"Phantom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apostolitic descent, every Minister, until he has shown himself eccentic or incapable of interesting a congregation, is regarded with quite as much respect as in England is accorded to the claimant of a phantom-priesthood; and therefore, prospectively, Jeames was to his mother a man of no little note. Maggie remembered how, when a boy, he had liked to talk with her father; and how her father would listen to him with a curious look on his rugged face, while the ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... eyes. She saw, or thought she saw, something sinister about the stranger's features. Her old terrors awoke; she took advantage of a kind of hesitation on his part, slipped through the shadows to the door of the solitary house, pressed a spring, and vanished swiftly as a phantom. ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... Barrere's transportation be suspended, and that he be tried again, his sentence being too mild. The terrorists rise at Toulon, as at Paris, and are subdued with much difficulty and bloodshed. 25. The Chouans, seeing themselves betrayed and deceived by a phantom of a treaty which had been held out to them as secure and permanent, again take up arms. 28. Rhull blows his brains out. A petition is presented to the convention demanding a separation of the supreme ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? Thou contempt of the brave—oh, rather the grave, Than to pine as the slave that thy fetters have bound. Like the dusk of the day is thy colour of gray, Thou foe of the lay, and thou phantom of gloom; Thou bane of delight—when thy shivering plight, And thy grizzle of white,[129] and thy crippleness, come To beg at the door; ah, woe for the poor, And the greeting unsure that grudges their bread; All unwelcome they call—from the hut to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was that the firms mentioned supplied us with a quantity of goods, agreeing to receive phantom eggs in exchange. This satisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying power of his hens which would have flattered them if they could have known it. It might also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which up to date ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... come back again to me that evening, and held a phantom levee behind the Marchioness of Heatherdale's shoulder. His 'ghaist' looked bonnie and rosy and confident, yet all the time the band was playing the requiem for his ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... boatswain, curiously enough, turned out a true one, for, although we had been only favoured with light winds from the time of Jackson's escape from the shark and all the while the ill-fated brute followed in our wake like a phantom of evil, not many hours elapsed after we had captured the animal before a strong southerly breeze sprang up. This, shifting round later on more to the westwards, came right astern of the vessel—thus enabling her to spread studding-sails and sky-sails, ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... commissionaires at the entrance seemed to start into life. And then suddenly several preoccupied men strode rapidly out of the theatre, buttoning their coats, and vanished phantom-like.... ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the wall for Georges and Jeanne. Jeanne laughed delightedly at the shadow and the grimaces of the profile; but when she saw that the shadow was me she cried and screamed. She seemed to say: "I don't want you to be a phantom!" Poor, sweet angel! Perhaps she has a presentiment of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... o'clock, another ship blew up. At ten, four ships, the only ones which were not disabled, and which I could distinguish to be French, crouded their sails, and quitted the field of battle; in the possession of which they appeared to be, as they were neither attacked nor followed. Such was the phantom produced by the enthusiasm ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... right, whence the sound proceeded, and as soon as the dim forms of the approaching squadron loomed upon us out of the mist, the word was given to fire. The whole line delivered a volley at a distance of about thirty paces, whereupon the phantom horsemen at once turned and fled back, uttering loud cries as they were swallowed up again in ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... are no phantom band; Brother, accept this fatal hand. Aches thine unbelieving heart With the fear that we must part? See, all we are rooted here By one thought to one same sphere; From thyself thou canst not flee,— From thyself no ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of the hour, and the night, by the appeal. Dimly he discerned, seated above him on the abutment, a shape outlined against the stars. It threw itself down with hard-striking feet, and came toward him, and he knew it was not a phantom of misery. It came closer to where he stood on the brink of the blackness, and laid a hand on his shoulder, put it farther across and held him, as tenderly as father might have held, in this ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... curious sound, like the lifting of a distant latch by phantom fingers, fell upon his ear,—then ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... sense that the term illusion has most frequently been confined. It is hardly less evident that there are illusions of memory. The peculiar difficulty of distinguishing between a past real event and a mere phantom of the imagination, illustrated in the exclamation, "I either saw it or dreamt it," sufficiently shows that memory is liable to be imposed on. Finally, it is agreed on by all that the beliefs we are wont to regard as self-evident are sometimes erroneous. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... wonders and perform miracles in art. He is the celestial limner who shall preserve the authentic faces of every generation from now until the world is no more. He holds the mirror up to Nature, paralyzes the fleeting phantom, by chemical subtilty, on the burnished plate,—and there it is fixed forever. He prepares the optical illusion of the stereoscope, so that through tiny windows we may look as into fairy-land and find sections of this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... heart and has not hitherto returned from the period whence the rose of my father's life suffered the autumnal breath of death, in plain English he passed through the gates of Grave, and from that hour the phantom of delight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... their several stations, might discountenance those malicious rumours, spread by evil-minded persons, to the prejudice of credit, and the eminent hazard of the public peace and tranquillity. The queen's recovery, together with certain intelligence that the armament was a phantom, and the pretender still in Lorraine, helped to assuage the ferment of the nation, which had been industriously raised by party-writings. Mr. Richard Steele published a performance, intituled, "The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... weird theory chimed in with his own feelings. The fourth dog, the one that had hid from the bullets, was a phantom, leading the savages on to vengeance for his dead comrades. Now and then he still bayed as he kept the trail, but the fleeing five sought in vain to make him a target for their bullets. Seemingly, he had profited by the death of his comrades, as his body never ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and Sicily. Innocent IV. died in 1254, but his successor, Alexander IV., continued his policy. A papalist King of Naples was wanted to withstand Manfred, and also a papalist successor to the pope's phantom King of the Romans, William of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... your system, not because they have confuted it, but because, like witchcraft or astrology, it has ceased to interest them. The great ship of your Church, once so stout and fair and well laden with good destinies, is become a skeleton ship; it is a phantom hulk, with warped planks and sere canvas, and you who work it are no more than ghosts of dead men, and at the hour when you seem to have reached the bay, down your ship will sink like lead or like stone to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... outline of the schooner, like a dark phantom stalking over the deep, could be discerned ahead. A vigilant lookout was kept, but hour after hour went by and the brig appeared to have got no nearer to her than at first. Jack and most of his officers remained on deck. Towards morning the distance seemed somewhat lessened. He ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... name, so that we will worship a supreme human god, so that we will worship mercy, justice, love and truth, and not have the idea that we must sacrifice our brother upon the altar of fear to please some imaginary phantom. See what Christianity has done for the world! It has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand organ and Ireland to exile. That is what religion has done. Take every country in the whole world, and the country that has got the least religion ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the editor of "The Firefly" softened. At first, he had taken his visitor for an unpaid contributor; but the American accent banished this phantom of the imagination. He continued to pour into a tumbler the contents ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... to have become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and phantom-like. He did not hear their voices. Perhaps the slow approach of dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. Before him the dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... splashed at a misstep up in his face. At last the blackness turned to grey, in which he could make out the fingers of his hand. Dawn was near. Why, thought the Englishman, did they delay striking so long? If they meant to kill him, he hoped it might be done quickly. The phantom figure which had accompanied them after the halt following the wildcat call must soon act. Even a brave man must wish such a night as this ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the moment was taken off his little monoplane, and his memory went back to the strange scenes in which he and his friends had recently played a part, in searching for the cave of the diamond-makers on Phantom Mountain. He recalled the promise he had made ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... to give him her full attention. She had a feeling that she had seen the man somewhere before, but where and under what circumstances she could not recall. It was no moment for retrospection and the phantom eluded her. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of our party, stared as deliberately and with as much freedom as if the children had been on a London music-hall stage. The Englishwomen passed us as though we had been invisible. They had so completely the air of seeing nothing in our chairs that I felt myself a phantom, a ghost like Banquo's, with no guilty eye to discern my presence at the table. Lastly came the Austrian, who had paused to speak to a servant, and, as she passed, she gave us a fleeting smile and a slight bow, the mere shadow of a curtsey, acknowledging our presence as human beings, to ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... howbeit, he slept well enough, judging from his lusty snoring. Now presently in the surrounding dark beyond the smouldering fire was a glimmer, a vague blur of sloping, trampled bank backed by misty trees; so came the dawn, very chill and full of eddying mists that crawled phantom-like, filling the little dingle brimful and blotting out the surrounding trees. In a little I arose and, coming without the cave, shivered in the colder air, shaken with raging hunger. And now remembering my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... more emaciated than a thirteenth-century statue, opened wide her toothless mouth. Terror paralyzed her. The man, better prepared for the visit of the phantom, cocked his revolver under the table and took aim at the Colonel, crying "Vade retro, Satanas!" The exorcism and the pistol missed ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... dark but that I was able to see, out of the corner of my eye, the nudges and gestures of delight which they interchanged as the great, stately Indiaman swept at length athwart our stern, dark and silent as a phantom. ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... association of opposites, we are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternity chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic Tithonos; and the Man ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second, her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of that high, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through the ceiling of the parlor, he began to address them, if indeed it were they whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of Princes, Marshals, Admirals, or trembling sheep-like re emits. It was difficult to hear the words, hopeless to make out the sense. It was a farrago of nonsense, part of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confused reminiscences of the published speeches of the man he ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... have similarly passed their lives in doing violence to mankind; but it was for something that was likely to last, and for a national interest. What they deemed the public good was not a phantom of the brain, a chimerical poem due to a caprice of the imagination, to personal passions, to their own peculiar ambition and pride. Outside of themselves and the coinage of their brain a real and substantial object of prime importance existed, namely, the State, the great body ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ill-poised upon its creaking hinges, crippled and decayed, swings to and fro before its glass 5 like some fantastic dowager: while our own ghostly likeness travels on, through ditch and brake, upon the plowed land and the smooth, along the steep hillside and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom hunter. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... arms, two clutched her by the shoulders, one placed his hand on her head. The serpent again hissed seven significant times, and in place of the solid Sophia the third Alexander of Macedon was substituted in phantom guise. When he faded Sophia reappeared and continued going and coming with a phantom between each of her appearances, so that she was in turn replaced by Luther, Cleopatra, Robespierre, and others, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... stumbled on the brink of the chasm as before, the thievish hands went once more, quick and busy, to his breast. He made a convulsive attempt to cry "No!" desperately rolled himself over into the gulf; and sank away from his enemy's touch, like a phantom in a dreadful dream. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before the steps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away; the shorts, gaiters, and smile—a phantom; and nature, who had gathered in the past, was providing for ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the heavy foliage. Its faint sickly odor overpowered her like a spell. Even the white bunches of elder flowers seemed to grow alive in the twilight, and to change into faces, looking at her whithersoever she turned. She shut her eyes, and tried to summon back the phantom of the golden chariot, and especially of the king-like man who sat inside. Scarce had she seen him clearly, but she felt he looked a king. If wishing could bring to her so glorious a fortune, she would almost like to have, in addition to the splendors of rich dress ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the abrupt inner change in Tannhaeuser, Venus and her world must vanish like a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of Tannhaeuser...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Annouschka to shut the door; for she wished to see Foedor once more, and to bid a last farewell to him who had been her lover. Annouschka obeyed; and Vaninka, with flowers in her hair and her breast covered with jewels, glided like a phantom ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 1919. I find the first signs of this spring, now the War is over, almost unbelievable. I have watched this advent with astonishment, as though it were a phantom. The feeling is the same as when waking from an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt the familiar objects in a morning light. They seem steadfast. Are they real, or is the dream? The morning works slowly through the mind to take the place of the night. Its brightness and ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... touch the substance is and must be in ourselves; and therefore there is no alternative in reason between the dreary (and thank heaven! almost impossible) belief that every thing around us is but a phantom, or that the life which is in us is in them likewise; and that to know is to resemble, when we speak of objects out of ourselves, even as within ourselves to learn is, according to Plato, only to recollect;—the only effective answer to which, that I have been fortunate to meet with, is ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... sea and eaten by the fishes. It was, however, something, so they maintained; for they had seen it; the dead man had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it psyche, was it pneuma, was it nous, with whom one had conversed in the dream? One imagined a phantom, an airy figure: it was skia, it was daimon, a ghost from the shades, a little soul of air and fire, very unrestricted, which ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... began to quicken, and as one half hypnotized she went clambering through the window into the ballroom, stood for an instant like a gray-white phantom in the outer shadows, then, with a laugh as foreign to her own ears as to another's, snatched up a great, square, shimmering silver scarf that gleamed across a deserted chair, stretched it taut by its corners across her hair and eyes, and with a queer little cry—half defiance, half ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to the piano, sat down, and played a plaintive, fleeting air—an air that was like a wandering moonbeam, the veritable phantom of a melody. Then he sang this song, in a low and almost toneless voice, uttering the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to the fact that it was originally addressed "To a beautiful Young Lady." Neither Dorothy nor Mary Wordsworth were physically "beautiful," according to our highest standards; although the poet addressed the latter as "a Phantom of delight," and as "a lovely apparition." It is quite true that it was Mary Wordsworth's old age that was "serene and bright," while Dorothy's was the very reverse; but the poet's anticipation of the future was written when his sister was young, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... dilirium of possession, like a priest drunk with the god who fills and moves him. All other thoughts disappeared from his soul, and the universe seemed to him only as a vague mist in the midst of which beamed the shining phantom of Nyssia. His happiness transformed itself into ecstasy, and his love into madness. At times his very felicity terrified him. To be only a wretched king, only a remote descendant of a hero who had ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... the wretched, is come: not hideous and with mockery, as superstition represents, but beautiful, smiling, and crowned with stars! The gentle phantom stoops to the beggar; its pale lips murmur a few airy words, which announce to her the end of her labors; a peaceful joy comes over the aged beggarwoman, and, leaning on the shoulder of the great Deliverer, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... silvered the cloud edges, leaving them as though carven from granite. The low shore, often within reach of our oar blades, appeared gloomy and inhospitable, the spectral rushes creeping far out upon the water like living things, seeming to grasp after us as the wind swept them, and we glided past in phantom silence. Beyond, like a great black wall, arose higher ground, occasionally jutting into bare bluffs outlined against the lighter sky; again diversified by gaunt dead trees, their fleshless limbs extended upward toward ghostly pillars of vapor ever floating from off the river's surface. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... to another life is doubtless very different. It is simply an expression of the reluctance of the human being to use the awful word "never." As the years take from us, one by one, all that we have loved, we try to avert our gaze; we are fain to believe that in some phantom world all will be given back to us, and that our toys have only been laid by in the nursery upstairs. Who, indeed, can deny that to give up these dreams involves a cruel pang? But, then, who but the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... phantom scene? — Do I wake in seeming show?— No, I dream not, since I know What I am and what I've been. And although thou should'st repent thee, Remedy is now too late. Who I am I know, and fate, Howsoe'er thou should'st lament thee, Cannot take from me my right ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... growth or decay, in the sun. This great orb is stationary as regards his place, and unchanging as regards his power. It is the subjective change in ourselves that projects itself into this endless succession of phantom changes in the object. Not otherwise on the scheme of development; the Christian theory and system are perfect from the beginning. In itself, Christianity changes not, neither waxing nor waning; but the motions of time and the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... been frustrated," I answered lamely. "Sufficient do I account the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these tawdry rags, and strap a soldier's ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... her hands, and endeavored to shut out the grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at midnight by ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... protest caused her to draw back. His only reaction to this was to step forward and continue to unbutton her blouse. She wanted to resist but the fear of driving him away held her mute; that and something in his eyes that told of excitement, an unformed phantom of delight that had never materialized but still held sway over her ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... ghost of Pain haunts not that garden-land Where Passion's phantom is so softly laid; But Charity beside that earth doth stand, Most lovely left of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... 30). W. Adolphe Roberts submitted a number of stories from Ainslee's: "Young Love," by Nancy Boyd; "The Token from the Arena," by June Willard; "The Light," by Katherine Wilson. He also drew attention to "Phantom," by Mildred Cram (Green Book, March). That the Committee of Award, after a careful study of these and other recommendations, failed to confirm individual high estimates is but another illustration of the disagreement of doctors. To all ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... in especial had been stirring on his cot as though trying to throw off some phantom of dread. Now instantly after the sentry's hail this stirring sleeper emitted an ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... caravan—a phantom caravan! Far off, gigantic, looming and lowering again, it paralleled the advance of their own train, which in numbers it seemed to equal. Slowly, steadily, irresistibly, awesomely, it kept pace with them, sending no sign to them, mockingly indifferent to them—mockingly ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... pursued the Phantom, "no father's counsel, aided ME. A stranger came into my father's place when I was but a child, and I was easily an alien from my mother's heart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... and noble face, Seen in the thronged and hurrying street, Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, A flying odor sweet, Then passing leaves the cheated sense Balked with a phantom excellence. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... almost the best ghost story he had ever heard. The spirit of Willson's father appeared to him, and stood before him. Willson was accustomed to apparitions, and so he said simply, "Won't you sit down, father?" The phantom put out his hand to lay hold of a chair-back as some people do in taking a seat, and his shadowy arm passed through the frame-work. "Ah!" he said, "I forgot ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with the basin made a horrid grimace when he caught my eye; his face was a curious golden yellow, his eyes jet black, and at first I took him for a fever phantom. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... or savage people, and the last stroke of the Prince's withdrawal had made us of the Irish more unpopular than ever. I was reflecting on my poor chances, when I saw another horseman on the hill, whom I supposed at first to have been a phantom, the news of his death in the very front at Culloden being current in the army generally. This was the Master of Ballantrae, my Lord Durrisdeer's son, a young nobleman of the rarest gallantry and parts, and equally designed by nature to adorn a Court and to reap laurels ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voice was choked with sobs. He still continued to point and to cry out, and to address some imaginary being whom he declared was wandering amongst the tombs. The boys pressed near to look, for some in the crowd suddenly made exclamations as though they had caught a glimpse of the phantom; but look as they would the brothers saw nothing, and Joseph asked of an elderly man in the little crowd ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the archway. He might have been shod with velvet for any sound he made. Could they get away unseen? The men with the torches were busy at their horrid work; they could not be seen yet from the front of the house. The horse crept forward, silent as a phantom. They were clear of the archway. "Now!" whispered Delmonte. "For life, Aquila!" and ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... glorious villain. The Parliament had made their covenant with the King at Newport—a bargain which gave them all, and left him nothing—save only his broken health, grey hairs, and the bare name of King. He would have been but a phantom of authority, powerless as the royal spectres Aeneas met in the under-world. They had got all from him—all save the betrayal of his friends. There he budged not, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... ship glided to her anchorage the crew stood about the deck in absolute silence, every man's heart in his face, the watch at its post, the others leaning on the bulwarks. Like statues they gazed on the shore. It seemed a phantom ship, blown from ghostly shores by the strength of hatred against the enemy, and love for the land of Eire; for no hope shone in their eyes, or in the eyes of Ledwith and his daughter, only triumph at their own light success. What a pity, thought Dillon, that at this hour of time ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... and wise consideration received in the Home by Mr. Ridley, while passing through the awful stages of his mania, had probably saved his life. The fits of frenzy were violent, so overwhelming him with phantom terrors that in his wild and desperate struggles to escape the fangs of serpents and dragons and the horrid crew of imaginary demons that crowded his room and pressed madly upon him he would, but for the restraint to which he was subjected, have thrown himself headlong from a window ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... the chamois of Switzerland, and it is hunted in the same manner. The hunter traverses the most inaccessible and broken localities, moving along with great caution, as the least unusual noise causes them to flit away like a phantom, and they will be seen no more. The animal is gregarious, but it is seldom that more than eight or ten are found in a flock. When not grazing they seek the sheltered sides of the mountains, and repose among ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... deal of attention in the streets, but this Marmaduke put down to his fame as a conqueror of phantom raiders. He began, however, to suspect that something was wrong when a newsboy shouted, "Where jer get that 'at, leftenant?" The question was unoriginal and obvious; but the newsboy showed imagination at his second effort, which was the opening line of an old music-hall chorus: "Sidney's 'olidays ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... and not over three paces distant, the image of Death himself rose out of the earth, and stretched forth his skeleton arms to clutch me. It was no phantom. There was the white, naked skull, with its eyeless sockets, the long, flesh-less limbs, the open, serrated ribs, the long, jointed fingers of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... old tragedy Hath made distraught—who now in dreams doth keep His cherished dead, unmindful of her sleep In ocean's bosom locked eternally! Scorn not the foolish grave that I have made Beside the deep sea of my soul's unrest, But let me hope that when the storms are stayed My phantom ship shall sail from out the west Bringing the boon for which I long have prayed— The broken vigil and the ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... about two years since, the work called the "Antiquary," he announced that he was, for the last time, intruding upon the public in his present capacity. He might shelter himself under the plea that every anonymous writer is, like the celebrated Junius, only a phantom, and that therefore, although an apparition, of a more benign, as well as much meaner description, he cannot be bound to plead to a charge of inconsistency. A better apology may be found in the imitating the confession of honest Benedict, that, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... be by a sort of anachronism that I had ever mentioned contemporary Venetian Commerce; and I turned with exultation from the phantom transactions of the present to that solid and magnificent prosperity of the past, of which the long-enduring foundations were laid in the earliest Christian times. For the new cities formed by the fugitives from barbarian invasion of the main-land, during the fifth century, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... individual was not—he hailed with renewed appreciation this costly expression of a social ideal. The dining-room at the Nouveau Luxe represented, on such a spring evening, what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its leisure: a phantom "society," with all the rules, smirks, gestures of its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other had been the product of continuity and choice. And the instinct which had driven a new class of world-compellers to bind ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... lineaments Of earth, the phantom throng That swept before my sight in thought, And lived in storied song. Vain, vain the dream—as well might I Aspire to build a star, Or pile the gorgeous sunset clouds ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... torrent. The path led us onwards in a manner that was all one with the plot now woven round our feet. We could but follow the path, though we knew with what an evil purpose it was made: that it was as phantom as the rest. At one place it invited us to cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the abyss of a cataract; in another it invited us to climb, in spite of our final weariness, a great barrier of rock that lay between an upper and a lower jasse. We continued upon it determinedly, with heads ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... faculty of seeing; the act of seeing; a supernatural appearance; a spectre; a phantom; a dream; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... to the old man's vision, Nell was still the same. When he could, for a moment, disengage his mind from the phantom that haunted and brooded on it always, there was his young companion with the same smile for him, the same earnest words, the same merry laugh, the same love and care that, sinking deep into his soul, seemed ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... hastened back to Toledo, pursued and pelted by the tempest. The mountains shook and echoed with the thunder, trees were uprooted and blown down, and the Tagus raged and roared and flowed above its banks. It seemed to the affrighted courtiers as if the phantom legions of the tower had issued forth and mingled with the storm; for amidst the claps of thunder and the howling of the wind, they fancied they heard the sound of the drums and trumpets, the shouts of armies and the rush of steeds. Thus beaten by tempest, and overwhelmed ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the old lady, and she resumed her knitting upon a phantom tam-o'-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas surprise for ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... rising from the water, But modelled from the Master's daughter! On many a dreary and misty night 'Twill be seen by the rays of the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel in its flight By a path none other knows aright, Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays Holding it firm ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... same time set their bells tinkling; when the breeze first blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek kissed; when the ships on the sea below seem to cross each other and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when there are distant concussions in the air and phantom horsemen galloping, ceasing; when the horizon swims blue, green, emotional—then Mrs. Jarvis, heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, "If only some one could give me... if I could give some one...." But she does not know what she wants to give, nor ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... persistently, pressing on toward the goal, all unaware that years ago he had left that goal like a lighthouse on a rocky shore, and was now sweeping along with the turbulent tide of Mammonism. He still saw the light ahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, "When I am worth ten thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth ten thousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-five thousand. He said, "When I am worth twenty-five thousand ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... pure fallacy, and a petitio principii throughout. The Cartesian form of it is the most glaringly fallacious, and indeed exposes itself; for by that reasoning we might prove the existence of a fiery dragon or any other phantom of the brain. But even King's more concealed sophism is equally absurd. What ground is there for saying that the number of possible things is infinite? He adds, "at least in power," which means either ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... to know that an opium-induced, phantom peritonitis causes pressure upon the diaphragm, which in turn crowds the lungs and heart, inducing precordial oppression—smothering sensations and simulating important symptoms which should be understood at once so that a ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... in describing these very stones, chooses the early morning as the time in which to exhibit them, when they "stood in the gray light of the dawning, like the phantom forms of antediluvian giants, who, shrouded in the habiliments of the dead, come to revisit, by the pale light, the earth which they had plagued with their oppression, and polluted by their sins, till they brought down upon it the vengeance of long-suffering heaven." On ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... thou for friends Tricked by a phantom, cheated to the grave? Woe worth the God, the mocking God, that sends Lies to the pious, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar, she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... inconsiderateness towards one too tender for such treatment. He deserves more pity than blame. And for her—thank Heaven for the blessing on them that mourn. Innocent creature, much will be spared her; if I could but dwell on that rather than on the phantom of delight she was, and my anticipations of again seeing the look that recalls Helen. If Helen was here, how she would be ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... although he bore only the name of regent; he had the power and the dominion; the infant nurseling Ivan, the minor emperor, was but a shadow, a phantom, having the appearance but not the reality of lordship; he was a thing unworthy of notice; he could make no one tremble with fear, and therefore it was unnecessary to crawl ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... fellow-feeling common to mankind. It would not indeed be an example of our substituting others for ourselves, but it would be an example of user substituting ourselves for others. And as it would not be an instance of benevolence, so neither would it be any instance of self-love: for this phantom of danger to ourselves, naturally rising to view upon sight of the distresses of others, would be no more an instance of love to ourselves than the ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... so struck by the brilliancy of this idea, that he played the air again, until it rang like a phantom chorus over the still plantations. At last, overcome by emotion and brandy, he slid from the stool and sat at the foot ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... bloom, And bluebirds sang their sonnets in the gloom Of leaves that roofed them in from sun or rain? I know not; but a presence will remain Forever and forever in this room, Formless, diffused in air, like a perfume,— A phantom of the heart, and not the brain. Delicious days! when every spoken word Was like a foot-fall nearer and more near, And a mysterious knocking at the gate Of the heart's secret places, and we heard In the sweet tumult of delight and fear A voice that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and virtue. There the mariner That sailed the sea under Euboea saw Flashing amidst the wide obscurity The steel of helmets and of clashing brands, The smoke and lurid flame of funeral pyres, And phantom warriors, clad in glittering mail, Seeking the combat. Through the silences And horror of the night, along the field, The tumult of the phalanxes arose, Mixing itself with sound of warlike tubes, And clatter ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores, Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed, I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars, With ghostly oars that move to song, a ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... price of cots suffered a dispiriting drop. Fifty cents would hire the most exclusive bed in the phantom ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... torch from side to side. He noticed nothing. He was, indeed, a rather imaginative man, and he hoped he would not notice anything. He did not like coming down this ghostly street, which his weak mind would persist in peopling with phantom crowds from long-played picture dramas. It gave him the creeps, as he had more than once confessed. He hurried on, flashing his torch along the blind fronts of the shops in a perfunctory manner. He was especially nervous when he came to corners. And he was glad when he issued ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... alarm, therefore, when this cloud of phantom- like beings rose before his eyes, le Bourdon stood firm, merely turning toward the chiefs behind him, to ascertain if they were taken by surprise, as well as himself. It was apparent that they were; for, understanding that a medicine-ceremony was to take place on the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... high Through the vast whole, the one infinity. Victor, he brought the tidings from the skies What things in nature may, or may not, rise; What stated laws a power finite assign, And still with bounds impassable confine. Thus trod beneath our feet the phantom lies; We mount o'er Superstition to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... were quite unstrung as he put spurs to his horse for a rush by the object of his fright. As he dashed past, his hair almost bristling with apprehension, the supposed phantom leaped upon the back of the horse and clasped the frightened man about his waist. His apprehensions were startling enough before, but now he was wrought to the ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Darkness, lends you her cloak! Out!" Kenkenes cried, striking at his pet. The wary animal eluded the blow and for a moment revolved about another sphinx, pursued by his master, and then fled like a phantom out of the court by the path he came. By this time the priest had emerged from his refuge and was attempting to prevent the young man's interference with the will ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of the water. I had remained in that position but a few moments, when my attention was called by the boatswain's-mate, who stood near by: 'Look yonder!' said he, pointing with his finger. I looked in the direction indicated, and lo! there lay the mystic 'Phantom Ship.' She was only a few yards off; perfectly becalmed, with no more motion than if painted on canvass, and apparently not over six feet long, yet perfect in every respect. I was gazing in admiration, with my eyes rivetted ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... my relatives. Between ourselves, I don't expect to make a fortune out of photography. The first days especially were very difficult. Nobody came, or if by chance some unfortunate wight did mount, I made a failure of him, got on my plate only an image blurred and vague as a phantom. One day, at the very beginning, a wedding-party came up to me, the bride all in white, the bridegroom with a waistcoat—like that! And all the guests in white gloves, which they insisted on keeping on for the portrait ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... playground,—the world. What is to be made out of wretches who, as thou hast observed, have strength neither for good nor evil? Gold, ambition, or pleasure, can quickly make rascals of them, who have for a short period pursued the phantom virtue; and if any one should move boldly at first along the path of vice, he will be driven back when half-way by the spectres of his crazy imagination. If, indeed, it were a proud hot-headed Spaniard, a revengeful assassinating Italian, or even a wild lascivious Frenchman, whom ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... him to the human nature he despises, or make him sensible of the sufferings of the poor wretch whom he dreads, by showing him this wretch in the guise of the escaped convict or the nocturnal burglar. The hideous phantom Death, under the repulsive aspect in which he has been represented by Holbein and his predecessors, gnashing his teeth and playing the fiddle, has been powerless to convert the wicked and console their victims. And does not our literature employ the same means as the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... expansion to the East, without a positive mission of its own, unable to create a state organisation of equal nations, free and progressive in civilisation. The dynasty, living in its absolutist traditions, maintains itself a phantom of its former world empire, assisted in government by its undemocratic partners, the barren aristocracy, the anti-national bureaucracy, and ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... this Phantom we detest, Rarely we let it cross our portals: It is a most exacting guest, And we are much afflicted mortals. Your neighbor Gay, that jovial wight, As Dives rich, and brave as Hector, Poor Gay steals twenty times a night, On shaking knees, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness; And his own Thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued like raging ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... prospecting about for news, and watching the movements of the English soldiers on shore, or of the fleet anchored a few miles farther off. They had only to steal away unnoticed, and take to their boat before the excitement began, and they could follow the phantom ships upon their mysterious way, and watch the whole attempt against the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, man of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, faggot voter; nominis umbra [Lat.], nonentity; flash in the pan, vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]. shadow; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; dream &c (imagination) 515; ignis fatuus &c (luminary) 423 [Lat.]; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]; air, thin air, vapor; bubble &c 353; baseless fabric of a vision [Tempest]; mockery. hollowness, blank; void &c (absence) 187. inanity, fool's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... highest Ranks, and the most unblemished Characters. Now, Sir, what Safety is there for a Woman's Reputation, when a Lady may be thus prostituted as it were by Proxy, and be reputed an unchaste Woman; as the Hero in the ninth Book of Dryden's Virgil is looked upon as a Coward, because the Phantom which appeared in his Likeness ran away from Turnus? You may depend upon what I relate to you to be Matter of Fact, and the Practice of more than one of these female Pandars. If you print this Letter, I may give you some further Accounts of this vicious ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed them, in a very forest of hewn timber; from the entanglements, intricacies, and depths of which, as from among the boughs of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... they passed through the doorway into a world of black gloom, in which phantom shapes at one moment pressed against one, and at the next vanished ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... different paths which ran about the sides of the mountain began to meet in two great roads, which insensibly gathered the whole multitude of travellers into two great bodies. At a little distance from the entrance of each road there stood a hideous phantom, that opposed our further passage. One of these apparitions had his right hand filled with darts, which he brandished in the face of all who came up that way. Crowds ran back at the appearance of it, and cried out, "Death!" The spectre that ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... phantom did the canoe bearing the scout skim along the shore of the Gila, hugging the banks as closely as possible, so as to take advantage of the ribbon of shadow which followed the winding of the stream. The moon was creeping higher up the sky, and this advantage would soon be denied the fugitive ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine: and the physician knew it well. Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, up rose a grisly phantom—up rose a thousand phantoms—in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and condemning myself as if I had been ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... A phantom central repeated the numbers; there was a pause, and then "Two two four one," came in a tiny voice into my ear—a voice with the English sing-song—the voice plainly of a gentleman. "Is that you again, Mr. Bellairs?" ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... handwriting that is of heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others; who have converted every bulwark wherewith it was guarded into Lutheran "spirits," what I may call phantom ramparts and parted walls. All this they have done that they might not be utterly dumbfounded by falling upon Scripture texts contrary to their errors, texts which they would have found it as hard to get over as to swallow ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... wall, And look thee in the face, triumphant Death. I call for aid, and no one answereth; I am alone with thee, who conquerest all; Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall, For thou art but a phantom and a wraith; Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt, With armor shattered, and without a shield, I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt; I can resist no more, but will not yield. This is no tournament where cowards tilt; The vanquished here ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and closed, and noiselessly as a phantom, Leo Gordon stood within the room. One swift survey enabled her to grasp all the details. The small, comfortless, dismal apartment, the barred narrow window, the bare floor, the low iron cot in one ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... phantom of our Freedom died Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried: "Drink coffee, Lads, for that is all that's left Since our Land of the ...
— The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam - With Apologies to Omar • J. L. Duff
... if expecting some one. Not you, miserable! You needn't stop and make signs for them to admit you. There! don't you see you have frightened them? You are not a fitting spectacle for such sweet-eyed darlings. They do well to drop the shade, to shut out the darkness, and the dim, gesticulating phantom. Flit on! 'Tis their father they are looking for, coming home to them ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... disappointment. With Charley, any emotion always reached the ultimate absurdity. He was a flowing, flexible phantom of translucent color and radiance. But now the colors faded like gaudy rags in caustic solution. Charley whined as Denver went through the grotesque ritual of donning space helmet and zipping up his glass cloth and metal foil suiting before ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... lived these weeks in Germany I do not doubt that what you would have seen would have led your ripe experience to a fervent faith in a Divinely guided future of mankind. The great spiritual movement of 1870, when I was a boy growing up, was but a phantom compared to July and August of 1914. Germany was a nation stirred by the most sacred emotions, humble and strong, filled with just wrath and a firm determination to conquer—a nation disciplined, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... young officer, "I should vainly attempt to paint all that passed in my mind at that dreadful moment. Nothing but the depth of my despair gave me strength to support the scene throughout. I saw the frantic and half-naked woman glide like a phantom past the troops, dividing the air with the rapidity of thought. I knew it to be Ellen; for the discovery of her exchange of clothes with one of the drum boys of the grenadiers was made soon after you left the fort. I saw her leap upon the coffin, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson |
