"Phantom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tortur'd fancy there appear'd The form of thee, thus beauteous as thou art; Thy garments flowing loose, and in each hand A wanton lover, who by turns caress'd thee With all the freedom of unbounded pleasure. I snatch'd my sword, and in the very moment Darted it at the phantom; straight it left me; Then rose, and call'd for lights, when, O dire omen! I found my weapon had the arras pierc'd, Just where that famous tale was interwoven, How the ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... solemn hush, in company with the night, caused comparative stillness to brood over the scene, in contrast to the pandemoniacal noise that had previously reigned so fiendishly. Then, all of a sudden, Fritz appeared to awake suddenly from a disturbed dream or phantom-haunted night-mare, in which all the powers of evil were tearing at his heart and brain. The war fever, for him, had exhausted its final paroxysm. The red mist had been withdrawn from his eyes. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... my lips can frame No syllable but Rama's name. Each sight I see, each sound I hear, Brings Rama to mine eye or ear, The wish was in my heart, and hence The sweet illusion mocked my sense. 'Twas but a phantom of the mind, And yet the voice was soft and kind. Be glory to the Eternal Sire,(848) Be glory to the Lord of Fire, The mighty Teacher in the skies,(849) And Indra with his thousand eyes, And may they grant the truth to be E'en as the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Mrs. Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of Poems called Men and Women. For other tributes by great poets to their wives see Wordsworth's "She was a phantom of delight," and "O dearer far than life and light are dear;" and Tennyson's "Dear, near and true." Mrs. Browning's love for her husband had found passionate expression in Sonnets from ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... variety of wild-flowers, in whose small cups dewdrops glistened, prismatic as opals. The shrubbery was no longer a dismal mass of darkness, but showed all manner of shadings of glossy green leaves, which the moisture of the night had ornamented with shimmering edges of crystal beads. She found the phantom of the night before browsing among flowers behind the cottage, and very kindly disposed to make her acquaintance. As he had a thistle blossom sticking out of his mouth, she forthwith named him Thistle. She soon returned to the house with her apron ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... that although the existence of Sylla, Marius, Dionysius the Elder, and Herod the Ascalonite may have been externally almost incomparably fortunate, few men, I fancy, would care to have lurking within them the strange, restless, blood-stained phantom, possessed neither of thought nor of feeling, on which the happiness must depend (if the word happiness be indeed applicable here) that is founded upon unceasing crime. But, this deduction being made, and on the most reasonable, most liberal scale (which will become the more generous as we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the theatre, a mile away, and meet the return boat. So down down through the creaking house, gingerly, as though I were a Jason picking my way among the coils of the sleeping dragon. Soon I was shooting along the phantom streets, like Mercury ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... garments dressed, With sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips, A pomp of all the passions passed along, All the night through; till the white phantom ships Of dawn sailed in. Whereat I said this song, "Of all sweet ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... toned down, and he was readier to hope for the best and to feel warm at heart and grateful,—grateful for Dolly and the tender thoughts that were bound up in his love for her. The tender phantom Aimee's words had conjured up, stirred within his bosom a thrill so loving and impassioned, that for the time the radiance seemed to emanate from the very darkest of his clouds of disappointment and discouragement. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bennet Street, where, for a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of his visitors. When, next year, he took chambers in Albany, one of the great advantages which his friends looked to in the change was, that they should get rid of this phantom. But, no,—there she was again—he had actually brought her with him from Bennet Street. The following year saw him married, and, with a regular establishment of servants, in Piccadilly; and here,—as Mrs. Mule ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... beauty of the night touched strange fancies to life in Martin's mind—he was on a phantom ship, sailing on an unreal sea. The desirable, disturbing presence so close to his side ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... cadence Persian Omar sings The life of man that lasts but for a day; A phantom caravan that hastes away, On to ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... distinct stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires, as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates, there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility to people the solitudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political condition of her country, by the traditions of the past no less than by the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... which Volney expresses his unbelief is entitled the "Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires."(595) It is a poem in prose. Volney imagines himself falling into a meditation, amid the ruins of Palmyra, on the fall of empires.(596) The phantom of the ruins appears, and, entering into converse with him, causes him to see the kingdoms of the world, and guides him in the solution of the mysteries which puzzle him.(597) It unveils to him the view of nature as a system of laws, and of man as a being gifted ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... allurement. There was the Quaker Sleuth, for instance, and Mad Matt the Trailer, and Buckskin Joe who rode disdainfully alone (like Lochinvar), rescuing maidens from treacherous Apaches, cutting long rows of death notches on the stock of his carbine. One of these narratives contained a phantom troop of skeleton horsemen, a grisly squadron, which came like an icy wind out of the darkness, striking terror to the hearts of the renegades and savages, only to vanish with clatter of bones, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... false, and which at the same time brought them no glory,—nothing to feed their vanity, or pride, or exalt them in any way. Admit, then, for a moment, that he is self-deceived, under some strong delusion, and that the object of which he is in pursuit is but a phantom. Then mark the path in which that phantom leads: it has turned him from being a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent, overbearing man (1 Tim. 1), into one of liveliest affections, most tender sympathies, a lowly servant of all; it has given him a joy that no wave of trouble ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... thy pace, While he joined in the wild-goose chase; Thou'rt now the great one of this place, While he hath lost his phantom race— Thy ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... perishing of thirst seem always to be present, properly to appreciate the humor of the deception; but when a gentleman whose narrative suggested this article averred that he had seen these illusory lakes navigated by phantom boats filled with visionary persons he was, I daresay, thought to be drawing the long bow, even by many miragists in good standing. For aught I know he may have been. I can only attest the entirely credible character ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... with heads awry And the sharpened gleam of a cunning eye— Watch, through the cracks of the ruined skull, How the evil business goes!— Beyond the eyes of the cherubim, Beyond the ears of the seraphim, Outside, forsaken, in the dim Phantom-haunted chaos grim He stands, with the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... hope. Men live for pleasures, riches, and honors, as though these things were worthy of our highest aspirations, as though they could satisfy the unappeasable appetite of man for happiness. Greater folly than this can no man be guilty of. He takes the dross for the pure gold, the phantom for the reality. Few men theoretically belong to this class; practically ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the Tempest, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet far as the poles from the spiritualities of religion! Ariel in antithesis to Caliban! What is most ethereal to what is most animal! A phantom of air, an abstraction of the dawn and of vesper sun-lights, a bodiless sylph on the one hand; on the other a gross carnal monster, like the Miltonic Asmodai, "the fleshliest incubus" among the fiends, and yet so far ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... will tell him, that he may not doubt the correctness of my information; that he had under his cloak a large white robe dotted with black tears, death's heads, and crossbones—for in case of a surprise, he was to pass for the phantom of the White Lady who, as all the world knows, appears at the Louvre every time ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... about four years ago, when, as the guest of Mr. Stedman, she told several interesting stories, relate an experience of her own, wherein, one night early in her life, she had leaned against the walls of the Campanile, gray and phantom-like in the moonlight, and, singing softly to herself, was surprised at discovering several little lizards lying about on the stones, their heads held alertly in the air as if entranced by the sound of her voice. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... have to be often revised before they correspond approximately to facts. What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities. The World War has taught something to everybody. It was indeed a great reality; it accustomed us to think in terms of reality and not in those of phantom speculation. Some unmistakable truths were revealed. Facts and force were the things that counted. Power had to be produced to destroy hostile power; it was found that the old political and economic systems were not adequate to the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... his eye, but saw nothing. Then all heard plainly a half-smothered grunt of satisfaction, followed by a deep drawn breath. Phantom-like, without apparently the slightest directing motion, the bows of the canoes swung like wind-vanes to point toward a little heap of driftlogs under the shadow of an elder bush. The bear was wallowing in the cool, wet sand, and evidently enjoying it. A moment later he stuck his head over the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition—it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. The Editor of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... think directly of Valerie, but vague pictures passed, phantom-like, before his mind. He saw her in her garden, gathering late flowers; he saw her reading under the fringe of vine-leaves and tendrils; he saw her again in the wintry New York of snow, sunlight, white, gold and blue, or smiling down from the high-decked steamer against a sky of frosty ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Vice beyond his power, Pope yet possessed"—(the Praise will make you start) - "Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart! And still we marvel at the Man, and still Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form, Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line That from ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: "It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the neck. See here; that's how near they came ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... people, and this upon a wise and enlightened administration of the government. It would seem that the best thing the Sultan could have done for Islam, would have been not to excite the fears of Europe by the phantom of a Panislamic league, but to have devoted all his energies to ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... forgiveness. Since then, if sitting alone, ligna super foco large reponens, I involuntarily recur to that ill-favored conception, it suffices to contrast with it the grotesque appearance of its originator, and the pale phantom evanisheth. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... bulky roll of misgovernment, incompetence, and blind folly be enrolled on the one hand, and then turn to the terrors of the midnight assassin and the lawless deeds which desecrate the sunlight of noontide, walking abroad as a phantom armed with the desperation of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Why is it that I tremble when thine eyes, Thy human eyes and beautiful human speech, Draw me, and stir within my soul That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... Simla. There are some sixteen stories in Plain Tales from the Hills into which the Simla motive is threaded. In the books immediately following, published in 1888 and 1889, Simla is not wholly abandoned, but the proportion of Simla stories is less. The Phantom Rickshaw (1889) is the last story which can fairly be brought within the list, and this story can only be included by straining its point to vanishing. Of all the groups of stories in Plain Tales from the ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... a quiet street, He stopped awhile and joined a Punch's gathering; And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet, To see that gentleman his Judy lathering; And heard, as Punch was being treated penalty, That phantom curate ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... the tomb of my Eveline, saw my boy, sought absolution, made many prayers, but could not shake off the phantom. It was on a Friday I slew my foe, and on each Friday night he appeared. The young Simon de Montfort was about to form another band of crusaders, and he allowed me to accompany him, with the result I have ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Maurice's head and the sharp corner. She was lifted up at once, in the horror of seeing him neither cry nor move, for, in fact, he had been almost stifled under her weight, and all had since been to her a frightful phantom dream. Albinia was infinitely relieved by this history, showing that Maurice could hardly have received any real injury, and in her declarations that Sophy's presence of mind had saved him, was forgetting to whom the accident was owing. Lucy wanted to know why her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw Cynthia Clarke as something far away, an almost meaningless phantom. He wondered why he had felt power in her; he wondered what it was that had led him to her, had kept him beside her, had bound him to her. She was nothing. She had never really been anything to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the blazing stars, that shook their horrid hair in the sky; the phantom ship, that brought its message direct from the other world; the story of the mouse and the snake at Watertown; of the mice and the prayer-book; of the snake in church; of the calf with two heads; and of the cabbage in the perfect form of a cutlash,—all ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... He was able so to contract his abdominal muscles that the aorta could be distinctly felt with the fingers. In this feat nearly all the abdominal contents were crowded beneath the diaphragm. On the other hand, he could produce a phantom abdominal tumor by driving the coils of the intestine within a peculiar grasp of the rectus and oblique muscles. The "growth" was rounded, dull on percussion, and looked as if an exploratory incision or puncture would be ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was only a phantom," said Amroth, "put there like the sights in the Pilgrim's Progress, the fire that was fed secretly with oil, and the robin with his mouth full of spiders, as ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his followers are evidently a little taken aback—an abduction not quite so simple an affair as they expected. While they are working themselves up to it, Manrico appears, as the stage-direction says, "like a phantom." In a helmet, with a horsehair tail, and a large white cloak, he does look extremely like the Ghost in Hamlet, and which is, perhaps, why the Count, under the impression that he is an apparition from some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... one's sanity to see the shadow of a revenge ghost cast on the wall,—to know that a vindictive spirit is beside one but invisible—than to see the specter himself? Under such circumstances, the sight of a skeleton or a sheeted phantom would ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... a phantom of a fright When first she burst upon my sight; A Cubist apparition meant To symbolize a Nude's descent. Her eyes like soft-shell crabs aflare Like loads of brick her dusky hair; And all things else about her drawn As by ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... enfolding the very bosom of the earth, escapes us. A little dog, traveling with his nose low, lives in another stratum of the world, and experiences other pleasures than his master. He has excitements that he does his best to share, and that send him flying in pursuit of phantom clues. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... Penseroso, without a glimmer of the countless and daily trifles of fairer aspect that made her actual presence possible to suffer,—comes to flatter his memory with assurance of strength in having endured so much and yet survived, or to stab him with her phantom poniards freshly and fiercely as ever,—no diffused affair, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... dreadful a vessel to fall in with as the Phantom Ship in Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner,' I always feel uncomfortable when I read that poem, and yet I admire ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... call me a nonentity if they will," he wrote to John Murray, Junr. (13th March). "I believe that some of those, who say I am a phantom, would alter their tone provided they were to ask me to a good dinner; bottles emptied and fowls devoured are not exactly the feats of a phantom. No! I partake more of the nature of a Brownie or Robin Goodfellow, goblins, 'tis true, but full of merriment and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... I should like to have called to you. I was desirous of making your acquaintance; and I have succeeded. Let me tell you the history of the unfortunate man whom I mentioned; you will then perhaps be convinced that it is no idle phantom of the brain when I see you in the most ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... rather as if it were still night, and not really dawn at all. Dawn appeared to be waiting for something else to give it authority, so to speak, and at the end of ten minutes that something else came—the slim form of Blackie, streaking, phantom-like, through the mist from the trench out in the field to the summer-house in the garden. Here, mounted upon the very top, he stood for a moment, as one clearing his throat before blowing a bugle, and then, full, rich, deep, and flute-like, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the waste, And lo!—the phantom caravan has reach'd The Nothing it set out ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... foliage; while, on the other, the river flowed by with a murmuring sound, reflecting the bright stars from the dark sky overhead. Far away to the right were sombre forests, with openings here and there, across which phantom forms were seen flitting to and fro, though so indistinct were they that we could not tell what animals they ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... The phantom stooped over me as she spoke, and lowered her gory fingers, as if to touch my face, when, terror giving me the power of which it at first deprived me, I screamed aloud—the casement of the apartment was thrown open with a loud noise,—and—But ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... shadow forth my bride As I knew her fair and kind As I woo'd her for my wife; She is lovely by my side In the silence of my life— 'Tis a phantom of the mind. ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... suffer—alone—or more than I do. There is hope for you; there is none for me. But one thing has been a comfort. I knew you only cared for an ideal creature, not at all like me. I was not afraid you would break your heart for a phantom that had never existed. And for me as I am, I knew you could have no regard. I see"—she broke off—"I see all the contradictions that are involved in what I have said and am saying, and yet I mean it all. In separate sections of my consciousness each separate clause exists at this ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... cause of his being "Boycotted" was his action is serving four processes himself, because neither love nor money nor threats would induce a process-server to do his work. The country folk know quite well the difference between Land League law and the phantom which remains of the law of the land. The former is instantly enforced, the latter cannot be carried into effect at all, a fact which is telling upon its officers with ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the insurgents by land and the fleet by sea, it would besiege and capture Havana. But again and again the sailing of the fleet was delayed, and there was alarm in the cities of the Atlantic states, because the newspapers published wild reports of phantom armadas hovering off the coast. When news came that Cervera had sailed from St. Vincent, and for many days there was no trace of his movements, there was a quite unnecessary alarm as to what the Spanish squadron might do. A wise Press censorship would have been very useful to the United ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... that Smolensk was entirely occupied, and its fires almost extinguished, and when day and the different reports had sufficiently instructed him; when, in short, he saw that there, as at the Niemen, at Wilna, at Witepsk, the phantom of victory, which allured him forward, and which he always imagined himself to be on the point of seizing, had once more eluded his grasp, he proceeded slowly towards his barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle, according to his custom, in order to appreciate the value of the attack, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... whole hearts on each other; but, in spite of these generous qualities, their common desires and their bitter suffering, some falsehood, some pride, some shyness, some suspicion, some chill, intangible phantom, is set fatally between them. In every community there are piteous tragedies of this sort, little dreamed of by those outside, but which the bleeding hearts concerned in them feel as a deadly drain, hastening ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the legends that cluster about his life, Francis himself must not be held responsible for all that has been written about him. He himself was no phantom or mythical being, but a real, earnest man who, according to his light, tried to serve his generation. As he himself said: "A man is just so much and no more as he is in the sight of God." "Francis appears to me," says Forsyth, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... any man. At the same time it is impossible for any human being not to have his attention often lured away to the other rings, in one of which Fricke's rams vie with the bird and the dragon; or where the phantom ship seems as firmly fixed as the practical rainbow, which so closely betrays the carpenter. In the other ring you can actually hear the dull jokes of Mimi and the Wanderer, or hear Walther explain that he has passed a comfortable night and ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... fever of his troubled breast. In broken dreams the image rose Of varied perils, pains, and woes: His steed now flounders in the brake, Now sinks his barge upon the lake; Now leader of a broken host, His standard falls, his honor's lost. Then,—from my couch may heavenly might Chase that worst phantom of the night!— Again returned the scenes of youth, Of confident, undoubting truth; Again his soul he interchanged With friends whose hearts were long estranged. They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead; As warm each hand, each brow as gay, As ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... thing. He is a villain, a damnable villain—but he is a 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, but ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... very minutely. Her pace increased suddenly; she dragged her linked companions on with a lurch forward. The farmhouse where she first saw the phantom stranger was well passed. She was ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... particular was a fair example of the spirit of the Life-force. His effort, no doubt, was in a way easier than that made by Mr. Taynton, for to be twenty-two years old and in love should be occupation sufficient. But he, too, had his bad hours, when the past rose phantom-like about him, and he recalled that evening when his rage had driven him nearly mad with passion against his traducer. And by an awful coincidence, his madness had been contemporaneous with the slanderer's death. He must, in fact, have been within a few ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... shrank back a little, instinctively; and then, as he leaned forward once more, determined to understand, shrank back with a sharp indrawing of breath, as there whirled past, it appeared only a few yards away, a flare of brilliant blue lines, in the midst of which passed a phantom-like body in a mist and accompanied by a musical sound (it seemed) of extraordinary clarity and beauty, that rose from a deep organ-note to the shrill of a flute, and down again Into a bass and ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... justifiable than any made by Spaniards; but the government is too much occupied with its own wars, and the knowledge could not be procured except at the price of blood. Two young men of good constitution, and who could afford to spend five years, might succeed. If the object of search prove a phantom, in the wild scenes of a new and unexplored country, there are other objects of interest; but, if real, besides the glorious excitement of such a novelty, they will have something to look back upon through life. As to the dangers, they are always magnified, and, in general, peril is discovered soon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... strange kind of mouse-in-the-trap trance, about that unhappiness. Was there to be no happiness, for her anywhere? Was she always to want more than she got, was all this passion now too late? Was it real at all? Was it not a fever, a phantom, a hallucination? Did she see Morris? Did she not rather see something that she must seize to slake her burning feverish thirst? For one moment she had known happiness, when her arms had gone around him and she had been able to ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... invade My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream, Tipples imaginary pots of ale, In vain; awake I find the settled thirst Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse. Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarred, Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach, Nor walnut in rough-furrow'd coat secure, Nor medlar, fruit delicious in decay; Afflictions great! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... terms, and in a manner calculated to sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent from her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness constantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared at this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness of his carriage, was to her as a sun-beam, awakening the hope of returning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions; and, even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an aching eye, upon the air-built ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... the store in despair. He found himself engaged in what appeared to be an endless chase after a phantom Considine, and the difficulties in his way semed insuperable. Yet how could he go back and tell them all at home that he had failed? What would they think of him? The thought made him miserable; and he determined, if ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... it; staggering she fell back upon a chair; she gazed fixedly at the window, even after the fearful phantom had disappeared. Her lips were open, as if for a cry which had been silenced by horror. She did not weep, she did not complain, and even the caresses of the children, the gentle address of Princess Elizabeth, and the comforting words of the king ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... we travel forth, and in our journey make survey of all that's interesting and instructive. Man's but the creature of a little hour, the phantom of a transitory life; prone to every ill, subject to every woe; and oft the more eccentric in his sphere, as rare abilities may gild his brow, setting form, law, and order at defiance. His glass a third decayed 'fore reason shines, and ere perfection crowns maturity, he sinks forgotten ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and with the aid of a spell, he came to the borders of Hades. There he saw and spoke with many renowned Shades, old and young, even his own friends who had fallen on the plain of Troy. Achilles he saw, Patroclus and Ajax and Agamemnon, still grieving over the treachery of his wife. He saw, too, the phantom of Heracles, who lives with honor among the gods, and has for his wife Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Juno. But though he would have talked with the heroes for a year and more, ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Etherington remained standing, as if uncertain whether to advance or retreat, while with incredible rapidity she poured out her hurried entreaties that he would begone, sometimes addressing him as a real personage, sometimes, and more frequently, as a delusive phantom, the offspring of her own excited imagination. "I knew it," she muttered, "I knew what would happen, if my thoughts were forced into that fearful channel.—Speak to me, brother! speak to me while I have reason left, and tell me that what stands before me is but an empty shadow! But it is no shadow—it ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... be detected in the opinions of some sects on the nature of the Buddha and the career of a Bodhisattva. Thus the Andhakas thought that the Buddha was superhuman in the ordinary affairs of life and the Vetulyakas[572] held that he was not really born in the world of men but sent a phantom to represent him, remaining himself in the Tusita heaven. The doctrines attributed to the Uttarapathakas and Andhakas respectively that an unconverted man, if good, is capable of entering on the career of a Bodhisattva ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... may fairly be acquitted of all but his usual 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 ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her upper deck and top-hamper, more like a dwelling than any ship he had ever seen, was fully exposed to view, while the seamen seemed to be at work with the rudest contrivances, calking and scraping her barnacled sides. He saw that phantom crew, when not working, at wassail and festivity; heard the shouts of drunken roisterers; saw the placing of a guard around some of the most uncontrollable, and later detected the stealthy escape of half a dozen sailors inland, amidst the fruitless volley fired upon them from obsolete ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... dim shadowed through the dark, Which makes the sky of Pluto's dreary shore; Lo! where thou stand'st, pale-gazing on the bark, That waits our rite to bear thee trembling o'er! Come, then! no more delay!—the phantom pines Amidst the Unburied for its latest home; O'er the grey sky the torch impatient shines— Come, mourner, forth!—the lost one bids ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... "Angel," behind St. Clements. As we do not propose to linger long in London, and prefer the country towns and villages where relics of old English life survive, we will hie to one of these noted hostelries, book our seats on a Phantom coach, and haste away from the great city which has dealt so mercilessly with its ancient buildings. It is the last few years which have wrought the mischief. Many of these old inns lingered on till the 'eighties. Since then their destruction has been rapid, and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... or hath a dream Flown forth from ivory gates to gleam In phantom gold, before forsaking ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... armies. Impressed with this idea, he stared wildly around; he called aloud the name of Mithridates; he shouted orders to imaginary troops; he struggled to break away from the restraints which the attendants about his bedside imposed, to attack the phantom foes which haunted him in his dreams. This continued for several days, and when at last nature was exhausted by the violence of these paroxysms of phrensy, the vital powers which had been for seventy long years spending their strength in deeds of selfishness, cruelty, and hatred, found ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... to be going about like a phantom, and I am ashamed of myself. My brother is successful and happy, and has all ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... now, as was my own, on the companion-way, from which a wild and frightened-looking crowd was densely emerging, with a confused hum of voices that announced their recognition of their impending danger. The change of age, of pain, of woe, seemed sealed upon each aspect, as one by one, and phantom-like, in rapid succession, those who had so lately gone down to feast returned to the upper day, like grim ghosts coming from a ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... this terrible hour arise before me. Twice have you seen me battling with a superhuman horror. My brow has been bathed in sweat, my limbs rigid, my cries have been stifled by a hand of iron. Has God permitted the Evil Spirit to tempt me? Is this remorse in phantom shape? These two conflicts I have suffered have so subdued my strength that I can never endure a third. Listen then, my Sandra, for I have instructions to give you on which perhaps the safety ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... cruel business was finished, she ordered 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 into ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... came to an end—we learned afterward that it was a good mile high—and we stumbled out on to some upland wilderness, unlit by star or window. Then we found ourselves descending again, and at last dim shapes of clustered houses began to appear, and the white phantom of a church. We could rather feel than see the houses, for the night was so dark, and, though here was evidently a village, there was no sign of a light anywhere, not so much as a bright keyhole; nothing but hushed, shuttered shapes of deeper black in the general darkness. So English ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated wondering, without, however, the power to ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for the sooner it was over the sooner they would have something to eat. Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they were, they rang true: he put no decorous phantom ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... pinched up by hunger, were greedily tearing at the grass along the ditches. They looked as though they had just been snatched out of the murderous clutches of some threatening monster; and the piteous state of the weak, starved beasts in the midst of the lovely spring day, called up, like a white phantom, the endless, comfortless winter with its storms, and frosts, and snows.... 'No,' thought Arkady, 'this is not a rich country; it does not impress one by plenty or industry; it can't, it can't go on like this, reforms are absolutely ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... all say," Raskolnikov went on, twisting his mouth into a smile, "that I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am mad, and have only seen a phantom." ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... end to the number of the things that he does, and does badly. His one manly taste is for the chase. In sum, he is but a plexus of weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse. I have seen this poor phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen, disregarded by all, and I have been even grieved for the bearer of so futile and melancholy an existence. The last Merovingians may ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a slave of the most degrading superstition. Instead of worshipping the true, free, living God, who governs all things by His Providence, he bows before the horrid phantom of blind chance or inexorable destiny. He is a man who obstinately refuses to believe the most solidly-established facts in favor of religion, and yet, with blind credulity, greedily swallows the most absurd falsehoods uttered against religion. He is a man whose reason has fled, and whose passions ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... piece of bad luck. Shall we let the day end with this? "Never," says the Gypsy. "Adventures ought to be continued till they end with good luck. We will put a long line on the other rod, and try that beautiful little phantom minnow, the silver silk one that came from Scotland. There must be some good fish in the pond, since they are big enough to run away ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... But the phantom did but fly the faster, and the Prince spent the whole day in this vain pursuit. When night came he saw the castle before him all lighted up, and as he imagined that the Princess must be in it, he made haste to get there too. He entered without difficulty, and in the hall ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... that of the Iliad or the Eddas. And the abandonment of the Masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy seemed a necessary and logical consequence of the long abandonment by thinkers of the anthropomorphic conception of the same." Accordingly he arranged a group of Phantom Intelligences that supply adequately a Chorus and a philosophical basis ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... guest joyfully. Rabelais was now forty- two years old, and a distinguished savant; so they excused him his three years' undergraduate's career, and invested him at once with the red gown of the bachelors. That red gown—or, rather, the ragged phantom of it—is still shown at Montpellier, and must be worn by each bachelor when he takes his degree. Unfortunately, antiquarians assure us that the precious garment has been renewed again and again—the students having clipped bits of it away for relics, and ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... action of dreams, and to the transfigurings worked upon troubled remembrances by retrospects so vast as those of fifty years, was in this instance greatly aided to my own feelings by the alliance with the ancient phantom of the forest mountain in North Germany. The playfulness of the scene is the very evoker of the solemn remembrances that lie hidden below. The half-sportive interlusory revealings of the symbolic tend to the same effect. One part of the effect from the symbolic is dependent ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the house, where, gaining her chamber, she locked the door, and flung herself upon her husband's bed; and in this last dear refuge, shutting her eyes, clasping her ears, as if by dulling her senses to escape the phantom, she lay in a convulsion of terror for the mere dread that such a ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... as in the blast of a furnace, was going to strike the little shrinking child—Miss Furnivall, the old woman by my side, cried out, 'Oh father! father! spare the little innocent child!' But just then I saw—we all saw—another phantom shape itself, and grow clear out of the blue and misty light that filled the hall; we had not seen her till now, for it was another lady who stood by the old man, with a look of relentless hate and triumphant scorn. That ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 1641—a mystery and a lie—is it not time to let every man look it in the face? The Irish Brigade—a marvellous reality to few, a proud phantom to most of us—shall we not all, rich and poor, learn in good truth how the Berserk Irish bore up in the winter streets of Cremona, or the gorgeous Brigade followed Clare's flashing plumes right through the great ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the garden walks for a while, long enough to have ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, they sat down, and she said, "I don't know that I've seen the moon so clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the autumn days Like a phantom ghost I glide, Where the big moose sees the crimson trees Mirrored on the silver tide, And the blood red sun when day is done Sinks below the hill, The night hawk swoops, the lily droops, And all the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... aboriginal Aino, show the mental soil and climate[16] which were to condition the growth of the seed imported from other lands, whether of Buddhism or Christianity. It is very hard to kill a god while the old mind that grew and nourished him still remains the same. Banish or brand a phantom or mind-shadow once worshipped as divine, and it will appear as a fairy, a demon, a mythical animal, or an oni; but to annihilate it requires many centuries ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Parliament demanded the powers of appointing and dismissing the ministers, of naming guardians for the royal children, and of virtually controlling military, civil, and religious affairs. "If I granted your demands," replied Charles, "I should be no more than the mere phantom of a king." ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... a Favrile goblet. You who knew the south-wind Bearing the secret of the morning To waking gardens, fields and forests. You in a gown of green, O footed Iris, With eyes of dryad gray, And the blown glory of unawakened tresses— A phantom sprung out of the garden's enchantment, In the silence of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... courting Chrissy; and Roger, the young giant who had pulled the bow oar, and was courting nobody as yet. Quick though Tilda was to find her feet in a crowd and distinguish names and faces, she found the numbers bewildering. To Arthur Miles they were but a phantom throng. He stood on the beach amid the small tumult and, while the sheep blundered by, gazed back upon the Island, still in view, still resting like a shield out yonder upon the milky, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Patience, Humility, Renunciation, Faith, and Hope. Indeed, it went even further: it taught that the world was of evil and that we needed deliverance; consequently it preached contempt of the world, self-denial, chastity, the giving up of one's own will, that is to say, turning away from life and its phantom-like pleasures; it taught further the healing power of suffering, and that an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity, I willingly admit that this serious and only correct view of life had spread in other forms ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... little, and the eyes that have been blankly staring at the roof-tarpaulins come down to the level of his own. He and her fallen enemy regard each other silently for a moment. Then Beauvayse says weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... no disaster, the Union will split, or I am a false prophet. How can it be otherwise? What is to hold us together? Congress is a shadow, the executive a phantom too thin to cast a shadow. With two hundred armed men I could drive Congress, the President and Cabinet into the Potomac; with five hundred I could take New York ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... decoration, a small, vital passionate world which has clothed itself in ordered beauty, learnt a fine way of easy, splendid living, and come under the spell of a devotion to what is, to us, no more than the gorgeous phantom of high imaginations—the divinity of a king. When the morning sun was up and the horn was sounding down the long avenues, who would not wish, if only in fancy, to join the glittering cavalcade where the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the 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
... passage almost on top of Toto, who was stalking phantom rats. Mrs. Meecher was manoeuvring in the background. Her face lit up grimly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'stead o' good flesh and blood, and fled from me amain. So, by reason of my dead body, that is no body o' mine, yet that nobody will believe is no body o' mine, they believe that this my body is yet no body, but a phantom; the which is out of reason; yet thus unreasonably do the rogues reason by reason of the body that hangeth in place of my body above the city gate. Wherefore I reason there is yet reason in their unreason, seeing this body ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... artillery of 100 officers and men, in addition to the all-important band. In reality, however, only the membership of the band was certain; in time of war the rest of the military establishment was much larger, and in time of peace it comprised numerous phantom soldiers, whose salaries were nevertheless regularly collected from the national treasury. Service was supposed to be voluntary, but the "volunteers" were generally picked out by communal chiefs and brought in under guard, sometimes tied ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... pirate's gold along the storied Spanish Main. Oft, by the miner's struggling lamp, I count the nuggets I have won; or in the cowboys' wind-swept camp indulge in wild athletic fun. The big round world is all for me, brought to me by the sprightly tale; o'er every strange and distant sea my phantom ship has learned to sail, I travel in all neighborhoods where daring man has left his tracks; I am the hunter in the woods, I am the woodman with his ax. I am the grim, effective sleuth who goes forth in a rare disguise, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... have noticed a clock somewhere during the minute that I was in the chateau, and though I had not been conscious of it, the after-image loomed before my eyes. As I ran now I could see a huge phantom clock, the dial marked with enormous Roman letters, and the hands moving with dreadful swiftness toward ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... least sullen and most even-tempered of men, was for once at war with himself. The midnight phantom had become a ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... was alleged, on the other hand, that the suffering would be the more brief and transient; one summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was 15 achieved. Forced the march was, and severe beyond example: there the forewarning proved correct; but the promised rest proved a mere phantom of the wilderness—a visionary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 20 of hardship and calamity, without a pause. These sufferings, by their very nature and ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... aroused from his wildering dream and turned himself slowly Towards where the village lay and was wildered again; for again came Moving to meet him the lofty form of the glorious maiden. Fixedly gazed he upon her; herself it was and no phantom. Bearing in either hand a larger jar and a smaller, Each by the handle, with busy step she came on to the fountain. Joyfully then he hastened to meet her; the sight of her gave him Courage and strength; and thus the astonished girl he accosted: "Do I then find ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... about the homes of work and care. The same sea washes its shores which beats upon the coasts of ancient continents; over it bends that same sky which enfolds all the generations of men. Prospero's island is no mirage, hovering unreal and evanescent on the far horizon; no impalpable phantom of reality floating like some strayed flower on the lovely sea of dreams. It is as solid as the earth, as real as the soul that fashioned it. No miracle was wrought, no law violated, in its making. Beautiful, true, and enduring, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... nascentibus, from nativities, and to whom we used to sacrifice in our processions in the fields of Ardaea; but if she is a Deity, we must likewise acknowledge all those you mentioned, Honor, Faith, Intellect, Concord; by the same rule also, Hope, Juno, Moneta,[254] and every idle phantom, every child of our imagination, are Deities. But as this consequence is quite inadmissible, do not you either defend the cause ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... so soothing and so full of loving kindness that it has for the last few months almost reconciled me to myself. Yes, it makes me happy to have you cast a glance upon my soul, at once so barren and so full of bloom; and I am thankful for every gentle word you say to one who rides the phantom steed of dreams, and ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Nick in those days, it was as a phantom that belonged to the nightmare that lay behind her. He had no part in her present, and the future she could not bring herself to contemplate. No one even mentioned his name to her till one day Lady Bassett entered ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... useless. Like a phantom she had slipped away amid the underbrush, leaving him to flounder blindly in the labyrinth. Once she laughed outright, a clear burst of girlish merriment ringing through the silence, and he leaped desperately ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... arm—had flashed into Mary's mind as she left the white-walled village of Shanmoor behind her, and climbed upward with her shame and her secret into the mists. To see the bogle was merely distressing and untoward; to be spoken to by the phantom voice was death. No one so addressed could hope to survive the following Midsummer Day. Revolving these things in her mind, along with the terrible details of her own story, the exhausted girl had seen her vision, and, as she firmly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... civilization. When I go to a variety show, and drop my ticket into the chopping-box at the door, and fastidiously choose my unreserved seat in the best place I can get, away from interposing posts and persons, and settle down to a long afternoon's delight, I like to fancy myself a far-fetched phantom of the past, who used to do the same thing at Thebes or Nineveh as many thousand years ago as you please. I like to think that I too am an unbroken tradition, and my pleasure will be such as shaped smiles ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... with cartridges, ran along by the side of my horses and pretended to keep a sharp look-out for robbers. Every now and then they got much excited, loaded their rifles, and fired away shot after shot at phantom brigands, whom, they said, they perceived peeping above sand hills a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... circulation. Sometimes standing out in their naked horror, at other times enveloped in sophistry and disguise. The Universal Cause, that God of the philosophers, of the Jews, and of the Christians, is but a chimera and a phantom—The phenomena of nature only prove the existence of God to a few prepossessed men—It is more reasonable to admit, with Manes, of a two-fold God, than of the God of Christianity—We can not know ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... he fell silent. Fra Mino gazed at the old man, and knew him, that he was a phantom and ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... is probably borrowed from Saint Paul, who (2 Cor. xii. 4) was "caught up into Paradise," which in those days was a kind of region that roofed the earth. The Shaykh in question began by showing the Voltairean Sultan of Egypt certain specious miracles, such as a phantom army (in our tale two lions), Cairo reduced to ashes, the Nile in flood and a Garden of Irem, where before lay a desert. He then called for a tub, stripped the King to a zone girding his loins and made him dip his head into the water. Then came the adventures ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
