|
|
|
More "Omen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in he had a bite before he could get his second hook baited, and the prize was a good pound fish, a beauty that made him exclaim with delight, and consider it a good omen. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... alone in the great crowd. Thus every year did these crows of ill omen carry off from Paris no fewer than 20,000 children, who were never, never seen again! Ah! that great question of the depopulation of France! Not merely were there those who were resolved to have no children, not only were infanticide and crime of other ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... his feet as if moved by an electric shock. A second shot, and then through the depths of the quarry rang the cry, quivering on the wings of the bird of ill-omen, "To arms!" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting the armistice with Hungary, to revert to it shortly afterward.[133] The joy with which the upshot of this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an evil omen. For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council had long before hardened into a sentiment much more intense, and any stick seemed good enough to break the rod of the self-constituted governors of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... produced great consternation in the mind of good-wife Louder. To have seen the man with the book was an evil omen, and to sign this book was the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... us gravely, and I could not but take it as a good omen when, in his pride of wealth and family and tradition, he laid bare everything to us, for the sake of Alma Willard. It was clear that in this family there was one word that stood above ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... For his dear sovereign's health; And hoped to have them heard, In long increase of years, In honour, fame, and wealth: Guiltless of greatness thus he always pray'd, Nor knew nor wish'd those vows he made, On his own head should be repaid. Soon as the ill-omen'd rumour reach'd his ear, (Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace,) Who can describe the amazement of his face! Horror in all his pomp was there, Mute and magnificent without a tear: And then the hero first was seen to fear. Half unarray'd he ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... it WAS Arabella!" cried Sue, covering her eyes with her hand. "And I am so miserable! It seems such an ill omen, whatever she may have come for. You could not possibly ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and this morning, when the first light spray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderful distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure stirred me as it had never done before and seemed a good omen for ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land. The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered over Scandinavian battle-fields to receive the souls of falling heroes, were identical with the Hindu Apsaras; ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was soon to receive. Of course he met no Gipsy; she had fled another way with the property she had so wickedly obtained. While waiting her arrival a hare started suddenly from its resting-place ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... they went forth from the monastery doors it seemed to them a good omen that the last words echoing in their ears were those of the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... one element yet wanting to assure the right usage of all this wealth of material, intellectual, and ecclesiastical power. This was what the slaveholding aristocracy saw at once to be the fatal omen for their cause, and nicknamed 'Abolitionism.' Abolitionism, as recognized by the Slave Power, is nothing more nor less than the religious reverence for man and his natural rights. This moral respect for the nature ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for that matter, for the two nights before that again, and he was not going to get any chance to make it up now. A distant echo of his name from somewhere up the sap brought a swift awakening. It was an evil omen, portending the worst fatigue. He decided to follow the lazy course of action, namely, to avoid it ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Byzantium. The tutelar genius of the city, a venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke, interpreted the auspicious omen, and obeyed without hesitation the will of Heaven. The day which gave birth to a city or a colony was celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous superstition: and though Constantine might omit some rites which savoured too strongly of their ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... madame had started for Paris. Birotteau returned home, shattered in mind and body. When he related his wild-goose chase to his wife and daughter he was amazed to find his Constance, usually perched like a bird of ill omen on the smallest commercial mishap, now giving him the tenderest consolation, and assuring him that ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... remarkable prophecy, or it had brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her own more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had given the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... enamored young Asirvadam brought to her father's gate the lover's presents,—the ear-rings and the bangles, the veil and the loongee, the attar and the betel and the sandal, the flowers and the fruits,—the lizard that chirped the happy omen for her betrothal lied. When she sat by his side at the wedding-feast, and partook of his rice, prettily picking from the same leaf, ah! then she did not eat,—she dreamed; but ever since that time, waiting for his leavings, nor daring to approach ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... glowering. "As I recall it, all that went on that list was the names of people who were slated to have their heads chopped off by Ko-Ko. Better watch your step, Shorty. It may be a back-handed omen. Maybe all those workers you're puttin' ticklers on to pump them full of adrenaline so they'll overwork without noticin' it will revolt and come out some day choppin' ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... dead; it is buried in a cloister, and in a cloister it will be born again; it is a good omen; have confidence in our Lord and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... gentry at the Spring, who have denounced him as a coward and no gentleman.—What to think of the business myself, I know not; and I much want your assistance to see what can have become of this fellow, who, like a spectre of ill omen, has so often thwarted and baffled my best plans. My own confinement renders me inactive, though my wound is fast healing. Dead he cannot be; for, had he been mortally wounded, we should have heard of him somewhere ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... "A bad omen, coming as it does as he enters the house," replied the soldier in the same low tone, tinged with the superstition of his race. "I pray God," he continued, "that he turn out ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... tents lay silent in the moonshine, but wayward lights flickered in the sumptuous dusk, and the quiet of the hills hung like a canopy over the bivouac of the little army. No token of misfortune came out of this peaceful encampment, no omen of disaster crossed the long lane of drowsy fires and huge amorous shadows. The sense of doom was in the girl's own heart, not in this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ill omen in the light reply. "Why, as to that, my Lord," said Law, "if you should think my poor service useful, your servants might get trace of me at the Green Lion—unless I should be in prison! No man knoweth ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... happened to sneeze.[41] Immediately the whole army around shouted with one accord the accustomed invocation to Zeus the Preserver; and Xenophon, taking up the accident, continued—"Since, fellow-soldiers, this omen from Zeus the Preserver has appeared at the instant when we were talking about preservation, let us here vow to offer the preserving sacrifice to that god, and at the same time to sacrifice to the remaining gods as well as we can, in the first friendly ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... had burst into flames, as the escaping petrol caught fire. Jack considered that a good omen for ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."—But those are words of bad omen.—"No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped" (Epictetus, ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... come of the Cornish part of the Celtic movement remains to be seen, but it is not without good omen that this book is published at the “Sign of ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... had harnessed them in their dread armour, they set forth to go, and left there all the best of the host. And to them did Pallas Athene send forth an omen on the right, a heron hard by the way, and they beheld it not with their eyes, through the dark night, but they heard its shrill cry. And Odysseus was glad in the omen of the bird, and prayed to Athene: "Listen to me, thou child of aegis-bearing Zeus, that ever in all toils dost stand ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... indulgent to the royalists, disapproved of the condemnation of the two women, who had only been convicted of a crime by which neither of them had profited. The reprieve granted to Mme. Acquet, "whose declaration had deceived no one," seemed a good omen, indicating a commutation of her sentence. The nine "brigands" condemned to death received no pity. Lefebre was not known in Rouen, and his attitude during the trial had aroused no sympathy; the others were but vulgar actors in the drama, and only interested ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... city over those dead bones, And, after her who first the place selected, Mantua named it, without other omen. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... spring grass, now tender and nutritious, was cropped with avidity by the horses, and after a halt of two hours, they again pursued their journey. They soon found the first buffalo they had seen since the preceding autumn, and they hailed the sight of them as an omen of good. About sunset, Whirlwind had the good fortune to kill one, and they deemed it prudent to encamp, as it would be impossible for them to reach the boundary of the prairie that night. Steaks constituted the chief feature ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... which endured some moments. It lay upon me like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and solemn, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... many days' journey from our own place that we might fight with men of war, nomads in way of life, and whose civil polity was like our discipline in war-time. Therefore, as one who by God's help shall to-morrow conquer—nay, conquer again if needful (for I would say nothing of bad omen) I commit to thee the care of my children: for it is fitting that thou, their uncle, shouldest carry over ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... thoughts, and had almost overtaken his head, when behold! at a sudden turn in the road there stood Miss Rachel Doolittle, picking barberries from a wayside bush. "My sakes! If she ain't right here, like Rachel in the Bible!" ejaculated Captain Ben, taking heart at the omen. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... exclaimed, "we are not a party of terrified old women to shiver on the edge of a worn-out omen! Fill your glasses, signori! More wine, garcon! Per bacco! if Judas Iscariot himself had such a feast as ours before he hanged himself, he was not much to be pitied! Hola amici! To the health of our noble ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... omen if a Master-Card, in the Practical Affairs of life, business, society, or art, or one of them. Influenced by a like suit, in a Commercial thing; a Meeting wished; an influence desired. By a Heart, a wealthy and superior, or happy Marriage. By a Club, a Communication of importance or good. By ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... name is an omen, and carries in it rules of conduct. The root idea of 'saint' is 'one separated to God,' and the secondary idea which flows from that is 'one who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... very superstitious and my wife is a Roman. If you see a hunchback, it is good luck; if you see three, then your luck is magnificent and you have to swallow your saliva three times; on the other hand, if you see a humpbacked woman it is a bad omen and you must spit on the ground to keep away the jettatura. Three priests together is a very good sign. We ought all to get along very well in Rome, because we see three and up to ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... at this genial season of the year, when a new time is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are re-assembled, for the members of this institution to be calling men together from all quarters, with a brotherly view to the general good, and a view to the general ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Asaph, disregarding Wolsey's candidate and the opposition of the clerical party at Court, who detested Standish for his advocacy of Henry's authority in ecclesiastical matters, and dreaded his promotion as an evil omen for the independence ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... between civilized nations, although as yet the world has not progressed sufficiently to render it possible, or necessarily desirable, to invoke arbitration in every case. The formation of the international tribunal which sits at The Hague is an event of good omen from which great consequences for the welfare of all mankind may flow. It is far better, where possible, to invoke such a permanent tribunal than to create special arbitrators for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... It was of ill-omen to me, one of its earliest incidents being my only brother's death; but Dickens had a friend's true helpfulness in sorrow, and a portion of what he then wrote to me I permit myself to preserve in a note[95] for what it relates of his own sad ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... clasped the youth to his heart, and then held his hands and looked long into his face. All indecision, all mournful forebodings were over; he felt again as the head of his house should feel. Before him stood, blooming in youth and health, the future of his family. He took it as an omen, as the voice of fate to him in the hour of decision. "And now," said he, "come home; there is no further need for ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... hailed the success at Bethel as an omen of the future; but rather that it tested the spirit of the troops and their ability to stand fire, than from any solid fruits of the fight. They understood that it was scarcely a check to the great advance to be made; and though perhaps not ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... that great catch, as here in this far land it is my habit to do upon everything, however small, that happened to me in my youth before I became a wanderer and an exile, I seem to see in it an omen. For has it not always been my lot in life to be kissed of fortune and to gather great store, and then of a sudden to lose it all as I was to lose that rich ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... fairy, is a favorable omen to all classes, as it is always a scene with a beautiful face portrayed as a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... up the bundle of books and ran away with it; and though the boy ran after it, he failed to catch the jackal and had to go and tell his father how he had lost his school books. The Raja told him not to mind, as it was a very good omen and meant that he would grow up as clever as a jackal; and so the matter ended as far as the boy was concerned; and his father bought him a new ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... rays waxed hot, the King gave up the chase, and set forth with the Princes to their house; and as they drew nigh thereto the cadet pushed forwards and sent word to the Princess that the Asylum of the World was coming in all good omen. Accordingly, he hastened to receive him and stood waiting his arrival at the inner entrance; and after, when the King rode up to the gate and dismounting within the court stepped over the threshold of the house-door, she fell down at his feet and did worship. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... eye was attracted by the sight of some heartsease that peeped through the rocks. I caught at it as a good omen, and going to preserve it in a letter that had not conveyed balm to my heart, a cruel remembrance suffused my eyes; but it passed away like an April shower. If you are deep read in Shakespeare, you will recollect ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... war, they drive us utterly away, what they will do next can only be conjectured. If a new monarchy is erected, they will want a KING. He who first takes into his hand the sceptre of America, should have a name of good omen. WILLIAM has been known both as conqueror and deliverer; and perhaps England, however contemned, might yet supply them with ANOTHER WILLIAM. Whigs, indeed, are not willing to be governed; and it is possible that KING WILLIAM may be strongly inclined to guide their measures: but Whigs have been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... praise of the Redeemer of mankind! A short time previously the mention of that name with honour in that place would have exposed him who uttered it to a violent death. The incident was very cheering as an omen of the dawn to benighted India, when, through the tender mercy of our God, Jesus the light of the world shall shine into the hearts of its teeming population, and raise them ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... him;" but though we had not spoken of his majesty, we certainly alluded to the crew; and whether D——, their representative, bears any affinity to that mighty potentate, I have never heard; yet certain it is, the said D——, with a countenance of ill omen, came into the cabin, and regretting that he should disturb us at such a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... victorious garlands I make a happy omen. For we, as thou well knowest, are tossing in a storm of war with the Greeks, and great is the hazard of Thebes. The king Eteocles has therefore gone forth adorned with his armor already to battle with the Argives. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... wherefore her lovers became known at once by their unnatural tastes, and any respectable man who met her in the public streets turned away, and made haste to avoid her, lest his clothes should be soiled by contact with such an abandoned creature, for she was a bird of ill-omen, especially for those who saw her early in the day. As for her fellow-actresses, she always abused them most savagely, for she was ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... were followed and flanked by quite a number of their neighbors, who gazed on the festal scene with an impressive curiosity that can not be described. Pale-faced, wide-eyed, statuesque, their presence, interpreted by a vivid imagination, might have been regarded as an omen of impending misfortune. They stood on the outskirts of the wedding company, gazing on the scene apparently without an emotion of sympathy or interest. They were there, it seemed, to see what new caper the townspeople had concluded to ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Calli, Quauhtli.] At the north, which they call Teutletlapan, which signifies the place of the gods, they placed the other five signs which were wanting to complete the twenty. The first was a tiger, which is a very ferocious animal, and accordingly they considered the echo of the voice as a bad omen and the most unlucky of any, because they say that it has reference to that sign. The second was a skull or death, by which they signified that death commenced with the first existence of mankind. The third sign was a razor or stone knife, by which are ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... to draw me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. And as I stood and watched Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro—those birds of infinite ill omen—she stood beside me watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly—her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was gray because the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she held me. She had asked me to ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his gate, watching the dawn flame into incandescence and looking more frail and helpless than ever. The cruiser towered beyond, blotting out half the dawn sky like a sinister omen. A faint, deep hum was coming from it as the drive went into the preliminary ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... hope it is. 'The wine-dark sea' and the 'rosy-fingered dawn' are all I remember; though I'm glad you know what comes next. It's a good omen. But look at the ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... work day after day, and in a short time found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass far with very little obstruction. This Rasselas considered as a good omen. "Do not disturb your mind," said Imlac, "with other hopes or fears than reason may suggest; if you are pleased with the prognostics of good, you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life will be a prey to superstition. ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... But their conversion was doubted, they were subjected to constant espionage, and the least suspicion of indulging in their old worship exposed them to the dangerous charge of heresy, a word of frightful omen in Spain. It was to punish these delinquent Jews that in 1480 the Inquisition was introduced, and at once began its frightful work, no less than two thousand "heretics" being burned alive in 1481, while seventeen thousand were "reconciled," a word of mild meaning elsewhere, but which in Spain ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... full of infinite significance—the snapping of a dry twig among the shadows; a sound that made the ensuing silence but the more profound, a breathless quietude which, as moment after moment dragged by, grew full of deadly omen. And now, even as Barnabas turned to front these menacing shadows, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... killed, and his body barbarously mutilated.(257) The king, who was in the earl's camp, only saved himself by crying out in time "I am Henry of Winchester, your king." Whilst the battle was raging the city was visited with a terrible thunderstorm—an evil omen of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the conduct of Father Francis, believed his silence to be a bad omen to him; and that he had nothing else to expect but an unhappy death, and a more unhappy eternity. In this thought, he went with all diligence to find the Father, and falling down before him, "Your silence," ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... nearly she rode El Capitan out to some part of the work, and the men who were toiling for more than wages learned to know her and to hail her presence as a good omen. Many a rough fellow, dreaming of wife or sweetheart and the home he would make for them in the desert as he drove his team and held the bar of his Fresno, worked the harder for a cheery word from the daughter of ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... So they consulted the omen, but it was not favorable, and they were starting home when the brother-in-law asked Lumawig to create some water, as the people ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... looked gloomy and discontented. Though victorious, the army was depressed: the first town taken by assault, burnt before them by the determined hatred of its defenders, seemed to the soldiers a sinister omen. They were all tired of a war which imposed upon them unheard-of efforts without any glory coming to console them with its accustomed intoxication. "The war is not a national one," said Count Daru recently at Vitebsk; "the importation of a few English goods into Russia, or even the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... erect,—envied by the bravest even. On an occasion when General Walker was attacking the Costa-Ricans in Rivas, the dog entered the plaza ahead of the rest, and, finding there one of his own species, he forthwith seized him, and shook him, and put him to flight howling,—giving an omen so favorable, that the greasers were driven out of the town with ease by the others. Even his every-day life was sublime, and elevated above the habit of vulgar dogs. He allowed no man to think himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... his march into Germany, he was every where received as a deliverer; the Jesuits of Olmutz erected, at his entrance into the town, a triumphal arch, with the inscription, "Salvatorem expectamus;" and all hailed, as a sure omen of victory, the presence of the champion whose very name had become a byword of terror among the Turks. The beleaguered garrison was, meanwhile, cheered by frequent messages promising speedy relief from the Duke of Lorraine, whose emissaries, selected for their knowledge of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Douglas badge is indeed a heart—but it is a bleeding heart. God avert the omen, and keep this young man safe—for though many love him, there be more that would ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... said it appeared strange, and somewhat like a bird. A committee of the wise men were called to inquire into, and if possible to ascertain the meaning of, the strange phenomenon. They feared that it might be the omen of some disaster. Some thought it a precursor of good, others of evil; and some supposed it to be the star spoken of by their forefathers as the forerunner of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... is given due official prominence; but as soon as we penetrate anywhere near the heart of the festival, Dionysus and his brother gods are quite forgotten, and all that remains is a great ritual for appeasing the dead. All the days of the Feast were nefasti, of ill omen; the first day especially was es to pan apophras. On it the Wine Jars which were also Seed and Funeral Jars were opened and the spirits of the Dead let loose in the world.[17:1] Nameless and innumerable, the ghosts are ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the fertilising flood of which was attributed to the influence of this beautiful star. It is believed that the Mazzaroth in Job is an allusion to this brilliant orb. Among the Romans Sirius was regarded as a star of evil omen; its appearance above the horizon after the summer solstice was believed to be associated with pestilence and fevers, consequent upon the oppressive heat of the season of the year. The dies caniculares, or dog-days, were ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... foreshortened in the bas-relief overhead. March absently lifted his eyes to it. It was suddenly strange after so many years' familiarity, and so was the well-known street in its Saturday-evening solitude. He asked himself, with prophetic homesickness, if it were an omen of what was to be. But he only said, musingly: "A fortnightly. You know that didn't work in England. The fortnightly is published once a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... propounded (not, I am bound to add, by you) at Manchester,[181] appear to me to be most mournful delusions; and their re-issue, for their real parentage is elsewhere, from the bosom of the party to which we belong, an omen of the worst kind if they were likely to obtain currency under the new sanction they have received. It is most easy to complain as you do of laissez-faire and laissez-aller; nor do I in word or in heart presume to blame you; but I should sorely blame myself ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... may gaze, and a fond hope to which he may cling. Artificial life, whether in the select school or the select party, tends to weaken our faith in humanity; and a want of faith in our race is an omen of ill-success in life. Teachers should have faith in humanity, and should labor constantly to inspire others with the belief that the true law of our nature ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... of clearest omen were the great birds of prey—hawks, "Apollo's swift messengers," and eagles, "the birds of Zeus." It was a good omen if the birds flew from left to right, a bad omen if in the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... vessel, which was now slowly moving from the shore. It alarmed her, and impressed her mind with a sad and mournful sense of the dangers of the elements to whose mercy she was now to be committed for many days. "What an unhappy omen is this!" she exclaimed. She then went to the stern of the ship, looked back at the shore, then knelt down, and, covering her face with her hands, sobbed aloud. "Farewell, France!" she exclaimed: "I shall never, never see thee more." Presently, ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... beheld drops of blood oozing from the torn roots. Though horrified at the sight he plucked another bough, and again blood oozed out as before. Then praying to the gods to save himself and his people from whatever evil there might be in the omen, he proceeded to tear up a third shoot, when from out the earth at his feet a voice ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... Napoleon. "Do not those warlike Austrians see that that is their death-knell, and that it is a bad omen for them that Gentz had to blow the war-trumpet? Is it not the same Gentz who drew up the high-sounding manifesto for the King of Prussia, previous to the battle ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... haunted by the angels of Rob's visions—the lovers, taking leave only of the mother, stole away to walk through the heavenly sapphire of the still night, up the hills and over the rushing streams of the spring, to the cave of their rest—no ill omen but lovely symbol to such as could see in the tomb the porch of paradise. Where should true lovers make their bed but on ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of scene even his gloom left him; his bosom's lord sat lightly in his throne. St. Cleeve was not sufficiently in mind of poetical literature to remember that wise poets are accustomed to read that lightness of bosom inversely. Swithin thought it an omen of good fortune; and as thinking is causing in not a few such cases, he was perhaps, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... person." On the other hand without freedom of individual development, the organisation of life becomes the death of the soul. Prussia has shown how the psychology of the crowd can be skilfully manipulated for the most sinister ends. It is a happy omen for our democracy that both these complementary movements are combined in the new life of the schools. To both appeals, the appeal of personal freedom, and the appeal of the corporate life, the British child is peculiarly responsive. Round these two ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... wind might creak the wood, or rattle the latch, but could not speak with a child's voice, nor knock with the soft plain blows that a plump fist gives. And the strange unusual howl of the wolf-hound was an omen to be feared, be the rest what it might. Strange things were said by one and another, till the rebuke of the house-mistress quelled them into far-off whispers. For a time after there was uneasiness, constraint, and silence; then the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... whom the successorship had fallen, and was surrounded as soon as he appeared. Keeping silence, and turning his eyes on all sides, he fixed them for a moment on Blecourt, then looked in another direction, as if seeking some one else. Blecourt interpreted this action as a bad omen. The Duc d'Abrantes feigning at last to discover the Count d'Harrach, assumed a gratified look, flew to him, embraced him, and said aloud in Spanish, "Sir, it is with much pleasure;" then pausing, as though to embrace him better, he added: "Yes, sir, it is with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... journey with uncertainties ahead. And the delay was more than compensated for by the new spirit which now seized this poor, fugitive remnant of the Tribe of the Little Hills. The speedy and spectacular triumph over a foe so formidable as the giant bull urus was unanimously accepted as an omen of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... felt but could never avoid. I leased proven properties, only to find that the pay ceased without reason. I did this so frequently that owners began to refuse me and came to consider me a thing of evil omen. Once a broken snow-shoe in a race to the recorder's office lost me a fortune; at another time a corrupt judge plunged me from certainty to despair, and all the while my time was growing shorter and I ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... where I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold, Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old, And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea— But I think of a little white cottage and one that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... storm today with great crashing waves, then everything grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love the sea. I can almost say my prayers ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... father had forgotten her, friends had overlooked her, but the stepmother, the traditional oppressor, was thoughtful of her, and wanted to include her in the love afloat. This little circumstance made a deep impression on the three witnesses. It was a good omen for Leam, and promised what indeed her new mother did honestly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... strike breakers! Ruth knew that name well, and what the arrival of the man of evil omen foretold. It promised violence, riot, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... had fled and gone, For nothing had been left to eat. Only an owl was brooding there, Uttering its cry of evil omen. ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... teaching the young novices. And now she was free, if she chose, to leave the Temple service, and even to marry. But Fabia had no intention of taking a step which would tear her from the circle in which she was dearly loved, and which, though permitted by law, would be publicly deplored as an evil omen. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... distance a black figure seated on the portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that she had turned back from ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... for bringing about the same end by inducing Clement to delegate to him his full powers westward of the Alps. Henry's trust in him was fast waning before these failures and the steady pressure of his rivals at court, and the coldness of the King on his return in September was an omen of his minister's fall. Henry was in fact resolved to take his own course; and while Wolsey sought from the Pope a commission enabling him to try the case in his legatine court and pronounce the marriage null and void by sentence of law, Henry had determined at the suggestion of the Boleyns and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... first line of the Eunuch. This is evidently the Prologue spoken on the second attempt to bring forward the piece. On the first occasion it probably had none. "Vitium" was a word used by the Augurs, with whom it implied an unfavorable omen, and thence came to be used for any misfortune or disaster. He seems to mean the depraved taste of the public, that preferred exhibitions of rope-dancers and ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... full of plans and detached impressive scenes in which he figured before Marjory. The simple fact that there was no train away from Agrinion until the next daybreak had wrought a stupendous change in his outlook. He unhesitatingly considered it an omen of a good future. He was up before the darkness even contained presage of coming light, but near the railway station was a little hut where coffee was being served to several prospective travellers who had come ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... beyond the rampart. That if deceived, they would rather endure any consequence which chance may bring, than show contempt to the Tarentines, the advisers of peace." The consuls said that "they embraced the omen, and prayed that the enemy might continue in the resolution of not even defending their rampart." Then, dividing the forces between them, they advanced to the works; and, making an assault on every side at once, while some filled up the trenches, others tore down the rampart, and ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... ready to weep with sadness and despair, but as she thought upon it she came to see in the dream a good omen. It had been long since she had dreamed a vision of perfect health with no touch of impotence at its close. There was something of hope in this vision; a man's hand had broken the spell ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... a man who could quicken her pulse like Captain Fitzgerald. It was a curious coincidence that they both had already two partners to regret. It was an extra link between them, and Jane McBride, who was superstitious, read the omen to mean that this time each had met his ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... the crater sprang the miser, and the morning sunshine followed him. He found the first stone shaped like a salmon head; the second like a kamas root, and the third, to his great joy, was the carven image of an elk's head. This was his own tamanous, and right joyous was he at the omen, so taking his elk-horn pick he began to dig right sturdily at the foot of the monument. At the sound of the very first blow he made, thirteen gigantic otters came out of the black lake and, sitting in a circle, watched him. And at every thirteenth blow ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... infernal regions with courtly and regal splendour, should pronounce the modern Ossian to be the glory of Scotland;—a country that has produced a Dunbar, a Buchanan, a Thomson, and a Burns! These opinions are of ill omen for the Epic ambition of him who has ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Tracy was being thus humiliated that he received a summons from Mrs. Montague Arnold and hailed it as an omen ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... were all destroyed, leaving the lower part of them—mere quadrangular pillars, without arms, or legs, or body—alone standing. The sacrilege sent universal dismay into the city, and was regarded as a most depressing omen, and was done, doubtless, with a view of ruining Alcibiades and frustrating the expedition. But all efforts were vain to discover ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... called the battle of 'Lundy's Lane,' or 'Niagara.' The action began forty minutes before sunset, and it is recorded that the head of the American column, as it advanced, was encircled by a rainbow—one which is often seen there, formed from the rising spray. The happy omen faithfully prefigured the result; for when, under the cloudy sky of midnight the battle at length terminated, the Americans were in possession of the field, and also the enemy's cannon, which had rained such ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... about which the map hasn't lied, anyway," said Drew. "It pointed out the inlet just where we found it. That's a good omen, it seems ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... long-waited for moment has come at last. We march from Bloemfontein on a glorious autumn morning, in fresh cool air and the sky cloudless. Forty miles off Thaba Nchu, that hill of ill omen, might be ten, so bold and clear it stands up above the lower ranges. The level plain between the island hills ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... today with great crashing waves, then everything grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love the sea. I can almost say my ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... and an ardent man of letters," with "a young friend of his own," in whom there is no mistaking Beardsley, "to bespeak my interest for a periodical about to take birth in his hands, on the most original 'lines' and with the happiest omen." But there was youth in this readiness for hero-worship—youth in this tribute to the older men whose years could not dim the brilliance nor lessen the power of their work in the eyes of the new generation—the fragrance of youth exudes ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... over my right shoulder this evening, which I accept as an omen of good luck. Let it come. It will suit me just as well now as at any time. If deceived, I shall never more have faith in the moon; and as for the man in the moon, I shall call him a ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... evil omen, traitor to Uglik, attempted slayer of Invar and me, I offer you!" cried ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... sternly, rolling up the sleeves of my pyjamas with great deliberation, "I have had one visitor already to-day. His corpse is now in the candlestick. It is an omen, Simpson." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... near Berber, but there is an old tradition that the future ruler of the Soudan will be from that isle. Zebehr Rahama knew this, but he fell on leaving his boat at this isle, and so, though the Soudan people looked on him as a likely saviour, this omen shook their confidence in him. He was then on his way to Cairo after swearing his people to rebel (if he was retained there), under a tree at Shaka. Zebehr will most probably be taken prisoner by the Mahdi, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... gods and spirits of the chase, and that the trees and rivers seemed to them the spirits of the good or evil deities? The note of the wood-pigeon sounded on the right. The padre smiled as he looked up. "That is a favorable omen," he declared. "In the religion of the river-dwellers, the Bagobos, when the wood-dove calls, it is the voice of God. Hark! It is coming from the right. It is a favorable sign, and we can go upon ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, "She is coming to you; it is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I'll go away." He accordingly retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace's formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... placed in command. Gratian hurried Thraceward with the Gaulish legions, and at last Valens thought it time to leave his pleasant home at Antioch for the field of war. Evil omens beset his march, but no omen could be worse than his own impulsive rashness. With a little prudence, such a force as he had gathered round the walls of Hadrianople was an overmatch for any hordes of barbarians. But Valens determined to storm the Gothic camp without waiting for his Western ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... rough jokes and the talking back and forth, it seemed as though the scene of early morning lingered in our vista. The words of Montoyo had scored deeply, and the presence of our supernumerary laid a kind of incubus, like an omen of ill luck, upon us. Indeed the prophecies darkly uttered showed the current ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... I find it deplorable, Absurd and abnormal. To cling to the formal 'Twere such a good omen To drop the cognomen. So I beg you to promise That you'll call me "Thomas," Or better yet, "Tommie," Instead of th' abomi- Nable "Mr. Gilfoyle." You can, and you will foil My torments Mephistian By using my Christian Name and permitting Yours Truly ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... make a speech, which proved to be effective, in Lynch's behalf; and when the vote was taken, Lynch was chosen by 424 to 384. This first victory over the Blaine Machine, the Edmunds men hailed as a good omen. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... not wish to be, either now, or later, or ever! What I am going to speak to you about, with the requisite deliberation, going back to the very beginning of the thing, is a horrible and mysterious occurrence, which was an infernal omen of my calamity, and which has distressed me ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... anxiety is natural at the beginning of most enterprises, and there were some who dreaded a "hitch" with superstitious fear, as if it would be a bad omen. But all ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... fair signorina," replied the Roman matron. "If you wish that packet delivered, which I see in your hand, my grandson Pietro shall run with it for a baiocco. The Cenci palace is a spot of ill omen ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Menaechmi, 155). Cicero says that when Marcus Crassus was at Brundisium, about to cross over to Greece, a vendor of figs began crying out "Cauneas!" (the name of a kind of figs.) [10] This, Cicero says, was taken as an omen; for it sounded like "Cave ne eas," which must therefore have been pronounced Cau' n' eas. Conversely, in poetry, the vowel v sometimes strengthens into consonant v. Thus in Plautus, Lucretius, and even ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore they who have the Tao do not like ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... from the cab, a young man came out of the door and walked swiftly down the street. In passing me, I noticed that he cast an inquisitive and somewhat malevolent glance at me, and I took the incident as a good omen, for his appearance was that of a rejected candidate, and if he resented my application it meant that the vacancy was not yet filled up. Full of hope, I ascended the broad steps and rapped with the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that Louis should be crowned alone. There had not been many precedents for the coronation of a queen in France; and the last instance, that of Marie de Medicis, as having been followed by the assassination of her husband, was regarded by many as a bad omen. If Marie Antoinette had herself expressed any wish to be her husband's partner in the solemnity, it would certainly have been complied with, and their subsequent fate would have been regarded as a confirmation of the evil augury. But she was indifferent on the subject, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... flourished for some time under the direction of Baron Johann Albrecht Korin (1697—1766). At the accession of Elizabeth the original plan was enlarged and improved; learned foreigners were drawn to St Petersburg; and, what was considered a good omen for the literature of Russia, two natives, Lomonosov and Rumovsky, men of genius who had prosecuted their studies in foreign universities, were enrolled among its members. The annual income was increased to L. 10,659, and sundry other advantages were conferred ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ceremony was in progress, if a storm arose it was looked upon as an omen of disaster. At such a time, when clouds gathered, the people joined in ceremonial songs and appeals for clear sky, the ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... it—ever so small—had flickered in her face, but had vanished before the omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had shown themselves in his own. His eyes filled—but that made her continue. She continued gently. "I think that what it really is must be that you're afraid. I mean," she explained, "that you're afraid of all the truth. If you're in love ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... this arrangement, as containing an evil omen. But, on the other hand, it had a species of recommendation, from the habits and feelings of the Highlanders, who, to this day, are wont to mingle a degree of solemn mirth with their mourning, and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... sharp decline in stocks. A few hours after the House of Peers adjourned at six o'clock in the morning, a run for gold began on the Bank of England. The simultaneous effort of the French to abolish their hereditary peerage was hailed as an omen of what was coming in England. Riots broke out all over England. The return to Bristol of Sir C. Wetherell, one of the chief opponents of the bill, was made the occasion of ominous demonstrations. A riotous mob burned the mansion ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... pleasant coincidence that we are located in these two rooms, and altogether a good omen for our tramp generally. They are numbered 13 and 19, and the reason why the numbers are not consecutive is because 19 (Mr. Winkle's room) is also approached by a back staircase. Mr. Pickwick's room, as befitted his years and his dignity as G.C.M.P.C., is a larger ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."—But those are words of bad omen.—"No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped" (Epictetus, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... jealousy, he went unto Dhritarashtra, and finding him alone he saluted him with reverence and distressed at (the sight of) the partiality of the citizens for Yudhishthira, he addressed the monarch and said, 'O father, I have heard the parting citizens utter words of ill omen. Passing thee by, and Bhishma too, they desire the son of Pandu to be their king. Bhishma will sanction this, for he will not rule the kingdom. It seems, therefore, that the citizens are endeavouring to inflict a great injury on us. Pandu obtained of old the ancestral kingdom by virtue of his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... than to the two triumphant figures on the other side of me, overwhelmed and defeated me. I bent my head; I felt a shame, a degradation as though I should have crept into some shadow and hidden.... I would not mention this were it not that afterwards, in retrospect, the moment seemed to me an omen. After all, life is ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... I us gravely, and I could not but take it as a good omen when, in his pride of wealth and family and tradition, he laid bare everything to us, for the sake of Alma Willard. It was clear that in this family there was one word that stood above all ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... an axe chops a log— Like so much wool for color and bulkiness; And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness, Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily, {340} And a sinking at the lower abdomen Begins the day with indifferent omen. And lo! as he looked around uneasily, The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder, This way and that, from the valley under; And, looking through the court-yard arch, Down in the valley, what should meet him But a troop of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... cavaliers—perhaps another reinforcement like that of Montmorency? This new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediate attendants, the Duc de Bar and the Comte de Clermont,(1) always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from St. Denis with orders from the King. These orders were abrupt and peremptory—to turn back. Jeanne and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and Paris at their feet! There ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... maladies, saved the hare in the chase, and sold his mantle to redeem a lamb from the butcher: He taught the people not to be [63] afraid of the strange, ugly creatures which the light of the moving torches drew from their hiding-places, nor think it a bad omen that they approached. He tamed a veritable wolf to keep him company like a dog. It was the first of many ambiguous circumstances about him, from which, in the minds of an increasing number of people, a deep suspicion and hatred began to define ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... dangerous ground, and I almost feared to set my foot down lest it might chance to be in the wrong place. Aunt Lucinda, however, gave me a much more kindly welcome than I had feared, which I regarded as a favourable omen. She also introduced me to the notice of my aged grandmother who was seated in her deep arm-chair in the corner. She has seen more than eighty years of life, but as she sits there, day by day, in her quiet decrepitude, she still pretends ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... and pikes, defiled before the king, and took their places upon the terrace of the Seine, crying; "Vive la nation!" "Vive Petion!" The king continued the review, not, however, without feeling saddened by this omen. He was received with the strongest evidences of devotion by the battalions of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, and Petits-Peres, who occupied the terrace, extending the length of the chateau. As he crossed ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... rode. He placed it in concealment at some distance, and in the morning the friends of the bridegroom could not find the horse, though they searched in every direction. Then, while Sthuladatta was distressed at the evil omen, and searching for the thieves who had carried off the horse, the wife of Harisarman came and said to him, "My husband is a wise man, skilled in astrology and magical sciences; he can get the horse back for you; why do you ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... little from time to time and then relapsed into a long silence. Robert noticed that nothing living stirred in the defile. No more rabbits came out to play and no birds sang in the trees. He considered it a sign, nay more, an omen that Tayoga's prediction was coming true. The peril threatening them was great and imminent. His sense of the sinister and uncanny increased. A chill ran through his veins. The great shining day was going, and, although ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attachment was at length a matter of such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... being under the protection of the deity. A small earthen pot, containing sacred earth and rice, stood in front, in which Joss-sticks and other incense was burnt. A lighted lamp, too, was here always kept burning; if it had gone out during a voyage it would have been considered an omen of bad luck. On the right and left, before coming to this Joss-house, were paintings. One panel represented the Mandarin Ducks; another, a Chinese lady at her toilette; a third, a globe of gold-fish. On this deck were cabins for passengers and supercargoes, the doors painted with different ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Staff duties require special studies, they are the highest military science; and where, in the name of all, could Butterfield have acquired it? I am certain Butterfield is not even aware that staff duties are a special science. All this is a very bad omen, very bad, very bad. Literally they laugh at me; now they hurrah for Hooker. May they not cry very soon on account of Hooker's staff. When I warn, Senators and Representatives tell me that I am very difficult to ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah, few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace, And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release! From the ravage of life, and its riot, What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last,— For the lights, with their welcoming quiver That throb through the sanctified river, Which girdle the harbor at last, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and brief, but breathing youth and strength of purpose. Miss Smith seized upon it as an omen of salvation. In vain her shrewd New England reason asked: "What can a half-taught black girl do in this wilderness?" Her heart answered back: "What is impossible to youth and resolution?" Let the shabbiness increase; let the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... with a grave friendliness, like one restored from madness or risen from another world. "Staneholme, you've never kissed the wean, and it's an ill omen," she said, suddenly, watching him intently as he dandled the child; and as if jealous of any omission regarding it, she appeared satisfied when ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... lulling for a time, suddenly shifted to the opposite quarter, and blew in the face of the enemy. As the day advanced, moreover, the sun, which had shone in the eyes of the confederates, gradually shot its rays into those of the Moslems. Both circumstances were of good omen to the Christians, and the first was regarded as nothing short of a direct interposition of Heaven. Thus ploughing its way along, the Turkish armament, as it came nearer into view, showed itself in greater strength than had been anticipated by the allies. It consisted of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... "It's an omen, almost, that we'll always have the good, comfortable, common things to fall back upon, if our marriage should not prove quite all we've dreamed it. It's been so perfect up to now; it must drop down out of the clouds ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... visions, they complain, are dim. The strands of the coil become tangled between their fingers. One of them descries an angry face—Alberich's—floating before her; another becomes aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil. This suddenly snaps—terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry that "eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of their mother, Erda, in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Nawadlook, who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to an appointed task—the watching of the southward ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... he was forced to renounce the prize. On his way back he doubled the Cape, which, from his former experience, he called the Cape Tempestuous, until the king, showing that he understood, gave it a name of better omen. Nevertheless, Portugal did no more for ten years, the years that were made memorable by Spain. Then, under a new king, Emmanuel the Fortunate, Vasco da Gama went out to complete the unfinished work of Diaz, lest Columbus, fulfilling the prophecy of Toscanelli, should reach Cathay by a shorter ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered the church /with her left foot/,—an omen all the more dreadful because the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning. The priest whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance at the De Profundis. Thus the marriage was accompanied by circumstances so fateful, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... the guttering of a candle is a sign of impending death. All this he believes firmly, and acts upon, although he would candidly acknowledge his inability to explain the principle supposed to underlie the sequence between the omen and its fulfilment. It is the irrationality of the belief that constitutes its superstitious character, the contented acquiescence in some inconceivable and impossible law, whether physical or metaphysical, in virtue of which the predicted ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... nor buoyancy, and predicted that it would burst or fall apart after a week. It certainly occurred that, after a few fitful appearances, the stranger was seen no more, till, on the 28th of June, it floated, like a thing of omen, over the spires of Richmond. At that time the Federals were in full retreat, and all the acres were covered ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... decidedly in their favour, for it would help to screen them from the observation of any wakeful and inquisitive coastguard. In fact, the unusual combination of wind and fog seemed like a special sign of good omen to their adventure. ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and don't know ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and Vestein, their two brothers-in-law. A speech foretelling their disunion is reported to Gisli, and leads him to propose the oath of fellowship between the four; which proposal, meant to avert the omen, brings about its fulfilment. And so the story goes on logically and inevitably to the death of Gisli, who slew Thorgrim, and the passionate agony of Thordis, Thorgrim's wife and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Romans at that time called the Tarpeian Hill. There the chief of the prophets made him turn towards the south, covered his head, and then standing behind him with his hand laid upon his head, he prayed, and looked for a sign or omen sent from the gods in every quarter of the heavens. A strange silence prevailed among the people in the Forum, as they watched him eagerly, until a prosperous omen was observed. Then Numa received the royal robes ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... shutters were still closed, although day peeped in the divisions; and the great room was lighted only with a single taper and the shining of the fire. Close in the chimney sat two men. The one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it was the bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set close to the red embers, and made up into a bundle like a mummy, I could but see that he was an alien, of a darker hue than any man of Europe, very frailly built, with a singular tall forehead, and a secret eye. Several packets and a small valise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any way divining the count's project, his friends followed him, accompanied by a crowd of people whose acclamations and delight seemed a happy omen for the success of that project with which they were yet unacquainted. The wind was blowing strongly from the harbor, and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lance, the special symbol of investiture, was placed in his hand, he turned to make some jocular remark to his boon companions who were laughing and chattering behind him, and carelessly let it fall, an incident doubtless considered at the time of evil omen, and easily interpreted after the event as a presage of the loss of the duchy. From Normandy John sent over to England to assist the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, in taking measures to secure his succession, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... to reach the top of it, where I sat in fancied security. But the merciless whelp, in his ire, sprang at me, seized my coat, and tore a large piece out of it! That coat, thus cur-tailed, I wore all through Dixie. I mention this incident, because it was what some would call a bad omen. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause of the growth of ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... was this. She believes herself to have encountered in the library the specter of a man; a specter with a gaze so terrifying that it impressed itself upon her as an omen of death, or some other dire disaster. What have your other ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... a seat and leaning both arms an the vessel's stern, "what a sad omen for such a sad voyage!" Then, once more fixing on the receding harbour her eyes, dried for a moment by terror, and beginning to moisten anew, "Adieu, France!" she murmured, "adieu, France!" and for five hours she ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 1227, but the historian of the Yuen dynasty, the Kangmu, and Ssanang Setzen are all agreed that he died at the age of sixty-six, and they are much more likely to be right. Mailla says he had a piece of clotted blood in his fist when born—no bad omen, if true, of his future career. According to De Guignes, Karachar Nevian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Rambha. This lustful wretch is not able to violate any woman by force. Thy husband will soon come, protected by Sugriva and with the intelligent son of Sumitra in his train, and will soon take thee away hence! O lady, I have had a most terrible dream of evil omen, indicating the destruction of this wicked-minded wretch of Pulastya's race! This night wanderer of mean deeds is, indeed, most wicked and cruel. He inspireth terror in all by the defects of his nature and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Phoebe to-day:" to such considerations does a man turn after contemplation of his soul. On seeing a couple of magpies, the white and black of their plumage showing silver and iridescent green in the sun as they swooped over the field, he took steps to justify the omen by setting off across the moors in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... says Jim. "I am very glad to see you. But, between you and I, you're always a bird of ill omen. Whose pig's dead now? What brings YOU back? I thought we should be rid of you ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth. Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow officer of Dupin's. Suddenly Mme. Dupin left the room. Nothing was thought of this, and the dance went on. In less ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... returned the Chevalier, warmly grasping her hand. "You out of place here? No! no! you are at home on the ramparts of Quebec, quite as much as in your own drawing-room at Tilly. The walls of Quebec without a Tilly and a Repentigny would be a bad omen indeed, worse than a year without a spring or a summer without roses. But where is my ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... last day of the old order dawns ... and the dawn is crimson, my lord, as with blood!" Her soft scarlet lips curled thirstily and showed her teeth, small, sharp and white as pearls. "I think," she added with somber conviction, "this omen ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... such volubility that nobody could keep pace with me. First I scolded the nurse, then abused the fairies, and finally took my parents to task roundly for attempting to stop me. The courtiers tried to persuade them that this was only an omen of my precocious genius, and that, beyond all doubt, I should one day become the wisest, most eloquent princess in the world. But they remembered the threat of the malicious old fairy, and became exceeding sorrowful. As I grew up my volubility increased; I talked from morning ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... Asirvadam brought to her father's gate the lover's presents,—the ear-rings and the bangles, the veil and the loongee, the attar and the betel and the sandal, the flowers and the fruits,—the lizard that chirped the happy omen for her betrothal lied. When she sat by his side at the wedding-feast, and partook of his rice, prettily picking from the same leaf, ah! then she did not eat,—she dreamed; but ever since that time, waiting for his leavings, nor daring to approach the board till he has retired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... a smile disturbed the familiar composure of the king's wrinkles. He took another sip of the wine and his affability expanded. "You are always a bird of evil omen," he chirped. "Be bright, man; look at me. The Burgundian Leaguer is at my gates; my throne sways like a rocking-chair, yet I don't pull a ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and Class Lists, it is hard to fix any limit to their number—will be distressed to learn that, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of such matters, he was not at that time reckoned to be of "exceptionally scholarly calibre." Perhaps this was an omen all the better for his future prospects ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... voice, as he saw me tremble, 'that permission were easier given to thee to wed the wild tiger than to mate with the loftiest noble of Morisca! Beware!' He spoke, and left me. O Muza!" she continued, passionately wringing her hands, "my heart sinks within me, and omen and doom rise dark before ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... settle difficulties between civilized nations, although as yet the world has not progressed sufficiently to render it possible, or necessarily desirable, to invoke arbitration in every case. The formation of the international tribunal which sits at The Hague is an event of good omen from which great consequences for the welfare of all mankind may flow. It is far better, where possible, to invoke such a permanent tribunal than to create special ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... yellowing leaves blown about the garden, I had seen a flock of birds rise above the half-denuded poplars and wheel in the darkening sky. I had felt there was a mysterious meaning in that moment, and in that flight of dim-seen birds an augury of ill-omen for my life. It was a mood of Autumnal, minor-poet melancholy, a mood with which, it had occurred to me, I might fill out the rhymes of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... almost dazzling splendor on the group, which Emily pronounced "a good omen," and again the organ pealed forth its joyous strains as they left the church, and gaily ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... professional career, may, in such a case as this, want the means, though he cannot want the inclination, to act with promptitude. The enclosed note Mr. Alan Fairford must be pleased to consider as his first professional emolument; and she who sends it hopes it will be the omen of unbounded success, though the fee comes from a hand so unknown as ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... plodding back to the witch's castle, Wilhelm drew his talisman from his bosom and gazed tenderly upon it. It had never looked so bright and shining. The moon beams danced upon its smooth face and kissed it. Wilhelm was confident that this was an omen that his dear mother approved the errand he was on. Then he knelt down by the roadside and said a little prayer, and when he had finished, the night zephyrs breathed their sweetest music in his ears, and Wilhelm thought it was the heavenly Father whispering words of ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... was premonition. Omen of it came with the first wailing night winds that bore the smell of icebergs from over the black forests north and west. The moon came up red, and it went down red, and the sun came up red in the morning. The loon's call died ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... are the "eagles" mentioned? The silence is rendered more impressive by the occasional "shrill cry" of the eagles, and the "wings" of the eagles hovering above are an omen of the coming disaster which is to overtake "the gilded eagles of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... scope. That same kindly eye, one glance of which we all loved so much to catch in after-life, beamed only the more warmly as the creatures frisked in greater confidence around him. It was to me an omen for good. He who could enjoy thus the innocent gamble of these guinea-pigs could not fail to be accessible for good when occasion required. It was the first flush of that largeness of heart which afterwards appeared ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... was trooping towards England, bag and baggage, his journey was stopped near Cockenzie by meeting the funeral of the Earl of Winton, the old and faithful servant and follower of his ill-fated mother, poor Mary! It was an ill omen for the INFARE, and so was seen of it, cousin." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... because it pressed a vein which communicates directly with the heart. So universal is the custom of wearing the wedding ring among Jews and Christians that no married woman is ever seen without her plain gold circlet, and she regards the loss of it as a sinister omen; and many women never remove it. This is, however, foolish, and it should be taken off and put on several times at first, so that any subsequent removal or loss need not jar painfully ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... me a mile up. Evidently likes the Alps. Soared over Mount Terrible whither I dared not venture—yet! Saw no Huns. Back by sundown. Manitou dropped in to dinner—like a thunderbolt from the zenith. Astonishment of Blue Devils on guard. Much curiosity. Manitou a hero. All see in him an omen ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... heavily armed, managed to slip out of the cars at the village of Downington unobserved, and proceeded to Penningtonville, where he encountered Kline, who had started several hours in advance of the others. Kline was terribly frightened, as he knew Williams, and felt that his presence was an omen of ill to his base designs. He spoke of horse thieves; but Williams replied,—"I know the kind of horse thieves you are after. They are all gone; and you had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... news, whom, as also her brother, they tenderly embraced, and explained to them, and many others that stood by, the whole mystery. Whereat the ladies, transported with delight, rose from table and betook them with Griselda to a chamber, and, with better omen, divested her of her sorry garb, and arrayed her in one of her own robes of state; and so, in guise of a lady (howbeit in her rags she had shewed as no less) they led her back into the hall. Wondrous was the cheer which there they made with the children; and, all overjoyed at the event, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... moving into the new castle, the news arrived of the fall of Sebastopol, and this was taken as an omen of good luck. The Prince and his suite sallied forth, followed by all the population, to the cairn above Balmoral, and here, amid general cheering, a large bonfire was lit. The pipes played wildly, the people ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... a bird of evil omen, for sometimes she brought me good news as well as bad. One day she said, "There is a clergyman coming to see you, who used to be a great friend of yours, but since your conversion he has been afraid of you. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... at seven o'clock, the way to Mrs. Agnew's was so intricate that we could not find it, till one of the king's footmen recollecting me, I imagined, came forward, a volunteer, and walked by the side of the chaise to show the postilion the house.—N.B. No bad omen to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Flanders, and Champagne, who in former generations had distinguished themselves in fighting the battles of the church. But notwithstanding such promising appearances, this proud armament took the sea under an evil omen. The fleet was driven into Sardinia; and there a great and unfortunate change was made in the plan of operations. Instead of proceeding to Palestine, it was resolved that the troops should be landed in the neighbourhood of Tunis, to assist ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the doctor's door, and I saw him returning along the road. As he appeared, from somewhere—-I could not determine from where—came a strange and uncanny wailing sound, a sound that chilled me like an evil omen. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... but brought over leaders. The force must come from you folk at home. He has with him Lord Grey of Wark, with Wade, the German Buyse, and eighty or a hundred more. Alas! that two who came are already lost to us. It is an evil, evil omen.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... held at this genial season of the year, when a new time is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are re-assembled, for the members of this institution to be calling men together from all quarters, with a brotherly view to the general ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... the dust of the disloyal city, whose superstitious people were alive to many an omen that boded his approaching ruin,14 the unfortunate commander held on his way towards Pastos, in the jurisdiction of Benalcazar. Pizarro and his forces entered Quito not long after, disappointed, that, with all his diligence, the enemy still eluded his pursuit. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... some early aspects of socialism, we must first ascertain what socialism itself essentially implies. Already within the lifetime of the present generation the word has greatly enlarged the scope of its significance. Many who ten years ago would have objected to it as a name of ill-omen see in it now nothing which may not be harmonised with the most ordinary of political and social doctrines. It is hardly any longer the badge of a school. Yet it does retain at any rate the bias of a tendency. It suggests chiefly the transference of ownership in land ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... excited the fears and apprehensions of many people. Some considered it as a portentous omen of the wrath of Heaven in vengeance denounced against the land, others as the immediate harbinger of the last day, when 'the sun shall be darkened, and the moon ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... little son; but when he related to her all that had passed between himself and his master, the old king, she clasped her hands together, and began to weep and wail for sorrow, "because," as she said, "it was a very bad time to be 'out of work,' and an evil omen for the child. However, we'll have a real nice christening, Martin dear, and invite all the good fairies. And next week you will go on with your gardening again, you know, just ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... head out of the window, and feel how deliciously fresh and cool it is!" commanded Winona. "Look at that bright planet! I think it must be Jupiter. I take it as a good omen for to-morrow. The storm will have cleared your brain, and your star's in the ascendant. Here's luck ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... in every sense a contribution to a Cause; and as such it ever will remain. I wish the public to receive it on that basis. So much important material has drifted straight to it from other hands that this unexpected aid seems to the author like a good omen. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... and they are as actually a result of the application of steam, electricity, and machinery to the service of man, as are our factories and railways. Great evils though they may have become, there is naught of evil omen in them to make us fear for the ultimate ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... precious. prdestin, predestined. prfrer, to prefer. premi-er, -re, first, former. prendre, to take; — un jour, to set a date. prparer, to prepare. prs de, near to, in comparison with. prsage, m., presage, omen. prsence, f., presence. prsent, m., present, gift; present (time). prsenter, to present, offer; se —, to appear. pressant, pressing, imminent. presser, to be pressing, oppress. prtendre, to mean. prter, to lend. prtre, m., priest. prvenir, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... weakness for this sort of ornament, pounced upon the shining jewel and carried it off to a tree. The brother with commendable quickness took up his bow and shot the bird; thus the ring was recovered, and the story duly related to the king, who evolved out of the incident a prophetic omen of the boy's future greatness. His majesty had the child brought up at the Court, and bestowed upon him the town of Hunyad ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... the lights of which wavered on the surface of the placid river; and a shooting meteor, streaking its pale course in the very direction they were taking, was interpreted by the doctor into a most propitious omen. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... through the drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... treating everything as an omen. He was delighted with the sun—it rose out of a sack and grew brighter and brighter in the course of the day. It was never lucky for the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... misfortune—the lukewarm and the indifferent and the apathetic; those who stood by and sneered; and those who thought they did God service enough if they now and then faintly applauded. There were ravens croaking ill omen, and murmurers who preached the folly and futility of the attempt. The world is made up of such; and they were as abundant ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... take it in hand. The Home Government is taking it in hand; horses willing, if a thought unskilful. Royal Highness of Cumberland has selected General Braddock, and Two Regiments of the Line (the two that ran away at Prestonpans,—ABSIT OMEN). Royal Highness consults, concocts, industriously prepares, completes; modestly certain that here now is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... superstitious onlookers retreated in poor order, their teeth chattering. Their mammies had told them about the Voodoo Eye. They remembered the tales whispered in the slave quarters about people being prayed to death by these baleful creatures of ill omen! They weren't ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... look-out. They could always communicate with Togo's flagship by wireless telegraphy. And now currents passing through the air announced that the Russian fleet was in sight, and was in the square numbered 203. This number was considered a good omen by the Japanese, for the fate of the fortress of Port Arthur was sealed when the Japanese took a fort called "203-metre Hill" (Port Arthur, which lies on the coast of the Chinese mainland, had fallen into the hands of the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... handful of Huguenots continued the pursuit. Of nearly four hundred royalists, eighty were killed and fifty captured. When Regnier, returning to Montauban, brought the flags of the enemy and a body of prisoners outnumbering his own band, the citizens renounced their fears, accepted the omen as a pledge of Divine assistance, and cast in their lot with ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... could look at no one else," the charm of her manner exceeded even the graces of her person, but her education was defective, and she was amusingly superstitious. She could be heard saying at every turn: "This is a good omen; that a bad one; oh, shocking! ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... I hope it is. 'The wine-dark sea' and the 'rosy-fingered dawn' are all I remember; though I'm glad you know what comes next. It's a good omen. But look at the yacht; she's ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... an omen of good that chairs of political and social science are being established in all our high grade colleges to train young men for this service. They ought to prosper, and will. Milton saw this need years ago, and said: "The next remove must be to the study ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... of the days gone by Tell that if, when a funeral train Passed there, dark clouds swept over the sky, And howled the wind and sobbed the rain, Such storm was still an omen blest, And told the spirit's happy rest. If all were calm—then woe the dead! Sad rose ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... why (as they continued to speak of her cousin) she made a most egregious blunder, that caused her opponent to pronounce the word "Mated!" he regarded it as a fatal omen, more especially as Mr. Frank came to her side at that very moment; and when the young lady laughed, and said, "What a goose I am! whatever could I have been thinking of?" he thought within himself (persisting in his illogical and perverse conclusions), ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... right for my father to send me a black messenger on my birthday—it is not a good omen. And it was the same last year when we were in Paris; the concierge told me. Birthday gifts should come with a white fairy, you know, Anneli—all ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... himself, who found, on his return, that the company were the better for the pastor's absence, though unable to recover the mirth which he had put to flight. Erica had been shedding a few tears, in spite of strong efforts to restrain them. Here was a bad omen already,—on the very day of her betrothment; and she saw that Hund thought so; for there was a gloomy satisfaction in his eye, as he sat silently watching all ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... fairly commenced. One of the shot of the first broadsides of the Kearsarge carried away the spanker-gaff of the enemy, and caused his ensign to come down by the run. This incident was received as a favorable omen by the fortunate crew, who cheered vociferously and went with increased confidence to their work. Wild and rapid was the firing of the Alabama, that of the Kearsarge being deliberate, precise, and almost from the commencement productive ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... sure (and Captain Cai might with better command on his nerves have hailed the omen) Nature could hardly have dressed shore and harbour of Troy in weather more auspicious. The smoke of chimneys arose straight on the "cessile air," making a soft dun-coloured haze through which the light of the declining day was filtered in streams of yellow—pale lemon-yellow, golden-yellow, orange, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, when God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success not to lend you her aid. She will shed over your enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... stopped at Lizzy's door; and Lizzy, as she sat on the window-sill with her bright rosy face laughing through the casement, has seen her and disappeared. She is coming. No! The key is turning in the door, and sounds of evil omen issue through the keyhole—sturdy 'let me outs,' and 'I will goes,' mixed with shrill cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... turrets and mullions, whilst outside beyond the keep and raised drawbridge the beacons and camp fires stained the frost-laden air with vivid streaks of red and yellow—colours which formed the background of the Ffraddle coat of arms, thus presenting an omen to the startled inhabitants which history relates they were not ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... barn as boy could well be—the human father of him would all day be sitting in a certain dark court, as hard at work as an aching head and a bloodless system would afford. The said court was off the narrowest part of a long, poverty-stricken street, bearing a name of evil omen, for it was called the Widdiehill—the place of the gallows. It was entered by a low archway in the middle of an old house, around which yet clung a musty fame of departed grandeur and ancient note. In the court, against a wing of the same ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah! few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace! And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release. From the ravage of life, and its riot What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last? For the lights with their welcoming quiver That through the ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... a thrill of satisfaction, lay back on his blanket. The idea that they should observe Sunday, that it would be a good omen and beginning, had taken hold of him with singular power. His character was devout and a life in the wilderness among its mighty manifestations deepened its quality. Like the Indian he wanted the spirits of earth and ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... come on deck. I assisted her up. Scarcely had she appeared, when there came a break in the clouds to the eastward, and the sun shone forth. "A good omen!" she exclaimed. ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... be a hard blow," Carlyon said. "The tribesmen are very confident. Last night they watched a messenger ride eastwards on a white horse. It was an omen foretold by the Heaven-sent when he left them to carry the message through the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... hour for the march, and almost came too late through suddenly receiving orders to take a circuitous route through the city. On former occasions they had marched out by the Via di Borgo Santi Apostoli, and the campaign had been unsuccessful. It was clear that there was some bad omen connected with the exit through this street against Pisa, and consequently the army was now led out by the Porta Rossa. But as the tents stretched out there to dry had not been taken away, the flags—another bad omen—had to be lowered. The influence ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... innocence should be good omen; the gods grant it!" said Nicanor. He pushed onward through the press to get a nearer view of the Saxons; and heard as he came a great voice shouting ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Truth!" To himself he thought: "How the most ignorant are usually the most impudent and the most ready to rush into print!" He had a faint prevision of how his name—should it really leak out, despite all his precautions—would come to stand for atheism and immorality, a catchword of ill-omen for a century or two; but he smiled on, relying upon the inherent reasonableness and rightness of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... through a sea of gray-black clouds, and shone brilliantly just before night's coming, it seemed an omen of good to the little party in the wilderness, for at almost the same moment, Ree, running on a head a little way, cried: ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... worthy, soaring ambitions, such as the work upward to success in school, or in trade, and so on. When a child is born, little kites are sent up by modest households to announce the arrival. Kites are also flown to celebrate birthdays. To lose a kite is considered an omen of ill-luck." ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... the whole court, I began to talk with such volubility that nobody could keep pace with me. First I scolded the nurse, then abused the fairies, and finally took my parents to task roundly for attempting to stop me. The courtiers tried to persuade them that this was only an omen of my precocious genius, and that, beyond all doubt, I should one day become the wisest, most eloquent princess in the world. But they remembered the threat of the malicious old fairy, and became exceeding sorrowful. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... promise, had taken the veil at the convent of Santa Maria delta Croce, and deserted the court and its follies and passions, just as the prophets of old, turning their back on some accursed city, would shake the dust from off their sandals and depart. Sandra's retreat was a sad omen, and soon the family dissensions, long with difficulty suppressed, sprang forth to open view; the storm that had been threatening from afar broke suddenly over the town, and the thunderbolt was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... during the civil wars, were such as to oblige him to sell a great portion of his lands, and to part with the ancient Barony of Erskine, the first possession of the family. This necessity may almost be considered as an ill omen for the future welfare of a family; which never seems to be so utterly brought low by fortune, as when compelled to consign to strangers that from which the first sense of importance ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... girls did not want to go to the other baklad or weir. They preferred to go back home happy, for the day had commenced with a bad omen and they feared that ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... quite inscrutable to the late John Marshall, who attended him, and to all of us, this old idea seized upon his brain; so much so, indeed, that Marshall hailed it as a good omen, and advised us to foster it, which we did with excellent results, as will be seen by referring to the very last entry in his mother’s touching diary as lately printed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti: “March 28, Tuesday. Mr. Watts came ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... blew from the west it was wafted across the Nile to Thebes, and this was regarded as an evil omen, for from the south-west comes the wind that enfeebles the energy of men—the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a superstitious soul. She did not even believe that the near-by screech of an owl was an omen of death. However, she did have some fearful ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the English—who could not be so numerous as the French forces in the town—had been suffered to make these great works unmolested, he could only reply with a shake of the head, and with words of evil omen. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... studied, that same morning, the envelope of Gordon's letter to Felix Brand. Why should such a letter always herald Brand's return from these unaccountable absences, which grew ever longer and of darker omen? What had Hugh Gordon meant by those two or three curt, unconsidered sentences that seemed to hint at some uncanny fate toward which Brand was hastening? And what would be the architect's demeanor now? Would it be such that she could not stay longer in his employ? With all the financial risk ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... known then as much as I learned afterwards of what it meant to be "taken up" by Mrs. Minchin, I might not have thought the comparison a good omen for my friendship with Matilda. To be hotly taken up by Mrs. Minchin meant an equally hot quarrel at no very distant date. The squabble with the bride was not slow to come, but Matilda and I fell out first. I think she was tyrannical, and I know I was peevish. My Ayah spoilt me; I ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... they did at the burning-grounds. It's a horrid shame to treat you so. The Chota Rani has got rid of all her fears by dint of the Englishwoman's teaching, but as for me, I had to send for the priest to avert the omen before I could get any peace of mind. For my sake, dear, do get away to Calcutta. I tremble to think what they may do, if ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... foretold the advent of a far different state of things after the Union. Then, pointing to the divergence of British and Irish policy at the time of the Regency crisis he pronounced it a dangerous omen, and declared the Union to be necessary to the peace and stability of the Empire. The House agreed with him and negatived the amendment without ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... {diaphthereei se}. It is impossible to reproduce the double meaning of {diaphtheirein}, "to destroy," and "to corrupt with bribes." The child was apparently alarmed by the vehement gestures of Aristagoras and supposed that he was going to kill her father. Cleomenes accepts the omen.] ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... god sends this, I will rejoice in it," he declared lightly. "A fair omen for to-morrow, and it will shine rarely on Hermione's arm." The mention of that lady called forth new protests from Cimon, but he in turn was interrupted, for a half-grown boy had entered the tent and stood ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... for it—ever so small—had flickered in her face, but had vanished before the omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had shown themselves in his own. His eyes filled—but that made her continue. She continued gently. "I think that what it really is must be that you're afraid. I mean," she explained, "that you're ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... and the queenly Wiwst stood Alone in the moon-lit solitude, And she was silent and he was grave. "And fears not my daughter the evil spirit? The strongest warriors and bravest fear it The burning spears are an evil omen; They threaten the wrath of a wicked woman, Or a treacherous foe; but my warriors brave, When danger nears, or the foe appears, Are a cloud of arrows,—a ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... is a good omen. I have not seen a dead man for twenty years, save those that died of sickness and old age. When shall we have the good old times when men killed each other with swords? I feel that it is coming. When shall we fall upon the four kingdoms, and tear ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... Stixon now had nothing more to tell, but what he had told already seemed of very great importance, confirming strongly, as it did, the description given me by Jacob Rigg. And even the butler's concluding words—that I seemed born to hear it all—comforted me like some good omen, and cheered me forward to make them true. Not that I could, in my sad and dangerous enterprise, always be confident. Some little spirit I must have had, and some resolve to be faithful, according to the power of a very common mind, admiring but never claiming courage. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... most happy omen, The goddess of love Wished that a new sacrifice Should consecrate to her our bright days. Already the fagots are lighted, The altar glows, the incense fumes, The victim is adorned— By love itself it is ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... appearing to be a person of some figure and consequence, but in private she grumbled at his personal extravagance. At both these changes Susannah smiled, but to her heart, ever weighing the chances in favour of Ephraim's constancy, they seemed an ill omen. It was because she was absorbed in the personal application of all things to her own secret case that she paid less attention to ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... But Diomede has more courage, and finally Agamemnon begins to call to the host to fight, but breaks down, weeps, and prays to Zeus "that we ourselves at least flee and escape;" he is not an encouraging commander-in-chief! Zeus, in pity, sends a favourable omen; Aias fights well; night falls, and the Trojans camp ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. And as I stood and watched Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro—those birds of infinite ill omen—she stood beside me watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly—her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was gray because the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... tied up in bundles, is an omen of tears. If you see it growing in your dreams, it is ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... sight. But then there was no Ananias, no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than a providential omen. N. B. Not every revelation requires a sensible miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of 'credenda'. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority, and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... occasion when General Walker was attacking the Costa-Ricans in Rivas, the dog entered the plaza ahead of the rest, and, finding there one of his own species, he forthwith seized him, and shook him, and put him to flight howling,—giving an omen so favorable, that the greasers were driven out of the town with ease by the others. Even his every-day life was sublime, and elevated above the habit of vulgar dogs. He allowed no man to think himself his master, or attach him individually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... can divine the future by the past, the Fifth Column, that shadowy group of secret agents now entrenched in every important country throughout the world, is an omen of what is to come. Before Germany marched into Austria, that unhappy country witnessed a large influx of Fifth Column members. In Czechoslovakia, especially in those months before the Republic's heart was handed to Hitler on a platter, there was a tremendous ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... returned to his house, well contented with the King. Next morning, the King repaired as usual to his council-chamber, and the amirs and viziers and chamberlains took their places round him. Now he had among his viziers one who was forbidding of aspect, sordid, avaricious and envious: a man of ill omen, naturally inclined to malevolence: and when he saw the esteem in which the King held Douban and the favours he bestowed on him, he envied him and plotted evil against him; for, as says the byword, "Nobody is free from ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Soon they had reached the highest point of the roof, and here Balbi contrived to lose his hat, which rolled down the roof, failed to lodge in the gutter, and fell into the canal below. The poor fellow grew desperate, and said it was a bad omen. Casanova soothed him, and left him seated where he was, while he himself went to investigate, his faithful ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... or Carthage, a name that, in the Phoenician and Hebrew tongues, (which have a great affinity,) signifies the New City. It is said, that when the foundations were dug, a horse's head was found, which was thought a good omen, and a presage of the future ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... blow. As soon as the head was cut off there was a rush on the part of the sacrificers to see in which direction the head faced. If the head faced towards the north or west, it was considered an evil omen; if it faced towards the south or east, a good omen. The east is a lucky quarter amongst the Assamese also. The people ended up the proceedings by giving a long-drawn-out, deep-toned chant, or kynhoi. Immediately after the ceremony was concluded hundreds ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... benignant as ever, but he handed me over to an attractive war worker with a detached air that showed he was quite unconscious of ever having seen me before. For an instant I was chilled, and then I realised the happiness of the omen. If my beard alone so changed me, there would be no fear of recognition when art ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... Was it an omen of success that she should cross his path almost the first thing, grown into a slim, handsome girl, with glorious eyes and a rose red mouth that he would have liked to kiss there in the public street? How proud and dignified she had been, how piquant and daring and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... I can no longer give my testimony without shame for not having given it ere the innocent man suffered, thou wilt forget my claim; and, indeed, thy present hesitation is a bad omen of thy future gratitude.' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and for evil. In England here—they have been as yet, as far as I can see, nothing but blessings: but I have my very serious doubts whether they are likely to be blessings to the whole human race, for many an age to come. I can conceive them—may God avert the omen!—the instruments of a more crushing executive centralisation, of a more utter oppression of the bodies and souls of men, than the world has yet seen. I can conceive—may God avert the omen!—centuries hence, some future world-ruler sitting at the junction ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... resume. On his way to Babylon, Apollonius saw by the roadside a lioness and eight whelps, where they had been killed by a party of hunters, and argued from the omen that he should remain in that city just one year and eight months, which of course turned out to be exactly the case. The Babylonish monarch was so delighted with the eloquence and skill of the noted stranger, that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... or lively. He was always gentle, peaceful, taciturn, never saying a word, and never playing at any of those little pastimes that we call children's games. It was found most difficult to teach him to read, and he was nine years old before he knew his letters. A good omen, I used to say to myself; trees slow of growth bear the best fruit. We engrave on marble with much more difficulty than on sand, but the result is more lasting; and that dulness of apprehension, that heaviness of imagination, is a mark of a sound judgment ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... Suetonius—that he once remained seated to receive the whole body of Conscript fathers, that he had a gilded chair in the Senate house, and appointed magistrates at his own pleasure to hold office for terms of years, that he laughed at an unfavourable omen and made himself dictator for life; and such things, says the historian, 'are of so much more importance than all his good qualities that he is considered to have abused his power and to have been justly assassinated.' But it is the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... And Kirkwood, his eyes like his spirit elevated, saw that the clouds of night were breaking, the skies clearing, that the East pulsed ever more strongly with the dim golden promise of the day to come. And this he chose to take for an omen—prematurely, it ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... hundred years on Mount Ceelius, lying always hitherto on their right sides; but that, in the very moment of his laughter, they had turned themselves over to their left sides, in which posture they should continue asleep for other seventy-four years, being a dire omen of future misery to mankind. For all those things which our Saviour had foretold to his disciples, that were to be fulfilled about the end of the world, should come to pass within those seventy-four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... at the moment when Jacob reached the territory belonging to Haran was an auspicious omen. To meet young maidens on first entering a city is a sure sign that fortune is favorable to one's undertakings. Experience proves this through Eliezer, Jacob, Moses, and Saul. They all encountered maidens when they approached ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... that he accepted her invitation at all, she considered a proof of the falsehood of the report about his intended marriage, and a good omen for herself. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... amongst it in the darkness with both hands, he found a long waterproof overcoat, and after more search a sealskin shooting cap; appropriating both of these he strode to the rear of the house, opened the door by which his father had entered on that night of evil omen, and walked out ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... Such an omen forboded no good. Nevertheless, the judge, in order to set things to rights, took the chief of police's place, and, sweeping all the snuff from his upper lip with his nose, pushed Ivan Ivanovitch in the opposite direction. In Mirgorod this is the usual manner of effecting a reconciliation: it ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 12th of May, some ptarmigans were seen. These were hailed as a sure omen of returning summer. Several of the men went out on shooting excursions; and, being exposed, for several hours, to the glare of the sun and snow, became affected with that painful inflammation in the eyes, called "snow-blindness." As a preventive of this complaint, a piece of black crape ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Diamond Jubilee man—that's a good omen," rejoined Nalini, with a shade of sarcasm in his voice. "What were ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... pay absorbin' heed. If some gent with whom I chooses to differ touchin' some matter that's a heap relevant at the time, ups an' reaches for his gun abrupt, it fills me full of preemonitions that the near future is mighty liable to become loaded with lead an' interest for me. Now thar's an omen I don't discount. But after all I ain't consentin' to call them apprehensions of mine the froot of no sooperstition, neither. I'm ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... scatter'd, gath'ring to that place Assembled; for its strength was great, enclos'd On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones They rear'd themselves a city, for her sake, Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot, Nor ask'd another omen for the name, Wherein more numerous the people dwelt, Ere Casalodi's madness by deceit Was wrong'd of Pinamonte. If thou hear Henceforth another origin assign'd Of that my country, I forewarn thee now, That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth." I answer'd: "Teacher, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... comes over us as a warning? Some people will tell you so. A vision of the future seemed to rest on Maude Kirton as she sat there; and for the first time all the injustice of the approaching act rose in her mind as a solemn omen. The true facts were terribly distinct. Her own dislike (it was indeed no less than dislike) of the living lord, her lasting love for the dead one. All the miserable stratagems they had been guilty of to win him; the dishonest plotting and planning. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... which took us rapidly down the channel, and our prospects appeared to be as cheering as the day, for just as we were about to push from the shore, a seal rose close to the boat, which we all regarded as a favourable omen. We were, however, shortly stopped by shoals; it was in vain that we beat across the channel from one side to the other; it was a continued shoal, and the deepest water appeared to be under the left bank. The tide, however, had fallen, and exposed broad flats, over which it was hopeless, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... was found in other newspapers, and indeed it went about Great Britain later and found its way to the Colonies. "An Oriental Omen" it was headed, and Madame's only regret appeared to be that it could not be held to be distinguished by the quality of absolute truth. But there it stood in print, and there was the name of Hilbert and ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... a scrich-owle sing. The screech of the owl was supposed to be an omen of death to the hearer. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... natives supposed it, occurred. Among the presents offered by the king was ajar of honey; this one of the servants upset without breaking the pot. Had it been broken, the omen would have been unfortunate; as it was, the governor was highly pleased, and ordered the poor to be called in to lick up the honey. They rushed in, squabbling among themselves. One old man, having a long beard, came off with a double ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... making the Eastern sign to scare away evil spirits. "The omen!" she whispered. "The omen! A broken string ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... them. I leave you to judge the constraint I live in, what alarms my thoughts give me, and yet how unconcerned this company requires I should be; they will have me at my part in a play, "The Lost Lady" it is, and I am she. Pray God it be not an ill omen! ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... mantle to redeem a lamb from the butcher: He taught the people not to be [63] afraid of the strange, ugly creatures which the light of the moving torches drew from their hiding-places, nor think it a bad omen that they approached. He tamed a veritable wolf to keep him company like a dog. It was the first of many ambiguous circumstances about him, from which, in the minds of an increasing number of people, a deep suspicion ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... fire into their ranks, when, a spark accidentally communicating with the magazine of powder, the whole blew up with a tremendous explosion. The Spaniards were filled with consternation; but Gonsalvo, converting the misfortune into a lucky omen, called out, "Courage, soldiers, these are the beacon lights of victory! We have no need of our ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... however, a disgrace to the country that men should be found in it capable of putting ideas so insolent upon paper. So, then, a young man arm-in-arm with a rosy-cheeked girl must be a spectacle of evil omen! What! and do they imagine that you are thus to be extinguished, because some of you are now (without any fault of yours) unable to find work? As far as you were wanted to labour, to fight, or to pay taxes, you were welcome, and they boasted of your numbers; but now that your country has been ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... bells! peal forth From south to north, No longer let your iron tongues be dumb: Up to the rafters swing, Make all the country ring An omen of a Happy ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... we give the following explanation: The sun is certainly a much more astonishing thing than a comet, but because we see the sun continually and the comet rarely we are so much astonished at the comet that it even seems an omen, while we are not at all astonished at the sun. If, however, we should imagine the sun appearing at rare intervals, and at rare intervals setting, in the first instance suddenly lighting up all things, and in the second casting everything into shade, we should see great ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... to expect it, Carew," he said. "I am not a bird of ill-omen, but, by Heaven! the redskins are determined to hang on ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... "a young friend [Harland of course], a Kensington neighbour and an ardent man of letters," with "a young friend of his own," in whom there is no mistaking Beardsley, "to bespeak my interest for a periodical about to take birth in his hands, on the most original 'lines' and with the happiest omen." But there was youth in this readiness for hero-worship—youth in this tribute to the older men whose years could not dim the brilliance nor lessen the power of their work in the eyes of the new generation—the fragrance of youth exudes from the pages of the Yellow Book as I turn them ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... everything as an omen. He was delighted with the sun—it rose out of a sack and grew brighter and brighter in the course of the day. It was never lucky for the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... at the moment, lifted the salt-cellar to sprinkle her salad,—but she was so astonished at the boldness of this speech, that she dropped it from her hand, and the salt was spilt on the floor,—an evil omen which all ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... soldiers near him happened to sneeze.[41] Immediately the whole army around shouted with one accord the accustomed invocation to Zeus the Preserver; and Xenophon, taking up the accident, continued—"Since, fellow-soldiers, this omen from Zeus the Preserver has appeared at the instant when we were talking about preservation, let us here vow to offer the preserving sacrifice to that god, and at the same time to sacrifice to the remaining gods as well as we can, in the first ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... company you could look at no one else," the charm of her manner exceeded even the graces of her person, but her education was defective, and she was amusingly superstitious. She could be heard saying at every turn: "This is a good omen; that a bad one; oh, shocking! the spoons ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... dead!—sinister omen!" said Vance, discomposed. "I have no faith in artists who count on being talked of after they are dead. Never knew a dauber who did not! But stand back: time flies; tie up your hair; put on your bonnet, Titania. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And she went away to a far country in order to learn the secrets of necromancy, it is not known where. I would see this Duke's Justicer. Does he dwell near by? What! In that very tower? It is of good omen. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... "It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare venture ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... say they will," said the boy, his eyes snapping. "Here's something for you to take with you, Mr. King. It's my lucky stone. It always gives good luck. Of course, you must promise to bring it back to me. It's an omen." ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to speak but could not find his voice, and was chagrined at his failure, which Elodie preferred to the most eloquent greeting. She noticed also and looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his cravat with more ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... communities; he builds a few deep cells or sacks in which he stores a little honey and bee-bread for his young, but as a worker in wax he is of the most primitive and awkward. The Indian regarded the honey-bee as an ill-omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and above all his eager, miserly habits. The honeybee's great ambition ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... me, perhaps there is yet time to escape the mischief! The air of Berlin is very bad, and I vex myself too much here. As we drove up to the castle when we came from Koenigsberg, one of our carriage horses stumbled and fell. That was an ill omen, and we should have heeded it and turned about immediately. Perhaps there may yet be time to flee from the threatened evil, if we go back to Koenigsberg! If I only knew what kind of gloves the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... weeks these cells begin to elaborate the thin, watery fluid called colostrum. Contrary to popular belief, the quantity of colostrum is not prophetic of the character of the milk; there is no ill-omen, to be sure, in a plentiful secretion, but a meager one is quite as likely to be followed by successful lactation. At present we are unable to predict by any means either the quantity or the quality of the milk which a ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... the inharmonious interior matter but little. Toward the foe, whose sail might have arisen on the horizon at any moment, the protecting church presented the heavy rounded walls and safely narrowed windows of its three apses, and behind them the military omen of the severe, rectangular tower. High in every one of its four sides, seaward and landward, was a window, from which many a watcher must have looked and strained anxious eyes. This is the significance of the little sea-side Cathedral, this the ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... was a good omen, and drew much comfort from it. She tried to lie awake to nurse her joy, but her eyes were so heavy that she fell asleep in the midst of ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... chroniclers' stories. One story is, that when William was born, his first exploit was to grasp a handful of straw, and to hold it so tenaciously in his little fist that the nurse could scarcely take it away. The nurse was greatly delighted with this infantile prowess; she considered it an omen, and predicted that the babe would some day signalize himself by seizing and holding great possessions. The prediction would have been forgotten if William had not become the conqueror of England at a future day. As it was, it was remembered and recorded; and it suggests to our imagination ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... me," said she, "a good omen that the enchanter has to-day received a message which caused him to leave so early and in such haste that he did not securely close the cage, and that you returned so early to-day from the garden. This day is my birthday, the only day that I can be delivered ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... April, and bad news had just arrived. Glendower had commenced the campaign with great vigour, as the appearance of a comet had been interpreted, by the bards, as an omen most favourable to him, and his force had greatly increased during the winter. He had destroyed the houses and strong places of all Welshmen who had not taken up arms at his orders, and had closely blockaded Carnarvon. He marched to Bangor, levelled the cathedral, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... whole neighbourhood. She was always due at the house of affliction and, with her kindly heart and a certain skill in nursing, she proved a sort of melancholy blessing. Her predilection for disaster caused her to be regarded as a bird of ill-omen, for where Mrs. Fraser was, there would calamities be gathered together, and to see her issue from the big gate on the brow of the south hill with her ominous-looking black bag was sufficient to raise apprehension in every heart. Indeed, Mrs. Duffy, who lived nearly opposite ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... are to me a good omen of deliverance, for it was once prophesied to me that, through storks, a great piece of good fortune is to ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... substituting ******* **** for Ben, and the Honble United Company of Merch'ts trading to the East Indies for the Master of the misused Team, it might seem by no far fetched analogy to point its dim warnings hitherward—but I reject the omen—especially as its import seems to have been diverted to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a bird that came flapping its wings against the window of the room in which lay a sick person, and this visit was considered a certain omen of that person's death. The bird not only fluttered about the lighted window, but also made a screeching noise whilst there, and also as it flew away. The bird, singled out for the dismal honour of being a death prognosticator, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the passion to win them. The two renewed their tickets of admission and passed on into the famous atrium, stared a while at the news bulletin, whereon all the important events of the day are briefly set forth, and gazed musingly at the bats darting across the ceiling, real bats, a sinister omen such as one sees in imaginative paintings of the Door of Hades. At nine they joined the never-ending procession which passes in and out of the swinging doors day ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... letter to-day, and was so glad thereof. It was of good omen to me also. I worked from ten to one (my classes are suspended now for Xmas holidays), and wrote four or five Portfolio pages of my Buckinghamshire affair. Then I went to Duddingston and skated all afternoon. If you had seen the moon rising, a perfect sphere of smoky ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with them at the Union League Club, and stating that, in common with all true Republicans, they rejoiced at the happy issue of the earnest struggle in the Chicago convention. They hailed the general approval of its work as an auspicious omen, and looked forward confidently to the labors of the canvass. They felt an especial and personal gratification in the fact that the ticket selected at Chicago bore his name. His faithfulness in public duties, his firmness ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... meditatively at his waterpipe. He thereupon inquired if Matthews were acquainted with another friend of the prince among the merchants of Shuster, himself a Firengi by birth, though recently persuaded of the truths of Islam; and not like this visitor of good omen, in the bloom of youth, but bearded and hardened in battles, bearing the scars ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representative chair you sit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German sea east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene of waste and desolation; what would be your thoughts if you should be informed, that they were computing how much had been the amount of the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the scene. The whole is a dramatic lyric that moves from broader tune to a reiterated note of sad desire, driven to a splendid height of crowned bliss. The turbulence of early love is there; pure ardor in flaming tongues of ecstasy; the quick turn of mood and the note of omen of the original poem: the violence of early love and the fate that ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... wind instrument, while the priest offered the sacrifice, and the incense was burning, to procure the favour of the gods; the waits, or spondaulae, continuing their music, to prevent the priest from hearing sounds of ill omen, which might disturb the ceremony, or divert his attention. It has been suggested, in this view of the origin of the waits, which many writers consider to be the real source of the custom, that they are altogether anti-christian, and of heathen and idolatrous foundation, and of consequence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... "Omen? omen?—the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... almost certainly end in a formal call upon the family. He might perhaps send Bubble over with an invitation to go fishing. No, that was too risky. Esther might refuse to go fishing and that would be a bad omen. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... dashes by the side of the road. "Oh!" she cried aloud, in rapture. It was her wedding day; a year ago the sun had shone as warmly and benignantly as he was shining now, and the same haze had risen, like an exhalation, from the hills. She saw a special omen in it, and felt herself the child of happy fortune, to be so mothered by the great blue sky. Then she ran in to give David his breakfast, and tell him, as they sat down, that it was their wedding morning. As she went, she tore ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... a kettle and a tripod,' asked the old w omen, and the emperor ordered them to be brought instantly. The old woman picked them up, and tucking them under her arm went on her way, keeping at a little distance behind the royal huntsmen, who in their ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... in the harbor, and thus produce a collision, until they had been actually attacked, or until I had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked. This paper I received most cordially, and considered it as a happy omen that peace might still be preserved, and that time might thus be gained for reflection. This is the whole ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... said the happy lover, "the day is done; your old life is finished; it has been a happy time, and it sets in glory and splendor. The red light in the west is a happy omen of the day ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... out of the window, and feel how deliciously fresh and cool it is!" commanded Winona. "Look at that bright planet! I think it must be Jupiter. I take it as a good omen for to-morrow. The storm will have cleared your brain, and your star's in the ascendant. Here's ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... before when the word got out in Cottonville that we had some scheme to make the niggers white, the niggers there took up with the idea that the doctor was mebby the feller the bishop had been prophesying about, and for a sign and a omen and a miracle of his grace and powers was going out to Big Bethel to turn 'em white. Poor devils, they didn't see but what being turned white orter be a part of what they was to get from the coming ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... Gore—now 42 Hyde Park Gate. There his second son, James Fitzjames, was born on March 3, 1829. James was the name upon which my grandfather insisted because it was his own. My father, because the name was his own, objected as long as he could, but at last compounded, and averted the evil omen, by adding Fitzjames. Two other children, Leslie and Caroline Emelia, were born in 1832 and 1834 at the same house. The Kensington of those days was still distinctly separate from London. A high wall divided Kensington ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that chamber of death and informed Scott of our discovery. Most of the plainsmen are very superstitious, and we were no exception to the general rule. We surely thought that this incident was an evil omen, and that we would be killed if we ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... April 13th, 1841.—. . . . Here I am in a polar Paradise! I know not how to interpret this aspect of nature,—whether it be of good or evil omen to our enterprise. But I reflect that the Plymouth pilgrims arrived in the midst of storm, and stepped ashore upon mountain snowdrifts; and, nevertheless, they prospered, and became a great people,—and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Captain; no one had expected that he would. 'I didn't notice at first, but of course I hope you're a good omen. It's needed. And this,' he pointed to the learned gentleman, 'your ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... ensnare the mother bird with her young during incubation, and to employ them for the purpose of securing fruitfulness and good luck in bringing up children: also because it was held to be a good omen to find the mother sitting on ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... complicated affair. For Talmudic traditions of death by sneezing see Lane (M. E. chaps. viii). Amongst Hindus sneezing and yawning are caused by evil spirits whom they drive away by snapping thumb and forefinger as loudly as possible. The pagan Arabs held sneezing a bad omen, which often stopped their journeys. Moslems believe that when Allah placed the Soul (life ?) in Adam, the dry clay became flesh and bone and the First Man, waking to life, sneezed and ejaculated "Alhamdolillah;" whereto ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... this may not be an omen, and that I may not be compelled to eat my bread with tears, and to weep through nights of affliction! But if it must be, O God, give me strength to bear my misfortunes uncomplainingly, and to be a comfort to my husband, a mother ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it. For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself believe. He could not accept with assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those great affairs of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... his blanket over his face, in expectation of the fatal shot, the Chief stepped forward and presented some water to him, as a token of pardon, when he was permitted again to join the party. They consider it also as a very bad omen in common with the Tartars, to cut a stick that has been burnt by fire, and with them they consign every thing to destruction, though it be their canoe, as polluted, if it be sprinkled with the water of animals. ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... "Their enemies," he said, "outnumbered them eight to one; but that was only an incitement to glorious exertion. He had dreamt on the past night," he told them, "that a furious animal had rushed into his tent, which, after a long struggle, he had slain. With such an omen," he exclaimed, "success is certain to those who fight under the protection of his great arm, who raiseth the weak to glory, and casteth down the proudest oppressors." If his troops were encouraged by this speech, they were still more so by his example. After his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... family; to those who are, the event which has happened will only serve as the corroboration of an old tradition that long has been related of the apartment in which you slept. You have seen the Radiant Boy; and it is an omen of prosperous fortunes;—I would rather that this subject should no more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... two hours after Velasquez had left our camp to visit Narvaez, the drum beat to arms, and our little army set forwards on our march for Chempoalla. We killed two wild hogs on our way, which our soldiers considered as a good omen of our ultimate success. We halted for the night on the side of a rivulet, having the ground for a bed, stones for our pillows, and heaven for our canopy, and arrived next day at the place where the city of Vera Cruz is now built, which was then an Indian village in a grove ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... chamber, he observed on his dressing-table a small packet addressed to his name, and in an unknown handwriting. Opening it, he found a pretty racing-jacket embroidered with his colours of pink and white. This was a perplexing circumstance, but he fancied it on the whole a happy omen. And who was the donor? Certainly not the Princess Lucretia, for he had observed her fashioning some maroon ribbons, which were the colours of Sidonia. It could scarcely be from Mrs. Guy Flouncey. Perhaps Madame Colonna ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... company, preferring to spend the night devouring some books lately come from Venice. He had striven to tell me of a mysterious experience. A stone bearing the image of Apollo had fallen before him as he read, and he had accepted it as a propitious omen. I laughed rudely and he ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... wreathe with ivy-spray Your budding poet, so that Codrus burst With envy: if he praise beyond my due, Then bind my brow with foxglove, lest his tongue With evil omen ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... he) It is a planet, now I see And, if I err not, by his proper Figure, that's like tobacco-stopper, It should be Saturn. Yes, 'tis clear 455 'Tis Saturn; but what makes him there? He's got between the Dragon's Tail And farther Leg behind o' th' Whale. Pray heav'n divert the fatal omen, For 'tis a prodigy not common; 460 And can no less than the world's end, Or ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of it was steeling him against the canker of Joan's untimely disappearance. "I don't look much like a Greek," he said to himself; "but the 'Alexandre' sounds well as an omen. I'm not so sorry now. This business ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the deck; on which one of the young mates, emphatically regarding it for a moment, cried out with the emotion so natural to a sailor under such circumstances, "What! is the Kent's compass really gone?" leaving the bystanders to form, from that omen, their own conclusions. One promising young officer of the troops was seen thoughtfully removing from his writing-case a lock of hair, which he composedly deposited in his bosom; and another officer procuring paper and pens, ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... but reasonable, and I had to assent, though to turn back seemed an evil omen, and to carry me away from Bessie. The horses were stabled, and I meanwhile paced the broad open sweep in front of the tavern, across which the lights were shining. Hiram improved the opportunity to eat a hearty supper, urging me to partake. But as I declined, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... very ancient custom, not yet fully explained, but which clearly had for its object the reverential burying of a rabbit or hare. It is characteristic of the totem animal that it serves as an omen to its clansmen, and we find that the hare is an omen in Britain. Boudicca is said to have drawn an augury from a hare, taken from her bosom, and which when released pursued a course that was deemed ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... deal; what Lambeth Chapel brings out with singular vividness is the strange audacity with which the Archbishop threw himself across the strongest religious sentiments of his time. Men noted as a fatal omen the accident that marked his first entry into Lambeth; the overladen ferry-boat upset in the crossing, and though horses and servants were saved the Primate's coach remained at the bottom of the Thames. But no omen brought hesitation to that bold, narrow mind. His first action, he tells ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Away with thee! May the graves open and swallow thee ten thousand fathoms deep, thou bird of ill omen! Who bade thee come here? Away, I tell thee, or I will run thee ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... imaginings, when suddenly over that extended prospect the faint, distant tolling of a bell rang sadly out and died. It was the Angelus. Father Jose listened with superstitious exaltation. The Mission of San Pablo was far away, and the sound must have been some miraculous omen. But never before, to his enthusiastic sense, did the sweet seriousness of this angelic symbol come with such strange significance. With the last faint peal, his glowing fancy seemed to cool; the fog closed in below him, and the good Father remembered he had not had his supper. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... replied "A poor maimed copy of Brutus!" Too much like, Indeed, to be so unlike! too unskilled At Philippi and the honest battle-pike, To be so skilful where a man is killed Near Pompey's statue, and the daggers strike At unawares i' the throat. Was thus fulfilled An omen once of Michel Angelo?— When Marcus Brutus he conceived complete, And strove to hurl him out by blow on blow Upon the marble, at Art's thunderheat, Till haply (some pre-shadow rising slow Of what his Italy would fancy meet ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... general, provisional only, and that a new order of things was at hand. The creation of a settled sanctuary was to be coincident with the establishment of an abiding kingdom, to which the grace of God was vouchsafed. It was an evil omen for Saul that the erection of a fixed sanctuary was not even mooted under him. The close of Ps. lxxviii. likewise points out the intimate connection of the kingdom and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... the day before I was married back in Iowa. Robert came up that evening, and saw me with a brown dress on and marigolds at my waist. 'Wear them to-morrow, Deborah,' says he. 'They're so bright and sunny and a good omen. You see, we're going to need sunshine on our wedding journey.' So the next day, when I was married, I wore some marigolds against my white dress. Some folks thought 'twas an awful queer thing to do. They said roses would have ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... half-supported her as she poured out her grief in words of pleading and entreaty; but Cedric was as adamant, he would not bend to offer any hope. This unbending quality she could not understand, and took it as an omen of ill. In very truth she felt she was to lose for all time her heart's idol. And when Cedric spoke to the guard and told him he was ready to go, she cried "Nay, nay, nay!" in such awful agony he came near relenting. She turned white and would have fallen, had not Cedric supported her. Janet ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... queer thing (I don't know whether a punishment or an omen of blessing) that our talk when you prophesied my repentance took place on the same road I travelled last night in a car of the same make and same power. The same moon which gazed coldly on you and me, and maybe eavesdropped, beamed ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... celebrate the union of Napoleon and Marie Louise, Prince Schwartzenberg gave a fete, at which a fire occurred, the Prince's wife and some twenty other people being burnt to death. The superstitious drew attention to the coincidence, and it is said that Napoleon looked upon it as an evil omen. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... court seemed to remain neuter, and persuaded as I was that should the society receive a severe check it would not come from the parliament, I saw in the inaction of government the ground of their confidence and the omen of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... are sick: For, as sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost, If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post; But a kettle of scalding hot-water injected Infallibly cures the timber affected; The omen is broken, the danger is over; The maggot will die, and the sick will recover. Such a worm was Will Wood, when he scratch'd at the door Of a governing statesman or favourite whore; The death of our nation he seem'd to foretell, And the sound of his brass ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... slept on deck, and when he landed, his finances consisted only of a few shillings; yet, with a cheerful heart, he walked to Philadelphia, a distance of thirty-three miles, with only his fowling-piece on his shoulder. He shot a red-headed woodpecker by the way,—an omen of his future pursuits, for hitherto he had devoted no attention to the study ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... without any hesitation, for he understood in a moment that those savage and superstitious men regarded the appearance of a reptile as an evil omen and an announcement that the flight ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and a vote passed, at your last [1] meeting, on a subject the substance whereof you had al- ready accepted as a By-law. But, I shall take this as a favorable omen, a fair token that heavy lids are opening, even wider than before, to the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... into the woods, which were very thick at that point, and tied them. My beast, however, lay down and rolled, saddle and all, thus breaking my mirror—a most unlucky omen—and the bottle of olive oil which we had brought along for mayonnaise dressing. Tish is fond of mayonnaise, and, besides, considers olive oil most strengthening. However, it was gone, and although Aggie comforted me by suggesting that her boiled salad dressing ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... no man can foresee the coming evil, or how great our woes and distractions may be?" he asked, with a gloomy triumph. "Whoever thought to hear De Ruyter's guns at Sheerness, or to see the Royal Charles led captive? Absit omen! Who knows what destruction may come upon that other Royal Charles, for whose safety we pray morning and night, and who lolls across a basset-table, perhaps, with his wantons around him, while we are on our knees supplicating the Creator for him? Who knows? We may have London in flames again, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... bedstead keeps, With direful notes to fright your sleeps; No furies here about To put the tapers out, Watch or did make the bed: 'Tis omen full of dread; But all fair signs appear Within the chamber here. Juno here far off doth stand, Cooling sleep ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the pharaoh, "then they threaten me thus from the first day of my reign. My mother, a dog barks loudest when he is afraid; so threats are of evil omen, but ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the numbering and registering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls in general commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need, one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes a dictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the head of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, all the priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called Pontifex Maximus. Some say this was because he was the fax (maker) ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of human beings arrived. Nobles and nobodies, beauties and blacklegs, dispersed in all directions. The Duke of Burlington carried off the French princes and the Protocolis, the Bloomerlys and the Vaticans, to his Paradise of Marringworth. The Fitz-pompeys cantered off with the Shropshires; omen of felicity to the enamoured St. Maurice and the enamouring Sophy. Annesley and Squib returned to their pates. Sir Lucius and Lady Aphrodite, neither of them with tempers like summer skies, betook their way to Cambridgeshire, like ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... aught of evil omen save that which signifies some evil thing? Cowardice is a word of evil omen, if thou wilt, and meanness of spirit, and lamentation and mourning, and shamelessness. ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... not only a big and powerful man—he was also courageous, but the absence of Dodge and the presence of Cunningham offered such sinister omen that temporarily he was bereft of his natural wit ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... had their faces disfigured, disturbed many even of those who, as a rule, despised such things. A story was put about that the Corinthians, of whom the Syracusans were a colony, had done it, hoping that such an evil omen might make the Athenians either postpone or give up their expedition. But the people paid no heed to this insinuation, and still less to those who argued that there was no omen in the matter at all, but that it was the work of extravagant young men after their wine. They regarded the incident ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... done speaking there rose up from the Champions a hum as of praise, and Ralph was well-pleased withal, deeming it a good omen; so he said: "Fear not, good fellows, that I shall forget you when we have overcome the foemen, and meanwhile we will live and die together. But thou, ancient man, show our sergeants where our riders shall lie to-night, and what they shall ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian expedition was starting. In reference to that expedition, it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen. It would doubtless have been so interpreted, had it been a mere undesigned accident happening to any venerated religious object—just as we are told that similar misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of the melancholy festival ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and flagrant dishonesty. Business men, although Home Rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with those ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... grass plots in the direction of the temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on the portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that she had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... first a kettle and a tripod,' asked the old w omen, and the emperor ordered them to be brought instantly. The old woman picked them up, and tucking them under her arm went on her way, keeping at a little distance behind the royal huntsmen, who in their turn followed ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... three days,' to a 'dream' containing that assurance, and thence to apparitions of a young woman and a robin-redbreast. The appearance of that bird, by the way, is, in the folk-lore of Surrey, an omen of death. Walpole was in a position to know all current gossip, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... old cotton-wood trees that grew along the bank, lamentably abused by lightning and tempest, were withering with the drought, and on the dead limbs, at the summit of the tallest, half a dozen crows were hoarsely cawing like birds of evil omen as they were. We had no alternative but to keep on. There was no water nearer than the South Fork of the Platte, about ten miles distant. We moved forward, angry and silent, over a desert as flat as ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... had a good many at the top already, you know," answered Tom, watching the operation with as much interest as if he had faith in the omen. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... to Rome. Raphael could not be induced to join the company, preferring to spend the night devouring some books lately come from Venice. He had striven to tell me of a mysterious experience. A stone bearing the image of Apollo had fallen before him as he read, and he had accepted it as a propitious omen. I laughed rudely and he shrank ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of Ohio and from several cities of the adjoining States, there came letters in cordial appreciation of the critical recognition which it was my pleasure no less than my duty to offer Paul Dunbar's work in another place. It seemed to me a happy omen for him that so many people who had known him, or known of him, were glad of a stranger's good word; and it was gratifying to see that at home he was esteemed for the things he had done rather than because as the son of negro slaves he had done them. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... us, that, according to Hippocrates's Doctrine, Deafness is a very dangerous Symptom in the Beginning of acute Disorders, though it be a good Omen, and portends Health, when it does not appear till the Height of Fevers, especially those of a malignant Kind; and adds, that he himself has a thousand Times observed, that those labouring under this Fever have recovered, when this Symptom of Deafness ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... mightier struggle, and the volunteers of the Confederacy, enduring all things and sacrificing all things, the prototype and model of a new army, in which North and South shall march to battle side by side. ABSIT OMEN! But in whatever fashion his own countrymen may deal with the problems of the future, the story of Stonewall Jackson will tell them in what spirit they should be faced. Nor has that story a message for America alone. The hero who ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... rather poorly dressed and pushed about as I was. When the surge again gave him footing, he spoke beside me. "'Now that this is over, they might do some great, worthy thing!' Very true, friend, they might! I take your words for good omen." The throng shot out an arm and we were parted. The same action brought back to me Diego Lopez. Speaking to him later of the tall man, he said that he had noticed him, and that it was the Italian who would go to India by ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... raised to this barrier, which seemed to shut out the boisterous world beyond, he fancied he noticed for the first time a slight breach in the parapet, over which an advanced banner of the fog was fluttering. Was it an omen? His speculations were cut short by a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... hear my husband first," she answered coldly, and Larssen took it as an ill omen. He offered her a chair again, and seated himself so as to command ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... from the circlet of rubies which, like the espousal ring of the Serenissimo, had been consecrated with solemn mass and benediction by the Patriarch of Venice,—did the words of the ancient rite occur to some among that throng of nobles, perchance, as an omen? ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Mrs. Colwood could sleep. Was the emotion she had just witnessed—flinging itself geyserlike into sight, only to sink back as swiftly out of ken—was it an effect of the past or an omen of the future? The longing expressed in the girl's heart and voice, after the brave show she had made—had it overpowered her just because she felt herself alone, without natural protectors, on the brink of her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... opprobrium I heap upon you—you, the most pointless things imaginable, saucy apes, brewers of odious contrasts, haunting birds of ill omen, mocking echoes, unseasonable reminders, oft-returning vexations, skeletons in my morris-chair, jesters in the tomb, death's-heads at the wedding feast, outlaws of the brain that every night defy the mind's police service, thieves ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... species of pigeon that nests in the Hills. It seldom sings, and then only at nightfall. It is reverenced by these people, who believe that it sings prophecies of good or evil, the character of the omen being determined by the point of the compass in which it lights to offer its rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs—I will show you that after supper. It is a queer superstition, Major: they think that a song ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... few slashes and jabs, von Schlichten knocked the unwieldy thing from his opponent's hand. This raised a fearful ullulation from the Skilkan nobility, who had stopped fighting to watch the duel; evidently it was the very worst sort of a bad omen. Firkked, seemingly relieved to be disencumbered of the thing, caught his sword in both hands and aimed a roundhouse swing at von Schlichten's head; von Schlichten dodged, crippled one of Firkked's lower hands with ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... "That's a good omen," said Fran, pressing Mrs. Gregory's hand. "The moonlight was beautiful when I was on the ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... effort of your literary power one further claim, besides the many you have already established, to the gratitude and veneration of Catholics, and trust that the reception which it has met with on all sides may be the omen of new successes which you are destined to achieve in the vindication of the teaching and principles of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... chief and the queenly Wiwaste stood Alone in the moon-lit solitude, And she was silent and he was grave. "And fears not my daughter the evil spirit? The strongest warriors and bravest fear it. The burning spears are an evil omen; They threaten the wrath of a wicked woman, Or a treacherous foe; but my warriors brave, When danger nears, or the foe appears, Are a cloud of arrows—a grove ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... way divining the count's project, his friends followed him, accompanied by a crowd of people whose acclamations and delight seemed a happy omen for the success of that project with which they were yet unacquainted. The wind was blowing strongly from the harbor, and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in it, and felt glad as well as they; for while she might have doubts of howling dogs and dripping candles, this seemed an omen that heaven itself might deign to send as a ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the new day shone on them, on his daughter and grandson and the prowler pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... my whole desire, And listened for the queen of all the quire. Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing, And wanted yet an omen to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Creoles—to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans, Irish, Sicilians, and others—he became an omen and embodiment of public and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her. Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... and no more auspicious omen could have been furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... battle at Tucuman, and the Spaniards suffered a heavy loss in men and munitions of war. Belgrano, then in turn advanced and made once again for Salta. In the neighbourhood of this town the Argentine flags were carried into battle for the first time, and their presence was welcomed as a favourable omen, for the victory remained with the patriot forces. Belgrano showed himself generous as a victor by liberating the great majority of his prisoners on parole, which, it is regrettable to state, large ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... has no constitutional power to hold territory that is not to be erected into States in the Union, or to govern people that are not to be made citizens. They are able to cite great names in support of their contention; and it would be an ill omen for the freest and most successful constitutional government in the world if a constitutional objection thus fortified should be carelessly considered or hastily overridden. This objection rests mainly on the ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... interrupted the speech, and she leaned over the parapet to see. Then she drew back, and cried, with hands clasped above her head, "Now blessed be Isis! 'Tis he—Ben-Hur himself! That he should appear while I had such thought of him! There are no gods if it be not a good omen. Put your arms about me, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... we gained that beauteous height, Where dwells the monarch, of the sons of light; Thou knowest he declared us two to be The chosen servants of his ministry, Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign Of conquest, or, with omen more benign, To give its due weight to the righteous cause, To express ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... other than to me Thy words were evil augury; But still I hold Sir Roderick's blade Clan-Alpine's omen and her aid, Not aught that, gleaned from heaven or hell, Yon fiend-begotten Monk can tell. The Chieftain joins him, see—and now ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... answered the admiral. "I have not been let into their secret intentions, and I don't wish to act the part of a bird of ill-omen; though I confess that, were he to have the offer of a ship, I should ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... be good omen; the gods grant it!" said Nicanor. He pushed onward through the press to get a nearer view of the Saxons; and heard as he came a great voice shouting a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the various phenomena of the heavens inspired into those who knew not their causes; and he mentions a striking proof which he gave of this knowledge, on his expedition against Peloponnesus, when there happened an eclipse of the sun. The sudden darkness, being considered as an omen unfavourable to the object of the expedition, occasioned a general consternation. Pericles, observing the pilot of his own galley to be frightened and confused, took his cloak and placed it before his eyes, asking him at the same time if he found any thing alarming, or of evil presage, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... 960 To prayers, then winds and seas, yet winds to seas Are reconcil'd at length, and Sea to Shore: Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages, Eternal tempest never to be calm'd. Why do I humble thus my self, and suing For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate? Bid go with evil omen and the brand Of infamy upon my name denounc't? To mix with thy concernments I desist Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my own. 970 Fame if not double-fac't is double-mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds, On both his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... these words when the neighing of Rocinante fell upon their ears, which neighing Don Quixote accepted as a happy omen, and he resolved to make another sally in three or four days from that time. Announcing his intention to the bachelor, he asked his advice as to the quarter in which he ought to commence his expedition, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Astolphe on his hippogriff, I was galloping through worlds, suiting them to my fancy. Presently, as I looked about me to find some omen for the bold productions my wild imagination was urging me to undertake, a pretty cry, the cry of a woman issuing refreshed and joyous from a bath, rose above the murmur of the rippling fringes as their flux and reflux marked ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... was staying with his guardian, an old Colonel Sinclair; and when my father came up to town he and this Colonel Sinclair discovered that they were old school-fellows, which Leo and I looked upon as a good omen for our friendship. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... before the mad tempest under bare poles. A snow-white sea-bird came for shelter from the storm, and poised on the deck to rest. The incident filled my sailors with awe; to them it was a portentous omen, and in distress they dragged themselves together and, prostrate before the bird, prayed the Holy Virgin to ask God to keep them from harm. The rain beat on us in torrents, as the bark tossed and reeled ahead, ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... Emma and Louis recurred to my mind. I dressed; the hairdresser called me "Madame" too, and arranged my hair so nicely that I said, I remember, "Things are beginning well; this coiffure is a good omen." I stopped Marie, who wished to lace me tighter than usual. I know that white makes one look stouter and that Marie was right; but I was afraid lest it should send the blood to my head. I have always had a horror of brides who looked as if they had ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... The "happy omen" of getting her passage to New York free had stopped working on the Monarchic. Since then bad luck had walked after her and jumped onto her lap and purred on her pillow, exactly like a cat that persistently clings to a person who dislikes it. All the positions which she was competent to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... little native climbed the mast after them; but though they are generally so tame, or so stupid, as to permit themselves to be approached and taken with the hand, these flew away before he could seize them. We hailed the appearance of these birds as a favourable omen, neither species being often seen at any considerable distance from land. It was, I suppose, about an hour after this, that happening to look back, I saw what appeared to be a high island, covered with tall groves of palms, some two miles distant. The elevated shores, and the green tops of the trees, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... edge of the throng, and the news was passed along from man to man until it swept up the steps, through the lobby and to the dining room upstairs where the football men of the Varsity team were impatiently awaiting lunch. "A good omen," said the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... principles of liberty. The planters look with astonishment on the continuance of slavery in the United States, and express their strong belief that it must soon terminate here and throughout the world. They hailed the arrival of French and American visitors on tours of inquiry as a bright omen. In publishing our arrival, one of the St. John's papers remarks, "We regard this as a pleasing indication that the American public have their eyes turned upon our experiment, with a view, we may ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... seamen thought it a good omen— It is as well to think so, now and then; 'T was an old custom of the Greek and Roman, And may become of great advantage when Folks are discouraged; and most surely no men Had greater need to nerve themselves again Than these, and so this rainbow look'd like hope— ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... o'clock in the evening, one of my friends came to seek me at the Rue de la Fontaine, to conduct me to the general rendezvous. We traversed together the whole city. A bright moon illuminated the streets. I regarded the fine weather as a favorable omen for the next day. I examined with care the places through which I passed. The silence which reigned made an impression upon me. By what would ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... wine, nor sit in the theatre the hired applauder of the mouthing actor. But whether the citadel of panoplied Minerva allure him with its smile, or the land where the Spartan exile came to dwell, or the Sirens' home, let him devote his early years to poesy, and let his spirit drink in with happy omen a draught from the Maeonian fount. Thereafter, when his soul is full of the lore of the Socratic school, let him give himself free rein and brandish the weapons of great Demosthenes. Next let the band of Roman authors throng him round, and, but newly freed from the music of Greece, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... that we could not find it, till one of the king's footmen recollecting me, I imagined, came forward, a volunteer, and walked by the side of the chaise to show the postilion the house.—N.B. No bad omen to worldly augurers. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... upon a flat stone, she cut them through the jaws, and, extracting the poison sac, stirred the fluid into the tin cup. While she stirred, she remembered that she had heard an owl hoot the night before. It was an ill-omen, and it had sounded close. The hooting of an owl meant harm to some one. She wondered now if an owl feather would not make the medicine stronger. She set down her cup and looked carefully under the trees, but could find no feathers. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... the augury of the ancients was a good deal founded upon the observation of the instincts of birds. There are many superstitions of the vulgar owing to the same source. For anglers, in spring, it is always unlucky to see single magpies,—but two may be always regarded as a favourable omen; and the reason is, that in cold and stormy weather, one magpie alone leaves the nest in search of food, the other remaining sitting upon the eggs or the young ones; but when two go out together, it is only when the weather is warm and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... reign Akkad attained to a splendour which surpassed that of Babylon. In an omen text the monarch is lauded as the "highly exalted one without a peer". Tradition relates that when he was an old man all the Babylonian states rose in revolt against him and besieged Akkad. But the old warrior led forth his army ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... proper for human life, [133] where a gentle temperance reigns; and at the extremes she drew the twin zones of numbing cold, making her work dun and sad with the hues of perpetual frost. She paints in, too, the sacred places of Dis, her father's brother, and the Manes, so fatal to her; and an omen of her doom was not wanting; for, as she worked, as if with foreknowledge of the future, her face became wet with a sudden burst of tears. And now, in the utmost border of the tissue, she had begun to wind in the wavy line of the river ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Cinq-Diamants, and got the address of the owner, for the purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through the dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a rapid success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a rare chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale Cesar on the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about midnight, he heard, in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a vaudeville chorus sung by Gaudissart, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... it, and of which I would of course have said nothing, but that he chanced to brog his thumb, and completely soiled the whole piece of work with the stains of blood; which, for one thing, could not wash out without being seen; and, for another, was an unlucky omen to happen to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Already in vivid imagination he saw a goodly city rise, mapped out the courts and streets in his mind, and explained his glowing schemes to the friendly Heitz. The steward himself was carried away with zeal. The very name of the hill was hailed as a promising omen. "May God grant," wrote Heitz to the Count, "that your excellency may be able to build on the hill called the Hutberg a town which may not only itself abide under the Lord's Watch (Herrnhut), but all the inhabitants of which may also continue on the Lord's Watch, so that no silence may be ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... was one element yet wanting to assure the right usage of all this wealth of material, intellectual, and ecclesiastical power. This was what the slaveholding aristocracy saw at once to be the fatal omen for their cause, and nicknamed 'Abolitionism.' Abolitionism, as recognized by the Slave Power, is nothing more nor less than the religious reverence for man and his natural rights. This moral respect for the nature and rights of all men has always encountered the peculiar scorn of aristocracies, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... anything to celebrate it with some lucky event, although I was at a loss to think of anything lucky that could have happened to me there. Indeed, I began my new year badly—much worse even than I expected. That was an ill-omen to me. First of all there was a terrible row among my men in camp. They had taken to their rifles. They wanted to shoot the cook. The man deserved punishment, perhaps, but not quite so severe a one. After a great deal of arguing I quieted them and got them to lay down their weapons. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... beautiful still evening. July was not yet ended, and roses, lilies, and mignonette breathed their fragrance upon the air. Overhead one clear star was shining; like the star of promise that shone of old, it seemed to Marjory an omen of a new life for her. Peace entered into her soul as she gazed upwards. Away to the west the last lingering tints of a late sunset were still to be seen; the whole world seemed at rest. She, too, would lie down and sleep, calm after the storm, and ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... when o'er rock and dell A sudden stream of yellow splendour fell, As if a star, with sunlike lustre crown'd, Dropp'd instantaneous thro' the blue profound. His heaving breast the joyful omen cheer'd, And now thro' ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... scarcely known; yet Lamb dedicated his prose works to him, in 1818, and there described him as "no common judge of books and men;" and Southey, corresponding with Rickman, when his "Joan of Arc" was being reprinted, says, "The best omen I have heard of its welldoing is, that Martin Burney likes it." Lamb was very much attached to Martin, who was a sincere and able man, although with a very unprepossessing physiognomy. His face was warped by paralysis, which affected one eye and one ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... case," returns courteous Manager, bowing most graciously as he emphasises the possessive pronoun. In the hall are trim young ladies, pleasant matronly ladies, chorus of young porters and old porters, all smiling, and awaiting my lightest bow and heaviest baggage. I am "to be shown up." (Absit omen!) However, I am shown up. Charming room: sea-view, nearly all the views from the windows of Royal Bath are sea-views, take the Bath which way you will; and the welcome is so warm, it ought to be The Warm ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... looked like an old man, but moved briskly, clad himself in good armour, and seemed a mighty warrior. His joy broke forth in words, and he chanted songs of gladness in vengeance, and joy in strife, and evil omen to the death-doomed foe. Thus gladly, with spear in hand, he went forth to find his enemy and avenge his son; but he turned and kissed his brave wife farewell, for he said: "It may well be that we shall not ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... increase the sense of our own imperfection, and be sure that the diminution of a consciousness of sin means not diminished power of sin, but lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right, lessened love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom of life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the condition of advance is the recognition of an ideal not attained. Whoever has not before him a standard to which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see no faults in our work we shall never ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... some progress, and it is likely our operations will yet have a decided effect on slave-trading in Eastern Africa. I am greatly delighted with the prospect of a Church of England mission to Central Africa. That is a good omen for those who are sitting in darkness, and I trust that in process of time great benefits will be conferred on our own overcrowded population at home. There is room enough and to spare in the fair world our Father has prepared for all his progeny. I pray to be made a harbinger of good to many, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... on his way to Nuremberg[1] to fulfil a mission with certain German princes when the dauphin alighted in Brabant, like "a bird of ill omen," as he designated himself on one occasion. The count did not return to Brussels until January 12, 1457. Thus he took no part in the hearty welcome accorded to the visitor. It is more than possible that the heir of Burgundy was not wholly pleased with the state of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... fishing towns on the east coast of Fife, till very recently, that class entertained a great horror of swine, and even at the very mention of the word. If that animal crossed their path when about to set out on a sea voyage, they considered it so unlucky an omen that they would not venture off. A clergyman of one of these fishing villages having mentioned the superstition to a clerical friend, and finding that he was rather incredulous on the subject, in order to convince him told him he would allow him an opportunity of testing the truth ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... world had moved a good deal since that cautious innovation, and after 1860, enormous and excessive masses of archive were brought into play. The Italian Revolution opened tempting horizons. In 1864 Doellinger spent his vacation in the libraries of Vienna and Venice. At Vienna, by an auspicious omen, Sickel, who was not yet known to Greater Germany as the first of its mediaeval palaeographers, showed him the sheets of a work containing 247 Carolingian acts unknown to Boehmer, who had just died with the repute of being the best authority on Imperial charters. During several years Doellinger ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... day before yesterday to Do, and was about to continue with a letter to you when a telegram called me subitissimo back to Rome. The thread of my ideas has not been broken on the journey, and I resume our conversation, a trois, on the long gestation—omen of abortion—of ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... sure of getting back comfortably, . . . a stone's throw, too, it is from the Pitti, and really in my present mind I would hardly exchange with the Grand Duke himself. By the bye, as to street, we have no spectators in windows in just the grey wall of a church called San Felice for good omen. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... teaching, and, along with his books, have made his name known in all the civilised countries of the world. Some of Eucken's most important works have already appeared in half a dozen languages. The demand for them increases everywhere. This receptivity is a good omen of better days. The world is beginning to get tired of the mechanism and shallowness of our age, and is once more on the point of turning to the spiritual fountains of life. Where can it find a better guide to lead it to the waters of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... dreams?' I said. Hers, I would have it, was one of good omen; for though she fought with the storm all night, she was not drowned. So it would be with the lads: they might encounter a gale, and get a severe buffeting, but would ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring at the door, or to call ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... maintain his footing there. His account of it was, that, one day, when he was perplexed with doubt and uncertainty about his plans, he fell asleep and dreamed that he saw a swarm of bees flying southward. This was an omen, as he regarded it, indicating the course which he ought to pursue. He accordingly embarked his men on board his ships again, and crossed the Channel, and sought successfully in Normandy, a province ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Cough and by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever - but whither that way points there can be no question - and there will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers in spite of fate, fortune, and the Devil. ABSIT OMEN! ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Apostle of Altitude, as he has been recently denominated, welcomed the appointment of Bishop TALBOT as a good omen for the campaign which he is so ably conducting. "Nothing," he remarks, "has impressed me so much in the works of TENNYSON as the line, 'We needs must love the highest when we see it.' Mountain or building or man, it is all the same. I never felt so happy in all my travels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... steeple,—fulness of time, or entire rottenness of axle-tree, being at last completed, at this fateful moment. Perhaps an ominous thing? Friedrich, as Caesar and others have done, cheerfully interprets the omen to his own advantage: "Sign that the High is to be brought low!" says Friedrich. Were the march-routes, wagon-trains, and multifarious adjustments perfect to the last item here at Crossen, he will with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... forth, skirting the cliffs, examining every bit of rock which showed the slightest mineral stain. Scarcely a moment of the daylight was wasted in this search. His mysterious guide no longer touched him, and this he took to be a favorable omen. "I'm near it," ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... father was a child, came swimming down from the far north, where they look for the northern lights, swimming and diving through the broken ice; and they watched her in wonder, and no one would throw a harpoon at this white lady of the Greenland seas, for her visit was a good omen, promising ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... representative chair you sit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German sea east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene of waste and desolation; what would be your thoughts if you should be informed, that they were computing ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... in the Rubber Boot Reservation, the Stork came staggering up to a Frame Dwelling with a hefty Infant. The arrival was under the Zodiacal Sign of Taurus, the Bull. Every Omen ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Mashauana, stopped the canoe to tell us, namely, that a water-turtle which, in trying to ascend a steep bank to lay her eggs, had toppled on her back, thus enabling us to capture her, was an infallible omen of good luck ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that Maqueda was trembling, for she, too, thought this occurrence a very bad omen, and even Oliver remained silent, perhaps because he feared ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... leading his enemy in triumph through the streets, proclaiming before him: "This is the man whom the king delighteth to honor." As he passed by the gallows he had the day before erected for that very man, a shudder crept through his frame, and the first omen of coming evil cast its shadow ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... favorable wind had accelerated the progress of the Resolute toward the place of her destination. The navigation of the Mozambique Channel was especially calm and pleasant. The agreeable character of the trip by sea was regarded as a good omen of the probable issue of the trip through the air. Every one looked forward to the hour of arrival, and sought to give the last touch to ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... story of these ships is not like that later one of the Mayflower. The colour dies out of the picture; and there remains only the worn, motley band of men—men who have taken possession of the country by the sign of the cross, fit omen of the fate ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... soul of the deceased and acquires his superhuman knowledge. As a sign of his inspiration the medium shivers and shakes. According to some accounts, however, this shivering and shaking of the medium is an evil omen; whereas if he remains tranquil, the omen is good. It is especially in cases of sickness that the images are consulted. The mode of consultation has been described as follows by a Dutch writer: "When any one is sick and wishes to know the means of cure, or when any one desires ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... John that the shadow of sorrow was suddenly removed from him, and as though a weight of care had been lifted from his heart. He could not account for the alteration, but he felt no longer sad. Was it an omen? Was this New Year going to fulfill some great thing after all? A divine peace fell upon him, and then a pleasant sensation of sleep, and he turned out the lights and went softly to his room, ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... orders to take a circuitous route through the city. On former occasions they had marched out by the Via di Borgo Santi Apostoli, and the campaign had been unsuccessful. It was clear that there was some bad omen connected with the exit through this street against Pisa, and consequently the army was now led out by the Porta Rossa. But as the tents stretched out there to dry had not been taken away, the flags—another ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cried the old lay-sister. "I fear me it is an omen. The angel Gabriel, Reverend Mother, sent to bear you from earth to heaven. 'The one shall be taken, and the other left.' Ah, if he had but flown off with ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... right sides; but that, in the very moment of his laughter, they had turned themselves over to their left sides, in which posture they should continue asleep for other seventy-four years, being a dire omen of future misery to mankind. For all those things which our Saviour had foretold to his disciples, that were to be fulfilled about the end of the world, should come to pass within those seventy-four years. That nation should rise up against nation, and kingdom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... the rising of the sun, he did not fail to make the orthodox greeting at the exact moment that the chief's shadow passed in front of him, which Zalu Zako returned punctiliously, thereby averting an evil omen. As soon as the young man had passed beyond the next hut appeared in the grove a girl, modelled like a bronze wood nymph. She wore the tiny girdle of the unmarried and walked furtively, carrying in her hand a parcel wrapped in banana leaves. In the shadow ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... guardian's humours, has proposed to be of the party, and Lady Lillycraft has talked also of riding out to the scene of action and looking on. This has gratified the old gentleman extremely; he hails it as an auspicious omen of the revival of falconry, and does not despair but the time will come when it will be again the pride of a fine lady to carry about a noble falcon in preference to a parrot or ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... of his wife. Arundhati insulted even the wise Muni amongst the (celestial) seven. In consequence of such insulting thoughts of hers, she has become a little star, like fire mixed with smoke, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible, like an omen portending no good (amongst a constellation of seven bright stars representing the seven Rishis). I look to thee for the sake of children. I never wronged thee, like Vasishtha who never wronged his wife. Thou hast, therefore, by thy jealousy behaved towards me like Arundhati of old ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the god made of earth and corn were buried. When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause of the ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... seven spheres which have a retrograde movement, opposite to that of the heavens. One of these is the domain of the star which on earth they call Saturn. Next is the luminary which bears the name of Jupiter, of prosperous and healthful omen to the human race; then, the star of fiery red which you call Mars, and which men regard with terror. Beneath, the Sun holds nearly the midway space, [Footnote: The middle, as the fifth of the nine spheres, enclosed by four; and enclosing ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... well to-morrow—the darling little man,' said Rachel, all the more fondly for that vague omen that seemed ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the Prince Imperial pinned to the wall over the drawers, which were covered with surgical instruments. As consciousness returned to him through the medium of external objects, the poor melancholy face with its faded eyes, discoloured by the damp of the walls, suggested a sad omen of ill-fated youth. But besides ambition and cunning, Paul had his full share of courage; and raising with difficulty his head and its cumbrous wrapping of bandages, he asked in a voice broken and weak, though fleeting still, 'Wound ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... man of no mean note, was the father of our poet. He was born in 1632, at Maltesmeaburn, in the parish of Corby Ravensworth, (what a name of ill-omen within ill-omen, or as Dr Johnson would say, "inspissated gloom"!) in the county of Westmoreland. His father was a minister of the gospel; but in such humble circumstances, that Lancelot was received from the Grammar-school of Appleby into Queen's College, Oxford, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... tribe, and drawing his blanket over his face, in expectation of the fatal shot, the Chief stepped forward and presented some water to him, as a token of pardon, when he was permitted again to join the party. They consider it also as a very bad omen in common with the Tartars, to cut a stick that has been burnt by fire, and with them they consign every thing to destruction, though it be their canoe, as polluted, if it be sprinkled with the water of animals. And ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... hillocks behind the hotel at Huelva you can see in the distance East Rabida, Palos, Moguer, San Juan del Porto, and the sea, where the three birds of good omen went skimming past in the vague morning light 400 years ago, lest they might be seen by the Portuguese. Columbus means dove, and the arms of Columbus contained three doves. From Huelva I sailed to Rabida first. Rabida is on the last point of the promontory, nearest the sea, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... reared. A sergeant-de-ville seized him by the bit. Listen to Madame de Gontaut: "I was frightened, and cried out. The King scolded me for it afterward. I confessed my weakness; to fall at the first step in Paris would have seemed an ill omen. The King subdued his fretful horse, said a few tender words to the children, raised his hat gracefully to the ladies surrounding us. A thousand voices shouted: Vive le Roi! The grand-master was reassured, the horse was quieted, and the King resumed his place. The carriage ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... blossom; and near one another were the two rose- bushes, one damask and one white provence, whence Somerset and Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your unlucky soul, you tun-bellied beast of ill-omen! for the bare supposition of such a thing; depart—depart quickly, and never let me ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the bird's flight would take him. No Roman legionary, going into unequal battle with his war eagle wheeling above its standard, ever watched its swift course with higher hopes or believed more fully in the omen. The eagle spread his wings and glided off to the west, flying low as he approached the plain; and as he passed over Pinal and the claim by Queen Creek, Denver ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... staid about the house all winter. Whenever the door was opened, they would fly to the little girl. The parents feared that this might be a bad omen, and that ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... this; l for r appears in Sally, Dolly, Hal P for m in Patty, Peggy; vowel-change in Harry, Jim, Meg, Kitty, &c; and in several of these the double consonant. To pursue the subject: re-duplication is used; as in Nannie, Nell, Dandie; and (by substitution) in Bob. Ded would be of ill omen; therefore we have, for Edward, Ned or Ted, n and t being coheir to d; for Rick, Dick, perhaps on account of the final d in Richard. Letters are dropped for softness: as Fanny for Franny, Bab for Barb, Wat for Walt. Maud is Norman for Mald, from Mathild, as Bauduin for Baldwin. Argidius ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... point of fact, McDowell, feeling time to be of great value, urged the President to let him move on the morning of Sunday, the 25th; but Mr. Lincoln positively refused; the battle of Bull Run had been fought on a Sunday, and he dreaded the omen.[15] This feeling which he had about days was often illustrated, and probably the reader has observed that he seemed to like dates already marked by prestige or good luck; thus he had convened Congress for July 4, and had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... It actually seemed as if they were preposterous enough to take this ordinary meteorological incident as an omen. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... collection of his short stories about a month before. He took the letter into the "round window" of the club, overlooking the street, and tore it open excitedly. The fact that he had received a letter from the firm without the return of his manuscript seemed a good omen. This was what ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... of joy.]—Creon says this for the sake of the omen. The first words uttered at such a crisis would be ominous and tend ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... to them from time to time, through the afternoon. The bride-cake was considered a miracle of art, and the fact that Martha divided it with a steady hand, making the neatest and cleanest of cuts, was considered a good omen for her married life. Bits of the cake were afterwards in great demand throughout the neighborhood, not so much to ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... than that women, enemy of the government and of France, without which she cannot live;" and several days previously he wrote to Fouche, "When I occupy myself with Madame de Stael, it is because I have the facts before me. That woman is a true bird of bad omen; she believes the tempest already arrived, and delights in intrigues and follies. Let her go to her Lake Leman. Have not the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... alarmed by this omen, or not, she certainly was relieved from much terror by discovering this man to be only a soldier on duty, and it immediately occurred to her, that it might be he, who had occasioned so much alarm on ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... several guesses, I said that I wished it to be a white house with brownish steps and a dark door with a white knob. Hence, great was my satisfaction when near the southeast corner of Eighteenth and K streets, we halted in front of a cottage of that description; and it was regarded as a lucky omen for me, that my first wish amid new scenes ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... now, which endured some moments. It lay upon me like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Particulars as to the cases hereinbefore-mentioned can be obtained from anybody in Killygordon, which is altogether a remarkable place—to say nothing of its name, which for obvious reasons has the misfortune to be unpleasant to the Grand Old Man. Nomen, Omen? ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... do, there were not many hours of the night left in which to act, and I was determined to be out of that house of ill omen before day dawned. If I could get clear of the hotel and at the same time ascertain that Semlin was as much a stranger there as myself, I could decide on my further course of action in the greater freedom of the streets of Rotterdam. One thing was certain: the waiter had let the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... thoughtfully; "but the thing, you see, was in the shape of a man—a man lying at full length as if he were dead, and indeed in his grave: he might take it for his wraith—an omen ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
