"Portent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disappeared in the haze that hid the whole horizon; but up in the western sky was a portent—a black silhouette of irregular out-line, that grew larger ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... on the roof! What a revel there was of brave scout doings, of gentlemanly conduct!—all witnessed by a large, fat moon. He wigwagged messages of great portent to phantom scouts who were in dire need. He helped blind men across streets that ran down the whole length of the roof. He held back pressing crowds while the police were rendered speechless with admiration. He swept off his scout headgear to scores ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... has just killed two malefactors dead at his feet; and in a fourth the other John, the Baptist, is painted with a rope round his neck, dragged by an executioner before Herod. The executioner next beheads the saint, and evidently sees some terrible portent on doing so, for his hair stands on end, and his hand flies up in horror. The two other medallions are separate subjects. In one, a figure with a rope round his neck is dragged before Christ by demons; other demons, one red ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... strange ride of Mahommed Gunga's, and a fateful one—more full of portent for the British Raj in India than he, or the British, or the men amid whose homes he rode could ever have anticipated. He averaged a little less than twenty miles a day, and through an Indian hot-weather, and with no spare horse, none but a born horseman—a ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... d'abord, mon arrive au collge, c'est que j'tais le seul avec une blouse. A Lyon, les fils de riches ne portent pas de blouses; il n'y que les [17] enfants de la rue, les gones, comme on dit. Moi, j'en avais une, une petite blouse carreaux que datait de la fabrique; j'avais une blouse, j'avais l'air d'un gone.... Quand ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... proclaimed and deliberately sworn that they would tell and were telling it. The State loyalty as being a mental reservation evermore to abrogate the oath of National loyalty:—what is it but a modern reproduction of the old Jesuit portent? ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... certain waste lands near Sardis, met with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his troops to a last effort, regained the lost ground, and more. The Austrians gave way, turned to flight, and one of the great victories of the epoch had been won. In a few hours the glorious news had reached Paris, and in Paris it was interpreted as an evil portent for Robespierre. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... to reach her house even in advance of herself, and with grave misgiving he beheld a large automobile at rest before the sainted gate. Forthwith, a sinking feeling became a portent inside him as little Maurice Levy emerged from the front door of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Conversation languished during the trip; a disturbed conscience on the part of the father, and on the part of Kay and her mother an intuition, peculiar to their sex and aroused by the doctor's comments, that events of more than ordinary portent had occurred that ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... had heard of "the King" of course, but what it was I had never thought of. To me it represented strength and omnipotent protection, but it was an abstraction only; an undefined something of awful portent; and that it could die was very mysterious, and set me wondering ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... murmured. "I'm afraid, too. Yes," she breathed, confronted by a portent, "I'm afraid. I never have been afraid before. I didn't fear Montoyo. I've always been able to take care of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Samans. A celestial shower of flowers belonging to every season fell on that spot where he of Vrishni's race, with Ganga's son and the son of Pandu were. Celestial instruments of every kind played in the welkin and the tribes of Apsaras began to sing. Nothing of evil and no portent of any evil kind were seen there. An auspicious, pleasant, and pure breeze, bearing every kind of fragrance, began to blow. All the points of the compass became clear and quiet, and all the animals and birds began to rove in peace. Soon after, like a fire at the extremity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Popular Antiquities, ed. 1849, iii. 132, where Brand cites Melton's Astrologaster, or the Figure-Caster, 1620, to show that to dream of the devil and of gold was deemed an equally lucky portent. To dream of gold is also pronounced a happy omen in the Countryman's ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming 'dropper.' About the time the 'dropper' reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens. That's the little plan which Bailey's presence threatened to wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars are ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... another and perished near Aspis, the African city. And in the vicinity of the City blood descended from heaven and was smeared all about by the birds. When at the Ludi Romani not one of the senators was entertained on the Capitol, as had been the custom, they took this, too, as a portent. Again, the incident that happened to Livia caused her pleasure, but inspired the rest with terror. A white bird carrying a sprig of fruited laurel had been thrown by an eagle into her lap. As this seemed to be a sign of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... eyes, and besought all the gods she worshiped to restore her good master's former vigor, that she might once more hear him curse and storm; for his subdued mood seemed to her unnatural and alarming—a portent of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... god of silence sealed his lips. He could not speak. How could he speak, when, if he told what was in his heart, his words would be of such terrible portent? Then, like lightning, the issues became clear to him. They were written from sky to sky. If he did not speak, if he maintained the silence which he had hitherto maintained, the jury would find him guilty, and he would be hanged. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... masses of moss, winding with the faint light in our hands through the awful ways and avenues of the catacombs. The scene grew real to me, as I mused. Alone, what should I fear? These silent hosts encamped around would but have cheered their child. But with her, every murmur becomes a portent of danger, every current of air gives me fresh tremors; as we pass casual openings into the sky, the vault of air, the glint of stars, shall seem a malignant face; I fancy to hear impossible footsteps behind us, some bone that crumbling falls from its shelf makes my heart beat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... suavity had all but vanished: his voice was harsh and stern. His eyes glittered under his shaggy brows as he looked at me. Had I been less agitated, I should have noted this, as a portent of the coming storm, also his great ape's hands picking nervously at the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... admire an old Florentine cabinet near it, she still saw its portrait; and when, in desperation, she turned away to look out of the window across the sky and sloping park, the shadow of the cow hung like a portent. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... This portent befel south at Mossfell, the self-same night, that Onund dreamed how Raven came to him, covered all over with ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... Was this a portent of the fate about to overtake the latest comers? Jenks, of course, stood up. He always, stood square on his feet when the volcano within ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... however, his thoughts took a different turn. From the material wreck they passed on to the dire significance which such portent might indicate. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... forests seems to come out of the skies like the malediction of an evil spirit. Without uttering the words of any language — Poe's "Nevermore" was, of course, a poetic license — people of all nationalities appear to understand that some dire calamity, some wicked portent, is being announced every time the unbirdlike creature utters its rasping call. The superstitious folk crow with an "I told you so," as they solemnly wag their heads when they hear, of some death in the village after "the bird of ill-omen" has made an ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... a lawyer and the experience of a statesman, should be in our midst claiming to be endowed with the gift of healing spoken of in the New Testament as vouchsafed to the Christians of apostolic times, is a portent indeed, and one well worthy of the attentive consideration of the most sceptical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... it as to a promised land. We sat upon our horses, spellbound, gazing upon what seemed at once too grand and too beautiful to be real. Had we been superstitious like soldiers of an ancient time, we might have seen a miraculous portent in it; and even as it was, such sentiment as may be permitted in the sceptical spirit of our own day could find a happy omen in the scene. We were entering upon a new chapter in our military lives, and it was cheering to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and finally ends its career in the Lake Bracciano. Regarded from whatever point of view, the flight was certainly extraordinary, and it is not surprising that in that age it was regarded as nothing less than a portent. Moreover, little details of the wonderful story were quickly endowed with grave significance. The balloon on reaching the ground rent itself. Next, ere it plunged into the water, it carefully deposited a portion of its crown on the tomb of Nero. Napoleon, on learning the facts, forbade ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... was one of icy terror that crept to the very marrow of his bones. He knew instantly that there was a meaning of dreadful portent in the abrupt cessation of the cries. He halted an instant, listening, but at first could hear no more than the throb of his heart in his breast and the whisper of his own troubled breathing. But presently, at a distance of one hundred yards, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... "Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion? Do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking? Do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat? Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? Do you not remark this mad needle? Every sign and portent of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... edition only brought the author L20 direct return, but it introduced him to the literati of Edinburgh, whither he was invited, and where he was welcomed, feasted, admired and patronized. He appeared as a portent among the scholars of the northern capital and its university, and manifested, according to Mr Lockhart, "in the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was where he was entitled to be, hardly deigning ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in Germany also found that their power was being undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor that it was necessary to let loose this ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... were the miracles of religion. If men in the twelfth century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail loads of laughing human beings, and if they had then been told that the people alluded to this pulverising portent chirpily as 'The Twopenny Tube,' they would have called down the fire of Heaven on us as a race of half-witted atheists. Probably they ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... do, or they fare, as they that ben Certainement, madam, ilz se portent, or ilz le font come ceulz ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... en tete du volume, represente Mielot a genoux, faisant l'offrande de son livre au duc, lequel est assis et entoure de plusieurs courtisans, dont trois portent, comme lui, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... years before, and he seemed an old, old man now. He recognized the very spot where he had slept the first night after he ran away and awakened to that fearful never-forgotten storm at sunrise, which lived in his memory now as a mighty portent of the storms of human passion that had swept around him on many a battlefield. There was the very tree where he had killed the squirrel and the rattlesnake. It was bursting spring now, but the buds of laurel and rhododendron ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... might be aroused, by precisely the right persuasion, to a tumult of applause. Yes, they must all be conquered, until, as in the case of Beethoven for instance, the name of the genius appeared as though written like a portent in the sky, above the heads even of throngs that knew nothing of music, that would never hear these harmonies, but that would be filled all the same ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... his rider's mood, sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... quite the last person he wished to face. This weakness, this smallness of spirit, was only temporary, he assured himself; it would soon pass, and then he would find the strength to go to her with his customary smile, his mask in place. Now, however, he was empty, cheerless, frightened by the portent of this new thing. It could have but one significance—it meant that he would lose his "sister," that she would have no further need ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... did all his wit could do to make ridiculous, that the Senate laughed, and even Roscoe Conkling, who never condescends to sneer at a woman in public, turned and listened and smiled his most sardonic smile. Then Thurman blew his loudest regulation blast—sure portent of approaching battle—and rose and moved that the petition be referred to the committee on public lands, of which Oglesby is chairman. At this proposition—intended to be equally humorous and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?—a great red letter in the sky,—the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... He repelled it with terror, rage, and despair. He passed an hour or two of agony in his own room, and came down, looking pale and exhausted. But, indeed, the little Dumas, though he does not pass for a moralist, says truly and well, "Les amours ille'gitimes portent toujours des fruits amers;" and Ned Severne's turn was come to suffer a few of the pangs he had inflicted gayly on more than one woman and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... she entered the dining-room the parlour-maid told her that Mr. Peyton had overslept himself, and had rung to have his breakfast sent upstairs. Was it a pretext to avoid her? She was vexed at her own readiness to see a portent in the simplest incident; but while she blushed at her doubts she let them govern her. She left the dining-room door open, determined not to miss him if he came downstairs while she was at breakfast; then she went back ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... bamboo of extraordinary size and a bush with sweet and beautiful flowers: many people tried to cut down the big bamboo and to pluck the beautiful flowers but every arm that was raised to do so was restrained by some unseen power. Eventually the news of this portent reached the ears of the Raja who went to see what was happening. When the Raja tried to pluck a flower he succeeded at the first attempt. The Raja then cut down the bamboo and out of it stepped the mongoose boy who told of the illtreatment ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... natural law gravitate towards virtue; accidents may drive them out of their proper direction; but such accidents are a sort of prodigies, and, like other prodigies, it is an alarming omen, and of dire portent to the times. For if virtue cannot keep to her allegiance those men, who in their hearts confess her divine right, and know the value of her laws, on whose fidelity and obedience can she depend? May such geniuses never descend to flatter vice, encourage folly, or propagate ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... of them, the best guide and carrier I had found on the whole island, had screwed his courage up to where he had promised to go farther with me; but the morning of our start a "quago" bird flew across our path and hooted; and that settled the matter. Such an ominous portent as that no intelligent Bagabo could be expected to disregard. The men hardly could be got to carry my luggage as far as they had agreed, and as soon as they had put the things down, they bade me a hasty farewell and scuttled ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... Sunday-night enthusiasm; the flame of "successful rebellion" had spread; the country began to stir and hum ominously; people assembled in groups, on corners, by church steps, around tavern-doors, with faces full of portent and expectance; ploughs stood idly in the fields; and the raw-boned horses, that should of right have dragged the reluctant share through heavy clay and abounding stones, now, bestridden by breathless couriers, scoured the country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... days came on apace, and each one brought a new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and 1861, and the history of the old ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... bestow a benefit on all men and return one to him; seeing that for such characters death is the only remedy, and that he who never will return to himself, had best leave himself. However, such wickedness as this is uncommon, and is always regarded as a portent, as when the earth opens, or when fires break forth from caves under the sea; so let us leave it, and speak of those vices which we can hate without shuddering at them. As for the ordinary bad man, whom I can find in the marketplace of any ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... What portent from the mid oracular place Hath smitten thee so like a curse that flies Wingless, to waste men with its plagues? ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... frequently startle the night traveller, and that some peculiarity of form in the meteor had been exaggerated by the obscuring influence of the frost-rime and the briefness of the survey; but the apparition had filled his whole mind, as one of strange and frightful portent from the spiritual world. And often since that night has it returned to us in recollection, as a vision in singular keeping with the wild valley which it traversed, and the credulous melancholy of the solitary shepherd, its ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... spalpeen, or I'll smash you to smithereens!" said Tim, who, although his words were of such dire portent, spoke as gently as if he were ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... my sister right, Freeman, and I'll come and try if I can have a peep from your ladder." Then Blair saw a thing which always seems more impressive than anything else that can be witnessed at sea—except, perhaps, a snowstorm. A mysterious portent came rolling onward; afar off it looked like a pale grey wall of inconceivable height, but as it drew nearer, the wall resolved itself into a wild array of columns, and eddies, and whirlpools, and great full-bosomed clouds, that rolled and swam and rose and fell ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... it would scarcely have been honoured with a quarter of a line in the Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was a literary portent, [372] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the forest, the wedge of wild fowl flying with trumpet notes to some distant lake, the vulture hastening in heavy flight to the carrion that night has provided, the crane flapping to the shallows, and the jackal shuffling along to his shelter in the nullah, have each and all their portent to the initiated eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his daydream. What there is of squalor, and drudgery, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Juba. He summoned Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus, Ceres, Pomona, Neptune, Mercury, Minerva, and great Rome, to witness the marvellous occurrence; and then he had recourse to the infernal gods, Pluto and Proserpine, down to Cerberus, if he be one of them; but, after all, there the portent was, in spite of all the deities which Olympus, or Arcadia, or Latium ever bred; and at length it had a nervous effect upon the old gentleman's system, and, for the first evening after it, he put all his good things from ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... cordon was the leader who heretofore had escaped them, that each man was a link forged in the endless chain which was stretched around the invisible enemy. And, meanwhile, the starless sky and the waiting chain were equally silent and equally freighted with mystery. And the future seemed full of portent and very near. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... sign, a portent. There was nothing in him. Just about that time the word Thrift was to the fore. You know the power of words. We pass through periods dominated by this or that word—it may be development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity or efficiency or even sanctity. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... trail of the Milky Way. As a little child hanging in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had made friends with them all, even as she learned and loved all the signs of the earth beneath—the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the cry of a river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had known Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having suffered, and sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the dead of night, the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... full of glittering motes and smelt of dust, and that life worked itself out in cupboards made of glass and mahogany; and suddenly you learned, while smelling the dust, that Acapulco was more than a portent in a book and held only by an act of faith. Yet that astonishing revelation, enough to make any youthful messenger forget where he himself was bound, through turning to follow with his eyes that ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... Roman in an official or diplomatic post, who handles vast sums of money, adheres to his duty through the mere moral obligation of the oath which he has sworn"; that "amongst the Romans the corrupt official is as rare a portent as is the financier with clean hands amongst other peoples".[112] When the elder Africanus tore up the account books of his brother—books which recorded the passage of eighteen thousand talents from an Asiatic king ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the verge of weeping, too. Helen Cameron had hard work to keep back her own sobs; even Jennie Stone, the stout girl, was past turning the matter into a joke. And Madge Steele was unable to suggest a single cheerful portent. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... true) is of a menacing aspect, but if the new parliament (for whose convention so many good men pray) continue long to sit, I fear not but the star will lose its virulence and malignancy, or at least its portent be averted from this our nation; which being the humble request to God of all good men, makes me thus entitle ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... were lying beneath the earth, enveloped in his shroud, still unconscious of bitter toils. Would that the dark wave, when the maiden Helle perished, had overwhelmed Phrixus too with the ram; but the dire portent even sent forth a human voice, that it might cause to Alcimede sorrows and ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the world a portent Of eternal might and right, They chose for the steel a splinter From a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... rounded a point of timber, and came upon a small party of men whose attitudes even in the dimming light conveyed a subtle suggestion of portent. Some sat their horses, with one leg thrown across the pommel. Others stood in the road, and a bottle of white liquor was passing in and out among them. At the distance they recognized the gray mule, though ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... place in one of the lecture rooms of Grace Hall. There was a full attendance of the entering class, while the absence of sophomores was considered by those who had heard of former freshman elections at Erskine as something unnatural and of evil portent. ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... phenomenon, so early in the morning, and Bacchus was slightly uneasy at its portent, but he ventured to ask her what was ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making his notes, merely, as he tells us, from the suggestions of his own mind as he revised the proof-sheets, informs us, at the bottom of the page, that 'it reminds ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... softness and innocence in his voice, which had portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had anything of consequence upon his soul. Without more encouragement ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... to the State, And Echo hardly less. Vain-glorious crime; That pestilent portent of a morbid time, Would flourish less could sense or law avail To strangle coarse Sensation's clamorous tale, Silence the "Noisy Nymph," for half crime's ill Would end were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... too well do I understand the dream's portent and monition: my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... complexion was a yellowish-brown, bespeaking Indian blood. I knew at once that it must be John Randolph. As he uttered the words, 'Mr. Speaker!' every member turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some portent had suddenly appeared before them. 'Mr. Speaker,' said he, in a shrill voice, which, however, pierced every nook and corner of the hall, 'I have but one word to say,—one word, sir, and that is to state a fact. The measure ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Cioni, keep astride your politics, and never mount your prophecy; politics is the better horse," said Nello. "But if you talk of portents, what portent can be greater than a pious notary? Balaam's ass ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of fact, and by all its several complications, the German question; it was its sign and portent, and if action of some sort were not taken thereupon, the door set ajar was closed upon the future, for a generation at least. Palmerston's declaration, than which no unwiser one was ever made, touching the insanity of the man who should seek ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... political clouds gathered thickly and grew threatening. They were unmistakable in their portent. War was meant, and we heard the martial ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty. It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to radiant raiment, and it serves its purpose. Mascagni and his librettist do not seem to have been able to find a term with which to define their creation. They call it simply "Iris"; not a "dramma per musica," as the Florentine inventors of the opera did ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... keys were at the Town Hall, and against which in another minute, another sixty seconds, he had set his petard. That set and exploded, Geneva had lain open to its enemies. As it was, so small was the margin, so fatally accurate the closing, that when the day rose, it disclosed a portent. When the victors came to examine the spot they found beneath the portcullis the mangled form of one of the engineers, and beside him ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... was the doom meted out to the bush-handlers, the medicine-men, the rain-compellers, erewhile so inscrutably potent for working out the bliss or the bale of friend or enemy. "Lo, from no mountain-top, from no ceiba-hollow in the forest recesses, has issued any interposing sign, any avenging portent, to vindicate the Spirit of Darkness so foully outraged in the hitherto inviolate person of his chosen minister! Verily, even the powers of the midnight are impotent against these invaders from beyond the mighty salt-water! Here, huddled together in confused, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... tierce) [n]re S[r] le Roi disoit [q] ceo fuist de counge de luy et de sa volunte [q] gentz de sa retenue portent et usent mesme la Livere de Coler."—Rolls of Parliament, vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... heard him mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of a man invoking God in his pain than in waving deity like a portent before unbelievers. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of the bygone night, and his heart grew heavy, for it seemed to him that this vision of a dark woman searching his face with those dreadful eyes was a portent of evil not ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of a portent: it was a definite herald of revolt. The mere title, 'A German Requiem', involving the commandeering of the name hitherto associated exclusively with the ritual of the Roman Church and the practice of prayers for the dead, and its adaptation to entirely different words, was in ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... ever let yourself touch the Curse carelessly. Bless you, I know scores who were once as sweet as you who can now drink any costermonger of them all under the stools in the Haymarket bar. The young men grin and wink as that staggering portent lurches past: I do not smile; my heart is too sad for even a show of sadness. Then there are the children—the children of Drink they should be called, for they suck it from the breast, and the venomous molecules ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... it was because he was a small poet that he came to his strange and isolated triumph. It was because he was a failure in literature that he became a portent in English history. He was one of those to whom nature has given the desire without the power of artistic expression. He had been a dumb poet from his cradle. He might have been so to his grave, and ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... distinction of being the first negro born in the Colony, his parents having been landed from the Dutch privateer which in 1619 introduced the slave into Virginia. Viewed through a vista of nigh three hundred years, he appears a portent, a tremendous omen, a sign from the Eumenides. Upon that tranquil summer afternoon in the Virginia of long ago he was simply a good-humored, docile, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... may chance to become only the head of an inferior sect, instead of revelling in the universal tithes of a whole nation. As for the meteor, Scherirah must have crossed the river about the same time, and the Sultan of Roum may explain the bloody portent. For the shriek, as I really have no acquaintance with spirits, I must leave the miraculous communication to the favoured ears and initiated intelligences of your highness and my brother. It seems that it differed from ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... were gathering in Aulis, freighted with trouble for Priam and the Trojans; and we round about a spring were offering on the holy altars unblemished hecatombs to the immortals, beneath a fair plane-tree whence flowed bright water, when there was seen a great portent: a snake blood-red on the back, terrible, whom the god of Olympus himself had sent forth to the light of day, sprang from beneath the altar and darted to the plane-tree. Now there were there the brood of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard, no doubt, and remember what they ...
— Statesman • Plato
... the portent of the sky The sages fix their gaze on high, And speed them 'neath the furrowed way Marked by ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... I choose for the theme of my lay Is a portent "conspicuous even to-day," For, though she was freely condemned and abhorred, She was never suppressed and she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... of the world's history through which we pass complacently is of no light portent, its happenings no casual concern, but, in point of crucial fact, a virtual "rending of the sphere"—a cosmic upheaval such as never yet before has racked the tense life sinews of the world, confounding the wisdom of the wise and wrecking in one fell climax of contempt ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... ruisseau Portent, en livre jolie, Gouttes d'argent, d'orfavrerie, Chascun s'abille de nouveau: Le temps a laissi ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the shape of a section of our fortifications, the segment of a circle, with the triangle penetrating through from the north. These shapes were distinctly defined. Could the operations beneath have produced this phenomenon? was it accidental? or a portent of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to increase the prevailing panic. It rained blood in Sweden, monstrous births occurred in France, and at Weimar it was gravely reported by eminent chroniclers that the sun had appeared at mid-day holding a drawn sword in his mouth—a warlike portent whose meaning could not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bent down on one knee, and as he did so his magnificently jewelled tulwar fell forward naturally enough from the point of the scabbard touching the carpet right between us, and he started as if the sword between us had come as a strange portent to show that we were enemies, always to be kept apart by ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except, when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and died before the visible fulfilment of the great promise of salvation. To them, to be sure, or rather to many of them, not to all, merciful helps were granted. The unseen and the hoped-for was sometimes, not always, made more tangible to them by the grant of some sign and token, some portent or miracle, by the way. But the careful Bible-reader knows how very little such things are represented in the holy histories as being the "daily bread" of the life of the old believers. Even in the ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule |
