"Portentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the point of alarm. It looked out from the wasted face, at once—to her seeing—exquisite and austere, reaching forward, keenly curious of all death should reveal, unmoved, yet instinct with the brilliance, the mirthfulness even, of impending portentous adventure. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to be both admired and feared, and this incident took its place in Wall Street history as a brilliant coup side by side with Vanderbilt's Harlem Railroad and other celebrated exploits. It was soon followed, however, by much more sensational events. We have seen that the portentous figure of Vanderbilt was just at this time looming up in the railroad world, and Vanderbilt had his own theory of the management and financing of railroads. It was inevitable that he should clash ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... their conferences had been overheard and were now recalled, in which this expression of dislike had taken the form of threats, vague and purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken in connection with what she gathered from the lips of the child, seemed of portentous interest. Then, when she understood that Stevens had sent a note in reply—and that both notes were sealed, the quick, feminine mind instantly ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... journals and periodicals and extending over a period of more than a quarter of a century, these opinions and reflections express the refined judgment of one who has seen, not as through a glass darkly, the trend of events. And having seen the portentous effigy that we are making of the Liberty our fathers created, he has written of it in English that is the despair of those who, thinking less clearly, escape not the pitfalls of diffuseness and obscurity. For Mr. Bierce, as did Flaubert, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the early age of twenty-six, having suddenly disappeared from Florence, leaving certain work unfinished. A strange portentous meteor in art. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Taft delegates went home to meditate on the fight which they had won and the more portentous fight which they must wage in the coming months on a broader field. The Roosevelt delegates, on the other hand, went out to Orchestra Hall, and in an exalted mood of passionate devotion to their cause and their beloved leader proceeded ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... The fires of the goddess burn! Now for the dance, the dance! Bring out the dance made public By Mana-mana-ia-kalu-e-a. 30 Turn about back, turn about face; Advance toward the sea; Advance toward the land, Toward the pit that is Pele's, Portentous consumer of rocks in Puna. 35 Pi and Pa chirp the cricket notes Of Pele at home in her ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... besides the three shamans. When at last news came that a woman had gone to see the wife of the chief penitent, and had heard from her that her husband was working, things began to look not only strange but portentous. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the whole. Without this, no government, certainly not our government, is capable of a great war. None of the ancient regular governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at home to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It must be some portentous thing, like regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of old called Ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and of the allied states," he said, "are you aware of a silent but portentous growth within the bosom of Hellas? (14) Few here need to be told that for size and importance Olynthus now stands at the head of the Thracian cities. But are you aware that the citizens of Olynthus had already brought over several states by the bribe of joint citizenship and ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... awfully intelligible, against the men and the measures that had brought England to the brink of ruin. The effect of this popular feeling soon showed itself in the upper regions. The country-gentlemen, those birds of political omen, whose migrations are so portentous of a change of weather, began to flock in numbers to the brightening quarter of Opposition; and at last, Lord North, after one or two signal defeats (in spite even of which the Court for some time clung to him, as the only hope ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... sweep down every unsheltered foe who was upon his feet, and to utterly fright the savages from their propriety. Beaujeu and a dozen more fell dead upon the spot, and the Indians already began to fly, their courage being unable to endure the unwonted tumult of such a portentous detonation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... father proposed dropping a brass door-key down her back as the most efficacious of cures. Had she consented to this heroic treatment I might have been shunted into silence, but her prompt refusal to allow any one to do anything for her left diplomacy at its wit's end. In the portentous silence which followed I was able to repeat my question ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... to his new passion. With his comfortable fortune and good connections, the future seemed bright and possible enough as to circumstances. He knew that Argemone felt for him; how much it seemed presumptuous even to speculate, and as yet no golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous in his amatory zodiac. No rich man had stepped in to snatch, in spite of all his own flocks and herds, at the poor man's own ewe- lamb, and set him barking at all the world, as many a poor lover has to do in defence of his morsel of enjoyment, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... others were to leave in the course of the day. Lady Maud had just said good-bye to a party of ten who were going off together, and she had not had a chance to speak to Margaret, who had come down late, after her manner. Most great singers are portentous sleepers. As for Logotheti, he always had coffee in his room wherever he was, he never appeared at breakfast, and he got rid of his important correspondence for the day ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... family or an individual. Neither, lastly, do we receive the impression (which, it must be observed, is not purely fatalistic) that a family, owing to some hideous crime or impiety in early days, is doomed in later days to continue a career of portentous calamities and sins. Shakespeare, indeed, does not appear to have taken much interest in heredity, or to have attached much importance to it. (See, however, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... a portentous yawn. Ben heard her, came and sat down on an ottoman not far off, and ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... of limestone, for all the world like a decayed rampart of some ancient city. A wide floor of rock at its base made beautiful walking to a place where the lofty escarpment showed exposures of limestone underlying an enormous mass of dark sandstone, topped by tar-clay. It is a portentous cliff, bearing a curiously Eastern look, as if some great pyramid had been riven vertically, and the exposed surface scarred and scooped by the weather into a multitude of antic hollows, grotesque projections, and unimaginable shapes. Here, also, the knives of passers-by had carved numerous ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... full measure of his base rage, and her face grew pale and set. "You're making a perfect fool of yourself, Cliff," she said, with portentous calmness. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... glade, saw the sky had become flecked with clouds that were scudding across the heavens, in a thousand fantastic waves, while just above the peak of the topmost hill over the lake, a black cloud, heavy and portentous with a gathering storm, was rising slowly, leaving a long streak of light unbroken cloud ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... accidental any morning on their doorstep, they don't ask where it comes from, but just put it down into their cellars. Sometimes information gets sworn before them, and they has to let the revenue people know, but somehow or other, I can't say how it is," and the fisherman gave a portentous wink, "our fellows generally get some sort of an idea that things ain't right, and the landing don't come off as expected; queer, ain't it? But that fellow Faulkner, he ain't like that. He worries hisself about the ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... blue. But Mr Baildon, whether from hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least comprehend the rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories. He actually says of that portentous monument of humour, Prince Florizel of Bohemia, that, 'though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on the whole rather an irritating presence.' From this we are almost driven to believe (though desperately and against our will) ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... was merely a handsome girl, with a strong vein of originality. I began to doubt the evidence of my senses. Surely I must have been labouring under some hallucination the previous night. It was almost easier to believe that I had been the dupe of a portentous nightmare than that this charming girl should have enacted such a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... has not led to the formation of any school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the production of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has happened in tragedy, comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last achieved such a dazzling and portentous success by one dramatic masterpiece, began his career as a playwright by following the vein of The Father of the Family; but The Marriage of Figaro, though not without strong traces of Diderotian sentiment in pungent application, yet is in its structure and composition ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... among the austere flesh-mortifying antiques. There was the morning-room, with its pale lemon walls, its painted Venetian chairs and rococo tables, its mirrors, its modern pictures. There was the library, cool, spacious, and dark, book-lined from floor to ceiling, rich in portentous folios. There was the dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its great mahogany table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, its eighteenth-century pictures—family portraits, meticulous ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... when behold; the hands of all were loosed upon the booty and everywhere plucked up the shining treasure. There you might have marvelled at their disposition of filthy greed, and watched a portentous spectacle of avarice. You could have seen gold and grass clutched up together; the birth of domestic discord; fellow-countrymen in deadly combat, heedless of the foe; neglect of the bonds of comradeship and of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint guardian and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They all look portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a little ruffled by the lack of any response, continues] I don't know that I can consent to act under such conditions. Mr Tanner has, I understand, some objection also; but I do not profess ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Thine own presence, and divested it of all its terrors. My soul! art thou at times afraid of this, thy last enemy? If the rest of thy pilgrimage-way be peaceful and unclouded, rests there a dark and portentous shadow over the terminating portals? Fear not! When that dismal entrance is reached, He who has "the keys of the grave and of death" suspended at His golden girdle, will impart grace to bear thee through. It ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows toward us from the pages of the sagas. Bjoernson has gazed deeply into the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic anarchy which was a necessary result of the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... above-mentioned classes—the "slightly impoverished gentleman" never having laid eyes on him in his life—the negotiations had to be conducted with a certain formality. Todd had therefore, on his arrival, unpinned from the inside of his jacket a portentous document signed with his owner's name and sealed with a red wafer, which after such felicitous phrases as—"I have the distinguished honor," etc.—gave the boy's age (21), weight (140 pounds), and height (5 feet 10 inches)—all valuable data for identification in ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... at the change, none of the Rangers are dismayed by it, or even surprised. The old prairie men are the least astonished, since they know what it means. At the first portentous sign Cully ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Unrest.—The four years intervening between the campaign of 1892 and the next presidential election brought forth many events which aggravated the ill-feeling expressed in the portentous platform of Populism. Cleveland, a consistent enemy of free silver, gave his powerful support to the gold standard and insisted on the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act, thus alienating an increasing number of his own party. In 1893 a grave industrial crisis fell upon ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... hand and then seemed to remember something. After exchanging a portentous glance with the woman in uniform, he looked steadfastly into her face and said sombrely: "I hope all's well with you, sister! I ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... When they had seen those two portentous heroes go in, the prospect of their ever going out had seemed fearfully remote. But now, if one man was got rid of for only three runs, why should not ten men go for only thirty? At which arithmetical discovery the school immediately leapt from the depths ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Warburton was a portentous meteor: it seemed unconnected with the whole planetary system through which it rolled, and it was imagined to be darting amid new creations, as the tail of each hypothesis blazed with idle fancies.[144] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter actually in debate, and leave it to time to suggest a more active treatment should the course first tried prove unsatisfactory. Who can be surprised that the earlier apologists should have felt thus in the presence of an enemy whose novelty made him appear more portentous than he can ever seem to ourselves? They were bound to venture nothing rashly; what they did they did, for their own age, thoroughly; we owe it to their cautious pioneering that we so know the weakness of our opponents and our own strength as to be able to do fearlessly what may well have seemed ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... daughters to uphold that ensign and to exhibit the glory of their house. To the first-born, Piero, came the great inheritance of his father's place and power, and no man ever entered into a greater possession,—a possession, so firm, so unquestioned and so portentous, that nothing seemed likely to disturb its equilibrium or to sully ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... mockery. "You are scientifically frank. You were bored with yourself.—Then there is some hope for your future wife. . . . We have had many talks in our acquaintance, Dr. Marmion, but none so interesting as this promises to be. But now tell me what your purpose was in coming. 'Purpose' seems portentous, but quite ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gems, neck-laces, scarfs and bracelets, and infinite riches: In sum, was so enamour'd of it, that for some days, neither the concernment of his Grand Expedition, nor interest of honour, nor the necessary motion of his portentous army, could perswade him from it: He styl'd it his mistress, his minion, his Goddess; and when he was forc'd to part from it, he caus'd the figure of it to be stamp'd in a medal of gold, which he continually wore ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Elberfeld, has told the world, in sentences of portentous length and complication, that "the petty trader's instincts which form the most typical characteristic of the British race" came notably to the fore in our treatment of the German prisoners of war who were held under military surveillance in the British ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It may have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... body, with its narrow shoulders and sunken chest, frail as it was, seemed almost too heavy for his feeble legs. His thin face, bloodless and sallow, with a sparse, daintily trimmed beard and weak watery eyes, was characterized by a solemn and portentous gravity, as though, realizing fully the profound importance of his mission in life, he could permit no trivial thought to enter his bald, domelike head. One knew instinctively that in all the forty-five or fifty years of his little life no happiness or joy that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... him on the front seat of the Stenton stage, sharing with the driver not his customary cigarettes but more portentous cigars from an ample pocketful. "Greenstream's dead," he pronounced; "I'm going after ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have "prave 'ords enough, look you," to fill the biggest speaking-trumpet that ever was cast; but miserable is it for men who have not such "prave 'ords," to be forced to bellow their little ones through the portentous instrument which they have not breath ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... portentous thing to realize that a newborn human creature can only know what it is taught. The teaching may be conscious or unconscious, intelligent or idiotic, exquisite or brutal. The images presented by those surrounding it, as its perceptions awaken day by day, are those which record themselves ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have been exiled from office at the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty. The nation would have deserted them, and Parliament would have deserted them, too; neither would have endured to see a secret negotiation, on which depended the portentous alternative of war or peace, in the hands of a person who was thought to be weak—who had been promoted because of his mediocrity—whom his own friends did not respect. A Ministerial government, too, is ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... was a week old this was said in many a respectable household through the country. Many a squire, many a parson, many a farmer was grieved for Mr. Daubeny when the words had been explained to him, who did not for a moment think that the words could be portentous as to the great Conservative party. But Mr. Ratler remembered Catholic emancipation, had himself been in the House when the Corn Laws were repealed, and had been nearly broken-hearted when household suffrage ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... leather, I would fix my eyes on the dignified high-church rector, and the dignified high-church clerk, and watch the movement of their lips, from which, as they read their respective portions of the venerable liturgy, would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to happen among the prairie folk time out of number. Many a brain stupefied by the lonely life of the dugout, the solemn, often portentous grandeur of the great blue dome, under which the pioneers crawled so helplessly, had been blown zigzag by the wild buffetings of the wayward, wanton winds, punctuating the dread loneliness so insistently, so incessantly, so diabolically by its staccato preludes, by its innuendoes of interludes prestissimo, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... that, during that pause, she could see the little policeman everywhere. In every part of the room she found him, with his fat legs and dirty, streaky face and open collar. The flat was heavy, portentous with his presence, as though it stood with a self-important finger on its lips saying, "I've got a secret in here. Such a secret. You don't know what ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... influence of clergymen's collars and neck-bands upon the thoughts and minds of their audiences. Such questions of chance influence of trifles upon the greater events of life is a constant theme of speculation among the pragmatics; no petty detail is overlooked in the possibility of its portentous consequences. Walter Shandy's hyperbolic philosophy turned about such a focus, the exaltation of insignificant trifles into mainsprings of action. Shandy ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... in American history was more portentous than the first gun fired from Fort Johnson at 1.30 o'clock in the morning of April 12, 1861. As the shell wound its graceful curve into the air and fell into the water at the base of Sumter, the Civil War ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... summit nodded to its base, The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. The Tolbooth felt—for marble sometimes can, On such occasions, feel as much as man— The Tolbooth felt defrauded of his charms, If JEFFREY died, except within her arms: [64] Nay last, not least, on that portentous morn, 480 The sixteenth story, where himself was born, His patrimonial garret, fell to ground, And pale Edina shuddered at the sound: Strewed were the streets around with milk-white reams, Flowed all the Canongate with inky streams; This ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... her grasp on the bridle, for the ringing of a rifle rose, sharp and portentous, from beyond the rise. The colour faded in her cheek, and Hetty leaned forward a trifle in her saddle, with lips slightly parted, as though in strained expectancy. No sound now reached them from beyond the low, white ridge ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... had ceased their shrilling; the night birds their chirping; the animals, great and small, their callings or their stealthy rustling to and fro. Of the world of sound there remained only the crackling of our fires, the tiny singing of the blood in our ears, and that far-off portentous roar. Our simple dispositions were made. Trenches had been dug around the tents; the pegs had been driven well home; our stores had been put in shelter. We waited silently, puffing ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... closer and more thrillingly up to the climax. But at the end of the seventh, with the score tied six and six, with daring steals, hard hits and splendid plays, enough to have made memorable several games, it seemed that the great portentous moment ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... cut, sting, make bad smells, secrete the most dreadful poisons (which Heaven only knows how they contrive to make), cover their precious seeds with spines like those of a hedgehog, frighten insects with delicate nervous systems by assuming portentous shapes, hide themselves, grow in inaccessible places, and tell lies so plausibly as to deceive even ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... slipped loose; and when they came out they ran mad, biting all that came in their way, people and cattle. All who were bitten by them till the blood came turned raging mad; and pregnant women were taken in labour prematurely, and became mad. From Easter to Ascension-day, these portentous circumstances took place almost every night. People were dreadfully alarmed at these wonders; and many made themselves ready to remove, sold their houses, and went out to the country districts, or to other towns. The most intelligent ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... son, while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however, on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace, and melted them, as it were, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... another romantic tale to tell before we bid adieu to the story of early Rome. In the second year of the pestilence a strange and portentous event occurred. The Tiber rose to an unusual height, overflowed with its waters the great circus (Circus Maximus), and put a stop to the games then going on, which were intended to propitiate the wrath of heaven, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ran busily concerning the absent one. And then, soon, Plutina was again hurrying over the trail, which the bordering wild flowers made dainty as a garden walk. Once, her eyes turned southward, to the gloomy grandeur of Stone Mountain, looming vast and portentous. The blur of shadow that marked the Devil's Cauldron touched her to an instant of foreboding, but the elation of mood persisted. She raised her hand, and the fingers caressed the bag in which was the fairy crystal, and ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 1720, was passed an Act with a pompous and even portentous title: it was called "An Act for the better securing the Dependency of the Kingdom of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain." The preamble recited that "attempts have been lately made to shake off the subjection of Ireland unto and dependence upon the Imperial Crown of this realm, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... wandering imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh alarms. A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction— political, economic, moral, religious—the soil which was adapted for it, and grew with alarming rapidity; it was as if gigantic trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth worked ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... portentous cloud seemed to hang above our horizon. It looked dark and threatening, (and more terrible because the disputants were members of the same family). We thought it might break upon our heads at any time. The seat of war being so near us, the country so new and inhabitants so few, made ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... altogether successful party. The dinner had portentous suggestiveness; the Leidchardt'stonians were at first rather difficult. Sir Luke a little too conscious of his responsibilities towards the British Throne: Lady Tallant so brilliant as to be bewildering. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... course. He was followed by another and another. Birds flew shrieking through the air. Even the river animals swam uneasily along the banks, or peered out of their holes, as if nature had communicated to them, also, the terrible alarm; while, like the roar of a cataract,—dull, heavy, portentous,—the wrath of the flames rolled ominously ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... how delightful! Its memories and associations, how charming! Its luxuries the most luxurious proffered to mortals! Its results how far reaching, and momentous! No mere lover's fleeting bauble, but life's very greatest work! None are equally portentous, for ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... for him did the Jessamine climb and the one hawthorn tree at the back gate leading to the orchard yield its sweet white May, not for him did the tall clock strike and the parrot talk. Talk!! Why, the only time the creature was ever known to be quiet was when Mr. Simon P. Rattray made his portentous visits twice or three times a year. And as for the hidden sweetness of the drawing-room or the comforts of the kitchen or the fascinations of the bar, Mr. Simon P. Rattray knew nothing whatever about them. He was a total abstainer you see, and the blue ribbon appeared in his ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... notorious Dr. Oates, rustling in the full silken canonicals of priesthood, for ... he affected no small dignity of exterior decoration and deportment.... His exterior was portentous. A fleece of white periwig showed a most uncouth visage, of great length, having the mouth ... placed in the very centre of the countenance, and exhibiting to the astonished spectator as much chin below as there was nose and brow above it. His pronunciation ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven, Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?" "Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous, An undeciphered solemn signal of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! The truth of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in it: not dead, chopping barren logic merely! Out of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... clearing the wave, but generally pitch nose foremost into the water where it begins to rise, and are hurled back head over tail in impotent confusion. Some of the heavier fish, too, after their jump may be seen to come down with portentous skelp on top of the retaining wall of the salmon-run in mid-stream, thence—apparently with "wind bagged"—to be ignominiously hurried back into the deep pool from which they have but the moment before hurled themselves. The general effect of the spectacle is as if one watched ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... his monotonous existence, riding hard and drinking obstinately, but never, even in the latter case, rising into conviviality. A long, bushy beard, and portentous mustache, grizzled, though he was scarcely past middle age, which could not conceal a deep sabre-scar, gave him a grim, sinister expression; and his voice had that brief imperious accent which is peculiar to men for many years used to give ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... keeping its own counsel. Their situation gained for them the further interest that nothing need be said about it; and the added importance of caution was plainly to be discerned in their bearing, even toward one another. It was a portentous business, this of marrying a minister, under the most ordinary circumstances, not to be lightly dealt with, and even more of an undertaking in a far new country where the very wind blew differently, and the extraordinary freedom of conversation made it more than ever necessary ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... died exhausted by precocious labor—is perhaps the lightest-hearted, lightest-handed man still pouring out fragments of pearl and spangles of pure gold on the stage.... With all this it is remarkable as it is unfair, that among musicians—when talk is going around, and this person praises that portentous piece of counterpoint, and the other analyzes some new chord the uoliness of which has led to its being neglected by former composers—the name of this brilliant man is hardly if ever heard at all. His is the next name among the composers belonging to the last thirty years ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... obscure a subject to be discussed here. Imagine yourself standing at a point from which you can survey the whole system and see into the depths and details of it. At one point is a single star (like our sun), billions of miles from its nearest neighbour, wearing out its solitary life in a portentous discharge of energy. Commonly the stars are in pairs, turning round a common centre in periods that may occupy hundreds of days or hundreds of years. Here and there they are gathered into clusters, sometimes to the number of thousands ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... portentous shadow cast by the slim daughter of William W. Blithers, for the simple reason that neither Graustark nor Dawsbergen knew that it existed. They lived in serene ignorance of the fact that God, while he was about it, put Maud Applegate Blithers into the world on precisely the same ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... making for Mr. Tom," said she with a portentous face. "Mr. Haines has given more orders about his reception than I ever knew him to issue before; and, what seems strange, he actually insists on my calling him Mr. Thomas, when I never can get my tongue round anything but Mr. Tom, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... it was over I determined to close the palace in Vienna and remain in the country. I could not go back to that restless high-pitched life, with its ceaseless gaiety on the one hand and its feverish politics and portentous rumblings on the other. My tired mind rebelled. And the long strain ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that have characterised the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century. It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany it has become ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Phokians beforehand to slay every man whom they should see not coloured over with white. So not only the sentinels of the Thessalians, who saw these first, were terrified by them, supposing it to be something portentous and other than it was, but also after the sentinels the main body of their army; so that the Phokians remained in possession of four thousand bodies of slain men and shields; of which last they dedicated half at Abai and half at ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... the portentous and all-pervading chain of connection which links together the head and members of this great community, my scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the outset. A countryman of mine, whom a foolish lawsuit had brought to town, by chance met me, and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... had been the occasion of profaning the festival by such occurrences.], an uncorruptible yet mild tribunal, in which the white ballot of Pallas given in favour of the accused is an invention which does honour to the humanity of the Athenians. The poet shows how a portentous series of crimes led to an institution fraught ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... me feel languid, but did not affect my chest at all. To-day is a soft gray day; there was a little thunder this morning and a few, very few, drops of rain—hardly enough for even Herodotus to consider portentous. My donkey came down last night, and I tried him to-day, and he is very satisfactory though alarmingly small, as the real Egyptian donkey always is; the big ones are from the Hejaz. But it is wonderful how the little creatures run along under one as easy as possible, and they have no ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of the portentous significance of this day in his life David could not help seeing and feeling in his suddenly changed environment, as he puffed along behind Father Roland, something that was neither adventure nor romance, but humour. A whimsical humour at first, but growing grimmer as his thoughts sped. ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... state, appeared to him to be so extremely just that he raised not the least objection to it. Accordingly, each of the two silent, voiceless victims of the evening's occurrences were wrapped into a bundle that from without appeared to be neither portentous nor terrible ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... getting the gig lowered. I suppose you will be content to sit here and smoke your pipe until we come back; and, indeed, seven is as many as the gig will carry with any degree of comfort. The cutter will go ashore to fetch off the luggage, which will probably be of somewhat portentous dimensions." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... unscrupulous rascals in Colorado. Between you, you've got the men stirred up to a point where a strike is inevitable." For a time, Hartwell was apparently crushed by Firmstone's unanswerable logic, as well as by his portentous forecasts. He could not but confess to himself that his course of action looked very different under Firmstone's analysis than from his own standpoint alone. He drummed his fingers listlessly on the desk before him. He was all but convinced that he might have been wrong in his ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... state of exaltation. No longer was I conscious of the rasping cold, and it seemed to me I could have couched me in the deep snow as cosily as in a bed of down. Surpassingly brilliant were the lights. They seemed to convey to me a portentous wink. They twinkled with jovial cheer. What a desirable place the world was, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... purpose, and sends the seven sages to make the formal request for Parvati's hand. The seven sages fly to the brilliant city of Himalaya, where they are received by the mountain god. After a rather portentous interchange of compliments, the seven sages announce their errand, requesting Parvati's hand in behalf of Shiva. The father joyfully assents, and it is agreed that the marriage shall be celebrated after three ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... energy by the combination of stimulants which, in any other society, would have counteracted each other. The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism, irreconcilable antagonists every where else, were for once mingled in an unnatural and portentous union. Their joint influence produced the third and last rising up of the aboriginal population against the colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers of Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... winds. The deep groans which convulsed the distracted bosom, and shocked the trembling frame of Alonzo, broke the delusive charm: he awoke, rejoiced to find it but a dream, though it impressed his mind with doleful and portentous forebodings. ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... gives gentlemen and even painters cash upon good letters of credit; and, once or twice in a season, opens his transtiberine palace and treats his customers to a ball. Our friend Clive used jocularly to say, he believed there were no Romans. There were priests in portentous hats; there were friars with shaven crowns; there were the sham peasantry, who dressed themselves out in masquerade costumes, with bagpipe and goatskin, with crossed leggings and scarlet petticoats, who let themselves out to artists at so ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly, wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain peddler, and to-day, at least, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... loaded every breeze With the fallen honours of the mourning trees, The maiden waited at the accustom'd bower. And waited long beyond the appointed hour, Yet Bateman came not;—o'er the woodland drear, Howling portentous did the winds career; And bleak and dismal on the leafless woods The fitful rains rush'd down in sullen floods; The night was dark; as, now and then, the gale Paused for a moment—Margaret listen'd pale; But through ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... wife's insistence, he attended an informal garden-party at the Fujinami house. Again he suffered acutely from those cruel silences and portentous waitings, to which he noticed that even the Japanese among themselves were liable, but which apparently they ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... boded rain, and about four o'clock, announced by deep-toned thunder and portentous clouds, it began to charge down the mountain-side in front of me. I ran ashore, covered my traps, and took my way up through an orchard to a quaint little farmhouse. But there was not a soul about, outside or in, that I could find, though the door was unfastened; so I went into ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man. Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget invents the "Marseillaise," under the visitation of a breath from on high. An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes sweeping over these men, and they shake, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to the presence of a minute unicellular plant of a red color, which grows and multiplies with great rapidity on the surface of bread, starch-paste, and similar substances. So general was once the belief in its portentous nature that Ehrenberg described it under the ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... Dred Scott decision; John Brown had organized an insurrection; Stephen A. Douglass and Abraham Lincoln at the time were in exciting debate; William H. Seward was proclaiming the "irrepressible conflict." With other signs portentous, culminating in secession and events re-enacting history—for that the causes and events of which history is the record are being continuously re-enacted from a moral standpoint is of easy observation. History, as the narration of the actions of men, with attendant ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... "it does indeed look like it. An amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be endured by the Proprieties. Where on earth can that young ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Central Empire," as the natives call it, for to Chinamen there is a fifth point to the compass—the center, which is China. Not far on the road we heard the clatter of hoofs behind us. A Kalmuck was dashing toward us with a portentous look on his features. We dismounted in apprehension. He stopped short some twenty feet away, leaped to the ground, and, crawling up on hands and knees, began to chin-chin or knock his head on the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... solemnity-without even a room prepared and empty—to go through a business of such portentous seriousness!— 'Tis truly amazing from a man who seemed to delight so much in religious regulations and observances. Dr. Fisher himself was dissatisfied, and wondered at his compliance, though he attributed the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... what a novel about Roedean or Wycombe Abbey would be like. The queer thing was that some young woman didn't write one; it need be no duller than the young men's. Rather duller, perhaps, because schoolgirls were more childish than schoolboys, the problems of their upbringing less portentous. But there were many of the same ingredients—the exaltation of games, hero-worship, rows, the clever new literary mistress who made all the stick-in-the-mud other mistresses angry.... Only were the other mistresses at girls' schools stick-in-the-mud? ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay |
