"Portent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature with a bland disposition, gradually brings himself to inflict misery on his fellow-creatures with indifference, with satisfaction, and at length with a hideous rapture, deserves to be regarded as a portent of wickedness; and such a man was Barere. The history of his downward progress is full of instruction. Weakness, cowardice, and fickleness were born with him; the best quality which he received from nature was a good temper. These, it is true, are not very promising materials; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. One of the acolytes had half his head clean shaved! A most extraordinary sight! I could not take my eyes from it, and I heartily wished I had an Omen-book with me to tell ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... frightened Inez; though she too is not without apprehension. If they but understood the "Code of Signals," all this misery would be spared them. Since from the frigate's main-royal masthead floats a blue flag, with a white square in its centre, which is a portent she will soon spread her sails, and glide off out of sight—carrying their amantes beyond all danger of duels, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... would, they found A wondrous thing: a marvel of man's skill, That stood within a vale of hollow ground, And bulk'd scarce smaller than the bitter-hill,— The common barrow that the dead men fill Who died in the long leaguer,—not of earth, Was this new portent, but of tree, and still The Trojans stood, and marvell'd ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... prostrated themselves with their faces to the earth. He could not understand the language in which, with noisy clamour and gesticulation, they broke their former profound and patient silence, and greeted the portent for which they had watched. But he knew now that these were the Wise Men of the Epiphany, and that this was the Star of Bethlehem. In his ears rang the energetic simplicity of the Gospel narrative, "When they saw the Star, they rejoiced ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... word,—and who are setting all English feeling and all natural principles at defiance, that it is only the bourgeois gentilhomme who will wear his dressing-gown upside down, "parceque toutes les personnes de qualite portent les fleurs en en-bas." ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... pause at Derby, had frightened the Londoners from their propriety, and all but scared the Second George beyond seas. This terror in time subsided, but the interest in the northern savages still survived, and was further stimulated when, about fifteen years after, the portent of Macpherson's Ossian burst on the astonished world of literature. Then about eleven years later, in 1773, the burly and bigoted English Lexicographer buttoned his great-coat up to the throat and set out on a Highland sheltie from Inverness, on that wonderful 'Tour to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Protector to eternal perdition, not liking to lose the portent, boldly says the remarkable hurricane occurred on September 3, the day of Oliver's death. Oliver's admirers, on the other hand, represent this wind as ushering him into the other world, but for a very ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... master among Italian painters, however, was Giovanni Cimabue, who lived in Florence during the last part of the thirteenth century; he infused into his work a certain vigor and animation which were even more than a portent of the revival which was to come. Other Italian painters there had been before him, it is true, and particularly Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa, but they fail to show in their work that spirit of originality and that breadth of conception which were so characteristic of their ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... breathed his wonder till the very impunity of his attitude and the very insistence of his eyes produced, as he felt, a sudden stir which showed the next instant as a deeper portent, while the head raised itself, the betrayal of a braver purpose. The hands, as he looked, began to move, to open; then, as if deciding in a flash, dropped from the face and left it uncovered and presented. Horror, ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... city Sets now the red sun's dome. See, mystic firebrands sparkle There on each store and home. See how the golden gateway Burns with the day to be— Torch-bearing fiends of portent Loom o'er ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... lightly as if to pass judgment on the conference as entirely too serious for a Christmas holiday occasion. Marion and Helen did not respond in tones of joviality, as might have been expected. They met her jocular reproach with expressions of such serious portent that the Guardian of the Fire could no longer look upon it as calling ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Tinker. And after he had cleansed the pan to his satisfaction, he turned to me with dexter finger upraised and brow of heavy portent. "Young fellow," said he, "no man can write a good nov-el without he knows summat about love, it aren't to be expected—so the sooner you ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... it gave signs of breaking. The sky, which had been of a steel blue, harbored great piled thunder-heads. Occasionally athwart the heat shot a streak of cold air. Towards evening the thunder-heads shifted and finally dissipated, to be sure, but the portent was there. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... 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
... lacking among the Germans. They ruled their primitive subjects with the brutal intolerance of Zabern, with the ruthless cruelty since displayed in occupied Belgium. This was what made the rise of the German dominion a terrible portent in the history of European imperialism. The spirit of mere domination, regardless of the rights of the conquered, had often shown itself in other European empires; but it had always had to struggle against another and better ideal, the ideal of trusteeship; and, as we have seen, the better ideal ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Vanderbilt died in 1877, America's first great industrial combination had become an established fact. In that year the Standard Oil Company of Ohio controlled at least ninety per cent of the business of refining and marketing petroleum. A new portent had appeared in our economic life, a phenomenon that was destined to affect not only the social and business existence of the every-day American but even ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... often the causes of their own fulfillment, and this portent led Zopyrus to endeavor to devise some means to accomplish the end in view. He went first, however, to Darius, to converse with him upon the subject, with a view of ascertaining how far he was really desirous of bringing the siege ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... N. omen, portent, presage, prognostic, augury, auspice; sign &c (indication) 550; harbinger &c (precursor) 64; yule candle^. bird of ill omen; signs of the times; gathering clouds; warning &c 668. prefigurement &c 511. Adj. ill-boding. Phr. auspicium melioris ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... frightened the oracle generally fell back on some remedy full of pain and blood. The medieval plan of burning heretics alive had not yet been invented. But the history of uncivilized man, if it were written, would provide a vast list of victims, all of them innocent, who died or suffered to expiate some portent or monstrum—some reported teras—with which they had nothing whatever to do, which was in no way altered by their suffering, which probably never really happened at all, and if it did was of no consequence. The sins of the modern world ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... that of 1680."—Winthrop on Comets, Lecture II. p. 44. Increase Mather, in his Discourse concerning Comets, printed at Boston in 1683, says of this one: "Its appearance was very terrible, the Blaze ascended above 60 Degrees almost to its Zenith." Mather thought it fraught with terrific portent to the nations of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... been keenly discussed in various papers, but by none with more enthusiasm than The Daily News. In a special article from the luminous pen of "A.G.G.," in the issue of April 12th, the true inwardness of the portent is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... classes 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 ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... them. The right gods broke the spells which the left wove, the right pointed out the ore which the left had buried, the right disclosed the remedies for the sickness which the left had sent. This venerable division is still retained when we speak of a sinister portent, or a right judgment. It is of physiological interest as showing that "dextral pre-eminence" or right-handedness was prevalent in earliest historic times, though it is unknown in ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... "boost." It stood, apparently, for any action or attitude that would increase prices. The virus was now in the veins of the community; pulsing through every street and by-way of the little city. Dave marvelled, and wondered how he had failed to read these signs until Conward had laid their portent bare before him. But as yet it was only his news sense that responded; his delight in the strange and the sensational. He was not yet inoculated with the poison ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... 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 Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... mine there, to whom, while we were supping together, I related the adventures of the day's chase and the diabolical apparition of the fiery beam which we had seen. They exclaimed: "What shall we hear to-morrow which this portent has announced?" I answered: "Some revolution must certainly have occurred in Florence." So we supped agreeably; and late the next day there came the news to Rome of Duke Alessandro's death. [1] Upon this many of my acquaintances came to me and said: "You were right in conjecturing that something ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Tingley, was on 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
... 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 with maddening ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... was your dream, and full of sad portent; Avert it, heaven, if it from heaven were sent! Let on thy foes the dire presages fall; To us be good ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... 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
... from Captain Smith the protest that this act "hath laid one of the finest countries of America under the just scandal of being a mere hell upon earth." The sweepings of the London and Bristol streets were exported for servants. Of darker portent, though men perceived it not, was the landing of the first cargo of negro slaves. But so grateful was the Company for the general prosperity of the colony that it appointed a thanksgiving sermon to be preached at Bow Church, April 17, 1622, by Mr. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the explanatory powers of the philosopher, and will remain to the end, a permanent difficulty to the scoffer and to the sceptic, and to all those who have not faith. As a fact in history, it is unique: forming an extraordinary exception to the law of universal change: a portent, and a standing miracle. Its persistence, century after century, in spite of fire and sword; of persecution from without, and of treachery from within; in prosperity, and in adversity; in honour and dishonour; while kingdoms rise and fall; and while one civilisation yields to a higher, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... insistent knock greeted him. In no fury now, but with a vague sense of portent which gave an aspect of farewell to the one quick glance he cast about the well-known spot, he fitted the key in the lock, and stood ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the gale of last night continuing, with rain and a densely overcast sky. The barometer is rising, however, which is a portent that the gale will not last long. I have abandoned the idea of attempting to run into Fayal. These Azores seem to be so guarded by the Furies of the storm, that it would appear to be a matter of great difficulty ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the pagan gods came back, drunk and debauched with their long exile under the earth, and the garden-god assumed the throne of the Holy of Holies. Alexander, Caesar, Lucrezia, the threefold divinity, might be shown as a painter has shown one of them on the wall of one of his own chapels: a swinish portent in papal garments, kneeling, bloated, thinking of Lucrezia, with fingers folded over the purple of his rings. Or the family might have been shown as Rossetti, in one of the loveliest, most cruel, and most significant of his pictures, has shown it: a light, laughing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... fenced it all about with palisades, as they had brought in stakes for this very purpose. It had just been finished when a great serpent came gliding along beside it on the road leading to Carthage, so that by this portent, Scipio, owing to the tradition about his father, was encouraged, and devastated the country and assaulted the cities with greater boldness. Some of the latter he did succeed in capturing; and the Carthaginians not yet [lacuna] prepared remained still, and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... 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 ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... clean across it and upon our hero, who, entirely unprepared for such an extraordinary attack, was flung back against the wall, with an arm as strong as steel clutching his throat and a knife flashing in his very eyes with dreadful portent of instant death. ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... Sam'l and Owd Bob, sally forth and search every hole and corner on the premises—to find nothing. One of the dairy-maids gave notice, avowing that the farm was haunted; that, on several occasions in the early morning, she had seen a bogie flitting down the slope to the Wastrel—a sure portent, Sam'l declared, of an approaching death in the house. While once a shearer, coming up from the village, reported having seen, in the twilight of dawn, a little ghostly figure, haggard and startled, stealing silently from tree to tree in the larch-copse ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... which caused them great wonder. They took it to the emperor, who was much more astounded because the day before he had seen a very brilliant cross in the air, although he had told no one of it; but, when this portent was found in his garden, he had his soothsayers called in to tell him what it meant. Some of them said one thing and some another; but the chief of them said that these crosses were from the fathers who, although blameless, had been put to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... 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 Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... round some object on the ground. It was at the two-mile cross, and within that distance from their homes. At last, to their horror, they discovered that the recumbent figure was a livid corpse, swathed in a blood-stained winding-sheet. {5a} Many thought that this apparition was a portent of the deaths connected with the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... terrace, Blind to Galileo on his turret, Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal— When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better! Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... is no more What it was when you put on the man; We've Mail Trains, all rattle and roar, And that portent, the Packet Post Van. A Pullman, and not the Box-seat, Is the aim of our modern Lord BOBS; But the old recollections are sweet; And Punch drinks to your ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... yet, since on the holy height, The Temple's marble walls of white and green Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world's light Went out in darkness,—never was the year Greater with portent and with promise seen, Than this eve ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... gods and men, loudly hast thou thundered from the starry sky, yet nowhere is there a cloud to be seen: this surely is a portent thou art showing to some mortal. Fulfil now, I pray thee, even to miserable me, the word that I shall speak. May the wooers, on this day, for the last and latest time make their sweet feasting in the halls of Odysseus! They that have ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... mapped and bounded. Each dream had some special significance, or was at least susceptible of classification under some significant head. Dreams, as a general rule, went by contraries; but a dream three times repeated was a certain portent of the thing defined. Rena's few years of schooling at Patesville and her months at Charleston had scarcely disturbed these hoary superstitions which lurk in the dim corners of the brain. No lady in Clarence, perhaps, would ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a sudden, the simplest thing in the world—the sense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he should feel, forevermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease with her. He went in fact a step further than Charlotte—put the latter forward as creating his necessity. She was staying over luncheon ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of which the second change was only a portent, all remained fairly peaceful in the big burrow under the whins and brambles. Occasionally, in the brief winter days, Brock was awakened from his comfortable sleep by the music of the hounds, as they passed by on the scent of Vulp, the fleetest and most cunning fox on the countryside, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... talents by a 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 ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... as a peep of the most restless of the passions? Such a revelation would baffle discouragement, and discouragement was in fact so baffled that, helped in some degree by the mere intensity of their need to hope, which also, according to its nature, sprang from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real pitch of their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny, but of unprecedented frankness. There were broodings indeed and silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her friend she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... prove that the operator understood the portent of the message but I know the fellow—his name is Wicks, and I think he's a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Day of Festival and Frolic,—once. Now Day of Portent, of Threats and the Evil Eye. Such is the miracle worked by Steam ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... battlements. They remain there through the night, hooting. At dawn they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of the death of any other Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what be the time of year) a cuckoo. It stays for an hour, cooing, then flies away, none knows whither. Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement, and that my authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing of the family-vault. Not every forefather of mine rests quiet beneath his escutcheoned marble. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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
... not the only portent having reference to his marriage. After describing shakings and tremblings of his bed, for which indeed a natural cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling for a long ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... king," said his stout old follower. "'Twas the great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the king, that didst call thee. Win Norway, king, for the portent is that thou and thine shall ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... They lunched, finished their business, and Washington went away. When this perfectly insignificant fact was published in the papers the next morning, the South burst into a storm of indignation and abuse. Some of the Southern journals saw, in what was a mere routine incident, a terrible portent, foreboding that Roosevelt planned to put the negroes back to control the Southern whites. Others alleged the milder motive that he was fishing for negro votes. The common type of fire-eaters saw in it one of Roosevelt's ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... "A portent on the farm of Pericles?" cried the old woman. "I'll warrant it will be read as favoring him, since he already has a world at his feet. May the Gods forgive me, but it seems to me they are often ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... castle walls The crescent banner falls, And the crowd beholds instead, Like a portent in the sky, Iskander's banner fly, The Black Eagle with double head; And a shout ascends on high, For men's souls are tired of the Turks, And their wicked ways and works, That have made of Ak-Hissar A city of the plague; And the loud, exultant cry ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... war-cloud grew blacker, the superstitious fears of Lafaele increased, and every day some new portent was reported. "On May 16," says the diary, "Lafaele and Araki reported that while walking on the road they met Louis riding on my horse Musu. What was their surprise and terror when they reached home to find that he had not left the house all day. Great anxiety ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... thunders of the heart, —The small lost Eden, troubled through the night, Sounds there not now,—forboded and apart, Some voice and sword of light? Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?— Searching like God, the ruinous human shard Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make, ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... awakening, King," said his stout old follower. "'T was the great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the King, that didst call thee. Win Norway, King, for the portent is that thou and thine shall rule ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... is the first application of the celestial portent to this particular comparison. Yet Milton's "imperial ensign" waves defiant behind his impregnable lines, and even Campbell flaunts his "meteor flag" in Waller's face. Gray's bard might be sent to the lock-up, but even he would ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Edgeworth ayant fait un recueil de ces derniers, je prends la liberte de lui offrir un petit recueil de nos betises qui meritent le nom qu'elles portent aussi bien que les Irish bulls. J'ai fait autrefois une dissertation ou je recherchois quelle etoit la cause du rire qu'excitent les betises, et dans laquelle j'appuyois mon explication de beaucoup d'exemples et peut-etre meme du mien sans m'en appercevoir; mais la femme ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... went on, sah. Dey had 'portent business, an' wouldn't likely wait 'roun' here jest ter help a nigger. Ain't ennybody ben here ter see me, no-how, an' I 'spects I'se eradicated from ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the law to prowl abroad as soon as the dusk has fallen. And they went pattering softly over the plain, and their eyes shone in the dark, and crossed and recrossed one another in their courses. Suddenly there became manifest in the midst of the plain that fearful portent of the presence of Man—a little flickering fire. And the children of Earth who prowl abroad by night looked sideways at it and snarled and edged away; all but the wolves, who came a little nearer, for it was winter and the wolves were hungry, and they had come in thousands from the mountains, and ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... a true portent; for the wind freshened during the first watch, causing us to take in all of our stu'n'sails before midnight. Then followed the royals and topgallants in quick succession, the main-sail and inner and outer jibs being next furled and the foresail reefed, the vessel at "four bells" being only under ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... number who lost their lives on this singular occasion was fourscore and four persons, including fifteen children; and at this expense of blood was extinguished a flame that arose as suddenly, burned as fiercely, and decayed as rapidly, as any portent of the kind within the annals of superstition. The Commissioners returned to Court with the high approbation of all concerned; prayers were ordered through the churches weekly, that Heaven would be pleased to restrain the powers of the devil, and deliver the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in actual life, came under the author's observation. If that be so, we must admit that Arnold's dogma about Miracles had a practical effect upon certain minds. An Elsmere of a different type—a flippant Elsmere, if such a portent could be conceived—might have answered that, if miracles happened, they would not be miracles; in other words, that events of frequent occurrence are not called miracles; and that it belongs to the idea of a miracle that it is a special and signal suspension of the Divine Law, for ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... on the book of fate, Hands may not unbind it; Eyes may search for truth till late, But will never find it—! Rising on the brow of night Like a portent of dismay, As the worlds in wild affright Track it on its direful way; Resting like a rainbow bar Where the curve and level meet, As the children chase it far O'er the sands with blistered feet; Sadly through the mist of ages Gazing on this life of fear, Doubtful shining on ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... light of reincarnation it is probable that neither can occur there without anterior cause. But probably too it is the preponderance of either that creates the mystery of life, as it may also foreshadow the portent of death. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... courts by those who had solemnly 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
... a portent it overhung him—he raised the strange weapon and brought it gruntingly down with all the strength of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... lived 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 lives where they occur ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... 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 the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he will not be scared away when I boldly confront him in the latter portions of my book with this name of strange portent, Walt Whitman, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beaten in America, or perhaps in modern times. Then, these chapters are a proper supplement or continuation of my themes and their analogy in literature, because in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... that, ye 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 seeking to ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... Will you againe vnknit This churlish knot of all-abhorred Warre? And moue in the obedient Orbe againe, Where you did giue a faire and naturall light, And be no more an exhall'd Meteor, A prodigie of Feare, and a Portent Of broached Mischeefe, to the vnborne Times? Wor. Heare me, my Liege: For mine owne part, I could be well content To entertaine the Lagge-end of my life With quiet houres: For I do protest, I haue not sought ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for some comment. Why "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 their ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the steps, and breathed the cool night air. A slender taint of drugs hung everywhere about the building, and the almost imperceptible permeation sickened him; it was deadly, he thought, and imbued with a hideous portent of suffering. That John Harkless, of all men, should lie stifled with ether, and bandaged and splintered, and smeared with horrible unguents, while they stabbed and slashed and tortured him, and made an outrage and a sin of that grand, big, dexterous body of his! Meredith shuddered. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... reference to all other matters sky-divination either allowed things to be done and they were carried out without consulting any individual augury further, or else it would prevent and hinder something, it restrained the balloting of the populace altogether and was always a portent to check them, whether it was of a favorable or ill-boding nature. Now the cause of this custom I am unable to state, but I set down the common report. Accordingly, many persons who wished to obstruct either the proposal of laws ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy, incredulity, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... again, amid the hushed expectancy of men. And now, behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its own Palais, with 'crowds inundating the outer courts,' not only does not register, but (O portent!) declares all that was done on the prior day to be null, and the Bed of Justice as good as a futility! In the history of France here verily is a new feature. Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is incompetent ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of that launch, for, with Natalie beside him, and Gordon on deck by the companionway door talking quietly to Mrs. Goring concealed inside, the air seemed suddenly charged with portent. The wrecked Barang lay close by like a stranded, decayed monster on a desolate shore. She was black and jagged with burned stumps of timbers down to the water line; on her upper part, where decks had been, and houses, half-consumed beams supported planks that were charcoal ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... for occultism; but in spite of his distant and repellent attitude, Mlle. Blaye de Tartas made him her sole heir, to the violent wrath of a questionable old party known to infamy as the Sar Torrevieja, the "King of the Sorcerers." This malevolent old portent, whose gray and crafty face was often seen in the Rue M. le Prince during the life of Mlle. de Tartas had, it seems, fully expected to enjoy her small wealth after her death; and when it appeared that she had left him only the contents ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... before he knew how to comport himself. But before he could make up his mind—cr'r'k, a second time— the Presence had assailed him again, fighting with deadly force, and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had no leisure to think what this portent might mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death struggle now between them. He stood face to face at last in mortal conflict with his materialized enemy. What form the Evil Thing had assumed to suit his present purpose Trevennack knew not, nor did he even care. Stung with pain and ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... conventions and forms which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent attitude toward life—to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even might have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she somehow had the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had swept ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proves of no avail; they seem one and all to be laboring under the impression that my appearance is of evil portent to themselves. Perchance some social calamity they have just been visited with, is attributed in their superstitious minds to the fell influence of the foreign devil, who has so suddenly bobbed up in their midst ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... piled upon them, and many a man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Out into the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, their fine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder, to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemed wrought ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... eye that, when she tried to 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
... the Eskimo, of the way he had received us and its portent. There could be only one explanation. I had no heart now for the competition as to who should first sight the post. Yet how we hope even when there is nothing left to us but the absence of certainty! I could not quite give up yet. Suddenly George exclaimed, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... work) lasts sometimes for weeks. There is mention in a Maori legend of a taboo of three years.[1023] According to the later Hebrew law, in every seventh year all agricultural operations ceased.[1024] A portent may demand a long period of restriction, as in the case of the Roman nine-day ceremony (novendiales feriae).[1025] As has been remarked above, economic taboos are often dictated by convenience—they are prudential rules to which a supernatural ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... it henceward Measured by mile-lengths the mere-water standeth, Which forests hang over, with frost-whiting covered, A firm-rooted forest, the floods overshadow. There ever at night one an ill-meaning portent, A fire-flood may see; 'mong children of men None liveth so wise that wot of the bottom; Though harassed by hounds the heath-stepper seek for, Fly to the forest, firm-antlered he-deer, Spurred from afar, his spirit he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ominous. She bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... pile-driver, evidences of the pressure sustained by the slender boom piles were not wanting. Above the steady gurgle of the water and the intermittent puffing and other noises of the work, they could hear a creaking and groaning of timbers full of portent to those ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... 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
... another Tate Gallery, what lies in store for the human spirit? Are we in the period of a new incubation? Or is the new age born? Is it a new slope that we are on, or are we merely part of a surprisingly vigorous premonitory flutter? These are queries to ponder. Is Cezanne the beginning of a slope, a portent, or merely the crest of a movement? The oracles are dumb. This alone seems to me sure: since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance unless ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... seemed less attentive to his loss, than buried in meditation on the stupendous object that had occasioned it. He touched, he examined the fatal casque; nor could even the bleeding mangled remains of the young Prince divert the eyes of Manfred from the portent ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... as if at the hearing of some portent, the professor stood rooted to the spot for a moment, and then was about to leap to the door, when the simulacrums before him sprang to their feet and with a tremendous stamping, smote their wooden legs upon the floor, "stamp, stamp—stamp, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... The stream under earth: not far is it henceward Measured by mile-lengths that the mere-water standeth, Which forests hang over, with frost-whiting covered, A firm-rooted forest, the floods overshadow. There ever at night one an ill-meaning portent A fire-flood may see; 'mong children of men None liveth so wise that wot of the bottom; Though harassed by hounds the heath-stepper seek for, Fly to the forest, firm-antlered he-deer, Spurred from afar, his spirit he yieldeth, His life on the shore, ere in he will venture ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... 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
... the blackness of this transaction at this stage of my story, but before it is ended I will lay this and many more of an equally hellish nature before them in such A B C simplicity that all can read the portent as clearly as the Prophet Daniel read the writing on the wall in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... mystical explorers, of peculiarly modern temper, who are perhaps most essentially represented in the plays and poetry and philosophies of Mr. Yeats and M. Maeterlinck: those who dwell—it has before been said—"upon the confines of a crepuscular world whose every phase is full of subtle portent, and who are convinced (in the phrase of M. Maeterlinck himself) 'that there are in man many regions more fertile, more profound, and more interesting than those of his reason or his intelligence.'" It is an order ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... mixed emotions,—a trembling merge of love and fear, with something, indeed, of awe for this woman-child of her mother, who had come to him so deviously and with a secret significance so mighty of portent to his own soul. When they brought her in at last, he had to ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... that the weather is fine again. We had a whole day's rain (which Herodotus says is a portent here) and a hurricane from the south worthy of the Cape. I thought we should have been buried under the drifting sand. To-day is again heavenly. I saw Abd-el-Azeez, the chemist in Cairo; he seemed a very good fellow, and was a pupil of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... no surprise to sagacious observers. For many years it had been visible, at times a mere speck in the sky, again growing larger and more angry in appearance. It would disappear, sanguine patriots hoped forever, only to come again, full of dire portent and evil menacings. All men who were not blind saw it, but most of them trusted, many believed, that it would pass over and do no harm. Some of those high in authority blindly pinned their faith to luck and shut ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... words or their portent, the effect was startling. Steele's bulky assailant paused, remained stock-still, his purpose arrested, all his anger gone ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... and boating parties, beneath skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... my master's most amazing feats and one which he has repeated countless times in the presence of uncountable witnesses: I mean taking a bone away from a vicious dog which has never seen him before. I think that amounts to a portent, or would if it had not happened ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... one moan Amidst his fellows: "From whose evil act Is this the fruit? Hath worship not been paid To mighty Manibhadra? Gave we not The reverence due to Vaishravan, that King Of all the Yakshas? Was not offering made At outset to the spirits which impede? Is this the evil portent of the birds? Were the stars adverse? or what else hath fall'n?" And others said, wailing for friends and goods:— "Who was that woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... desolation over sea and land. Some of the faint-hearted," adds Antonio Agapida, "looked upon this torment of the elements as a prodigious event, out of the course of nature. In the weakness of their fears they connected it with those troubles which occurred in various places, considering it a portent of some great calamity about to be wrought by the violence of the bloody-handed El Zagal and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving |
