"Portentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment there was portentous silence on the part of Colonel Ashley. He gazed at his dangling line and at the straightened pole. ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... A portentous revolution was taking place. Before 1820 nearly all the wool of the country had been made into cloth by hand in the homes of the people, and the ratio of home manufactures to population was about the same in most of the States. Now the sheep-raisers sold their wool to the mill men, ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... direct the attention of the Irish Government to the now undoubted fact, that a great portion of the potato crop in this country was seriously affected by the disease in question." A cautious, well-weighed sentence, which, coming from such a responsible quarter, was full of portentous meaning for the future. The Dublin Corporation took up the question of the Potato Blight with much and praiseworthy earnestness. They appointed a committee to enquire and report on the subject. A meeting ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the eyes of the old party leaders to the significance of the Populist returns. Democrats, with a clear majority of electoral votes, were not inclined to worry about local losses or to value incidental gains; and Republicans felt that the menace of the third party was much less portentous than it might have been ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... "Ma's" best parlor, with its cross-stitch embroideries, its mourning pictures, its rigid black horse-hair chairs and sofas. Above the mantelpiece, with its tall vases of waving pampas grass, "Ma" herself gazed down from a portentous gold frame with a quelling glance; "Pa" hung beside her, a meek young man with a feeble smile of apology; one could understand that he had backed out of existence as soon as might be. In one corner stood a tall dim mirror, and before ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... judgment. In the "Tuba mirum" the spirit of the music changes from the church form to the secular. It is written for solo voices, ending in a quartet. The bass begins with the "Tuba mirum," set to a portentous trombone accompaniment; then follow the tenor ("Mors stupebit"), the alto ("Judex ergo"), and the soprano ("Quid sum miser"). This number is particularly remarkable for the manner in which the music is shaded down from the almost supernatural character of the opening ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... to be one of the most extraordinary in the annals of the Maison Vauquer. Hitherto the most startling occurrence in its tranquil existence had been the portentous, meteor-like apparition of the sham Comtesse de l'Ambermesnil. But the catastrophes of this great day were to cast all previous events into the shade, and supply an inexhaustible topic of conversation for Mme. Vauquer and her boarders ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... came the 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 ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... "Peace," commanded Democrates, with portentous gravity, "justice first, mercy later. Do you solemnly swear you heard Phormio call ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... crumbling into whiteness, the furious into the obscure, all the tumult of which the sepulchre is capable, a whirlwind under a catafalque—such is the snowstorm. Underneath trembles the ocean, forming and re-forming over portentous ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... himself, were men who were secretly endeavouring to make political capital of that new and immense motive power, that not yet available, and not very easily organised political power which was already beginning to move the masses here then, and already threatening, to the observant eye, with its portentous movement, the foundations of tyranny, the fact, too, that these men were understood to have made use of the stage unsuccessfully as a means of immediate political effect, are facts which lie on the surface of the history of these works, and unimportant as ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... months could not be utilized to much effect by the South. Worn in resources, supplies—in everything but patient endurance, she still came forth from the dark doubts the winter had raised, hopeful, if not confident; calm, if conscious of the portentous clouds lowering ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Grandlieus of the elder branch. More than once he took particular interest in the family's affairs. He employed Corentin to clear up the dark side of the life of Clotilde's fiance. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] Some time before this M. de Chaulieu made one of the portentous conclave assembled to extricate Mme. de Langeais, a relative of the Grandlieus, from a ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Then in deep portentous tones she said: "I came down to pay a surprise visit to your cats' home. I always do. It's the only way I can make sure that the poor dear things are receiving proper treatment." The frown on her face grew rhadamanthine. "And last night I saw your Uncle Maurice at the station—he did not see me—with ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... certainly forbidding. He perched in grim, expectant silence on the edge of his chair, waiting, watching. His lean face had the blue-white look of the much-shaven actor, and his manner was as portentous as ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the main! Tis the vex'd billows, that insurgent rave, Their white foam silvers yonder distant wave, Tis not his sails! thy husband comes no more! His bones now whiten an accursed shore!— Retire,—for hark! the seagull shrieking soars, The lurid atmosphere portentous lours; Night's sullen spirit groans in every gale, And o'er the waters draws the darkling veil, Sighs in thy hair, and chills thy throbbing breast— Go wretched mourner!—weep thy griefs to rest! "Yet, though through life is lost each fond delight, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... success of the play; in fact the book is greater than the play. A portentous clash of dominant personalities that form the essence of the play are necessarily touched upon but briefly in the short space of four acts. All this is narrated in the novel with a wealth of fascinating and absorbing detail, making ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... 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
... research and skill in discussion first appeared in his "Pensees sur la Comete." In December, 1680, a comet had appeared, and the public yet trembled at a portentous meteor, which they still imagined was connected with some forthcoming and terrible event! Persons as curious as they were terrified teased Bayle by their inquiries, but resisted all his arguments. They found many things more than arguments in his amusing volumes: "I am not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... an end, the footman ventured to knock, and ask if the master wanted lights. He replied that he had lit the candles for himself. No smell of tobacco smoke came from the room; and he had let the day pass without going to the laboratory. These were portentous signs. The footman said to his fellow servants, "There's something wrong." The women looked at each other in vague terror. One of them said, "Hadn't we better give notice to leave?" And the other whispered a question: "Do you ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... and a tall, slender, childish figure in a white smock, slipped in and closed it gently behind him. Tony stole up to his father and stood between his knees. He looked at Ian, silent, pale, large-eyed. That a grown-up person and a man should shed tears was strange, even portentous, to him. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... appearance of the comet: "I stand unshaken prepared for everything, seeking my help in God." He heard without alarm, how people in one place were terrified by monstrous births, and how in another reports were afloat concerning portentous signs, a shield and banner seen in the sky; ships manned by spirit-warriors crossing Lake Luzern; and the shooting of guns by night, that wakened from slumber the neighbors on the Reuss. Ulric Meier, vogt of Schenkenberg, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... position of many members of the present Parliament, shortly before the opening of this session, when, on a sudden, rumours of some intended change began to spread themselves abroad. An era of conversion had commenced. In one and the same night, some portentous dream descended upon the pillows of the Whig leaders, and whispered that the hour was come. By miraculous coincidence—co-operation being studiously ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Upon the Louisiana Purchase, I have already touched; but not upon its diplomatic side. In those years the European game of diplomacy was truly portentous. Bonaparte had appeared, and Bonaparte was the storm centre. From the heap of jackstraws I shall lift out only that which directly concerns us and our acquisition of that enormous territory, then called Louisiana. Bonaparte had dreamed and planned an empire over here. Certain vicissitudes disenchanted ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... instantly to his palace. Trembling for their lives from the suddenness of the summons, and from the unseasonable hour, and scarcely doubting that by some anonymous delator they have been implicated as parties to a conspiracy, they hurry to the palace—are received in portentous silence by the ushers and pages in attendance—are conducted to a saloon, where (as in every where else) the silence of night prevails, united with the silence of fear and whispering expectation. All are seated—all look at each other ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Desjardins's earliest essays, strikes the note of his life and writings at a time when he himself was unconscious of its portentous meaning to his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... lay in working up to a dramatic climax dramatically. He didn't understand the hurried leaps and bounds by which you took the tragic on the skip, as if it were not portentous. In his response to Miss Walbrook there was a hint of irritation, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Mr. Skryme is accustomed to say, "may go star-gazing, and look for conjunctions in the heavens, but here is a conjunction on the earth, near at home and under our own eyes, which surpasses all the signs and calculations of astrologers." Since these portentous weathercocks have thus laid their heads together, wonderful events had already occurred. The good old king, notwithstanding that he had lived eighty-two years, had all at once given up the ghost; another king had mounted the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... woman into whose charge he had been given was seized with the plague and died the same day, whereupon his mother took him home with her. The first of his bodily ailments,—the catalogue of the same which he subsequently gives is indeed a portentous one,[13]—was an eruption of carbuncles on the face in the form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of the nose; and when these disappeared, swellings came. Before the boy was two months old his godfather, Isidore di Resta of Ticino, gave him into the care of another nurse ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... instance. If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... was amazing and portentous and full of horrible phenomena, according to White, with a peculiar haze or smoky fog prevailing for many weeks. 'The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... have lost their grip on the masses who are rapidly slipping into a religious chaos. The universal disintegration of creeds, strangely combined with a secret thirst for truth and unity now sweeps the English-speaking world. Are not these portentous events that manifest, as "The stirring of the waters," the movement of the ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... in a nook, An' at his lordship steal't a look, Like some portentous omen; Except good sense and social glee, An' (what surpris'd me) modesty, I marked ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... illustrious orators of the Left, interspersed with caricatures at the expense of the Government; but he looked more particularly at the door of the sanctuary where, no doubt, the paper was elaborated, the witty paper that amused him daily, and enjoyed the privilege of ridiculing kings and the most portentous events, of calling anything and everything in question with a jest. Then he sauntered along the boulevards. It was an entirely novel amusement; and so agreeable did he find it, that, looking at the turret clocks, he saw the hour hands were ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... faces, all turned toward the same object but with expressions subtly various, I spent my days, studying them all, and finding (here has been nature's consolation to me) relief from my own thoughts in an investigation of the mind of others. The portentous pretence on which we were engaged needed perhaps a god to laugh at it, but the smaller points were within the sphere of human ridicule; with them there was no danger of amusement suffering a sudden death, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... upon Statius observes, every thing great and noble was looked upon as Cyclopian: [570]quicquid magnitudine sua nobile est, Cyclopum manu dicitur fabricatum. Nor was this a fiction, as may be surmised; for they were in great measure the real architects. And if, in the room of those portentous beings the Cyclopes, [Greek: Kuklopes], we substitute a colony of people called Cyclopians, we shall find the whole to be true, which is attributed to them; and a new field of history will be opened, that was before unknown. They were, undoubtedly, a part of the people styled Academians, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... meeting was a very solemn and portentous one. He had studied the question long and deeply—not from the standpoint of his own mere individual feelings and judgment, but from that of fair Constitutional construction, as interpreted by the light of Natural or General Law and right reason. What ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... away, plodding along the pavement heavily, huge and portentous. The back of his head bulged above the collar, with no show of neck between. He was comical and pathetic; he seemed too vast in mere flesh to be the sport of a thing so freakish as luck. To think that such a bulk had a weak heart in it—and that deeper still in its ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... short, he had fallen in love with Ida de la Molle when he first saw her five years ago, and was now in the process of discovering the fact. There he sat in his chair in the old half-furnished room, which he proposed to turn into his dining-room, and groaned in spirit over this portentous discovery. What had become of his fair prospect of quiet years sloping gently downwards, and warm with the sweet drowsy light of afternoon? How was it that he had not known those things that belonged to his peace? And ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Italy (145-207). Anchises owns his mistake, and recalls how Cassandra had in other days been mocked for prophesying that Troy should eventually be transplanted to Italy (208-225). Landing in the Strophades, they unwittingly wrong the Harpies, whose queen Celaeno thereupon threatens them with a portentous famine. Panic-stricken, they coast along to Actium, where they celebrate their national games and leave a defiance to the Greeks (226-342). At Buthrotum they find Helenus and Andromache in possession of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and by them are entertained awhile and sent upon their way with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... fetched a piece of cane, and a minute later on the salt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared these portentous letters: ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... but little (by "we" I mean the freshmen of our year) from those who have lately appeared for the first time in King's Parade, or Jesus Lane. We were very young—we imagined Proctors to be destitute of human feeling; we ate portentous breakfasts of many courses, and, for the most part, treated our allowances as though they had been so much pocket-money. Also we had an idea that a man who had passed his thirtieth year was absurdly old, and that nobody could be called a boy whose ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... precipitated the ruin of the Confederate cause; yet we must in candor admit that the situation was becoming so portentous that human wisdom might be overtaxed in trying to determine what course to take. Of one thing there is no shadow of doubt. We of the National Army in Georgia regarded the removal of Johnston as equivalent to a victory for us. Three months ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... I did indeed blanch when that portentous word was uttered in conjunction with my darling's name. Mr. Sheldon leant a little further across the table, and his hard black eyes penetrated a little deeper into the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... circumstances, moreover, which coupled with late events, gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider, and to the capabilities of the steed. The space passed over in a single leap had been accurately measured, and was found to exceed, by an astounding difference, the wildest expectations of the most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to surround and capture these floating boats, though, to their great disappointment, the prize usually proved empty. On one occasion they tried a still profounder strategy; for an officer visiting the pickets after midnight, and hearing in the stillness a portentous snore from the end of the causeway (our most important station), straightway hurried to the point of danger, with wrath in his soul. But the sergeant of the squad came out to meet him, imploring silence, and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... amusement at all, particularly if triflings bring serious thoughts in their train and frivolous matters are so treated that a reader not altogether devoid of perception wins more profit from these than from the glittering and portentous arguments of certain persons—as when for instance one man eulogizes rhetoric or philosophy in a painfully stitched-together oration, another rehearses the praises of some prince, another urges us to begin a war with the Turks, another foretells the future, and another proposes a new method ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Beholding the forest burning in innumerable places and Krishna also ready to smite them down with his weapons, they all set up a frightful roar. With that terrible clamour as also with the roar of fire, the whole welkin resounded, as it were, with the voice of portentous clouds. Kesava of dark hue and mighty arms, in order to compass their destruction, hurled at them his large and fierce discus resplendent with its own energy. The forest-dwellers including the Danavas and the Rakshasas, afflicted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had to be summoned home: and after his departure, Conon, in alliance with Pharnabazus, recovered the supremacy of the sea for Athens, and greatly weakened Spartan influence in Asia. Not content with this result, the two friends, in the year B.C. 393, sailed across the Egean, and the portentous spectacle of a Persian fleet in Greek waters was once more seen—this time in alliance with Athens! Descents were made upon the coasts of the Peloponnese, and the island of Cythera was seized and occupied. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No Dean—and perhaps no don—who has been in that portentous position as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice. It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception with which ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... the populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the steeple of the State House was a bell, imported twenty-three years previously from London by the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It bore the portentous text from Scripture: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... 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 which ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... We boys felt something portentous in the scene. The Captain grew uncomfortable, too, no longer laughing heartily or joining in our talk. He kept his eyes on the sky, and smoked pipe ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... laugh at the portentous glare of a comet, and hear a crow with equal tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of times and situations proper for intellectual performances,' &c. The Idler, No. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... it had been rapidly growing dark, and the gloom at length increased so much, that the speakers could scarcely see each other's faces. The sudden and portentous darkness was accounted for by a vivid flash of lightning, followed by a low growl of thunder rumbling over Whalley Nab. The mother and daughter drew close together, and Mistress Nutter passed her arm round ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... genius loci weary of the solemn silence in his awful mountains, and we chatted carelessly of the sights animate and inanimate before us, laughing at the asseverations of the salesmen, and at the hardened scepticism of the customer, at the portentous dignity of the superb old messenger, white-bearded and clad in scarlet and gold, as he bombastically described to the knot of poor relations and admirers that elbowed him the splendours of the last entertainment at "Peterhof," where Lord Lytton still reigned. I smiled, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... a small oaken bookstand which stood slightly in advance of the more imposing shelves in which reposed the portentous volumes of newspaper clippings and photographs which ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Lord omnipotent foretold to Phoebus, Phoebus Apollo to me, I eldest born of the Furies reveal to you. Italy is your goal; wooing the winds you shall go to Italy, and enter her harbours unhindered. Yet shall you not wall round your ordained city, ere this murderous outrage on us compel you, in portentous hunger, to eat your tables ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... awesome name to Penrod Schofield and Samuel Williams. Even Herman and Verman, though lacking many educational advantages on account of a long residence in the country, were informed on the subject of Rena Magsworth through hearsay, and they joined in the portentous silence. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... he stood leaning upon the railing. With his eyes on the blossoming locust tree, he waited, in helpless patience, for the words to enter into his thoughts and to readjust his conceptions of the last few months. There slowly came to him, as he recognized the portentous gravity in the air about him, something of the significance of that ringing call; and as he stood there he saw before him the vision of an army led by strangers against the people of its blood—of an army wasting the soil it loved, warring for an alien right against the convictions ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... reserved for his old age; and, during the many years which I knew him, he never lacked invention or laboriousness. From the very first moment he had attracted me very much: even his residence, strange and portentous, was highly charming to me. In the old castle Pleissenburg, at the right-hand corner, one ascended a repaired, cheerful, winding staircase. The saloons of the Academy of Design, of which he was director, were found to the left, and were light ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... with her, did he seem to be anxious about, or even attentive to, what she was thinking of him. And the completeness of his egoism called from her egoism respect, as she was forced to realize that he possessed certain of her own qualities, but exaggerated, made portentous, brilliant, mysterious, by something in his temperament which had been left out of hers, something perhaps racial which must be for ever denied ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Swiveller, with a portentous frown. ''Tis well. Marchioness!—but no matter. Some wine there. Ho!' He illustrated these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... danger. And yet Mrs. Bassett was outwardly friendly, and she privately counseled Marian, quite unnecessarily, to be "nice" to Sylvia. On the same evening Mrs. Bassett was disagreeably impressed by Harwood's obvious rubrication in Mrs. Owen's good books. It seemed darkly portentous that Dan was, at Mrs. Owen's instigation, managing Sylvia's business affairs; she must warn her husband against this employment of his secretary to strengthen the ties between Mrs. Owen and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Martha happened to have her handkerchief in her hand, and stuffed it into her mouth so tightly that she came near suffocating. Judge Owen still stood in the doorway, his face judicially severe and portentous, as if he felt that some awful desecration had been committed, for which the full severity of the criminal law could scarcely be ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the better for living on fraud, Lady Rose, and I don't believe you have any right to drop the case. You have to think of Sir David's good name and of his wishes. The will you are suffering from was a portentous wrong." ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... road in the gray of a morning overcast with clouds and portentous of a storm. At the last moment, their host, with an eye upon the weather (and another upon Markham's hidden wallet), had sought to keep them until the skies were more propitious. But they were not to be dissuaded and trudged off briskly, Monsieur Duchanel and Madam Bordier accompanying them ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... it was judged that the furthest could not have been many miles distant. In some they imagined they could trace the spiral motion of the water as it was drawn up to the clouds, which were every moment being augmented in their portentous darkness. The sense of personal danger, Mr Ellis confesses, and the certainty of instant destruction if brought within their vortex, prevented a very careful observation of their ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... dark-skinned girls, on their knees in a corner, were gathering together the shirts and stockings destined for the parental traveling-bag. Garcia, for his part, was occupied in cleaning with a bit of rag a portentous, long-barreled carbine, apparently dating back to the time of Pizarro, which he had been exhibiting during the day as his hunting rifle, and which he intended to carry along ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Egypt—which was a long way from Brittany—or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child. Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No wonder, if they were of Jewish descent. It was the only way of accounting for so portentous a fact. Again; the Cagots were capital carpenters, which gave the Bretons every reason to believe that their ancestors were the very Jews who made the cross. When first the tide of emigration set from Brittany to America, the oppressed Cagots crowded to the ports, ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to dream of Elks, But always thought portentous of Success, Of happy Life, and Victories in War, Or fortune good when we ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... and mental energies of this nation,—that it is depraving our morals, and destroying the public conscience,—and that it is causing an amazing waste of property, and health and life. I ask every patriot to look at this portentous evil. Every true patriot, who will examine the length, breadth, and depth of this evil, cannot but feel that it claims his attention. And he will enquire what efforts, what sacrifices, can deliver us from the curses of this narcotic? The answer to this inquiry is an easy ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... Wiggs's Good Day. The legend of it was handed down for years afterwards in Euralia. It got into all the Calendars—July 20th it was—marked with a red star; in Roger's portentous volumes it had a chapter devoted to it. There was some talk about it being made into a public holiday, he tells us, but this fell through. Euralian mothers used to scold their naughty children with the words, ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... spoke, his extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ. Unorna ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... or tempt the Irish peasant to violate the law, especially when sanctioned, in that violation, by those whose opinion and advice he takes as the standard of his conduct. Be this as it may, the state of the country was now becoming frightful and portentous; and although there had not, as yet, been much blood shed, still there was no person acquainted with the extraordinary pains which were taken to excite the people against the payment of tithe, who was not able to anticipate the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Moreover, portentous as the numbers appear to us, they are small compared with those which represented Henry's ruthless severity after the Northern Rising, when the whole country was covered with gibbets, and with those of Elizabeth's victims who were hanged, cut ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... his old woman, in a portentous bonnet, beneath whose gay yellow ribbons appeared a dusky old face, wrinkled like a ship's timbers, out of which looked a pair of keen black eyes, where the best beauty, that of loving-kindness, had not ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... little 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 plan to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... almost touching the ship, when the whirling waves round its base made us oscillate from side to side, the Josephine, heeling over to her chain-plates from a sudden rush of wind that appeared to accompany it, the portentous column of vapour darted off almost at right angles to its former course; and then, the cloud, having taken up more of the sea-water than it could contain, burst with a loud hissing sort of report, ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... finger on hushed lips; when deliberately, without haste the great white flakes zigzagged down from the soft gray above, obscuring and softening the landscape, rendering dear and mysterious the commonest things. Then sounds came, subdued as in a sanctuary, and people approaching showed portentous as through a mist, and the boys, looking upward, caught big wet flakes on their lashes as they tried in vain to determine the point at which the snowflakes became visible. There existed no such point. The snowflakes ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... of the renowned Hudibras was portentous, as we learn from Butler, who thus describes ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... refreshing fragrance to the air, and they rested the longer, as Mrs. Shortridge seemed worn out with the heat. Lady Mabel seized the occasion to add some new plants to her hortus siccus, which, now swollen to a portentous bulk, occupied the highest place in the load of one of the mules. As she wandered from one cluster of plants to another, her voice rose into a tuneful strain. L'Isle followed her with eye and ear, as imprisoned Palamon ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... masses of clouds, heavy and black, were piled in the western sky, fringed here and there by an angry red, and torn by vivid streams of lightning. Not a breath of wind shook the leaves or stirred the high, rank grass by the water-side; a portentous and awful stillness filled the air,—the stillness felt by nature before a devastating storm. Quiet, with the like awful and portentous calm, the black regiment, headed by its young, fair-haired, knightly colonel, marched to ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... own fault if a blessing be not extorted ere they take their flight. Principles, like those which in the earlier days of the republic elevated men into statesmen, are now again in the field, chasing the policies which have dwarfed their sons into politicians. These things are portentous of change,—perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurred to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it so much of the portentous character, that I might well have been excused for regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confounded and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mind to communicate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... daily increased. On the twenty-ninth day of the month the stock had sunk to one hundred and fifty; several eminent goldsmiths and bankers, who had lent great sums upon it, were obliged to stop payment and abscond. The ebb of this portentous tide was so violent, that it bore down everything in its way; and an infinite number of families were overwhelmed with ruin. Public credit sustained a terrible shock; the nation was thrown into a dangerous ferment; and nothing was heard but the ravings of grief, disappointment, and despair. Some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town, A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... of Tegea, many years elapsed before the Lacedaemonians sustained a defeat. At length a calamity befel them which astonished all their neighbours. A division of the army of Agesilaus was cut off and destroyed almost to a man; and this exploit, which seemed almost portentous to the Greeks of that age, was achieved by Iphicrates, at the head of a body of mercenary light infantry. But it was from the day of Leuctya that the fall of Spate became rapid and violent. Some time before that day the Thebans had resolved to follow the example set many years ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the 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
... portentous signalling that went on night after night could resuscitate our faith in the Military. An age ago the Magersfontein misfortune had put off indefinitely the long-expected succour. We had been made to feel our ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... 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 ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... old legends of what the Thames was in ancient times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn't built, and Waterloo-bridge had never been thought of; and then they would shake their heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of the rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered where all this would end; whereat the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the display of parcels, packets, and envelopes, large and small, spread out on the side-table in his sitting-room was simply portentous; for the fashionable world of London had had no intimation yet that their favorite singer was ill-disposed towards them, and had even at times formed sullen resolutions of withdrawing altogether from their brilliant rooms. As he quite indifferently ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... as, on rising of his esteemed colleague, he hastily passed out. Example again contagious; Benches emptied; but ELLIS ASHMEAD pounded along. There was the speech reproachfully facing him in its portentous-printed length; must be reeled off, though the glass roof fell. Did it at last; sat down, flushed, and triumphant. Members, warily assuring themselves speech really finished, began to stream back again, till all the Benches filled to hear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... did not move from his semi-recumbent position as he uttered this alarming threat, but he accompanied it with a portentous frown and an ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the world. So it was in France. Despotism and License, mingling in unblessed union, engendered that mighty Revolution in which the lineaments of both parents were strangely blended. The long gestation was accomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hopes and terror, that agonizing travail and that portentous birth. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... god in us triumphing more and more over the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under his feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennially significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The union of melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason, with foul Irrationality and Lust; in which, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... rose and moved down the car, oscillating heavily, steadying himself with his gold-headed cane, and got out in front of a portentous mansion, Andrew would scarcely have recognized the look in his own eyes had he seen himself in ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... correspondence. It is also certain to develop and extend. But its main significance is twofold: as a sign of China's awakening and as an innovation, the certain effect of which will be to weaken national unity and extend regionalism at its expense. From this point of view the reform is portentous. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... parallel in nobility these two letters, which were exchanged between a comprehensive intellect such as Garve and one of the most portentous geniuses of the world, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... in nowise remote; but close, evident almost to 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
... his chair. In the unlit room the figure of his master seemed to have assumed a portentous, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... persiflage, perspicacious, perspicuity, pertinacious, pharmaceutic, phenomenal, phlegmatic, phraseology, pictorial, piquant, pique, plagiarize, platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, poignant, polity, poltroon, polyglot, pontifical, portentous, posterior, posthumous, potent, potential, pragmatic, preamble, precarious, precocious, precursor, predatory, predestination, predicament, preemptory, prelate, preliminary, preposterous, prerequisite, prerogative, presentiment, primogeniture, probation, probity, proclivity, procrastinate, prodigal, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... 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 carried on in the face of day. Its life ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... a portentous character, which seemed to threaten a prolongation of this controversy, when his companion, who had been looking sharply at the old man, put a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... He fell, less from disapproval of his policy, than from rude prejudice against his country. The flow of angry emotion had not subsided before the whisper of strife in the American colonies began to trouble the air; and before that had waxed loud, the Middlesex election had blown into a portentous hurricane. This was the first great constitutional case after Burke came into the House of Commons. As, moreover, it became a leading element in the crisis which was the occasion of Burke's first remarkable ...
— Burke • John Morley
... theatrical grandeur of Napoleon, the severe dignity of Cromwell, are strangely contrasted by a frequent, nor always seasonable buffoonery, which it is hard to reconcile with the ideal of their characters, or the gloomy and portentous interest of their careers. And this, equally a trait in the temperament of Rienzi, distinguished his hours of relaxation, and contributed to that marvellous versatility with which his harder nature ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Three white-clad figures were standing in the bows of the superstructure, examining the open space through binoculars; and as Lethbridge waved his handkerchief they waved in return, while one—the smallest—was seen to run excitedly aft and dart into the pilot-house. The savages also saw the portentous apparition, and fled, howling with abject terror, to the shelter of their huts; while the Flying Fish, sweeping gracefully round, came to earth within a few feet of the spot where the four white men stood awaiting her arrival. A ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "The portentous purchase by the civic authorities of Mr. Whistler's senile Carlyle renders it necessary for that section of the community who are not enamoured of Impressionism to watch with some vigilance the next steps taken by that body towards the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... no conflagration, no fuss, no searching of the passengers, no whisper of what had happened in the air; instead of a stir there was portentous peace; and it was clear to me that Raffles was not a little disturbed at the falsification of all his predictions. There was something sinister in silence under such a loss, and the silence was sustained for hours during ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... bird of night did sit, Even at noon-day, upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, 'These are their reasons—they are natural; For, I believe, they are portentous things." ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... did rushing come. Scarce could they hear, or see their foes, Until at weapon-point they close. They close in clouds of smoke and dust, With sword-sway and with lance's thrust; And such a yell was there Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth And fiends in upper air; O life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair. Long looked the anxious squires; their eye Could in ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... arms the human bodies passing into long snaky bodies coiled together. A single pair of wings was divided between the two outermost of the three beings, while snakes' heads, growing out of the human bodies, rendered the aspect of the group still more portentous. The center of the pediment was probably occupied by a figure of Zeus, hurling his thunderbolt at this strange enemy. We have therefore here a scene from one of the favorite subjects of Greek art at all periods—the gigantomachy, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... papers with nervous hand. Gray impulsively stepped forward, his eyes kindling with hope. It was on the tip of his tongue to launch into a proffer of his own services for the detail, but Gordon hastily warned him back with a sweep of the hand and a portentous scowl. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front, and the increased perpendicular of the profile. To this conception Parrhasius fixed a maximum; that point from which descends the ultimate line of celestial beauty, the angle within which moves what is inferior, beyond which what is portentous. From the head conclude to the proportions of the neck, the limbs, the extremities; from the Father to the race of gods; all, the sons of one, Zeus; derived from one source of tradition, Homer; formed by one artist, Phidias; on him measured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... as you can, and meet Simms who is coming up with Mrs. Brewster. Send Simms and the men on to help us, but you three women take Jeb and go right on down. There's a forest fire." Mr. Brewster added the last portentous words in an ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Marcellus, or Darius. The map of the United States was just about to bloom forth with towns named Ithaca and Syracuse, Corinth and Sparta; and on the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of Licking Creek, a city had lately been founded, the name of which was truly portentous. "Losantiville" was this wonderful compound, in which the initial L stood for "Licking," while os signified "mouth," anti "opposite," and ville "town;" and the whole read backwards as "Town-opposite-mouth-of-Licking." In 1790 General St. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... will earnestly strive to hold up the glass of the constantly shifting times before you, that you may be enabled to see the flitting shadows of the hour as they pass across it, grave or gay, portentous or hopeful, draped in solid political vesture, the toga of the statesman, or robed in the blue gossamer of metaphysics, in the drapery of sorrow or light hues of joy, in the tried armor of the Divine, or the dubious motley of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... would have proved amusing to the bloods of that day, and merely incredible to those of the present time. There was an unnecessary twopence for the ferry—admitting the whole business to have been unnecessary. There was sixpence for a meal, consisting of tea and a portentous allowance of scones with butter. There was threepence for a packet of cigarettes ('colonial' tobacco), the first I had ever smoked, and a purchase which had actually been decided upon some days previously. Finally, there was fourpence ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Carrie Amelia Nation, but having noticed from old records that her father wrote the first name "Carry," she now does the same, and considers the name portentous as concerns what she is trying and means to do. She believes, she says, that it is her mission to "carry a nation" from the darkness of drunken bestiality into the light of purity and sobriety; and if she can do this, or in any great measure contribute ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... and supports his family on the remaining five cents. Among the educated classes the men are beginning to refuse to permit their wives and daughters to attend the confessional, the most subtle and portentous agency for evil that was ever invented, which has contaminated more innocence and destroyed more domestic happiness than any other ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou |
