"Presentiment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uneasiness changed into anger at himself, and at the same time into a terrible fear. Not reflecting any longer, he turned around as if stung by a sudden evil presentiment. Walking hurriedly, he held the rifle ready to fire, with that great dexterity which he had acquired through daily hunting, and advanced amid the thorny mimosas without any rustle, exactly like a panther when stealing to a herd of antelopes at night. After a while he shoved his ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... most simple one, no doubt, there was in our opinion another, newer one, a corollary of the first, less easy to perceive and more easy to contest, a view as philosophical and belonging no longer to the priest alone but to the savant and the artist. It was a presentiment that human thought, in changing its form, was about to change its mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer be written with the same matter, and in the same manner; that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... first place, when material qualities are ascribed to mind, it strikes vividly out, and brings at once before us, the conception of an inward feeling or emotion, which it might otherwise have been difficult to convey, by the presentiment of some bodily form or quality, which is instantly felt to be its true representative, and enables us to fix and comprehend it with a force and clearness not otherwise attainable; and, in the second place, it vivifies dead and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... reproach; and Rawleigh, without fortune and without hope, in sickness and in sorrow, brooded over the sad thought, that in the hatred of the Spaniard, and in the political pusillanimity of James, he was arriving only to meet inevitable death. With this presentiment, he had even wished to give up his ship to the crew, had they consented to land him in France; but he was probably irresolute in this decision at sea, as he was afterwards at land, where he wished to escape, and refused to fly: the clearest intellect was darkened, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... throughout the course of the battle, and shield him from harm even at the cost of his own life. Some strange foreboding had fallen upon Paul, and he scarce expected to see the light of another day; but this presentiment of coming ill he bravely hid from his companion, and the two rode into the ranks with smiling faces, and looked across at the opposing lines of the enemy with a steadfast and lofty courage. Then the ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... children at the wagon. He had been separated from them now a full day and a half, and many a change might take place—many a danger might arise in that time. In fact, he began to blame himself for having left them alone. It would have been better to have let his cattle perish. So thought he now. A presentiment that all was not right was gradually forming in his mind; and he grew more anxious to proceed ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... unrelieved, our whole life long, Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings. In very terror I at morn awake, Upon the verge of bitter weeping, To see the day of disappointment break, To no one hope of mine—not one—its promise keeping:— That even each joy's presentiment With wilful cavil would diminish, With grinning masks of life prevent My mind its fairest work to finish! Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously Upon my couch of sleep I lay me: There, also, comes no rest to me, But some wild dream is sent to fray me. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Chance, or a presentiment of speedy success, led her to take her place, on the first day, very near the master, in a peculiar seat—a sort of small, low easy chair which inspired one with a sense of nonchalance. She was in full sight. Her ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... charity or reconstruction in his memory, above all in places he knew and loved. They can identify these by the letters he wrote home from France before the war. His mother has kept every one. Through a presentiment of his death, or because she couldn't part from them, she has brought along a budget of Jim's letters from America. She carries them about in a little morocco hand-bag, as other ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at last, and when the mists had risen above the meadows, Robbie saw before him, nigh at hand, the ancient city of Carlisle. A presentiment that he came too late took the joy ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... my arm and led me through the gallery, I had an odd presentiment of going towards a doom. While I followed her up a winding stair, the misgiving increased. Did venerable lemurs inhabit the Basque mountains? Could so magnificent; an old age be of this earth? An ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... came back to Evelina with a pang. She stopped to wipe away the tears beneath her veil, to choke back a sob that tightened her throat. Suddenly, she felt a presentiment of oncoming evil, a rushing destiny that could not be swerved aside. Frightened, she turned to go back; then ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... some presentiment of evil, Mr. Hardwick got up from the table, and sternly motioning the boys back, went down to the shop. As he came near the door, he saw the surveyor holding one end of the chain and taking sight upon a staff which the lawyer within was adjusting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... discovered Oswald, and rested upon him—a spark of joy, a lively and gentle hope, was painted in her countenance: on beholding her, every heart beat with pleasure and fear: it was felt that so much felicity could not last upon earth; was it for Juliet, or Corinne, that this presentiment ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... persons, one eighty-six and the other eighty-eight years of age, by whom the author was told the tale in 1498, both affirming that they had been in the church when Joan of Arc spoke of her betrayal. There can be but little doubt that Joan had had for some time before she went to Compiegne a presentiment of her soon falling into her enemies' power. On the eve of the King's coronation at Rheims she said to her friends that what she alone feared was treason—a foreboding too soon, alas! to come true. She never, however, seems to have fixed on any particular period when the treason she dreaded would ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... popular misapplication of the word "God," and as being less liable to misconstruction, and more specifically marking his idea. His "Intelligence" principle remained practically liable to many of the same defects as the "Necessity" of the poets. It was the presentiment of a great idea, which it was for the time impossible to explain or follow out. It was not yet intelligible, nor was even the road opened through ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... by the honest accents which long practice had taught Mascarin to use, and he had neither a suspicion nor a presentiment. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... thinking only of our destination, the Banyais country, making plans for our settling amongst those people, and full of happiness at the thought of our new enterprise. An excellent spirit prevailed in our little troop,—serious and gay at the same time; no regrets, no murmurings; with a presentiment, indeed, that the Transvaal Government might make some objection to our advance, but with the certainty that God was with us, and would over-rule all that man might try to do. We crossed the Orange Free State without hindrance, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... distance of forty miles. At daybreak they reached a wayside tavern near Lake Erie and ordered breakfast. While the meal was in preparation they quickly fell asleep. Just as the breakfast was ready, however, Henson had the peculiar presentiment that some danger was near and that he should at once leave the house. After experiencing some difficulty in persuading the fugitives to leave the tavern quickly they agreed to follow his orders. They had hardly left the tavern when ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... a dark presentiment in her mind,—a heavy foreboding to which she would not give utterance before Cicely, lest it should grieve her. But the next day, when Dr. Forsyth paid her his usual visit, and said in his usual cheery way that all was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... presentiment Alice had no faith; but she did not oppose him, and at parting she said ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the event. Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium. Nevertheless, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... exceptionally fine and calm; and we expected on the morrow (February 11th) a quiet return to El-Muwaylah. Yet a manner of presentiment induced me to summon the engineer and his native assistants, and to promise the latter a liberal "bakhshsh," if by hard work at the boiler all night, and by rigging up the ship's pump instead of a donkey-engine, they could steam ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Egypt, but, as their latest commentator justly remarks (Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 624), these new ideas are fairly overwhelmed in the old mythology. The mysteries of Isis and Serapis seemed to offer a revelation that had been a presentiment for a long time, and the affirmation of a ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... preordained in his own flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the base things of the world ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... apprehensive, and on the watch for disastrous change, I will not here undertake to determine. Too certain it is that I was so. I never ridded myself of an over-mastering and brooding sense, shadowy and vague, a dim abiding feeling (that sometimes was and sometimes was not exalted into a conscious presentiment) of some great calamity travelling towards me; not perhaps immediately impending—perhaps even at a great distance; but already—dating from some secret hour—already in motion upon some remote line of approach. This feeling I could not assuage ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... is not so. The joy is, I suppose, something like our joy at the long pleasant summer days—it has the presentiment of the dark days coming. And it is this presentiment that casts its shadows over the joy of men, just as the driving clouds cast their shadow over the fjords. It lies there so bright and blue—and of ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... at that time a large sum in gold, and on the eve of the battle, from a presentiment perhaps of the turn which things would take on the morrow, I concealed it in the principal vault of the convent of Newcastle, in the tower whose summit you now see silvered by the moonbeams. My treasure has then remained interred there, and I have ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... away I set you free.' His widow commemorated his death annually at the Studion, and on the last occasion surprised the abbot by making a double offering, saying, 'I may not live another year,' a presentiment which proved true. According to her dying request, Aecatherina was buried in the cemetery of the Studion, 'as a simple nun, without any sign to indicate that she was born a Bulgarian princess and had been a ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... got a gambler's faith in a hunch, or presentiment, or intuitive conclusion—whatever term one chooses to apply—but from the moment he spoke of seeing four riders on a ridge during that frolic of the elements, a crazy idea kept persistently turning over and over in my mind; and when Mac got that far I blurted it out for what it was ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and said to me, "Valerie, I have a presentiment that we never shall meet again, and yet I am anything but superstitious. I can truly say that you are the only person to whom I have felt real attachment since my youth, and I feel more than I can describe. Something ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Leopardi had a presentiment of his death, and his end was perhaps hastened by the nervous shock of the terror produced by the cholera, which was then raging in Naples. At that time the body of a Neapolitan minister of state who had died of cholera was cast into the common burial-pit at Naples—such was the fear of contagion, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... yet unutterable awe crept over him—a fearful but undefined sensation—a presentiment that something terrible was about to happen. He strove to shake it off, but could not—like an icy thrill it ran, slow and curdling, through his veins. A low rustling, as of silken drapery, struck upon his ear. He turned to know the cause, and leaned eagerly forward. A shriek, wild and agonizing, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... With this force he resolved to attack the enemy on the next day; and soon after daylight he called Captain Blackwood on board the "Victory," the last words he uttered to whom were:—"God bless you, Blackwood; I shall never see you more." He had a presentiment that, while he was certain of victory, it would, nevertheless, be gained at the price of his own life. Yet, with this prospect before him, appalling as it must have been to his mind, he was calm and serene. His whole attention ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... buckskin continuations, were carried up to your uncle, whom we found busily preparing for a ball, which was to be given that night by the heiress of Rookawn Lodge. I confess that my brother and myself felt a strong presentiment that something unfortunate would occur, and our forebodings were shared by the buckskins, who, like ourselves, felt considerable reluctance to join in the expedition. Remonstrance, however, would have been idle; we therefore submitted with the best grace we could, and in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... persuaded that all these pretended wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought, and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture only; the vaunted light of our reason ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the moment you spoke," she said, rising on the lounge where she had been lying, and sitting up on it; with the book she had been reading shut on her thumb, she faced me across the table where her lamp stood. "I had a presentiment when the children said there was some strange-looking man here, asking for you, and that they had told him where to find you. I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about it. What did ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... but Omega refused. For some time he had sat silent, his great, brilliant eyes on the flaming sun as it sank toward the rim of the earth. A great loneliness had suddenly seized him. He recognized it as a presentiment of disaster. It was beyond the analysis of reason, but for the first time in his life he longed to hold back that sun. Somehow he feared the advent of the night. It seemed to him that before the morning light would again flood the earth a dire ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... a tone of unspeakable melancholy. "How fearfully prophetic it sounded in my ears. I know not how it is," he pursued, "but I wish I had not heard those sounds; for since that moment I have had a sad strange presentiment of evil at my heart. Heaven grant my poor brother may make his appearance, as I still trust he will, at the hour Halloway seems to expect, for if not, the latter most assuredly dies. I know my father well; and, if convicted by a court martial, no human power can alter the destiny that ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... without having the courage to address to her another word. That man so brave, who knew no fear, recoiled from no danger, wept like a child. A sad presentiment told him that it was his last meeting with Madaléna, though her concluding promise tended in ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... just joined the army. I had many times quailed under his fierce eye and writhed under his birch rod. The strain to which he was subjected under these circumstances was doubly trying, waiting inactive for his first baptism of fire. His eye was restless as we passed; perhaps he had a presentiment, as he received his death-wound before ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... am neither notional, nor given to small, vulgar superstitions, but I have learned that this peculiar sensation is never without significance. I remember that I felt it the night our wagon bridge went out by high water. I tried to read the presentiment as I dressed. But not until I was shaving did it relate itself to the going out of Potts. Then the illumination came with a speed so electric that I gashed my chin under the shock of it. Instantly I seemed to know, as well ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... sworn to me that she is innocent. She says that she has a proof of it which I shall see some day—and her husband also. A presentiment has fixed itself in her mind that she can't live, and before the end she ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... mouth with a presentiment of what was coming as I saw an elegant and beautifully dressed woman sauntering along in front of us on ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... Chance had come. Again that strange sixth sense of his, the inexplicable instinct, that only the born speculator knows, warned him. Every now and then during the course of his business career, this intuition came to him, this flair, this intangible, vague premonition, this presentiment that he must seize Opportunity or else Fortune, that so long had stayed at his elbow, would desert him. In the air about him he seemed to feel an influence, a sudden new element, the presence of a new ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... younger—tribute touching, whether wrung, perforce, from a proudly humble, or freely offered by a simply magnanimous, heart—when, like John the Baptist speaking of Jesus, Bourdaloue, growing old, said of Massillon, enjoying his swiftly crescent renown: "He must increase, and I must decrease." It was a true presentiment of the comparative fortune of fame that impended for these two men. It was not, however, in the same path, but in a different, that Massillon outran Bourdaloue. In his own sphere, that of unimpassioned appeal ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... at being held in this state of suspense, I passionately besought Mehevi to permit me to proceed. Whether my companion had arrived or not, I felt a presentiment that my own fate was about to be decided. Again and again I renewed my petition to Mehevi. He regarded me with a fixed and serious eye, but at length yielding to my ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... though far inferior in number, having only seventy-five vessels, convinced that this struggle was to be the most desperate and the last, prepared themselves for it as men who had everything at stake. After a short but inspiring harangue, De Ruyter gave the signal for attack. As if with a presentiment that long years would elapse before they should again try the strength of each other's arm, the English and Dutch seemed mutually determined to leave upon the minds of their foes an ineffaceable impression of their skill ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... be merciful!" said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which, for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow's stare covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension—a presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity. There was no space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only by turning another ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... feet; but the wretch had leaped over the counter, and fortified himself behind it. He looked as ugly as sin itself; but I could see that he was not without a presentiment of the consequences of his rash act. I do not profess to be an angel in the quality of my temper, and I was as mad as a boy of fifteen could be. I made a spring at him, and was going over the counter in a flying ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... you? I have a presentiment—the spirit of prophecy is upon me. She is going to appoint him, and we are to go there and do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... we had been living for years like one who has a presentiment that something dreadful is hanging over him which will suddenly descend upon his head, and who carries this feeling of dread about with him with an uneasy conscience, trying to drown it in the tumult and ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... of which small territory his family had long been the feudal lords. Pico was the youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting in his wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous school of law at Bologna. From the first, indeed, she seems to have had some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith in omens characteristic of her time, she believed [39] that a strange circumstance had happened at the time of Pico's birth— the appearance of a circular flame which suddenly vanished away, on the wall of the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... slave-trade with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke. This was an early presentiment of the fortune of Hayti, but it was not justly derived from an acquaintance with the Spanish-bred negro alone; for the negroes who were afterwards transported to the colony directly from Africa had the same unaccommodating temper, which frequently disconcerted the Cardinal's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... stillness that tells of intense mental engrossment. Self-deception was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and beyond the merciless findings of intellect was the besetment of presentiment, intuition, inward convictions that can override logical conclusions, words that are breathed in the soul as by a wind, and, like the wind, are born and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... passion! Oh, what a happiness will it be when he again returns! And he will return! Yes, he will be with me again on the 18th of December, and, animated by his glances, I shall for the first time appear in all the splendor of an imperial crown. Ah, they have no presentiment, my councillors and ministers, that I have selected the 18th of December for the ceremony precisely because it is the birthday of my beloved! He will know it, he will understand why his Anna has chosen this particular day, and he will thank me with one of those proud and glowing ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... overcame her, but she could not turn her eyes from him. Always, when he was near, a strange presentiment came to her—a dreamy knowledge of an unknown land. This impression varied in clearness. To-night she was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... our skill by shooting at a mark. We continued this exercise through the afternoon, partook of a hearty supper, chatted till bed-time, and then retired. Ralph soon fell sound asleep, but I could not; I felt a presentiment of approaching danger; still there was no visible signs of it, yet I could not shake off a peculiar nervousness which agitated me. I lay still for some time listening to the deep and regular breathing of Ralph, and ever and anon as an owl screamed ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... departure, the house, the world itself, seemed a desert; and absorbed by his own memories, he now recalled to mind many a dark speech which had fallen from his absent friend, particularly in the latter days of their intercourse, and which betokened but too plainly a presentiment of early death. But time and youth exercised, even over these sorrows, their irresistible influence. Edward's spirits gradually recovered their tone; and as the traveler always has the advantage over the one who remains behind, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... a presentiment, I know not why, that you are about to encounter danger. If so, be prudent,—be prudent for the sake of your dear sisters—be prudent for the sake of all your friends, who ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... wanted to wish her a hurried good-bye: she grasped my hand, and gazing into my face, exclaimed, "God alone knows when I shall see you again!" This cut me to the heart, and I felt conscience-stricken. The fact that she was expressing the presentiment she felt of her early death I only realised when, barely two years later, without having seen her again, I received the news that she had ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... tante; criticised the sauces; presided over the wine; cut jokes with the waiter; and pretended to have ordered every dish beforehand. The stewed kidneys with mushrooms were provided especially for Madame Marotte; the fricandeau was selected in honor of Mam'selle Marie (had he not an innate presentiment that she loved fricandeau?); and as for the soles au gratin, he swore, in defiance of probability and all the laws of nature, that they were the very fish we had just caught in the Seine. By-and-by came Monsieur Choucru's famous cheese souffle; and then, with a ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... at me when I was already on my back. That's Number Three for you! And the worst of it is, I don't know what to say in reply. I tell you what it is now, Macrorie, that was a pretty tough beginning for the day. I felt it, and I left my room with a dark presentiment in my mind, and the same general idea of a brooding thunder-storm, which I had experienced ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... of the head of Christ for the original picture, which has been preserved on a torn and soiled piece of paper at Brera, expresses the most elevated seriousness, together with Divine gentleness pain on account of the faithless disciple, a full presentiment of his own death, and resignation to the will of the Father. It gives a faint idea of what the master may have accomplished in the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... chapters show how this vision or presentiment was verified. The journeys which he now took exposed him to frequent dangers, both from robbers and from lawless men who hated the monks. One adventure with a murderer is told with delightful simplicity and vividness. Suso remains throughout his life ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... dignity. Indeed, his equanimity seemed almost like the fortitude of fatalism. No doubt, he was sustained by the conviction that the compromise measures had avoided civil war, and by the feeling that if he had erred, Clay and Webster had likewise erred; but he could have had no presentiment of the depth of the retirement to which he was destined. He was to reappear, in 1856, as a presidential candidate of the Americans; and, after civil war had rent the country in twain, his sympathy for the Union was to reveal itself early and with ardour. But ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... twenty-four passengers, all told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... appearance, and to the gradual operation of hunger and hardship upon their frames, but the change in the looks of these men, since last they parted, was a type of the famine and desolation of the land; and they now began to indulge the horrible presentiment that they would all starve together, or be reduced to the direful ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... who had a presentiment that something pleasant was about to be related. The very mention of music made ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... replied the master, who appeared to be unusually grave (as if in sad presentiment of evil). "I've watched him often.—But it's no use—they mind ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... up. It was from Father Letheby. And what was it? The Imitation in Greek, by a certain George Mayr, S. J. Wasn't this nice? My pet book done into my favorite language! It was the happiest Christmas I ever spent. Quam bonus Israel Deus! So too said Father Letheby. But I had some dim presentiment that all his well-merited pleasure would not be quite unalloyed,—that some secret hand, perhaps a merciful one, would pluck a laurel leaf or two from his crown. We had a pleasant academic discussion ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... again they started. But Mr. Punch's presentiment will turn out to be quite correct. He will be unfortunately engaged on Boxing Night, and so his tour of the terrestrial Music Halls with TIME will ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... you," replied Mrs. Weldon; "but I have, as it were, a presentiment that the tempest is going down or is going ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... at the time no presentiment of disaster. I remember remarking to the ship's purser, as my things were being carried to my state-room, that I had never in all my travels entered upon any voyage with so little premonition of accident. "Very good, Mr. Borus," he answered. "You will find your state-room in the starboard ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... "What are you thinking of?" said I. "I was thinking," said Belle, "how exceedingly kind it was of you to get everything in readiness for me, though you did not know that I should come." "I had a presentiment that you would come," said I; "but you forget that I have prepared the kettle for you before, though it was true that I was then certain that you would come." "I had not forgotten your doing so, young man," said Belle; "but I was beginning to think that you ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... are starting for the benefit of widows and orphans, and deceased within six days of the ceremony—if ceremony one may call the hasty affair in those foreign places. My dear, the instant I heard it I had a presentiment, 'All has gone well up to now.' I remember murmuring the words. Then your letter, received in that smelly Barcelona: Lord Ormont was carrying you off to Granada—a dream of my infancy! It may not have been his manoeuvre, but it was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with these emotions—they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this hour of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... lock the gates to-night," he said, before he left the yard, for he had a dull presentiment that he would only come home late at night, were it only for the sake of ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... was lighted as usual, he had not waited many moments before a slight chill fell upon his sanguine mood. The house was so still, and the rain dripped and the wind sighed so dismally without, that a vague presentiment of evil began to assert itself. Heretofore he had found the apartment full of life and mirth, and he could not help remembering that some who had been its guests might now be out in the storm. Would ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... I would have laughed at such an idea, but all day I have had a vague presentiment of coming evil which I have found impossible to shake off," explained ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with equal regret, my dear sirs," said he, "that I part with you, because I feel a presentiment that we part ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... forward to fasten it in Anabelle's dress she leaned toward him. It was as if two roses had been brought together by a breeze straying through a garden. Through Rollo's heart spread a shivering thrill which carried no presentiment of an untimely end, but a feeling that he should ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... be his last trip for the year, the following spring was fixed for their marriage; and when he took his leave, it was with the gloomy presentiment that he had a ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... now for the first time struck me. I thought of the bloody scenes that had occurred at Tampico, San Patricio, and the Alamo, of the false and cruel character of those in whose power we were, and I was seized with a presentiment of evil. For a moment I was about to communicate my apprehensions to my comrades; but hope, which never dies, again caused me to take a more cheering view of our situation. Nevertheless, in order to be prepared for the worst, and, in case of need, to be unencumbered in my movements, I watched my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... read the letter—a sweet, touching epistle, full of mournful affection, which that murdered lady had written only a few days before her death, when some presentiment of coming evil was no doubt upon her. The diamonds were her mother's, she wrote, and had only crossed the ocean with her because of the haste with which the voyage to America had been arranged. Fearing for their safety, she was about to intrust them to her foster-mother, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... kindness till they became a covenant between her and Him, a bond of memory for mother and child when parted from each other. Now that He had appealed to her love, she did not feel so lonely; she felt once more at one with Him, and had a sort of presentiment that in future times her bleeding mother's heart would be ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... "I had a presentiment that we should want a consoling something of this sort," said Fritz. "Fill your glass, David, and let out the worst of it at once, before we get to ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... non-culture, the plebeian publicity of the so-called 'interests of culture' are extolled for their benefit in magazines and newspapers as an entirely new and the best possible, full-grown form of culture! Whither shall the poor fellows fly when they feel the presentiment that these promises are not true—where but to the most obtuse, sterile scientificality, that here the shriek of culture may no longer be audible to them? Pursued in this way, must they not end, like the ostrich, by burying their heads in the sand? Is it not a real happiness for them, buried as ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Monday morning, January the first, 1917, that I learned of my boy's death. And he had been killed the Thursday before! He had been dead four days before I knew it! And yet—I had known. Let no one ever tell me again that there is nothing in presentiment. Why else had I been so sad and uneasy in my mind? Why else, all through that Sunday, had it been so impossible for me to take comfort in what was said to cheer me? Some warning had come to me, some sense that all ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... so of persons you have never seen, and to whom you ought to feel grateful for the kindness of their invitation; even if it has interfered with another party, that I must confess seems to offer unusual attractions. Now I have a presentiment that we shall find the Watkinson part ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... eleven I had the most curious presentiment, my dear. I remember the hour so exactly because I've been making it a rule to begin work on your Christmas present every morning at— Oh, but I didn't inTend to let you know. No, dearie, I won't tell you what it is. But I can't help believing it's Just what you'll ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... that most of the townsmen went back to their own firesides and sat talking with their wives and children about the calamities of the times. Others who were younger and less prudent remained in the streets; for there seems to have been a presentiment that some strange event was on ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and he was to join the family tea as he had used to do in the old times. But still she did not feel quite easy. She was restless and uncomfortable in spite of herself, and was conscious of being troubled by a vague presentiment ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... should make arrangements by which, and by the kindness of the jailer, she should be kept constantly informed of his condition of health, both mental and bodily. "If he should be either worse in body or better in mind," she said, "I shall go to him at once; and I have a strong presentiment that he ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... that Damascus home of ours, where I would willingly have remained all my days. I knew that mine was to be the wanderer's life, and that it is fatal for the wanderer to make ties and get attached to places or things or people; but in spite of this presentiment, I greedily drank in whilst I could all the truths which the desert breathes, and set my hands to do all the good work they could find, until ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... interpretation of dreams. Because they were a universal experience—as he believed, the universal mode of communication between the unseen and the seen—his beloved "plain people," the "children of Nature," the most universal types of humanity, were their best interpreters. He also believed in presentiment. As faithfully as the simplest of the brood of the forest—those recreated primitives who regulated their farming by the brightness or the darkness of the moon, who planted corn or slaughtered hogs as Artemis directed—he trusted a presentiment ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... vestments and altar cloths, the great treasures of the church, had been purposely left in an open box, that they might be inspected by the visitors, and the Padre had departed with a growing uneasiness in his mind, lest the instructions should be neglected. So strong was his presentiment, "though the gentleman was not one to forget," that he felt compelled to leave the sick man before nightfall, and hurry off to the church to see if his fears were justified. He promised, however, to return to the ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... if I should not bring a small competence home with me, I have an idea, or rather, I have a presentiment that it is awaiting me on my return. Yes; comparative wealth, to say nothing of happiness! In what way? That is my secret, my dearest Hulda, and you will forgive me for having a secret from you! It is the only one! Besides, I will tell you all about it. When? ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... about the size of your hand. It may be very funny to see it dodging up and down among the breakers—but I can't stand it much longer. Already the spray has wellnigh strangled me; I shiver all over; a horrible presentiment is uppermost in my mind that polypi, and sea-leeches, and shiny jelly-fish are fastening their suckers upon my legs; I jump, and kick, and plunge in an agony of apprehension, while those fair creatures on the rock imagine, no doubt, that I am disporting myself in sheer exuberance of joy. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... advice decided the matter. Danger to him was only a necessary excitement. He was naturally fearless, and his merry laugh and gay joke at the expense of the bushranger fearing party gradually dissipated the unaccountable presentiment of danger which I for one had in no ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... would have spoken, but North—thinking the excitement had produced one of those hysterical crises which were common to her—gently drew her, still gazing, back towards the gate. The convict's arms fell, and an undefinable presentiment of evil chilled him as he beheld the priest—emotion pallid in his cheeks—slowly draw the fair young creature from out the sunlight into the grim shadow of the heavy archway. For an instant the gloom swallowed them, and it seemed to Dawes that the strange wild man of God ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time: 'Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,'"[195]—a strange presentiment for a ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people, governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never more disturbed than by the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... presentiment that I should one day be poor, and have to rely for subsistence on my own labour. With this persuasion, I frequently busied my thoughts in imagining the most lucrative and decent means of employing my ingenuity, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... sending my father to you, only I felt a presentiment that you would be here this evening; for I must tell you that I start for France on Friday: I must go there, if I am ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... sent and forgotten, but a strange presentiment came over the mind of the writer. "I am afraid I did not direct that letter right." He sent a second postal card, asking if a letter had been received at her home; if not, to go to ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... on being told that the figures she had beheld in the vision were thought to be those of her ancestors, she was not so much surprised as I expected, but said that she had had a presentiment all along that the tragedies she had witnessed were in some way ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of its suddenness. 'But a moment before, I had been quite happy, quite secure. A moment later—' I shudder. Why be thus at Fate's mercy always, when with a little ordinary second sight...Yet no! That is the worst of a presentiment: it never averts evil, it does but unnerve the victim. Best, after all, to have only false presentiments like mine. Bolts that cannot be dodged strike us kindliest from ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... black everything about the nursery with the bottom of the frying-pan. It then set to work to lick the frying-pan clean. The nurse, a woman of narrow ideas, had a presentiment that later on it would be ill. My friend explained to her the error the world had hitherto committed: it had imagined that the parent knew a thing or two that the Child didn't. In future the Children were ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... motion of a limb; it was as if a wandering breeze wafted her before it, at its own wild and gentle pleasure. But, by and by, a purpose began to be discernible, throughout the seeming vagueness of her unrest. She was in quest of something. Could it be that a subtile presentiment had informed her of the young man's presence? And if so, did the Veiled Lady seek or did she shun him? The doubt in Theodore's mind was speedily resolved; for, after a moment or two of these erratic flutterings, she advanced more decidedly, and stood motionless before ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... however, he strove, as he went along, to persuade himself that the presentiment was but the work of fancy; that there was nothing real in it; that he had excited himself to fears and apprehensions that were groundless; that the expedition of the Earl to Italy was but a temporary undertaking, and that it would most probably make no change in his situation, no alteration ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... would not break its wings." And then sharply a thought struck me like a pang. Can I perhaps see you better with my soul's eyes, Allison, if you are never mine? Would I break your wings in touching you? Are you something too fine and fair for human experience? It came like a presentiment then that you would never be mine in the dear common human way. Can it be so, dear love? No, no; I would have you when the hour comes. Despite the angel in your eyes, you were made to make fair a home, to know in all its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I waited, trusting in the dove-sent olive-leaf, yet in the midst of my trust, terribly fearing. My fear pressed heavy. Cold and peculiar, I knew it for the partner of a rarely-belied presentiment. The first hours seemed long and slow; in spirit I clung to the flying skirts of the last. They passed like drift cloud—like the wrack ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... clerical party, very powerful in that country, were especially vehement in denouncing the project of placing the scion of a great Protestant dynasty on the 'throne of Charles V.' M. Ollivier tells us that when the news first reached him it brought upon him suddenly and painfully the presentiment of impending war, to the discomfiture of all his efforts for the preservation of peace until the Liberal Empire should ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... powers of your guardian spirits; he will then ask you to attempt the recovery of his scalp; he will show you the direction, and if you feel inclined, as I dare say you do, go forward, my son, with a strong heart, persevere, and I have a presentiment you will succeed." The young man answered, "I will try." Early next morning, after having eaten from the magic kettle, he started off on his journey. Toward evening he came to the lodge as he was told, and soon heard the groans of the magician. "Come in," he said, even before the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... kept sayin' I thocht he would be a lassie because I was fleid he would be; but a' the time I had a presentiment he would be a laddie. It was wi' Joey deein' sae sudden, an' I took on sae terrible aboot 'im 'at I thocht all alang the Lord ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... in the use of fire-arms. Mr. Burton had been out with Ensign Beckwith, and some soldiers of the New South Wales corps, intending to kill ducks on the Nepean. With that sensation of the mind which is called presentiment he is said to have set out, having more than once observed, that he feared some accident would happen before his return; and he did not cease to be tormented with this unpleasant idea, until his gun, which he carried rather awkwardly, went off, and lodged its contents in the ground within ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... without looking at her. It was evident he did not dare just yet. "Nothing much, I reckon. I've been a bit down all day. I really don't know why, myself. I've had a queer presentiment, as if something were going to happen. As if something terrible were ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... him as the sound of the sea does the sailor; and dear as the odors of the ocean to the mariner were the resinous scents of the forest to him. Like a sailor, too, he had his superstitions. He had a presentiment that he was to die by one of these trees,-that some day, in chopping, the tree would fall upon and crush him as it did his father the day they brought him back to the camp on a ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... have happened. I had such a presentiment of trouble at home that I could not wait till to-morrow. I came on the night express. Why is the house all ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... had a presentiment that their troubles would begin some time or other. They had expected it at the very start; but it had been put off stage by stage throughout the day, until it really seemed as if it must make haste, if it was to come ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... home some years before, and gone far west towards the Mississippi. For some time they continued to hear from him, but he had long since ceased to write. She feared that he was dead; but sometimes she had a strong hope, which seemed like a presentiment to her, that she should yet look upon his face on earth; and in this hope, she continued still occasionally to direct letters to the spot from which he ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... pages which he now adds he seems at first unchanged. How then as to that story of M. de Rance, the reformer of La Trappe, finding the head of his dead mistress; an incident which the reader of La Morte will surely have taken as a "presentiment"? Aliette had so taken it. "A head so charming as yours," Bernard had assured her tenderly, "does not need to be dead that it may work miracles!"—How, in the few pages that remain, will M. Feuillet justify that, and certain other delicate ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... thinking of," said Klingemann. "That is all of no consequence; that is all done with the moment you give the word. I have a dim presentiment that we two suit each other very well. Yes, unless I am very much deceived, the blood should be flowing in your veins, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... it. There was a presentiment in his heart that he did not dare to shake off. It seemed as if this conflict were one that would threaten the happiness of his whole life. He still kept his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the memory of the many happy days they had spent together; ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... mellowed the beauty of Fanny Bellairs, and the same summer-time of youth had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud and flower. She was ready now for love. She had felt the variable temper of society, and there was a presentiment in the heart, of receding flatteries and the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of her own choosing, from the man she loved; and, with the power to recall time, she would have ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... have a presentiment that we shall be chased," cried Macgreggor. "I believe there will be ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... eyes. What she had had a presentiment of had now happened, what she had never dreamt of at first had come after all. She stood as though crushed. She felt a pain as though there were something in her throat. It was her terror that was choking her, but she forced it down. Clenching her fists so ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... hope for the confession. Agatha sat down. But hardly had she done so before the strangest presentiment came over her. She heard the door below open and shut, and it was borne in upon her mind that two men had entered. How she guessed it, she could not tell, but, as she sat there, she had no doubt at all that ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... after day glided past, Mrs. Darlington felt more and more uneasy about Mr. Scragg, with whom, she had a decided presentiment, there would be trouble. Had she known where to find him, she would have sent him a note, saying that she had changed her mind about the rooms, and could not let him have them. But she was ignorant of his address; and the only thing ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... individuals, an intuitive sense or presentiment of something to come? If they have, then there has been perhaps no period in our history when that faculty was more keenly alive than towards the close of the last century. From the beginning of the French Revolution to the advent of the Victorian Era constitutes what ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... early youth, it may be even said from his days of boyhood, Napoleon felt an inward presentiment that he was not destined to live in mediocrity. This persuasion soon taught him to treat others with disdain, and to entertain the highest opinion of himself. Scarcely had he obtained a subaltern command in the artillery, when he considered ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... back of the garden seat, into the light, with Mangan]. I think I shall. He keeps telling me he has a presentiment that he is going to die. I never met a ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... at that time the image of woman, the vision of love, scarcely ever arose in definite shape in my brain; but in all I thought, in all I felt, lay hidden a half-conscious, shamefaced presentiment of something ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... gay spirit, she piloted her two friends on that summer morning. No presentiment of evil touched her, no cloud was in her sky. Gaily she sped along the sunny road, little dreaming that that same sun that so gladdened her was to set upon the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... polite ever to breathe a word against his antagonist, if, indeed, he did not respect his talents too highly to disparage them. Perhaps he was conscious that victory would be his in the end; as Hoppner might also have a presentiment that he was to be defeated. He was of a quick temper; was a husband and a father; entirely dependent on his own exertions, though he could earn five thousand a year easily when fully employed. But certainly the innkeeper's son was ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... thud of the hoofs of the galloping horses. Now and again we whispered to each other how delightfully we were going to surprise the enemy. When the horses came to a sudden pause, and an inexperienced rider, owing to a presentiment of evil, involuntarily uttered his wish to 'halt,' we turned upon him angrily and called him 'traitor.' We did not then know that we were far beyond earshot of the enemy. It stopped raining, and towards morning we reached the mountains; and after ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... so near that by stretching his neck he could see over the intervening shrubs and observe the sleepers. Just then Drake chanced to waken. Perhaps it was a presentiment of danger that roused him, for the Indian had, up to that moment, made not the slightest sound. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, the trapper looked cautiously round; then he lay down and turned over on his other side to ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... secondly, in his material prosperity he failed to acknowledge God, and even counted the years as his own. In the hour of his selfish jubilation he was smitten. Whether the voice of God came to him as a fearsome presentiment of impending death, or by angel messenger, or how otherwise, we are not informed; but the voice spoke his doom: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee."[928] He had used his time and his powers of body and mind to sow, reap and garner—all ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... and the expedition started on their return home. It had not travelled many hours before an uncontrollable disposition seized them to go back again to the spot of separation to see if all was well, for some declared that they had a presentiment that there had already been foul play. Back they went, and when they reached the spot where good wishes had just been interchanged, the first spectacle which met their eyes was the mutilated dead bodies of their faithful hostages! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... cheerfully. "I have a strong presentiment that the men are coming in this very night. I am going to put everything in readiness for them, and we must go to bed early, dear mother. Perhaps we shall have very ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the Norseman's faith never emerged. What that early phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded to the Muses, and learnt to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to say. As it is, its career was cut short in mid-course. It carried about with it that melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has come to be so characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a trace exists in ancient times, and this feeling would always have made it different from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts us in the Greeks; but even that downcast brooding heart was capable ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... is a sailor, and, as such, must know perfectly well what respect is due to a captain; and I cannot think he was ever allowed to behave to his former captain as he just now behaved to you. I have a presentiment that he means mischief of some kind. And see, too, what influence he appears to possess over the rest of ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... keenly determined that they would not die before they had satisfied their ambitions. In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes, notwithstanding their advanced age. Felicite professed to feel a presentiment that she would die rich. However, each day of poverty weighed them down the more. When they recapitulated their vain attempts—when they recalled their thirty years' struggle, and the defection of their children—when they saw their airy castles end in this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the connection being known to those who find in them matter of astonishment. Presentiments furnish marked cases: sometimes there is no mystery to those who have the clue. In the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. 80, part 2, p. 33) we read, the subject being presentiment of death, as follows: "In 1778, to come nearer the recollection of {51} survivors, at the taking of Pondicherry, Captain John Fletcher, Captain De Morgan, and Lieutenant Bosanquet, each distinctly foretold his ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... sufficient genius came the golden maxim, "Think of living." Strong men love life. The system, so cheery and severe, seems to them worthy to be continued yonder and without end. This day leading a better, itself good not leading alone,—this presentiment,—this solid increment of hard-won power,—of what other stuff should our eternity be woven? In wisdom first appears the present tense, an hour which is not mere transition, but something for itself. There are men who live—to live. He who finds our destiny given beforehand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... wrote some lines in which he seemed to have a kind of presentiment of the glory that awaited him, and, at any rate, in which he displayed his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in the gambling duel of the two men he watches. As he forces his way in, Charlie, dashing a last handful of gold upon the red, turns his ferocious eyes on Hardin. The lawyer calmly waits the turn of the arrow. Some quick presentiment reaches the mind of the woman. Her nerves are shaken with the strain of long repression. The arrow trembles on the line in stopping. The queen's eyes, for the first time, catch the burning glances of Philip Hardin. "French Charlie," with an oath, grasps the hand of the woman. She is raking ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... d'Aigleroche, doubtless alleging as his reason that he was going in pursuit of the runaway couple, left his house after boarding up the entrance. He went away, leaving all the rooms as they were and removing only the firearms from their glass case. At the last minute, he had a presentiment, which has been justified to-day, that the discovery of the telescope which had played so great a part in the preparation of his crime might serve as a clue to an enquiry; and he threw it into ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... her trance: she kept her eyes on the door—she stretched out her hand, with the rapidity of flight and terror, to Captain Walladmor—and said, but with the stifled whisper of one in agony: "Oh!—come—come—come— come—come!" He rose, and for one moment paused. A presentiment was at his heart that it were better he should go. Yet he had not the resolution to refuse that hand which was stretched out to save him, nor voluntarily to forego the sweet—sweet feeling that he was protected by Miss Walladmor. In such torments of farewell anguish, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... felt instinctively that the boundless resources of that prolific region of sand and pine shrubbery would never be fully developed without a railroad constructed and equipped at the expense of the Government, and perhaps not then. (Laughter.) I had an abiding presentiment that, some day or other, the people of this whole country, irrespective of party affiliations, regardless of sectional prejudices, and "without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," would rise in their majesty, and demand an outlet ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... stated that the monks themselves, when out upon search for travellers, have frequently owed their preservation to their dogs, in a manner which would seem to show that the dogs are endued with a presentiment ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the attempt. A Spaniard was discovered, arrested, and quartered at Antwerp; a rich trader called Hans Jansen was put to death at Flushing. Many offered their services to Prince Alexander Farnese and were encouraged by gifts of money. The Prince of Orange, who knew all this, felt a vague presentiment of his approaching death, and spoke of it to his intimate friends, but he refused to take any precautions to protect his life, and replied to all who gave him such counsel, "It is useless: God has numbered my years. Let it be according to His will. If there is any wretch who does not fear ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... seemed to him the most mythical of myths. His child-like self-confidence was pathetic. The laws that govern human affairs had little interest for the man who was always a law unto himself. Yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy: whoever lives for ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... terror seized upon old Hayes's soul: a horrible icy fear, and presentiment of coming evil; and yet the woman had but looked at him. He thought rapidly over the occurrences of the last night, the quarrel, and the end of it. He had often struck her before when angry, and heaped all ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I'd rather write my own way,' remarked Sarah, as she rose from the window-seat. When she got to the door, she turned back to say, 'I have a presentiment that she'll accept, and it will be all your fault, remember. Whatever the consequences, they will be ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... courier with news and despatches from Bush; and I was very much disappointed and a little alarmed when I reached Penzhina to find that no one had arrived at that place from Anadyrsk, and that nothing had been heard from our party since the previous spring. I felt a presentiment that something was wrong, because Bush had been expressly directed to send a courier to Gizhiga by the first winter road, and it was now late ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... haunting, vague idea that this sudden love, with its glowing ardor and intoxicating delirium, was like the brilliant red sunset which frequently prognosticates a night of storm, ruin and death. Yet, though he felt this presentiment like a creeping shudder of cold through his blood, it did not hold him back, or for a moment impress him with the idea that it might be better to yield no further to this desperate ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... into his hand a folded note. With an instinctive presentiment of its contents, Elijah turned red and embarrassed in receiving it from the woman who was recognized as his wife. But the impassive, submissive manner of this household drudge, instead of touching his conscience, seemed to him a vulgar and brutal acceptance of the situation that ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... his eyes fixed on De Wardes, and shuddered at the bitter manner in which the young man smiled. Something like a presentiment flashed across his mind; he knew that the time had passed away for grands coups entre gentilshommes; but that the feeling of hatred treasured up in the mind, instead of being diffused abroad, was still hatred all the same; that a smile was sometimes as full of meaning as a threat; ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has no backward ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... unknown. If you have forgotten those terrible kisses, I have never been able to efface them from my memory,—I am dying of them! Yes, each time that I have met you since, their impress is revived. I was shaken from head to foot when I first saw you; the mere presentiment of your coming overcame me. Neither time nor my firm will has enabled me to conquer that imperious sense of pleasure. I asked myself involuntarily, "What must be such joys?" Our mutual looks, the respectful kisses you laid upon my hand, the pressure of my arm on yours, your ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Hartman had a presentiment that the triplets would have something more to say, for he had halted and was ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... courage with which she had saved his life, almost at the cost of her own. He thought, too, of that scene when on the following day he had entered the room where she was asleep, when the wandering ray of light had wavered from her breast to his own, when that strange presentiment of the ultimate intermingling of their lives had flashed upon him, and when she had awakened with an unearthly greeting on her lips. While Effie slowly sobbed herself to silence in the corner opposite to him, one by one, he recalled ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Aino who recounts one of his stories does so under the impression that he is narrating an actual event. He does not "make believe" like the European nurse, even like the European child, who has always, in some nook or corner of his mind, a presentiment of the scepticism ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... elation as for a personal good. It seemed as if this image symbolized for him his tragic fate, his noble origin, his early orphanhood, his poverty, his cares, the injustice of men, his solitary state in the world, and perhaps too some presentiment of his future sufferings. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner |
