"Witching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cathedral of Notre Dame awoke him, and, starting from his reverie and listening, he counted the hours to the full score of midnight. Struck, then, by the weird aspect of the scene and singular silence, a vague sense of horror stole through him, and he exclaimed hoarsely: "This is the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and spirits walk abroad!" and scarcely had the words escaped his lips when a wild tumult rose near him, and he perceived a bacchanalian and disorderly troop of both sexes sallying into the moonlight; wherein ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... with its witching gayeties, and, though the young Christian was never tempted to join the giddy multitude in their unlawful pastimes, yet his views were more lax than ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... ceased to tinkle the herd to rest; they have all paced across the heath. Is not this the witching time of night? The waters murmur, and fall with more than mortal music, and spirits of peace walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments. Worldly cares melt into the airy stuff that dreams are made of, and reveries, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... heart than that of the humbled Pharisee beat there beneath the bosoms of happy maidens even though their feet were rising and falling in time to witching melodies. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Silvery light Luna peeps the clouds between, And 'spite of dark disastrous night The radiant sun is also seen When the wavelets murmuring flow When oak and ivy clinging grow, Then, O then, in that witching hour Let us ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... rays of a half moon high in the heavens came with the tenderest touch and the most gracious softness upon all earthly things. There was a vapourous glitter on the water of the broad river, a dewy or hazy veil on the land; the scene could not be imagined more witching fair or more removed from any sort of discordance. Esther stood looking, and her heart calmed down. She had been feeling distressed under the question of ways and means; now it occurred to her, 'Take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; your Father ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... see. There was a witching mingling of the frank, the childlike, and the womanly, in her troubled face; frankness that would not deny the truth that her monitor seemed to have read, a childlike simplicity of shame that he should have divined it, and a womanly self-respect that owned it had ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... promised myself a whole night with you, and I'm not going to be chased away, just at the witching hour," Tavia insisted. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... At that "witching hour," if any of the Corner House girls had been awake and had looked out of the window, they would have seen that the snowman was then buried to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... trouvez-vous ca? I am also in a conspiracy with the American editor, a French restaurant-man, and an Italian fisherman against the Padre. The enclosed poster is my last literary appearance. It was put up to the number of 200 exemplaires at the witching hour; and they were almost all destroyed by eight in the morning. But I think the nickname will stick. Dos Reales; deux reaux; two bits; twenty-five cents; about a shilling; but in practice it is worth from ninepence to threepence: thus two glasses of beer would cost two bits. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still mirroring her image in my memory, forgetful of all else,—the broad white brow, the long dark lashes resting in such delicate tracery against the smooth velvet of the cheek now slightly flushed, the witching pink of the ear, the softly parted lips between which gleamed the small and regular teeth of ivory, the round white throat swelling ever so slightly to her breathing,—when a sudden shout of surprised recognition ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... A cat-bird first, with witching low song, eying me closely with that calm, dark eye of his, the while he poured it out ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the witching skies, And with a jocund train, With dancing joy-light in His eyes, God, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... wondering eye, Take to itself a female form, And hover toward me from on high, As fall the leaves in Autumn storm. Her dress was like the mantle fair Which Autumn to Columbia brings, And bids the moaning forest wear, With rainbow hues of angel's wings; Her voice was like the witching strain Which laughing streamlets gayly sing When Summer o'er the ripening grain Spreads wide ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... of his own dress, the echo of his own footfall, the wavering of his own shadow, afraid of his own thoughts, would breathe the suppressed invocation, "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" as the idea crept curdling over his brain and through his veins, "It is the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... himself the doom of that footman, and the doom also of that saddle-horse. They at any rate should go. And then he would spend no more money in trips to Scotland; and above all, he would keep out of the bedrooms of impoverished members of Parliament at the witching hour of midnight. Such resolves did he make to himself as he drove home; and bethought himself wearily how that L400 might be made to be forthcoming. As to any assistance in the matter from Sowerby,—of that he gave himself no promise. But he ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... have a plot. In "Travels with a Donkey," by Stevenson, no one cares for the plot of the whole book,—in fact there is none; yet the reader is interested in the purchase of the "neat and high bred" Modestine up to the "last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy." This incident has a plot. The following is a paragraph from "An Autumn Effect" by Mr. Stevenson. The simple events are perfectly ordered, and there is a delightful surprise at the end. This paragraph has a plot. Yet the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... pearl, in a gold setting shaped like a diminutive human hand; his watch-chain was of gold, wrought in a wonderful and extravagant design. As he stepped through the swinging, glazed doors of the Bank, and stood on the broad step without, at the witching hour of twelve, he twirled his small black moustache so as to display to advantage the sparkling diamond ring which encircled the little finger of his left hand. His Semitic features wore an expression of great self-satisfaction, and his knowing air betokened intimate knowledge ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... fascinating ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... describe her. Beauty is the same In Anno Domini as erst B.C.; The type is still that witching One who came, Between the furrows, from the bitter sea; 'Tis but to shift accessories and frame, And this our heroine in a trice would be, Save that she wore a peplum and a chiton, Like any modern on the beach ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... thunder, and with blinding lightning flung In jagged javelins of purple wrath From splitting skies; sometimes with wiles and words Fair-sounding, 'mid hushed leaves and softened airs From shapes of witching beauty; wanton songs, Whispers of love; sometimes with royal allures Of proffered rule; sometimes with mocking doubts, Making truth vain. But whether these befell Without and visible, or whether Buddh Strove ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Was that witching light already fading in her sky? Was the storm even now muttering, that would rudely toss aside the rose leaves that garlanded the feet of her beloved? In the midst of her eloquent prologue would darkness smite suddenly, and end the drama? Life had poured its richest ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... with Joe Marion, his pal, by his side, his brow was wrinkled in thought. He was reviewing the events of the previous night. At 1:00 a.m., the witching hour when the crooked ones, the mean ones, come creeping forth like ghosts to carry on doubtful conversations by radio, a strange thing had happened. A message had gone crashing out through space. Wave lengths 1200 meters long sped it on its way. There ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Bertha perused that letter, or if we may draw an inference from her wearing it about her person (probably that she might be able to refresh her memory with its information concerning her cousin), the epistle was either very difficult of comprehension, or it had some witching spell which drew her eyes irresistibly to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... that she had not meant to rise at the witching hour of three A. M. Her intention had been to set the alarm for half-past five and her mistake was due to the fact that she had not set an alarm ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... out of the gate before Congdon broke forth in open praise of her. "When Mart dies, what a witching morsel ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... say it? She was never a woman—she was a girl— far, far transcendent. It was the first time I had ever seen her— standing there before the door. I had never beheld such beauty, such profile, poise—the witching, laughing, night-black of her eyes; the perfectly bridged nose and the red, red lips that smiled, it seemed to me, in sadness. She hesitated, and as if puzzled, lifted a jewelled hand to her raven ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... turned away To gaze upon a poet's home; 'Twas near the close of that bright day, And golden sunlight on it shone; Perfume of flowers, and birds' songs low A witching ...
— Within the Golden Gate - A Souvenir of San Fransisco Bay • Laura Young Pinney
... tea-tent, through the throng of clergymen and parasols and tanned men with field-glasses, and young bloods and pretty girls, she noted uneasily that his eyes wandered from her to these types of English beauty, these flower-faces under witching hats. Indeed, he had led her out of the way to plough past a row of open carriages. "The shortest cut," he said, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... were held, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at the dead of night. Notices were sent to obnoxious persons warning them to stop certain practices. If warning failed, something more convincing was tried. Fright was the emotion most commonly stirred. A horseman, at the witching hour of midnight, would ride up to the house of some offender, lift his head gear, take off a skull, and hand it to the trembling victim with the request that he hold it for a few minutes. Frequently violence was employed either officially or unofficially by members of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... saddle, looking. Chapuli tossed his head and in the act caught a glimpse of the other horse—then they both stood rigid, gazing in astonishment at the living statue against the sky. At sight of that witching figure, beckoning him from the mountain top, Hardy's heart leaped within him and stopped. Once more the little hand was thrown out against the sky and a merry voice floated down to him ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... shimmers like a bridal veil adorning a wood nymph. It lays its gentle touch on the waterfall, transforming it into a torrent of molten silver, and causing each drop to glisten like topaz under its witching light. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held: Who was it did all this for me? O, who, but ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow |
