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More "Ill-omened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before the tall chief, whose ill-omened appearance and conduct we have noted, again darted out into the opening; when, with a quick, wild glance around him, and a yell of fiendish triumph, he rapidly whirled his arm aloft, and, the next instant, the glittering tomahawk was seen, like a shooting gleam of light, swiftly speeding its way ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of a huge oak, he invited her to lie down and rest. She was about to accede to his invitation, when they were startled by a shrill and discordant sound accompanied with a heavy flapping of wings, and presently a flight of dull ill-omened ravens issued from their solitary abodes, and hovered about, as if to dispute the possession of their ancient ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... pale-faced young man, stared at us all in amazement He shrugged his shoulders; he smiled, and positively could not conceive what had happened to us, and why we were in such a state of excitement. He himself did not see an insect at all, did not hear the ill-omened whirr ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... of instruction, the doctor, and M. Plantat exchanged a significant look. What misfortune had befallen M. Courtois, this worthy, and despite his faults, excellent person? Decidedly, this was an ill-omened day! ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... voyage had ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission now without one particle of vanity. In matters of this sort there is always one who gives and another who accepts. From the first day of our ill-omened attachment, I was conscious that Agnes's passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and—if I may use the expression—a purer sentiment than mine. Whether she recognized the fact then, I do not know. Afterward it was bitterly plain to ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... you not hold that comitia? Was it because a tribune of the people announced that there had been an ill-omened flash of lightning seen? When you have any interest of your own to serve, then auspices are all nothing; but when it is only your friends who are concerned, then you become scrupulous. What more? Did you not also desert him in the ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death while in the performance of the bullet-catching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties chargeable to that ill-omened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... bounteous hand, and furnished with full stores, so that all may be well with her as she enters on her new duties. So is it that England should send forth her daughters. They should not escape from her arms with shrill screams and bleeding wounds, with ill-omened words which live so long, though the speakers of them ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and, turning back, consider who could have found his interest in such a deed. Against whom did the dead man urge him to be on guard lest Martin's papers should be spirited away? Was there some other claimant of that ill-omened peerage of whom he knew nothing, or was it—And Westray resolutely quenched the thought that had risen a hundred times before his mind, and cast it aside as a malign ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the merchant, during which time he contrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he had arrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of persons of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed to have become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; his calculations rapid and profound. He ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... me, from the beginning, devoting all my efforts for the reorganization of the country, and desirous of giving you a good administration and justice for all. But ill-omened events occurred to destroy our common labors. In fact, certain souls, blinded by passion, have misunderstood the scope of our reforms and have not given credit to a Government just born. On the other hand, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the multitudo imperitorum confused the dies religiosi and dies nefasti. The distinction is most clearly seen in the fact that on dies religiosi the temples were (or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was ill-omened (Gell., ib.), while on dies nefasti the latter was regular, such days being made over to the gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular ignorance with such words as ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... from a social gathering, reported that they had seen a bright, uncanny light in the sky, like a fire, or some said like a golden hand, at midnight over the ill-omened mountain. ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... near, we both happened to be working in the yard. She was delving to plant potatoes, and I told her it would do her hurt; but she was eager to provide something, as she said, for what might happen. Oh! it was an ill-omened word. The same night her trouble came on, and before the morning she was a cauld corpse, and another wee wee fatherless baby was greeting at my bosom—it was him that's noo awa' in America. He grew ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... accomplish the ruin, to prolong the life or hasten the death, of the objects of private love or hatred. While systematically practising upon the credulity of his dupes, the professed master of this ill-omened art frequently resorted to assassination by poison or dagger in the accomplishment of his schemes. Sorcery by means of waxen images was particularly in vogue. Thus, the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, in her ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... gradually evaporated until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grce to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Ledge. It had folded over like the leaves of a half-opened book when they close, crushing the trees below, piling its ruins in a glacis at the foot of what had been the overhanging wall of the cliff, and filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man's Hollow. This it was which had saved the Dudley mansion. The falling masses, or huge fragments breaking off from them, would have swept the house and all around it to destruction but for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of ruin was happily directed. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speaking upon the great question of the proper relations of Christianity and science, Mr. Draper says: "In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened day is that in which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen, at that time (A. D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in the church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria and retire to Caesarea. In vain through ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... the heat to which they had been subject. In an instant all hands were in the water swimming about round and round the vessel. The boat was in the water on the starboard side. Murray, intending to bathe afterwards, was alone on deck. Suddenly he saw the ill-omened fin of a shark rising above the water at no great distance off, and then his snout appeared, and his wicked eyes were visible surveying the scene of action. Murray shouted to Adair and the rest of the people to come on board. No one lost an instant in attempting to obey the order. Wasser ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... three times, but in a language was not understood. At last an answer was given from the canoe. What it was I could not tell. It seemed to satisfy them. To my great joy they once more let draw their foresail, and stood away from us. This was not the last time we were to see that ill-omened craft. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to enjoy an hour's sleep upon your bed. I hated mine; so that I had never, except in a stealthy visit every day to unmake it, lest Martha should discover the secret of my nightly absence, entered the ill-omened chamber. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... she had curled herself up and gone to sleep, saw the rug upon which Sorez had reclined, saw the very spot where she had sat with the image in her lap, saw where she had stood as she had thrust the revolver into his hand and sent him on his ill-omened errand. But all these things only emphasized her absence. It was as though he were looking upon the scene of events of a year past. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Frontier Boys went silently along down the dark canyon, each one occupied with his own thoughts and the ill-omened Mexican guide in the lead. Juarez kept a sharp lookout on either side of the trail expecting an ambush. His horse seemed to feel something of the strain his rider was under, as a horse will. Once he shied at something he saw in a clump of bushes, and nearly went off the trail. It was only ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... story of the Sarayashiki with its cruel fate of the unhappy Kikujo[u], the Lady of the Plates. Long had the distressed figure of the wretched girl ceased its wailing over the never completed tale of the porcelain plates. But the memory of her misfortunes, of the ill-omened well of the Yoshida Goten has remained for centuries in the mind, and thought, and speech of Nippon. Up to the early years of Meiji the Ko[u]jimachi-ido still existed, to be pointed out to the superstitious ever present in this land. The ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... no immediate reply, but was studying the ill-omened grove with his glass. After a moment he said, "I do not think there will be any further pursuit. The enemy are retiring from the grove. My explanation of their conduct is this: There is some large decisive movement in progress, and we were merely brushed out of the way that we might learn nothing ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... galloped for it in blind terror. He was in the mood in which men compose poetry, for he felt himself a midget in the grip of immensities. He knew no poetry, save a few tavern songs; but in his youth he had had the Scriptures drubbed into him. He remembered ill-omened texts—one especially about wandering through dry places seeking rest. Would to Heaven he were ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... may be sure was the spirit of many another reply to these ill-omened invitations. It would have been well if, on these occasions, the pride he boasted of had stood him in better stead, and repelled such unjustifiable intrusions. But in this, as in so many other respects, Burns was the most inconsistent ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... no time and no necessity for any one to do anything. The situation itself vanished in the financial crash as a building vanishes in an earthquake—here one moment and gone the next with only an ill-omened, slight, preliminary rumble. Well, to say 'in a moment' is an exaggeration perhaps; but that everything was over in just twenty-four hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... you ill-omened beast," I said, "instead of croaking of death like a crow. And listen: I am going to walk forward to that camp; you must follow with the wagons as fast ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... expression like a mask, and he seemed ill at ease. He had been contending all the morning with Narcissa's freakishness, which he thought intensified by the presence of the valley man, who was returning the civility of that ill-omened visit, and who, by reason of the abnormal excitements of the day, had been received with scant formality, and was already upon the footing of a familiar friend. Selwyn stood smilingly in the way hard by, speaking ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... crouching position, and supporting herself with a stick, staggered off into the open space. It was an extraordinary sight to see this frightful vulture-headed old creature, bent nearly double with extreme age, gather strength by degrees, until at last she rushed about almost as actively as her ill-omened pupils. To and fro she ran, chanting to herself, till suddenly she made a dash at a tall man standing in front of one of the regiments, and touched him. As she did this a sort of groan went up from the regiment which evidently he commanded. ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... their left Lydford and its ill-omened castle (which, a century after, was one of the principal scenes of Judge Jeffreys's cruelty), Amyas and his party trudged on through the mire toward Okehampton till sunrise; and ere the vapors had lifted from the mountain tops, they ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... noticed. He had reached the limit of his observations, and no amount of further questioning could elicit anything more from him. This Mr. Gryce soon saw, and giving him into the charge of one of his assistants who was on duty at this place, he proceeded back to the ill-omened house where the ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... while yet a new born thing, Death o'er my cradle waved his darksome wing; My mother died to give me birth: forlorn I came into the world, a babe of woe, Ill-omened from my childhood's early morn; Yet heir to what the idolators of show Deem life's good ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes equivalent to ama polon, which points to both his musical and his heavenly attributes; for there is a 'moving together' alike in music and in the harmony of the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. The Muses are so called—apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget (lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy well-balanced nature, dia to ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... was a glorious morning, though a few ill-omened clouds lingered like a night-cap round Penllwyd. Larks were singing, cuckoos calling, bluebells made the woods seem a reflection of the sky, and the gorse was ablaze on the common. The walk was collar-work at first, up, up, up, climbing a steep track between loose-built, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... which held her chained to the ill-omened spot, and she turned to fly, only to find herself on his breast and his dear voice ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... have travelled far?' he added, his curiosity getting the better of the unfriendly distrust with which the Wirtemberger regards all strangers. 'From the far north,' she answered shortly. 'You have never been in our country before?' he asked; 'well, you have an ill-omened day for your arrival; the storm greeted you!' The lady started. 'Thank you for reminding me,' she said, 'I dislike ill omens.' The man grinned: it delighted his honest soul to have succeeded in annoying a foreigner. 'You will ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... river was broad and deep, and not far below it the water washed over a weir near which was a post bearing a board marked "Danger!" To those who knew the waters and had some skill with their oars there was no peril, but to a crew of drink-filled junketers it was an ill-omened place. The wedding-party was too wild and young and rollicking to observe the sign-board. The men rocked the boat, shouted and sang, the women squealed and laughed and shouted with them; the little bride burst forth weeping, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was given still more distinctly, and with greater definiteness and authority. When he was required, as Pope, to pronounce upon the dissolution of the ill-omened marriage, he related to Borghese and other Cardinals what had passed in that interview between the Legate and the King, adding that, when the report of the massacre reached Rome, the Cardinal exclaimed: "God be praised! the King of France has kept his word." Clement referred ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... genius for drawing second only to that for music, he had exercised it on the walls of the room, originally modelled and tinted to represent a robin's egg. He mixed his colors with the bitter distillations of his heart, and created the beautiful but ill-omened vision which long afterwards ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... dear friends' door, of my hopes the goal, * Whose sight mote assuage my sorrow and woes of soul: No friends found I there, nor was there another thing * To find, save a corby-crow and an ill-omened owl. And the tongue o' the case to me seemed to say, * 'Indeed This parting two lovers fond was cruel and foul! So taste thou the sorrow thou madest them taste and live * In grief: wend thy ways and now in thy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... now sworn, while Mrs. Jocelyn returned to her seat. In the young fellow's frank, honest face the judge found an agreeable contrast with the ill-omened visage of the floor-walker, whose good looks could not hide an ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... man the Trosachs' shaggy glen; Within Loch Katrine's gorge we'll fight, All in our maids' and matrons' sight, Each for his hearth and household fire, Father for child, and son for sire Lover for maid beloved!—But why Is it the breeze affects mine eye? Or dost thou come, ill-omened tear! A messenger of doubt or fear? No! sooner may the Saxon lance Unfix Benledi from his stance, Than doubt or terror can pierce through The unyielding heart of Roderick Dhu! 'tis stubborn as his trusty targe. Each to his post!—all ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... am that soul ill-starred, unblest, That by nature shone in gleaming Robe of white, Of angel's beauty once possessed, Yea, loveliest, Like a ray refulgent streaming Filled with light. 66 And by my ill-omened fate, My atrocious devilries, Sins treasonous, More dead than death is now my state Bowed with this weight That nought can lighten, vanities Most poisonous. 67 I am a sinner obstinate, Perverse, that know no remedy For this my plight, Oppressed by guilt most obdurate, And profligate, Inclined ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Nightingale lane. For a pair of lovers what scene could be more propitious?—But such a pair of lovers! Not a nightingale sang to soothe us: the very gypsies who were encamped there during the fair, made no offer to tell the fortunes of such an ill-omened couple, whose fortunes, I suppose, they thought too legibly written to need an interpreter; and the gypsey children crawled into their cabins and peeped out fearfully at us as we went by. For a moment I paused, and was almost tempted to turn gypsey, but ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... had passed since Sir Wilfred had paid that ill-omened visit to the Grange, and yet some subtle mysterious change had passed over Margaret. It was as though some blighting influence had swept over her; her face was pale, and her eyes were swollen and dim as ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... will the tribesmen of the ill-omened prophet do with them? They cannot hide them on the desert or anywhere on the banks of the Nile, for they all would die of hunger and thirst on the desert, and they certainly would be apprehended on the Nile. Perhaps they will try to join ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in crimson and ermine she came from the cabin and stood swaying on the deck before Egil and his men, while round her train played heedlessly the ill-omened black kitten; ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... think upon the cause— Forget it not: when you lie down to rest, Let it be black among your dreams; and when The morn returns, so let it stand between The sun and you, as an ill-omened cloud, Upon a summer's ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... with generous wines, or with good spirits that had mellowed for years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... vessel, Many months have lain at anchor, I, a war-ship well constructed, Am decaying in the harbor, Never having sailed to conquest; Worms are gnawing at my vitals, In my hull their dwelling-places, And ill-omened birds of heaven Build their nests within my rigging; Frogs and lizards of the forest Play about my oars and rudder; Three times better for this vessel Were he but a valley birch-tree, Or an aspen on the heather, With the squirrels in his branches, And the dogs beneath ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Jews, destroying all they touched. Wandering to and fro among these people was that crazed man Jesus, the son of Annas, who had met them with his wild prophetic cry as they entered into Jerusalem, and whose ill-omened voice Miriam had heard again before Marcus was taken at the fight in the Old Tower. To and fro he went, none hindering him, though many thrust their fingers in their ears and looked aside as he passed, wailing forth: "Woe, woe to Jerusalem! Woe to the city and the ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... to both, as they lay breathless and exhausted, of seeing this bird or one of its relatives rise from below the cliff edge one day as they approached; and, looking down, they saw upon a ledge, where it had fallen, a dead lamb, upon which the great ill-omened bird had been ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... gaze was nailed there. Fatal, ill-omened blighted threshold, cursed by his father's footsteps in his dying hour, cursed by his young wife's sorrowing tread, cursed by the daily shadow of the old clerk's figure, cursed by the crossing of his murderer's feet—what men were standing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... spirits deserted her. She flung herself prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious; there came up again and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary on their force. The pleasure was never realised. You might say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had risen; but now she sat down, her face changed with fear. Danusia hid her face in the folds of the princess' dress. The courtiers, ladies and rybalts, who were on horseback behind the carriage, having heard the ill-omened name, began to surround the carriage. The men tried to laugh, but there was fear in their eyes; the young girls were pale; only Mikolaj of Dlugolas maintained his composure and wishing ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cornfield; bags of powder, boxes of cartridges, great chests of shot and shell showed, half submerged in a tortuous creek. At the edge of the field, there was a cannon spiked and overturned. Here, too, were dead horses, and here, too, were the black, ill-omened birds. There was a trench as well, a long trench just filled, with two or three little head boards bearing some legend. "Holy Virgin!" said the courier, "if I was a horse, a child, or a woman, I'd hate ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... step, in fact, were abandoned weapons, sabers, bayonets, and, more particularly, chassepots; and so numerous were they that they seemed to have sprouted from the earth, a harvest that had matured in a single ill-omened day. Porringers and buckets, also, were scattered along the roads, together with the heterogeneous contents of knapsacks, rice, brushes, clothing, cartridges. The fields everywhere presented an uniform scene of devastation: ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... under simple yet severe conditions, fitted to bring out the real force of a man. After half an hour's talk you part as if you were parting with an old friend, yet knowing that the same roof is not likely ever to cover both of you again. There are, of course, rough and ill-omened explorers and settlers in South Africa, as in other new countries: but having wandered a good deal, in different countries, on the outer edge of civilization, I was struck by the large proportion of well-mannered and well-educated ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... tale, stranger, if this token had not confirmed thy speech:—verily thou hast a better witness than a fool's tongue to thy story. That ill-omened losel may depart. See thou fall not hastily into the like offence, else shalt thou smart from Childermas to All-hallowtide. Hence! to thy place." Barnulf awaited not further dismissal, glad to escape the scrutiny of Nicholas ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that ill-omened day, a few moments after Frantz had stealthily left his room on Rue de Braque, the illustrious Delobelle returned home, with downcast face and that air of lassitude and disillusionment with which he always ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Llewellen, of New Mexico, a good citizen, a political leader, and one of the most noted peace-officers of the country; he had been shot four times in pitched fights with red marauders and white outlaws. There was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up the Black Jack gang of ill-omened notoriety, and his Captain, Curry, another New Mexican sheriff of fame. The officers from the Indian Territory had almost all served as marshals and deputy-marshals; and in the Indian Territory, service as a deputy-marshal meant capacity to fight stand-up ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... after fervently deprecating a general resignation, an ill-omened purpose of this very course actually flitted across the mind of the young under-secretary himself. A scheme was on the anvil for the education of the blacks in the West Indies, and a sudden apprehension startled Mr. Gladstone, that his chief might devote ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Government was told by the lord-lieutenant, that the exhausted state of the public revenues rendered it impracticable to embody a militia, whence the people were given to understand that they might take measures to protect themselves. This was an ill-omened step for ministers to take, when the people of Ireland were everywhere displaying the feelings of rebellion. By it the serpent's teeth were sown, and they sprang up armed men. The Irish obeyed the call with alacrity. Volunteers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was nervously conscious, meanwhile, of a more ill-omened occurrence. This was the non-arrival of several of her oldest pupils, notably, the refractory and incorrigible Pike County contingent to whom Sperry had alluded. For the past few days they had hovered on the verge of active insubordination, and had indulged in vague mutterings which she had resolutely ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the land, and the whole of the main road over which I had passed from Sui-fu to Tong-ch'uan-fu (a distance of over four hundred miles) was blocked by infuriated mobs, who were out to kill,—their motto the famous ill-omened Boxer motto of 1900: "Exalt the dynasty; destroy ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... jackasses cackled after him in derision from a grove of young timber; a magpie, the joy of the morning, and most mirthful of birds, whistled for him sweet notes of hope and good cheer; then a number of carrion crows beheld him, and approached with their long-drawn, ill-omened "croank, croank," the most dismal note ever uttered by any living thing. They murder sick sheep, and pick out the eyes of stray lambs. They made short straggling flights, alighting on the ground in front of the miserable man, inspecting his condition, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... thou hast so often cursed. Look at that pale emaciated form, a figure of wax, rather than flesh and blood—that is thy mother—that is the unhappy Zilia Moncada, to whom thy birth was the source of shame and misery, and to whom thy ill-omened presence has now brought death itself. And behold me"—he pushed the lad from him, and stood up erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit he described—"Behold me," he said; "see you not my hair streaming with sulphur, my brow scathed ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... opposition proposed a resolution directly censuring the treaties, he spoke with an eloquence, energy, and dignity which raised his fame and popularity higher than ever. To the coalition of Fox and North he alluded in language which drew forth tumultuous applause from his followers. "If," he said, "this ill-omened and unnatural marriage be not yet consummated, I know of a just and lawful impediment; and, in the name of the public ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a long time, lost in a maze of thought, and then, in the twilight, roused the rapt child from his visions, and they started for their home. But villainous faces had hovered on the outskirts of the village green, and ill-omened eyes had marked the beauty of Ninon and the spiritual face of her brother. At that time there was in France a terrible monster, known as Giles de Laval, whose emissaries were ever on the alert for such victims. It was this cruel man who suggested to Perrault his world-renowned story of Barbe-bleu, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... following the ill-omened banquet in Park Lane was held a second dinner party, in Cadogan Gardens. Like veritable ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... chose to come to her swathed in mourning bands, none the less kindly and thankfully must it be welcomed. And as she reclined against him she breathed a sigh of thanks that not he, but Bingham, had been concerned in the laying of her ill-omened corner-stone. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... ill-omened man Flitch had sidled round by the bushes to within a few feet of him. Flitch primarily defended himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him to account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; but he admitted that he had taken "something short" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eunuch. "Why, many wait three years and many go to the grave still waiting; bigger men than you, Egyptian, though I hear you do claim to be of royal blood yonder on the Nile. But talk not of arrows flying towards the most High, for surely it is ill-omened and might earn you another honour, that of the string," and he made a motion suggestive of a cord encircling his throat. "Man, leave your bow behind! Would you appear before the King armed? ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... was! Zounds! I almost acquired a relish for benevolence. They caught me round the neck like madmen. The very girls seemed in love with my black visage, that's as ill-omened as the moon in an eclipse. Gold, thought I, is omnipotent: it makes even a Moor ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hadst thou left the ill-omened son that thy womb conceived, to die thus in youth, honoured and lamented, than to live to manhood, wrestling against an evil ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... war, and at whose monstrous deeds and doctrines the civilized nations of the earth stand aghast, started into definite being less than thirty years ago. I can almost lay my finger upon the date and circumstances of its ill-omened advent. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... on that river, and his memorable repulse before Vienna had been ever held as a warning, that the Ottoman arms were destined never to prevail against the ramparts of the Kizil-Alma. These considerations, however, had little weight with Kara-Mustapha; bridges, hastily thrown over the ill-omened stream, afforded a passage to the army, (July 8,) and the march was again directed without stop or stay on Vienna. A body of Hungarians in the pay of the emperor, under Budiani, passed over to the ranks of their insurgent countrymen on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and claim his Mushhirah, or monthly pay; not a cateran came near us but affected to hold himself dishonoured if not provided at once with the regular salary. 'Brahim was wholly beardless, and our Egyptians quoted their proverb, Sabh el-Kurd, wa l Sabn el-'Ajrd—"Better (see ill-omened) monkeys in the morning than the beardless man." As the corruption of the best turns to the worst, so the Bedawi, a noble race in its own wilds, becomes thoroughly degraded by contact with civilization. I remember a certain chief of the Wuld Ali tribe, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... she loved me, could she join with the marchesa against me? Was I not induced by my love for her to pay her aunt's debts? Answer me that, my father. Why did she insist upon this ill-omened marriage?—a proceeding ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Circumstances, however, unfavourable to this idea, arose, and I turned from one conjecture to another, until I reposed, at length, in the belief that they were sinners—sinners of the deepest dye—such as their ill-omened looks betrayed—and that they sought the kind and ever-ready minister to obtain his counsel, and to share his prayers. At all events, this was a subject upon which I received no enlightening from their confidant. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... me. It may be another ignis fatuus, such as the others I have pursued, for I have been chasing rainbows now for three years, and I suppose I shall go on chasing them; but as long as there is a chance left, I can't quit—I can't. And something tells me that I have left that ill-omened thing behind at last, and I am ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick blossom of the ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... night, to drift together again presently. He tried to tell me of some things she had asked him to do should she not get over this, but what they were I know not, for they engulfed him at the first step. He would draw back from them as ill-omened things, and next moment he was going over them to himself like a child at lessons. A child! In that short year she had made him entirely dependent on her. It is ever thus with women: their first deliberate act is to make their husband helpless. There are few men happily married ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... said Issachar, "where the accursed woman would have offered sacrifice, and the priests struck me down because I prophesied to them of the wrath to come, and that is now at hand. An ill-omened spot, indeed, and an ill-omened tryst with the fiends for witnesses. Well, lead on, and I pray you to be brief as may be, for this place weighs down my soul, and I feel danger in it—danger to the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... down in the world, decayed, undone; on the road to ruin, on its last legs, on the wane; in one's utmost need. planet-struck, devoted; born under an evil star, born with a wooden ladle in one's mouth; ill-fated, ill-starred, ill-omened. adverse, untoward; disastrous, calamitous, ruinous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... fashion to count our foes?" and their rashness prevailed. Arthur marched to besiege the town of Mirabeau, where there resided one whom he should never have attacked—his aged grandmother; but Constance had taught him no sentiment toward her but hatred, and with this ill-omened beginning to his chivalry ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... group of ill-omened rocks, as we proceed rapidly under the rocky slopes of the Monte di Chiosse towards Positano, which extends in a long curving line of cheerful-tinted flat-roofed houses from the summit of its protecting cliff ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Corey! Hillo-ho! Giles Corey!— No answer but the echo from the barn, And the ill-omened cawing of the crow, That yonder wings his flight across the fields, As if he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and men yielded to her. She walked along, peering on every side, approaching every shadowy corner where impurity might lurk under cover of the darkness and solitude, where hands were waiting to swoop down upon a shawl. Belated pedestrians saw her by the light of the street lanterns, an ill-omened, shuddering phantom, gliding along, almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with that appearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which sets the thoughtful man's heart and the physician's ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Let no ill-omened word Escape the barrier of your teeth. I heard Men say his temper's in an awful state; Therefore beware lest some untoward fate Befall you; and—I do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... in fact, the five acts of a portentous drama, full of shifting scenes and striking situations, on the issues of which depended the fortunes of France and of Germany; it was played out with ill-omened rapidity in nine days. In regard to the train of causes and consequences that brought France to the tremendous disaster upon which the curtain fell, diverse accounts have been given to the world by the leading actors—by M. de Gramont, by Bismarck, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... look affected Edith very unpleasantly. The mystery about her father seemed to grow darker, and to assume something of an ill-omened character. The name also—Van Diemen's Land—served to heighten her dark apprehensions; and this discovery that she had known even less than she supposed about her father made it seem as though the knowledge that had thus been hidden could not ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... upon the steps. I casually glanced across the tracks to where my pal, Peoria Red, was sleeping his eternal sleep, and I was almost stunned by surprise when instead of the three crosses which I had left behind when in the Spring I drifted to the Southland, I counted five of those ill-omened messengers of death. In vain I tried to solve the riddle of these added graves, and was about to cross over to the grave plot beyond the tracks, hoping to find some inscriptions upon the new crosses that would give me a key to the new tragedies that I knew must ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... that, for adventure and discovery, deserves a high place in the history of maritime enterprise in the Pacific. Voyages take their rank from the scientific attainments and literary ability of the men who record them, and the Pandora, unlucky in her fate as in her ill-omened name, was scarcely less unfortunate ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... ill journey for someone," I said. "I think, sir, for you. Something speaks in my bosom; and so much it says plain—that this is an ill-omened journey." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to loathe and fear, and who she now believed was eager only for her inheritance. She remembered her abject compliance through the greater fear of the world, the stormy scenes that followed their ill-omened union, her final abandonment of her husband, and the efforts of her friends and family who had rescued the last of her property from him. She was glad she remembered it; she dwelt upon it, upon his cruelty, his coarseness and vulgarity, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... of my cousin Rashleigh's villainy I had yet to learn. In the rebellion of 1715, when in an ill-omened hour the standard of the Stuart was set up, to the ruin of many honourable families, Rashleigh, with more than another Jacobite agent, revealed the plot to the Government. My poor uncle, Sir Hildebrand, was easily persuaded to join the standard of the Stuarts, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... deceit and treachery. Full on his cusp his angry master sate, Conjoined with Saturn, baleful both to man: Of secret slaughters, empires overturned, Strife, blood, and massacres, expect to hear, And all the events of an ill-omened year. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... past, sister,' said Fergus; 'and you may wish Edward Waverley (no longer captain) joy of being freed from the slavery to an usurper, implied in that sable and ill-omened emblem.' ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Such was the ill-omened opening to a wedded life which brought nothing but unhappiness with it and which gave to the world some of the most degenerate women (in addition to a son who was almost an idiot) who have ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... deacon, age, disease, and distress of mind, had brought him to his last hours. The passions which had so engrossed him when in health, now turned upon his nature, and preyed upon his vitals, like an ill-omened bird. It is more than probable that he would have lived some months, possibly some years longer, had not the evil spirit of covetousness conspired to heighten the malady that wasted his physical frame. As it was, the sands of life were ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cosmical bodies. In our own day, however, the public mind has taken another and more cheerful, although singular, turn with regard to comets; and in the German vineyards in the beautiful valleys of the Rhine and Moselle, a belief has arisen, ascribing to these once ill-omened bodies a beneficial influence on the ripening of the vine. The evidence yielded by experience, of which there is no lack in these days, when comets may so frequently be observed, has not been able to shake the common belief in the meteorological ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... lovely girl, in the first sweet flush of her pure and innocent womanhood, the daughter of the unknown and mysterious being whose ill-omened name caused a shudder if it was only whispered in the homes of the rich and powerful; the name with which the death-sentences of the Terrorists were invariably signed, and which had come to be an infallible guarantee that they would be carried out ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much toward the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers (round), one of which, according to Nibby, still remained fifty years ago, which very little of Nicholas' building has done. His great sin was one which he shared with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... in Wall Street, and I presume the wretch paid her some compliment or other while he was buying her apples, for he appeared very much pleased after he came home, and he hasn't bestowed a compliment on me since the month after we were married. Ah, fated word! Ah, Percy, Percy!—on that ill-omened day, what caused you to linger? We might even then have retraced our steps, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... christening had for godfather neither prince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, on whose inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and tallow stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers that passed that way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designated by the snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the place where the wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were but common humanity, traders and adventurers, later gold-seekers and pot politicians, ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... directly censuring the treaties, he spoke with an eloquence, energy, and dignity which raised his fame and popularity higher than ever. To the coalition of Fox and North he alluded in language which drew forth tumultuous applause from his followers. "If," he said, "this ill-omened and unnatural marriage be not yet consummated, I know of a just and lawful impediment; and, in the name of the public weal, I ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Boys went silently along down the dark canyon, each one occupied with his own thoughts and the ill-omened Mexican guide in the lead. Juarez kept a sharp lookout on either side of the trail expecting an ambush. His horse seemed to feel something of the strain his rider was under, as a horse will. Once he shied at something he saw ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... Katrine's gorge we'll fight, All in our maids' and matrons' sight, Each for his hearth and household fire, Father for child, and son for sire Lover for maid beloved!—But why Is it the breeze affects mine eye? Or dost thou come, ill-omened tear! A messenger of doubt or fear? No! sooner may the Saxon lance Unfix Benledi from his stance, Than doubt or terror can pierce through The unyielding heart of Roderick Dhu! 'tis stubborn as his trusty targe. Each to his post!—all ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... pale lady from a foreign land has died in the night, and the blind man who is lying in his daughter's arms has but one consolation, that of knowing that he shall soon follow her to her endless rest. And the ill-omened birds scream out to the winds that the old Slavonic curse has fallen on the castle, and the doom has lighted on ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... It was a kind of picture and the meaning of it was Sudden Death—oh Lord! Sudden Death. Tell me it was a fancy bred of that ill-omened ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... suffer the opportunity to lapse, allow the occasion to pass, allow the occasion to slip by; waste time &c. (be inactive) 683; let slip through the fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of their empire. The Emperor determined that it should adorn the dome of the invalids, at Paris. During the work it was remarked that a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed, that "it seemed as if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it is well known that he was accessible to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... smoke. Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog. But, one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace protected the first steps of my escape, and led me ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that the thing was still living and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the girl, laughing, "she must be stupid indeed. To drive away any one dear to her. And moreover, into an ill-omened wood. The forest and its mysteries might have waited long ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... that lay between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of midnight sounded from ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the first who taught This lesson of observant thought, That equal fates alone may dress The bowers of nuptial happiness; That never, where ancestral pride Inflames, or affluence rolls its tide, Should love's ill-omened bonds entwine The offspring of an ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... roar of enthusiasm echoed through the marble throne room, and Nelson would have felt wholly at ease had not that little knot of priests remained gathered like ill-omened carrion crows about the door. Muttering among themselves, they were watching him with a curious intentness that aroused deep misgivings in the American's mind, and it was with something like a sigh that he joined the procession forming to proceed to the triumphal ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living creatures visible "like foul lemures flitting ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... if there was some fatality at work to prevent the attainment of Mrs. Elmslie's great object in life. Hardly was one obstacle to the ill-omened marriage removed by my father's death before another succeeded it in the shape of anxieties and difficulties caused by the delicate state of Ada's health. Doctors were consulted in all directions, and the result of their advice was that the marriage ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... nevermore. He next invented a pretext for the frequent but varying use of nevermore. This word could not be spoken in the right tone by a human being; it must come from an unreasoning creature, hence the introduction of the raven, an ill-omened bird, in harmony with the main tone of the poem. He then considered what was the most melancholy subject of mankind, and found it was death, and that that melancholy theme was most poetical when allied to beauty. Hence the death of a beautiful woman was unquestionably the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... look, a score, A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood, They boiled into the lucid air Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair! And more, and more, and ever more, The numberless, ill-omened brood Flapping their ragged plumes, Possessed the landscape and the evening light With menaces and glooms. Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o'er the place Where once I saw the little house so white Amid the flowers, covering every trace Of beauty ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... on the top of that famous mountain with two thousand men, hoping to render himself as celebrated there as Lautaro had been formerly, by gaining an important victory over the Spaniards. Not dismayed by the misfortunes which had befallen his countrymen in that ill-omened place, the governor put himself at the head of a thousand Spaniards and a large auxiliary force of Indians, and marched without delay for Mariguenu, determined upon dislodging the Araucanians or of besieging them in their post. Having disposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... boxes of cartridges, great chests of shot and shell showed, half submerged in a tortuous creek. At the edge of the field, there was a cannon spiked and overturned. Here, too, were dead horses, and here, too, were the black, ill-omened birds. There was a trench as well, a long trench just filled, with two or three little head boards bearing some legend. "Holy Virgin!" said the courier, "if I was a horse, a child, or a woman, I'd hate ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... said Egerton, starting back at that ill-omened sound; "we shall ne'er be rid o' this pestilence!" He attempted to spring aside from the object of his abhorrence; but in a moment his horse was holden by the bridle with almost more than human strength; and the malicious creature set up an exulting and triumphant ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... shaking, quaking limbs aloft; Braved falling stones, cut steps on ice-slopes steep, That I the glory of his deeds might reap. My porter, who with uncomplaining back O'er passes, peaks, and glaciers bears my pack: Tho' now the good man looks a trifle sadder, When I suggest the ill-omened name of "ladder." O'er many a pipe our heads we put together; Our first enquiry is of course "the weather." With buoyant hearts the star-lit heaven we view; Then our next point is "What are we to 'do'?" My pipe I pocket, and with head ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... instruction during the training cruise, like us boys on the lower deck each in our respective billet, gave out that we were in latitude 44 degrees 10 minutes north, and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west, thus showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape Finisterre and now safely out of the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... bring gold and silver; I, alas! a worthy vessel, Many months have lain at anchor, I, a war-ship well constructed, Am decaying in the harbor, Never having sailed to conquest; Worms are gnawing at my vitals, In my hull their dwelling-places, And ill-omened birds of heaven Build their nests within my rigging; Frogs and lizards of the forest Play about my oars and rudder; Three times better for this vessel Were he but a valley birch-tree, Or an aspen on the heather, With the squirrels in his branches, And ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... frank-mannered sailor and "patriot king," William IV; but the hopes crushed by the death of the much-regretted Charlotte had renewed themselves with even better warrant for Victoria. She was the child of no ill-omened, miserable marriage, but of a fitting union; her parents had been sundered only by death, not by wretched domestic dissensions. People heard that the mortal malady which deprived her of a father had been brought about by the Duke of Kent's simple delight in his baby princess, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... having paid the honours of burial to some among the dead, as well as the time and place permitted, the rest of the corpses were left as a banquet to the ill-omened birds, which at that time were accustomed to feed on carcases—as is even now shown by the places which are still white with bones. It is quite certain that the Romans, who were comparatively few, and contending with vastly ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Earth beyond the Tigris' stream, And Rhine's broad river, wandering at her will 'Mid Teuton hordes and Scythian, though by sword Sought, yet returns not. Would that from the day When Romulus, aided by the vulture's flight, Ill-omened, raised within that hateful grove Rome's earliest walls, down to the crimsoned field In dire Thessalia fought, she ne'er had known Italia's peoples! Did the Bruti strike In vain for liberty? Why laws ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... chances of surmounting even low hills seemed remote should he have the fortune to reach their base; but with another canyon hope was dead. Above them Ska still circled, and it seemed to the ape-man that the ill-omened bird hovered ever lower and lower as though reading in that failing gait the nearing of the end, and through cracked lips Tarzan growled out ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... middle-class is selfish and indifferent, and unmoved sees us perish. The people know nothing of our existence: even those who are fighting the same fight like us are cut off by silence and do not know that we exist, and we do not know that they exist.... Ill-omened Paris! No doubt good also has come of it—by gathering together all the forces of the French mind and genius. But the evil it has done is at least equal to the good: and in a time like the present the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... lay by the road-side, or in the fields, unburied, not grateful to gods or men, I saw no bird of prey, no ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place where it was held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but no black wing was spread over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of the most noted peace-officers of the country; he had been shot four times in pitched fights with red marauders and white outlaws. There was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up the Black Jack gang of ill-omened notoriety, and his Captain, Curry, another New Mexican sheriff of fame. The officers from the Indian Territory had almost all served as marshals and deputy-marshals; and in the Indian Territory, service as a deputy-marshal meant capacity to fight stand-up battles with ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... amaryllis, only showed their arid brown or gray remnants. The moat had become a deep waterless cleft; and beneath, on the accessible sides towards the glen, clustered a collection of black horsehair tents, the foremost surmounted by the ill-omened crescent. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly to every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned her head ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... end the Queen's Suzerainty;—an ill-omened term, which had proved fruitful in all conceivable kinds of misinterpretation, and made possible the misunderstandings and controversies that culminated in this cruel and wasteful war. So was resumed ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... a glorious morning, though a few ill-omened clouds lingered like a night-cap round Penllwyd. Larks were singing, cuckoos calling, bluebells made the woods seem a reflection of the sky, and the gorse was ablaze on the common. The walk was collar-work ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... cannot tell you how often I have thought over this maddening, this puzzling personality, terrifying beyond words, who seems implacably bent on our destruction!... Again and again I have had reason to fear that his ill-omened influence has been directed against my humble self!... As if he guessed something of this, the baron has frequently sought to reassure me; yet, through some singular coincidence, each time we have spoken of Fantomas a tragedy has occurred, a dreadful tragedy, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... could not rest because of the ill-omened dream that her son had had; and in her distress she called all the Asa-folk together to consider what should be done. But they were speechless with sorrow and alarm; and none could offer advice, nor set her mind at ease. Then ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Caithness alleged that their bands that wore this color were cut off at the battle of Flodden; and for this reason they avoided the crossing of the Ord on a Monday, that being the day of the week on which the ill-omened array set forth. This color was disliked by both those of the name of Ogilvy and Graham. The greatest precautions had to be taken against the Daoine Shi' in order to prevent them from spiriting away mothers and their newly-born ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... croaking of a raven or carrion crow mentioned as an indication of anything, which is very remarkable, as well on account of its ill-omened sound, as because it was so much noticed by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... heard—much more seldom seen. Hyenas are numerous, and thievishly inclined. Leopards, less common, are the terror of the villagers. Foxes are not numerous, but frighten the black traveller by their ill-omened bark. Hares, about half the size of English ones—there are no rabbits—are widely spread, but not numerous; porcupines the same. Wild cats, and animals of the ferret kind, destroy game. Monkeys of various kinds and squirrels ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... preceding that ill-omened day, a few moments after Frantz had stealthily left his room on Rue de Braque, the illustrious Delobelle returned home, with downcast face and that air of lassitude and disillusionment with which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... only eight years before, Flood and Grattan, after fighting side by side for many years, had all at once sprung upon one another in the Parliament House with the fury of vultures: Flood had screamed to Grattan that he was a mendicant patriot, and Grattan had called Flood an ill-omened bird of night, with a sepulchral note, a cadaverous aspect, and a broken beak. The Irish, like the French, have the art of making things dramatic, and Burke was the greatest of Irishmen. On the opening of the session of 1791, the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... were delighted with this, but their joy reached its height when someone shouted: 'You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.' Mr. O'Rourke ignored the suggestion, and passed on to sharpen his wit upon the landlords. He described them as 'ill-omened tax-gatherers who suck the life-blood of the country, and refuse to disgorge a penny of it for any useful purpose.' Mr. O'Rourke was not a man who shrank from a mixed metaphor, or paused to consider such ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... resign what ought to have been yours without your unfortunately illegal act. Your secret is perfectly safe with me. Time will heal the wounds you have inflicted on yourself and enable you to forget. Leave this ill-omened document with me; it is safer than in your hands. Indeed there is ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... Marly—"ill-omened Marly"—that the Duc de Berry, the younger grandson of Louis XIV., and husband of the profligate daughter of the Duc d' Orleans—afterward Regent, died, with great suspicion of poison, in 1714. The MS. memorials of Mary Beatrice ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... once more, became a prey to the terror of another visit from the so-called Madame Le Prun, whose ill-omened approaches had inspired her with so much terror ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... caverns, crosses, confusion and wavy, broken and crooked lines. No good luck to be foretold. So it appears on the surface. You are overcast by sorrow and losses, with death to many present hopes. As holding up the cup, gravestones, tears—heart-tears—seems an ill-omened cup, yet no ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... property. It was true that he might be murdered that night, or some other night, and that when the brig, with its golden cargo, reached port, he might not be in command of her. It was true that a hundred things might happen to prevent the advancing enjoyments from ever reaching him. But ill-omened chances threaten everything that man is doing, or ever can do, and he would not let the thought of them ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... tumbling up from below, rather astonished at being so soon called. The other officers were also soon on deck Mr Randolph agreed that the stranger, which hung on our quarter like some ill-omened bird of prey, had an exceedingly suspicious appearance, and that we were only acting with ordinary prudence ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... been "down upon his luck." We saw him one day in the tribune, pale, stammering, but daring. He had a long bony face, and a distrust-inspiring jaw. His theatrical name was Florivan. He was a strolling player transformed into a trooper. He died Marshal of France. An ill-omened figure. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... over you." Saying this, Serapion slowly went out, and I saw him no more. I soon recovered completely, and returned to my usual occupations; and though I never forgot the memory of Clarimonde and the words of the father, nothing extraordinary for a time occurred to confirm in any way his ill-omened forebodings, so that I began to believe that his apprehensions and my own terror were unfounded. But one night I had a dream. Scarcely had I fallen asleep when I heard my bed-curtains drawn, the rings grating sharply on the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... erratic; I believe he has been seen in the Methodist chapel occasionally, but won't put his foot inside our church; and he is no loss at all to the neighbourhood, for he lived the life of a recluse. I always look upon this house as an ill-omened place. I didn't tell you that the last vicar who lived here died of delirium tremens. He was a disgrace to his profession, but that was thirty years ago. The new vicarage was built shortly after.' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... "drawn-work" of civilization, stood a lamp of finer fashion, but no better illuminating facilities, than the one carried off by the darky, who had made great haste to leave the room, and who had not lifted his eyes toward the ill-omened "ghost-seer" nor spoken a word since Gordon had blurted out his vision on Bogue Holauba. This table also bore a tray with crackers and sandwiches and a decanter of sherry, which genially intimated hospitable forethought. The bed was a big four-poster, which no be-dizenment ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... where we had been basking all the sunny afternoon, Tom reading, and I simply staring vacantly into the heavens and wondering when the time would come that should set me free to unravel the mystery of this ill-omened spot. Finally, after taking our fill of idleness, we bathed as the sun was setting; and I remember wondering, as I dived off the black ledge, whether beneath me there lay any relic of the Belle Fortune, any fragment that might preserve some record of her end. I had dived here ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... countenance was adjusted to the smile of hospitality, but it wore the expression like a mask, and he seemed ill at ease. He had been contending all the morning with Narcissa's freakishness, which he thought intensified by the presence of the valley man, who was returning the civility of that ill-omened visit, and who, by reason of the abnormal excitements of the day, had been received with scant formality, and was already upon the footing of a familiar friend. Selwyn stood smilingly in the way hard by, speaking to those of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... your wedding, I'm sorry I gave you my promise to stay away from it. I think that this recent notion of yours that the marriage of an ex-Vestal is an ill-omened occasion, like a funeral, is morbid and baseless. Every Vestal has a right to leave the order at the end of her term of service and to marry if she pleases. The right is indubitable. Nothing that is right is ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and deep, and not far below it the water washed over a weir near which was a post bearing a board marked "Danger!" To those who knew the waters and had some skill with their oars there was no peril, but to a crew of drink-filled junketers it was an ill-omened place. The wedding-party was too wild and young and rollicking to observe the sign-board. The men rocked the boat, shouted and sang, the women squealed and laughed and shouted with them; the little bride burst forth weeping, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... caecique furore, Et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce.' (Yet we, thoughtless and blind with enthusiasm, urged it on, and in our hallowed citadel stationed the ill-omened monster.)" ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... crimson and ermine she came from the cabin and stood swaying on the deck before Egil and his men, while round her train played heedlessly the ill-omened black ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... an ill-omened and minatory look. It was one of four which stood back some little way from the street, two being occupied and two empty. The latter looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was no time and no necessity for any one to do anything. The situation itself vanished in the financial crash as a building vanishes in an earthquake—here one moment and gone the next with only an ill-omened, slight, preliminary rumble. Well, to say 'in a moment' is an exaggeration perhaps; but that everything was over in just twenty-four hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about it; and the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... always ready to our had when we want them, never running away? But the taking them, for all that, not so easy. One man shrinks from picking flowers, another from cutting down trees. And, it's curious that most of the forest tales and legends are dark, mysterious, and somewhat ill-omened. The forest-beings are rarely gay and harmless. The forest life was felt as terrible. Tree-worship still survives to-day. Wood-cutters... those who take the life of trees... you see ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... "little Mary" ever to begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young Thorpe's ill-omened gift. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... deprecating a general resignation, an ill-omened purpose of this very course actually flitted across the mind of the young under-secretary himself. A scheme was on the anvil for the education of the blacks in the West Indies, and a sudden apprehension startled Mr. Gladstone, that his chief might ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to the group of ill-omened rocks, as we proceed rapidly under the rocky slopes of the Monte di Chiosse towards Positano, which extends in a long curving line of cheerful-tinted flat-roofed houses from the summit of its protecting cliff to the strand below, sprinkled with boats and nets and cloths with heaps of grain ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... revile that which they know not. Virtue is not in such account as hatred of the Christians. Now, then, if the hatred be of the name, what guilt is there in names? What charge against words? Unless it be that any word which is a name have either a barbarous or ill-omened, or a scurrilous or an immodest sound. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood still, if the earth hath been moved, if there be any famine, if any pestilence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the mob once more, urging on the executioner, who, his superstitious nature not having overcome the ill-omened fact that the matchlock a moment before had jumped out of his hand (which he probably attributed to the doing of some supreme power and not to the over-charge), seemed quite reluctant ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Ferronerie, all blocked with drays and carriages? to burn Jeanne d'Arc elsewhere than in the Vieux-Marche? to despatch the Duc de Guise elsewhere than in that chateau of Blois where his ambition roused a popular assemblage to frenzy? to behead Charles I and Louis XVI elsewhere than in those ill-omened localities whence Whitehall or the Tuileries may be seen, as if their scaffolds were appurtenances of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... ye ill-omened spalpeen, don't be causin' yer dirty clouds to come over this purty vision. Wot's the use o' cryin' before ye're hurt, or pretendin' to know the futur' whin ye knows nothin' about it? Ye're no better than a ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... house, the physician from his patients, the notary from his office, the counsellor from his clients, the judge from his court, the husband from his wife, the brother from his brother, the father from his children, the child from his parents, and marks its ill-omened cross on every head, from the highest to the lowest. Nobody escapes. A man in tatters, wearing a long beard, came into my room one morning at Brussels. "I have just arrived," said he; "I have travelled on foot, and have had nothing to eat for two days." Some bread ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... dinars; whereupon quoth I to myself, 'I will buy this damsel for our lord the Sultan, whose money was paid for her.' So I said to Nur al-Din, 'O my son, sell her to me for four thousand dinars.' When he heard my words he looked at me and cried, 'O ill-omened oldster, I will sell her to a Jew or to a Nazarene, but I will not sell her to thee!' 'I do not buy her for myself,' said I, 'I buy her for our lord and benefactor the Sultan.' Hearing my words he was filled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... various affairs which we have described were brought to a conclusion, the warlike young prince, now that the battle of Strasburg had secured him the navigation of the Rhine, felt anxious that the ill-omened birds should not feed on the corpses of the slain, and so ordered them all to be buried without distinction. And having dismissed the ambassadors whom we have mentioned as having come with some arrogant messages before the battle, he returned ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... kindnesses which the King lavished upon her; neither the legitimation of the child which she soon afterwards bore, nor the clemency which the King—against the advice of his wisest ministers extended to her brother Auvergne, availing to expel it from her breast. How far she or that ill-omened family were privy to the accursed crime which, nine years later, palsied France on the threshold of undreamed-of glories, I will not take on myself to say; for suspicion is not proof. But history, of which my beloved master must ever form so great a part, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... devil to that which had so clutched and torn at the sensitive spirit of Rufus Hardy, seemed to rise up with the dawn of that ill-omened day and seize upon the camp at Hidden Water. It was like a touch of the north wind, which rumples the cat's back, sets the horses to fighting in the corrals, and makes men mean and generally contrary. Bill Johnson's ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the stars went out, until none were visible except the bright, beautiful morning star, as it rose higher and higher in the eastern sky. One by one the owls and the wolves, ill-omened birds and beasts of night, retired to rest in the dark recesses of the forest. Little by little, the gray dawn overspread the sky, and paled the lustre of the morning star, until it faded away altogether; and then Jacques awoke with a start, and throwing out ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... lean-tos on the southern ascent. Though the hour was late, many windows were light and sounds of revelry came dimly, as though muffled, from curtain-hid interiors. There was something furtive and ill-omened about this neighborhood which one sensed rather than perceived. Spear rode close ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... screeched the eunuch. "Why, many wait three years and many go to the grave still waiting; bigger men than you, Egyptian, though I hear you do claim to be of royal blood yonder on the Nile. But talk not of arrows flying towards the most High, for surely it is ill-omened and might earn you another honour, that of the string," and he made a motion suggestive of a cord encircling his throat. "Man, leave your bow behind! Would you appear before the King armed? ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... bid you, you ill-omened beast," I said, "instead of croaking of death like a crow. And listen: I am going to walk forward to that camp; you must follow with the wagons as fast ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... would be a marriage into the family of Negrepelisse, and for him this meant a family connection with the Marquise d'Espard, and a political career in Paris. Here was a fair tree to cultivate in spite of the ill-omened, unsightly mistletoe that grew thick upon it; he would hang his fortunes upon it, and prune it, and wait till he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... may have been for the moment cowed. But the memory of the central act of the ghastly tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily obliterated, and the chief actor was everywhere received with lowered brows and ill-omened cries.[433] It was superstition as well as hatred that sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man was walking the streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tribune's blood. He polluted the city wherein he dwelt and the presence of all who met him. The convenient theory that ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Colonel comes. Let no ill-omened word Escape the barrier of your teeth. I heard Men say his temper's in an awful state; Therefore beware lest some untoward fate Befall you; and—I do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... that all her romantic fantasies arrived at this self-same dreary termination,—it appeared impossible for her even to imagine any other than a disastrous result from her connection with her ill-omened attendant. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was nailed there. Fatal, ill-omened blighted threshold, cursed by his father's footsteps in his dying hour, cursed by his young wife's sorrowing tread, cursed by the daily shadow of the old clerk's figure, cursed by the crossing of his murderer's feet—what men were ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... stores, so that all may be well with her as she enters on her new duties. So is it that England should send forth her daughters. They should not escape from her arms with shrill screams and bleeding wounds, with ill-omened words which live so long, though the speakers of them lie cold in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... narrative of his night's adventures in association with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief, and old Viola, at Sotillo's headquarters. To the doctor, with his special conception of this political crisis, the removal of the silver had seemed an irrational and ill-omened measure. It was as if a general were sending the best part of his troops away on the eve of battle upon some recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have been concealed somewhere where they could ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... an instant all hands were in the water swimming about round and round the vessel. The boat was in the water on the starboard side. Murray, intending to bathe afterwards, was alone on deck. Suddenly he saw the ill-omened fin of a shark rising above the water at no great distance off, and then his snout appeared, and his wicked eyes were visible surveying the scene of action. Murray shouted to Adair and the rest of the people to come on board. No one lost an instant in attempting to obey the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... invaders with a ferocity which had for its inspiration a full understanding of the consequences of disaster in such a direction. Outflanking stared at him with all its ugly meaning, and as he went he shouted hoarsely back to Kars his ill-omened news. Kars needed no second warning. He passed the call on to Bill. He claimed the reinforcement which only desperate emergency had the right to demand. Then he flung himself to the task of making good the depleted defence where Abe ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Shaykh, and claim his Mushahirah, or monthly pay; not a cateran came near us but affected to hold himself dishonoured if not provided at once with the regular salary. 'Brahim was wholly beardless, and our Egyptians quoted their proverb, Sabah el-Kurud, wa la Saban el-'Ajrud—"Better (see ill-omened) monkeys in the morning than the beardless man." As the corruption of the best turns to the worst, so the Bedawi, a noble race in its own wilds, becomes thoroughly degraded by contact with civilization. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Edmund, the father of the young prince, before his eyes, as he had known him in his own impetuous youth. Dear, indeed, had that prince been to Ella, both before and after his elevation to the throne, and as he heard the sweet boyish voice of Edwy, his thoughts were guided by memory to that ill-omened feast at Pucklechurch, where the vindictive outlaw Leolf had murdered his king. The sword of Ella had been amongst those which avenged the crime on the murderer, but they could not call back the vital spark which had fled. "Edmund the Magnificent," as they loved ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... one could tell. In an instant, she appeared and was on us with a dreadful concussion. Every man was prostrated on deck and all our masts were carried away. From the other vessel we heard shrieks and a cry of despair; but the ill-omened miscreant disappeared as rapidly as she approached, and left us floating a helpless log, on ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... when by chance they pick up some inconvenient object, they drop it quickly, and forget it as soon as possible. How many citizens in any country knew the truth about the divided responsibility for the war, or about the ill-omened part played by their politicians, who, themselves deceived, pretended with great ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... else. But he could have maintained his position as the independent and unbending defender of nationality and as the foe of compromise. He might then have brought Mr. Clay to his side, and remained himself the undisputed head of the Whig party. The coalition between Clay and Calhoun was a hollow, ill-omened thing, certain to go violently to pieces, as, in fact, it did, within a few years, and then Mr. Clay, if he had held out so long, would have been helpless without Mr. Webster. But such a course required a very strong will and great tenacity ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... prince. That ill-omened and chaotic agglomeration of diverse forms of evil has yet a kind of anarchic order in it, and, like the fabled serpent's locks on the Gorgon head, they intertwine and sting one another, and yet they are a unity. We hear very little ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... my dear friends' door, of my hopes the goal, * Whose sight mote assuage my sorrow and woes of soul: No friends found I there, nor was there another thing * To find, save a corby-crow and an ill-omened owl. And the tongue o' the case to me seemed to say, * 'Indeed This parting two lovers fond was cruel and foul! So taste thou the sorrow thou madest them taste and live * In grief: wend thy ways and now ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the ill-omened bird through the somewhat narrow opening against the feathers, had the double effect of ruffling it out to a round and ragged shape, very much beyond its ordinary size, and of rousing its spirit to ten times its wonted ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... demanded protection. Government was told by the lord-lieutenant, that the exhausted state of the public revenues rendered it impracticable to embody a militia, whence the people were given to understand that they might take measures to protect themselves. This was an ill-omened step for ministers to take, when the people of Ireland were everywhere displaying the feelings of rebellion. By it the serpent's teeth were sown, and they sprang up armed men. The Irish obeyed the call with alacrity. Volunteers were embodied, equipped, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... are allowed to club these rivals into submissiveness. Keeping the foreigner away by competing fairly with him is what we should desire; but barring him forcibly out, even when prices mount to extravagant levels, helps to fasten on this country the various evils which are included under the ill-omened term monopoly; and among the worst of these evils are a weakening of dynamic energy and a reduction ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... disgraceful accusation. He unhesitatingly asks for a weapon upon which to swear. Hagen craftily offers his spear. Siegfried placing his right hand on the point, solemnly calls upon the sacred weapon to register his oath, wording it in the following ill-omened fashion: "Where sharpness may pierce me, do you pierce me; where death shall strike me, do you strike me, if yonder woman spoke the truth, if I broke my vow to my brother!" Bruennhilde hearing, flings his hand from the spear-point, and ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... whose monstrous deeds and doctrines the civilized nations of the earth stand aghast, started into definite being less than thirty years ago. I can almost lay my finger upon the date and circumstances of its ill-omened advent. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... seeing this bird or one of its relatives rise from below the cliff edge one day as they approached; and, looking down, they saw upon a ledge, where it had fallen, a dead lamb, upon which the great ill-omened bird ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... from distant places. Occupied with sad thoughts, that brought him no comfort, he was attracted by the low whine of the wolf, and upon turning discovered him fondling around the captive Chief, who seemed equally pleased with him; at the same time be caught the ill-omened look of Black Snake, distorting his face with rage, jealousy and revenge, as it glowed from beneath his tawdry plume of many colors. Hastening his daughter along, who was quickly followed by the wolf as she gave a peculiar call, they passed silently ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... the wood which then covered the whole of this county; but it is curious, is it not?" said the vicar, "that the tradition should have been handed down through all these centuries of its being an ill-omened place, long after any tradition of what the uses ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that colonization would tend "to secure the property of every master in the United States over his slaves." Subsequently the management of the Society itself recognized the force of this remark as a quotation from the eighty-second report will show: "It was this ill-omened utterance of a solitary member of the Society, who appears to have taken very little if any part in its subsequent proceedings, that afterward gave the impracticable abolitionists a text for the most vituperative and persistent ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... This ill-omened talk was broken in upon by the coming out of the minister, his wife and daughter, and the consequent interchange of Christmas compliments. I had had a shock, and felt heavy-hearted and anxious, and hardly up to making the appropriate replies to the kind greetings ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to impart to his own sour, ill-omened visage a smile of approbation, in which he greatly failed; "so you're ready now, Mr Finney says; here's the place, d'ye see;"—and he put his huge brown finger down on the dirty paper;—"name or mark, it's all one. Come along, old boy; if so be we're to have the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... fatuus, such as the others I have pursued, for I have been chasing rainbows now for three years, and I suppose I shall go on chasing them; but as long as there is a chance left, I can't quit—I can't. And something tells me that I have left that ill-omened thing behind at last, and I ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... finished their ill-omened repast, when the air above us was darkened by two mighty shadows. The captain of my ship, knowing by experience what this meant, cried out to us that the parent birds were coming, and urged us to get on board with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... is a fast day, and is considered an unlucky day because it was the day of Christ's crucifixion. Soames ("Anglo-Saxon Church," page 255) says of it, "Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit on Friday and died on Friday." Shakspere refers to the ill-omened nature of the day as follows: "The duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton Friday" ("Measure for Measure," ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... consisted of a close coat of embroidered buff leather, elegant enough to be worn as a court undress, and on which, if need were, one could buckle a cuirass, for battle: like his father, he was pale; like his father, he was to die young, and, even more than his father, his countenance wore that ill-omened melancholy by which fortune-tellers recognise those who are to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... true hearts to us and him, dates "November 24th," just while Voltaire (whom she always likes, and in a beautiful way protects, "FRERE VOLTAIRE," as she calls him) was despatching Hirsch on that ill-omened Predatory STEUER-Mission. Her Brother is in real alarm for Wilhelmina, about this time; sending out Cothenius his chief Doctor, and the like: but our dear Princess re-emerges from her eclipse; and we shall see her again, several times, if we ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... standing, as the host had stated, on the bank of the river, about a bow-shot from the bridge. The door was opened by Bryan, and the party entered without further ceremony. They found no one within except an old woman, with harsh, wrinkled features, and a glance as ill-omened as that of a witch, whom Bryan Bowntance told them was Fenwolf's mother. This old crone regarded ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family for their care of the infant; you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureau bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the darling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face again within their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all be very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they being poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God's help, as they had hitherto done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for the luckless Stewarts! again and again this affecting ceremony took place before the time of their final promotion which was the precursor of their overthrow. They were all kings almost from their cradle—kings ill-omened, entering upon their royalty ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the west shore. Corny and Miss Anneke—God bless you both! Mary Wallace is in terror lest ill news come from some of you; but I will run ahead and let her know the glad tidings. It is but five minutes since I left her, starting at every sound, lest it prove the foot of some ill-omened messenger." ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... corpse-candles and blue lights, the Welsh, according to Mr Wirt Sykes, in his work, British Goblins, pp. 212-216, possess a species of ill-omened ghost that is not, however, restricted to any one family, but which visits promiscuously any house or village prior to a death. Sometimes it flaps its leathern wings against the window of the room containing the sick ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... deep and rich in meaning. What a world of thoughts, what germs of future forms lie concealed in this symphony! He himself stands upon this great work, and from this vantage strives to advance further. During this period the ill-omened raven, Professor Hanslick, uttered his silly words about Wagner's "luck." But the victory was this ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... castle of Ellieslaw, destined to be the scene of this ill-omened union, was a building of much older date than the castle itself, though that claimed considerable antiquity. Before the wars between England and Scotland had become so common and of such long duration, that the buildings along both sides of the Border were chiefly dedicated to warlike ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... time that I was cutting loose from this ill-omened company and continuing my road Edinburgh-wards. We were lying in a wide trough of the Pentland Hills, which I well remembered. The folk of the plains called it the Cauldstaneslap, and it made an easy path for sheep and cattle between the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... explained the circumstances of the purchase of those ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go to him for ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... carried all before him. Rinaldo had now reached the scene of action, and was looking on as an unconcerned spectator, when he was espied by Galafron. The king instantly recognized the horse Rabican, which he had given to Argalia when he sent him forth on his ill-omened mission to Paris. Possessed with the idea that the rider of the horse was the murderer of Argalia, Galafron rode at Rinaldo, and smote him with all his force. Rinaldo was not slow to avenge the blow, and it would have gone hard ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Lydford and its ill-omened castle (which, a century after, was one of the principal scenes of Judge Jeffreys's cruelty), Amyas and his party trudged on through the mire toward Okehampton till sunrise; and ere the vapors had lifted from the mountain tops, they were descending the long slopes from Sourton down, while Yestor ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was not understood. At last an answer was given from the canoe. What it was I could not tell. It seemed to satisfy them. To my great joy they once more let draw their foresail, and stood away from us. This was not the last time we were to see that ill-omened craft. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
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