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More "Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merely dote, and play the fool: why yes, this is what I mean by growing young again: for what else is it to be a child than to be a fool and an idiot? It is the being such that makes that age so acceptable: for who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten? And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... could not stifle I concealed my selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my ominous and guilty love. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Amid this ominous stillness of nature I began to ascend the cone-strewn path. Evidently enough the extensive grounds had been neglected for years, and that few pedestrians and fewer vehicles ever sought Friar's Park was demonstrated ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... clouds that hung black and low, to the appointed place of assembly. The cold winds of autumn were driving in fitful blasts through the streets, striking a chill into the soul as well as the body. They seemed ominous of that black and bitter storm that was even now beginning to break in sorrow and death upon the followers of Christ. Before I reached the ruins the rain fell in heavy drops, and the wind was rising and swelling into a tempest. It seemed to me, in the frame I ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... much that is out of joint, much to justify doleful prophecies, in the social and religious conditions of the present age, but the signs of the times are not all ominous. At all events, nothing would be gained by a return to the monkish ideals of the past. The hope of the world lies in the further development and completer realization of those great principles of human ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... was turned toward the sea once again after his two years of landsman's hebetude, all his seaman's instinct, all his seaman's caution, revived. His nose snuffed the air, his eyes studied the whirls of the floating clouds. There was nothing especially ominous in sight. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to the chief's ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... tradition; and that other day in the year is the 1st of April. But, gentlemen, on that day the Prime Minister, speaking out,—I do not question for a moment his own sincere opinion,—made what I think one of the most unhappy and ominous allusions ever made by a Minister of this country. He quoted certain words, easily rendered as 'Empire and Liberty'—words (he said) of a Roman statesman, words descriptive of the State of Rome—and he quoted them as words which were capable of legitimate application to the position and circumstance ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... by O'Brien, an Irishman serving on an English naval vessel, that an elderly and respectable Malay woman, with whom he was conversing in an entirely unsuspecting manner, suddenly began to undress herself, and showed a most ominous and determined intention of stripping herself completely, and all because a by-standing friend had suddenly taken off his coat; at the same time she manifested the most violent anger at what she deemed this outrage to her sex, calling the astonished friend an abandoned ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that there is no alternative—" began the Judge, to be interrupted by the banging of the court-room door. He looked up, glaring at the offender with ominous eyes. The polite attendant from the outer corridor was advancing in great haste. He was not only in haste but ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a crowd began to collect in the neighbourhood of the jail. Martin, peering from behind a barred window, was not long in grasping the significance of this ominous gathering. He was the only inmate of the "calaboose"; therefore, he was in no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom so many different terms of opprobrium were being applied by certain loud-voiced citizens in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... for the special benefit of these "friends" of mine (with what ominous emphasis that name is sometimes used! "I must have a private interview with you, my young friend," says the bland Dr. Birch, "in my library, at 9 a.m. tomorrow. And you will please to be punctual!"), for their special benefit, I say, I will produce another ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... Indian drew himself up with a certain arrogance, but his narrow black moustache did not hide the fact that his lips were twitching with excitement. His dark eyes shone like the eyes of a beast, green and ominous. "But we have never spoken. I thought not. Now, Mr. Rivington, will you permit me to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... An ominous coolness now pervaded the atmosphere. Buckingham sat by the table, impatiently tapping the floor with his boot, his eyes growing dark at the delay. Hart still plumed himself before the mirror. His dress was rich; his sword was well balanced, a Damascus blade; his cloak hung gracefully; his big ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... his advances with an ominous scream, and Hitty hurried into the house to give him to the servant's charge, while she returned to the sitting-room, where the old man had seated himself in the rocking-chair, and was taking a mental inventory of the goods and chattels with a momentary keenness in his look that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Erling the Bold gathered his brow into an ominous frown, pressed his lips together, tossed his locks impatiently while he thought on these things and battered the iron mass on his anvil with the amount of energy that he would have expended in belabouring the head of King Harald himself, had ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... minutes later, having taken as much room as the width of the creek would permit, our helm was eased over and the Felicidad swept round toward the object of her first attack, which was the schooner flying French colours. A death-like and ominous silence now prevailed on board the four craft that we were so audaciously attacking, and not a man was to be seen on board either of them. This state of things continued until we were within forty fathoms of the nearest craft, when a ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... at him bravely, and resumed her watch of the windows of the castle. Here in the open, hidden from the courtyard beyond the bulk of the buildings, they could hear nothing of what was passing at the drawbridge gate. The silence seemed ominous. Had Windt's men succeeded in bridging the gap? As yet there were no signs of light in the castle windows, except the lurid reflections of the northern sky. But in any event there was no time to spare. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Bitter, fierce, ominous, his wrath loomed up in his heart. His fists gripped tight together, his teeth clenched. Oh, for a moment to have his hand upon the throat of S. Behrman, wringing the breath from him, wrenching out the red life of him—staining the street ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were in him marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek, in the dimness that stole over his eyes. "If this cleaving distrust from which I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy of evil to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Not for nothing does Unamuno live in the rust and saffron-colored town of Salamanca in the midst of bare red hills that bulge against an enormous flat sky in which the clouds look like piles of granite, like floating cathedrals, they are so solid, heavy, ominous. A country where barrenness and the sweep of cold wind and the lash of strong wine have made people's minds ingrow into the hereafter, where the clouds have been tramped by the angry feet of the destroying angel. A Patmos for a new Apocalypse. Unamuno is constantly attacking sturdily those ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... to build her nest in a bush beside the garden, and her mate began to make the sky ring with his song. The puzzle of the feathered tribe whose habits he couldn't fathom was the whip-poor-will. His mother seemed to dislike his ominous sound. But the soft mournful notes appealed to the Boy's fancy. Often at night he sat in the doorway of the cabin watching the gathering shadows and the flicker of the fire when supper was cooking, listening to the tireless song within a few feet ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the ominous prophecy Geirrod hastily drew his sword, intending to slay the insolent singer; but when he beheld the sudden transformation he started in dismay, tripped, fell upon the sharp blade, and perished as Odin had just foretold. Turning to Agnar, who, according to some accounts, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to a low, ominous pitch, and she paused as though to draw all the threads of memory into one firm grasp. Her look, too, changed. But it was a change quite ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had more to say, his hand drew me forward, his interpreting lips stirred. No. Not now. Here into the twilight alley broke an interruption: it came dual and ominous: we faced two bodeful forms—a woman's and a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... is light and versatile, And moods must change and tranquil breezes veer, And o'er this blissful hour there came a chill And sullen shadows slowly creeping near In lengthening lines, and murkier dusk took form Of all things ominous, disastrous, ill, And as a mid-day gloom portending storm, A lowering fate made prophecy of fear, And Atma knew the menace in the air, As ghostly shudderings of our fearful life Foretell the advent of th' assassin's knife. Low ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... wails the long recall; Derision stirs the deep abyss, Heaven's ominous silence over all. Return, return, O eager Hope, And face man's latter fall. Events, they make the dreamers quail; Satan's old age is strong and hale, A disciplined captain, gray in skill, And Raphael a white enthusiast ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... the beginning of the twentieth century that the monster "Standard Oil" loomed up before the people as the giant of all corporate things and that its ominous shadow seemed to dwarf all other institutions, public or private. In multitudinous forms ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... sat slowly up. His appearance was ominous. His face had become set as marble; there was a look in his eyes like the flashing of a light upon black metal. He contemplated his ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... occurred which impressed Mozart with an ominous chill. One night there came a stranger, singularly dressed in gray, with an order for a requiem to be composed without fail within a month. The visitor, without revealing his name, departed in mysterious gloom, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... scrambled Charlie and Juggie, the dead "spy" manifesting an unusual energy and scrambling after them, forgetting that his friends were in his rear and not in the closet. The next moment all heard an ominous descent from the second to the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... something ominous in these facts. Whether the secular press (not all papers are thus unfair) are influenced by partisan hatred of the truth or simply by a reckless regard for whatever is most popular, the facts are equally portentous. And if it be true that such publications are what the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... and it trembled Beneath her ominous paw; And while it shook, with a threatening look, She ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... an ominous silence brought on a coolness of the strangest kind. The Presidente might have admitted that her "little girl" was subject to epileptic fits. The President, thinking that Cecile ought not to be present, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... acting on his own account, for he, too, had heard the tiny, ominous sounds given out by the telephone and guessed their purport. First he ran to the massive transom that blocked the doorway and pushed. It was useless; not even an elephant could have stirred it. Then he stepped back, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... served—the invisible choir of boys' voices had just completed an enchanting stornello with an accompaniment of mandolines—when a stillness, strange and unaccountable, fell upon the company—a pause—an ominous hush, as though some person supreme in authority had suddenly entered the room and commanded "Silence!" No one seemed disposed to speak or to move, the very footsteps of the waiters were muffled in the velvet pile of the carpets—no sound was heard but the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... once—he dared not interrupt him now. A slight stir—a noise as of an opening box. Thank God, he was, at least, alive! Nonsense! Why should he not be alive? What could happen to him? And yet he knew that something was going to happen. The silence was ominous—unbearable; the air of the room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunderstorm were about to burst. He longed to hear the man raging and stamping. And yet he could not connect the thought of one so gay and full of gallant life, with the terrible ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has aples and you have none, and you make no nocturnal visits to his orchard; when you lunch-basket is without them, and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... certainly ceased out of London when we hear of it again. They had so utterly perished that not a single Celtic or Roman local name was left, except the two already mentioned—Thames and London. There is absolute silence in the chronicle. This ominous silence lasts from 457 to 609. We have, therefore, a hundred years from the departure of the Romans to the battle of Crayford, and 152 years more to the next mention of London; in all 250 years during ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... ominous click from behind. Ralph turned suddenly and seized his brother's arm as he was in the act of raising his rifle to his shoulder. The gun was lowered, and the intense face of Nick scowled at the author of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... a fine dagger, or a lance that struck his fancy, nothing will satisfy him except to order them all back and tell his cofather-in-law that he must needs have the lance or dagger, giving some sly reason, as, for instance, that his wife had an ominous dream last night. In one marriage feast that I witnessed, after all the bridegroom's people had left the house, the bride's father told his son to beat the dog. Whereupon he ordered the party back and told his cofather-in-law that it was passing strange that the dog ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the point of committing a great folly. This letter would of course accomplish the destruction of my hated creditor, but I doubt exceedingly if I would escape unharmed if I handed this ominous writing to the king. He would never forgive me for having discovered this affair, which he, of course, wishes to conceal from the whole world. The knowledge of such a secret would be most dangerous, and I prefer to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet, his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as Stingaree screwed round ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... sea again Mr. Stobell was discoursing, almost eloquently for him, upon drains. From drains to the shortcomings of the district council they progressed by natural and easy stages, and it was not until Miss Drewitt had withdrawn to the clearer atmosphere above that a sudden ominous silence ensued, which Mr. Chalk saw clearly he was expected ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the public movement where resistance would be vain; yet such conformity as need not be inconsistent with subsequent condemnation of the proceedings, nor incompatible with patriotic reserve founded on a belief that the rejoicings are premature and ominous. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he heard a curious noise — a far, faint sound such as he never before had heard. If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it. ... Probably some sort of unknown bird. ... Perhaps a bird ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... soon, my friend," rejoined the captain of the voyageurs, casting an eye back across the great lake, which lay black and ominous under a threatening sky, the sweep and swirl of its white caps ever racing hard after the frail craft, as though eager to break through its paper sides and tear away the human beings who ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... he argued within himself, that to the agency of "revenuers" was due that mysterious glow, more brilliant than any ordinary fire, steady, suffusive, continuous, rising in the dark wilderness, in the deep midnight, to reveal that ominous face overlooking all the countryside, with subtle flickers of laughter running athwart its wonted contortions, more weird and sinister in this ghastly glare than by day? And what significance might attend these strange ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... they were talking about the rain, which hadn't yet begun to fall, but which, judging from the ominous gray sky and black clouds, ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... feelings had sounded the depths of hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth and jaw immobile ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... out the condition of the women and children, of whom many are dying, and all are exposed to great dangers. If there was a chance of succeeding in the end, then we might hold out, but there is no such chance; there is no possibility of intervention, and the silence of the deputation is ominous. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... unlucky accident, occasioned by little Th-d the wine merchant overturning F-z-y in his tandem, compelled the latter to sell out of the army, but not without having lost a leg in the service. A determined patriot, he was still resolved to serve his country. A barrister on one leg might be thought ominous of his client's cause, or afford food for the raillery of his opponent. The bar was therefore rejected. But the church opened her arms to receive the dismembered son of Mars (a parson with a cork leg, or two wooden ones, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and his master, Jean Pelletier, had been in the habit of eating and drinking at the castle, and bad always laughed at the ominous stories told ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... to her more factitious than actual, stood the three contending and opposing forces. The thought came and went like a flash, for it was not a time for meditation, but for hurried and desperate action. The sense of something vast and ominous seemed to hang over the darkness, where, for a second or two, the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... I here protest by earth and heaven I holde your state right highlie and renowned And your faire sisters beauties and deserts To be most worthy the greatest king alive; Onlie an ominous vision troubled me And hindred the wisht speede I would have made (Not to dissolve it, though it were diferd,) By such portents as, least you thinke I faine, Lord Hardenbergh can witnesse is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... cried a cheery and cheeky voice coming round the jog; "oo'd a thought of meetin' a play hactor 'ere in the bush! Down, Muggins, down," the latter to a largish and wiry-looking terrier, the author of the ominous growls. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the distress of the South increased, the belief that Federal legislation was responsible for it increased likewise. The spread and deepening of this conviction in the Southern States precipitated among them an ominous crisis in their attachment to the Union. Nullification and an embittered sectionalism was the hateful legacy bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy. It left the South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters relating to her domestic interests. It left the North in a ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... were comfortably regaling ourselves: God knows how we were joking about the poor governor and his fortifications, both of which we promised ourselves to take in less than twenty-four hours. This was going on in the trenches, when we heard an ominous cry from the ramparts, repeated two or three times, of, 'Alerte on the walls!' This cry was followed by a discharge of cannon and musketry, and this discharge by a vigorous sally, which, after having filled up the trenches, pursued us as far ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... banging and tugging at the door, but never a jot did it stir, and after about five minutes of this futile work he appeared again at the window. The water was nearly on a level with the opening now, and rising moment by moment, while there were ominous ripping and rending sounds in Katherine's ice island, which warned her that the rescue must take place in the next few minutes if it was to be ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... up in line also facing to the cliff. There is no noise in their ranks. An ominous silence characterises the scene. In front is their chief mounted upon his coal-black steed; and upon him the eyes of all are fixed, as though they expected some signal, his face is pale, but its expression is stern ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... however, was but too true: the good folk of Windsorton had surrendered to the Boers. Intelligence of a more agreeable nature followed soon after. Cronje's repulse at Mafeking, and the British victory at Glencoe, made us hopeful at the end of a week, the beginning of which had looked so ominous; and nearly all things were to our satisfaction on Saturday night when the third part of our "time" had ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes. He stood a full minute without speaking—and you know how long ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... to the side, and peered at the coming boats, while Hilary stood fretting and fuming at his side. There was, however, something so ominous in the look of the boats, dimly-seen though they were through the murky night, that the lieutenant did give orders, and cutlasses and boarding-pikes were seized, the men then ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... from Rome. These arrive—and Tannhaeuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are heard; Tannhaeuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at the Tournament of Song—only now the madness ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... only we could be sure that it is not like so much in the book the outcome of her powerful imagination! Besides repeated complaints about her husband's ill-humour and frequent absences, we meet with the following ominous reflections on marriage:— ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... glad that it was such a wretched day—a hideous day for anyone's twenty-first birthday, ominous of all bad things, she thought. There was not a rift in the dull gray sky; the straight fine rain came down persistently, soaking into the sodden earth, and sending up an odour of dead leaves. The smooth shining laurels in the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... you ain't." Grimshaw's voice was low and hard. The game had ceased, and the four others were watching the two. "An', by the way things is framin', I don't expect you'll ever git there." There was something ominous in the man's words, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... a-tellin' me." Mr. Gibney's tones were ominous; he glared at his friend suspiciously as from the Maggie's cabin issued forth ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... that he was wearing a long motor-coat, of a smart cut, and a peaked cap which became him excellently, struck me as ominous. Had he caught the birds—our birds—after all, at the last moment, and had they been too cowardly ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... explained presently, Senor—at supper, to which the Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me," then, aside and below his breath, again the ominous word of reminder—"pays." "Most happily, your cousin's presence was the means of saving a fellow-creature's life. But, as I have said, the tale is long. Senor—permit," and in another second Lysbeth found herself walking down her own hall upon the arm of the Spaniard, while Dirk, her ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... when he had finished he listened to the same silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man glanced uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup or his fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant moment and were chilled in the succeeding one, for ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... in their basis of authority, although they owed their first awakening to him; and they were not truly Anabaptists, though they allied themselves at first with this movement, and earnestly laboured to check the ominous signs of Ranterism and Fanaticism, and the misguided "return" to millennial hopes and expectations, to which many of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping, she obeyed. "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy—you remember him, Doc—J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... denunciations of an administration which he regarded "as a civil and military failure." Lincoln's reelection, he said, "I shall consider the end of the Union in my day, or its reconstruction on terms worse than disunion." But Mr. Phillips's friendship ought to have been regarded by the Fremonters as ominous, for it was his custom always to act with a very small minority. Moreover he had long since ceased to give voice to the intelligence of his party or even fairly to represent it. How far it had ever been proper to call the Abolitionists a party may be doubted; before the war they had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... their broken rear Rages the Prussian's bloody spear. So fell a shriek was none, When Beresina's icy flood Reddened and thawed with flame and blood, And, pressing on thy desperate way, Raised oft and long their wild hurra, The children of the Don. Thine ear no yell of horror cleft So ominous, when, all bereft Of aid, the valiant Polack left - Ay, left by thee—found soldiers grave In Leipsic's corpse-encumbered wave. Fate, in those various perils past, Reserved thee still some future cast; On the dread die thou now hast thrown Hangs not a single field ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... to induce the son to write a letter in his favor; and so when he arrived in 1702 they were both sedulous in their attentions in the expectation of controlling him. A month had not passed, however, before this ominous entry was made in ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position and immediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with an ominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in a soft, ominous tone; "that's the bank. They give a fellow a post that keeps him going night and day, Sundays and holidays, knowing that if he gets up against it absolutely, some other mark will chip in and help him out. They get the greatest possible labor ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... surpasses most other wild animals! According to his mood he whines, he threatens, or warns by loud snorting. He roars with rage, and when in pain he cries, or he bawls and howls. In addition to this he threatens an enemy by snapping his jaws together with a mighty ominous clank, accompanied by a warning nasal whine. An angry bear will at times give a sudden rake with his claws to the ground, or the concrete on which he stands. Now, with all this facility for emotional expression, backed by an alert ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... other, "the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... ask the gallant gentlemen who vote for removal of woman's political disability if they have observed in the minds and manners of the women in the forefront of the movement nothing "ominous and drear." Are not these women different—I don't say worse, just different—from the best types of women of peace who are not exhibits and audibles? If they are different, is the difference of such a nature as to encourage a hope that activity in public affairs will work ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... bureaucratic system adopted by his own countrymen. He commends the English practice under which "the Home Government never interferes in the management of internal affairs," and it is earnestly to be hoped that the commendation is deserved, albeit of late years there have occasionally been some ominous signs of a tendency to govern India rather too much in detail from London. Speaking of the rapid development of Burmese trade, M. Dautremer says, in words which are manifestly intended to convey a criticism of his own Government, "This is an example of the use of colonies ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... he was oblig'd to turn off on the Right Hand to a Friends House, whither he was going to divert himself a Day or Two. They had not gone a Hundred Rood farther, but he stop'd and desired the Englishman if he wou'd take a pinch of Snuff, and then look'd backward and forward with an ominous Countenance, he Collar'd the Englishman, and drawing a small Pistol out of his Pocket, without any farther Ceremony, he cry'd Ou la vie, ou la Bourse. The Business was quickly over, and the Englishman robb'd of all his Stock, which was to the value of Nine Pounds English, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... the black coffin on trestles; the door open, for we had a fear of cats getting at the body,—we could glimpse the ominous black object as we sat down to breakfast. And I laid my head on the table and wept as much because of that sight as over the loss of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the structure of the milky way. If we proceeded on that method, we might say with perfect legitimacy that a friend of ours, who had slipped on the ice upon his door-step and cracked his skull, some months after dining with thirteen at the table, died because of that ominous feast. I know, in fact, one such instance; and I might, if I chose, contend with perfect logical propriety that the slip on the ice was no real accident. "There are no accidents," I might say, "for science. The whole history of the world converged to produce that slip. If anything had ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the mystery connected with the story, and it is the solving of this mystery that must constantly be kept in mind. "Who is the masked stranger?" "Who is the owner of the mysterious clutching hand," "Who is the mysterious and ominous personage who inevitably sends a telephone message of warning when about to strike down a new victim?" These are the questions that keep them guessing from week to week and draw them back to witness every episode. Your climax may be a thrilling ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... arias ("O figlio mio, che diro"), known more popularly by its French words, beginning, "Ah! mon fils." It has enjoyed a world-wide popularity, and still holds its place in all its original freshness and vigor. Fides hardly disappears before the ominous chant of the Anabaptists is heard again. He does not need much persuasion now. They make their compact in a quartet of magnificent power, which closes the act; and some of John's garments are left behind stained ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... entered the house. Bob had to go with the rest. The room was feebly illuminated by a small oil lamp. Bob noticed that they fastened the door with a huge chain. The fastening of that door was ominous to him, and the clanking of that chain smote him to the heart, and echoed drearily within his soul. It seemed to him now like real imprisonment, shut in here with chains and bars, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... had yet made on the Breton coast, when, just as they were within sight of the Point de Ray, which raises its bare and jagged head three hundred feet above the noisy waves which brawl at its base, an ominous cloud suddenly overspread the heavens, and the symptoms of a coming storm were but too apparent. With silent awe the solitary mariners beheld, sailing heavily along the darkening sky, two birds, of sable plumage, whose flight seemed directed towards the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures—dingy moths, silent but ominous night-jars, forlorn women of the town—ill-favored and ill-dressed, some of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to my arms. I threw off the ominous influence. I leaned to my sculls. The clammy black rocks began deliberately to march by me down-stream. I was making headway, and the more way I made, the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... to be 138; whereas if the noes had been content with the first error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that observation. This I have told you so minutely because it is the second fatall and ominous accident that hath fain out in the divisions about Sir G. Cartaret. Thursday was ordered for the second observation, the words of which are, Two hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred thirty and one thousand pounds thirteen shillings and ninepence, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... secretary to take the chair for a few minutes," he said, and there was something in his voice that meant business. Something ominous. The delegates pressed closer. The secretary took the chair. "I've got something to say ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... his sunken eyes as the sleepy steward rose, gave his bedside chair to Ailsa, and replaced the ominous screen. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... and the wind was increasing. The last gust had been preceded by an ominous roaring down the whole mountain-side, which continued for some time after the trees in the little valley had lapsed into silence. The air was filled with a faint, cool, sodden odor, as of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of silence ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... remotely came within the Squarcionesque influence, the true gift of the landscape-painter. Atmospheric conditions formed invariably an important element of his conceptions; and to see that this is so we need only remember the chilly solemnity of the landscape in the great Pieta of the Brera, the ominous sunset in our own Agony in the Garden of the National Gallery, the cheerful all-pervading glow of the beautiful little Sacred Conversation at the Uffizi, the mysterious illumination of the late Baptism of Christ in the Church of S. Corona ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... for two or three days. When I went back this afternoon, I got a look from Mrs. Nye that told me there was a row in the air. I was later than usual and rushed up to my room to change for dinner. The whole house seemed awfully quiet and ominous, like the air before a thunderstorm. I expected to be sent for at once to stand like a criminal before Grandfather and Grandmother—but nothing happened. All through dinner, while Gleave tottered about, they ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem of skull ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... particularly true of evolutionary philosophy, which was held as an article of faith, either consciously or sub-consciously, by the greater part of Western society. Not only did it deter men from realizing the ominous tendency of events but, more unhappily, it minimized their power to discriminate between what was good and bad in current society, and even reversed their sense of comparative values. If man was indeed progressing steadily from bad to ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... brought you?' exclaimed his sister, starting up anxiously, for something in the young man's look seemed ominous. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Galbraiths. All of them could be relied upon to meet the situation with ease and dignity. But Cynthia—what would be her attitude? Of late, when she had come over in the car with Mr. Snelling, she had maintained a distant politeness which would have been amusing had it not been ominous. He wondered how she would conduct herself today, not alone toward him but toward the girl whom she could not but regard as her rival. How much did she guess, he speculated, of the romance that was taking place in the rose-covered cottage on the bluff. And if she had guessed nothing, might not ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... voice of the enemy at last:—an ominous roar, growing inexorably louder every minute. At the sound his head took a more assured lift; his mouth a firmer line; and the fire of determination deepened ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogate all authority, the spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debating societies to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are ominous signs for the next period. Emancipated Russia must learn, if necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, that democracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience to just laws and ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... spoke these words the whole edifice shook, and I heard a noise as if a shower of great stones had crashed into the roof and sides of the building. The legislators quaked with fear and all looked toward the ceiling. All of this instantly reminded me of the thousand lords who looked at the ominous handwriting on the wall at ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... enough, but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... to themselves, and to a dead stop. When they looked round, he was making up to them with choleric strides. "What the deuce do you mean, sir, by having telegrams sent here?" cried Mr Wentworth, pitching at his son Frank an ominous ugly envelope, in blue and red, such as the unsophisticated mind naturally trembles at. "Beg your pardon, Gerald; but I never can keep my temper when I see a telegraph. I daresay it's something about Charley," said ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried. So much as gladness ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... to my companion where she leaned to the tiller, her long hair streaming out upon the wind, her lithe body a-sway to the pitching of the boat and steering as well as I myself. From her I gazed to windward where an ominous and ever-growing blackness filled me with no small apprehensions; wherefore I made fast all our loose gear, as oars, spare sail, spars and the like. Now in the bows were stowed her belongings, a leathern trunk and divers bundles, the which I proceeded to secure in their turn. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... was visible, he was surprised by the extreme thinness of the child, who seemed to be little more than skin and bone. When the little peasant had been put to bed, Benassis tapped the lad's chest, and listened to the ominous sounds made in this way by his fingers; then, after some deliberation, he drew back the coverlet over Jacques, stepped back a few paces, folded his arms across his chest, and closely ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Wells spoke with cold, almost ominous, curtesy and he would have shut the door in their faces if he had not caught the pitying look in a girl's eyes. A dull red crept into his face. Involuntarily he stepped toward Elizabeth Thorley. "If you hear anything of the child ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... he was leisurely viewin'' He spied the short ears and sharp eyes of old Bruin, Peering out 'mid the branches—a sight worth a dollar When the rifle is charged and the stomach is hollow; So he drew a bead on him, and sent him a missile, Which Brain perceived, by an ominous whistle, Was very near taking him plump in the eye, But he dodged just in time, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... barometer will prove correct, I fear," said Miss St. John, following them out on the piazza, for a thin scud was already veiling the stars, and there was an ominous moan ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the meaning of it? Surely it could not mean that this man was digging fresh pitfalls for the poor straying feet. She could not believe this,—she could only shudder as the ominous thought suggested itself. And Liz—nay, even Liz could not be weak enough ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play Canace Tasso may have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his blank verse, as likewise for ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... attacks of the German submarines upon the lives and property of American citizens had gone on; the protests of our Government were now sharp and ominous, and this nation was rapidly being drawn into a state ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... merely a sign of that energy and of that will's eventual fortunes. Dramatic terror and dramatic humour both depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its conscious intent. Everything in human life is ominous, even the voluntary acts. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature, but we may build up a world without meaning it. Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. A will that represents many active forces, and is skilful in divination and augury, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... as he was, it gave an ominous feeling. Why did she come here even in her sleep? What did that look mean? He ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... power, as well as the arms of England; but to paint him black, is perfect Jacobitism, and a manifest type of those who blacken the actions of the best Princes. It is not easy to distinguish, whether the other fowl painted over the punch-bowl, be a crow or raven? It is true, they have both been held ominous birds; but I rather take it to be the former; because it is the disposition of a crow, to pick out the eyes of other creatures; and often even of Christians, after they are dead; and is therefore drawn here, with a design to put the Jacobites in mind of their old practice, first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... within sight of the old grey walls. Silent and tragic, they stood up against the mist-veiled sky. The sunlight had turned to an ominous copper glow. And in that moment Olga was afraid, with that sick apprehension of evil that comes upon occasion even to the brave. She gave no sign of it, but it was coiled like a serpent about her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and craning their necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and his charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express the astonishment that filled him, when be was aware of an ominous shining of her eyes and trembling of her hand ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw me prepare to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path. I believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and other perilous chances of the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... signal to go on; but if it crossed the path, it was a bad omen, and a sign to retreat. Others saw their village god in the rainbow, others saw him in the shooting star; and in time of war the position of a rainbow and the direction of a shooting star were always ominous. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... meanwhile, Charly's deductions had been proved correct, for when the breeze freshened Dampier climbed into the shrouds. He had noticed the ominous blackness to windward, and knew what it meant, which was why he had hauled a reef in the schooner's mainsail down, and now kept her out a little from the ice. As the light faded he found it very difficult ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... said Will, for there was an ominous silence among the fishermen, who had been at work all this while apparently for nothing. Then all at once there was a loud cheer, for the shoal, a very large one, suddenly appeared at the top again, fretting the water as the fish swam here and there, shut-up as ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... room's far end. It was as he thought. The beast was not chained. The sleeping leopard's spotted hide heaved softly yet, with undisturbed breathing, and as Timokles watched across the space, he remembered the ominous words spoken to him on his entrance into this building: "Go in, O Christian! ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... closed in, the elements appeared in unison with the distracted condition of the kingdom. Dark clouds, seeming of ominous import to men's minds, gathered in the heavens, to be presently torn asunder and hurried in wild flight by tempestuous winds across the troubled sky. As night deepened, the gale steadily increased, until it raged in boundless fury above the whole island and the seas ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... which our guide had alluded. Unless we could stop our sledges before we should reach the mouth of the river we must inevitably be blown off the ice into three or four fathoms of water. Precisely such a disaster had given the river its ominous name, Leet and the Cossack Paderin, who were alone upon their respective sledges, and who did not get so far from the shore in the first place, finally succeeded with the aid of their spiked sticks in getting ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes. The drapery fluttered on the still outstretched arm of the tall object near the window;—a crack of this was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind stirred the hanging folds. In my excited state, I seemed to see something ominous in that arm pointing to the heavens. I thought of the figures in the Dance of Death at Basle, and that other on the panels of the covered Bridge at Lucerne, and it seemed to me that the grim mask who mingles with every crowd and glides over every threshold was pointing ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... diffame** of this man, *ominous **evil reputation Suspect his face, suspect his word also, Suspect the time in which he this began: Alas! her daughter, that she loved so, She weened* he would have it slain right tho,** *thought **then But natheless ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a few questions fired at the escaped prisoners, and as they managed to tell their story there were ominous growls and comments from ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... that some of the crew might still be awake and on deck; he therefore kept the three masts of the vessel in one, and crept up to her very gently from right astern. As he drew in under the shadow of her hull the complete darkness and silence in which the craft was wrapped seemed almost ominous and uncanny; but presently he detected a solitary figure on the poop, evidently on the watch, and a moment later saw that this figure was silently signalling to him to draw up under the counter. Obeying these silent signals, he found a rope dangling ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... side They floated; but, ere long, hov'ring aloft, Right o'er the midst of the assembled Chiefs They wheel'd around, clang'd all their num'rous plumes, And with a downward look eyeing the throng, Death boded, ominous; then rending each The other's face and neck, they sprang at once Toward the right, and darted through the town. Amazement universal, at that sight, 210 Seized the assembly, and with anxious thought Each scann'd the future; amidst ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the fight. Noon came. The fire of pickets died away. All eyes were turned to Seminary Ridge, For lo our sullen foemen—park on park— Had massed their grim artillery on our corps. Hoarse voices sunk to whispers or were hushed; The rugged hills stood listening in awe; So dread the ominous silence that I heard The hearts of soldiers throbbing along ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... western sea-rim, and there was still no sign of the captain's boat. On the shore an ominous silence prevailed, though now and then it would be broken by the weird, resonant boom of a conch-shell. The night was passed in the greatest anxiety by all on board, every man, musket in hand, keeping a ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return—and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over—and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... week passed without tidings from the absent Caliph, not only did both Giafer and Zobeideh lose hope of his return, but ominous rumours began to circulate secretly among the Court and the people, regarding the cause of the Caliph's absence. As a matter of course, Ibrahim, the next heir according to Moslem usage, was especially active both in prosecuting inquiries ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... as a shed flower fallen, nor heard The ominous entry, nor saw the other love, The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus dared At such an hour to lay her claim, above A stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed With misery, no ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... I began to be aware of the ominous distresses and disturbances connected with the affairs of the theater, that were to continue and increase until the miserable subject became literally the sauce to our daily bread; embittering my father's life with incessant care and harassing vexation; and of the haunting apprehension ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... The shelling of the back-areas continued; air-raids became more and more frequent. These were ominous signs. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... gate when he heard an ominous sound by his side. It was the cocking of Davy Crockett's rifle, and when he looked around he saw that Old Betsy was leveled, and that the sure eye of the Tennessean ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the middle of the town. O native land! O Ilium, house of gods, and Dardanian city renowned in war! four times in the very gateway did it come to a stand, and four times armour rang in its womb. Yet we urge it on, mindless and infatuate, and plant the ill-ominous thing in our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra opens her lips to the coming doom, lips at a god's bidding never believed by the Trojans. We, the wretched people, to whom that day was our last, hang the shrines of the gods with festal boughs throughout the city. Meanwhile the heavens ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... torn down and messengers dispatched to Antonius. However, when the treason got abroad in the camp, and the men returning to head-quarters saw Vespasian's name on the standards and Vitellius' portraits scattered on the ground, at first there was an ominous silence: then with one voice they all vented their feelings. Had the pride of the German army sunk so low that without a battle and without a blow they should let their hands be shackled and render up their arms? What had ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... on the morning of election when a cloud no bigger than a man's hand appeared upon the horizon. It came from the direction of the black district. It grew, and the managers of the party in power looked at it, fascinated by an ominous dread. Finally it began to rain Negro voters, and as one man they voted against their former candidates. Their organisation was perfect. They simply came, voted, and left, but they overwhelmed everything. Not one of the party that had damned Robinson Asbury was left ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Sun!" As noon approaches, the music fairly becomes radiant. A series of recitatives and arias follow, bringing out in a vivid and picturesque manner the oppressive, exhaustive heat and the longing for rest and shade, leading at last to an ominous silence as the clouds begin to gather and the sky darkens. A short recitative prepares the way. A crash of thunder is heard upon the drums: it is the prelude to the storm-chorus ("Hark! the deep tremendous ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of its veins; For it yearns to be displayed. Night is ominous with rains. Haste, ye cowards, back ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... rode up, Cavanagh perceived in the other man's face something profoundly serious. He did not smile in greeting, as was usual with him, and, taking some letters from his pocket, passed them over in ominous silence. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... unanswered, leaving the room in ominous silence. Then Jamie's treble blundered into its midst, dutifully echoing ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... others shook their heads. And by and by, even while he was working double tides for them as well as for himself, ominous murmurs met his ear. "Parson aboard!" "Man aboard, with t'other world in his face!" And there were sinister ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... large size, and a second time with the spinning bait. Two fish showed during the day, a shockingly black beggar of not less than 30 lb. which jumped out of the water, and another kelt which plunged out of range. It was an absolute blank, and a fall of snow before I caught my train was ominous. There had been a flood of 15 ft. (a favourite figure apparently on that Tay gauge) and it takes any river a long time to settle down, and the fish to resume their ordinary habits, after such riotous excess. Still, I had enjoyed ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the chimney pots, the window hangings,—all were the colour of the unchanging forest. And it was a place of huge dimensions, low and long and rambling. It seemed to have been forcibly jammed into the steep slope that shot high above its chimneys; the mountain hung over its vine clad roof, an ominous threat of oblivion. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... time these efforts seemed to make no impression. The man lay as still and impassive as a corpse excepting for the slow, shallow and rather irregular breathing with its ominous accompanying rattle. But presently, by imperceptible degrees, signs of returning life began to make their appearance. A sharp slap on the cheek with the wet towel produced a sensible flicker of the eyelids; a similar slap on the chest was followed by a slight gasp. A pencil, drawn ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... said, mounting the steps with an ominous calmness, "my daughter sees fit to reject the addresses of Mr. Newton and yet receive those of Mr. Stewart. I perceive now why he was so deeply concerned in what I had to tell him this morning. May I ask, Mr. Stewart, if you consider yourself a ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in the same manner and covered by an oil painting, representing Lord Ashiel's grandmother. The polished boards were unconcealed by any rug or carpet, and reflected a little of the light from the window. An ominous discoloration near the writing-table showed plainly ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... steadily, like some steer stopped from grazing. Then he placed his pipe on the stone step, and rose slowly to his feet, squat and burly, his little eyes glinting below his greasy, unbraided hair, his jaw protruding and ominous. Slowly he loosened the dirty red handkerchief he kept swathed about his throat, and raised a stubby hand to push the hair from his heavy forehead. Then his face relaxed into a grim smile, and he seated himself ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... Jennie, the ominous motion of Fleming's finger naturally suggesting what all good people believed to ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the little gleam of sunshine which had for a moment penetrated her heart was speedily quenched in a deeper darkness than that which reigned in it before, and she could not help viewing the visit of Rudolph as an ominous event. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... comfortable now, for I thought if I had really seen a redskin with a gun lurking among the bushes, we must have left him well behind, and we fell into a comfortable little jog-trot, side by side again. Suddenly I heard once more the ominous crackle of a dry twig, and turning quickly, I looked full into a pair of dark eyes peering through the bushes. I hesitated not a moment, but raising my pistol, leveled it straight at the eyes, and would have fired but that a voice called to me ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... tape-transmitter had automatically signalled its arrival from the mining-planet Orede. But, having sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space. It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals. It drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and since it came from Orede—the planet nearest to Dara of the blueskins—the health ministry informed the ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... contagion, scattered along through an interval of half a century, might have been thought sufficient to satisfy the minds of all inquirers that here was something more than a singular coincidence. But if, on a more extended observation, it should be found that the same ominous groups of cases clusterings about individual practitioners were observed in a remote country, at different times, and in widely separated regions, it would seem incredible that any should be found too prejudiced or indolent to accept ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... to the advanced observation post of the Artillery where I met General Stockdale, commanding the 15th Brigade, R.F.A., and not only saw how the land lay but heard some interesting opinions. Also, some ominous comments on what armies spend and what Governments scrimp:—that ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... my heart has hearkened, hanging on thy clamorous ominous cry, 1480 Fain yet fearful of the knowledge whence it looks to live or die; Now to take the perfect presage of thy dark and sidelong flight Comes a surer soothsayer sorrowing, sable-stoled as birds ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... thing happened. From the opposite stupendous cliffs, draped in snow, bejeweled with icicles, frowning and desolate, an ominous black shape flung itself furiously, and made straight for the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering cliff-top, and flapped towards the eagle in the path of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the Boy and the ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... weeks went by, and she heard nothing from Chupin. A month and a half! What had become of him? To Mme. Blanche this silence was as ominous as the calm ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died away almost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry could have been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon the waters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whom they could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, they knew, at least, that Nashola had been the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... delayed a second. The butt of the pistol that would equalize the affair was almost within his grasp, and Muller stood in the light, but he saw an ominous glint in the pale blue eyes and the farmer's fingers tighten on the haft. There was also a suggestive raising of one shoulder; and his hands went up above his head. Muller advanced the points an inch ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... a German?" screamed the landlord, with ominous face; "the old government is done away with; the traitors have had their reward, and their spies shall be hanged as well;" and, rushing at the merchant, he brandished an old sword ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Iroquois, there was a long and ominous silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the night between the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence a little above Montreal. Concealed by the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the sense of extremes, as they all did. In a few months they would be shaking their heads over a blizzard with the same solemn enjoyment. She liked the suddenly darkening sky, the ominous rattle of thunder; "like boxes being smashed," she wrote Sally. She fairly sang when the rain began to ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... other things, it has of old been observ'd that the bay is ominous of some funest accident, if that be so accounted which Suetonius (in Galba) affirms to have happen'd before the death of the monster Nero, when these trees generally wither'd to the very roots in a very mild winter: And much ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... once the state of cerebral erethrism, of general mental alacrity, that followed on a dose. Again, champagne (followed perhaps by a soupcon of whisky) leads to a mood essentially humorous and playful, while about three dozen oysters, taken fasting, will in most cases produce a profound and even ominous melancholy. One might enlarge further upon this topic, on the brutalising influence of beer, the sedative quality of lettuce, the stimulating consequences of curried chicken; but enough has been said to point our argument. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... specifically Central-European style of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "I am perfection!" In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... sight of the old grey walls. Silent and tragic, they stood up against the mist-veiled sky. The sunlight had turned to an ominous copper glow. And in that moment Olga was afraid, with that sick apprehension of evil that comes upon occasion even to the brave. She gave no sign of it, but it was coiled like a serpent about her heart from ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... rough hewn logs, was the most comfortable one in the settlement, and occupied a prominent site on the hillside about one hundred yards from the fort. It was constructed of heavy timber and presented rather a forbidding appearance with its square corners, its ominous looking portholes, and strongly barred doors and windows. There were three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a magazine room for military supplies, and a large room for general use. The several ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... together, I saw (I saw, too, that Captain Whidden and some of the others were watching them sharply) Mr. Thomas and Roger Hamlin were leaning side by side upon the rail, and forward the men were gathering in groups. It was indeed an ominous message that the brig had given us. But supper broke the tension, and afterwards a more cheerful ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... would have been in danger of being torn in pieces, than he ever experienced, but that he could no more bring a son in for Sheffield than he could fly in the air. Sir John Beckett is just gone to stand for Leeds, and certainly the catechism to which he was there forced to submit is very ominous. A seat in the House of Commons will cease to be an object of ambition to honourable and independent men, if it can only be obtained by cringing and servility to the rabble of great towns, and when it shall be established that the member is to be a slave, bound ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of all just men made perfect—and even the legions and guns that Germany is massing on the western front must break against such a barrier. This is in certain uplifted moments; but when other moments come I feel, like Gertrude, that I cannot endure any longer this awful and ominous hush before the ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... kept at this station eight days, sometimes hearing ominous announcements of the terrible Dulbahantas, sent to frighten me by the Abban, and sometimes amusing myself in other and various ways. The Dulbahantas could not conceive my motive for wishing to travel in their land; no peddling Arab, even, had ever ventured there, so why should I desire to go? ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... narrower and the country wilder as he progressed. It was noon when Baree stopped dead in his tracks, stiff-legged, the bristles of his spine erect, a low and ominous growl in his throat. He was standing over a patch of white sand no larger than ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... inside Marise's mind, and like a resultant black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility loomed up, so darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no breath to answer the clergyman's question. Those lines Frank Warner had gone to survey ran ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... only red tiles that had startled me. There was an upright brick range in a corner, an old water-tank, some shelves and a cupboard. A missing pane of glass left a space through which the air had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... gathered at the door of the hospital. Dr. McLean's buggy and a doctor's motor car waited outside. There was an ominous look about the picture that filled Molly with dark forebodings. Most of the people in the group at the door were members of the faculty, Miss Pomeroy, Miss Bowles and the Professor of French literature. They were talking in low voices. Dodo Green and Andy McLean leaned against the wall of the house, ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... word. There have been none of them sold; they have been sent back from London long ago; and this L3. 3s. is for the cellaridge, or warehouse-room in our book cellar." The work was in consequence preferred from the ominous cellar of the publisher's to the author's garret; and, on presenting a copy to an acquaintance, the old gentleman used to tell the anecdote with great humour and still ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Campaigns. At Hameln, which was to be a strong post, drunken Christian rode out once, on a summer afternoon (1624), to see that the ramparts were all right, or getting all right;—and tumbled, horse and self (self in liquor, it is thought), in an ominous alarming manner. Taken up for dead;—nay some of the vague Histories seem to think he was really dead:—but he lived to be often beaten after that, and had many ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... much for open war, O Peers! As not behind in hate, if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war, Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair, And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... not then learned to control my expression. I could not help showing what ruins of lofty castles that ominous "but" dropped upon ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... her not, I will be there. [Exeunt Arch-Bishop and Cardinal. What can she mean?—repent? Or is it cast betwixt the king and her To sound me? come what will, it warms my heart With secret joy, which these my ominous statesmen Left dead within me;—ha! she ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... hotter and sultrier than ever. We were all seated out in the verandah, men-folk smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning themselves and fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous rumbling was heard which made us all start ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... man, Allen C. Armstrong, living in the neighborhood of Sutton Junction, who had been an aid in the work of locating Kelly, awoke one morning to find upon his doorsteps a miniature coffin, which bore an ominous inscription, giving his name and the record of his death (without date), and calling him a "Sutton Junction detective." Also, anonymous letters were reported to have been received by two men in the same vicinity, viz.: N. P. Emerson, Vice-President of the Alliance for ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, nervous and delicate as she was, clung fast to the neck of her ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of going off the stage of life appears to have been well known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz., Mr. Flat-man, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying, because, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... him his three sons, together with their tutor, and his own servant, that they might become acquainted with his beloved native home. When, shortly before, some students at his table heard of a strange and ominous fall of a large clock at midnight, he said, 'Do not fear; this means that I shall soon die. I am weary of the world, so let us rather part like well-filled guests at a ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... from his manner, had already fallen violently in love with Grace, and was almost dislocating his organs of speech in the effort to pay her romantic compliments in English. Freeman observed this with unalloyed satisfaction. But the look which Grace bent upon him and Miriam, on entering, and the ominous change which passed over her mobile countenance, went far to counteract this ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, to hear you talk; to learn things from you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... begun could not fail to progress well. Whenever Margery's crusty old father felt the need of a civil sentence, the flash of Jim's fancy articles inspired him to one; while the lime-burner, having reasoned away his first ominous thought that all this had come out of the firm, also felt ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... now advanced from her hanging-place, and standing at the foot of the bed, opened out a fiery scroll with these ominous words:— ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... applause with a boyish smile of triumph. As soon as Lashly got on to the Barrier, Scott took his party away and they returned to Cape Evans. It would have been a disappointment to them if they had known that we shortly afterwards heard an ominous rattle, which turned out to be the big end brass of one of the connecting rods churning up—due to a ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... organ had ceased to fill the great edifice with sweet and inspiring sounds. Instead, there now was only the muffled tread of marching feet, the rumble of heavy wheels, and the low, ominous beating of drums ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... them—to Mr. Gryce, in fact, upon whose age Fancy had begun to work, this battling craft presented an ominous appearance. It was doomed. The gale was too much for it. Did he see in this obvious fact a prophecy of what lay before the man upon whose privacy they were ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering mass of sulphurous hue that already casts its ominous shadow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... general air was not all Indian summer—which was not used to be so sick a thing, however mild—but, in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks on fire, in Vermont; so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecate's cauldron—and two sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field, seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, hutted in an Adullum cave, well towards the south, according to his season, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... which Israel arrived at Mount Sinai, a heavy cloud rested upon them, and every one except Moses was forbidden to ascend the mountain, yea, they durst not even stay near it, lest God smite those who pushed forward, with hail or fiery arrows. [197] The day of the revelation announced itself as an ominous day even in the morning, for diverse rumblings sounded from Mount Sinai. Flashes of lightning, accompanied by an ever swelling peal of horns, moved the people with mighty fear and trembling. God bent the heavens, moved the earth, and shook the bounds of the world, so that the depths trembled, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... time upon the mast our brown sail flapped; Our keel plowed bitter salt, and everywhere The ominous sky in sullen mystery wrapped, What side we looked on, either here or there, The welcome sight of land long sadly sought; And that Atlantis, hid within the sea, The land with all our hope and promise fraught, We saw not yet, nor wist where it ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... of consumption may well be thought to compensate the somewhat greater risks from fever. Even on the plains, that immense mortality of whites from the mother country which once gave to Jamaica the ominous name of 'The Grave of Europeans,' was caused as much by their reckless intemperance as by any necessity of the climate. Or, rather, habits which in Great Britain might have been indulged in with comparative impunity, in Jamaica were rapidly fatal. It is said ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and he saw a figure coming in stealthily, and, as it drew nearer, the form was that of a marvellously beautiful woman some twenty-three years of age. Cautiously she looked around her; and when she saw that all the guard were asleep, she smiled an ominous smile, and was going up to the Prince's bedside, when she perceived that in one corner of the room there was a man yet awake. This seemed to startle her, but she went up ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... away, the captain regarded him with an ominous scowl. He wished that for fifteen minutes Harry had been one of the crew. It was fortunate for Jack that his temper was diverted, for, apparently forgetting the young sailor, he strode on, and Jack managed to slip down to ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... There was an ominous flash in Dr. Dubbe's eye when he arose to address the class. "We have this week," he began, "a program barbarous enough to suit the lovers of ultra-modern music. There is Saint-Saens' overture, 'Les Barbares,' ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the brookside, and over the brook on the high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in the cases laid before conveyancers. They promised, however, to turn it over in their minds, and to let Messrs. Quirk and Gammon know if anything occurred to vary their impression. A week elapsed, however, and Mr. Tresayle and Mr. Mortmain preserved an ominous silence. As for Frankpledge, he had a knack, somehow or another, of always coming to the conclusion wished and hoped for by his clients; and, after prodigious pains, he wrote a very long opinion, to show that there ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... In that ominous minute, like the devil in an old-time drama, Suliman knocked at the door leading from the outer hall. Grim opened it, and I heard the boy's voice piping up in Arabic. The Administrator was in his car outside, waiting to know whether Major Grim ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... it is a recognised maxim of the class never 'to tell upon one another' so long as they remain good friends. I have heard an experienced housewife say there is nothing she dreads so much as an unbroken harmony below stairs; like silence in the nursery, it is ominous of ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... him right:—in the Greek tragedians, who sometimes teach us Christians better morality than (I am sorry to say) we teach ourselves, there is a sentiment often repeated—which I dare say, Mr. Bertram, you remember: it is to this effect,—That it is ominous of evil to come—for any man to express, by his words or acts, that he glories in his own prosperity as though it were of his own creation, or held by the tenure of his own merits. Now this is in effect the very crime of him that, being born of woman, yet hardens his heart against the prostrate ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Judge was giving what, in his opinion, was the law of the land. It was his opinion, nay, it was his decision. Nor was it the unanimous ruling of the court. Two justices dissented. The words quoted are picturesque, and are well suited to a battle-cry. On every side, with ominous emphasis in the North, one heard that the negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. This was, until 1860, the last and greatest exhibition of audacity on the part of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... helplessness, the scoundrels had robbed me, while I lay insensible, of every gold crown in my purse! Nor was this all, or the worst, for I saw at once that in doing so they had effected something which was a thousandfold more ominous and formidable—established against me that secret understanding which it was my especial aim to prevent, and on the absence of which I had been counting. Nay, I saw that for my very life I had only ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common man can understand—you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy for himself, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... Turkish troops with the caliph Mamun was an ominous event for the country. Up to 846 all the successive governors had been Arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. With some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple habits—the Arabs were never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... home and the family just about to take breakfast. Gray Michael had returned somewhat unexpectedly, with a fine catch, and did not intend sailing again before the evening tide. A somewhat ominous silence greeted the girl, a silence which her father was the first ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... weird winds lashing the defiant deep, And roar of floods that gather strength and leap Down dizzy, wreck-strewn channels to the main. I turn upon my pillow and again Compose myself for slumber. Let them sweep; I once survived great floods, and do not fear, Though ominous planets congregate, and seem To foretell strange disasters. From a dream— Ah! dear God! such a dream!—I woke to hear, Through the dense shadows lit by no star's gleam, The rush of mighty waters on my ear. Helpless, afraid, and all alone, I lay; The floods had come upon ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stars appeals to every boy's fancy. It had vanished since the spring. In it he had always recognized the form of a brig he had seen hove-to in Portsmouth Harbor—high poop, skyward-sticking bowsprit and ominous, even row of gun-ports where she carried her carronades—three on a side. How those black cannon-mouths had gaped at the small boy on the dock! ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... of pouring rain. Great drops beat on the little window, a gargoyle poured a noisy stream of water, and a loud sea cried off the land and broke upon the outer edge of the rock of Doom. A loud sea and ominous, and it was hard for Count Victor, in that welter of midnight voices, to hear the call of an owl, yet it came to him by and by, as he expected, with its repetition. And then the flageolet, with its familiar and baffling ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... purpose of fetching a pair of field-glasses. She was anxious to identify the horse. She passed along the veranda towards the furthest window. It was the window of her uncle's office. Just as she was nearing it she heard the sound of voices coming from within. She paused, and an ominous pucker drew her brows together. Her beautiful dark face clouded. She had no wish to play the part of an eavesdropper, but she had recognized the voices of her uncle and Lablache. She had also heard the mention of her own name. What woman, or, for that matter, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... a narrow escape from the bloodhounds. He had trusted his secret to a colored man who, faithful like the rest, was directing him on his way when deep ominous sounds fell on their ears. The colored man knew that sound too well; he knew something of the nature of bloodhounds, and how to ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... the Parliament Bill into law destroys, and is meant to destroy, every security against the passing of any Home Rule Bill whatever which the present majority of the House of Commons choose to support. This gives an ominous significance to the obstinate refusal of the Government to alter or amend any of the material enactments contained in this ill-starred measure. A Leap in the Dark, combined with a knowledge of the Parliament Bill and the legislative dictatorship with which it invests the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. They seemed to lighten in the dark ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... burden of censure. I must confesse that it might have been written with more maturitie, and deliberation, but in respect of my promise, I have made this hast, how happy I know not, yet good enough I hope, if you vouchsafe your kind approbation: which with your judgement I hold ominous, and as under ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... Wells spoke with cold, almost ominous, curtesy and he would have shut the door in their faces if he had not caught the pitying look in a girl's eyes. A dull red crept into his face. Involuntarily he stepped toward Elizabeth Thorley. "If you hear anything of the child let me know," he said as if the words were ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... been announced at Kennington, and preparations were made; but Gaveston's jousts were not popular. None of the Barons accepted the invitation, and in the night the lists and scaffolding were secretly carried away. This mortification was ominous, but Edward's funds were so low that he could not avoid summoning a parliament to meet at Westminster; and at their meeting the nobles again resorted to the device of Montfort at the Mad Parliament. They brought their armed followers, and forced the King to consent ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... qualification—e.g., Hautboys playing loud music; A lofty strain or two to the hautboys; Trumpets and hautboys sounded, and drums beaten all together. In Ant. IV, iii, 12, Hautboys supply the supposed ominous 'music in ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... suspended; in large niches were deposited scrolls, clasped and bound with iron; and a profusion of strange and uncouth instruments and machines (in which modern science might, perhaps, discover the tools of chemical invention) gave a magical and ominous aspect to ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous: many of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... consider that the palmy days of British agriculture began to dwindle at about that time. The shadow of the approaching depression had already fallen upon the land before the year 1875 had run its course, and the outlook became ominous as the decade of the 'seventies neared its close. One memorable feature was associated with 1877 in that this was the last year in which the dreaded cattle plague (rinderpest) made its appearance in England. The same year, 1877, was the last also in which the annual average ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to be a soldier, and with all his thoughts bent on that glorious scheme, he too scarcely dared to touch on the subject nearest his heart. Once or twice when he ventured on it with George, the latter's countenance wore an ominous look. Harry had a feudal attachment for his elder brother, worshipped him with an extravagant regard, and in all things gave way to him as the chief. So Harry saw, to his infinite terror, how George, too, in his grave way, was occupied with military matters. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rolled up, and the play began. An ominous silence seemed to hang over the audience. The actors were nervous at first, but as the silence continued and offensive demonstrations were not immediately made, they gained courage and swung into their parts with as much enthusiasm ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... windows he dispersed with a wave of his hand the dark swarm of faces peering eagerly within, and then at last he deigned to break the silence which had become so ominous. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... too late. He was never more to need human attendance or attention. On Thursday morning, March 10th, at about seven o'clock, the usual cup of tea was taken to his room. To the knock at the door there was no response save an ominous silence. The attendant opened the door, only to find that the venerable patriarch lay dead, on the floor beside the bed. He had probably risen to take some nourishment—a glass of milk and a biscuit being always put within reach—and, while eating the biscuit, he had felt faint, and fallen, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... responsibility to God and my country. My public life will terminate within a brief period, and I have no other object of earthly ambition than to leave my country in a peaceful and prosperous condition and to live in the affections and respect of my countrymen. The dark and ominous clouds which now appear to be impending over the Union I conscientiously believe may be dissipated with honor to every portion of it by the admission of Kansas during the present session of Congress, whereas if she should be rejected I greatly fear these clouds will become darker ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... our first acquaintance with punkas. They extend throughout the cabin, ominous of hot weather, which I detest; Vandy, on the other hand, revels in it, and it is his turn now. Vandy handed me today a string of Cambodia money, sixty pieces, which cost only two cents, showing to what fractions they reduce exchanges in Cochin China. I have been careful to collect coins in every ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... were talking about the rain, which hadn't yet begun to fall, but which, judging from the ominous gray sky and black ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... firearms. Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired at the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... and clear in a cloudless sky. Their feet sounded loud and ominous. Their tongues ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... sank in fiery splendour, he reached the little wood. Evening was falling, and already, among the trees, shadows were deepening to twilight, but in the west was a flaming glory; and, upon the edge of the wood he turned to glance back at this radiance, splashes of gold and pink flushing to an ominous red. For a long moment he stood to stare around about the solitary countryside, joying in life and the glory of it. Then he turned, with a smile on his lips, and stepped into the gloom of the wood. On he went, forcing his way through the ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... fool: why yes, this is what I mean by growing young again: for what else is it to be a child than to be a fool and an idiot? It is the being such that makes that age so acceptable: for who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten? And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with such an old blade, as, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... hesitated, and glanced nervously forward. "Yessir," he said at length, and shuddered as a low, ominous growl came from the crew. Despite his slowness, the meal came to an end at last, and, in obedience to orders, he rose, and taking his plate forward, looked entreatingly at the ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... harnessed four white horses led by Libyan soldiers. Behind him stood a slave clad in a dull robe, set there to avert the influence of the evil eye and of the envious gods, who held a crown above the head of the Imperator, and now and again whispered in his ear the ominous words, Respice post te, hominem memento te ("Look back at me ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... a group of listeners. The interest she excited dissipated, in some degree, the dread inspired by the mysterious voices. There was nothing ominous about this young, bright, fair reality, though ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... was breathless silence. Once again the terrible howling seemed to circle the hut, but it grew less distinct as it went across the marsh and up the mountains on the other side of the valley. Then came an ominous stillness. Presently some man, who couldn't hold in any longer, said ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... a supersitious motion entertained by the ignorant in all countries even until this day. The Asiatics suppose that uncommon qualities of beauty, fortune or health, raise an ominous admiration admiration, which injures the possessor. To tell parents that their children are stout and healthy, is a mal-a-propos compliment; also to congratulate women on their healthy appearance is often unwelcome; ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... called the public. I am sure, my dear Lady Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it can only be from an apprehension that it may affect me, upon which I have already set you at ease; or from a fear that this present blame is ominous of their future or final destiny. If this be the case, your tenderness for me betrays you. Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... as if this were my fault," cried Algitha, on one still, ominous night, after she had resigned her post at the bedside to the nurse, who was to fill it for a couple of hours, after which Hadria took her turn ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... suppose that the Bard looks upon the dark hue of his accoutrements as ominous of a mournful ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... and the insurgent Republicans to the passage of the bill and to the Winona speech were ominous for the future of the party. Although not unanimous, condemnation was common in the West, even in Republican papers. Particular objection was made to the high estimate which the President placed upon the act and to his defence of Senator Aldrich, who had come to be looked ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... for publication, and "The Scarlet Letter" was written. Hawthorne's study or workshop was the front room in the third story, an apartment of some width but with a ceiling in direct contradiction to the elevated thoughts of the writer. There is an ominous silence in the American Note-book between 1846 and 1850, which is rather increased than diminished by the publication from his diary of a number of extracts concerning the children. The babies of geniuses do not differ essentially from those of other people, and it is not supposable ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Methuen's position at Modder River doubly critical. On Sunday he was ready, and set out to test his fate. On Tuesday he was back again in his camp, the measure of his defeat being given by his assurance that in his camp he was in perfect security. Those are ominous words, for they have not the air of the man who does not know that he is beaten, and who means to try again at once. It is, however, conceivable that, as the defeat seems to have been caused by an inexplicable blunder, the marching of a brigade in the dark in dense formation ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... time first, and the rain still did not fall. It was very black, and flashes from distant lightning with mutterings of the thunder were frequent and threatening; still no rain unless a few ominous drops. At last voices and fluttering muslins came down the road; the flutter came near, and in poured a stream of gay people at the door of the poor little room. Gay as to their dress and attire, that is; for gaiety was not to be found at present in their words and ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Mr. Tutt said nothing. Neither he nor Tutt nor Bonnie Doon nor yet Higgleby showed any the least sign of concern. Caput's momentarily returning self-possession forsook him. What portended his ominous silence? Had he made some horrible mistake? Had he overlooked some important jurisdictional fact? Was he now to be hoist for some unknown reason by his own petard? He was, poor ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... remains and realized the truth of Lord John Roxton's words. The beetling head of the cliff projected over the cane-brake. Undoubtedly he had fallen from above. But had he fallen? Had it been an accident? Or—already ominous and terrible possibilities began to form round ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been in his armies. The name and authority and high office of the two Consuls had done something with them, and young Caesar had been with the Consuls. But both the Consuls had been killed—which was in itself ominous—and Antony was still full of hope, and young Caesar was not there, and Decimus was unpopular with the men. It was of no use that Cicero should write with lofty ideas and speak of the spirit of the Senate. Antony had received a severe check, but the feeling of military ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... fancy of the skull—of letting fall a bullet through the skull's eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium." ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... pause). I am struck dumb by that tongue's eloquence, Which ever was so ominous to me. And how shall I, a weak, untutored woman, Cope with so subtle, learned an orator? Yes truly; were these lords as you describe them, I must be mute; my cause were lost indeed, Beyond all hope, if they pronounce me guilty. But, sir, these names, which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came in gusts, swift, spiteful, and icy cold. In the dining-room Mrs. Royall awoke from a light doze and piled fresh logs on the fire. Anne and Laura, whom she had kept ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... mother lay on her bed, suffering and wasting. The house assumed a look of desolation. Everybody went on tiptoe; we talked in whispers; for weeks at a time there was no laughter in our home. The ominous night lamp was never extinguished. We slept in our clothes night after night, so as to wake the more easily in case of sudden need. We watched, we waited, but ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... mask; but the papal party are now venturing to cast it aside, and to appear in their real character. Within the last few years scenes have been exhibited in this Protestant land, which our ancestors would never for one moment have tolerated. Many Protestants are lukewarm amid these ominous proceedings. May they be aroused from their present apathy into a spirit worthy of the men, by whom our deliverance from papal tyranny was effected in ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... sneezing was ominous;[42] from the right it was considered auspicious; and Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, that before a naval battle it was a sign of conquest! Catullus, in his pleasing poem of Acme and Septimus, makes this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... make such designs as those when we are well and strong," Raphael replied, burying his hands in Pauline's hair. But even then a horrible fit of coughing came on, one of those deep ominous coughs that seem to come from the depths of the tomb, a cough that leaves the sufferer ghastly pale, trembling, and perspiring; with aching sides and quivering nerves, with a feeling of weariness pervading the very marrow of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... was the first person from the Josephine who presented himself to the principal. There was something in the professor's countenance which looked ominous, and Mr. Lowington's fears seemed to be confirmed by the unusual solemnity of the learned gentleman's expression. Mr. Lowington's heart rose up into his throat; for independently of the sorrow which the loss of one or more of the Josephine's crew would cause him, he realized that such ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... servants of the household. Female slaves have to grind the corn to make bread for the Suitors; one of these slaves is still at her task, though past daybreak, she being the weakest of all. Standing at her hand-mill she utters the ominous word: "O Zeus, ruler, fulfill this wish for me wretched: may the present feast of the Suitors be their last, they who have loosed my limbs with painful toil in grinding their barley meal!" Thus the prayer of ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... year; and now he was again in a fever of impatience to be away, safe, at sea. He added the more portentous word with the vague self-assurance that it was only the customary expression of his notable ignorance of land; but it echoed with an ominous ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been convinced that he gauged the other sufficiently for the purposes of the proposed tour. Afterwards each found himself trying to recall the other with greater distinctness and able to recall nothing but queer, ominous and minatory traits. The doctor's impression of the great fuel specialist grew ever darker, leaner, taller and more impatient. Sir Richmond took on the likeness of a monster obdurate and hostile, he spread upwards until ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... before he went to Switzerland. He could see her now as she was then, tall and slender in her white robe, and the red ray of sunshine gleaming like a splash of blood upon her breast. He glanced at her by his side as she turned towards him, and behold! there it shone again, splendid yet ominous. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... cargoes of sugar from British vessels? In the former case, indeed, the ships were ordered to be released; in the latter case, of which the complaint was made twenty-four hours later, the reply to inquiries was the ominous statement that 'no ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... described. The spirit of this religion—if such it can be called—is not so much adoration of a Being supreme and beneficent, as a tax to certain malignant furies—a propitiation, in fact, to prevent them bringing evil on the land, and to insure a fruitful harvest. It was rather ominous that hail fell with violence, and lightning burnt down one of the palace huts, while the king was in the midst of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... down the steps into the street, and the lean, hard-faced storekeeper turned to Drummond with an ominous frown. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... sign to keep silence, raised his foot with ominous calmness to mount the stair, and turned round, sword in hand, to see if the officer followed him. The officer made a sign of the cross and stepped up. Porthos and Aramis, who knew their D'Artagnan, uttered a cry, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gave the smallest encouragement to questioners, and as Jane herself quietly declined every invitation to take a meal or spend an hour away from home, curiosity was obliged to seek gratification elsewhere, and baffled inquirers to talk about her amongst themselves with ominous whispers and ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... without making excuses. When he returned, Dr. Lindsay had dried his face and was calmer. But his aspect was sufficiently ominous; he ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... earth and air and ocean had certainly broken out that morning, for the ominous lines of Fog and Mist were hovering afar off upon the boundaries of the horizon. Under the crystalline azure of a summer sky, the water of the harbor had an intensity of color rarely seen, except in the pictures of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... on layer of murky low-flying clouds into a dense mass overhead. Night, black as the bottomless pit, walled us in. A fifty-mile breeze lashed us spitefully, tugging at our shirt-sleeves and drowning our voices, while we halted on that pinnacle. By the dank breath of the wind, the ominous overcasting of the sky, all the little signs that a prairie-wise man learns to read, we knew that a storm was close at hand. Shelter there was none, nor food, and we ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spread to our starboard bow (west-south-west), and the vibration caused by the pressure could be felt intermittently on board the ship.... The incessant grinding and grating of the ice to the southward, with seething noises, as of water rushing under the ship's bottom, and ominous sounds, kept me on the qui vive all night, and the prospect of a break-up of the ice would have wracked my nerves had I not had them numbed by ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
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