"Ghastly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... striving to make her voice sound matter-of-fact, her eyes glued to the road ahead of them as it twisted and turned through the woods. "I don't see why lights should make a perfectly harmless wood look ghastly. And, anyway, I couldn't turn them out now. I don't believe I could find my way. You don't want me to ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... tracking an ordinary sleep-walker. The lawns were broader than I imagined, and it seemed an age before I reached the edge of the Grove. The world was so still that I appeared to be making a most ghastly amount of noise. I remember that once I heard a rustling in the air, and looked up to see the green doves circling about ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... which are built and thatched in a circular form, and in which their young men and bachelors sleep; here likewise are deposited the heads, of which they have more than enow, as above one hundred ghastly remnants of mortality ornamented the abode in which we slept. I could not on this occasion find out that they professed to take the heads of friends or strangers, though the latter may fall victims if on enemies' ground. They ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Marquis gazed a moment, And nothing did he say, But the cheek of Argyle grew ghastly pale, And he turn'd his eyes away. The painted harlot at his side, She shook through every limb, For a roar like thunder swept the street, And hands were clench'd at him, And a Saxon soldier cried aloud, "Back, coward, from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... ship's crew; others in sky-blue, in gold and pink and combinations of brilliance that blended their loose garments to kaleidoscopic hues. But the figures were similar in one unvarying respect: they were repulsive and ghastly, and their faces showed bright blotches of blood vessels and blue markings of veins through ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... shield and a great shouting, and in the semi-darkness a noisy battle raged. After some minutes the Lirongs drew off and rushed back to their boats as wildly as they had come; and, strange to say, no blood was flowing, no heads were rolling on the ground, no ghastly wounds were gaping, in fact no one seemed any the worse. For it seems that this attack was merely a well understood formality, a put-up job, so to say. When two tribes, between whom there is a blood-feud not formally settled, meet together to make peace, it is the custom ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and guilt bringeth weakness, and faintness in this life; how much more, when both with all their power and force, like a giant, fasten on them; as God saith, "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee?" (Eze 22:14). Now will the ghastly jaws of despair gape upon thee, and now will condemnings of conscience, like thunder-claps, continually batter against thy weary spirit. It is the godly that have boldness in the day of judgment (1 John 4:17); but the wicked will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... left behind, was as the man in his own story, "Silence," who sat upon a rock—the gray and ghastly rock of "Desolation." "With his brow lofty with thought and his eyes wild with care and the fables of sorrow and weariness and disgust with mankind written in furrows upon his cheek," he sat upon the lonely grey rock and leaned his head upon his hand and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... father, her only friend—the one for whom she would lay down her life, and to soothe whose delirium she had consented to this abhorrent sacrifice of herself. The marriage thus planned was to take place thus; it was to be a hideous, a ghastly mockery—a frightful violence to the solemnity of sorrow. She was not to be married—she was to be sold. The circumstances of that old betrothal had never been explained to her; but she knew that money was in some way connected with it, and that she was virtually ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... long years should have brought more wisdom, he went poaching for supper upon Welsh rabbits. That night all the ghastly time came back, and stood minute by minute before him. Every swing of his body, and sway of his head, and swell of his heart, was repeated, the buffet of the billows when the planks were gone, the numb grasp of the slippery oar, the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... end, to sew the piece on the other, for the sons and nephews of Berka now share the presents amongst them. His Giantship was very condescending to me, though savage enough with the merchant. He laughed and joked, and "grinned a ghastly smile," and asked me, why I did not go into the public square and see all the people, thinking my not going out more showed a want of confidence in the Touaricks. Want of confidence in a Touarick is the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the path. Men were staggering along alone, or supported by comrades, or crawling on hands and knees, or carried on stretchers. Corpses lay here and there. Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature. The splinters and fragments of the shell had torn and mutilated in the most ghastly manner. I passed about two hundred while I was climbing up. There was, moreover, a small but steady leakage of unwounded men of all corps. Some of these cursed and swore. Others were utterly exhausted and fell on the hillside in stupor. Others again seemed drunk, though they had had no liquor. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... business-like Miss Frayne start and shiver as a little scream escaped her. I didn't wonder. Even I, knowing that it was an illusion and a snare, felt my flesh creeping as I looked at the ghastly thing in ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... bearers of the litter halted for a moment. Many turned away their faces in horror. I saw the schoolmistress of the red feather supporting my mistress of the upper first, who was almost in a swoon. At the same moment I felt a touch on the elbow; it was the little mason, who was ghastly white and trembling from head to foot. He was certainly thinking of his father. I was thinking of him, too. I, at least, am at peace in my mind while I am in school: I know that my father is at home, seated at his table, far removed from all danger; ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... "I suppose we can find out soon, for tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," he said, with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... night had been near three part wasted, Full half the meeting more like spectres seem'd Than of this world. The clamour then grew great; Whilst ev'ry torturing passion of the foul Glar'd in the ghastly visages of several. Some grinn'd in rage, some tore their hair, whilst others, Upon their knees, with hands and eyes uplifted, In curses dar'd assail all-ruling Providence Under the varied names of Fate and Fortune. ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... said compassionately, seeing the ghastly pallor of his face, "but I pity you. The street is furious that these wretches should have carried off that sweet young creature, who was so good to everyone; but what could we do? We hissed the men, and we ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... declared Nan. "Why, the Chattertons are fourteen miles from Abbencombe Station and it would be simply ghastly if they sent all that way to meet me—and there was no me! Besides, there's a rehearsal fixed for ten o'clock ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... about Swakopmund. As a town it is the most extraordinary place I have seen. I use the superlative deliberately. But I do not wish to live there. It is purely artificial, and artificial to a ghastly degree too. There is not a spot of vegetation. There is not a genuine tree to be seen. The water has a detestable, unsatisfying blurred taste, to which the adjective "brackish" is applied. It is probable that a town occupied by enemy troops does not ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... that contraption, will you? If ever it started going off not one of us would live to tell the ghastly tale," called Will, as if really and truly alarmed, which, of course, ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... returned Dodger, as a ghastly expression came over his face, and he tumbled back into his ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity. The carnage had only ceased at this late hour of the day because there ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... his cloak about his humped shoulders, and in the flickering dim light from overhead his face stood out in all its ghastly pallor, accentuated by the dead black hair and mustache. But his eyes were burning strangely, and when they saw it the men drew back, and more than one sought the outer chill in ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... picture of which, and that of purgatory, were on the wall opposite that of heaven, the human faces were the most horrible that can be imagined. Persons of different descriptions were represented, with the most distorted features, ghastly complexions, and every variety of dreadful expression; some with wild beasts gnawing at their heads, others furiously biting the iron bars which kept them in, with looks which could not fail ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata; starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which would be ghastly." ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... that she wanted to deposit in the bank for John. For Fanny was saving now as only Fanny knew how when she set her mind to it. And she had set not only her mind but her very soul on making good. Every cruel taunt had left a ghastly wound and only work of the hardest ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... water. And there, beside a ruined shrine, two dead cactus bushes, with their stiff distorted limbs, made Roy think suddenly of two dead Germans he had come upon once—killed so swiftly that they still retained, in death, the ghastly semblance of life. Why the devil couldn't a man be rid of them? Dead Germans were ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... my court, and tried her, and condemned her, and, as nearly as might be, put her to death. I, with my ten hundred thousand sins—all of them as black as Erebus—found her not pure enough for me! It ought to make one die of laughter. Diane," he went on, in another tone—a tone of ghastly jocularity—"didn't it amuse you, knowing yourself to be what you are—knowing what you had done for Mrs. Eveleth—knowing the things Bienville has just said of you—didn't it amuse you to see me sitting in judgment ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... There was not a moment to be lost! She went straight to it, and knocked rather loud. No answer came. She knocked again. Still there was no answer. She knocked a third time, and after a little fumbling with the lock, the door opened a chink, and a ghastly face, bedewed with drops of terror, peeped through. She was standing a little back, and the eyes did not at once find the object they sought; then suddenly they lighted on her, and the laird shook ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... had all been ring-barked a couple of seasons or more before this time, with the result that they were now the very haggard skeletons of mighty trees, naked for the most part, their white bones open to all the winds of heaven, but here and there sporting a ghastly kind of drapery, remnants of their grave-clothes as it might be, in the shape of long hanging streamers of dead bark, which moaned and rustled eerily in the night breezes. High above the tattered grave-clothes of their lifeless trunks, the knotted, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... use of his limbs," was carried to a boat, and hoisted in a chair over the ship's side. This latter journey, far more fatiguing to the sufferer than the twelve miles ride which he had previously undergone, was not rendered more easy to bear by the jests of the watermen and sailors, to whom his ghastly, death-stricken countenance seemed matter for merriment; and he was greatly rejoiced to find himself safely seated in the cabin. The voyage, however, already more than once deferred, was not yet to begin. Wednesday, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... The ghastly eyes were fixed on Des Esseintes, penetrating him, freezing his very marrow; wilder than ever, the bulldog woman threw herself at him and commenced to howl like a dog at the killing, her head hanging ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the casual observer that no further proceedings were to be taken in the matter. The god's face wore its usually placid look, unmoved by the shifting panorama of human life which ebbed and flowed in front of him from morning till night. The ghastly-looking policemen, with their grinning visages and ferocious scowls and contorted bodies, remained in the same unchanging postures ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... its former hue, So natural, warm, and florid, The Furnace burns of a brimstone blue, And instead of the couleur de rose it threw, With a cooler reflection,—justly due— Exhibits each of the Pagan crew, Livid, ghastly, and horrid! But vainly they close their guilty eyes Against prophetic fears; Or with hard and horny palms devise To dam their enormous ears— There are sounds in the air, Not here or there, Irresistible voices everywhere, No bulwarks can ever rebut, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of animalism, under increasing control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try to enlarge the significance of an ivory chessman by ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... seen, by their deformed, bowed legs, bent backs and shrivelled little, old faces—such faces as we find in cripples aged by pain. Our hearts have been almost stilled as we have listened to the terrible stories of the hundreds of little girls in the ghastly fleshmarkets of India and China who, by the knife and the insertion into their tender bodies of wedges of expanding wood, are thus made ready, through months of torture, for the use of some inhuman Hindu ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... How can it be doubted that in this speech the Ghost accuses his wife and brother of adultery? Their marriage was not adultery. See how the ghastly revelation grows on Hamlet—his father in hell—murdered by his ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Frank Rolls blowing his infernal whistle opposite my summer cottage at some ghastly hour in the morning. Even without getting out of bed, I could see from the window that it was no day for fishing. No, not raining exactly. I don't mean that, but one of those peculiar days—I don't mean wind—there was no wind, but a ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... that the faces of the speakers were revealed to me with extraordinary vividness, and their horrified expressions were even more startling than was the silent, ghastly figure of the Unknown. The scene comes back to me, here, in my little room in Norwood, with its every detail as clearly marked as on the night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains, darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in gaping expectancy; ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... entertainment having gone completely out of fashion in France. The papa of the farce (who was also the Jack Tar of the drama) reappears in the pantomime as Pierrot, the white-faced clown; and tremendously funny is he. There is a weird, elastic harlequin in a ghastly mask which he never lifts; and an amazing notary in an astounding nose, who proves to be Monsieur Goosequill. There is a humpback of hideous deformity and a Columbine of seraphic loveliness; and all Monsieur Goosequill's troubles come out of the fact ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... little slanted tables, each under an electric globe with a green shade. Here a curly-headed scoundrel with a corncob pipe was hurling paper balls the size of apples at the head of an industrious man who, under these difficulties, was trying to draw a picture of an awful wreck with ghastly-faced sailors frozen in the rigging. Near this pair a lady was challenging a German artist who resembled Napoleon III. with having been publicly drunk at a music hall on the previous night. Next to the great ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha. His spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds.' Precious memorandums from the pocket-book ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the western quarter at a depth to the back; in this hell they appear at a distance like serpents of various kinds; and the most deceitful like vipers: but in the hell into which I was permitted to look, they appeared to me as if they were ghastly pale, with faces of chalk: and as they are mere concupiscences, they do not like to speak: and if they do speak, they only mutter and stammer various things, which are understood by none but their companions who are near them; but presently, as they sit or stand, they make themselves ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think we hadn't looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and nick them - or else the police will think WE'VE got them - or else that she's been fooling them. Oh, it's a pretty decent average ghastly mess this time, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire, must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression, discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror to the darkness of the grave. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... officer gazed as though stricken with sudden horror, his blue eyes staring, his gaunt, pinched features ghastly white, and then Sergeant Haney and another trooper sprang from their horses and ran to his side. Weak, worn, starved, he had quailed at the dreadful sight, and was toppling head-foremost to ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... her, took it and more. "We're to sit together at the Ambassador's then—or at least you two are—with this new complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... gold, mother, The Queen has lands and gold, While you are forced to your empty breast A skeleton babe to hold,— A babe that is dying of want, mother, As I am dying now, With a ghastly look in its sunken eye, And famine upon ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the two candles went low, and then shone with a ghastly green effulgence. I looked up, quickly, and as I did so I saw the lights sink into a dull, ruddy tint; so that the room glowed with a strange, heavy, crimson twilight that gave the shadows behind the chairs and tables a double depth of blackness; and wherever the light struck, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the destroyed area I met not one living person. The noise made by my feet kicking the broken glass was the only sound. The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastly tributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, made more desolate by the bright sunshine, gave you a curious feeling that the end of the world had come and ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... religion to him, and whose appearance only a few hours ago had been the most inspiring thing which had entered into his life? He looked across the lawn into the pine grove with steadfast eyes and knitted brows, and Da Souza watched him, ghastly and nervous. At least he ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more like a wild beast than a man. "You're not fit to live! You're beasts of prey! No decent girl is safe from you!" His voice rose loud and thin and harsh. He was fast losing hold of himself. His ghastly face, bloody and horribly disfigured, made an appalling setting for his blazing eyes. Nearer and nearer the crowd he walked, gnashing and grinding his teeth till the foam fell from his lips. The wild fury of his Highland ancestors was turning him into a wild beast ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... should a sicht sae ghastly-like, Wi' rags, and banes, and skin, Hae nae impression on yon folks, But tell ye 'll stand ahin'; O what a contrast will ye shaw, To the glowrin' Lunnun folk, When in St James' ye tak' your stand, Wi' a hinging, toom meal pock. And sing, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and though the savages made vigorous search for him, he remained undiscovered. You can imagine the horrible sight the fort presented when the sun went down, the soldiers in their red uniforms lying there scalped and mangled, a ghastly heap under the summer sky. And to just think it was only a short time ago, a little more than a ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... royal funerals on record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple, ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself had already been privately interred.—A week after this disappearance of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... "Ghastly affair, isn't it?" said the owner contemptuously. "I'd let it stand empty rather than live in it myself. It reeks of my uncle's medicine and echoes with his gouty groans. Besides what is there in ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... finish—nay, may sometimes be called rough as to workmanship. But, unhappily there are few of the lesser arts that have fallen so low as the plasterer's. The cast work one sees perpetually in pretentious rooms is a mere ghastly caricature of ornament, which no one is expected to look at if he can help it. It is simply meant to say, 'This house is built for a rich man.' The very material of it is all wrong, as, indeed, mostly happens ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... heavens. Thunder rolls, and the electric current cuts the air, illuminating the wild scene with a picturesque touch that is almost ghastly in its yellow white. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... British ships to lay Constantinople under their guns, was a splendid conception worthy the military imagination of the daring ages when the British Empire was built and the days of the Spanish Main, but the only criterion in the ghastly business of war ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... wood which will bear edge enough to cut off heads and arms at one blow. When this valorous exploit was done, he comes to me laughing, as a token of triumph, delivered me my sword again, with abundance of suprising gestures, laying it, along with the bleeding and ghastly head of ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... hosts, Of ghosts, And that without reflectors; And creepy things With wings, And gaunt and grisly spectres! He can fill you crowds Of shrouds, And horrify you vastly; He can rack your brains With chains, And gibberings grim and ghastly. Then, if you plan it, he Changes organity With an urbanity, Full of Satanity, Vexes humanity With an inanity Fatal to vanity - Driving your foes to the verge of insanity. Barring tautology, In demonology, 'Lectro biology, Mystic nosology, Spirit philology, High class astrology, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... tenderly handled, and the soldiers who bore them upon their shoulders carried sad faces, too; for happily as yet the death of friends in the South was not made, by familiarity, a thing of course. And lastly—lifted so gently, and suffering so patiently—came the ghastly burdens of the stretchers. Strong men, maimed and torn, their muscular hands straining the handles of the litter with the bitter effort to repress complaint, the horrid crimson ooze marking the rough cloths thrown over them; delicate, fair-browed boys, who had gone forth a few days back so full ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... cap the climax, the German airplanes returned over the spot of their ghastly triumph and fired on the rescuers with machine guns. God will never forgive the Huns for that act alone. Nor will our comrades ever ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... of the traffickers, they were hurried away, from country to country, until the highest bidders obtained the virtue, honour, and the life of the victims of these inhuman traffickers. In my various journeyings these ghastly facts were over and over again brought to my knowledge. Their truth I was unfortunately frequently able to verify, so that from personal observation and knowledge I knew this state of things to exist, yea, to be ever on the increase. I knew that just as ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and shriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep, sly smile, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kills as the un-stayed pest. It lies in the hands of the man who'd sell His hold on his life for an ice-bound hell. What care we for the fevered brain That's filled with ravings and thoughts insane, So long as we hold In our hands the gold?— The glistening, glittering, ghastly gold That comes at the end of the hunger and cold; That comes at the end of the awful thirst; That comes through the pain and torture accurst Of limbs that are racked and minds o'erthrown, The gold lies there and is all ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... seem," she said to Hannah, and then, as Richard's name dropped from Ethelyn's lips, she looked curiously at the flushed face so ghastly white, save where spots of crimson colored the cheeks, and at the mass of hair which Ethie had pushed up and off from the forehead it seemed to oppress ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... half frightened and much surprised, but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range of his ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... independence, girls of that class are used to the feeling of being specially protected, as, in fact, they are. This feeling accounts for nine tenths of their audacious gestures. Her face had gone completely colourless. Ghastly. Fancy having it brought home to her so brutally that she was the sort of person who must run away from the police! I believe she was pale with indignation, mostly, though there was, of course, also the concern for ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... The two ghastly women, squeezing each other tightly, followed the maneuvers of the boat. The music of La Grenonillere continued to sound in the distance, and appeared with its cadences to accompany the movements of the somber fisherman; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... guilty conscience made Charles tremble lest at any moment she would lose footing and be precipitated down the dark and gaping chasms formed by glaciers and rocks. After hours of toil, and with imminent peril, they found the body of Cassier. A dark pallor had clouded his features, a ghastly stare, closed teeth, and clenched hand bespoke the last sentiment of human passion. Alvira trembled and stood powerless for a few moments. Still, necessity nerved her to action. She removed the money and valuables from the body of her father, and, in the midst of wailings that ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... up, and, for the first time, Lalage saw how he had changed. He was livid and ghastly, and, when he tried to speak, he caught his breath and coughed heavily. Lalage waited with pitiful anxiety ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... at once to the Morgue and found that the "unknown man" was indeed Mr. Jocelyn, and yet he had so changed, and a bullet-hole in his temple had given him such a ghastly appearance, that it was difficult to realize that he was the handsome, courtly gentleman who had first brought his beautiful daughter to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... have ventured to shoot her without her permission, you know!" In a moment he repented of the ghastly pleasantry into which exasperation had led him. "Forgive me, Cheniston—the thing's got on my nerves ... I hardly ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... wondering why it had taken to rolling and earthquaking in that preposterous manner; or were thinking on the bald-headed mother he had left behind him in the African wilderness. When the loud laugh of the men saluted his ears, Jacko looked up as quickly and steadily as he could, and grinned a ghastly smile—or something like it—as if to say, "What are you ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... mutter that 'they didn't know as 'twas altogether such a bad thing as they was hung for sheep-stealing.' There were parsons then, as now, in every rural parish preaching and teaching something they called the Gospel. Why did they not rise as one man and denounce this ghastly iniquity, and demand its abolition? They did nothing of the sort; they enjoyed their pipes and grog ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... yet," he said with a ghastly affected airiness, and I sat there with the blood freezing in my veins, fearing he was going mad. All at once he ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... to the subtle nuances of thought! A profound change had come upon him, yet essentially he, the man, was unchanged. Except for those scars, the convoluted ridges of tissue, the livid patches and the ghastly hollows where once his cheeks and lips and forehead had been smooth and regular, he was as he had ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... proceeded from a spectre or the branch of a tree. Farther off was heard the vehement croaking of some crow whose nest had been flooded, and whose first sleep was disturbed. Close to her there was ghastly laughter. "Hee, hee! hoo, hoo!" and again Lenore started. Was it a malicious forest kobold, or only a night-owl? Nature spoke around her in a hundred melancholy tones. Lenore sometimes enjoyed, and sometimes trembled at the wild charm of this ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... weapon, and beat the rusty blade away, hacking through a few bramble strands, and there, deep down in a tunnel of strands and boughs, was the ghastly blood-besmeared countenance of a man, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and a look of weakness that strongly resembled that which, to his sorrow, he had so often seen upon ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... middle classes professional men and men of moderate means, bore the chief burden of the war. They submitted to terrible taxation, to many privations, besides the universal gift of their young blood. We won the war and what was the result? The wealth of the country, through ghastly legislation, drifted into the hands of the profiteering classes, the wholesale shopkeepers, the ship owners, the factory owners, the mine owners. The professional man with two thousand a year was able to save a quarter of that before the war. After ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she said. Her smile was ghastly. She turned to Jane on the open threshold. "He hasn't got the children with him, has he? I don't ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... Gropphusen, however, was smiling once more; though in sooth on her pallid countenance the smile had something of a ghastly look. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... used to twist the lad's arms and administer a certain number of hard blows upon them. This he did every day so long as the whim lasted. As for the smoking, poor Brokenribs had to smoke a certain number of pipes every day. A single pipe made him look ghastly, and the whole series made him dreadfully ill. I remember his white face at such times; but he attained his reward in becoming an ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... he picked up his rifle and ran for the forest. He knew that chance, or perhaps the will of the greater powers, had saved him again, but, as he ran, he shuddered many times, not from the cold, but at the ghastly fate that had overtaken the warriors. The impression faded by and by. When one is in a bitter struggle for life he does not have time to think long of the fate of others, and the savage wilderness through which he fled was ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sense she ever possessed: she did not faint, but she stiffened herself in the posture in which she sat, and with her hands turned down over the elbows of the huge chair, on which her arms were extended, she leaned back in all the frightful rigidity of a corpse, with a ghastly face, and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... said Priscilla. "What on earth is the point of dropping off like that in the middle of the day? Ghastly laziness I ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... woman breathed an invocation to the Deity and sank back against the wall, her face ghastly ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... time for strengthening the defenses about Richmond, and for concentrating their forces there. Now they were ready to fall back without testing our magnificent works and huge guns, and lead us into the swamps of Chickahominy; where they hoped that the fever would complete the ghastly ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... story, that day when he 'lost his head,' while we were bidding each other good-bye before his journey. He didn't mention the name of the Duchess, but said only that he had leave, and was going to Holland on business. But while he was away a dreadful thing happened—the most ghastly misfortune—and as we were engaged to be married, he felt obliged when he came back to let me know ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... my heart is all trembling for thy sons, lest my father forthwith destroy them together with the strangers. Slumbering just now in a short-lived sleep such a ghastly dream did I see—may some god forbid its fulfilment and never mayst thou win for thyself bitter care on ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... remained for a considerable period, his clothes and hair (for his hat had fallen to the ground) being saturated with rain; while his face purple with blood, his eyes swollen and protruding from their orbits with a most ghastly look of agony and fear, showed how often the uneasiness of his horse, round whose body his legs were wrapped with the convulsive energy of despair, had brought him to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... consigned to the oblivion of the grave, and for the five hundred of our fellow-subjects now suffering on Molokai." A noble instance of devotion has just been given by Father Damiens, a Belgian priest, who has gone to spend his life amidst the hideous scenes, and the sickness and death of the ghastly valley of ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... hour's repose, while I took his place by Harry's bedside. It was between two and three o clock in the morning, and the first rays of early dawn, stealing in through the partially closed shutters, and mingling with the faint glimmer of the night-lamp, threw a pale and ghastly light over the surrounding objects, when I fancied that I heard my name pronounced in a low, scarcely audible voice. I glanced at Ellis, but his hard and regular breathing proved him to be sound asleep. I next turned towards the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... like a sea-urchin; his face was quite disfigured with black marks of violence; behind his bleeding left ear still stuck the cigarette. His swollen upper lip was drawn sideways and gave him the expression of a ghastly smile. His eyes looked out helpless, dispirited, from his ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... acts is often noble. The long speech of York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with passion, is most noble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached. One little glimmer of heart in him would alter ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... lighted cabin, Levy with his arms bound behind him, had watched the game of dice as calmly as though his life did not lie in the hands of the two who played for such a ghastly stake. Out on the deck, the mutineers drank and jested and sang uproariously in their new freedom. He wondered if that were to be the end: a short plank, a blow to thrust him into the dark waves of the ocean which he had loved so well. Uriah closed his eyes, swaying ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... her, for it seemed to her that if life were really what she had believed it to be last night, these men and women could not walk so buoyantly, could not smile so gaily, could not spend so much thought and time on the way they looked and the things they wore. "No, it must have been a mistake, a ghastly mistake," she insisted almost passionately. "Some day we shall laugh over it together as we laughed over my jealousy of Abby. He never loved Abby, not for a minute, and yet I imagined that he did and suffered agony because of it." ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and hypochondriac of the eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club, between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh-toned termagant and dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... literrally dyed with the same hue as the ground. He started up in terror; a long vivid flash lingering more than a minute in the air, disclosed the object against which he had fallen; and paralyzed with horror, pale, ghastly, as if suddenly turned to stone, he remained. He uttered no word nor cry; but flash after flash played around him, and still beheld him gazing in stupefied and motionless horror on the ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... rushes to him and places his arm round him. With his foot he drags a chair nearer, into which Sir Hastings falls with a heavy groan. It is only a momentary attack, however; in a little while the leaden hue clears away, and, though still ghastly, his face looks ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... of the poor are alike as graves that appear not;—only their murmur, that sayeth "it is not enough," sounds deeper beneath us every hour; nay, the whole earth, and not only the cities of it, sends forth that ghastly cry; and her fruitful plains have become slime-pits, and her fair estuaries, gulfs of death; for us, the Mountain of the Lord has become only Golgotha, and the sound of the new song before the Throne is drowned in the rolling death-rattle of the nations, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in every direction;—what could it mean? I awoke the chief, and the mystery was solved. He appeared to be just recovering from the effects of the night's debauch,—the Iroquois were in the camp. Mine host "grinned horribly a ghastly smile" as he placed himself, rather unsteadily, in a sitting posture in his bed, and in a hoarse tremulous voice bade me welcome, at the same time rousing his better-half, who appeared to be in the same happy state ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... dare to tell you the rest of this story as the old Pottawatomie told it to me, for it is near bedtime and these are the very trees between which the ghostly, ghastly figures flitted in the darkness. It is all past and gone now and you need have no fear. You boys on the outer edge who are crowding up to the light of the camp-fire are just as safe as the fellows in the middle. The thing to interest you is what the Indians did ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... oak wainscot. A large and cheerful fire and a number of gas-jets illuminated the company. The Prince and his follower made the number up to eighteen. Most of the party were smoking, and drinking champagne; a feverish hilarity reigned, with sudden and rather ghastly pauses. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I snapped at her. And her ghastly attempt at a grin, with her swollen nose and red eyes, made me hysterical. I laughed and cried together, and pretty soon, like the two old fools we were, we were sitting together ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall—a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty, and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here Giuseppe tells me of the "Relief Boat" which leaves for the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... of impending disaster, once more invaded him. Suddenly it revealed itself in definite terms. A ghastly notion ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... fanaticism. And the new Pope Gregory sang Te Deum in solemn state; and the morose monarch of Spain laughed aloud in unwonted glee; but Charles of France, men said, was haunted to the hour of his death by red visions of that ghastly carnival of blood. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... echoed, and stopped the bearers who laid their ghastly burden down, having little relish in the task. Yes, it was in ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... dump and noisome, but not by any means so bad as might have been expected, considering the number of months which had elapsed since last the vault was opened to receive one of its ghastly and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... as they had charged together, and her mare, enraged and intoxicated with noise and terror, had torn away at full speed that had outstripped even the swiftest of her Spahis. A little farther on a dog's moan caught her ear; she turned and looked across. Upright, among a ghastly pile of men and chargers, sat the small, snowy poodle of the Chasseurs, beating the air with its little paws, as it had been taught to do when it needed anything, and howling ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... reply. As Cuthbert spoke the ruddy color on his cheeks had been replaced by a ghastly pallor. An expression of bewilderment had come across his face, the perspiration stood out in big ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... were determined to hang him; he was running for his life. He took me to a hill from which I could see the Garrison, and the American flag flying over it. I looked, and saw we were standing in blood up to our knees, while here and there ghastly white bones shone above the red surface. Just then, below me I saw crowds of people running. "What is it?" I asked. "It means that in another instant they will commence to shell the town. Save yourself." "But Will—I ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... perspective of so many generations. And in that strange century the sorrow and the pain of a world in travail are as evident as its joy. The feverish excitement with which it grasped at life and pleasure is counterbalanced, and explained by the ever-present horror of death in its most ghastly forms. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... saw the bushes on the opposite shore move, and a face, painted and ghastly, was thrust out. Others followed, a half-dozen altogether, and Henry saw them surveying the river and examining his own shore. The muzzle of his rifle moved forward a few inches more, but he knew that it would ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... looked Olivier in the face,— Ghastly paleness was there to trace; Forth from his wound did the bright blood flow, And rain in showers to the earth below. "O God!" said Roland, "is this the end Of all thy prowess, my gentle friend? ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... the Royal Servian Government made itself guilty, has lasted up to the moment in which the events of June 28th demonstrated to the entire world the ghastly consequences of such sufferance. ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... is once more the Rudin type—utterly irresolute, with a mind teeming with ideas and surging with ambition. He wants to be a Russian Napoleon, with a completely subservient conscience, but instead of murdering on a large scale, like his ideal, he butchers two inoffensive old women. Although the ghastly details of this double murder are given with definite realism, Dostoevski's interest is wholly in the criminal psychology of the affair, in the analysis of Raskolnikov's mind before, during, and chiefly after the murder; for it is the mind, and not the bodily ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... such as to strongly favour the second. Whilst the hunters had been sedulously pursuing their task the sky had gradually lost its pristine purity of blue and had become a pale colourless grey, in which the sun seemed to hang like a ghastly white radiant ball, shorn of his beams. The distant landscape first became unnaturally clear and distinct in all its details and then became veiled in a sort of murky haze. Presently a sharply defined ridge of cloud made its appearance above the south- ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... alone with the apparently dying man, she felt that a silent, yet mighty struggle was going on between the forces of life and death. She feared death would obtain the victory. By a terrible fascination, her eyes became fixed on the ghastly face over which she fancied she could perceive, more and more distinctly, shadows cast by the hand of the destroyer. Every moment she thought of recalling her mother, but feared that the slightest jarring movement of the atmosphere might stop at once that feeble respiration. So she remained, watching ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... education, and in almost every respect. She is surrounded by the most numerous and delicate attentions. Yet she is not satisfied.... The Anglo-Saxon 'new woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart from the deprecation—perhaps well placed—which is contained in this presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman question. The grievance of the new woman is made up of those things which this typical characterization ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... demanded currency, but the cashier had become alarmed by the investigations made by the General and had temporized—said he must consult the president, and asked the major to call two hours later, whereat Burleigh had taken alarm. He was looking ghastly, said the cashier. It was apparent to every one that mentally, bodily, or both, the lately debonair and successful man of the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... "I must say, you know—what? Oh, of course, it was a ghastly affair all along. But you know all that, as well as I do. Why, her temper! Oh, awful! I've seen her myself dead-white in one of her rages—she had hold of a wine-glass so hard that it snapped, and cut her hand. She looked at the blood—she didn't know ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... turns out that the curate is well connected. (Mitchener staggers at the shock. Speechless he contemplates Balsquith with a wild and ghastly stare; then reels into his chair and buries his face in his hands over the blotter. Balsquith continues remorselessly, stooping over him to rub it in.) He has three aunts in the peerage; and Lady Richmond's one of them; (Mitchener utters a heartrending groan) ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... been expected. From time to time, it is true, Northmour or I would rise from table and make a round of the defences; and, on each of these occasions, Mr. Huddlestone was recalled to a sense of his tragic predicament, glanced up with ghastly eyes, and bore for an instant on his countenance the stamp of terror. But he hastened to empty his glass, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and joined ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saluting. Then, his face still a ghastly hue, he turned and marched from the room, not venturing, under the eyes of the O.C., to look at ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock |
