"Omened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men Shall man the Trosachs' shaggy glen; Within Loch Katrine's gorge we'll fight, All in our maids' and matrons' sight, Each for his hearth and household fire, Father for child, and son for sire Lover for maid beloved!—But why Is it the breeze affects mine eye? Or dost thou come, ill-omened tear! A messenger of doubt or fear? No! sooner may the Saxon lance Unfix Benledi from his stance, Than doubt or terror can pierce through The unyielding heart of Roderick Dhu! 'tis stubborn as his trusty targe. Each to his post!—all know their charge.' The pibroch sounds, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... those of most men, that Providence did not consider me of sufficient importance to give me audible information of what was about to happen. So strong was this impression to the last, notwithstanding, that on our return, when the vessel passed the spot where the evil-omened prediction was uttered, I caught myself muttering involuntarily, "—— is a false ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... silently along down the dark canyon, each one occupied with his own thoughts and the ill-omened Mexican guide in the lead. Juarez kept a sharp lookout on either side of the trail expecting an ambush. His horse seemed to feel something of the strain his rider was under, as a horse will. Once he shied at something he saw in a clump of ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... all her romantic fantasies arrived at this self-same dreary termination,—it appeared impossible for her even to imagine any other than a disastrous result from her connection with her ill-omened attendant. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 5th of December, they left this ill-omened river, and steered due north. Bad luck still haunted them; tortured by flies, mosquitoes, and sand-flies, their horses scattered and rambled incessantly. While the brothers were absent, searching ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... will the tribesmen of the ill-omened prophet do with them? They cannot hide them on the desert or anywhere on the banks of the Nile, for they all would die of hunger and thirst on the desert, and they certainly would be apprehended on the Nile. Perhaps they will ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of enthusiasm echoed through the marble throne room, and Nelson would have felt wholly at ease had not that little knot of priests remained gathered like ill-omened carrion crows about the door. Muttering among themselves, they were watching him with a curious intentness that aroused deep misgivings in the American's mind, and it was with something like a sigh that he joined the procession forming to proceed to the triumphal feast ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... they lay breathless and exhausted, of seeing this bird or one of its relatives rise from below the cliff edge one day as they approached; and, looking down, they saw upon a ledge, where it had fallen, a dead lamb, upon which the great ill-omened bird ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... ill-omened banquet in Park Lane was held a second dinner party, in Cadogan Gardens. Like veritable ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... Ledge. It had folded over like the leaves of a half-opened book when they close, crushing the trees below, piling its ruins in a glacis at the foot of what had been the overhanging wall of the cliff, and filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man's Hollow. This it was which had saved the Dudley mansion. The falling masses, or huge fragments breaking off from them, would have swept the house and all around it to destruction but for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of ruin was happily directed. It was, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of this ill-omened individual will afford you a clear indication of his abject views and pernicious purpose. Speaking of the patriotic tribunal now called upon to punish him, he declared insultingly,—'The Revolutionary Tribunal is like a play of William Shakespeare, who mixes up with the most bloodthirsty ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... its sovereigns had revived for the frank-mannered sailor and "patriot king," William IV; but the hopes crushed by the death of the much-regretted Charlotte had renewed themselves with even better warrant for Victoria. She was the child of no ill-omened, miserable marriage, but of a fitting union; her parents had been sundered only by death, not by wretched domestic dissensions. People heard that the mortal malady which deprived her of a father ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... like a soldier. It was a better end for an Italian prince than escaping with money-bags to Germany. Great as were Murat's faults, an Italian should remember that it was he who first took up arms to the cry which was later to redeem Italy: independence from Alps to sea; and if he stand on the ill-omened shore of Pizzo, he need not refuse to uncover ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... real essential was that the pastrycooks should never run short of paper. Now "Esmond" is, in my opinion, exceedingly interesting during the campaigns in the Lowlands, and when our Machiavelian hero, the Duke, comes in, and also whenever Lord Mohun shows his ill-omened face; but there are long stretches of the story which are heavy reading. A pre-eminently good novel must always advance and never mark time. "Ivanhoe" never halts for an instant, and that just makes its superiority as a novel over "Esmond," though as a ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance—if ever she, the wan misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... skeleton—a dancing Death. No masquer this, but a grim messenger from the Shades, bringing dire warning to one, at least, of that gay company. As it had come, so it vanished, but all the gaiety had gone from the merry throng. The ill-omened dancer had laid a chilly hand on the heart of many ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... She disengaged herself suddenly from Scythrop, sprang through the door of the tower, and fled with precipitation along the corridors. Scythrop pursued her, crying, 'Stop, stop, Marionetta—my life, my love!' and was gaining rapidly on her flight, when, at an ill-omened corner, where two corridors ended in an angle, at the head of a staircase, he came into sudden and violent contact with Mr Toobad, and they both plunged together to the foot of the stairs, like two billiard-balls into one pocket. This gave the young lady time to escape, and enclose ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... anxiety. He must grow to be a mighty man for their sakes, and I doubt not that his nurse gives him better nourishment to that end than I could who am only a weak woman. But you, you poor, dear, little ill-omened mite, I shall nourish you myself, and if your life is unhappy it shall not be because I have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 old man, in a slightly husky voice—"to make up to us for inventing troubles." The Squire was a good deal disturbed by the sight of that ill-omened message; and it was the better way, as he knew by experience, to throw his excitement into the shape of anger rather ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... belief, that our aim, both in speech and in action, should be to cause him to cease from his insolence and to pay the penalty for it. And yet I see that in fact the treacherous sacrifice of our interests has gone on, until what seems an ill-omened saying may, I fear, be really true—that if all who came forward desired to propose, and you desired to carry, the measures which would make your position as pitiful as it could possibly be, it could not (so I believe), be made worse ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... of ages. All around Lies hushed and still, save with large, dusky wing The bird of night makes its ill-omened sound; Or moor-game, nestling 'neath th' flowery ling Low chuckle to their mates—or startled, spring Away on rustling pinions to the sky, Wheel round and round in many an airy ring, Then swooping downward ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... intervention of Congress to protect slavery in the Territories. Toombs was accused of abetting Brooks's attack on Sumner, which he disclaimed; but he found nothing to hinder his taking part in a banquet in Brooks's honor a few months later, and on this most ill-omened occasion he joined in the threats of disunion if Fremont should be elected. But still the catastrophe lingered, and seemed improbable. Stephens left Congress in 1858. Two years more, and secession became a burning question; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... thou art!" said the Abbot Eustace, interrupting him; "what signifies the pretext under which thou dost despoil the house of God? and why at this present emergence will thou insult the master of it by thy ill-omened presence?" ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... his speeches a portent occurred. A cloud of 56 ill-omened birds[152] flew over his head and its density obscured the daylight. To this was added another omen of disaster. A bull broke from the altar, scattered the utensils for the ceremony, and escaped so far away that it had to be killed ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... to use the contents of the chamberpot, which, being impregnated with salt, would operate more effectually than pure element. Thus directed, the governor lifted up the vessel, which was replete with medicine, and with one turn of his hand, discharged the whole healing inundation upon the ill-omened patient, who, waking in the utmost distraction of horror, yelled most hideously, just at the time when Peregrine had brought his mistress to a parley, and entertained hopes of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the radio telescope whirred into life as he spoke and its disk shone bright with the reflected light of Titan as it pictured the body. The Nomad was speeding toward the ill-omened satellite at the rate of more than a ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... welcome as night to the weary labourer. She had a heart like yours, formed to love and be loved; and it would be doing honour to yonder proud Baron, to say he had such worth as my father's.— Yet was she most unhappy. Oh! my sweet lady, be warned, and break off this ill-omened match!" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... towards his own home. Maura then gave up the key, and the youthful bridegroom was soon dressed and prepared to meet his "man," and a few friends whom he had invited, at the chapel. His mind, however, was disturbed, and his heart sank at this ill-omened commencement of his ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... painful excitement was aroused by the misfortunes of the Red River expedition in April and May. Begun on unsound military principles, but designed politically to assert against French intrigues the claim of the United States to Texas, that ill-omened enterprise culminated in a retreat which well-nigh involved the Mississippi squadron in an overwhelming disaster. The Red River was unusually low for the season, and falling instead of rising. There was not, when the army retired, water enough to enable the gun-boats which had ascended the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... in the castle of Ellieslaw, destined to be the scene of this ill-omened union, was a building of much older date than the castle itself, though that claimed considerable antiquity. Before the wars between England and Scotland had become so common and of such long duration, that the buildings along both sides of the Border were chiefly dedicated to warlike ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... comes. Let no ill-omened word Escape the barrier of your teeth. I heard Men say his temper's in an awful state; Therefore beware lest some untoward fate Befall you; and—I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... to her as to anybody else; but if happiness chose to come to her swathed in mourning bands, none the less kindly and thankfully must it be welcomed. And as she reclined against him she breathed a sigh of thanks that not he, but Bingham, had been concerned in the laying of her ill-omened corner-stone. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... upon the cause— Forget it not: when you lie down to rest, Let it be black among your dreams; and when The morn returns, so let it stand between The sun and you, as an ill-omened cloud, Upon a summer's ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... horror upon horror; then came Clement Hicks, as one having authority, and bade them begone. The ill-omened fowls hopped off; relations began to collect; there was an atmosphere of suppressed electricity about the place, and certain women openly criticised the prominent attitude Hicks saw fit to assume. This, however, did not ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks, and it was evident already to an ordinary observer, that something wrong had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with more than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... shall forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living creatures visible "like foul ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... formally indicted; and I may say it is no good sign of the times that an offence which has been hitherto unknown to the law should now crop up for the first time in this year of grace, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight. Not even in the worst days of Lord Castlereagh's ill-omened regime was such an attempt as this made to degrade the green of Ireland into a party colour, and to make that which has long been regarded as a national emblem the symbol of a faction. Gentlemen, there ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... ermine she came from the cabin and stood swaying on the deck before Egil and his men, while round her train played heedlessly the ill-omened black kitten; and that ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... ill-omened journal, I could not forbear a muttered quotation: "The day looks dark for England." Nevertheless, I drove on straight from Frederick, determined to prove what the morrow would bring forth. It was late when we reached the small ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... select, but let them obey. First of all indeed let Phoenix, dear to Jove, be the leader; next then mighty Ajax and divine Ulysses: and of the heralds, let Hodius and Eurybates follow with them. But bring water for the hands, and command to observe well-omened words,[297] that we may supplicate Saturnian Jove, if perchance he will ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... that the exhausted state of the public revenues rendered it impracticable to embody a militia, whence the people were given to understand that they might take measures to protect themselves. This was an ill-omened step for ministers to take, when the people of Ireland were everywhere displaying the feelings of rebellion. By it the serpent's teeth were sown, and they sprang up armed men. The Irish obeyed the call with alacrity. Volunteers were embodied, equipped, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "down upon his luck." We saw him one day in the tribune, pale, stammering, but daring. He had a long bony face, and a distrust-inspiring jaw. His theatrical name was Florivan. He was a strolling player transformed into a trooper. He died Marshal of France. An ill-omened figure. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned with supplicatory fillets. Ye, O young men, and young women lately married, abstain from ill-omened words. This day, to me a real festival, shall expel gloomy cares: I will neither dread commotions, nor violent death, while Caesar is in possession of the earth. Go, slave, and seek for perfume and chaplets, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... with horror after the black carriage, lumbering upon its way. Then we turned our steps towards this ill-omened house in which they had ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pese sui l'oeuvre de l'artiste. Cela ressemble a une malediction amere, lancee sur le sort de l'humanite.' There is, indeed, some fatality about that copy of Durer's 'Knight, Death, and the Devil,' which seems really ill-omened, for this is the second time it has fallen. Thank you, sir. The frame only is injured, and I will not trouble you to remove it. Let it lean against the grate, until I have it rehung ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... entails such scathing disgrace and suffering, is encouraged in many seductive ways. The talk in good company often runs on wine; the man who has the deadly taint in his blood is delicately pressed to take that which brings the taint once more into ill-omened activity; but, so long as his tissues show no sign of that flabbiness and general unwholesomeness which mark the excessive drinker, he is left unnoticed. Then the literary men nearly always make the subject of drink attractive in ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... "Why, many wait three years and many go to the grave still waiting; bigger men than you, Egyptian, though I hear you do claim to be of royal blood yonder on the Nile. But talk not of arrows flying towards the most High, for surely it is ill-omened and might earn you another honour, that of the string," and he made a motion suggestive of a cord encircling his throat. "Man, leave your bow behind! Would you appear before the King armed? Yes, and ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Philadelphia, which I approached, even after some years of absence, with a good deal of doubt. It was an ill-omened place for me; for although I got nearly seven hundred dollars by entering the service as a substitute for an editor,—whose pen, I presume, was mightier than his sword,—I was disagreeably surprised by being hastily forwarded to the front under a foxy young lieutenant, who brutally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... comes up to Birdalone with wonder in her eyes, and greets her kindly, and asked her of her name, and Birdalone told it all simply; and the new-comer said: What errand hast thou hither, that thou art come thus naked and alone in this ill-omened ferry? Birdalone trembled at her words, though she spake kindly to her, and she said: It is a long story, but fate drave me thereto, and misery, and I knew not whither I was bound. But is there no ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop her ill-omened mouth,' cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles of bedding. 'She and the parrots are alike. They screech ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death while in the performance of the bullet-catching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties chargeable to that ill-omened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth were finally ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... is past, sister,' said Fergus; 'and you may wish Edward Waverley (no longer captain) joy of being freed from the slavery to an usurper, implied in that sable and ill-omened emblem.' ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... she could annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of midnight sounded ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... wise not to understand the gulf between them. To-morrow she would confront him flatly with his deceit; she would array the power of the authorities behind her race. She would sweep instantly from that ill-omened palace. There would be no ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... an ill-omened bird; I wish I knew his reason," said Martin thoughtfully. "Did he ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened interference of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of charming and touching simplicity, which had their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that bound them oppressed him as if it had been an ill-omened matrimony, and he sat beside her like an unwilling old husband. All the while, Miss Boke had no appreciation whatever of her companion's real condition, and, when little, spasmodic, sinister changes appeared in his face (as they certainly did from time to time) she attributed them to pains ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... through an opening between the curtains saw the young men of whose bar-room performance he had happened to hear. Not caring to meet any of their sort he went silently away, shaking his head with ill-omened significance. Of course one good man told his wife what sort of company their new neighbors kept, and whom ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... illusions. He was in the vortex of a vast whirlpool, not of water or of wind, but of life. Alas! he seemed indeed the very current of that whirlpool, a monstrous force, around which evil circled and lurked and conquered. Wade—who had the ill-omened croak of the raven—Wade—who bent his driven steps ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... trifle, I take her judgment, not his, upon that. She had been lazy towards duty, had persistently turned aside from what she knew to be her business, until she dared not even look at it. And now that the crisis was at hand, as omened by that letter from the butcher, with the sense of her wrong-doing was mingled the terror of her husband. What would he think, say, and do? Not yet had she, after all these years, any deep insight into his character; else perhaps she might have read there that, much as he loved money, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... christening had for godfather neither prince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, on whose inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and tallow stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers that passed that way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designated by the snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the place where the wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were but common humanity, traders and adventurers, later gold-seekers and pot politicians, ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... impetuous youth. Dear, indeed, had that prince been to Ella, both before and after his elevation to the throne, and as he heard the sweet boyish voice of Edwy, his thoughts were guided by memory to that ill-omened feast at Pucklechurch, where the vindictive outlaw Leolf had murdered his king. The sword of Ella had been amongst those which avenged the crime on the murderer, but they could not call back the vital spark which had fled. "Edmund the Magnificent," as they ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... which had induced their servants to leave their establishment, and prefer throwing themselves completely out of place, rather than remain in so ill-omened a house, were sure to be bruited ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... they passed through a huddle of huts, tents and lean-tos on the southern ascent. Though the hour was late, many windows were light and sounds of revelry came dimly, as though muffled, from curtain-hid interiors. There was something furtive and ill-omened about this neighborhood which one sensed rather than perceived. Spear rode close and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and rayless, as if drowned in the ill-omened yellow clouds. The wind kept puffing and blowing at intervals. A few minutes' lull enabled us to collect a little grass, and then, seated side by side, we watched the approach of night, dark, desolate, and starless; but the comparative coolness of the atmosphere ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... E'en now ill-omened birds of prey Through the unpeopled mansions rove: Quench'd is that eye's inspiring ray, And lost the breezy lip ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... me, from the beginning, devoting all my efforts for the reorganization of the country, and desirous of giving you a good administration and justice for all. But ill-omened events occurred to destroy our common labors. In fact, certain souls, blinded by passion, have misunderstood the scope of our reforms and have not given credit to a Government just born. On the other hand, the war which broke out in Europe has all ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... side of it is formed by a wall seven or eight feet thick, which supports one end of the immense Salle des Pas-Perdus. It is entered through the first door in the long dark passage in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between the office window close to the railing of the gateway, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... and unmoved sees us perish. The people know nothing of our existence: even those who are fighting the same fight like us are cut off by silence and do not know that we exist, and we do not know that they exist.... Ill-omened Paris! No doubt good also has come of it—by gathering together all the forces of the French mind and genius. But the evil it has done is at least equal to the good: and in a time like the present the good quickly ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... returned to America in 1863 he went to live on Staten Island in order to be near George William Curtis, who cared for him as Damon did for Pythias, and who served to counteract the ill-omened influence of Cranch's brother-in-law. The Century Club purchased one of his pictures, an allegorical subject, which I believe still hangs in their halls. From 1873 to 1877 Lowell would seem to have frequented Cranch's house in preference to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... an ill-omened and minatory look. It was one of four which stood back some little way from the street, two being occupied and two empty. The latter looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that here and there a "To Let" ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blood-red anemones, and pale yellow amaryllis, only showed their arid brown or gray remnants. The moat had become a deep waterless cleft; and beneath, on the accessible sides towards the glen, clustered a collection of black horsehair tents, the foremost surmounted by the ill-omened crescent. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stood beside him, looking at the work. The instinct of the artist for the moment superseded all other feelings in her mind, and she forgot alike her own troubles and the ill-omened gift with which her husband purposed remembering ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... crossed the Po at Piacenza on May 7th, and obliged the Austrians to retreat to the Adda. Following them he forced the bridge of Lodi on May 11th, and entered Milan amid the rejoicings of the people on the 15th. But his ill-omened proclamation had done its work; violence and pillage were rampant in the French army, and he could do little to restrain them. Indeed, he himself showed an example of plundering, though under more organized forms. Heavy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... New Mexico, a good citizen, a political leader, and one of the most noted peace-officers of the country; he had been shot four times in pitched fights with red marauders and white outlaws. There was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up the Black Jack gang of ill-omened notoriety, and his Captain, Curry, another New Mexican sheriff of fame. The officers from the Indian Territory had almost all served as marshals and deputy-marshals; and in the Indian Territory, service as a deputy-marshal meant capacity to fight ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... myself that it was not absolutely unpardonable for an old man to transgress etiquette so flagrantly before so many witnesses. As to apology, there could be no occasion for that, when one's slip had resulted in so well- omened a wish. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... great chests of shot and shell showed, half submerged in a tortuous creek. At the edge of the field, there was a cannon spiked and overturned. Here, too, were dead horses, and here, too, were the black, ill-omened birds. There was a trench as well, a long trench just filled, with two or three little head boards bearing some legend. "Holy Virgin!" said the courier, "if I was a horse, a child, or a woman, I'd hate ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... devil of a precipice and the deep sea, he who ventured on the passage must have hurried anxiously along the thread of sand, hoping to reach the last bend in time. As he rounds the ill-omened corner he sees he is too late; already the surf is breaking against the cliff. He turns back only to find retreat barred behind by rollers that have crept in since he passed. His very footprints have all been washed away. Caged! Like the walls of a deep-down dungeon the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... the temple, feeling assured that the next few hours would not be disturbed by the ill-omened creature. This vulgar, brutal act had to be performed; he had been preparing himself for it since daylight, when his mind had resumed the round of cause and effect that answers for life. It was over now, and he could return to Alves. There were other petty ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... be of good cheer. We shall come to no such ignoble end. We shall live, and not die. During the period allotted to our several lives, we shall continue to rejoice in the return of this anniversary. The ill-omened sounds of fanaticism will be hushed; the ghastly spectres of Secession and Disunion will disappear; and the enemies of united constitutional liberty, if their hatred cannot be appeased, may prepare to have their eyeballs seared as they behold the steady ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming—his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and look affected Edith very unpleasantly. The mystery about her father seemed to grow darker, and to assume something of an ill-omened character. The name also—Van Diemen's Land—served to heighten her dark apprehensions; and this discovery that she had known even less than she supposed about her father made it seem as though the knowledge that had thus been hidden could not ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... group of ill-omened rocks, as we proceed rapidly under the rocky slopes of the Monte di Chiosse towards Positano, which extends in a long curving line of cheerful-tinted flat-roofed houses from the summit of its protecting cliff to the strand below, sprinkled with boats and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the tale, stranger, if this token had not confirmed thy speech:—verily thou hast a better witness than a fool's tongue to thy story. That ill-omened losel may depart. See thou fall not hastily into the like offence, else shalt thou smart from Childermas to All-hallowtide. Hence! to thy place." Barnulf awaited not further dismissal, glad to escape the scrutiny of Nicholas with a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... have been slow—an affair of sporadic attempts and scattered adventures. The two strongest motives, patriotic devotion and commercial gain, would have been lacking. The English have never been good at preparing for a merely possible war; they are apt, indeed, to regard such preparation as ill-omened and impious. This strenuous and self-dependent breed of men, being conscious that they do not desire war, and believing that he is thrice armed who has his quarrel just, have always been content, in the face of many warnings, to repose their main confidence ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... I left the committee-room I could not help congratulating myself over the ill-omened beginning, since it had resulted toward a relation of the work far more complete than had otherwise ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... their joy reached its height when someone shouted: 'You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.' Mr. O'Rourke ignored the suggestion, and passed on to sharpen his wit upon the landlords. He described them as 'ill-omened tax-gatherers who suck the life-blood of the country, and refuse to disgorge a penny of it for any useful purpose.' Mr. O'Rourke was not a man who shrank from a mixed metaphor, or paused to consider such trifles as the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... ceased; the boat began to glide forwards once more. But Mr. Heard's eye remained fixed upon the ill-omened black rock. The sun's rays had already licked dry the moisture on its surface; it shone with a steady dull glow. Some malefic force seemed to dwell here. Some demon haunted the place, peering out of the crevices or ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... witnesses. Soon the ill fortune of those thus favoured with the vision of the Lady of the Plates was rumoured abroad. Wounds, money losses, even death fell on them or on their households. Men no longer were curious. They fled the neighbourhood of this ill omened gap in Earth's surface, unseemly exit for these foul spirits. On nights of rain and storm none passed that way. Even by day the children were rebuked and ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... ill-omened chase forbear; Yon bell yet summons to the fane: To-day the warning spirit hear, To-morrow thou mayst mourn ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... slowly with his escort up and down the crowded Porta Pia thoroughfare; but even this insult failed to effect its object. The device was too transparent for an Italian crowd not to detect it, and the ill-omened cortege of the "Pope's representative," as the Romans styled the executioner, passed by without ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... colonization would tend "to secure the property of every master in the United States over his slaves." Subsequently the management of the Society itself recognized the force of this remark as a quotation from the eighty-second report will show: "It was this ill-omened utterance of a solitary member of the Society, who appears to have taken very little if any part in its subsequent proceedings, that afterward gave the impracticable abolitionists a text for the most vituperative and persistent ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... hand, and furnished with full stores, so that all may be well with her as she enters on her new duties. So is it that England should send forth her daughters. They should not escape from her arms with shrill screams and bleeding wounds, with ill-omened words which live so long, though the speakers of them lie cold in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... at this ill-omened crisis was Mary Stuart, who within a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her mother acted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that the infant girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, who afterward reigned as Edward ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery hung in impenetrable shadow. "She said nothing of her intentions; nothing! But the man who came for me told me where she was to be found. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... impossible that she may have imagined, as well as her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the recurrence of further ill-omened shocks. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... esquire behind him; in his foolhardiness he took them on with him towards the ships, nor did he fail to come by his end in consequence. Nevermore was he to return to wind-beaten Ilius, exulting in his chariot and his horses; ere he could do so, death of ill-omened name had overshadowed him and he had fallen by the spear of Idomeneus the noble son of Deucalion. He had driven towards the left wing of the ships, by which way the Achaeans used to return with their ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... same story. And this lodger, strange to say, had not taken any sake. Suspecting some envious plot to ruin his business, the landlord answered passionately: 'Thee to please all things honourably have been done: nevertheless, ill-omened and vexatious words thou utterest. And that my inn my means-of-livelihood is—that also thou knowest. Wherefore that such things be spoken, right-there-is-none!' Then the guest, getting into a passion, loudly said things much more evil; and the two ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... sorrowing eyes, Now old and dim—perchance the fault is theirs— They find no longer, ranged along your walls Amid the deep-dyed trophies of old time, That chiefest of your Standards, lost, men say, In that ill-omened battle lost which wrecked But late our Wessex kingdom. Odin's wrath— I spare to task your time and patience, Lords, Enforcing truth which every urchin knows— 'Twas Odin shamed his foe! Ah Cynegils! What made thee Odin's foe? Our friend ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... willingly resign what ought to have been yours without your unfortunately illegal act. Your secret is perfectly safe with me. Time will heal the wounds you have inflicted on yourself and enable you to forget. Leave this ill-omened document with me; it is safer than in your hands. Indeed there is no ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... "Iron, O thou ill-omened one!" cried Rrisa, with the ancient invocation against the sand-storm. He stretched out his forefinger, making the sign of protection. Neither the meaning of his cry nor of the gesture could he have explained; but both came to him involuntarily, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... to the Pastoureau family for the care of the infant: you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureau bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the darling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face again within their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all be very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they being poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God's help, as they had hitherto done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Who could see the faintest glimmer of it? Who could see anything but the ill-omened figure of Michael Vanstone, posted darkly on the verge of the present time—and closing all the prospect that lay ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... The men of Caithness alleged that their bands that wore this color were cut off at the battle of Flodden; and for this reason they avoided the crossing of the Ord on a Monday, that being the day of the week on which the ill-omened array set forth. This color was disliked by both those of the name of Ogilvy and Graham. The greatest precautions had to be taken against the Daoine Shi' in order to prevent them from spiriting away mothers and their ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... off into the open space. It was an extraordinary sight to see this frightful vulture-headed old creature, bent nearly double with extreme age, gather strength by degrees, until at last she rushed about almost as actively as her ill-omened pupils. To and fro she ran, chanting to herself, till suddenly she made a dash at a tall man standing in front of one of the regiments, and touched him. As she did this a sort of groan went up from ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... observations, and no amount of further questioning could elicit anything more from him. This Mr. Gryce soon saw, and giving him into the charge of one of his assistants who was on duty at this place, he proceeded back to the ill-omened house where the tragedy itself ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... gaze was nailed there. Fatal, ill-omened blighted threshold, cursed by his father's footsteps in his dying hour, cursed by his young wife's sorrowing tread, cursed by the daily shadow of the old clerk's figure, cursed by the crossing of his murderer's feet—what men were standing in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... chronologically; beginning with the discontents that inaugurated the reign of Charles I., and following regularly to the final, though short-lived, triumph of the Cavalier cause, in the accession of James II. After his ill- omened advent to the throne, the Cavalier became the Jacobite. In this collection no Jacobite songs, properly so called, are included, it being the intention of the publishers to issue a companion volume, of the Jacobite ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... monthly pay; not a cateran came near us but affected to hold himself dishonoured if not provided at once with the regular salary. 'Brahim was wholly beardless, and our Egyptians quoted their proverb, Sabh el-Kurd, wa l Sabn el-'Ajrd—"Better (see ill-omened) monkeys in the morning than the beardless man." As the corruption of the best turns to the worst, so the Bedawi, a noble race in its own wilds, becomes thoroughly degraded by contact with civilization. I remember a certain chief of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... buff leather, elegant enough to be worn as a court undress, and on which, if need were, one could buckle a cuirass, for battle: like his father, he was pale; like his father, he was to die young, and, even more than his father, his countenance wore that ill-omened melancholy by which fortune-tellers recognise those who are ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... now sworn, while Mrs. Jocelyn returned to her seat. In the young fellow's frank, honest face the judge found an agreeable contrast with the ill-omened visage of the floor-walker, whose good looks could ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... wrath and heavy on our home, That fiend of whom thy voice has cried, Alas, an omened cry of ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... neighbourhood. This place must have stood rather lonely, away from the town, probably in the wood which then covered the whole of this county; but it is curious, is it not?" said the vicar, "that the tradition should have been handed down through all these centuries of its being an ill-omened place, long after any tradition of what the uses ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the castle walls contained a bride and a corpse. The pale lady from a foreign land has died in the night, and the blind man who is lying in his daughter's arms has but one consolation, that of knowing that he shall soon follow her to her endless rest. And the ill-omened birds scream out to the winds that the old Slavonic curse has fallen on the castle, and the doom has lighted on the foreign ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... mountains. But in an old, cold, and rugged country such as mine, the days of immigration are long at an end; and away up there, which was at that time far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the mind as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Commissioner the van and horses, merged into one mass, seemed something alive—a square-backed black monster blocking half the street, with sudden iron-shod stampings, fierce jingles, and heavy, blowing sighs. The harshly festive, ill-omened glare of a large and prosperous public-house faced the other end of Brett Street across a wide road. This barrier of blazing lights, opposing the shadows gathered about the humble abode of Mr Verloc's domestic happiness, seemed to drive the obscurity of the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... night, to drift together again presently. He tried to tell me of some things she had asked him to do should she not get over this, but what they were I know not, for they engulfed him at the first step. He would draw back from them as ill-omened things, and next moment he was going over them to himself like a child at lessons. A child! In that short year she had made him entirely dependent on her. It is ever thus with women: their first deliberate act is to make their husband helpless. There ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... shortest road to various places in the neighbourhood of the Great Kraal ran over it, and although no Zulu ever dared to set foot there between sun-set and rise, in the daytime they used these paths freely enough. But I suppose that they also held that this evil-omened field of death had some spirit of its own, some invisible but imminent fiend, who needed to be propitiated, lest soon he should claim ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... attention to myself just at present," thought Fandor; "I will wait until the cell door is opened. If Fuselier does not wish to give me permission to remain, I can at any rate cast a rapid glance round that ill-omened little cell!" ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... limbs aloft; Braved falling stones, cut steps on ice-slopes steep, That I the glory of his deeds might reap. My porter, who with uncomplaining back O'er passes, peaks, and glaciers bears my pack: Tho' now the good man looks a trifle sadder, When I suggest the ill-omened name of "ladder." O'er many a pipe our heads we put together; Our first enquiry is of course "the weather." With buoyant hearts the star-lit heaven we view; Then our next point is "What are we to ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling |
