"Portentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young man, likewise laughing, "why, Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni must have come to see you in his ominous conical nightcap; and, do you know, you may see it flashing every morning from his window in the Spanish Square like a portentous meteor. But it's not by any means owing to this cap that he's called the Pyramid Doctor; for that there's quite another reason. Doctor Splendiano is a great lover of pictures, and possesses in truth quite a choice collection, which he has gained by a practice of a peculiar ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... sounds a little portentous to me," said Edward, and in the lightness of the night Bateman could see that he was smiling. "I'm afraid you'll think I've degenerated sadly. There are several things I think now which I daresay would have seemed outrageous ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! The truth of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in it: not dead, chopping barren logic merely! Out of all that rubbish of Arab idolatries, argumentative ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... both remain divided from Denmark, though the three are, to all intents and purposes, of the same race, religion, language, and early historical traditions. And close beside them looms up, more and more portentous, the Russian colossus, which, having trampled Swedish Finland under its feet, is looking across the Scandinavian peninsula toward the good harbors of Norway, just opposite Great Britain. Russia has declared the right of her one hundred and twenty millions of people to an ice-free port ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... illustrated newspapers and a great glitter of favours and carriages. The bridegroom was most thoughtful and generous about the Sawbridge side of the preparations. Only one thing was a little perplexing. In spite of his impassioned impatience he delayed the wedding. Full of dark hints and a portentous secret, he delayed the wedding for twenty-five whole days in order that it should follow immediately upon the publication of the birthday honours list. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the Louisiana Purchase, I have already touched; but not upon its diplomatic side. In those years the European game of diplomacy was truly portentous. Bonaparte had appeared, and Bonaparte was the storm centre. From the heap of jackstraws I shall lift out only that which directly concerns us and our acquisition of that enormous territory, then called Louisiana. Bonaparte had dreamed and planned an ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The occasion is significant. On March ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... was unusually stormy, dark clouds rested upon the adjacent high land, while others no less portentous hurried past us on the wings of the tempest. Soon after breakfast, we bade adieu to the wild scenery of Port Usborne, and stood across the Sound, for our old anchorage on the north side of Point Cunningham, distant one and twenty miles. In the mouth of the harbour we passed over a coral ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... eastward from the Isle de Seins, and it was an open question whether we should be able to fetch that passage and pass through it. To all appearance Captain Vavassour was perfectly calm and collected, yet he looked decidedly grave, and I thought it seemed rather portentous that the master should be his companion. The latter appeared to be doing most of the talking, and it was clear to see that he at least was distinctly anxious. At length, apparently by way of reply to a few words from the Captain, he went ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... sharp differences composed for ever. But the "Catholic Revival," initiated under the leadership of Newman, Pusey, and Keble, has proved to be no transient disturbance: and no figure has in relation to the Church history of the half-century the same portentous importance as that of John Henry Newman, whose powerful magnetism, as it attracted or repelled, drew men towards Romanism or drove them towards Rationalism, his logical art, made more impressive by the noble eloquence with which ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... mutual consent, the subject was dropped forthwith. Donald's silence throughout the remainder of the meal was portentous, however, and Mrs. McKaye and her daughters were relieved when, the meal finished at last, they could retire with good grace and leave father and son ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No Dean—and perhaps no don—who has been in that portentous position as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice. It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... barren truths which generate no conclusion, are thrown in to augment unwieldy bulk, without adding anything to weight. Because two accusations are better than one, contradictions are set staring one another in the face, without even an attempt to reconcile them. And, to give the whole a sort of portentous air of labor and information, the table of the House of Commons is swept into this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true esprit de corps, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further information. "At this time there were no umbrellas wore in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... with my mother, it was paradise to that I was destined to endure with my father's mistress, jealous of her illegitimate authority. My father's former occasional tenderness, in spite of his violence of temper, had been soothing to me; but now he only met me with reproofs or portentous frowns. The house-keeper, as she was now termed, was the vulgar despot of the family; and assuming the new character of a fine lady, she could never forgive the contempt which was sometimes visible in my countenance, when she uttered ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Geneva was five hours more of impatience. At Geneva the party halted no longer than was necessary to refresh themselves at a buffet near the station and hire a conveyance to Chamouni, which they reached two or three hours after sunset. The town still lay, as Lynde had left it, in the portentous shadow of the mountain, with the sullen rain dropping from the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... characterised the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century. It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... firebox until by the time he had cooked and eaten breakfast it was glowing red. When he sat with his feet cocked up on the stove front and gave himself up to the sober business of thought, it seemed to him that he was passing a portentous milestone. To his unsophisticated mind the simple fact that Sophie Carr had permitted him to kiss her, that for a moment her head with its fluffy aureole of yellow hair had rested willingly upon his shoulder, created a bond between them, an understanding, a tentative promise, a cleaving ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... question to answer, Natala. It was such a brilliant reign and so fraught with portentous results in the future that it would be very difficult to say that this or that one act was greatest of all; although, unquestionably, the translation of the Bible was one of the greatest blessings to posterity. Who can tell me something of great ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... MR. HAWTHORNE,—The night before last I received the two portentous bundles [essays by Miss Sedgwick's scholars]. Last night—though to give up reading "The House of the Seven Gables" for the purpose of reading a packet of seventy gabbles was like tearing the flesh from my bones—I set to, and got through ten of the compositions—six ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... misfortune, by voluntarily breaking the fearful chain of prosperity, and led some of them to weep and groan when the gems thus sacrificed were afterwards brought back to their hands by simple fishermen, who had recovered them in the intestines of fishes—a portentous omen, which was interpreted into a sorrowful indication that the Deity thus answered the propitiatory appeal, and made solemn proclamation that he had rejected it]—whether, I say, it were this spirit of jealousy ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... was doubtless caused in many cases by the delay of the commissioners in making their awards. But on the other hand it should be remembered that the commissioners had before them a portentous task. They had to examine between four thousand and five thousand claims. In most of these the amount of detail to be gone through was considerable, and the danger of fraud was great. There was the ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... accepted Clark's proposal, and the latter became a legal debtor for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and the owner of the abandoned works, and so simply and smoothly was the business carried out that to the council there seemed something magical and portentous ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... and self-satisfied George took himself off to the mill, and all day long thought much of his mother's advice, and somehow he felt himself being impelled towards paying another visit to Bourhill. Out of that visit arose portentous issues, which were to have the strongest possible influence upon the future of Gladys Graham. He found her in a lonely and impressionable mood, and left the house, to his own ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... and strength encountered strength, Thus long, but unprevailing—the event Of that portentous fight appeared at length. Until the lamp of day was almost spent It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past, Heavily ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... followers. She had an umbrella, and, if I recollect aright, was smoking a cigar. On emerging from her bag, a circle formed about her, and she was graciously pleased to dance for us, no one venturing to join her. As she was fat and scant o' breath, [26] her performance, was characterized by portentous deliberation, precision, and dignity, and was as palpably agreeable to her as it was curious ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... investing it with colour and life, he has to show how these things can be—how a religion with such attributes as he freely ascribes to the Gospel, so grand, so pure, so lasting, can have sprung up not merely in but from a most corrupt and immoral time, and can have its root in the most portentous and impossible of falsehoods. It must be said ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... short, the middle class was forming underneath the outward show of feudalism still intact: and all was getting ready for the beginning of the great commercial epoch in whose LATTER days I would fain hope we are living. That epoch began with the portentous change of agriculture which meant cultivating for profit instead of for livelihood, and which carried with it the expropriation of the PEOPLE from the land, the extinction of the yeoman, and the rise of the capitalist farmer; and the growth of the town ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... hatred or national jingoism. Evil motives are attributed to foreign powers; the German Emperor has designs upon South America; the Japanese are preparing to invade our Pacific Coast. Insignificant words of individuals are headlined and treated as portentous; foreign peoples are caricatured; our national "honor" is held to be in danger daily. Or the capitalists are pictured as universally fat and greedy and unscrupulous; anarchism is encouraged-as in the case of the murderer of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of the plague by Moses, upon what seems to have been a sudden inspiration, was a stroke of genius in the way of quackery. He was, indeed, in this way almost portentous. It had a great and terrifying effect upon the people, who were completely subdued by it. Against corporeal enemies they might hope to prevail, but they were helpless against the plague. And they all cried out with one accord, "Behold we die, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... may be a natural one. But there is something portentous in the change in Chichester," said Malling. "You know I'm a rather cool hand, and certainly not inclined to easy credulity. But there's something about Chichester which—well, Professor, I'll make a confession to you that isn't a pleasant one for any man ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and apparently unattended camera came a steady, portentous view of the rocket ... sleek and so incredibly slim that Jordan wondered why on Earth it didn't simply topple over and ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... carried away captive out of his land; Isaiah announces the same thing in the southern kingdom, and declares that only a remnant shall return. These men are in no doubt as to the impending political annihilation of Israel, and they set themselves to find some reason for an occurrence so portentous, so impossible to harmonise with ordinary religious faith. They account for it by a view of the nature of Jehovah far exalted above that of their people. He is punishing them for their iniquities, they ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... tread of an armed host; sounds being magnified to a degree almost terrific, in the absence of others by which their intensity may be compared. Even the dash of the waves below the walls was heard in the deep and awful stillness of that portentous night. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... but most would sooner have none at all. Whereupon enters Daw, a third shepherd, complaining of portents 'With mervels mo and mo.' 'Was never syn noe floode sich floodys seyn'; even 'I se shrewys pepe'—apparently a portentous omen. At this point Mak comes on the scene. He is a notorious bad character of the neighbourhood, who boasts himself 'a yoman, I tell you, of the king,' and complains that his wife eats him out of house and home. The shepherds suspect him of designs ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a portentous lecture on military science, military discipline, military tactics, and other sorts of militaryism, but his English was so wretched, his ideas so sky-blathering, his martial ardour so knocking down, that no one could make anything out of ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... contemplation of the quaint wood-cut representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a bottle-green bodice—very generously decolletee, her head adorned by a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of persons—presumably footmen—clad ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... that the celestial sphere was so stupendous that the earth itself was absolutely insignificant in comparison therewith. If, then, this stupendous sphere rotated once in twenty-four hours, the speed with which the movement of some of the stars must be executed would be so portentous as to seem well-nigh impossible. It would, therefore, seem much simpler on this ground to adopt the other alternative, and to suppose the diurnal movements were due to the rotation of the earth. Here Ptolemy saw, or at all events fancied he saw, objections of the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... for God's fearers—much valuable seed was sown, and the light of divine truth penetrated into many a benighted town and village. At length dark and portentous clouds rolled over the horizon. The Protector had entered into rest; his son was wholly incapable of taking the helm of public affairs. The exiled king, Charles II, declared his determination to publish an amnesty for all political ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... weather-beaten as the mountains around them. By their sides were plain-featured matrons, whose rustic beauty had early faded under the stress of life's toil, and apple-cheeked boys and girls, with faces composed into the most unnatural and portentous gravity. There was a sprinkling of young men, with visages so burned by the sun that they might pass for civilized Indians. They were accompanied by young women who, in their remote rural homes, had obtained hints from the world of fashion, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... a portentous experiment to make, to set Mr Masefield's prologue beside Chaucer's. But not only is it a tribute to Mr Masefield that he brought us to reading Chaucer over again, but the comparison is at bottom just. Chaucer is not what we understand by a great poet; he ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... be described as a piling up of detail upon detail till there is attained an effect portentous, overwhelming. He lacked, however, a sense of proportion; he became so carried away by his visions of human depravity, that his characters developed powers of wickedness beyond mortal strength; he lay under an obsession regarding the iniquities of mankind. In dealing with this it was unfortunately ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... of the portentous nature of the storm, it was not fully borne out, and morning saw the sun shining on the piles of snow that had fallen. There had been a considerable quantity sifted down on what was already about Elk Lodge, but there was not enough to hinder traffic for the sturdy ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... their best bibs and tuckers," Corkran mumbled in a stage whisper, as the eight dwellers at our table began to sort themselves for places. Then, in portentous silence he paused till everybody everywhere was seated. Waiting still, until satisfied that eyes and ears were focussed upon us, he rapped on the table with ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Democrates, with portentous gravity, "justice first, mercy later. Do you solemnly swear you heard Phormio ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... hoar summit, mildly bright [Footnote 16] With purple ether's liquid light, High o'er the world, the white-rob'd Magi gaze On dazzling bursts of heavenly fire; Start at each blue, portentous blaze, Each flame that flits with adverse spire. But say, what sounds my ear invade [Footnote 17] From Delphi's venerable shade? The temple rocks, the laurel waves! "The God! the God!" the Sybil cries. Her figure swells! she foams, she raves! Her figure swells ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... alarming and wicked-looking. They walk about a while among the fitful figures that gleam here and there out of the great tapestry (as it were) with which the painter has hung all the walls, and then, depressed and bewildered by the portentous solemnity of these objects, by strange glimpses of unnatural scenes, by the echo of their lonely footsteps on the vast stone floors, they take a hasty departure, finding themselves again, with a sense of release from danger, a sense that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was spoken of, no promise was held out of a constitutional reform; the limitation of the regular troops to a fixed number was declared advisable, and a vote of thanks to the Volunteers was passed without demur. But the proceedings of the Houses were soon eclipsed by the portentous presence of the Volunteer Convention. One hundred and sixty delegates of corps attended on the appointed day. The Royal Exchange was too small to accommodate them, so they adjourned to the Rotunda, accompanied by mounted guards of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... between rival soups—shall it be 'clear or thick'? And when she decides on 'thick,' how relieved they seem to be, as if—well, some few matters remain undecided in the universe, but never mind, this is settled for ever—no more doubts possible on one portentous issue, at any rate—Madame will take ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... asked idly, it is yet capable of a meaning that is very far from idle; and that however old they may think it, yet as asked by our generation it is really completely new—that it bears a meaning which is indeed not far from any one of them, but which is practical and pressing—I might almost say portentous—and which is something literally unexampled in the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... now advanced to the dignity of own gentleman and house-steward, entered the room with a letter; it had a portentous look; it was wafered, the paper was blue, the hand clerklike, there was no envelope; it bore its infernal origin on the face ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for days, and Vance was somehow never within speaking distance. He heard with relief that they had not gone—but with dread as well. Keen excitement worked in him underground. He slept badly. Like a schoolboy, he waited for the summons to an important examination that involved portentous issues, and contradictory emotions disturbed his ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... prompts the remark, "Poor boy! he was not born for business"; a third, with light auburn hair, and laughing tawny eyes, has all the lively humor, and activity, and gaiety of the South; while the fourth, he of the tawny red hair and fan-shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his portentous cravat, his sternness, his dignity, ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... at a most interesting period. The situations of the principal powers of Europe are singular and portentous. Connected with some by treaties and with all by commerce, no important event there can be indifferent to us. Such circumstances call with peculiar importunity not less for a disposition to unite in all those measures on which the honor, safety, and prosperity of our country depend than ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Adams • John Adams
... all was silence and portentous gloom. Nature seemed to pause and hold her breath in dread anticipation. Then came a muffled, jarring sound, as of far distant artillery, which died away into an oppressive stillness. Suddenly ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... stage-coach; and, as railroads flourish more amongst us than with our less commercial and enterprising neighbours, it is probable that, to many English travellers, it is even more familiar. There is no need, therefore, to describe the portentous vehicle. Suffice it to say, that, of the three compartments into which it is divided, I found myself lodged—not in the coupee which looks out in front, and which has the appearance of a narrow post-chaise that has been flattened ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... 'Georgey told me you were original. Marmy's a millionaire, and many people love millionaires for their money. But to love Marmy for himself— I do call that originality! Why, weight for age, he's acknowledged to be the most portentous ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... all hope, and, being a piously inclined person, he was privately addressing himself to God. Every man on board was fully aware of the character of this new danger, and all seemed to forget that of the nearest point of rock, towards which they were now wading with portentous speed. That point might be passed; there was a little hope there; but as to the point a quarter of a mile beyond, with the leeward set of the schooner, the most ignorant hand on board saw how unlikely it was that they ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Samuel Williams. Even Herman and Verman, though lacking many educational advantages on account of a long residence in the country, were informed on the subject of Rena Magsworth through hearsay, and they joined in the portentous silence. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... glorious weather for the day of the wedding. Little deputations streamed in from other villages; gay flags and banners, though some of fearsome home-devised patterns, made a brave contrast to the white mantle of snow; while we supplemented the usual salvo of guns from portentous and historic fowling-pieces with a halo of distress rockets, which we burned from our hospital boat, which was lying frozen ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... call upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night. Now as he had divined ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and was exulting over it, when the farmer's portentous figure burst upon them, cracking an avenging horsewhip. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seemed to be indeed. A grey head, covered with short, close hair, strangely full behind the ears, and drawn out in the face to a portentous length, the narrowness of his forehead up to its summit widening over the eyebrows, which were shaggy and met, pointing downwards over the bridge of the nose, imperfectly shading with their sable outline the cold and inexpressive eyes; the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Irish Government to the now undoubted fact, that a great portion of the potato crop in this country was seriously affected by the disease in question." A cautious, well-weighed sentence, which, coming from such a responsible quarter, was full of portentous meaning for the future. The Dublin Corporation took up the question of the Potato Blight with much and praiseworthy earnestness. They appointed a committee to enquire and report on the subject. A meeting of this committee was held in the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... This bold portentous utterance, involving the most radical departure from accepted tenets of the Methodist church since its very foundation, was made before the most representative body of Methodist clergy in America. It included the vast majority of the preachers ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... something moa than the best steeplechaser that ever looked through a bridle-ah," he announced in his somewhat portentous way. "She is—in my judgment—the realization of a dream. In her have met once more the two great streams of the Anglo-Saxon race. You have every right to be proud of hah; and so, I venture to say, have we. For we of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Mr. Lord's condition; a deep silence possessed the house. In the afternoon Nancy went to pass an hour with Jessica Morgan; on her return she met Samuel Barmby, who was just leaving after a visit to the sick man. Samuel bore himself with portentous gravity, but spoke only a few commonplaces, affecting hope; he bestowed upon Nancy's hand a fervent pressure, and strode away with the air of an undertaker who ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... "thinkin' 'bout sunthin' else." In fact, he was possessed by portentous uneasiness. There was well-defined doubt in his mind regarding his reception at the Jack-o'-Lantern. Dorothy's parting words had been plain—almost to the point of rudeness, he reflected, unhappily, and he was not sure that "a brute" would ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... restless, in great cities—and we cannot say that the change is not natural: we see in it, on the contrary, the fulfillment of an inevitable law of change, which is no doubt a law of growth, and not of decay. And yet we look upon the portentous thing with a great distaste, and doubt with what altered passions we shall come out of it. The huge, rushing, aggregate life of a great city—the crushing crowds in the streets, where friends seldom meet and there are few greetings; the thunderous noise of trade and industry that speaks of nothing ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... into the dark recesses of the aisles and transept, into the dim space overhead, as if he almost expected to hear the flapping of ghostly pinions in the portentous gloom. A sense of mystery daunted his spirit as he followed his sire by the light of a feeble lamp, carried in the hand, amidst the tall columns which rose like tree trunks around, each shaft appearing to rise farther than the sight could penetrate, ere it gave birth to the arch from its summit. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... photograph of Paul Dresser, the only less celebrated brother of Theodore Dreiser, with a short biography of the composer of On the Banks of the Wabash. As Sir George Grove in his excellent dictionary neglected to mention this portentous name in American Art and Letters (although he devoted sixty-seven pages, printed in double columns, to Mendelssohn) I saw the advantage of adding the little book to my collection. The bookseller, when questioned, offered to relinquish the volume for a total of fifteen ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... exhibition of "signs in the heavens" foretold in Scripture, but also Divine warnings of vast value to humanity as incentives to repentance and improvement of life-warnings, indeed, so precious that they could not be spared without danger to the moral government of the world. And this belief in the portentous character of comets as an essential part of the Divine government, being, as it was thought, in full accord with Scripture, was made for centuries a source of terror to humanity. To say nothing ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... steel wall to acquire that habit. The sea, sliding over 267's skin, worried me with importunate, half-caught confidences. It drummed tackily to gather my attention, coughed, spat, cleared its throat, and, on the eve of that portentous communication, retired up stage as a multitude whispering. Anon, I caught the tramp of armies afoot, the hum of crowded cities awaiting the event, the single sob of a woman, and dry roaring of wild beasts. A dropped shovel clanging on the stokehold floor was, naturally enough, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... had closed behind him, she stood quite still in the middle of the floor where he had left her. That letter, that portentous letter which Angie had spitefully put into her willing, credulous hands had referred to Tia Juana, not to herself. How plain it all was, now, and how ruthlessly, unjustly she had driven him from her! And he? He had repaid her flouting of ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... Irish peasant to violate the law, especially when sanctioned, in that violation, by those whose opinion and advice he takes as the standard of his conduct. Be this as it may, the state of the country was now becoming frightful and portentous; and although there had not, as yet, been much blood shed, still there was no person acquainted with the extraordinary pains which were taken to excite the people against the payment of tithe, who was not able to anticipate the terrible outburst ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming business of the day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he showed himself not without a quiet humor in describing the pomposities of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr. Stock. Trent turned the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... with men which he loved. He travelled, in a fashion that suited his purse and his hardy nature, by a merchant vessel from London to the Adriatic. The food was uneatable, the horrors of dirt and discomfort portentous; but he bore them cheerfully for the sake of one advantage,—"the solitariness of the one passenger among all those rough new creatures, I like it much, and soon get deep into their friendship."[7] Grim tragedies ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... and his friend were conversing on deck, another conversation which was to have a portentous effect upon the former's destiny was taking place in the upper corridor of the Peckham Young Ladies' Seminary at ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... my lords, that a bill of this portentous kind, a bill big with innumerable mischiefs, and without one beneficial tendency, will be rejected by this house, without the form of commitment; that it will not be the subject of a debate amongst us, whether we shall consent to poison the nation; and that instead of inquiring, whether ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... his portentous introduction, fills the rest of his sixteen loosely printed double-columned octavo pages with a farrago of the most indescribable character, made up of brags, lies, promises, forged recommendations and letters, boasts of systematic charity, funny scraps of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... six succeeding years does not surpass, but only amplifies this, his first examination of the whole brood of questions relating to slavery precipitated upon the country by Douglas's repeal. After a searching history of the Missouri Compromise, he attacks the demoralizing effects and portentous consequences of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Martin), Rosalind; Herman Merivale, Touchstone; Tom Taylor, Adam; and other well-known celebrities assisting). Then he describes me: "A muffled creature of sinister aspect. Short, auburn-locked, extinguished by a portentous hat, tripping and stumbling over a cloak, or robe, in whose dragging folds he conceals his identity as well as his power of volition, a weird and gruesome phantom. What—oh what—is this hovering ghost? He must be just defunct, for the purgatorial garments ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... She received him in the Empire drawing room—very stiff and stately in its appointments. It had the charm (and the intrinsic value) of a museum; it was as cosy as a room (under present arrangements) at Versailles. The great wood fire alone redeemed it from artistic bleakness. Tea was brought in by portentous, powdered footmen in scarlet and gold. She was very much the princess; the princess in her state apartments, a different personage from the pretty woman in a boudoir. Paul, sensitive as far as it is given man ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... box-stall abode he triumphantly announced that "Old Griff" had surrendered with the one portentous sentence, "Ach! I vill see aboud this!" He found Tom sitting back against the board partition, arms about his drawn-up ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... action. No spectacle is more impressive than this of pairs of hunters, thus kindling the forest into a glare. The deer, reposing quietly in his thicket, is awakened by the approaching cavalcade, and instead of flying from the portentous brilliance, remains stupidly gazing upon it, as if charmed to the spot. The animal is betrayed to its doom the gleaming of its fixed and innocent eyes. This cruel mode of securing a fatal shot, is called in ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... faces, and there silently compares their then lives with what succeeding years have revealed! Who does not, would not grieve to recall the sad tidings that have come anon and filled one's heart and being with portentous gloom? This, perhaps a chum, an especial favorite, or at any rate a classmate, has fallen under a rude savage warfare while battling for humanity, without the advantages or the glory of civilized war, but simply with the ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... adventurers awake from their delirium. The number of the sellers daily increased. On the twenty-ninth day of the month the stock had sunk to one hundred and fifty; several eminent goldsmiths and bankers, who had lent great sums upon it, were obliged to stop payment and abscond. The ebb of this portentous tide was so violent, that it bore down everything in its way; and an infinite number of families were overwhelmed with ruin. Public credit sustained a terrible shock; the nation was thrown into a dangerous ferment; and nothing was heard but the ravings of grief, disappointment, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it? Do men dream of Lot and Abraham parting, one to the east and the other to the west, peacefully, because their servants strive? That States will divide from States and boundary lines will be marked by compass and chain? Sir, that will be a portentous commission that shall settle that partition, for cannon will be planted at the corners and grinning skeletons be finger- posts to point the way. It will be no line gently marked on the bosom of the Republic—some meandering vein whence generations of her children have drawn ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils, to destroy the chill Lent lilies; for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness, slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... had been narrated on the Exchange at Amsterdam or Flushing during that portentous midsummer that Barneveld had not only beheaded but roasted alive, and fed the dogs and cats upon the attorney, the apothecary, and the engraver, there would have been citizens in plenty to devour ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this striking passage of history because it bristles with suggestive lessons and warning notes to the great Republic at the present time, and because the grave evils, which are as symptomatic to-day as were the signs of the times portentous in the reign of the easy-going, sensual Louis, are being met by those who have it in their power to avert a social catastrophe in precisely the same short-sighted spirit as characterized the conservative aristocracy when it denied the existence ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... morning found him on the front seat of the Stenton stage, sharing with the driver not his customary cigarettes but more portentous cigars from an ample pocketful. "Greenstream's dead," he pronounced; "I'm going after ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... rang once more, and there was a sharp impressive knock that reverberated through the forlorn house in a most portentous and terrifying manner. It might have been death knocking. It engendered the horrible suspicion, "Suppose he's seriously ill?" Priam Farll sprang up nervously, braced to meet ringers ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... for Representatives in Congress to keep the peace and prevent any violations of the so-called enforcement acts and other offenses against the laws of the United States; and upon a requisition of the marshal of Louisiana, and in view of said armed organizations and other portentous circumstances, I caused detachments of troops to be stationed in various localities in the State, to aid him in the performance of his official duties. That there was intimidation of Republican voters at the election, notwithstanding these precautions, admits of no doubt. The following ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... a reputation that you need not fear having whom you liked to write the different articles— medicine, surgery, chemistry, etc.; navigation, travellers' voyages, etc., etc." There is certainly a melancholy humour in the formulation of so portentous a scheme by a man who was at this moment wandering aimlessly among the lakes and mountains, unable to settle down to any definite piece of literary work, or even to throw off a fatal habit, which could not fail, if persevered in, to destroy all ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... very little scruple in disposing of its leading enemies by means of the halter or the prison. It was for the time not so much a struggle of political parties as a {22} struggle of hostile armies. The men were serious and savage, because the crisis was serious and portentous. The chances of an hour might make a man a prime-minister or a prisoner. Bolingbroke soon after was in exile, and Walpole at the head of the administration. The slightest chance, the merest accident, might have sent Walpole into exile, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Willis Bund, Cal. Worcester Quar. Sess. Rec.,i, p. clxxxii. The appearance of a bastard was a portentous event. See the many ridings to and fro across country to ecclesiastical and civil magistrates in the Ashburton Acc'ts (Butcher, The Parish of Ashburton), p. 47 (1576-7). The Devonshire justices order, Easter 1598, that every woman who shall have a ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... stood on the threshold. Lady Caroline addressed the little group, on which a sudden chill and silence fell for a moment, as if her appearance heralded some portentous crash of doom. The door had been left ajar when Margaret entered; it was not easy to say how much of the conversation Lady Caroline had heard. Mrs. Brand started up; Margaret turned very pale and drew back, while Wyvis came closer to her and put his arm round her with an air of protective defiance. ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... full measure of his base rage, and her face grew pale and set. "You're making a perfect fool of yourself, Cliff," she said, with portentous calmness. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... forth on their errand of charity in high glee; but Jim returned from the expedition with a face and air of such portentous gravity, so different from his usual happy-go-lucky bearing, that Milly was moved to ask if ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews |
