"Haunting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a long breath, and glanced up the stairway, as though the spirit of his Aunt Mirabelle were still haunting him; then, with a depressing recollection of what she had said about his conscience, and with hot resentment at what she said about his taste, he walked slowly ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... no!—I think not!" And Sir Francis, descending his office stairs, went out into the broad sunshine which flooded the city streets, continuing his inward reverie as he walked,—"I think not. From what he said the other night, I fancy not even the haunting memory of 'ole Virginny' will draw him back there. 'Consider me as lost,' he says. An odd notion! David Helmsley, one of the richest men in the whole of two continents, wishes to lose himself! Impossible! He's a marked multi-millionaire,—branded ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... wise resolution, she took to haunting that purgatory of the poor, an intelligence office. Mrs. Flint gave her a recommendation, and she hopefully took her place among the ranks of buxom German, incapable Irish, and "smart" American women; for in those days foreign help had not driven farmers' daughters out of the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... of quiet, that I find the turmoil of the world becomes irksome to me. Then I have a house of my own, a little domestic world, created in a manner by my own hand, which I have left behind, and which is continually haunting my thoughts, and coming in contrast with the noisy, tumultuous, heartless world in which I am called to mingle. However, I am somewhat of a philosopher, and can accommodate myself to changes, so I shall endeavor to resign myself to the splendor of courts ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... on; things happened; but Ryecroft was still laborious and poor. In moments of depression he spoke of his declining energies, and evidently suffered under a haunting fear of the future. The thought of dependence had always been intolerable to him; perhaps the only boast I at any time heard from his lips was that he had never incurred debt. It was a bitter thought that, after so long and hard a struggle with unkindly ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... powerful and upright frame is bent and lean; her hair waves in wild, white locks about her shrivelled face; all the rude majesty of her form has departed; there is nothing to show that it is still Goisvintha haunting the scene of her crime but the savage expression debasing her countenance and betraying the evil heart within, unsubdued as ever in its yearning for destruction ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... added Thad, assuming a lofty air of superior knowledge, "of a fellow attending Scranton High believing the ridiculous yarns these uneducated tillers of the soil and their hired help pass around, about there being some sort of a genuine ghost haunting the old quarry—why, it's positively silly of you, Julius, and I don't mind telling you ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit—for what else is it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word that exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This is what—notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest assurances—I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say that ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Oxford, and has set himself to find and rescue by marriage the girl Lily, whom (you remember) he loved as a boy, and who has since drifted into the underworld. About this part of the story I will only say that, though the art is still there and the same haunting melody of style, Mr. MACKENZIE has too strong a sense of atmosphere to allow him to treat squalor in a fashion that will be agreeable to the universe. Frankly, the over-nice will be prudent to take leave of Michael ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... thy sad image," he replied, "Oft-haunting, drove me to this distant place. Our navy floats on the Tyrrhenian tide. Give me thy hand, nor shun a son's embrace." So spake the son, and o'er his cheeks apace Rolled down soft tears, of sadness and delight. Thrice he essayed the phantom to embrace; Thrice, vainly clasped, it melted ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... They heard of the haunting of the divine Lover; of the soul's mortal terror; of the divine pursuit, of the flight and the hiding of the soul, of its crying out in its terror; of its finding; of the divine consummation; of its eternal ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... was not rich, and his throne not over-secure. He was prejudiced against doing anything rash, both by nature and by the very limited income of the crown. He had given an audience to Bartholomew Columbus while the older brother was still haunting the court of Castile with his unfulfilled plans, and had gone so far as to tell the Genoese captain to bring his brother Christopher to England that he might talk with him. Had it not been for Queen Isabella's impulsive ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... this failure was a mystery. For the more she failed the more profoundly conscious she became of Christ as a Power. This feeling remained with her, and it grew stronger with time. The Christ who would not help her nevertheless tarried as a shadow haunting ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters in Lille fell into Prussian hands and were taken as their slaves with all that that means. I have decided that we must end this horror once and for all, so that my children can cultivate their little fields without this constant haunting fear of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... him repent of his cruelty. This surmise as to the poor boy's fate was confirmed the next morning, when some of his clothes were discovered under the forechains. The next day the chief conversation among the men was about Bobby Smudge's suicide, and of the threats he had uttered of haunting the ship. This led to the recounting of similar circumstances; and many a forecastle yarn was spun that evening, abounding in horrors sufficient to make the hairs of a less stout-hearted auditory stand on end. From the extraordinary remarks I heard as I passed about the decks, I declared, when ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... horror. Few living things have their home here. You might meet an occasional "klipspringer" (an antelope in habits and appearance somewhat like the chamois), a wandering troop of baboons, and now and then a herd of eland in the more grassy areas. There are said to be a few Bushmen still haunting the caves, but they are seldom or ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... Monster huge, hydro-cephalous, Haunting our city of blunders and jobs, Born, it would seem, to bewilder and baffle us, Who'll give you "one" for your numerous nobs. Many have menaced you, some had a shy at you; SALISBURY stout, and bespectacled CROSS, Each in his season has joined in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... temperament, disposition and aspiration they were one. That poetic and fervid statement of Mrs. Jameson, that Burne-Jones is the avatar of Raphael, contains the germ of truth. The dream-women of Burne-Jones have the same haunting and subtle spiritual wistfulness that is to be seen in the Madonnas of Raphael. Each of these men loved a woman—and each pictured her again and again. Whether this woman had an existence outside the figment of the brain matters not: both painted her as they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... by the Side of the Road," is from a text of Homer. "The Lunkhead" shows Foss in his happiest mood: gently satirizing the foibles and harmless, foolish fancies of his fellow-men. There is a haunting misty tenderness in such a poem ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... were the big shells in abundance. Sharp-edged, firm-backed, one of these shells made an admirable little shovel, something with which to cut the turf and throw up the soil, a most useful implement in the hands of the river haunting people. The idea of the youngsters was simply this: Their rendezvous should be at that point in the forest nearest the clump of trees standing solitary in the valley below. They would select the safest hours and then from the high ground make a sudden ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... "To a Butterfly" and "Life and Time" are gems of incomparable beauty. "Ole Gardens", by Winifred V. Jordan, is a haunting bit of semi-irregular verse which deserves warm applause for the cleverness of its imagery and the aptness of its phraseology. "The Reward of it All", by Emilie C. Holladay, is a potent but pathetic poem of sentiment, whose development is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... one of us should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy conspiracy—whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle any one of us should take away something from the load of anxious terrors haunting the minds of all who have relations in India—that man will have earned his right to occupy the public ear. For my own part, I will not lose myself at present, when so much darkness prevails on many leading questions, in any views too large and theoretic ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... nor, for their eyes, Glitter the crimson pictures of the clouds, Upon thy bosom, when the sun goes down. Their memories are abroad, the memories Of those who last were gathered to the earth, Lingering within the homes in which they sat, Hovering above the paths in which they walked, Haunting them like a presence. Even now They visit many a dreamer in the forms They walked in, ere at last they wore the shroud. And eyes there are which will not close to dream, For weeping and for thinking of the grave, The new-made ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... pale and thin to be a beautiful child, but with such a pair of haunting eyes, soft, silky hair of the same hazel hue, hanging in short curls just below her ears, and a mouth of rare and winning sweetness, she was sure to be remembered when no longer present. She looked several years ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... been buried, and it was in a kind of mad attempt to square himself before Heaven, and still the voice of that silent, haunting accuser, that he had performed the most signal act of heroism and willing sacrifice ever ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... manage to escape the importunate inquisitive demon, the familiar spirit, who pursued her incessantly with his queries and suggestions? He would stare up from river and street and merry gardens; his haunting eyes looked mockingly out of green realms of stirring foliage, and his voice was like a sardonic echo to the happy voices of the children, laughing at their play under the flickering shadows, of mothers discussing their cares and interests, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... reflexion that all this was only 'the natural order'. 'If the natural order is moved by the supernatural order, then I may not have done nothing. Fifty years of witness for God and His Truth, I hope, has not been in vain.' But the same thoughts recurred. 'In reading Macaulay's life I had a haunting feeling that his had been a life of public utility and mine a vita umbratilis, a life in the shade.' Ah! it was God's will. 'Mine has been a life of fifty years out of the world as Gladstone's has been in it. The work of his life in this world is manifest. I hope mine may be in the next. I ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... with such dire forebodings of some resultant evil. So bitter was her repugnance to the application to her grandfather, that she had set out on her journey feeling as though it were a challenge to fate; and this was the answer? The vague distrust, the subtle sombre presentiment, the haunting shadow of an inexplicable ill, had all meant this; this bloody horror, dragging her fair name down to the loathsome mire of the slums of crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... occasionally, notwithstanding his strong will, would perplex the soul and agitate the heart of Tancred; the haunting thought that, all this time, he was perhaps the dupe of boyish fantasies, was laid to-day. Sometimes he had felt, Why does no one sympathise with my views; why, though they treat them with conventional respect, is it clear that all I have addressed ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... a tragedy of errors. With the ghost of Hector haunting us, none of us, except the Dux, who always kept his head, could do anything. The doctor's favours were lavishly and impartially distributed. Watkins, the "baby" of the class, made an ingenious calculation that if all the "lines" which were doled out as the result ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... ever-shadowy stretches of land that go their austere way to the edges of some vacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even more aloof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeper hours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasion of either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadth of shadow, as if a breath of living essences always somehow pervaded those mystic woodland or still lowland scenes. But highly populate ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... barely see Vardin although they stood hand in hand too. The music was un-Earthly, incapable of repetition, indescribably the loveliest sound he had ever heard. He wanted to sink down into the obscuring gray murk and weep and listen to the haunting, sad, lovely ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... Sigurd loved his wife and felt a true fraternal affection for her brothers, he could not lose his haunting sense of oppression, and was seldom seen to smile as radiantly as of old. Giuki had now died, and his eldest son, Gunnar, ruled in his stead. As the young king was unwedded, Grimhild, his mother, besought him to take a wife, suggesting that none seemed more worthy to become Queen of the Niblungs ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... himself to his boys and by hard private study in his leisure hours, to drive the haunting memory away, but the effort succeeded only for a time. At night, as he lay in bed, unable to escape from himself, the vision of that pale face and that cry of terror hardly once left him till merciful sleep came to his rescue. And by day, when ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... legislated against magic, but till the fourteenth century there was no systematic attempt to root out witchcraft. The fearful epidemic, known as the Black Death, which devastated Europe in that century, seems to have aggravated the haunting terror of the invisible world of demons. Trials for witchcraft multiplied, and for three hundred years the discovery of witchcraft and the destruction of those who were accused of practising it, chiefly women, was a standing ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... had ever begun—between himself and Louise, he was grateful to this natural diversion of incident which spared them both an interval of embarrassing commonplaces. And, with the suspicion of some indefinable insincerity—either of his own or Louise's—haunting him, Minty's frank heartiness and outspoken loyalty gave him a strange relief. It seemed to him as if the clear cool breath of the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfast truth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poetic fancy would have been ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... stories the finest are The Pavilion on the Links, a tale of Sicilian vengeance and English love that is full of haunting mystery and the deadly fear of unknown assassins; Markheim, a brilliant example of this author's skill in laying bare the conflict of a soul with evil and its ultimate triumph; The Sire de Maletroit's Door, a vivid picture of the cruelty and the autocratic ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the window gave on the bitter rigors of blue and white winter mornings, the land choked with snow, on the golden blur of autumn, on the tender mists of April, draping the earth, and forever the cry of the waves on the shore haunting the air. That there was nothing of the mad woman about her, that she had retained reason in such a place, in such a room, with an eating grief to bear, impressed me as one of the marvels of the brain's endurance, with which nature sometimes surprises us. It seemed to me that this might ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... care, he bade adieu to Kentucky, and returned to Snowdon in time to join the Christmas party at Terrace Hill, where Irving Stanley was a guest, and where, in spite of the war clouds darkening our land, and in spite of the sad, haunting memories of the dead, there was much hilarity and joy—reminding the villagers of the olden time when Terrace Hill was filled with gay revelers. Anna Millbrook was there, more beautiful than in her girlhood, and almost childishly fond of her ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... defied the wisdom of physicians, who shook their heads gravely by his bedside. An old woman, however, cured him by a decoction prepared from a bitter root. The convalescence was slow and laborious; for the boy's nerves were shattered, and that deep, haunting melancholy, which he first called the "Fear" and afterwards the "Horrors," ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... to her, never quite able to forget the vague, haunting uncertainty, that seemed to challenge him, and which he would not hear. A pang of dread, almost guilt, as of insufficiency, would go over him as he heard her talking to the baby. She stood before ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the waters and the shanty was a living thing no one appears to have paid heed to it. To the landsman of those days—before folk-song hunting had begun—the haunting beauty of the tunes would appear to have made no appeal. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that he would never be likely to hear the sailor sing them ashore, and partly because of the Rabelaisian character of the words to which they were sung aboard ship. We had very prim notions ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... Phoebe and the Parson were at either side, and the foot of the table was taken by Annie, Archelaus, defiant and monosyllabic, on her left, and Lawyer Tonkin, glossy with black broadcloth, on her right. The lawyer had a haunting air as of cousinship to things ecclesiastical, and, indeed, he was lay-preacher at a Penzance chapel. Tom, who had taken care to set himself on his other hand, kept a careful eye for his plate ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Mathilde, haunting the market with its gayly striped booths, its rabbits hung in pairs by the ears, its strings of dried vegetables, its lace bazaars Mathilde was in touch with the people. It was Mathilde, and not one of his agents, who had brought word of the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... great ambition, born in him when a boy, and haunting him as a man. This was to conquer Corea, and perhaps China as well. He had begged Nobunaga to aid him in this great design, but had only been laughed at for his pains. Now that he was at the head ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the catalogue remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... If haunting doubts and vague unsatisfied longings possessed her at times, she attributed them to that dear but unreal glamour of romance that the Doctor had taught her must be expected to play for a while about the dawn of youth, but which fades ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... described best by Nietzsche's definition of a Lied: "Takt als Anfang, Reim als Ende, und als Seele stets Musik." Music is the very soul of his lyrics to an unusual degree. A melody of haunting sweetness dwells in his simple lines. It is as if the music of Robert Schumann had sought to clothe itself in words. Coupled with this, we meet a most delicate perception of nature and a remarkable ability to portray her various aspects and her ever varying moods. Romantic ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... out from church the "peace that passeth understanding" was over him. The beautiful old words that to churchmen are dear as their mothers' faces, haunting as the voices that make home, held him yet in the last echo of their music. Peace seemed, too, to lie across the world, worn with the day's heat, where the shadows were stretching in lengthening, cooling lines. And there at the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of the frenzy of Charles who, on one occasion, seemed to be resolved to take the lives of Navarre and Conde, unless they should instantly recant, and was only prevented by the entreaties of his young wife, may be exaggerated.[1227] But certain it is that the unhappy king was the victim of haunting memories of the past, which, while continually robbing him of peace of mind, sometimes drove him to the borders of madness. Agrippa d'Aubigne tells us, on the often repeated testimony of Henry of Navarre, that one ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... stars—there, ever as ye gaze, Ye meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes; Mine is the moon—and, mournful if her rays, 'Tis that she lingers where her ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... feet, she lifted the ruddy curls and flung them back on her shoulders. To Ebenezer, watching her, came like a haunting memory the witch's cry, "Hair, stranglin' ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... but they did not forget the old times, the old feuds and fightings and Bersarks, and dealings with ghosts, and with dead bodies that arose and wrought horrible things, haunting houses and strangling men. The Icelandic ghosts were able-bodied, well "materialised," and Grettir and Olaf Howard's son fought them with strength of arm and edge of steel. True stories of the ancient days were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by story tellers or Scalds. It was ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... old mystics, who have placed happiness only in an even and balanced quietude. And where but in utter loneliness was that quietude to be enjoyed? I no longer wondered that men in former times, when consumed by the recollection of some haunting guilt, fled to the desert and became hermits. Tranquillity and Solitude are the only soothers of a memory deeply troubled—light griefs fly to the crowd—fierce thoughts must battle themselves to rest. Many years had flown, and I had made my home in many places. All that was turbulent, if not ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this same Andante shows how the composer prized national themes and folk tunes, and strove to secure them. It is said that morning after morning he was awakened by the singing of a laborer, working on the house below his window. The song had a haunting lilt, and Tschaikowsky wrote it down. The melody afterwards became that touching air which fills the Andante of the First String Quartet. Another String Quartet, in F major, was written in 1814, and at once acclaimed ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... of delicate crimson on the college walls; the gardens were damp and forsaken. But to Mrs. Elsmere and Robert the place needed neither sun nor summer 'for beauty's heightening.' On both of them it laid its old irresistible spell; the sentiment haunting its quadrangles, its libraries, and its dim melodious chapels, stole into the lad's heart and alternately soothed and stimulated that keen individual consciousness which naturally accompanies the first entrance into manhood. Here, on this soil, steeped in memories, his problems, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mile distant from the wagon. Into this the same spruit alongside which we had outspanned at midday found its way and widened out into a broad, shallow, reed-bordered sheet of water, much frequented by wild duck, widgeon, and geese, and also the favourite drinking place of all the game haunting its immediate neighbourhood. I felt pretty certain, therefore, of getting a shot at something by ambushing myself among the reeds, and to this spot I accordingly made my way. As it happened, we arrived in the very nick of time, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... courtesy failed. He was becoming more sensitive than he liked to her charm and the warm sentiment she was giving out to him. This strange access in her of haunting loveliness, the gentle shadows that lay beneath her wide—yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... haunting memories of past sins by Lethe's waters, Dante finally lands on the "blessed shore." There Beatrice's hand-maidens welcome him, and beseech her to complete her work by revealing her inner beauty to this mortal, so he can portray it for mankind. But, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... provisional, a mere forecast of the superabundance to come. All things are provisional, all sights, all sounds, and this forms the peculiar charm of the hour, its haunting and winning charm. If you take the omnibus-top to be trundled whiningly up to one of the farther east-side entrances of the Park, and then dismount and walk back to the Plaza through it, you are even more keenly aware of the suspensive ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... truer far than Oak Or Dove or Tripod ever spoke. And 'twas the words—thou'lt hear and smile— The words that phantom seemed to speak— "Go and beside the sacred Nile "You'll find the Eternal Life you seek"— That haunting me by night, by day, At length as with the unseen hand Of Fate itself urged me away From Athens to this Holy Land; Where 'mong the secrets still untaught, The mysteries that as yet nor sun Nor eye hath reached—oh, blessed thought!— May sleep this ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... returned with the dusk. It was the silence that tormented him most. Nothing stirred but the mice behind the boards. The voice was haunting him again: 'I was a stranger and ye took ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange, contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye—and were they not Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to herself, amused at the vagaries of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... voices in dispute downstairs. First a man's voice, then the voices of two men—one of them Koenig's, the other with a haunting ring in it. She got up from the table and went to the door of her room, going on tip-toe, yet hardly knowing why. Koenig was saying: "No, sair, de lady does not lif here." Then a deep, strong chest-voice ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... clouds between, 10 Each, in his station twinkling not, Seems changed into a pallid spot. [2] The mountains against heaven's grave weight Rise up, and grow to wondrous height. [3] The air, as in a lion's den, 15 Is close and hot;—and now and then Comes a tired [4] and sultry breeze With a haunting and a panting, Like the stifling of disease; But the dews [5] allay the heat, 20 And the silence ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... flags and launched out to sea in the hope that the evil spirit who has brought the epidemic may take his departure therein. At Labuan it was difficult to prevail on a Malay messenger to pass after sunset by the gaol, where executions took place, or by the churchyard, for fear of the ghosts haunting those localities. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... to have had the crippled heir to the Fernald millions strong like other boys. Occasionally Ted had caught a glimpse of this Laurie Fernald, a fourteen-year-old lad with thin, colorless face and eyes that were haunting with sadness. In the village he passed as "the poor little chap" or as "poor Master Laurie" and the employees always doffed their caps to him because they pitied him. Whether one liked Mr. Fernald or Mr. Clarence ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... Gertrude's haunting dread did not diminish, but rather increased from day to day. All her grief had turned to fear, and her strength to combat it grew less and less. "Soon I shall not dare venture outside the door," she thought. "I may get to be a bit queer and morose, even if I don't become quite insane. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... a story such as this one? I could only wring his hand, and feel how hot it was, knowing that the same haunting wish to be up and off in pursuit was about him as about me. For half-an-hour we sat and smoked together. In three-quarters I was closeted in the room below with Francis Paolo, who had come from the agents to seek the berth of second officer to the new yacht Celsis. When the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... church, who furnished us advice. He still made fire engines, and a brook in a meadow presented irresistible temptation to water-wheels and machinery. One of his tilt-hammers made a very good ghost, haunting the meadow and keeping off trespassers. He had a foundry, where he cast miniature cannon, kettles and curious things, and his rifle-practice was a neighborhood wonder. He brought water from the cellar, and did other chores which Pennsylvania rules assigned to women, and ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... heritage from the time when wild in woods it ran. Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine does not seem wholly inexcusable, if we know a wild duck as well as a pig, especially the duck that takes to haunting a solitary woodland pool, who, when intruded on, springs up with such a sudden tremendous splash and flutter of wings and outrageous screams, that man himself, if not prepared for it, may be ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... him like fire. The prophecies of Hilda on the fatal night by the bautastein, which had decided him to reject the prayer of Gurth, the fears of Edith, and the cautions of Edward, came back to him, dark, haunting, and overmasteringly. They rose between him and his sober sense, whenever he sought to re-collect his thoughts, now to madden him with the sense of his folly in belief, now to divert his mind from the perilous ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... match in the other, I leaned against the uncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure. The mountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one match burned to the end and went out, and still I stared. For I had seen on her expressive face a haunting look that was horror, nothing less. Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have to be written large before I can read them. But a woman in trouble always appeals to me, and this woman was more than that. She ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. At intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. The same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hungry in his life. Over fields he went, and through the brook, and up Hawk's Nest mountain, and into the denser woods beyond. Suppose Archer should be mistaken. Suppose this dim trail should take him nowhere. Panting, he ran on, trying to conquer this haunting fear. Beyond Leeds Crossing the trail was hardly distinguishable and he must pause and lose time to pick it up here and there. Through woods, and around hills, and into dense, almost impenetrable thickets he labored on, his side aching, and ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the bad ways which make people ashamed when they meet a good and a respectable person, make them afraid of being overheard, afraid of being found out, fond of haunting low and out-of-the-way places where they will not be seen; fond of prowling and lurching out at night after their own sinful pleasures, because the darkness hides them from their neighbours, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... emerged from the dreamy, artistic, aesthetic existence into which he had drifted through living alone amid so much simple beauty; he was in real, human, haunting trouble, and the manlier man for ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... over. And what for? To be pursued for ever by that same white face? No. It was not worth while, it had never been worth while, even were that all. But there was something else to be considered. Paolo might now die of his accident, in his bed. There would be no murder done in that case, no haunting horror of a presence, no discovery to be feared, since there would have been no evil. Let him die, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Goethe's mind all his life through, although more particularly in the last thirty years. The relations of man with nature, the question how far he is free from the laws of necessity, how far subject to them, are always haunting him. If you read the Wahlverwandtschaften, the Wanderjahre, the second Faust, you will find those grave questions approached from all sides. I shall not, however, enter here into an exposition of Goethe's political, social, and educational ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... through the rock. The water we pumped out was fresh, not salt. There, my dear Jollivet, pray don't raise a bugbear that might scare the men and make them nervous. They are bad enough with what they fancy about goblins and evil spirits haunting the mine. Even Hardock can't quite divest himself of the idea that there is danger from gentry of that kind. Don't ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... off the Banks, and the second day of fog was cold as if icebergs were haunting the opaque pallor around her. In the ranks of steamer chairs people lay like mummies in their dense wrappings; in the music-room the little children of travel discussed the different lines of steamers on which they had crossed, and babes of five and seven disputed about the motion on the Cunarders ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and perplexity of the unhappy clergyman, with his belief in the sacred institution of marriage—and with the vision of Corydon pursuing him all day, and haunting his dreams at night. He imagined him trying to face the interview with the husband—with the terrible, conventionless husband, whose arguments could not be answered. "He simply couldn't face me! He went the very morning ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... holds the visitor who penetrates this delicious solitude is due not alone to the sense of sight. A haunting suggestiveness breathes from these surroundings, like the perfume exhaled when one unlocks a long-closed sandal-wood casket, once the depository of dainty feminine trifles. It needs not the name of the villa to tell us that a lady, sitting in this loggia, once duplicated Da Udine's traceries ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... some Hares by haunting the lowe watrie places do become foule and mesled, such Hares doe never follow the hard ways nor make such pathes to their formes, but use all their subtleties and pollecies by the sides of the Ryvers, brookes and other waters." Turberville's Booke ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... ruddy light streaming into the saloon and through the open state-room door aroused him. Sitting up in his berth, he looked around him in a bewildered way, passing his hand impatiently over his brow repeatedly, as if striving to recall distinctly the remembrance of something vaguely haunting his memory, but ever eluding his mental grasp. Glancing vacantly around him, the red glare of the flames fascinated his gaze, and he turned to watch the leaping, flickering flashes of light as they came and went with the sway and ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Indo-Malayan species, of which C. picta, from India and Indo-Malay, is characterized by its brilliant orange fur, and membranes variegated with orange and black. The genus includes delicately formed insectivorous, tropical, forest-haunting bats, whose colouring approximates them to the ripe bananas among which they often ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... said on either side. He debouches in extended order on the doomed house; gets his range and has the barrage well in hand (the quantity and quality of Madame's gesticulations furnish the key to this) before Colin drifts off the horizon and shows a peaked face with haunting eyes over George's shoulder. Colin does not speak. That is not his metier. He is the star shell illuminating the position; and usually in about six minutes' time it is safe for John to put in an appearance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... the ruthless care had assigned itself from the first, to Wall Street and the torture chamber of Dr. Parkhurst, our tremendously respectable dentist, who was so old and so empurpled and so polite, in his stock and dress-coat and dark and glossy wig, that he had been our mother's and our aunt's haunting fear in their youth as well, since, in their quiet Warren Street, not far off, they were, dreadful to think, comparatively under his thumb. He extremely resembles, to my mind's eye, certain figures in Phiz's illustrations to Dickens, and it was clear to us ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... plunderers, and profligates; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the abounding gaols; and in the streets along which the sixties rolled to a death which had become so common and material, that no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit ever arose among the people out of all the working of the Guillotine; with a solemn interest in the whole life and death of the city settling down to its short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton crossed the Seine again ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... seems to be the length of the nave of the cathedral. There is a square of four such sides; and of places for meditation, grave, yet not too somber, it seemed to me one of the best. While we stayed there, a jackdaw was walking to and fro across the grassy enclosure, and haunting around the good bishop's grave. He was clad in black, and looked like a feathered ecclesiastic; but I know not whether it were Bishop Dennison's ghost or ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... a time a Baba Yaga took to haunting their hut and sucking the breasts of the merchant's daughter. No sooner have the heroes gone off to the chase, than the Baba Yaga is there in a moment. Before long the fair maiden's face began to fall away, and she grew weak and thin. The blind man ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... man-haters. They love to attack and do damage. They go out of their way to bite people. They crawl into huts and bungalows, especially during the monsoon rains, and they infest thatch roofs. But are they wise, and retiring, like the house-haunting ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the outskirts of the light firing into the darkness. Finally, standing with the gun caught in the crook of her arm, she sent up a shrill call of "David." The cry fell into the silence, cleaving it with a note of wild and haunting appeal. Courant went after her and brought her back. When they returned to the fire the old man, who was busy with the cooking, looked up to speak but instead gazed in silence, caught by something unusual in their aspect, revivifying, illuminating, like the radiance of an inner glow. It glorified ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... attention to the glaring, dazzling truth that you never will have "more time," since you already have all the time there is—you expect me to let you into some wonderful secret by which you may at any rate approach the ideal of a perfect arrangement of the day, and by which, therefore, that haunting, unpleasant, daily disappointment of things left undone will be got ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... about Ann forever haunting her, as they would a mother who had a child away from home. New vision of the immensity of life could save her from giving destroying place to that sense of the woe of the world, but a conception of the wonders of the centuries could not keep out the gnawing fear that Ann might ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... their function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations, reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and real; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants; terror of Austrian Kaiser, of 'Austrian Committee' in the Tuileries itself: rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate bewilderment!—Haste, we say; and yet the Constitution had provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight days;—'unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is urgency.' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... from Germany by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I was affected by the account and happening to say so to my rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I realised on paper. ... I do not say the idea is altogether new . . . but no one has professedly used it and made it the principle throughout, that I ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... it must have looked for two centuries at least, you felt an involuntary shiver, as of warm, human, daily life brought suddenly into contact with the pale ghosts of the past. You could not escape the haunting thought that these oaken tables were dined at, these high-backed chairs sat upon, these black-framed, dirt-obscured portraits gazed at and admired by people, once flesh and blood like yourself, who had ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with questions: Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face? And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the crowd, but not of it, urged on as ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... arc of which touched the steps of an open porch. These steps were sagging and decayed, and the porch was swept by the gentle eddyings of leaves of past summers that had sought refuge there and had been undisturbed by the ruthless sweepings of winds or brooms. There was a haunting odour of pine and something else that was damp and old and weary and forgotten, and a shrivelled wisteria vine that clung with withered fingers to a trellis at the house corner began to whisper at their approach. A yellow bar of light shot for ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... looked the little stranger over with evident anxiety. She seemed to be troubled with some haunting suspicion that this was not an orthodox cat. The bushy red tail was a special subject of curiosity. She touched it up with her paw and looked at it with her head on ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Mrs. Grier kept withdrawn from public ways. She did not seek supporters for her son. As the weeks went on, the strain became intense. Her eyes were aflame with excitement, but she grew thinner, until at last she was like a ghost haunting familiar scenes. Once, and once only, did she have touch with Barode Barouche since the agitation began. This was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shall go to eternal pain. And this I say over again, from the bottom of my heart, when I lie down at night." When Antony heard that, he said, "Like a good goldsmith, thou hast gained the kingdom of God sitting still in thy house; while I, as one without discretion, have been haunting the desert all my time, and yet not arrived at the measure ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... old! I loved the place, though, and so did Sir Lionel. Nothing ever tasted better than the rosy ham, the crisp cottage bread, the thick cream, and wild honey the farm people gave us. And the honey smelt like the moor, which has just as individual and haunting a fragrance ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... haunting anxiety of my life broke out—"You haven't come to say there's anything amiss with ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I ever received; for though, while reading, I affirmed to myself that every thing urged against me was weak, or ill founded, inconclusive, or absolutely false, yet the arguments returned with increasing and reiterated force, haunting and oppressing me like a painful dream from ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... varied, indeed, but by almost imperceptible gradations, was built up an infinitely complex structure of intermediate parts, increasing from below upwards in freedom, ease and beauty of form, till high above all floated on the ear snatches of melody, haunting, poignant, meltingly tender, or, as it might be, martial and gay exquisite in themselves, yet never complete, fragments rather, as it seemed, of some theme yet to come, which they had hardly time to suggest ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... she became aware that one of the tall figures had stopped in the trail beside her pile of driftwood. In a tone singularly pleasing he was humming the air of the funeral lament, fitfully, experimentally at first, then as the haunting monotony of the strain became familiar, with a certain easy confidence. Jean forgot to be afraid. Almost unconsciously she found herself humming in unison with the motionless figure. Even when the man faced her and she saw in the dim light, not an Indian, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... had never reached to his love, but only excited his fancy (the fancy of twenty-two), had her image always retained a pleasant and grateful hue; it was blended with no deep sorrow, no stern regret, no dark remorse, no haunting shame. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in mid-apartment, dressed by an odd irony all in bridal white, that yet was not as white as was her face. Her eyes looked like two black stains, solemn and haunting as they fastened up on this intruder who would not be refused. Her lips parted, but she had no word for him. She just stared in a horror that routed all his audacity and checked the masterfulness of his ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... not to the doctor or me, but to the man on the jetty. Hrolfur vouchsafed me one quick, unfriendly glance, but apart from that scarcely seemed to notice me. The look in those sharp, haunting eyes went through me like a knife. Never before had anyone looked at me with a glance so piercing and ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business in the green fields, and the town— To plough, loom, anvil, spade—and oh! most sad To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'Twas now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... but in Paris the pursuit itself insures countenance and sympathy, which in themselves yield vast encouragement. There are more odd characters ensconced in the nooks of this capital than anywhere else in Europe;—men who have become unconsciously metropolitan friars—living in celibate dens, haunting libraries and gardens, subsisting on a bare competence, and working out some darling theory or speculative problem; lonely in the midst of a crowd, and content in their self-imposed round ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into plants, finds a place in many of the modern plant-legends. Thus there is the well-known story of the wayside plantain, commonly termed "way-bread," which, on account of its so persistently haunting the track of man, has given rise to the German story that it was formerly a maiden who, whilst watching by the wayside for her lover, was transformed into this plant. But once in seven years it becomes a bird, either the cuckoo, or the cuckoo's servant, the "dinnick," as it is ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... I sincerely hope that no affectionate relatives will want to come and see him here; that would be a most awful nuisance. What do you think of a tearful grandmother haunting ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... be with the best in all these things. Perhaps at the stage which has been reached we have more reason than others to be dissatisfied with the results of success, since we are more beset than others by the haunting question—what then? For those who have to devote themselves to the cause of Catholic education it is often and increasingly necessary to win degrees or their equivalents, not altogether for their own value, but as the key that fits the lock, for the gates to the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... shadows of the days that are no more Stalk around the lakes and meadows, haunting oft the wonted shore,— Hunters from the land of spirits seek the bison and the deer, Where the Saxon now inherits golden field and silver mere; And beside the mound where burried lies the dark-eyed maid he loves, Some tall warrior, wan and wearied, in the misty moonlight moves. See—he ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... pair of brown-ambery eyes without feeling sure that she was somewhere close about him. The lame boy, for instance, had the same delicate tint in his sad, long, questioning gaze. His own collie had it too! For years it was an obsession with him, haunting and wonderful—the knowledge that some one who watched close beside him, filling his mind with fairy thoughts, might any moment gaze into his face through a pair of ordinary familiar eyes. And he was certain that all his star-imagination about the Net, the Starlight Express, and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... would be wanted by the spirits of the deceased in the world they were about to visit. They had one custom, however, which I did not observe among the southern tribes—that of placing weights on the grave to prevent the body from getting out again, and haunting its friends. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... thought the Prince was magnifying a fancied trouble; but the certainty that sorrow must overtake him for every indulgence of affection was a haunting shadow always attending the most trifling circumstance to set his imagination conjuring calamities. That at such times his first impulse was toward revenge is explicable; the old law, an eye for an eye, was part of his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... dead into the great well we had cut, with appropriate rites performed by the Queen. The daily tasks and pleasures were picked up where they had been dropped. The haunting fear died from the eyes ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... piano, with my violin in my hand, it was still that same haunting melody that bewitched my fingers. Whatever I essayed led me, unconsciously, back to the same theme; and whenever that motif fell from my fingers her face appeared before my eyes so distinctly that I would have to dash my hand across them to wipe away the impression ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... jigged its way into the desert night when, in the black splotch of the doorway, a figure appeared—a woman in a white nightdress. Swiftly Bob changed the jig tune into a real serenade, a clear, haunting, calling melody. The figure stood straight and motionless in the dark doorway as long as he could see. Someway he knew it was a white woman and ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... ampler prospect even this haunting tragedy of innumerable avoidable deaths is but an incidental thing. They die, and their troubles are over. The larger fact after all is the inexorable tendency in things to make a soldier a skilled and educated man, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... might there not be some sudden understanding, some recognition, some glad assurance that all was well? This wild fancy so grew upon him that when the last day of the year arrived it had become a fixed belief; and yet it was with a haunting sense of dread—a dread of he knew not what—that he looked forward to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... tarns, and meres, and treeless solitudes they went. And oh, how full of strange and dreamy beauty were the long quiet summer days in that land of mystic forgetfulness! that great, secret land of waters, with its irresistible tides, and the constant ocean murmur haunting it like a ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... appease the dead and to avert the threatened 'haunting.' At all events, she sent for Anita some days ago. Indeed, I believe it is her intention to take the Spaniard with her when she returns ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... assassination of the Duke of Orleans. But indeed it was not wisely to prepare the way of peace to cast the crime of Montereau in the face of Charles of Valois, who had been dragged there as a child and with whom there had remained ever after a physical trembling and a haunting fear of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France |
