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Vampire   /vˈæmpaɪr/   Listen
Vampire

noun
(Written also vampyre)
1.
(folklore) a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living.  Synonym: lamia.



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"Vampire" Quotes from Famous Books



... I do. In the real things, the things that matter. I cling and suck like a vampire. Why can't you have the courage ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... to Bond, to Tax, to Tribute, to Impoverish, to Grind, to Pillage, to Oppress, to Afflict, to Plunder, to Vampire the Life Labouring to Create Wealth is the ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... continued on deck clasped in each other's arms, and shedding tears of bitterness, and heaving the most heart-rending sobs at intervals, yet but rarely conversing. The feelings of both were too much oppressed to admit of the utterance of their grief. The vampire of despair had banqueted on their hearts. Their vitality had been sucked, as it were, by its cold and bloodless lips; and little more than the withered rind, that had contained the seeds of so many affections, had been left. Often ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... day, the sight of which, it has been stated, so appalled the late Lord Strathmore on entering the room, that he had it walled up. Some assert that, owing to some hereditary curse, like those described in a previous chapter, at certain intervals a kind of vampire is born into the family of the Strathmore Lyons, and that as no one would like to destroy this monstrosity, it is kept concealed till its term of life is run. But, whatever the mystery may be, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... fashioned for her by the civilization that had brought her into being, her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods; a coquette to some, a love to others, and to many a heartless vampire that sucked from them their hard-wrung dust, scattered their gold to the four winds of avarice that ever circled enticingly about the vortex of shallow joys that the City harbored, and, after intoxicating them with her beauty and her wine, flung them aside to make ready ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... report. "We lived together for over a year. We weren't married, of course, because he had a wife. You see, you're terribly mistaken." He must be impressed by her calm. "Because what I really am is a vampire. I lured a man from his wife, lived with him, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... more readily resign myself to die, but I am of a race that clings fast to the earth." His persistent struggle was sometimes calm, but was generally sharpened by a horrible dread of death, which fastened on his soul like a vampire, and gave a stern aspect to his self-defence. His patience in suffering was most admirable, though seldom clothed in the usual formalities. "Perhaps, after all," he would sometimes say, "God will give me back my health, for I have ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... another mysterious ear which is a stumbling-block to the simple theory-monger. It is in fashion among a tribe of bats to which belongs the so-called vampire of India. This monster is fond of coming into your bedroom at midnight through the open windows, but not to suck your blood, for it has little in common with the true vampire of South America. It brings its dinner with ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... indeed, the dishevelled vampire in her place right enough, stretched at full length, but looking always as if she were about to leap up; and straightway I meet the sidelong glance of her enamelled pupils, shining out of half-closed ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... the draughtsman who has blundered. The two skulls, being of different sizes, suggest the male and female occupants of the grave, and would therefore assign the production to the later rather than the earlier date. The two bones are not often found in so lateral a position, and the vampire wings are clumsy in the extreme. I have collected varieties of the skull and crossbone character in many places, and seen the eccentricities of many masons in the way of wings, but have met with very few so far astray ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... voiced by one who long Hath dwelt within this city, where before The bar he wondrous reputation gained, I waited not to form a judgment sound, But leaning on a faith of fiction born, Awoke to find selfseeking underneath Each silver work this vampire spouted forth. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... I recalled that very thing, and it gave more power to my arm, for I knew the poverty amid which Geordie's poor wife strove to keep their home together; and the pitiful bareness of wee Jessie's death-chamber flashed before me. This well-nourished vampire had sucked the life-blood from them all, and remembering this, I rushed into the unequal conflict and smote the vampire between his greedy eyes with such fervour that he fell where he stood. In a moment he was on his feet again, but my ministry with him was not ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... an almost human strength of purpose. For three consecutive nights I suffered from a sort of vampire cockroach, who crept under my pyjamas whilst I slept, and nibbled my chest. When I awoke, I could feel him hurrying off by way of my arm or leg. The moment worn-out nature reasserted itself in me, and I dozed again, that ghoul of a cockroach came ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... said. "Paranoid?" He had always thought Senator Lefferts was slightly on the batty side, and the idea of real paranoia didn't come as too much of a surprise. After all, when a man was batty to start out with ... and he even looked like a vampire, Malone thought confusedly. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... hair, innocent of crimp or curl, hung in a straight jet fringe low on her wide forehead; and though no lines marred the smooth, health-tinted skin, she was perceptibly "sun burnt by the glare of life," and the dew of youth had vanished before the vampire lips of ennui. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... turned pale, and gazed as if to make sure he did not behold a ghost or a vampire—gazed like one startled out of his self possession, and the first emotion which succeeded was sheer incredulity; there was small trace of the once fair-haired English boy in the sunburnt, storm-beaten warrior of fifty to ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... occasional visits of this life-consumer, this vampire that sucks out the blood, to his constant, never-failing presence? There are those who feel within themselves the power of living fullest lives, of sounding every chord of the full diapason of passion and feeling, yet who have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... should you be afraid? It is true one doesn't often see a woman with the eyes of a vampire-bat; but there is nothing to be frightened about. I have dissected the eyes of a vampire-bat—very interesting work, very. The Princess has them— only, of course, hers are larger and finer; but there is exactly the same expression in them. I am fond ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... for she should not work upon me again. With such as she, a vampire and yet a woman, a man's safety lay not in words but in ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... indeed, you see the operation of his favourite motive, the sense of wild power, under a sort of mask, or assumed habit, realised as the very genius of nature itself; and that interest, with some superstitions closely allied to it, the belief in the vampire, for instance, is evidenced especially in certain pretended Illyrian compositions—prose translations, the reader was to understand, of more or less ancient popular ballads; La Guzla, he called the volume, The Lyre, as we might say; only that the instrument of the Illyrian minstrel had but one ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... picture. She was certainly not the most physically beautiful woman there, but she was unrivalled by any other in the grace, the variety, the meaning of her gestures, the dramatic transformations of her countenance. She was Pandora, she was Hope, she was Lady Hammerton, she was the Vampire, and she ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... rain at this time, having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed, at last, to write something in imitation of them. "You and I," said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley, "will publish ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and, having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story[120] one evening,—but, from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Stavrogin, 'the vampire Stavrogin,' as you are called by a lady here who is in love with you! Listen! I have told you already, I've put all my life into one hour and I am at peace. Do the same with yours... though you've no need to: you have plenty of 'hours' and 'moments' ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... picture of his ravening life, was beloved and worshipped as few men have been since the world has stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuine unpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his edifying death,—this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyes fixed on the cross of the mild Nazarene, and tormented with impish doubts as to whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him for the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. Lust cannot lie at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... says, 'if it is, you'll take me to the Vampire Theatre to-night. Come on, Gethin Owens, for the sake of old times,' she says; and I was glad to see her, certainly, 'twas so long since I had met an old friend, and the brandy had got in my head a little, though I hadn't had ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... '48 and lost. And that is why we came here, to the Republic. Ach! I fear I will never be the great lawyer —but the striver, yes, always. We must fight once more to be rid of the black monster that sucks the blood of freedom—vampire. Is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... too sharp, Bigot simply threatened to resign, which wrought consternation, for no man of ability would attempt to unwind the tangle of Bigot's dishonesty during a critical war. Montcalm wrote home complaints in cipher. The French government bided its time, and Bigot tightened his vampire suckers on the lifeblood of the dying nation. The whole era is a theme for the allegory ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... with you," said Morcerf; "and the secret of that very pallor is what we want to find out. The Countess G—— insists upon it that he is a vampire." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... this time become in the last degree maudlin, and wept abundantly, inferred from the foregoing avowal, that it was his mission to communicate to others the blight which had fallen on himself; and that, being a kind of unintentional Vampire, he had had Miss Pecksniff assigned to him by the Fates, as Victim Number One. Miss Pecksniff controverting this opinion as sinful, Moddle was goaded on to ask whether she could be contented with a blighted heart; and it appearing on further examination that she could be, plighted his dismal ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... laughed like the sound of a saw, and said: 'Follow out the analogy, my Lilith, and you will see that man is like the corn that springs again after it is buried; but unfortunately the only result we know of is a vampire.' ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come to consider—not how they can promote each other's interests, but how they may successfully war upon them. And the political agitator like the vampire fans the victim to which he ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... Peninsula, parts of Polynesia, &c., it is conceived as a head with attached entrails, which issues, it may be from the grave, to suck the blood of living human beings. According to the Malays a penanggalan (vampire) is a living witch, and can be killed if she can be caught; she is especially feared in houses where a birth has taken place and it is the custom to hang up a bunch of thistle in order to catch her; she is said to keep vinegar at home to aid her in re-entering her own body. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... little larger than the noctule bat, and abundant in certain parts of South America, where it is troublesome owing to its attacks upon domestic animals, sucking their blood and leaving them weakened from repeated bleedings. (See VAMPIRE.) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... boasted land of freedom—but be careful not to touch Slavery! Ah, what a dark divinity is this, that we must sacrifice to it our peace, our prosperity, our blood, our future, our honor! What an insatiable vampire is this that drinks out the very marrow of our manliness! Pardon me; this sounds like a dark dream, like the offspring of a hypochondriac imagination; and yet—have I been unjust in what I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Love John Hay A Tragedy Theophile Marzials "Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel" Walter Savage Landor Airly Beacon Charles Kingsley A Sea Child Bliss Carman From the Harbor Hill Gustav Kobbe Allan Water Matthew Gregory Lewis Forsaken Unknown Bonnie Doon Robert Burns The Two Lovers Richard Hovey The Vampire Rudyard Kipling Agatha Alfred Austin "A Rose Will Fade" Dora Sigerson Shorter Affaire d'Amour Margaret Deland A Casual Song Roden Noel The Way of It John Vance Cheney "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" Oliver Goldsmith Folk-Song Louis Untermeyer A Very Old Song William ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... failed, Bering was good enough seaman to know these uncharted signs of a continent indicated that the St. Peter was hopelessly lost. Sixteen years of nagging care, harder to face than a line of cannon, had sucked Bering's capacity of resistance like a vampire. That buoyancy, which lifts man above Anxious Fright, had been sapped. The shadowy elemental powers—physical weakness, disease, despair—were closing round the explorer like the waves ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... head beyond her husband, extremely thin, with sharp nose, hollow cheeks, and good eyes. In fact, she was partly pretty, and might have been pleasant-looking, but for a large, thin-lipped, vampire-like mouth, and a general expression of greed and contempt. She was meant for a lady, and had made herself a money-maggot. She was richly and plainly dressed; and until she began to be at her ease, might have passed for an unpleasant lady. Master Appleditch, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... quietly: "Now, see here, Anne, I'm through parleying with you. I shall go on trying to prevent this marriage, but succeed or fail, I don't want to see your face again as long as I live. I'm through with you. You are like your mother. You are a damned vampire. God, how I have loved and trusted you, how I have believed in you. I did not believe that the woman lived who could degrade herself as you are about to degrade yourself. I have had my eyes opened. All my life I have loved you without even knowing ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... men Might wait an earthquake, quietly one grey morn, One grey October morn of mist and rain When all the window-panes in Plymouth dripped With listless drizzle, and only through her streets Rumbled the death-cart with its dreary bell Monotonously plangent (for the plague Had lately like a vampire sucked the veins Of Plymouth town), a little weed-clogged ship, Grey as a ghost, glided into the Sound And anchored, scarce a soul to see her come, And not an eye to read the faded scroll Around her battered prow—the Golden Hynde. Then, thro' the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs, swamps, and muddy rivers. The former are really dangerous only during two or three months of the year, and, moreover, a considerable portion of the trails are free ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... as well tell you just what I suspect. I fear that the hold of Senora Mendez is somehow or other concerned with it all. I even have suspected that somehow she may be working in the pay of the government that she is a vampire, living on the secrets of the group who so trust her. I suspect anything, everybody—that she is poisoning his mind, perhaps even whispering into his ear some siren proposal of amnesty and his estate again, if he will but do what she asks. My poor father—I must save him from himself if it is necessary. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... may be cognisant of the fact or otherwise. In the case of Sir Alister I feel sure it was the latter. He had probably no more idea than I what far-reaching, evil strain it was that came out in his blood and turned him, every seven years, practically into a vampire. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... went on the Stand and entered a General Denial. He had been all that a Rattling Good Husband could be, but she had been a regular Rudyard Kipling Vampire. She had continued to make his Life one lingering Day-After of Regret. His Record for Patience and Long-Suffering had made Job's Performance look like ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... and a slice of a child is esteemed a great dainty. Horrible wretches! They wear no clothes; the women just have a girdle of fibrous bark, and the men sometimes encircle their heads with a fillet of sewed net-work or leaves, and the hair of the vampire bat. Their houses are in the form of beehives, and the door-posts are ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... the bride was seized with anger against the philosophers. But the vessels of gold, the cup-bearers, the cooks, the attendants, disappeared; the roof flew away; the walls fell in; and Apollonius remained alone, standing with this woman all in tears at his feet. It was a vampire, who satisfied the handsome young men in order to devour their flesh—because nothing is better for phantoms of this kind than the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... veins at the contemplation of his villany. He accused himself bitterly for neglecting his duties as a landlord, and felt both remorse and shame for having wasted his time, health, and money, in the fashionable dissipation of London and Paris; whilst a cunning, unprincipled upstart played the vampire with his tenants, and turned his estate into a scene of oppression and poverty. Nor was this all; he had been endeavoring to bring the property more and more into his own clutches, a point which he would ultimately have gained, had not the Colonel's late succession ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... a sandy, grassy plain, half a mile in length, the whole of the island is densely covered with mangroves, and fringed with a reef of coral, chiefly dead. Great numbers of large turtle-shells were scattered about, showing the periodical abundance of these animals. Another large vampire-bat, Pteropus funereus, differing from that of Fitzroy Island, was met with in great numbers among the mangroves—a very large assemblage of these animals on the wing, seen from the ship while approaching the island, quite ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... fastened behind by a peculiarly large and massive button. Feeling, no doubt, that simplicity and plainness are the soul of elegance, Miss Brass wore no collar or kerchief except upon her head, which was invariably ornamented with a brown gauze scarf, like the wing of the fabled vampire, and which, twisted into any form that happened to suggest itself, formed an ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... and my husband merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a great vampire bat. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... months I have not seen the sun; The minatory dawns are leprous pale; The felon days malinger one by one; How like a dream Life is! how vain! how stale! I, too, am faint; that vampire-like disease Has fallen on me; weak and cold am I, Hugging a tiny fire in fear I freeze: The cabin must be cold, and so I try To bear the frost, the frost that fights decay, The frost that ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said that the "'County Mercury' ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish" (1) subsequently shot into Covent Garden and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... at first an amabilis insania, but ending in mischief and sudden death. He was an English terrier, fawn-colored; his mother's name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's DEMON. He was more properly daft than mad; his courage, muscularity, and prodigious animal spirits making him insufferable, and never allowing one sane feature of himself any chance. No sooner was the street door open, than he was throttling the first dog passing, bringing upon ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... the proprietor thinks the public thinks nice. If he happen to have a talent for writing, his work will be but the more painful, and his hypocrisy the greater. The chances are, though, that the talent has already been sucked out of him by Journalism, that vampire. To her, too, he will have forfeited any fervour he may have had, any learning, any gaiety. How can he, the jaded interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any enthusiasm?—without leisure, keep his mind in ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... in a Levantine Family" chapt. xi. Since the able author found his "family" firmly believing in The Nights, much has been changed in Alexandria; but the faith in Jinn and Ifrit, ghost and vampire is lively ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... faithless craft, which, in thy hour of need, Can court the slave, can swear he shall be freed, Yet basely spurns him, when thy point is gained, Back to his masters, ready gagged and chained! Worthy associate of that band of Kings, That royal, ravening flock, whose vampire wings O'er sleeping Europe treacherously brood, And fan her into dreams of promist good, Of hope, of freedom—but to drain her blood! If thus to hear thee branded be a bliss That Vengeance loves, there's yet ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... had tried to die. He and Professor Sykes had welcomed death with open arms, and death had been thwarted by their enemies who wanted them alive—wanted to draw their knowledge from them as a vampire bat might seek to feast. And, when even death was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... crystals getting in the way of wise ones; and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of patient ones, irreparably; just as things go on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals taking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds; and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crab crystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living on the means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon others; and all these, besides the two great companies ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... I can prove it by this magazine. I am an octopus, and a viper, and a vampire, and a man-eating shark. I am what you might call a composite zoo. If you want to get a line on me just read this article on The Shameless Brigand of Bessemer, and you will certainly find out that I am a nice ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... the death of every member of the family by assuming the form of a bhut or evil spirit," is new to us, and appears to be analogous to the superstitious dread entertained by the Greeks and Sclavonians, of a corpse reanimated into a Vroucolochas, or vampire. "But if a man escapes from their hands, and recovers after this treatment, he is shunned by every one; and there are many villages in Bengal, called villages of the dead, inhabited by men who have thus escaped death; they are considered dead to society, and no other persons will dwell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... of it, and for gowns not loose but clinging, that, invariably equipped with an abundant supply of toothsome gum, she looked less the blue-stocking, or the anarchistic reformer, than what she aimed to resemble—a flaming-tressed actress (preferably of the vampire type), a ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... thought she had reached up and caught his hand in a warm, furtive grasp for a moment. She took it away again directly, but it had comforted her to touch him. He was so strong and so there.... Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... Stella Sixmuth boasts such a "vampire" as even Theda Bara is seldom called upon to portray. Not until the final chapters of this mystery story do we discover that this lady has been poisoning a rich man's wife, with an eye on the rich ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... trodden on my favorite corn. I take the chair at noisy drinking bouts, Spend thirty pence a month. I nurse a hope That in the Var that Other still may land. I swagger in a Bonapartist hat And call whoever stares at me a vampire. I fight some thirty duels. I conspire At Beziers; fail. They'd have beheaded me, But I am missing. Good. I join at once The plot at Lyons. All are seized. I fly. They'd have beheaded me, but I am missing. So ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... balsam, sorrow, acting imperceptibly, and sucking the blood like a vampire, seemed gradually drying up the springs of life; and, without any formed illness, or outward complaint, the old man's strength and vigour gradually abated, and the ministry of Wildrake ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... begin. But then, quite unaccountably, there fell over his eagerness a chilling gloom. The delightful sprite named Expectation, who had whispered so piquantly of this same eventful morn, had basely changed herself into a hideous vampire, and she muttered at him, in frightful, raucous tones. Yet the hag's snarls were true promises. There was to come, surely, inexorably, a certain other eventful morn, and he would awake, and without ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... after my heart," Madge replied, carelessly; then added, under her breath, "She's a vampire, but ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... half-way to meet them; likewise serpents and alligators proffered them the freedom of the forests and exhibited a hospitality almost excessive. Snakes twenty feet long hung their seductive length from the trees; jaguars volunteered their society through almost impenetrable marshes; vampire bats perched by night with lulling endearments upon their toes. When Stedman describes himself as killing thirty-eight mosquitoes at one stroke, we must perhaps pardon something to the spirit of martyrdom. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... learned tends to the former conclusion. Naturally a Japanese child, when sent in the dusk to draw water, will do so with fear and trembling, for this limp, floppy apparition might scare the boldest. Another bogie, a terrible creation of fancy, I take to be a vampire, about which the curious can read in Dom Calmet, who will tell them how whole villages in Hungary have been depopulated by vampires; or he may study in Fauriel's 'Chansons de la Grece Moderne' ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... labour; but he contributed little to the hum of voices. Some of his companions, either then or afterwards, took, I believe, rather a gruesome view of his want of articulate enthusiasm, and accused him of coming to the place as a sort of intellectual vampire, for purely psychological purposes. He sat in a corner, they declared, and watched the inmates when they were off their guard, analysing their characters, and dissecting the amiable ardour, the magnanimous illusions, which he was too ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... German girl, always managing to have a boil either on her forehead or the back of her neck,—I believe in my soul it's from overfeeding,—who follows my footsteps like a misanthropic vampire. By what ingenuity she manages to cajole me out of my money I know not, but I positively assert that in the last fortnight, according to her account, her unhappy mother has suffered from eleven different incurable ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... desires, she was dainty in her ways. "It is like a Sabbat of witches to hear you talk, La Corriveau!" cried she, "I will have none of those foul things which you propose. My rival shall die like a lady! I will not feast like a vampire on her dead body, nor shall you. You have other vials in the casket of better hue and flavor. What is this?" continued Angelique, taking out a rose-tinted and curiously-twisted bottle sealed on the top with the mystic pentagon. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... will pass the boundaries of civilisation, and enter a country unexplored and altogether unknown to the people of Cuzco themselves! About the "Montana" very little is known in the settlements of the Andes. Fierce tribes of Indians, the jaguar, the vampire bat, swarms of mosquitoes, and the hot atmosphere, have kept the settler, as well as the curious traveller, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... "those poor nurses yonder in the foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of the lane as you go to the river, just beside Monseigneur the bishop! what if this little monster were to be carried to them to suckle? I'd rather give suck to a vampire." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... first cousin having been married en secondes noces to the Sieur de Bulkeley, from whom, as every one knows, the Dukes of Cheshire are lineally descended. Accordingly, he made arrangements for appearing to Virginia's little lover in his celebrated impersonation of 'The Vampire Monk, or, the Bloodless Benedictine,' a performance so horrible that when old Lady Startup saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year's Eve, in the year 1764, she went off into the most piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy, and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... he continued, "I'll tell you a secret. I'm writin' a story for the 'Irish Harp,' and I want to describe the residence of jess such a vampire as this here Farnham. Now, writin', as I do, in the cause of humanity, I naturally want to git my facts pretty near right. You kin help me in this. I'll call to-morrow to see you while you're there, and ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... the unfortunate Dunbar the text for a diatribe on the subject of descriptive poetry, because I find that this old ghost is not laid yet, but comes back like a vampire to suck the life out of a true enjoyment of poetry,—and the medicine by which vampires were cured was to unbury them, drive a stake through them, and get them under ground again with all despatch. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... had ever imagined in connection with Desolation. Its power to kill with its own hand. To gently destroy, sucking the vitality like a vampire and fanning the victim ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... are ever so sung at night; and oftentimes, what at noon would have been a lark's chant of liberty, grows at night to a vampire's screech for blood!" he murmured. "They are gay at your chateau ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... suggestive, and may be true to a certain degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible that the Kallikantzaroi may have some connection with the departed; they certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, "a corpse imbued with a kind of half-life," and with eyes gleaming like live coals.{73} They are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf, a man who is supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is to be noted that "man-wolves" ([Greek: lykanthropoi]) is the very name given ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... be done, Mr. Victor," replied the captain, who appeared to be overwhelmed with wrath at the unexpected termination of his voyage. "It is too late to scuttle her, and that vampire of a Yankee has smashed both of our boats into kindling wood. We did not begin ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... of her neck. She was before the glass, busy with her hair. "You don't ask me. You wouldn't ask me. No woman wants to make a fool of a man. If she does, she's a vampire." ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... Twenty-four Hours Rainy Season Mail on the Ranch The Vampire Bat Conservatism Little Pigs The Silly Ewe The Snake The Years Burning Mountains I-III Tropical Winter Talk on ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... foeman lurking in the wood, With medicine more strong than his," they said, "Stole in last night and gave the fatal wound." The warriors scoured the country miles around, Seeking for sign or trail, but naught they found: The murderer left behind no clue or trace More than a vampire's ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... her watch their mine alone! A wave of resentment rose up at the thought—it was the old hatred that she tried to fight down—and she clasped her hands and gazed straight ahead as she beheld in a vision, the woman! A lank rag of a woman, a Kipling's vampire, who lived by the blood of strong men! And to think that she should have fastened on Rimrock, who was ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... of the foundation for that rabid and unreasonable dread of the night air which we fresh-air crusaders find the bitterest and most tenacious foe we have to fight. We have literally discovered the Powers of Darkness in both visible and audible form, and they have wings and bite, just like the vampire. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... other assistance. This method is more inexcusable than the other. For there is no egotism or vanity so hateful as that which strikes at our satisfaction in everything else, and derives its nourishment from preying, like the vampire, on the carcase of others' reputation. I would rather, in a word, that a man should talk for ever of himself with vapid, senseless assurance, than preserve a malignant, heartless silence when the merit of a rival is mentioned. I ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... sure that blood was telling now; and telling in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come. Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers, the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those beckoning hands, I could do nothing. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... and the gusla, a rudimentary fiddle. The Bulgarians are religious in a simple way, but not fanatical, and the influence of the priesthood is limited. Many ancient superstitions linger among the peasantry, such as the belief in the vampire and the evil eye; witches and necromancers are numerous and are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... an age of science. Next: the stories of these "stirs" are always much the same everywhere, in Glenluce, at Tedworth, where the Drummer came, in Peru, in Wesley's house, in heroic Iceland, when Glam, the vampire, "rode the roofs." It is curious to speculate on how the tradition of making themselves little nuisances in this particular manner has been handed down among children, if we are to suppose that children do the trick. Last autumn a farmer's house in Scotland was annoyed exactly as the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... weak-minded youth whom she had driven to suicide—utterly false, of course, but difficult to deal with. A Sunday "special" appeared—one of those fantastic, colored- supplement nightmares—in which she was pictured as a vampire with an angel's face. It was the hackneyed "moth and flame" story. The page was luridly decorated with a swarm of entomological curiosities—winged bipeds supposedly representing her fatuous admirers. These fond ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... The hand of Burton betrays itself every here and there. Thus in Part 3 of the former we are referred to his Vikram and the Vampire for a note respecting the Gandharva-vivaha form of marriage. See ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... said 'I will eat you,' it would have been much nearer the mark, for he was no Brâhman, but a dreadful vampire, who loved to devour handsome young men and slender girls. But, knowing nothing of all this, the couple went home with him quite cheerfully. He was most polite, and when they arrived at his house, said, 'Please get ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... an uninteresting shadow that waited on the other's splendour. They often wondered among themselves how Mrs. Grant could have a daughter as drab and uninteresting as Miss Grant; they did not realize how, like a vampire, the older woman lived upon the younger one's vitality. People like Mrs. Grant exist at the expense of those they come in contact with. You either have to live for them or away ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... expressly with a view to what might be required of him on his accession to the throne; his ministers are in sympathy with himself, and he has already (1899) distinguished himself by putting his finger on the sore which is festering at the heart and is sucking up as a vampire the life's blood of Europe; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... booth-theatre fitted up, and luring the folk to its dingy green canvas enclosure. "The repertoire comprised blood-curdling tragedies. I went in and saw 'The Midnight Assassin; or, The Dumb Witness.' Next evening was to be given 'The Vampire's Feast; or, The Rifled Tomb.' This tragedy was followed by Allingham's play, 'Fortune's Frolick,' adapted to the narrow capacities of the company. It was performed in broad Cornish, and interspersed with some rather good and I fancy original ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... creditors. The farmers of hops, wine and tobacco in Southern Germany; the truck farmers on the Rhine; the small farmers in Central Germany—all are in that plight. The mortgagee sucks them dry; he leaves them, apparent owners of a field, that, in point of fact, is theirs no longer. The capitalist vampire often finds it more profitable to farm in this way than, by seizing the land itself and selling it, or himself doing the farming. Thus many thousand farmers are carried on the registers as proprietors, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... before his appointment she played The Baroness Telka, a lurid, lustful, remorseless woman—a creature with a vampire's heart and the glamour of Helen of Troy—a woman whose cheeks were still round and smooth, but whose eyes were alight with the flame of insanity—a frightful, hungry, soulless wretch. And as he sat ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form.... She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her ...; and all this lives only in the delicacy with which it has ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... drinking and sodden with morphine, and raves wildly of you. Think of them all—where are they now? Dead many of them—and you have survived and prospered like a vampire, sucking their blood. Do you ever think of a human being but your own degraded self? You would sacrifice your nearest and dearest for a moment's personal gain. You are not caught and strangled because the ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... the time for revolt passes, however much the daughter may long to seem young among younger women. The mother is usually unconscious of her selfishness; she would be unspeakably horrified if some brutal soul told her that she was a vampire. Chance, chance and waste, rule them both, and the world passes by while the mother has her games of cards with daughter, and deems herself unselfish because now and then she lets daughter join a party (only to hasten back to mother), and even "wonders why ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... for him? Why, but that's incredible! Such a man, Mother! James has told me a good deal about him. He's a sort of male vampire, always needing a woman to pet and admire him—any sort of woman. And our Jacqueline!" Her lips set. "Humph! If the child still cares for him, I'll see that she hears the whole truth about him. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... here, too, necessity will force the working-men to abandon the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more clearly perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... will shortly meet a revengeful fire-breathing vampire when walking alone on the edge of a narrow precipice," exclaimed Mean sympathetically. "Yet have you pressingly laid the facts before the spirits of your distinguished ancestors with a request for their ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... understand each other. The brother of Why-Why had died after partaking too freely of a member of a hostile tribe. The cave people, of course, expected Why-Why to avenge his kinsman. The brother, they said, must have been destroyed by a boilya or vampire, and, as somebody must have sent that vampire against the lad, somebody must be speared for it. Such are primitive ideas of medicine and justice. An ordinary brave would have skulked about the dwellings of some neighbouring human groups till he got a chance ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... suspicion took me. While Trewlove tortured himself to my model, was I, by painful degrees, exchanging brains with him? I laughed; but I was unhinged. I had been smoking too many cigarettes during these three weeks, and the vampire thought continued to flit obscenely between me and the pure seascape. I saw myself the inheritor of Trewlove's cast-off personality, his inelegancies of movement, his religious opinions, his bagginess at the knees, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... truth-entangling lines Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak; None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart The sparks of love and hope till there remained 145 Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, And the wretch crept a vampire among men, Infecting all with his own hideous ill; None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk Which makes the heart deny the "yes" it breathes, 150 Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy With such a self-mistrust ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... see the vampire," said Searles musingly, "landing at the Grand Central with enough hand-luggage to fill a freight-car; a big, raw-boned creature, with a horse face and a horrible mess as to clothes. You will be there ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... long front gallery where we worked, gleaning as they went; but the vampires were long in coming, and for months we neither saw nor heard of one. Then they attacked our servants, and we took heart, and night after night exposed our toes, as conventionally accepted vampire-bait. When at last they found that the color of our skins was no criterion of dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For three nights they swept about us with hardly a whisper of wings, and accepted either toe or elbow or finger, or ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... triple puncture, and one was taken by Mr. Darwin in the act of sucking blood from the neck of a horse. This able naturalist and accurate observer is of opinion, that horses do not suffer from the quantity of blood taken from them by the Vampire, but from the inflammation of the wound which they make, and which is increased if the saddle presses on it. Horses, however, turned out to grass at night, are frequently found the next morning with their necks and haunches covered with blood; and ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... keep sweaters in luxury? Why should so many admirable lives be sacrificed to the greater prosperity of brigandage? These hateful discords amid the general harmony perplex the thinker, all the more as we shall see the cruel vampire become a model of devotion where ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... therefor. Well do I remember how his nose, which he could not, if his worthless life had depended upon it, render retrousse, grew sublimely curvilinear in its contempt, as his hawk-eyes estimated my pitiful family. I will not name the sum which he offered, the ghoul, the vampire, the anthropophagous jackal, the sneaking would-be incendiary of my little Alexandrian, the circumcised Goth! He left me, like Churchill's Scotch lassie, "pleased, but hungry"; and I found, as Valentine did in Congreve's "Love for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... Woodyard the "Vampire,"—why, none of her admirers could say. She did not look the part this afternoon, standing before the fire in her library, negligently holding a cup of tea in one hand, while she nibbled gourmandizingly ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the sea-floor Solino's submarine carries two American soldiers of fortune to startling adventure among the Vampire Heads of Apex.] ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg

... wonderful descriptions of the artfulness with which these little blood-suckers make their approaches, and keep their victim comfortably asleep during the operation by fanning him with their wings. In fact, the Vampire Bats had so bad a reputation from the accounts given by travellers, that they seemed to be veritable scourges of the countries in which they live, but so far as can be made out from the most trustworthy ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold, trampling fellow—no creeper into worm-holes—no reviver even—however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they preach. But ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... Recessional The Vampire To the Unknown Goddess The Rubaiyat of Omar Kal'vin La Nuit Blanche My Rival The Lovers' Litany A Ballad of Burial Divided Destinies The Masque of Plenty The Mare's Nest Possibilities Christmas in India Pagett, M. P. The Song of the Women A ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... this change, for not only shall we then act in the true interests of the patient, but we shall also confer on those near to her an inestimable benefit. An hysterical girl is, as Wendell Holmes has said in his decisive phrase, a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her; and I may add that pretty surely where there is one hysterical girl there will be soon or late two sick women. If circumstances oblige us to treat such a person in her own home, let us at least change her room, and also have ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... insane passion for relating these dreadful legends, whose indulgence seemed necessary to her existence, and the happiness of the narrator was commensurate with the credulity of the auditor. Without knowing it, she was a vampire, feeding on the life-blood of a young and innocent heart, and drying up ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... But I wish you would tell me what you meant by that other more fearful—apparition—or what did you call it? Were you alluding to the vampire?" ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... first thought—the simple throwing up of every scrap of his property, including all but a bare subsistence out of his official incomes, which could not have been touched without difficulty. Had he done, or been able to do this, had he shaken off the vampire in stone and lime and hungry soil which had so long sucked his blood, had he sold the library, and the 'Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck,'[35] and the Japanese papers, and the Byron vase, and the armour, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... would be best for you to grapple with this thing at the outset—to take our vampire by the throat and strangle her at once. The knife is the only remedy for some forms of disease. If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck away its life and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... evening drew on, the birds and beasts and the innumerable insects, that had kept up a perpetual noise during the day, retired to rest; and then the nocturnal animals began to creep out of their holes and go about. Huge vampire-bats, one of which had given Barney such a fright the night before, flew silently past them; and the wild howlings commenced again. They now discovered that one of the most dismal of the howls proceeded from a species of monkey: at which discovery Martin ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... was born in a Pimlico lodging house and I had to make my spoon, and there'd be plenty to say I only spoiled a horn or an honest man. And if a struggling man staggers a bit over the line in his youth, in the lower parts of the law which are pretty dingy, anyhow, there's always some old vampire to hang on to him all his life ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... I see the Vampire climb the stairs From vaults below the church; And hark! the Pirate's spectre swears! O Psychical Research, Canst THOU not hear what meets my ear, The viewless wheels that come? The wild Banshie that wails to thee? The Drummer with ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... But this belated act of justice to the country cannot atone for all the deadly disasters, will not remove the fearful responsibility from Lincoln-Seward-Blair, for having so long sustained this horrible vampire. Now is ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... the back of a chair; and after getting all his legs in a line on the topmost part of it, he would hang there for hours together, and often with a low and plaintive cry would seem to invite the notice of his master. The sloth does not suspend himself head downward, like the vampire bat, but when asleep he supports himself from a branch parallel to the earth. He first seizes the branch with one arm, and then with the other; after which he brings up both his legs, one by one, to the same branch; so that, as ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... the master-vampire, "let us leave this talk of Holy Church for the salons and the council. We three know what we want, and to get it we need a grant from the King, giving in equal shares all the properties and goods of ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... time he had reached the Pacific coast his haggard hound's eyes were more haggard than ever. His skin hung loose on his great body, as though a vampire bat had drained it of its blood. But to his own appearance he gave scant thought. For new life came to him when he found definite traces of Binhart. These traces he followed up, one by one, until he found himself circling back eastward along the valley of the Magdalena. And down the Magdalena ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... hospital, and I had not seen her for some days. The sight of her, bright-eyed and brave, fresh and young, always filled me with happiness. I felt her presence like wine and the sea wind and the sunshine. So greatly did her vitality enrich me, that sometimes I called myself a horrid old vampire. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... my blood the madman was! A past, ancestral, long-forgotten sin, That bursting forth upon me, vampire-like, Snatched from my hand ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... civilisation; and under the banner of such a cause, it is a question whether war and anarchy and confusion be not preferable to the deceptive peace and apparent prosperity of despotism, that, like the death-dealing vampire, soothes ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... How could she have? Of course, we agreed that it was some vampire; but we can't decide which one. Most of the women we know don't go in for killing men; and a heap of them ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... and, coming out of the gloom of the drawing-room, he saw by the unsparing light the startling alteration in her appearance; she looked so thin and worn, her eyes so large, her face so small—her whole appearance wilted! When he thought of Mrs. Krauss, with her deadly secret, her vampire hold on this girl; then of Krauss and his secret, he could no longer restrain himself. All those influences which stir the deepest emotions of the heart were silently operating on Shafto's. His face assumed a set expression and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... that were made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was making an enormous effort under conditions which would be certain to entail disastrous effects on her health. The book was sapping her strength like a vampire, and the Gresleys were evidently exhausting it still further by unconsciously strewing her path with difficulties. Rachel did not know them, but she supposed they belonged to that large class ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... is the literary lower empire, Where the praetorian bands take up the matter;— A 'dreadful trade,' like his who 'gathers samphire,' The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter, With the same feelings as you 'd coax a vampire. Now, were I once at home, and in good satire, I 'd try conclusions with those Janizaries, And show them what an ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future.... Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum,—overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... the vampire, "you must hear more—you must know more ere you speak of the matters that have of late exercised an ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... vampire that soothes its victim while drawing its life-blood, the parasitic German organism cast a spell over influential Italians of the community and imparted to them a feeling that things were going well with themselves and their country. Money passed from ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... impregnable rectitude—the solid furniture, the heavy carpets, the chill high walls, the massive desks, the impressive chairs, the great majestic table portentously suggestive of power. Presto! the dim calm is broken; the air vibrates as when an ancient church is invaded by a swarm of vampire-bats. Into the great room enter a group of men and a flock of youths, who settle in the impressive chairs round the majestic table. You wonder what is the motive of the assemblage. These grave lawyers, whose names are weighty in the nation's councils, and these gray-haired, dignified financiers ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... wandered into the presence of St. Anthony. Perhaps, too, it was they who, as succubi, emotionalized the dreams of monks. Yet, in view of Ishtar, they could not have been very numerous in Babylon where, however, they had a queen, Lilit, the Lilith of the Talmud, Adam's vampire wife, who conceived with him shapes of sin. In these also the Babylonians believed, and naively they represented them in forms so revolting that the sight of their own image alarmed ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from spiritual pole to spiritual pole. He dies at the age of thirty-six, but he has completely exhausted the possibilities of joy and grief. He has adored death, loved as a vampire, kissed inimitable expressions of suffering and terror, and has, himself, been racked by implacable remorse, insatiable fear. He has nothing more to try, nothing more ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... and Sara remained silent. In her own mind she regarded Mrs. Selwyn as a species of vampire, sucking out all that was good, and sweet, and wholesome from the lives of those about her—even that of her own daughter. Did the woman realize, she wondered, that instead of being the help all mothers were sent into the world to be, she was nothing but a hindrance and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... valueless to the Boers, for it had always been nothing more than a vampire feeding upon the Transvaal, but as an outlet to the sea and as a haven for foreign ships bearing men, arms, and encouragement it was invaluable. In the hands of the Boers Delagoa Bay would have been worse than ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... probably come to London recently, and if she stays any time it would not be a difficult matter for me to find her. I daresay she drained the Russian's purse, and then served him as she served me. The heartless vampire! But I am glad I saw her to-night. With her aid it will be easier than I hoped, perhaps, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... onocentaurs and sirens, spoken of by the Prophet, are neither more nor less than jackals, if we examine the Hebrew original. The lamia, a vampire, half woman and half serpent like the wyvern, is a night bird, the white or the screech owl; the satyrs and fauns, the hairy beasts spoken of in the Vulgate, are, after all, no more than wild goats—'schirim,' as they are called in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... distrust leapt into being within him. He had been attracted by her and had pitied her. He told himself now that this was because of her dark beauty and the essentially feminine appeal which she made. She was perhaps a vampire of the most dangerous sort, one who lured men to strange deaths for some sinister object beyond ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... Taung S'Ali his men would be so dispirited that when the night came they would fly. There was so much at stake—Iris, wealth, love, happiness, life itself—all depended on his plighted word. Yet his savage enemy, a slayer of women, a human vampire soiled with every conceivable crime, was stalking back to safety with a certain dignified strut, calmly trusting ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... are simple. Most bats feed on insects which they catch on the wing; some of them eat fruit; and a few enjoy a bad name because they suck the blood of other animals. Of these last are the so-called vampire bats, respecting which it used to be said that they fanned their victim with their wings while they sucked its life's blood. Though it is quite true that horses and cattle in South America are attacked by some bats, this hideous tale ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... a Moloch that will devour everything, a vampire that will suck tribute from all the veins of the earth, a monster snake encircling the whole Equator.—"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... to call her the 'Judic des salons'. Wanda Strahlberg was now holding between her lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the greenish paleness of her face, which caused others to call her a vampire, one of the cigarettes she had for sale. With one hand, she was playing, graceful as a cat, with her last package of regalias, tied with green ribbon, which, when offered to the highest bidder, brought an enormous sum. Her sister Colette was selling ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... right at once had there been anybody there to prescribe a strengthening tonic; but failing that, she tried sweet stimulants that soothed and excited, but did not nourish: tales that caused chords of pleasurable emotion to vibrate while they fanned the higher faculties into inaction—vampire things inducing that fatal repose which enables them to drain the soul of its life blood and compass its destruction. But Evadne escaped without permanent injury, for, fortunately for herself, among much that was far too sweet to be wholesome ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... the tinkle of airy bridle-bells as Tamlane rides away with the Queen of Dreams, changes Pluto and Proserpine into Oberon and Titania, and makes friends with unseen powers as Good Folk; the other is a bird of night, whose shadow sends a chill among the roots of the hair: it sucks with the vampire, gorges with the ghoule, is choked by the night-hag, pines away under the witch's charm, and commits uncleanness with the embodied Principle of Evil, giving up the fair realm of innocent belief to a murky throng from the slums and stews of the debauched brain. Both have vanished ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... it by. She gave a scream that ended in a moan, and mechanically wiped her hands back and forth, back and forth, upon her coat. Brencherly's heart ached for her. Over and over he repeated reassuring words in her deafened ears, striving to lay the awful ghost that had fastened like a vampire on her heart. But to no avail. She was as beyond his reach as if she were a creature of another planet. Never in his active, efficient life had he felt so helpless. It was with thanksgiving that at last he saw the ornate entrance of Mrs. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... doubled fist towards him, and shouted in a thundering voice, "You, you hypocritical old villain, it's you who helped my old father in his unearthly practices up yonder; you lay upon his heart like a vampire; and perhaps it was you who basely took advantage of the old man's mad folly to plant in his mind those diabolical ideas which brought me to the brink of ruin. I ought, I tell you, to kick you out like a mangy cur." The old man ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... and sell." It is true. Whatever virtues of kindliness and pity the prostitute may (and often does) have for other unfortunates and outcasts, her attitude in general does become that of the parasite, the swindler, the vampire. Why? Because on her the deepest outrage against human personality is committed. Without a shadow of claim, without a pretence of offering its equivalent, that, in her, is bought and sold which is beyond price. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... it the mocking cunning of a miser? Is that a mortal who in the agony of death stands before the public in the art arena, and, like a dying gladiator, bids for their applause in his last convulsions? or is it some phantom arisen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who comes to suck, if not the blood from our hearts, at least the money from our pockets? Questions such as these kept chasing each other through the brain while Paganini continued his apparently interminable series of complimentary bows; but all such questionings ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... for?" cried Moore in a rage. "Every man's got his price. Latimer's poor as a church mouse. He's got a wife like a vampire. And as for you—I know cattle raising isn't ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... Amen to the Pater Noster, the hail would destroy our crops. And you need not try to bestow him on any other village. Wherever he came from, nobody wants him, for he's sure to bring a hail-storm this season before the vintage is over—the farmer's last hope; and then next year a vampire will rise from a corpse so buried, which will suck up all the rain ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... Shirley, the 'heavy' man, was seen with her a great deal recently, and that Jack Gordon, the leading man, who was engaged to marry her as soon as her decree was final, was jealous as a consequence, and that Miss Loring, playing the vampire In the story and engaged to Shirley, was even more bitter against the deceased than ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... demon, nourished with blood and gold. This Arachne who has drawn out and sucked more marriages, more families in the seed, more hearts, more Christians then there are lepers in all the lazar houses or Christendom. Burn, torment this fiend—this vampire who feeds on souls, this tigerish nature that drinks blood, this amorous lamp in which burns the venom of all the vipers. Close this abyss, the bottom of which no man can find.... I offer my deniers to the chapter for the stake, and my arm to light the fire. Watch ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours, "always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood that vampire of an uncle sucks ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... that's the man who won it. He's been handed down as a legacy from proprietor to proprietor, till now we've got him. Ages ago they tried to get him to compromise for a lump sum down, but he wouldn't. Said he would only spend it, and preferred to get it by the week. Well, by the time we've paid that vampire, there isn't much left out of our profits. That's why we are at the present moment a ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... united themselves. It was a fearful misnomer. The Republican party in the South, composed of ninety-nine ignorant negroes to one renegade white, about as truly represented the progressive party of Lincoln as a black vampire the ornithology of all lands. Indeed, since the war, there has never been in the South either a Republican or a Democratic party. The party line is not drawn on belief but on race and color. The white men, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... a sudden awful doubt passed through my mind, arrow-like. The hand that held my arm was bony and clawish; I could detect the presence of incredibly long finger nails—nails long as those of some buried vampire ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... didn't disturb her, which proved at once that he was right. Linda regarded herself with interest as a supremely reprehensible person, perhaps a vampire. The latter, though, was a rather stout woman who, dressed in frightful lingerie, occupied couches with her arms caught about the neck of a man bending over her. Every detail of this ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the land, is destined to flow on down to the latest posterity, and it will bear on its mighty bosom our virtues, or our vices, our glory, or our shame, or whatever else we may transmit as an inheritance. Thus it depends upon ourselves whether the moth of immortality and the vampire of luxury shall prove the overthrow of this country, or whether knowledge and virtue, like pillars, shall support her against the whirlwinds of war, ambition, corruption, and the remorseless tooth of time. And while assembled here to-night, in this, the very cradle of liberty, let us not forget ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... hoods and high- peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of the display,—Franciscan, Dominican, or Penitent habits,—usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,—the congo, the bb (or ti-manmaille), the ti ngue gouos- sirop ("little ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn



Words linked to "Vampire" :   evil spirit, folklore



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