"Ghostly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... across to me: "... A child, a comparative child, shrunk to an anatomy, her beauty changed, ghostly of youth and all its sadness, baffled by a word, slave to a doctor's nod! None knew but I, and, at the last, one of her ladies—a gentle, faithful, and fearful creature. Nor she till far beyond ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... simple declaration of this man, who in all probability died in the faith of a roman catholick. This, however, I am apt to think, will not disparage his declaration in the opinion of some great men at home, even tho he did not make his confession to a ghostly physician. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Ulysses," and upon which its phrases mainly hinge. Semper eadem—"Always the same"—has been the proud motto of the mightiest hierarchy that has controlled human action and shaped the destinies of mankind, no less in material than in ghostly concerns. Yet is a vast and very beneficial change, due to the imperious spirit of the times, manifest in the Roman Church. No longer do the stake, the sword, and the dismal horrors of the interdict figure as instruments for assuring conformity and submission to her dogmas. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... was not at all ghostly and they did not care to intrude, they were about to retire as softly as they had come, when Joe was startled by hearing his own name. Jim's hand shot out and clenched his friend's arm, and ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... chamber, with its shadowy bed, dark mirrors, ghostly wainscot-doors and narrow windows, had not been brightened for a long time by such a charming little apparition as Amy when she shook out her airy muslins, smoothed her curls, and assumed all manner of distracting devices for the captivation ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... trade being neerer to a new Religion, than to a Craft or Science. And for Fayries, and walking Ghosts, the opinion of them has I think been on purpose, either taught, or not confuted, to keep in credit the use of Exorcisme, of Crosses, of holy Water, and other such inventions of Ghostly men. Neverthelesse, there is no doubt, but God can make unnaturall Apparitions. But that he does it so often, as men need to feare such things, more than they feare the stay, or change, of the course of Nature, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... and a remarkable experience to have lived in one of Brigham Young's very own houses. But the place was ghostly—lonesome beyond everything—and when the wind moaned and sighed through the rooms one could fancy it was the wailing of the spirits of those seven wretched wives. When we returned at night to the dark, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... crustaceans, but to the visitation of the mother by a spirit—a floating, volatile demon or angel (known as an "incubus" in the Middle Ages) beneficent or malicious as the case might be. Stories of the nocturnal visits of these mysterious ghostly "incubi" are on record in great number and variety, both in European and Oriental tradition and legend. There seems to have been a readiness to believe the theory of paternity from among the hidden world of goblins, fairies, and sprites which was very naturally made ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... had settled with him they would no doubt burn the House down, but that would serve them little. From his airy pinnacle he could see the whole sea-front of Huntingtower, a blur in the dusk but for the ghostly eyes of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... reawakening of the old shipyards, their slips all filled with the frames of wooden vessels for the foreign trade, is like a revival of the old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly memories. In mellowed dignity the square white houses beneath the New England elms recall to mind the mariners who dwell therein. It seems as if their shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer visitor finds a fresh attraction in watching ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... repealing! Pale lips, your mystery so well concealing, May not the eloquent, varied minstrelsy Of my inspired ardor potent be To touch your chords to music's uttered feeling? Friend, here you cherished flowers: send me now One ghostly bloom to prove that you are blessed. No? If denial such as brands my brow Be in your heavenly regions, too, confessed, Oh may it prove the truth that your still eyes Foresee ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... my suddenly aroused and somewhat bemused senses played tricks with me, and my startled imagination began to conjure up the gruesome stories I had heard of weird visitants, and ghostly beings, heard but seldom seen, on the East Anglian meres and broads? Then again came the remembrance of the shriek or cry I had fancied I heard earlier in the night, and with a shudder I thought: "How ghastly ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Soon after this I began to descend the hill that leads into Coutances. A bend in the road, as I was rapidly descending, brought into view a whole blaze of lights, and I felt that here at last there were people and hotels, and an end to the ghostly sights of the open country. Then I came to houses, but they were all quite dark, and there was not a single human being in sight. Following this came a choice of streets without a possibility of knowing which one would ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... with the physical laws of matter. But I am rather inclined to hold, with another class of inquirers, that the origin of such marvels must be looked for in the mind of the seers; although I do not go the length of their scepticism, and deny the actual existence of the ghostly show, as a real and visible spectacle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... down the dismal garden track, And lights the little mound; But when she ventures there, The black and threatening branches wave her back, And guard the ghostly ground. ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... she meant. Jabez thought she meant him self; but he hadn't got the name o' Cast Steel for nothin', an' a sort of a grim smile crept onto his face. We stood still for a moment, an' then we went out together, an' before long we heard the sound again—a long, waverin', ghostly call in the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Irishman as plainly as he had ever seen him. The face, though, was white and bloodless. The ghostly figure moved with a heavy step, coming straight up the walk toward the building. Frank sat rooted to his chair. In the shadow of the piazza the figure seemed to turn, and was then lost to view. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... semi-circle round Westerfelt and his horse. In their white caps and sheets they appeared ghostly and hideous, as they looked down at him through the eye-holes of their masks. One of them held a coil of new rope and tantalizingly swung it back and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... close, and was dying in regal splendor. All day the dark, dreary rain had fallen wearily, ceaselessly; but just as twilight, ghostly and gray, was creeping up from the horizon, there had flashed out a sudden sunburst ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... upon the soil of Flanders or moulder beneath the waves of Suvla Bay. The slopes of Gallipoli, the sands of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Judasa afford them sepulture. Mons and Ypres provide their monuments. Wherever the battle-line extends from the English Channel to the Persian Gulf their ghostly voices whisper a response to the roll-call of the guardian-spirits of ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... from her place—sat yet with her brother's letter in her lap, her hands lying heavily upon it, although her muslin dress was ghostly in the stream of moonlight flowing across the chamber. She had wept her eyes dry, and her voice was monotonous, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... find some pattern, or meaning—withdrew baffled. But its invasion, as ghostly as that had been, loosened a knot here, cleared ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... beginning. God will open a door in His own good time. Yet to see and seize on the opportunity when given is difficult. How these things make one feel more than ever the need of Divine guidance, the gift of the Spirit of Wisdom and Counsel and ghostly strength. To human eyes it seems almost hopeless. Yet other islanders were in a state almost as hopeless apparently. Only there is a something about Santa Cruz which is probably very unreal and imaginary, which seems to present unusual difficulties. In a few days, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a great number of marvellous things told us of phantom forms and ghostly apparitions—of spectres that flit about lonely roads on moonlight nights, or haunt peaceful people in their own homes; of funeral processions, with long trains of mourners, watched from a distance, but which, on nearer approach, melt into a line of mist; of wild witch-dances in deserted ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... in its place; Let those who bore it bear it still, Lest thou displease the ghostly race That float in mist from hill ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but it looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look,—with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... dare to tell you the rest of this story as the old Pottawatomie told it to me, for it is near bedtime and these are the very trees between which the ghostly, ghastly figures flitted in the darkness. It is all past and gone now and you need have no fear. You boys on the outer edge who are crowding up to the light of the camp-fire are just as safe as the fellows in the middle. The thing to interest ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey half-lights, the ghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some lonely shore, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness which they could scarcely ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of this beautiful murderess contains a pathetic narrative of the exertions of the worthy clergyman (its author) to bring her to repentance. At first, his ghostly comfort was very ill received, and she returned with taunts and derision his exhortations to penitence. But this humour only lasted while she had hopes of obtaining pardon through the interest of her family. When these vanished, it was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... forsaken me. The prayer Whose crowning fervor lifts my nature up Midway to God, may still evoke thy form. Thou hast been with me, when the midnight dew Clung damp upon my brow, and the broad fields Stretched far and dim beneath the ghostly moon; When the dark, awful woods were silent near, And with imploring hands toward the stars Clasped in mute yearning, I have questioned Heaven For the lost language of the book of Life. Oh, then thy face was glorious, and thy hair ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... longer daylight when they came out of the little apartment in the Rue Spontini. Robert Le Menil made a sign to a coachman, and entered the carriage with Therese. Close together, they rolled among the vague shadows, cut by sudden lights, through the ghostly city, having in their minds only sweet and vanishing impressions while everything around them seemed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... naturally difficult to decide in a passage like this, the difference existing between a man's /utukku/ and his /edimmu/, but the probability is, that the former means his spiritual essence, whilst the latter stands for the ghostly shadow of his body, resembling in meaning the /ka/ of the Egyptians. To all appearance the abode described above is not the place of the punishment of the wicked, but the dwelling of those accounted good, who, if lucky in the manner of their death, and the disposal of their bodies, enjoyed ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... the willows, a cold breeze swept over the plain: before it every mystery-light fled back into the darkness, and still kept up its ghostly dance. Who knows what kind of amusement that ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... her, and he liked the quiet and comfort of her pleasant house. He must have gone back by the canal-packet, but his memory kept no record of the fact, and afterward he knew only of having arrived, and of searching about in a ghostly fashion for his old comrades. They may have been at school; at any rate, he found very few of them; and with them he was certainly strange enough; too strange, even. They received him with a kind of surprise; and they could not begin playing together at once in the old ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... prose; the haunted twilight of the soul has found its notations in his work. With Amiel he could say of a landscape that it was a state of soul. His very defects became his strength. With normal eyesight we should not have had the man of ghostly reveries, the patient, charming etcher on a miniature block of evanescent prose, the forger of tiny chords, modulating into Chopin-like mist. His mania for the word caused him to neglect the sentence; his devotion to the sentence closed for him any comprehensive handling of the paragraph; he ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a bend in the road, face to face quite close together. Behind his burly form stretched the dimness of a grey, ghostly field. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... right? What power had Dan, if he needed her, to communicate with this mute beast and send him to her? As she ran she wished for the day, the warm, clear sun—for these growing shadows of evening bred a thousand ghostly thoughts. Black Bart was running backwards and forwards before her as if he half ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... hum. Now and then I would recognize the subdued voice of a friend; now and then I would hear the voices of some I believed were not friends. All these referred to me and uttered what I could not clearly distinguish, but knew must be imprecations. Ghostly rappings on the walls and ceiling of my room punctuated ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... after her. It was an alluring lane, even in November, for the ghostly gray branches of old trees met and interlocked close overhead, fir trees, mingling with the silver white trunks of slender birches, walled it either side, a whirring of invisible wings added to ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... The water was firing. Every breaking wave dissolved in phosphorescence. The tub before the bow was outlined in radiance; the whipping painter was transmuted to a rope of silver; and as the dory split the crashing rollers they streamed away in sparkles of ghostly flame. Even in their peril the boys could not help appreciating the weird beauty ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... behind the arras, and found the spring which opened the partition. She listened; there was no sound from the room within. She pressed the spring, the tapestry door opened silently beneath her touch, and she passed into the Duke's writing-closet. Here the moon shone full in, white and ghostly. Wilhelmine's mind flew back to that far-off night at Guestrow, when in the moonlight she had stolen the key from under her mother's pillow. How she had trembled! She had been a child in experience then, a very different being from the strong, self-confident woman she knew ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... with stars, clear and sweet. Presently, with only a handful of miles behind him, the moon rose above the distant ridge, at the full, glorious and generous of light. He loosened his reins a little, gave the big roan his head, and swept on through the ghostly-lighted country. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... the choice of my house and compensated for many of its inconveniences. When the chimney smoked, or the doors alternately shrunk and swelled, resisting any forcible attempt to open them, or opening of themselves with ghostly deliberation, or when suspicious blotches appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather, there was always the bay-window to turn to for comfort. And the view was a fine one. Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, and Saucelito ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... underground, which never in all these ages has heard a sound, or seen the sun, nor ever shall; therefore the water flowing from it carries to the upper air a deeper silence than the spell left by the old Quaker on the hills, or even the ghostly memory of the Indian tribes, who, ages long ago, hunted and slowly faded away in these forests on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... her whispers. The tale full of fire, quick with interest, borne away by the morning wind, became a vague murmur. The shape that, seen in a moonbeam, lived, had a pulse, had movement, wore health's glow and youth's freshness, turned cold and ghostly gray, confronted with the red of sunrise. It wasted. She was left solitary at last. She crept to her ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... contrived, perhaps all unknown to themselves, to leave them better men for their knowledge of him. He came, and he departed. Whence he came and whither he went no one enquired, no one seemed to know. He just moved through the twilight forests like a ghostly, beneficent shadow, supreme in his command of their ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant. Then in the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the cattle kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking ghostly and unreal. The Kaffirs were marshalling their men for the attack. A minute more and it had begun. On up the slope they came in long, wavering lines, several hundreds of them, whistling and screaming, shaking their spears, their war-plumes ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... course, he finds them. In the same way, people may now know what customs it is orthodox to find among ghosts, and may pretend to find them, or may simulate them by imposture. The white sheet and clanking chains are forsaken for a more realistic rendering of the ghostly part. The desire of social notoriety may beget wanton fabrications. In short, all studies have their perils, and these are among the dangers which beset the path of the inquirer into things ghostly. He must adopt the stoical maxim: "Be sober and ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Black Watch's ghostly piper that plays proudly when the men of the Black Watch do well, and prouder ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... time passed heavily and still the priest did not arrive; and the ghostly terror was so sore on the child that she could bear it no longer and awakened him. And he told her in broken words of the terrible things that had oppressed him; sore fightings and struggles, and a voice in his ear that it was too late, and that ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replies. "First race, first men from anywhere To face you, eye to eye. For that do you curse Avalon And raise a hue and cry? These toilers cannot kiss your hand, Or fawn with hearts bowed down. Be glad for them, and Avalon, And Arthur's ghostly crown. ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... cough. On moonlight nights, tempted by the thrill of the mysterious, in a voluptuosity of fear, she stole out into the cloister where the darkness was pierced by the milky spots of the window panes. Nobody!... Then she would sit down in the monks' cemetery vainly awaiting the apparition of the ghostly friar to enliven her monotonous existence ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... attention to his surroundings. It was apparent that the earth under him, the grass around, the valley of the golden haze, were all real, not part of a dream. Therefore that other countryside which he kept seeing in a ghostly fashion was ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... I looked around me to see where this ghostly white terror might lurk, and now, as I gazed at the mountains, I was surprised and annoyed to discover that the distant peaks were gradually disappearing, being blotted out of the landscape before my eyes; a ghost-like mantle was creeping over ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... little farther, ghostly, white figures gliding side by side. Wildly as her heart was beating, Averil felt that it was all strangely unreal, felt that the man beside her was a being unknown and mysterious, almost supernatural. And yet, strangely, she did not fear him. As she had once said to him, she believed he was ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... road he saw the dim shadow of a horse. Ghostly it seemed, until through closer view it proved flesh and blood. Lying close by was a knight who seemed exceeding ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... the stillness and Tom moved ever so slightly in unison with it, hoping by changing his angle of vision to catch a better glimpse. He could see the bright spot now, the grim figure standing directly facing him in ghostly silence. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... losing a chance of getting a new bit of rigging," said Harek, laughing; for he seemed none the worse for the things of last night, which indeed began to seem ghostly and dreamlike to us all. "But what good ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our lands, and how we grow ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... a critical doctor through those ghostly wards, you would see some queerer results of battle and fray than ever the doctors observe nowadays,—cases I should like to report, it might be: poisonings that would have bewildered Orfila, heart-diseases that would have astounded Corvisart, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... churchyard in Richmond and the sad joy of the heart that mourns evermore; with the beauty of flowers—the more beautiful because doomed to a brief life; with the Gothic steeple, asleep in the still, blue air, and the bell in whose deep iron throat dwelt a note that was hollow and ghostly; with the great wall around the Manor House grounds and with the mighty gate that swung upon hinges in which the voice of a soul in torment seemed to be imprisoned, and with other things which filled him with a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... sign of Thorndyke. It was really a little strange, for he was the soul of punctuality, and moreover, his engagements were of such a kind as rendered punctuality possible. I was burning with impatience to impart my news to him, and this fact, together with the ghostly proceedings of Polton, worked me up to a state of nervous tension that rendered either rest or thought equally impossible. I looked out of the window at the lamp below, glaring redly through the fog, and then, opening the door, went out on to the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers, coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat! When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his dark eyes burning, he was said to have presented "a most ghostly appearance!" ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... wise counsel to monarchs. How didst thou move our terror and our pity with thy passionate scenes between Jack Catch and the heroes of the Old Bailey? How didst thou describe their intrepid march up Holborn Hill? Nor didst thou shine less in thy theological capacity, when thou gavest ghostly counsels to dying felons, and didst record the guilty pangs of Sabbath breakers. How will the noble arts of John Overton's** painting and sculpture now languish? where rich invention, proper expression, correct design, divine attitudes, and artful contrast, heightened ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook; And there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your hook. But before the sun has risen and after the moon has set I know that it's full of ghostly trout ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... at one of the leaves in the old registry book, and for a moment as he raised his eyes to the silent, white figure before the altar, he took her for a ghostly visitant; but Valmai, with a sudden inrush of recognition, clasped her hands, a faint exclamation escaped her lips, and the "Vicare du" knew it was no spirit who stood trembling before him. For a moment both were speechless—then ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... cigarette. No sound came from his companion. All round them spread the great common, with its old thorns, its clumps of fir, its hollows and girdling woods, faintly lit by a ghostly moonlight that was just beginning to penetrate the misty November dusk. The cheerful light of Dempsey's cigarette shone a moment in the gloom. Delane was conscious of an excitement which it took all his will to master. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hairpin, and her arm fell limply over the wing of the chair. A vision of her father's face had come before her, startling her imagination. She saw him again as she had seen him that night when Harold had announced his intended trip to Australia. She recalled his ghostly features on the night of Harold's return from abroad. Could there be some unknown reason for her father's actions against the young minister? And did ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark. So is the site of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude, which—strange to say—never involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writing his record? Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and over them ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... turned round, and could then see with a creeping feeling of dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing in strange distortions upon the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... water across the swamped hull. It picked up the light cedar skiff like a chip and cast it beyond his reach and beyond his sight. And as he clung to the cabin pipe-rail, drenched with the cold sea, he heard that big roller burst against the shore very near at hand. He saw the white spray lift ghostly in the black. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mothers weep over them! how wives kneel, and beat their hearts out on the rocky barriers that separate them from their hearts' love, their hearts' desire! How little starvin', naked children cower in their ghostly shadows through dark midnights! How fathers weep for their children, dead to them, dead to honor, to shame, to humanity! How the cries of the mourners ascend to ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of these atolls, so narrow, so barren, so beset with sea, here would seem a superfluity of ghostly denizens. And yet there are more. In the various brackish pools and ponds, beautiful women with long red hair are seen to rise and bathe; only (timid as mice) on the first sound of feet upon the coral they dive ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a sparklin' on the beeches' tender leaves As we started out a workin' in the morn; An' th' noonday sun was sendin' down a shower of burnin' sheaves When we heard the welcome-soundin' dinner-horn. An' th' shadders round us gathered in a sort of ghostly batch, 'Fore we started home from workin' in that ol' ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which had thronged the heights, shutting in the prospect on every side, had now vanished, discovering as wild and melancholy a spot as a romantic heart could desire. There was something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... see the beautiful Calypso—the sage Mentor—the eager pupil—pallid phantoms floating around him. He seemed to hear the beating of the sea upon the shore. The tears came to his eyes. The ghostly Calypso put aside the curtain of the bed. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... British observer, one scene, however, stood out distinguished from the rest—the field of Ypres. In that desolate and ghostly spot, the natural color and humors of the landscape and the climate seemed designed to express to the traveler the memories of the ground. A visitor to the salient early in November, 1918, when a few German bodies still added a touch of realism and human horror, and ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... said, of his priests—the most incompetent advisers in times of danger—he chose to await the approach of the enemy in his own capital; and it was not till the latter had arrived within a few leagues of Cuzco, that the Inca, taking counsel of the same ghostly monitors, sallied forth to give ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeon-holes and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he had painfully entered he gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine contempt for published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest him if it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading, compiling, and rearranging what he called his "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the Devil," and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed to fly and ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... moments, I'm the sinner at his end, That knows his doom if he unshriven go, And losing hope of any ghostly friend, Sees Hell already gape, and ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... lingered by the side of the deep old road where this robbery was committed, to cast wistful glances into its mysterious windings; and when night deepened the shadows of the trees, have urged my horse on his journey, from a vague apprehension of a visit from the ghostly highwayman. And then there was the Bollin, with its shelvy banks, which Turpin cleared at a bound; the broad meadows over which he winged his flight; the pleasant bowling-green of the pleasant old inn at Hough, where he produced his watch to the Cheshire squires, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... against his shoulder and fired again; the only result was a flirt of the tail of the chestnut as he darted about a hillside and disappeared. Hervey made no attempt to follow but sat his saddle agape and staring, thinking ghostly thoughts. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... in her aunt's small rather watery eyes an appeal that she should do so. The distance, however, seemed infinite, and Maggie had a strange feeling that her bending down would break some spell, that the picture in the passage would fall with a ghostly clatter, that Edward the parrot would scream and shriek, that the gas would burst into a bubbling horror, that the big black cat would leap upon her and tear her with ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting waiting for the miracle. The minutes drift on and on and on, with not a sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows what is coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pretend to be; but the making or marring of the book lies elsewhere. I do not think that it lies in the construction, though Fielding's following of the ancients, both sincere and satiric, has imposed a false air of regularity upon that. The Odyssey of Joseph, of Fanny, and of their ghostly mentor and bodily guard is, in truth, a little haphazard, and might have been longer or shorter without any discreet man approving it the more or the less therefor. The real merits lie partly in the abounding humour and satire of the artist's criticism, but even more in the marvellous vivacity and ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... desolate land, of the naked hillsides, of the moor marshes with their ghostly mists; the brooding of the watchful, solitary house, the horror of haunted twilights, of nightfall and of midnights now and then when Greatorex was abroad looking after his cattle and she lay alone under the white ceiling that sagged above ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... stars gleaming down above them like many eyes; the ponderous, ragged edge of cloud in the west; the irregular, castellated range of hills at their back; the dull expanse of plain ever stretching away in front, with no boundary other than that southern sky. The weird, ghostly shadows of cactus and Spanish bayonet were everywhere; strange, eerie noises were borne to them out of the void—the distant cries of prowling wolves, the mournful sough of the night wind, the lonely hoot of some far-off owl. Nothing ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... at night, with the fire of logs leaping up the great cavern of the chimney, telling stories of past exploits, speculating as to the present, praying perhaps for the future, and pausing now and then to listen to strange noises abroad in the night-ridden sky—strains of ghostly music playing a march or a charge, or the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... as she walked beside the Master. She was thinking involuntarily of that absent word dropped by her uncle—"Oxford is a place of training"—and there was a passionate and troubled revolt in her. Other ghostly wills seemed to be threatening her—wills that meant nothing to her. No!—her own will should shape her own life! As against the austere appeal that comes from the inner heart of Oxford, the young and restless blood in her sang defiance. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suddenly arced through the headlights, swinging on a vine. It disappeared behind a tree. Another. Another. Ghostly shadows with vine pendulums on both sides. Something banged down heavily onto the hood of ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... almost as large as a kite. It has bright orange orbs and long, pointed aigrettes. Its legs are devoid of feathers. According to Blanford it has a dismal cry like haw, haw, haw, ho. "Eha" describes the call as a ghostly hoot—a hoo hoo hoo, far-reaching, but coming from nowhere in particular. These two descriptions do not seem to agree. There is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... windows and sighing forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself, swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room. But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had evidently decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick, passionate vigor. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... himself a ghostly chuckle. "I'm afraid that isn't possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you have a small model of the machine if we had one available—more than happy. I would like to see such a machine myself, as a matter ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... the bush grew darker and drearier; and the plains more like ghastly oceans; and here and there the "dominant note of Australian scenery" was accentuated, as it were, by naked, white, ring-barked trees standing in the water and haunting the ghostly surroundings. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Paolo—'What if he return!' 'Nay, love, indeed he is securely gone As thou art surely here, beloved one, He went ere sundown, and our moon is here— A fear, love, in this heart that yet knew none!' How could he fright that little velvet ear With last night's dream and all its ghostly fear! ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... shiver of the glass, stirred by a breath of wind, one of those mysterious movements of inanimate objects which are so apt to occur in the dead hours of the night, and which seem always more or less ghostly to a nervous watcher? Could it have been only accidental? or had Mrs. Darrell been prowling stealthily in and out of ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... of coming. They could see the barge from which they were to be sent; they could watch the movements of the men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly fashion about the barge; they could hear the tap of hammers; but nothing ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... glowed a weird fire that darted forth at irregular intervals like glances of demoniacal hate; at the altar foot a great censer erupted a dense cloud of pungent smoke that rendered the altar and those about it still more vague and ghostly. And the glade was full of cowering, slavering blacks and half-breeds, whose superstitious terrors reached high tide with each succeeding swirl of smoke ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... give me a ghostly feeling! My flesh creeps! I feel almost as if Mona Forester herself were standing beside me, and had laid her dead hand upon me. I cannot look them over—I will tie them up again and burn them all at once," she ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... their chambers. At last the old lady, determined to resist this invasion of her domestic peace, told her servants to arm themselves with such weapons as they could obtain, she herself sitting up with a brace of loaded pistols before her. This proceeding had the desired effect. The ghostly visitants, if such they were, ceased from their nocturnal revels. All remained silent till cock-crow. Night after night the brave old dame heroically ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... fatal degradation for this temple of the nations! For the soul is never lifted by the accord of sights and sound; But yon priest in gold and satin, murmuring with his ghostly Latin, Drags it from its natural flights, and trails its plumage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... no sooner had I quitted the ghostly governor than I hastened to my little upright friend. Tell him indeed I must not: honour, shame, principle, forbade. Yet to keep the good news wholly secret would be to render the severe covenant cruel. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the current, heading to weather Sant' Elena. Lawrence took an oar silently. He liked the rush on the forward stroke, the lingering recovery. The evening puffs were cool. They slid on past a ghostly full-rigged ship from the north, abandoned at the point of Sant' Elena, until the black mass of trees in the Giardino Pubblico loomed up. A little off the other quarter the lights from the island of San Lazzaro gleamed and faded. It was so very ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick |
