"Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with funeral wing The ominous depths o'ershadowing, But she lay a dumb insentient thing— Alone with a heart of stone, With neither tears nor hopes nor fears And the booming swell like a monstrous knell Tolled ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... to-day need not turn their eyes abroad to find their counterpart in spirit; so far at least the pessimists are refuted: but the note of death that Turgenev strikes in his marvellous chapter on Venice has still for young Russia an ominous echo—so many generations have arisen eager, only to be flung aside helpless, that one asks, what of the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... Astrologers, are satisfied with this hour. I think he was born some minutes sooner. At his birth the Sun was in exact Square to Jupiter, and also in Square to Mars, and Mars was in Opposition to Jupiter. These are very ominous and important aspects. The former denotes great extravagance, and waste of money, and the latter gives impetuosity, and danger ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... went by the board. It fell slowly and with an air of dignified, solemn resignation, like Caesar under the daggers of the conspirators. The cross stays flew apart like cobwebs, but the lee shrouds unfortunately held good; and scarcely was the stick overboard before there was an ominous thumping at the sides, the drum-beat of death. It was like guns turned on their own columns; like Pyrrhus's elephants breaking the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... did this there came a sudden ominous growl from the interior of the cave. It was the growl of a wild beast and caused the youth to leap back in alarm. Then a slinking body came into view and a full-sized mountain lion ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... a foothold on the shores of Scotland, pushed hard for the ascendancy. At length the Papal religion prevailed. The black wings of apostasy, as of an ominous bird, were stretched from sea to sea. Dense darkness fell upon Scotland. The Thirteenth century was the horrible midnight, during which the people slept helpless in the grasp of a terrorizing nightmare. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... funerals furnished at such and such a place, at cheapest rate and shortest notice, painfully reminded us, at every turning of the street, that death was everywhere—perhaps lurking in our very path; we felt no desire to examine the beauties of the place. With this ominous feeling pervading our minds, public buildings possessed few attractions, and we determined to make our stay as short ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... him forward. The mist had thickened, but there were more of those ominous lights at water level, spreading down both sides of the point, forming a wall. Dark forms moved out of the water ahead of them, flopping on the rocks, pressing higher, towards the ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... forms of astrology are therefore comparatively recent. Before that it was of course reckoned ominous if an eclipse took place, or a comet was seen, or a bright planet came near the moon, just as spilling salt or crossing knives may be reckoned ominous to-day. The omens had as little to do with observation, or with anything ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... my hand, heart, and fortune. I set out for Boston, and on my arrival instantly proceeded to the residence of Judge . Again my evil star was in the ascendant. Desolation and death presided in Judge 's family. The ominous badge of mourning greeted me at the threshold; Laura's mother had just been consigned, broken-hearted, to the cold grave. The venerable Judge bowed his hoary head to the blows that Providence inflicted. He could not speak to me. His reply to my offer in relation ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... rights of homa Brahmans chant their mantra high, There is heard the jackal's wailing and the raven's ominous cry! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... figure of the clerk, Langhorn. His intrusion was startling enough, but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... schoolmaster, and unfortunate was the pupil who came into the room a laggard after that harsh summons had rung out across the fields and flats. There stood the schoolmaster—he could be seen from the Red Revenger—and it was not difficult even at that distance to imagine the ominous look upon his face. Again and again came forth the wooden call, and then the schoolmaster stepped out into the roadway. He looked about inquiringly. He came to the top of the hill, from whence, off in the flats, the jumper and its load were plainly seen, and then he paused. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... in the far distance—ominous and low at first, but rapidly increasing to the tones of distant thunder. It is the night express for the North—going at fifty miles an hour. At such a rate of speed it might go right round the world in twenty-one ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... but just to the bridal parties, mamma. Oh, I must"—and there was the little ominous bend of the brows at the words "I must," when Mr. Grey coming up, her mother, glad in her turn to throw the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... conscious will, in its moral assertiveness, is merely a sign of that energy and of that will's eventual fortunes. Dramatic terror and dramatic humour both depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its conscious intent. Everything in human life is ominous, even the voluntary acts. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature, but we may build up a world without meaning it. Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. A will ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... steady!" and the quiet voice grew still more calm, though the forehead wrinkled a little, and there was an ominous tightening of the lips. "You must take that back. Peter Vanrenen is quite as great a man in the United States as you are in England—may I even say, without disrespect, a man who has won a more commanding position?—and his daughter, Cynthia, is better fitted to adorn a coronet than a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... omen, auspice, portent, prodigy, prognostic, augury, foretoken, presage; mark, token, indication, symptom, index, emblem, symbol; trace, vestige, ensign, signal, beacon; gesture, motion; signature. Associated Words: ominous, portentous, augurial, semeiology, semeiological, sematology, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... became mobs, which speedily mingled together, and only formed one crowd. An enormous crowd, reinforced and agitated by tributary currents from the side-streets, jostling one against another, surging, stormy, and whence ascended an ominous hum. This hubbub resolved itself into one word, into one name which issued simultaneously from every mouth, and which expressed the whole of the situation: "Soulouque!"[12] Throughout that long line from the Madeleine to ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... not yet returned, it fell to the consul to accompany Miss Desborough and her maid to the station. But here he was startled to find a collection of villagers upon the platform, gathered round two young women in mourning, and an ominous-looking box. He mingled for a moment with the crowd, and then returned to ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... cupidity, determined to have back. This is the method he took to obtain them. All the nobles of the land were invited to meet him at Willamow, where he received them in a black tent, which opened on one side into a white, and on the other into a red one. Into this tent of ominous hue the waiting nobles were admitted, one at a time, and were here received by the emperor, who peremptorily bade them declare what lands they held as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... bridge as early as 1006, probably built to stop the passage of the Danish pirate boats. Indeed, Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian, tells us that when the Danes invaded England in 1008, in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (ominous name!), they entrenched themselves in Southwark, and held the fortified bridge, which had pent-houses, bulwarks, and shelter-turrets. Ethelred's ally, Olaf, however, determined to drive the Danes from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "How ominous," muttered he,—"became covered with black spots; that is a foreshadowing. How can I tell her," he thought. "It seems like wilfully destroying my own happiness." And he sat struggling with himself to obtain the necessary ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... with inconsiderate haste, That now their afternoon began to waste; And, what was ominous, that very morn The sun was enter'd into Capricorn; Which, by their bad astronomer's account, That week the Virgin balance should remount. 600 An infant moon eclipsed him in his way, And hid the small remainders of his day. The crowd, amazed, pursued no certain ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... one whispered his companion, who Whispered another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew, 'T was but his own, suppressed till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... we could hear General Howard's guns at intervals, away off to our right front, but an ominous silence continued toward our left, where I was expecting at each moment to hear the sound of battle. That night we reached Renfrew's, and had reports from left to right (from General Schofield, about Morrow's Mills, to General Howard, within a couple of miles of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... frantically from room to room, rousing the sleepers. Those who were sheltered by shed-tents awoke to see a rosy light spreading across the snow where they lay—a light that was not the aurora. Then, upon the rushing wind sounded an ominous roar and a mighty crackling. The great log house was afire, and the wind exulted in the flames, tossing them back and forth and upward with fiendish glee. Shouting hoarsely, the trappers leaped, wet and steaming, out of their covers, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... kitchen, wiping his face, nervous, weary, embarrassed. Supper was on the table. The blue-bordered dish, heaped with side bones and second joints done to a turn, was moved to a side station, while in its accustomed place before Enoch's plate there sat an ominous bowl of gruel. The old man did not look at the table, but he saw it all. He would have realized it with his eyes shut. Domestic history, as well as that of greater principalities ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... turned his back in so pointed and ominous a manner that Horace judged it better to withdraw without insisting further. "I'm afraid," he said to Mrs. Futvoye, after they had rejoined Sylvia in the drawing-room—"I'm afraid your husband is still a little sore with me about this ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... over before he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to the ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... to wake at full daylight. Just as I woke, I heard the distant patter of a galloping horse. Such a sound at such a time is ominous to duffing bullock drivers; so, as I sprang to my feet, you may be sure my companions were not much behind me. Along the track, a mile in advance of the wagons, we saw an approaching horseman. And as if this was n't enough, we heard ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... into the red of wine. The scene transfixed them. Gladiators of other days became helpless children. During the solemn suspense of this tragic moment, waiting in confused and wondering silence, their faces lighted with the ominous sunset sheen, one great chief uttered speech for all: "Brothers, the West, the West! We alone have the key to the West, and we must bravely unlock the portals; we can buy no lamp that will banish the night. We have always kept our time by the sun. When we pass through the gates of this dying day, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the western sea-rim, and there was still no sign of the captain's boat. On the shore an ominous silence prevailed, though now and then it would be broken by the weird, resonant boom of a conch-shell. The night was passed in the greatest anxiety by all on board, every man, musket in hand, ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... partly for this reason, and partly because of a certain ominous peculiarity of her physical condition, that she did not know for some months that she was going to have Peacey's child. It was indeed a rainy December morning when she heard a knock at the door and knew it was little Jack Harken, because he was whistling ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... was in sight, and the lake looked comparatively peaceful; but just across the middle stretched an ominous streak of muddy, rushing water, that beat against the high grass-grown dam, separating the lake from the village, and threatened every moment to ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... was; she answered, addressing the bridegroom, "Where thou art Caius, there shall I be Caia," intimating that she would imitate the exemplary life of Caia, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus. She was then lifted over the threshold, or gently stepped over, it being considered ominous to touch it with her feet, because it was sacred to Vesta ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... of THE SKULL—of letting fall a bullet through the skull's eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... had entered was likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod. As the Duchess finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she saw that the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light from the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could distinguish strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not occur to her at the time that danger could come from that quarter, she tried to gratify a more ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... shut the door to his house. The children reported that he would not even let them in, and that they could see him through the window stitching away in ominous ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... nervously crumbling a note in his fingers. Dalrymple sat motionless as a man of bronze, and, except to throw down a card when it came to his turn, never stirred a finger. There was, to my thinking, something ominous in ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... elements appeared in unison with the distracted condition of the kingdom. Dark clouds, seeming of ominous import to men's minds, gathered in the heavens, to be presently torn asunder and hurried in wild flight by tempestuous winds across the troubled sky. As night deepened, the gale steadily increased, until it raged in boundless fury above the whole island and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... arm Burns was threatening his professional friend in a way that looked ominous. But a laugh was in his eye, now that he had got his way, and the altercation ended in a fire of jokes. Then ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... as Mr. Poynter stared at the shirt upon the bed, his appearance was that of a young man decidedly out of sorts. Presently with an ominous glint of temper in his fine eyes, he noiselessly rearranged his tent, viciously donned the offending shirt, whistled for Nero and leaving the camp of his lady as unexpectedly as he had entered it, set ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... were found, and all the time the trap-door overhead was being lifted a few inches every minute, and fell with a clap, while the shrieking of the wind, and the rattling and banging of the woodwork in the observatory, sounded ominous of danger to the work of ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... still later hour, over against the harvest moon, see them rise congruous with the gentle night, casting round them not palls of ominous gloom, but clear translucent shadows sifted through traceries of leafage which do but veil the light. And what variety of form and structure sunders them from other trees, what irregular persuasive grace. Some are tall and straight, springing ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Gypsy were ominous. Gypsy Will was eventually executed for a murder committed in his early youth, in company with two English labourers, one of whom confessed the fact on his death-bed. He was the head of the clan Young, which, with the clan Smith, still haunts two ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the gloomiest interpretation on ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... me foolish if I ask you to wait here while I go in there"—she pointed to the ominous thicket near ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... to expostulate farther but the ominous click of a .38 Colt's was incentive enough to make him stop and then he shoved her over and gave her ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... say a falling house is best known by the rats leaving it—a falling state, by the desertion of confederates and allies—and a falling man, by the desertion of his friends. If this be true augury; your last letter may be considered as ominous of my breaking down. Methinks, you have gone far enough, and shared deep enough with me, to have some confidence in my savoir faire—some little faith both in my means and management. What crossgrained fiend has at once inspired you with what I suppose you wish me to call politic ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... is still doubtful and victory will fall at last upon the strong, though it is not the final triumph but the present struggle that makes the joy. In rendering the "subject" upon his canvas, by the manipulation of composition and line and mass and color, he makes the storm ominous and terrible, or glorious, according as he feels. The import of his picture is not the natural fact of the storm itself, but its significance ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... ominous. What was the boy going to do? Why all this delay? Why did he not promptly confront the fellow and order him to be gone? In reality, only a few minutes had elapsed since she first heard the noise, but it seemed a quarter of an hour even since ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... an ominous sense of impending peril; but she was too angry to avoid even the risks she saw. To her surprise Raymond put his arm about her with a smile. "There are many reasons why I have to think about money. One is that YOU don't; and another ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... had to say before jumping to a conclusion. Thus the little group of Englishmen on the high poop of the Adventure lapsed into sudden silence as the boat drew near; but it was a silence that was ominous, menacing, a silence of set lips and burning eyes, pregnant with dire possibilities for the city and all within it if aught of evil had befallen their Captain therein. For not only was Marshall, rough almost to uncouthness of manner though he was at times, beloved by ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the chemists and metallurgists in Europe, by denying the possibility of dissolving the golden calf; the solution of gold being actually found in every gilder's shop in Paris, and known even to coiners and forgers, for hundreds of years before he made this notable discovery. The result was ominous. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... dealing with the fast-gathering trouble which the labour-struggle had brought about, was so clear, that the conditions of the times had begot a deep seriousness amongst all reasonable people; a determination which put aside all non-essentials, and which to thinking men was ominous of the swiftly-approaching change: such an element was too dangerous for mere traitors and self-seekers, and one by one they were thrust out and mostly ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... rider were taking the border trail. It led them through a desolate country of desert where the flat-leafed prickly pear and the occasional pudgy creosote were the chief forms of vegetable life. Now and again a swift might be seen basking on a rock or a Gila monster motionless on the hillside. The ominous buzz of a rattler more than once made the pony sidestep. Mesa and flat and wash succeeded ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... in the midst of the most thriving Occidental metropolis—The City That Was. There has never been much of Chinatown that savored of Bohemianism, but it has always been the vogue for visitors to make a trip through its mysterious alleys, peering into the fearsome dark doorways, listening to the ominous slamming doors of the "clubs," and shuddering in a delightful horror at the recumbent opium smokers, pointed out to them by the industrious guide. And when they were taken into one of the gambling houses ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of whose ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fresh from his Scottish upbringing—"not dry behind the ears yet," John Fox put it—to take to the marriage customs of the country. Nevertheless he was not averse to the Factor's imperilling his own immortal soul, and, especially, feeling an ominous attraction himself for Lit-lit, he was sombrely content to clinch his own soul's safety by seeing ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... in some respects like theirs, have any better success: his fate at the hands of St. Bernard and the Council of Sens the world knows by heart. Far more consonant with the spirit of the universal Church was the teaching in the twelfth century of the great Hugo of St. Victor, conveyed in these ominous words, "Learn first what is to be believed" (Disce primo quod credendum est), meaning thereby that one should first accept doctrines, and then find texts ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... back was nearly turned to the chair where the attorney was sitting, said nothing; but he gave an ominous look round, which showed that he had heard what had passed. But it did not show that he by any ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... on, "because it seems to me that I can hear, at times like this, when one is alone, the sound of what one of your writers called footsteps amongst the hills, footsteps falling upon wool, muffled yet somehow ominous. There is trouble coming. I know it. I ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mirth but to indignation. For these plotters and their schemes are themselves the causes of the mischiefs they affect to deplore and the dangers they pretend to be bent on averting. Whatever is now feverish and ominous in French Politics grows directly out of two great wrongs—the first positive and accomplished—the law of the 31st May, whereby Three Millions of Electors were disfranchised—the other contingent and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... said Max, drawing a long breath as he eyed these ominous proceedings, "that we had a few of Colt's revolvers, to keep these fellows at a respectable distance: I confess I don't like the notion of coming to such close quarters with them as ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... falling trees, the incessant hum of insect life, the long-drawn howl of beasts of prey hovering on the outskirts of the camp, the soft whoo-whoo of an owl whose cry brought vividly to his mind the cool fragrance of the garden at Craven Towers and the nearer more ominous sounds of muffled agony that came from a tent close beside him where yet another victim of science was ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... plunderers. The incident proved the deterioration of the Grand Army from the times of Ulm and Jena. Raw conscripts raised before their time and hurriedly drafted into the line had impaired its steadiness, and men noted as another ominous fact that few unwounded prisoners were taken from the Austrians, and only nine guns and one colour. In fact, the only reputation enhanced was that of Macdonald, who for his great services at the centre enjoyed the unique honour of receiving a Marshal's baton ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... hand in the civilized world we now see childless marriages, the number of which incessantly increases; they are an ominous symptom of excessive luxury and other factors of decadence, if history is to be trusted. But it is not permissible for us, without special knowledge, to condemn individuals, whatever we may think of the phenomenon ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the more recent "Debs Movement"; the thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these, together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing into notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the Labor Movement in the nation a critical one. The best information acquirable, the best mental training obtainable are requisite to steer through the existing ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... a bird on his shoulder, which bird would be let fly among the crowd assembled in the square before the palace. The seeming prince accepted the invitation, and with the disguised ladies was conducted to a gorgeous pavilion, open on all sides, to view the ceremony. The ominous bird being loosened from his chain, soared into the air to a great height, then gradually descending, flew round and round the square repeatedly, even with the faces of the spectators. At length it darted into the pavilion, where the lady and her companions were seated, fluttered around her head, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... There was an orchestra, but what an orchestra! All the actors when not occupied on the stage assisted in it. Gudel at intervals played the trombone. The gallery was crowded; so crowded that, from time to time, there were ominous crackings, but the people in their excitement did ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... advancing slowly, and perfectly "dressed," with its red battle-flags flying, and the sunshine darting from the gun-barrels and bayonets. The two armies were silent, concentrating their whole attention upon this slow and ominous advance of men who seemed in no haste, and resolved to allow nothing to arrest them. When the column had reached a point about midway between the opposing heights the Federal artillery suddenly opened a furious fire upon them, which inflicted considerable loss. This, however, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... to my question struck me as ominous. To the Milan, of course, where Louis was all the time predominant! The girl might be innocent enough of all wrong-doing or knowledge of wrong-doing, but could one think the same of her uncle? I glanced at him instinctively. In sleep, his features were ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the belief that his brother had gone mad. On the contrary, he saw that the latter had conceived a very fine idea; and though it did not yet appear how the thing was to be carried out, Karl fancied that there was something in it. His sweet dream recurred to him, and this he now regarded as ominous of the success of some plan of escape,—perhaps by the very means which Caspar had suggested,—by making candles out ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... about Em. I don't need you to tell me what she is. I can see for myself." Alf rocked a little with an ominous obstinacy. His eyes were fixed upon her with an unwinking stare. It was as though, having delivered a blow with the full weight of party bias, he were desiring her to take a common-sense view ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... began to rise in an ominous and threatening way; and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta, with his impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful boldness. He became the idol of that part of Paris known ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... ominous of evil. Wittenberg was filled with consternation. If Luther obeyed, it was evident he would perish like so many faithful men before him; if he refused, he would be charged with contumacy and involve his prince. One and another expedient were proposed ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Rarely has battle been forced upon an army after a greater number of fruitless attempts to avoid it than those made by the French ecclesiastics, backed by the alternate solicitations and menaces of Pius the Fourth, and Philip of Spain. Such reluctance was ominous. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... force and urgency to these questions. The people began to clamor more boldly for the good time which had been promised by the kind-hearted king. The murmur swelled to an ominous roar. Thousands were at his very palace gates, telling him in no unmistakable terms that they were tired of smooth words and fair promises. What they wanted was a new ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, nervous and delicate as she was, clung fast to the neck of her liege ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... came floating down the stream, and drifting about the harbor, with flights of crows, and other carrion birds, feeding on them, and hovering, and screaming, and fighting about their prey. The forlorn Spaniards contemplated this scene with shuddering; it appeared ominous ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Inverkeithing; and four of the Nigg Presbytery, overawed by the stringency of the precedent, repaired to the parish church to conduct the settlement of the obnoxious licentiate, and introduce him to the parishioners. They found, however, only an empty building; and, notwithstanding the ominous absence of the people, they were proceeding in shame and sorrow with their work, when a venerable man, far advanced in life, suddenly appeared before them, and, solemnly protesting against the utter ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... to the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, forebodings of an impending catastrophe were prevalent at the Court of Vienna, and so imbued was Emperor Francis-Joseph with ominous presentiments, that he repeatedly exclaimed in the hearing of his entourage: "Oh, if only this year ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Pottinger's terms, and of the gathering of some 20,000 armed Belooches about the capital, he called for the co-operation of part of the Bengal column in a movement on Hyderabad. Cotton started on his march down the left bank, on January Jeth, with 5600 men. Under menaces so ominous the unfortunate Ameers succumbed. Cotton returned to Roree; the Bengal column crossed the Indus, and on February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later, Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the crew of the Halfmoon while the vessel lay off Honolulu, and deep and ominous were the grumblings of the men. Only First Officer Ward and the second mate went ashore. Skipper Simms kept the men busy painting and holystoning as a vent ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ominous, and George stiffened. "Very well, I'll be right over. But you can pretty well tell them where I stand on the main issues. Who's ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Venetian sun did, indeed, seem typical of the life beneath it; and Titian may have been justified in bringing thither those who were the recipients of his favors. One only did he not invite,—Philip II.; him he placed, dark and ominous, against a sky barred ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... down in the vested security of their great fortunes when an ominous situation presented itself to shake the entire propertied class into a violent state of uneasiness. Hitherto the main antagonistic movement perturbing the magnates was that of the obstreperous and still powerful middle class. Dazed and enraged at the certain prospect ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Zand River I saw my first fight. That morning, as the troops were drawn up in marching order, the ominous command was given, "Charge magazines," and every man knew that something was about to happen, and a murmur ran along the ranks. After an hour's march we came in sight of the Zand River, with its kopjes ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... Within a week the plague came. On the 7th of June, 1665, Mr. Pepys makes this ominous entry: "This day," he says, "much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord, have mercy,' written there; which was a sad sight to me, ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... old Earth have to come to that? Daily those ominous threats had been repeated, until popular fears had become frenzy. And Nat was being sent out as a last hope. If he failed, there would be nothing but surrender to this man, armed with a super-force that enabled him to lay waste ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... arrange the folds of her best black silk, and to insist on her wearing her prettiest cap—in a state of pleasurable excitement that was infectious, and the whole party set off in fine spirits. Graeme and Rose exchanged doubtful glances as they passed the dining-room windows. There was an ominous display of silver on the sideboard, and the enlargement of the table had ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... these ominous words, and every face darkened as gloomy looks were exchanged. So omnipotent and unchallenged had they been that the very thought that there was possible retribution in the background had been banished from their ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a conviction in the Colonel's deep voice that something extraordinary was afoot, and Uncle Noah, flurried by its ominous ring, hurried from the room. Dimly he had pictured his master's gracious astonishment and pleasure. Any queries relative to the financial source of the Christmas delicacies, however, had been lost entirely in the darky's jubilant excitement. Now ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... Drummond found it monstrously difficult to get along among the working people. He was not used to their ways, and they certainly were not used to his. They were suspicious. He had no antecedents. He could talk of no previous jobs. His hands were soft. His extraordinary politeness was ominous. His first idea of the role he would play was that of a free and independent American who chose to work with his hands and no explanations given. But it wouldn't do, as he quickly discovered. At the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... descriptions of eye witnesses, what a typhoon really means. A Chinaman informed me that the last typhoon destroyed not less than 18,000 persons in this neighbourhood alone—not a large number when we bear in mind the enormous floating populations in Chinese towns. All the day the air was ominous of a coming something. At noon I asked a Chinaman when it might be expected. His answer shewed me how even this mighty destroyer is guided by a far mightier hand—"Suppose he no' com now, he com by'm by, nine clock." ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... sharpened by woodcraft and by constant danger, heard a growing noise coming nearer and nearer. He knew the sound of the footsteps of many people, and among the casual shuffling of feet recognised the ominous tramp of soldiers. ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... from ascending their strange scaling ladder. So they determined to follow, hoping to overtake and dislodge some of them. But Herode, who had found the upper branches bending and cracking in a very ominous manner under his great weight, was forced to turn about and make his way back to the main trunk, where, under cover of darkness, he quietly awaited the climbing foe. Merindol, who commanded this detachment of the garrison, was first, and being completely ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... finished ruling his sheet of paper, and now proceeded to trace the ominous words at the head of the following ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... later Madonna Lucrezia followed her husband, the fact that they journeyed not together, seeming to wear an ominous significance. Her eyes had a swollen look, such as attends much weeping, which afterwards I took as proof that she knew for what purpose she was going, and was moved to bitter grief at the act to which her ambitious ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... entered, he paused, cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes. He stood a full minute without speaking—and you know how long a minute's silence seems on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the point of committing a great folly. This letter would of course accomplish the destruction of my hated creditor, but I doubt exceedingly if I would escape unharmed if I handed this ominous writing to the king. He would never forgive me for having discovered this affair, which he, of course, wishes to conceal from the whole world. The knowledge of such a secret would be most dangerous, and I prefer to have nothing to do with it. How can I manage to let ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... the fear which stirred and perplexed the solitary traveller; for he had heard things that afternoon—seen things that he did not like but could not ignore. He recognized an undercurrent of feeling, a silence more ominous than all the heated talk, and that was where the danger lay. Something would have to be done, and ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... less terrifying than the enemy at large and alone. It was, therefore, with a manner almost serene that she turned to greet the kindly concerned Principal and the dreaded "Gum Shoe Tim." The latter she found less ominous of aspect than she had been led to fear, and the Principal's charming little speech of introduction made her flush with quick pleasure. And the anxious eyes of Sadie Gonorowsky, noting the flush, grew calm as Sadie whispered to Eva, her ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... His attack had been for the moment repulsed. He gathered from Rose's manner that Catherine's action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaning nor accidental, as on second thoughts he had been half-trying to persuade himself. Evidently those about her felt it to be ominous. Well, then, at worst, when they met they would meet on a different footing, with a sense of something critical between them. Oh, if he did but know a little more clearly how he stood! He spent a noonday hour on a gray rock on the side ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... born and brought up under the shadow of this ominous establishment, must have known many a tale of sorrow and woe that owed its origin to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... the steps into the street, and the lean, hard-faced storekeeper turned to Drummond with an ominous frown. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... was flooded with moonlight. On all sides resounded the ominous hum of beetles' wings. Nature had summoned her burying squad. They had their work cut out, and blundered down from every quarter. For death had been very busy, and it was not the death that needs seeking out. About the centre of the field the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... contains an account of a large part of Jenkin's experimental work in the Birkenhead factory during the years 1859 and 1860. This paper is called Part I. Part II. alas never appeared, but something that it would have included we can see from the following ominous statement which I find near the end of Part I.: 'From this value, the electrostatical capacity per unit of length and the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric, could be determined. These points ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hearts and their sense of honour most profoundly at some future time, when it may have ceased to be remediable. If that were all, for us there would be no arrears of mortified sensibilities to apprehend. But what is ominous even in relation to ourselves from these professedly inert associates, these sleeping partners in our Chinese dealings, is, that their presence with no active functions argues a faith lurking somewhere in the possibility of talking the Chinese ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... passed and the sun had set, yet Minawanda had not returned to his lodge, from which the wanderers had not ventured for fear of further exasperating the Indians. This occurrence troubled them, and in truth looked ominous, as it had never occurred before, and with great impatience they watched for his coming. Still, hour after hour passed, and he came not, and with forebodings of evil, they proposed that one of them should reconnoitre the village under the cover of darkness to discover ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... again at the card. A tiny silver bell seemed to tinkle a sort of warning in a recess of his brain. The name was not engraved in copper-plate, but printed in heavy type. Somehow, it looked ominous. His first impression was to bid Minnie send the man away. He distrusted any first impression. It was the excuse of mediocrity, a sign of weakness. Moreover, why shouldn't he meet Isidor ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... ominous hand towards the siphon, and was only deterred from his fell intention by the entry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Washington was ominous. The California sinking, then the Laconia, proved how slender was the thread that held the sword of Damocles over the heads of the American people. Tension increased. "We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst," ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as Thayer bent over to fasten the straps. Then, buttoning his coat closely and pulling his cap down over his eyes, Thayer opened the door for the second time and went striding away across the gray, tempestuous darkness which had shut down again impenetrably between himself and those steady, ominous lights. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... quality, and the arbitrariness with which phenomena are judged to be ominous, will be visible in the numerous "signs" here recorded. At first sight, it may be thought that extreme folly is their salient quality. Yet if we take a wide view the case is reversed; we are surprised, not at the unintelligibility of popular belief, but at its simplicity, ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... with sensibility, we must, alas! submit to our fate. The habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he hesitate? ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... British Army is not worse than others. Professor Finger, at a meeting of the Medical Society in Vienna early in the war, estimated that over 700,000, or some ten per cent of the Austrian troops, had contracted venereal disease. More ominous still is the fact that in almost every place yet investigated the majority of the men were confessedly living in immorality amid the temptations of ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... make such designs as those when we are well and strong," Raphael replied, burying his hands in Pauline's hair. But even then a horrible fit of coughing came on, one of those deep ominous coughs that seem to come from the depths of the tomb, a cough that leaves the sufferer ghastly pale, trembling, and perspiring; with aching sides and quivering nerves, with a feeling of weariness pervading the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to show me. And so, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same lawless tune. Like a black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air, a hawk hung ominous; then, plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow, whence there rose, thin and shrill, a ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... dust,— He the more fortunate! Yea, he hath finished! For him there is no longer any future. His life is bright—bright without spot it was And cannot cease to be. No ominous hour Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap. Far off is he, above desire and fear; No more submitted to the change and chance Of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... are no funerals in the country. That is a word, funeral, of too forbidding, ominous, a sound to be under the broad and open sky. There where the neighbours gather, all those who knew and loved the departed from a boy, the "last sad rites are read," and the "mortuary services are performed." Then from the fruitful ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... desk a tallow candle, smoking and spluttering, throws a weird light, and more weird shadows, on the faces of clerks and President, on blank walls and ominous devices. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ominous rumours concerning the house even in the days when it belonged to the previous tenant Matov, a kinsman of the Rameyev sisters. It was said that the house was inhabited by ghosts, and by phantoms who had left their graves. There was a footpath close to the house ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... little ominous cloud in the serene sky of Mrs. Jenkins's happiness. She had nothing suitable for the occasion of the organ recital in the way of ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... a train of gunpowder. His determination to beat down his temper, no matter what came, was gone; his memory of her ordeals was wiped out; from his whole tense being there flashed out upon her a hot, heady anger, like stabbing lightning from an ominous cloud. His few words seared and scorched a place in ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... stand here and see how it works." Then Zoega pushed it all over, and it went slapping and dashing down into the steaming shaft. For a little while it whirled about, and surged, and boiled, and tumbled over and over in the depths of the churn with a hollow, swashing noise terribly ominous of what was to come. I peeped over the edge to try if I could detect the first symptoms of the approaching eruption. Zoega walked quietly away about twenty steps, saying he preferred not to be too close. There was ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... encounter with the enemy, and he hastily climbed to a high point to get some idea of their numbers. Far over the plain his eye could reach, and he was bewildered and dismayed by the sight before him. Greater far than he had reckoned were the Paynim hosts, and many times more ominous was their battle-array. One long look at their serried, glittering masses, and he ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Halleck, as he phrased it to himself. He knew that Halleck had plenty of money; he could make the stock itself over to him as security; he did not see why Halleck should hesitate. But when he entered Halleck's room, having asked Cyrus to show him directly there, Halleck gave a start which seemed ominous to Bartley. He had scarcely the heart to open his business, and Halleck listened with changing color, and something only too like the embarrassment of a man who intends a refusal. He would not look Bartley in the face, and when ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... seized the Acropolis. Then the rest of the Athenians joined together by common consent and besieged them for two days; and on the third day so many of them as were Lacedemonians departed out of the country under a truce. Thus was accomplished for Cleomenes the ominous saying which was uttered to him: for when he had ascended the Acropolis with the design of taking possession of it, he was going to the sanctuary of the goddess, as to address her in prayer; but the priestess stood up from her seat before he had passed through the door, and said, "Lacedemonian stranger, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... enough may be gleaned to give readers a fair idea of it. The elevation of Simbamwenni cannot be much over 1,000 feet above the level, the rise of the land having been gradual. It being the rainy season, about which so many ominous statements were doled out to us by those ignorant of the character of the country, we naturally saw it under its worst aspect; but, even in this adverse phase of it, with all its depth of black mud, its excessive dew, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... difficult. Even the words which she had carefully looked up in the dictionary and learned by heart escaped her fickle memory. She stumbled and floundered hopelessly, getting redder and redder with shame. Miss Huntley preserved an ominous silence, and did not attempt to help ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... sun, and fading to nothingness as the weird voyager recedes into the spatial void whence it came. Not many times need the advent of such an apparition coincide with the outbreak of a pestilence or the death of a Caesar to stamp the race of comets as an ominous clan in the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the storm began. The clouds lay low like a dark grey hood over the fir-trees and moorland shaggy tops of the downs all round. There was not a break anywhere in the consistent grey, and the air, always so brisk, had fallen still with that ominous lull that comes over everything before a convulsion of nature. Some birds were still hurrying home into the depths of the copses with a frightened straightness of flight, as if they were afraid they would not get back in time, and all the insects that are so gay with their ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Little attention was paid to those who were ill, and no sympathy was expressed. A young Sister who had been sent out on a begging expedition for the order, and had to trudge through the wet day after day, caught cold, and was obliged to return. She grew pale and thin, and the ominous red spot appeared on her cheek. She coughed incessantly, but still went through her duties. At night she suffered most; and to prevent the sound from disturbing others, she was ordered to move to a distant cell, without a ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... of heaven, it may perchance be a prophet in conceit;[125] for if night shall settle on his eyes as he is dying, verily this vaunting device would correctly and justly answer to its name, and he himself will have the insolence ominous against himself. But against Tydeus will I marshal this wary son of Astacus, as defender of the portals, full nobly born, and one that reverences the throne of Modesty, and detests too haughty language, for he is wont to be slow at base acts, but no dastard. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... enjoying himself by keeping his game just open enough to be apparent to every other man in the room—just covert enough to deceive the drink-misted brain of Cochrane. And the pale, swinish eyes twinkled as they stared across at the dull sorrow of the old man. There was an ominous sound ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... long aisles, raising strange and ominous echoes, and making the vast folds of sable drapery wave slowly backward and forward, as if agitated by unseen hands. A few spectators, standing in the background, appeared like grim figures on a black tapestry; and the gleam of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... permitted himself to be helped to the ground. No sooner, however, had his feet touched the earth than there came that ominous rattling sound. ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... port on the weather side; for I somehow seemed to realise instinctively that the Daphne's brief career was ended—that she would never again recover herself, but would "turn the turtle" altogether. The ominous words of the riggers on that day when, in the first flush of my new-born dignity, I went down to inspect the craft which was to be my future home, recurred to my mind as vividly as though they had that moment been spoken, and I felt that the prophecy lurking behind them was then in the very ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... happened that six weeks went by, and she heard nothing from Chupin. A month and a half! What had become of him? To Mme. Blanche this silence was as ominous as the ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... for open war, O Peers! As not behind in hate, if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war, Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair, And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... him with the ominous restraint of a tiger crouching for its spring. Psmith stood beside the table with languid grace, suggestive of some favoured confidential ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... and was held in favourable esteem. Only a day or two ago, when the brother had remonstrated in a low voice against some recent cruelty, the husband's wrath had blazed out. Witnesses to that wordy encounter had seen Thornton go white with a rage that was ominous and then bite off his unspoken retort and turn away. Those witnesses had not heard what was first said and had learned only what was revealed in the indignant husband's raised voice ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... even of the Honourable George; some one to assure me that my horrid dream of the night before had been a baseless fabric, as the saying is. The very absence of these people and of his lordship was in itself ominous. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... there was an ominous inflection in the word as if the question were portentous, "have you asked our new niece by what name she desires us ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Duchess fainted when her daughter was brought back with ominous red stains upon the gray background of her traveling dress. But the wound was neither deep nor dangerous. The court surgeon was as consoling as he was complimentary, and by the time that messengers from the palace ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... confused account arrived before the occasion of these rejoicings was generally known. Suddenly the bells began to ring; bonfires were kindled; and in an instant all was a scene of public rejoicing. But ominous indeed were these rejoicings; for the greater part was occasioned by a false rumour that the duke was to be sent to the Tower. No one inquired about a news which every one wished to hear; and so sudden was the joy, that a MS. letter says, "the old ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... caused him to assume. Full and deep upon the still night air rang out the tolling of the mysterious bell. To the anxious watcher, its tones no longer rang full and sweet as upon the previous evening, but sounded slow and threatening, as if freighted with an ominous meaning. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... like his Father, but his Mother more, Whom therfore she brought up and Comus named, Who ripe, and frolick of his full grown age, Roving the Celtic, and Iberian fields, 60 At last betakes him to this ominous Wood, And in thick shelter of black shades imbowr'd, Excells his Mother at her mighty Art, Offring to every weary Travailer, His orient liquor in a Crystal Glasse, To quench the drouth of Phoebus, which as they taste (For most do taste through fond intemperate ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... excellent drive, but unfortunately it didn't aviate quick enough. While the intrepid spectators were still holding their breath, there was an ominous crash. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... ominous, pathetic. In the dusk of the dreary Sunday afternoon, when the city had apparently retired to Sabbath meditation and prayer, with that tinge of the dying year in the foliage and in the air, one caught a sense of something grim ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... and the stillness which ensued seemed ominous. Some one was elbowing his way forward, and as he passed through the crowd the uproar began again. Every one was on his feet, and although the prisoner stood and gazed toward the source of commotion he could not see the man who spoke. He looked across to ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the sky. Presently we saw flames. Mr. Peabody was uneasy, and I walked out with him to see. Between the house here and the town lies the Common or City Park. As we crossed this, the signs became more ominous. We made our way into the principal street through the crowd, and then, looking down a cross street full of enormous warehouses, saw both sides of it in flames. The streets were full of steam fire-engines, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and wedged himself into the corner of the raft opposite to that other figure, ominous relic of the wild voyage the new-comer had entered upon; he put both arms over the ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... therefore, they, the guests on the island of Yaque, were in a perfectly impregnable position—counting out Fifth Dimension contingencies, which of course might include appearings as well as disappearings—and why shouldn't they stay there, and let the ominous noon of the following day slip by unmarked? And when the lawyer said, "But, my dear fellow," as he was bound to say, St. George answered that down there in Med there would be, by noon of the following day, two determined ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... caused him to jump ever so slightly and to cast a glance of inquiry at Annie, who altered her original course and moved toward the sitting-room door. In the kitchen a perfectly innocent skillet crashed into the sink with a vigour that was more than ominous. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... he held each one sternly to her duty. Belle was smiling and working in the midst of a gathering storm, and she was becoming conscious of it. So far from cowering, her indignation was fast rising, and there was an ominous glow kindling in her dark eyes. Their seemingly unwarranted hostility and jealousy were beginning to incense her. She believed she had as much right there as they had, and she resolved to maintain her right. Catching an ireful ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... me back into the room which we had just left. As he partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great straining and creaking—whereupon the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer |
