"Portentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... murmured Susanna, as with awe. "Portentous being." Then, changing her note to one of gaiety, "Ecco," she cried, "Signor Cinciallegra has completed his ablutions—and ecco, he flies away. Won't you—won't you sit down?" she asked, as her eyes came back from the departing bird; and a motion ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... concentric rings, Each narrowing above each;—the wings— The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips, The starry zone of sovereign height, All steeped in this portentous light! ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... salesman and his baubles from the sea." If quite agreeable to her he would make an appointment with the jeweller for 3.30 and would call for her in person. After that, he continued, the signing of a contract for life would not seem such a portentous undertaking, and they could go to the meeting with hearts as light as air. It was a cheerful, even gay little missive, but she was not for an instant blind to the irony that ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... created by human science and skill, directed by a single mind, and served with ascetic self-abnegation and religious ardour by over a hundred million people. The courage and faith of the Allies in gazing for years upon this portentous engine of destruction without making suitable provision for the day when it would be turned against themselves, will ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... emotion; and if there was a chamber of degustation on the premises, I failed to discover it. It was not in the search for it, indeed, that I spent half an hour in this bewildering bazaar. Like all "expositions," it seemed to me to be full of ugly things, and gave one a portentous idea of the quantity of rubbish that man carries with him on his course through the ages. Such an amount of luggage for a journey after all so short! There were no individual objects; there was nothing but dozens and hundreds, all machine-made and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... lived, Replied Rusilla, never penitence Had equalled his! full well I knew his heart, Vehement in all things. He would on himself Have wreaked such penance as had reached the height Of fleshy suffering,—yea, which being told, With its portentous rigour should have made The memory of his fault o'erpowered and lost, In shuddering pity and astonishment, Fade like a feeble horror." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... His knees smote together; he clenched his teeth in a vain effort to prevent their chattering. All his devilry, his assurance, his fortitude, his strength, seemed to leave him. He stood before them suddenly an old, a broken man, facing a doom portentous and terrible, without a spark of strength or resolution left to meet it, whatever it might be. And for the first time in his life he played the craven, the coward. He moistened his dry lips and looked ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... any indignant retort concerning the truth. For the curtain was held back, the door opened, and Captain Murray led the way in, slowly followed by his prisoner, who advanced firmly enough toward where the Prince sat, his Royal Highness turning his eyes upon him at once with a most portentous frown. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... fell asleep, the lads trooped up to bed, the house grew still, and nothing but the chirp of the crickets broke the soft silence of the summer night. Mrs. Bhaer sat sewing, for the big basket was always piled with socks, full of portentous holes, and thinking of the lost boy. She had decided that baby had been mistaken, and did not even disturb Mr. Bhaer by telling him of the child's fancy, for the poor man got little time to himself till the boys were abed, and he was busy writing letters. It was past ten when she rose to shut ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... cannot say that the change is not natural: we see in it, on the contrary, the fulfillment of an inevitable law of change, which is no doubt a law of growth, and not of decay. And yet we look upon the portentous thing with a great distaste, and doubt with what altered passions we shall come out of it. The huge, rushing, aggregate life of a great city—the crushing crowds in the streets, where friends seldom meet and there are few greetings; the thunderous noise of trade ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... In short, he had fallen in love with Ida de la Molle when he first saw her five years ago, and was now in the process of discovering the fact. There he sat in his chair in the old half-furnished room, which he proposed to turn into his dining-room, and groaned in spirit over this portentous discovery. What had become of his fair prospect of quiet years sloping gently downwards, and warm with the sweet drowsy light of afternoon? How was it that he had not known those things that belonged to his peace? And probably it would ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... time, and that first the last too, among the spacious halls and corridors of the old school building, as young ladies. Free to receive the smiles and addresses of the long-forbidden cadets without fear of madam's portentous frown. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Chorus an Alarming and Portentous Incident. Then Hyllus, the Son of Hercules, comes and announces ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... mighty Revolution in which the lineaments of both parents were strangely blended. The long gestation was accomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hope and terror, that agonising travail and that portentous birth. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It may have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost fancied ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... talking concerning him; and she always referred to him in some light which she chose to regard as ridiculous, but which had not seemed in the least absurd to the attentive listener. When her husband, therefore, said that Mr. Minturn had appeared on the scene, she felt that an era of portentous events had begun. The trees to be set out would change the old place greatly, but a primeval forest shading the door would be as nothing compared with the vicissitude which a favored "beau" might ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... purpose, and sends the seven sages to make the formal request for Parvati's hand. The seven sages fly to the brilliant city of Himalaya, where they are received by the mountain god. After a rather portentous interchange of compliments, the seven sages announce their errand, requesting Parvati's hand in behalf of Shiva. The father joyfully assents, and it is agreed that the marriage shall be celebrated after three days. These three days are spent by ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... German, Professor Elberfeld, has told the world, in sentences of portentous length and complication, that "the petty trader's instincts which form the most typical characteristic of the British race" came notably to the fore in our treatment of the German prisoners of war who were held under ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... terrified by encroaching Cynodon dactylon (TIME Aug. 10) now smothering their city (see National Affairs) were further distracted when turning on their radios (those still working) last week. The nasal, portentous boom of the evangelist calling himself Brother Paul (real name: Algernon Knight Mood) announced the 2nd Advent. It was taking place in the heart of the choking grass. What brought death and disaster to the country's 3rd city offered hope and bliss to followers of Brother Paul. 'Sell all you have,' ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Ward, who now pass their happiest moments mooning over tilted headstones in the cemetery on the Hill, those first nineteen years seem the longest and the best. And that fateful year of '73 to them seems the most portentous. For then, perhaps for the first time, they realized the cruel uncertainty of the struggle for existence. With the terrible drouth of '60 this realization did not come; for the town was young, and the people were young; only Ezra Lane was a graybeard in all the town in the sixties; ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... "how goes it?" but the Sergeant looked askance; Not for him the mazy phalanx or the military dance; He could only sit and suffer, with a most portentous frown, While a crowd of little gipsies turned the whole thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... on the ground under a green scarf. And so the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the perfect arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the colliers. Of all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical and portentous. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... as a spur to active industry. It must be confessed that Japan's debt is but a trifle less than that of the United States, and is carried at double the interest rates of the American debt; and further, that Japan's total area is smaller than that of our state of California. The portentous aspect of the national obligation of Japan is that it must absorb in interest charges fully a third of the empire's income for many years of peace and prosperity ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... instead of taking the rail for Liverpool, I set out, about eleven, for a long walk. It was an overcast morning, such as in New England would have boded rain; but English clouds are not nearly so portentous as American in that respect. Accordingly, the sun soon began to peep through crevices, and I had not gone more than a mile or two when it shone a little too warmly for comfort, yet not more than I liked. It was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the great little man could hardly eat for recurrent wrathful memories of the interview of the morning. Perhaps his most painful reflection was that he had not been quick enough to embrace the opportunity of annihilating his enemy. Thunder lowered portentous in his black brows, and not until he had drunk several glasses of wine did a word come from his lips. His presence was purgatory without the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... War of Independence." Since that time its advocates have been steadily supported by the country, and among them the subject of this sketch, who always referred with peculiar pride to that portion of his career—"the dark and portentous ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... box Harriet's ears and send her off to school without a moment's hesitation; while as for Shelley, he should have been told how ludicrous was the whole affair. But he was only nineteen, and she was only sixteen, and the crisis seemed portentous. Nothing could be more flattering to a young man's vanity than to have this girl cast herself upon him for protection. It did not really matter that he had not loved her hitherto, and that he was already half engaged to another Harriet—his cousin, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... treason of Hull has, indeed, excited a deep anxiety in all breasts. The depression was in the first moment gloomy and portentous. But it has been succeeded by a revived animation, and a determination to meet the occurrence with increased efforts; and I have so much confidence in the vigorous minds and bodies of our countrymen, as to be fearless ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thou surest guide! On earth again with frenzied men reside; Tear the dark film of vanity and lies, And inward turn their renovated eyes; In aspect true let each himself behold, By self deform'd in pride's portentous mould. And if thy voice, on Bethl'em's holy plain Once heard, can reach their flinty hearts again, Teach them, as fearful of a serpent's gaze, Teach them to shun the gloating eye of praise; That slightest swervings from their nature's plan Make them a lie, and poison all the man, 'Till black ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... with these same Grandlieus of the elder branch. More than once he took particular interest in the family's affairs. He employed Corentin to clear up the dark side of the life of Clotilde's fiance. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] Some time before this M. de Chaulieu made one of the portentous conclave assembled to extricate Mme. de Langeais, a relative of the Grandlieus, from ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... in a portentous stage aside which we were not supposed to hear. They caused Scroope to snigger and Charles to grin, but in me they raised a feeling ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Emily Owen tried to look grave, but looked at Joe and soon followed her lead. Aunt Martha happened to have her handkerchief in her hand, and stuffed it into her mouth so tightly that she came near suffocating. Judge Owen still stood in the doorway, his face judicially severe and portentous, as if he felt that some awful desecration had been committed, for which the full severity of the criminal law could scarcely be ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... frosty air in January; where the freshest toilettes, the daintiest bonnets—those "ducks of bonnets" invented fifty years ago by Mrs. T—d—ensnared admirers; where marten or "silver fox" muffs of portentous size—all the rage then—kept warm and coursing the stream of life in tiny, taper hands, cold, alas! now in Death's pitiless grasp; where the old millionaire, George Pozer, chinked his English guineas ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... portentous gravity, "justice first, mercy later. Do you solemnly swear you heard Phormio call ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so,' Utter'd by friends, those prophets of the past, Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do, Own they foresaw that you would fall at last, And solace your slight lapse 'gainst 'bonos mores,' With a long memorandum of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth century. But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school of Physical Science, whose ears might have long ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... had been bewildering—had ranged freely between the prescription that she was to answer when spoken to and the experience of lively penalties on obeying that prescription. This time, nevertheless, she felt emboldened for risks; above all as something portentous seemed to have leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at Miss Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who treated her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me—do you mean HE'S about ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... to drive into Boston for him with the handsomest hack which the livery of Cambridge afforded, and not trust to the horse-car and the local expressman to get him and his baggage out, as he would have done with a less portentous guest. However it was, he instantly lost all fear when they met at the station, and Harte pressed forward with his cordial hand-clasp, as if he were not even a fairy prince, and with that voice and laugh which were surely the most winning in the world. He was then, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... better not dispute that matter with a man who knows better," said the other in a portentous voice, though it seemed deep and sluggish ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... willows in the hollow beneath him, and upon the slope a few little stunted trees, which he fancied resembled the juniper he had seen among the ranges of British Columbia, but he could see no sign of any kind of life. What was more portentous, the mossy sod he stood upon was frozen, and there were smears of snow among the straggling firs upon a rather higher ridge. Inland, the little breeze seemed to have fallen dead away, and there was an oppressive silence which the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... our morning star's pure light Will never blot it from the nation's sight; That He will banish those portentous clouds Which from so many its effulgence shrouds— Which none will deem me Hamlet-mad when I Say hang like banners on the darkened sky, Suggesting perils in their warlike shape, Which Heavenly Father grant ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... did call upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night. Now as he had divined on Friday, according to our almanac, this meant that ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... study, and beheld the small, lean child dressed in all his best; not one of the gray linen frocks that Lucilla was constantly making for him, but in a radiant tartan, of such huge pattern that his little tunic barely contained a sample of one of each portentous check, made up crosswise, so as to give a most comical, harlequin effect to his spare limbs and weird, black eyes. The disappointment that Phoebe had to inflict was severe, and unwittingly she was the messenger whom Mrs. Murrell was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... finger on hushed lips; when deliberately, without haste the great white flakes zigzagged down from the soft gray above, obscuring and softening the landscape, rendering dear and mysterious the commonest things. Then sounds came, subdued as in a sanctuary, and people approaching showed portentous as through a mist, and the boys, looking upward, caught big wet flakes on their lashes as they tried in vain to determine the point at which the snowflakes became visible. There existed no such point. The snowflakes did not approach as other things approach, beginning small with distance, and ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... account of the dinner, and my speech, but you must not think that the dinner represented Cape Town society generally. Cape Town society, up to the reception at Government House, has regarded me as some portentous object come here to set the country on fire, and to be regarded with tremors by all respectable people. Outside Cape Town, on the contrary, in every town in the country, Dutch or English, I should be carried through the streets ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... tones of the terrors of the last judgment. In the "Tuba mirum" the spirit of the music changes from the church form to the secular. It is written for solo voices, ending in a quartet. The bass begins with the "Tuba mirum," set to a portentous trombone accompaniment; then follow the tenor ("Mors stupebit"), the alto ("Judex ergo"), and the soprano ("Quid sum miser"). This number is particularly remarkable for the manner in which the music is shaded down ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... all turned toward the same object but with expressions subtly various, I spent my days, studying them all, and finding (here has been nature's consolation to me) relief from my own thoughts in an investigation of the mind of others. The portentous pretence on which we were engaged needed perhaps a god to laugh at it, but the smaller points were within the sphere of human ridicule; with them there was no danger of amusement suffering a sudden death, and a swift resurrection in the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... her finger at him and tried to frown with portentous severity. But the dancing eyes and mutinous dimple ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... and portentous question—in some one of its many phases—was that of human slavery. This institution—until its final extinction amid the flames of war—cast its ominous shadow over our nation's pathway from the beginning. From the establishment of the Government under the Federal Constitution ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... been said about the weakness of such a party in point of numbers; but a party acting invariably in unison on this point would ultimately carry it, and with it, all others of vital importance." Referring to the apologies which had been made for these portentous changes, Mr. Sadler said that the country had been beguiled by them. He continued:—"I was one of those who thought the conduct of the noble and right honourable individuals who resigned in 1827 a sacrifice to principle and consistency: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at a most interesting period. The situations of the principal powers of Europe are singular and portentous. Connected with some by treaties and with all by commerce, no important event there can be indifferent to us. Such circumstances call with peculiar importunity not less for a disposition to unite in all those measures on which the honor, safety, and prosperity of our country depend than for all ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Adams • John Adams
... were excited to new and terrible energy by the combination of stimulants which, in any other society, would have counteracted each other. The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism, irreconcilable antagonists every where else, were for once mingled in an unnatural and portentous union. Their joint influence produced the third and last rising up of the aboriginal population against the colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers of Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons of the soldiers of Wolseley ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... oppressive, though the average heat of the day does not exceed 13, 9 deg. R. During the summer season the horizon is frequently obscured by heavy dark clouds, which seldom break over the valleys, but continue frowning over the hills. The natives call these portentous clouds Misti Manchari (terror of the whites),[76] because the inhabitants of the coast always regard them as indicative of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... to shrinking Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between him and the outstretched finger of Jehovah calling ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the dignified high-church rector, and the dignified high-church clerk, and watch the movement of their lips, from which, as they read their respective portions of the venerable liturgy, would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Dame Ysobel, that you allow this lad to make sport of serious things?" he asked austerely. "He is woefully light minded for so portentous an expedition." ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... be dispatched. The number of messages has increased by steady steps, until now, under the new tariff and with the facilities that have been so widely extended since the telegraphs came into the hands of the government, the number is truly portentous. Those sent during the past year amounted to close upon a million a week—fifty-one and one-half millions in all. Letters have grown from 80,000,000 in the year of the Queen's accession to more than 1,400,000,000. According to Mr. Pender, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... steep summit nodded to its base, The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. The Tolbooth felt—for marble sometimes can, On such occasions, feel as much as man— The Tolbooth felt defrauded of his charms, If JEFFREY died, except within her arms: [64] Nay last, not least, on that portentous morn, 480 The sixteenth story, where himself was born, His patrimonial garret, fell to ground, And pale Edina shuddered at the sound: Strewed were the streets around with milk-white reams, Flowed all the Canongate with inky streams; This of his candour seemed the sable dew, That of his valour ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... vaguely round in vast returning circles. The thoughts catch hold of nothing, but are heaved and tossed like masses of cloud by the wind. An incident of trivial import is turned and turned to catch the light of every possible consequence, and so magnified as to become portentous and terrible.' ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... in, at bedtime, to kiss their father and say good-night, there was something portentous in the stillness there; in the look of the sick man, raised high against the pillows, and turning his eyes wistfully toward them, with no slightest movement of the head; in the waiting aspect of all things,—the ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... her mouth to welcome the butler—for if that solemn and portentous individual ever unbent it was to Miss Ethel, whom in his heart of hearts he adored—but he placed a warning finger to his lip and ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... A mother succeeded in keeping by her side a male child, and thus, by a strange coincidence, that father and son, who, amongst all mammals, had been the most deadly enemies, were now the first to join hands. So portentous an alliance might well bring the world to their feet. The family would now present for the first time, the until then unknown spectacle of the inclusion within a domestic circle, and amidst its component females, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... looking at the opulence she could not reach. Her impetuous, rebellious little heart was thumping bitterly as she considered this single phase of the life to come. She was ready to cry out against the injustice of it all. The little frown was portentous of deep-laid designs. She would break down this cruel barrier that kept Baldos from the fields over which prejudice alone held sway. Her love for him and her determination to be his wife were not in the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... lady who commands respect. Her face is a portentous mask of solemnity, and her figure is spacious beyond the average of Dutch ladies, so that certain chairs are tacitly conceded her as a monopoly. The good Vrouw does not read or write, and having never found a need in herself ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... growing dark. Clouds were gathering in the sky. From their edges the last hues of the sunset faded, the moon was hid, and a portentous gloom fell upon the waves. The cannon were still thundering at intervals. The shells flew screaming through the air, and fell bursting on the fort or in the woods. It was now so dark that the flash of the guns had become lurid and sharp, and the meteoric course ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... was lost. But who in my place could have bettered it—save by not being such a portentous fool to begin with? But when that is in ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... a room prepared and empty—to go through a business of such portentous seriousness!— 'Tis truly amazing from a man who seemed to delight so much in religious regulations and observances. Dr. Fisher himself was dissatisfied, and wondered at his compliance, though he attributed the plan to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the embassy felt the new importance of their positions. So then, imagine the indignation of the majordomo, when, summoned at dusk one evening to the carriage gates, three or four days after the portentous news had issued from the palace, he found only a ragged and grimy carter who demanded peremptorily to be admitted and taken to ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... shirt, she had concluded that he had been talking religion. She hoped that he would not preach at his meals. The only religion that Ollie knew anything of, and not much of that, was a glum and melancholy kind, with frenzied shoutings of the preacher in it, and portentous shaking of the beard in the shudderful pictures of the anguish of unrepentant death. So she hoped that he would not preach at his meals, for the house was sad enough, and terrible and gloomily hopeless enough, without the kind of religion that made the night deeper ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... stupendous that the earth itself was absolutely insignificant in comparison therewith. If, then, this stupendous sphere rotated once in twenty-four hours, the speed with which the movement of some of the stars must be executed would be so portentous as to seem well-nigh impossible. It would, therefore, seem much simpler on this ground to adopt the other alternative, and to suppose the diurnal movements were due to the rotation of the earth. Here Ptolemy saw, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... interest in business matters." Hildegarde wondered what was coming; her mother looked very grave; she held in her hand a square grey envelope. "I shall be greatly obliged, therefore, my dear," her mother continued, with the same portentous gravity, "if—you would—read that"; and she gave the ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... petrified at the aspect of his Sovereign's murderer. The feelings of a father repressed his maledictions, while he gazed on him with stern silence as he would on a portentous meteor. Dr. Beaumont sooner recollected himself. Bowing to Cromwell as to one of those powers that are ordained by God, he answered that forgiveness and obedience were duties; but that the feelings of friendship were ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... These {655} gentlemen acquitted themselves with unsurpassed zeal. Not content with trying and punishing people brought before them, they put forth The Witches' Hammer, [Sidenote: Malleus Maleficarum, 1487] called by Lea the most portentous monument of superstition ever produced. In the next two centuries it was printed twenty-nine times. The University of Cologne at once decided that to doubt the reality of witchcraft was a crime. The Spanish Inquisition, on the other hand, having all ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... house; noises were heard in various places, sounds of footsteps pacing, and of a long robe sweeping about the passages; and Lady Mary's costumes, and the head-dress which was so peculiar, which all her friends had recognized in Connie's description, grew into something portentous under the heavier hand of the foot-boy and the kitchen-maid. Mrs. Prentiss, who had remained, as a special favor to the new people, was deeply indignant and outraged by this treatment of her mistress. She appealed to Mary with mingled ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in ancient times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn't built, and Waterloo-bridge had never been thought of; and then they would shake their heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of the rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered where all this would end; whereat the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth, and say, how that he hoped it might end well, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Congress excluded the populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the steeple of the State House was a bell, imported twenty-three years previously from London by the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It bore the portentous text from Scripture: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the knell ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Caesar, or Marcellus, or Darius. The map of the United States was just about to bloom forth with towns named Ithaca and Syracuse, Corinth and Sparta; and on the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of Licking Creek, a city had lately been founded, the name of which was truly portentous. "Losantiville" was this wonderful compound, in which the initial L stood for "Licking," while os signified "mouth," anti "opposite," and ville "town;" and the whole read backwards as "Town-opposite-mouth-of-Licking." In 1790 General St. Clair, then ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No Dean—and perhaps no don—who has been in that portentous position as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice. It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... sensual sot, Unnamed, unnoticed, let his carrion rot. When paltry rogues, by stealth, deceit, or force, Hazard their necks, ambitious of your purse: For such the hangman wreaths his trusty gin, And let the gallows expiate their sin. 140 But when a ruffian, whose portentous crimes, Like plagues and earthquakes terrify the times, Triumphs through life, from legal judgment free, For Hell may hatch what law could ne'er foresee: Sacred from vengeance shall his memory rest?— Judas, though dead, though damn'd, we ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... from the southern mails, and he has officially advised Congress to do by law, although in violation of the Constitution, what he had himself virtually done already in despite of both. The invitation has indeed been rejected, but by the Senate of the United States only, after a portentous struggle—a struggle which distinctly exhibited the political conditions of the compact, as well as the fidelity with which those conditions are observed by a northern candidate for the Presidency. While in compliance with these conditions, a powerful minority in the Senate were ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fingers—suddenly felt, with the leaning of her body, her heart beating against his. With that wave of passion there was an instant and portentous change in their attitudes. The soft protectiveness which had sometimes seemed to shine out of her face, to envelop him in its warmth, had disappeared. She was no longer the stronger. She looked at him ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this gradual discovery of sex as a thing collectively portentous that I have to mingle with my statecraft if my picture is to be true which has turned me at length from a treatise to the telling of my own story. In my life I have paralleled very closely the slow realisations that are going on in the world about me. I began life ignoring women, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... is not like America where one loses a fortune to-day and makes one to-morrow. In France when you make a fortune you keep it. The Russia which confiscated foreign holdings and ceased to pay dividends is a thief of portentous guilt to France. France, therefore, steadfastly opposes that Russia, and she has as steadfastly supported the other Russia which says she will recognize these old debts and pay them back plus dividends. France disapproved of the original revolution, but is said ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... portentous shadow cast by the slim daughter of William W. Blithers, for the simple reason that neither Graustark nor Dawsbergen knew that it existed. They lived in serene ignorance of the fact that God, while he was about it, put Maud Applegate Blithers into the world on precisely ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in a higher sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with special honours; at least, the saucy little beauty carried her head with a toss of supreme authority, and assumed a touch-me-not ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and woebegone that the older boys, who knew him well, trembled in their shoes. The room was very silent. With Mr. Simkins the storm was always in proportion to the calm, and the present calm was indeed portentous. The instructor fought for a moment with his emotions. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the whole house, so loudly and clearly did she strike it, rang in his ears till it stung like a castigation. It was ominous, portentous of justice and of disaster. There was more than doubt of him in ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... then, when this history properly commences, Legs, and his fellow Hugh Tarpaulin, sat, each with both elbows resting upon the large oaken table in the middle of the floor, and with a hand upon either cheek. They were eyeing, from behind a huge flagon of unpaid-for "humming-stuff," the portentous words, "No Chalk," which to their indignation and astonishment were scored over the doorway by means of that very mineral whose presence they purported to deny. Not that the gift of decyphering written characters—a gift among the commonalty ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... spoke his accents were blotted out by a repetition of that portentous noise which had saluted him in the lobby of the Monastery, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... moving forward as one mass, or is broken up and scattered. Such separations might be well enough if the different little companies were all going quietly on in one way; though even then their breaking up would argue on the one hand a portentous failure in that recognition of the shepherd's voice and the obedience to him which is due to his loving care, and on the other hand a strange lack of that gregariousness which is an instinct in the healthy sheep. But what if the sheep are seen running hither and thither in different directions: ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... in successive generations. Each period of tranquillity, however, was believed to have been, sooner or later, put an end to by a sudden and awful convulsion of nature, ushering in a brief and paroxysmal period, in which the great physical forces were unchained and permitted to spring into a portentous activity. The forces of subterranean fire, with their concomitant phenomena of earthquake and volcano, were chiefly relied upon as the efficient causes of these periods of spasm and revolution. Enormous elevations of portions of the earth's crust were thus believed to be produced, accompanied by ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them. The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce. He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers, abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country drained ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... word or two of small-talk that had followed it, but Alice doubted if he'd really seen her at all. And when a man didn't see Alice—this was a line of reasoning she was quite candidly capable of—it meant an intensity of preoccupation that one might call monstrous—portentous, anyway. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... I was already enrolled in that large category of what are called young men of genius,—men who are the pride of their sisters and the glory of their grandmothers,—men of whom unheard-of things are expected, till after long preparation comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten; subsiding into indifferent apprentices ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... circumstances, was soon taken: it was, that, if these repeated delays were persisted in, they would leave the court, protesting against the injustice which had been manifested to them and to their cause.[1142] Yet their anxiety was great. That dark cloud of portentous aspect could be descried by all sharp-sighted observers. It was the approaching storm of civil war, every moment rising higher above the horizon.[1143] Even now its advent was heralded by the anarchy pervading entire provinces—a righteous retribution for the sanguinary ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... heaving itself above the low roof of Lyng. Doubtless it was the mere fact of the other incident's having occurred on the very day of their ascent to Meldon that had kept it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from which it now emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous. At the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen. It was the period when they were always on the watch for one or the other of the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase, "I told you so," Uttered by friends, those prophets of the past, Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do, Own they foresaw that you would fall at last,[my] And solace your ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... star in Infinitude, but for us a colossal and portentous luminary. Hail, divine Benefactor! How should we not adore, when we owe him the glow of the warm and cheery days of summer, the gentle caresses by which his rays touch the undulating ears, and gild them with the touch? The Sun ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... present in the school a larger or smaller group of girls who consciously accepted this heritage and persistently endeavored to fulfill its obligation. We worked in those early years as if we really believed the portentous statement from Aristotle which we found quoted in Boswell's Johnson and with which we illuminated the wall of the room occupied by our Chess Club; it remained there for months, solely out of reverence, let us hope, for the two ponderous names ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... deep and wide, and it was lined throughout with beaten gold. In a straight path the light was reflected from every point—every point but one for at the far end, where the curved sides joined, was a circle of darkness. It stared like an eye, evil, portentous. Jerry nerved himself for an ordeal, unknown but imminent. The black eye glared ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... writings from the charge of a commonplace worldliness. Certainly he is not one of the 'genial' school, whose indiscriminate benevolence exudes over all that they touch. There is nothing mawkish in his philanthropy. Pope was, if anything, too good a hater; 'the portentous cub never forgives,' said Bentley; but kindliness is all the more impressive when not too widely diffused. Add to this his hearty contempt for pomposities, humbugs, and stupidities of all kinds, and above all the fine spirit of independence, in which we have again ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... mariner had been there; and the instructions of the owner rendered it incumbent on our young man to attempt to follow him. More than once, that morning, did our hero regret he had not entered into terms with the Vineyard men, that the effort might have been made in company. There was something so portentous in a lone vessel's venturing within the ice, in so remote a region, that, to say the truth, Roswell hesitated. But pride of profession, ambition, love of Mary, dread of the deacon, native resolution, and the hardihood produced ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pancks, as nearly as he could guess at them; and finally he described to him the position of the Father of the Marshalsea, and the course of time and events through which he had become invested with that character. To all this, Mr Pancks, snorting and blowing in a more and more portentous manner as he became more interested, listened with great attention; appearing to derive the most agreeable sensations from the painfullest parts of the narrative, and particularly to be quite charmed by the account of William Dorrit's ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... bark-like belt of wampum; aged breeches of sagathy; bedarned worsted stockings to the knee; old moccasins riddled with holes, their metal tags yellow with salt-water rust; a faded red woollen bonnet, not unlike a Russian night-cap, or a portentous, ensanguined full-moon, all soiled, and stuck about with bits of half-rotted straw. He seemed just broken from the dead leases in David's outlawed Cave of Adullam. Unshaven, beard and hair matted, and profuse as a corn-field beaten down by ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a mark of courtesy repaid, the Lady Peveril marshalled in person this party of her guests to the apartment, where ample good cheer was provided for them; and had even the patience to remain while Master Nehemiah Solsgrace pronounced a benediction of portentous length, as an introduction to the banquet. Her presence was in some measure a restraint on the worthy divine, whose prolusion lasted the longer, and was the more intricate and embarrassed, that he felt himself debarred from rounding it off by his usual alliterative petition for ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... special spite against a family or an individual. Neither, lastly, do we receive the impression (which, it must be observed, is not purely fatalistic) that a family, owing to some hideous crime or impiety in early days, is doomed in later days to continue a career of portentous calamities and sins. Shakespeare, indeed, does not appear to have taken much interest in heredity, or to have attached much importance to it. (See, however, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous events which had intervened. They could not have been real. But the stones—the great diamonds—they were real enough; the metal box too—the "Sign ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... for you, my Elias collected. Tell Poole, his Cockney in the Lon. Mag. tickled me exceedingly. Harwood is to be with us this evening with Fanny, who comes to introduce a literary lady, who wants to see me,—and whose portentous name is Plura, in English "many things." Now, of all God's creatures, I detest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies. But Fanny "will have it so." So Miss Many Things and I are to have a conference, of which you shall have the result. I dare say ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... piece of cane, and a minute later on the salt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared these portentous letters: ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... notorious Dr. Oates, rustling in the full silken canonicals of priesthood, for ... he affected no small dignity of exterior decoration and deportment.... His exterior was portentous. A fleece of white periwig showed a most uncouth visage, of great length, having the mouth ... placed in the very centre of the countenance, and exhibiting to the astonished spectator as much chin below as there was nose and brow above it. His pronunciation ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Poyntz; "it does indeed look like it. An amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be endured by the Proprieties. Where on earth can that young ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to make the most of those meagre paragraphs—until the Mercury came out, when fuller and less considerate details might be hoped for. The whispering, the nodding, the screwing up of lips, the portentous frowning and the shaking of heads—no ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... to be as capricious as Sibylla, as strangely curious as the great fear which had fallen upon Lionel. The fine morning had changed to the rainy, misty, chilly afternoon; the afternoon to a clear, bright evening; and that evening had now become overcast with portentous clouds. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... him with darkening face, evidently uncertain as to what course he should adopt—whether to "turn himself loose" upon this benighted Englishman or to abandon him to his deserved condition of fatuous ignorance. He decided upon the latter course. In portentous silence he turned his back upon Fatty Matthews and walked the whole length of the line to get a mule back over the rope. It took him some little time for the mule had his own mind about the manoeuvre and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the hour, my Soul, and great is the wonder to see; Prophet-like dost thou look to yonder portentous sky Where lo! the scroll is unfolding—the scroll of the great To Be:— Look to the east, O Soul, and clear and strong be thine eye! Look to the west where once waved the cherubic sword Over man's Eden lost, and ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... pit up-steams The Boreal fire's portentous glare, And, bursting into arrowy streams, Hurls horrid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... And, indeed, this portentous warning was better grounded and had a more literal meaning than might be supposed; for the swinging gate communicated with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pansie's track there was a newly ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
