"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my passage was the one which the ghost particularly affected. It was a sad story that of "the Dangerfield ghost." I have got it all out of Aunt Deborah at different times; and though I don't exactly believe in the spectre, I can't help sometimes crying over the incidents. The fact is, the Horsinghams were quite as proud of their ghost as they were of their hand; and although not a very creditable tale to any of the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... know by experience, suppose you hint to any one inclined to spectre-shooting, that he runs the risk of killing a live man, and having two ghosts on his hands,—the ghost of the poor devil shot, and one of himself hanged for murder. As for you, young girls, remember that when you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... any such choice as Irving's received so prompt and triumphant a vindication, for a year later appeared the "Sketch Book," with its "Rip Van Winkle," its "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Spectre Bridegroom"—to mention only three of the thirty-three items of its table of contents—which proved the author to be not only a humorist of the first order, but an accomplished critic, essayist and ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... said, a panic-terror pervaded the halls, and like an evil-announcing night-spectre passed over the heads of the stiffened, lifeless crowd the dismal rumor—"The regent and the princess are at variance; the regent is speaking to her with vehemence, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... itself out when he awoke. The early rose of a coming day was looking in at the top of the blinds. He heard the rattle of pebbles tossed against the half-closed wooden shutter. He opened, and there, pale as a spectre, stood Eben McClure. His teeth were chattering, so Stair made haste to let him in. He gave him a strong "four fingers" dram of Angouleme brandy, before making him roll himself up in a blanket and lie down in his warm place. Stair would be ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Burnam; And the Masons and Odd-Fellows, Once again sustain misfortune, Once again construct new temples, For the gath'ring of the mystic. On the fifteenth day of August, Came the dreaded epidemic, Came the poisonous contagion, Came the cholera's gaunt spectre, Spreading woe and desolation, Ever bringing fell destruction. Forty deaths were soon recorded, Forty homes in sable shroudings, All the bells were ringing "softly," For the crepe was "on the door." A devoted band of nurses, Led by ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... him that he was, in a manner, marked; that he was foredoomed to fail. Minna had come—had been driven to this; and he, acting too late upon his tardy resolve, had not been able to prevent it. Were the horrors, then, never to end? Was the grisly spectre of consequence to forever dance in his vision? Were the results, the far-reaching results of that battle at the irrigating ditch to cross his path forever? When would the affair be terminated, the incident closed? Where was that spot to which the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... meantime her spirit sinks, Her weary eyes are filled with tears— A horse's hoofs she hears—She shrinks! Nearer they come—Eugene appears! Ah! than a spectre from the dead More swift the room Tattiana fled, From hall to yard and garden flies, Not daring to cast back her eyes. She fears and like an arrow rushes Through park and meadow, wood and brake, The bridge and alley to the lake, Brambles she snaps and lilacs crushes, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... while his attachment to his mother, in whom he reveres the parent he has lost, makes him question the truth of crimes which are thus laid to her charge, and causes him to look upon this terrific spectre as the punishment of unknown crime, and the visitation of an offended Deity. Ducis has most judiciously and most poetically represented Hamlet, in the despair which his sufferings produce, as driven to the belief of an over-ruling destiny, disposing of the fate of its unhappy victims by the most ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... stood apart from the rest, with his tall, straight form standing out like a spectre against the dim sky, and the illusion was fully sustained by the light-gray military cloak which he folded around him. His face was pale, but wore a determined expression, and at times he drew nearer the centre of the ring, and said a few words, which were ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... The wind was driving the clouds across the moon at a tremendous rate, and sweeping at each gust flights of spectre leaves from the swaying trees. It caught him in the open of the bare high-road, and would not let him go. It opposed him, and buffeted him at every turn; but he held listlessly on his way. His ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... particular disease is not necessary to induce it. The accumulated strands of the unconscious fear of generations have been twisted into the warp and woof of our mentality, and we find ourselves on the plane of reciprocity with disease. Our door is open to receive it. What is disease? A mental spectre, which to material vision has terrible proportions. A kingly tyrant, crowned by our own beliefs. It has exactly that power which our fears, theories, and acceptances have conferred upon it. It is not an objective entity, but our sensuous beliefs have galvanized it into life. "As a man ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... here mentioned by Aubrey is often witnessed in mountainous countries, and in Germany has given rise to many supernatural and romantic legends. The "spectre of the Brocken", occasionally seen among the Harz mountains in Hanover, is described by Mr. Brayley in his account of Cumberland, in the Beauties of England and Wales, to illustrate some analogous appearances, which greatly astonished the residents near Souterfell, in that county, about a century ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... Miracles," said Sanchez, hastening from the room as the gaunt figure of the old man rose, like a sheeted spectre, from the bed, "that was his old self again! Blessed San ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... from the clouds, and by its position in relation to the sun, which produces the shadow. At mid-day it is deep down, almost underneath; but it is more grandly defined towards evening, when the golden and ruby tints of the declining sun impart a gorgeous colouring to cloudland. You may then see the spectre balloon magnified upon the distant cloud-tops, with three beautiful circles of rainbow tints. Language fails utterly to describe these illuminated photographs, which spring up with ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... starts from the preconceived opinion that the conception of Right must be a positive one, and then attempts to define it, will fail; for he is trying to grasp a shadow, to pursue a spectre, to search for what does not exist. The conception of Right is a negative one, like the conception of Freedom; its content is mere negation. It is the conception of Wrong which is positive; Wrong has the same significance as injury—laesio—in the widest sense of the term. An injury may be done ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... define Soul as something within man? As well might you declare some old castle to be peopled with demons or angels, though never a light or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seen ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... inflammation, which had proceeded from it, had reached his eyes; it could not be dispersed; and the consequence was, that he was then blind. The second was lame; he had badly ulcerated legs, and appeared to be very weak. The third was a mere spectre; I think he was the most pitiable object I ever saw. I considered him as irrecoverably gone. They all complained to me of their bad usage on board the Thomas. They said they had heard, of my being in Bristol, and they hoped I would not leave it without ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... did. He slept quietly as an infant all that night. Next morning I found him up and dressed. Looking like a spectre, indeed; but with health, courage, and hope in his eyes. Even my father noticed it, when at dinner-time, with Jael's help—poor old Jael! how proud she was—John ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... nearly, but not quite, dark, for a lamp, closely shaded, cast a dim light on a Prayer-book, placed on a small table, behind which stood poor Mr. Greaves—a black spectre, whose white bands were just discernible below a face whose nervous, disturbed expression was lost in the general gloom. He carefully avoided looking at the bride, fearing perhaps some appeal on her part such as would make his situation perplexing. Contempt and poverty had brought his ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was no less a person than Marshal Saxe. One night, on the march, he bivouacked in a haunted castle, and slept the sleep of the brave until midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the cloister for the tears of the blessed saint. The venerable guardian of St. Bridget probably expected the interference of her patroness—she of Holyrood might, perhaps, hope that David Ruzzio's spectre would arise to prevent the profanation. But Mrs. Policy stood not long in the silence of horror. She uplifted her voice, and screamed as loudly as Queen Mary herself when the dreadful deed was in the act ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... hurried on, her slight form showing like a spectre against the dim gleam towards which she bent her way, till suddenly she paused and we saw her standing with clasped hands, and bent head, looking down into ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... these old pages seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... so many bad purposes, that surmises of this nature were likely to meet with the less credit among all men of sense; and nothing but the duke's imprudent bigotry could have convinced the whole nation of his change of religion. Popery, which had hitherto been only a hideous spectre, was now become a real ground of terror being openly and zealously embraced by the heir to the crown a prince of industry and enterprise; while the king himself was not ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... deesse incessamment repose, Le coeur gros de chagrin, sans en savoir la cause. N'aiant pense jamais, l'esprit toujours trouble, L'oeil charge, le teint pale, et l'hypocondre enfle. La medisante Envie, est assise aupres d'elle, Vieil spectre feminin, decrepite pucelle, Avec un air devot dechirant son prochain, Et chansonnant les Gens l'Evangile a la main. Sur un lit plein de fleurs negligemment panchee Une jeune beaute non loin d'elle est couchee, C'est ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of which ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... as swiftly and silently as the spectre horseman of the story, for Venezuelan horses being unshod and their favorite pace a gliding run (much less fatiguing for horse and rider than the high trot of Europe) they move as noiselessly over grass as ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... started as though he beheld a spectre, but seeing that the young man was about to sink to the floor exhausted, he sprang to his feet and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... lessening into astonishment, astonishment dying into despair, it gathers up the passion and the pain, the blight and woe and agony; all garnered joys are scattered. Evil supplants the good. Hope dies, love pales, and faith is faint and wan. But every death has its moaning ghost, pale spectre of vanished loves. Oh, fearful revenge of the outraged soul! The mysterious, uncomprehended, incomprehensible soul! The irrepressible, unquenchable, immortal soul, whose every mark is everlasting! Every secret sin committed against it cries out ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... their nuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educated in the Roman faith—a promise difficult of performance in a land where a stormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectre that alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted. And now, duly provided with a safe conduct from the regicide, Bradshaw, he was journeying to the city where he was to part with his daughter for an indefinite period. He had seen but little of her, and yet it seemed ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... her eyes as those once fir'd my breast, Her snowy bosom bare, and sing'd her breast. Her beryl-ring retain'd the fiery rays, Spread the pale flame, and shot the funeral blaze; As late stretch'd out the bloodless spectre stood, And her dead lips were wet with Lethe's flood. She breath'd her soul, sent forth her voice aloud, And chaf'd her hands ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... into a pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away. Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of his eye brought him ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quarter of an hour Bounce glided noiselessly through the forest, keeping a course parallel with the river. In the deepening gloom of evening, he appeared more like a spectre than a human being—so quick and agile were his motions as he flitted past the tree stems, yet so noiseless the tread of his moccasined feet. The bushes were thick and in places tangled, compelling him to stoop and twist and diverge right and left as he sped along, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the case of Glam, the terrible spectre which Grettir had so much difficulty in overcoming. To all who appreciate a shudder may be recommended chap. xxxv. of "The Story of Grettir the Strong," translated from the Icelandic by E. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... only a spectre at their licentious feasts; a something in the midst of their revelry and riot that chilled and haunted them; but out of doors he was the same. Directly it was dark, he was abroad—never in company with any ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the sick man's energies. He got up, found his family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to his family ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... your world, Watts McHurdie's world, Lige's world, or John's world? It can't be all of 'em." He put the poker across the stove hearth, and sank his hands deeply into his pockets as he continued: "The question that philosophy never has answered is this: Am I a spectre and you an essence, or are you a spectre and am I an essence? Is it your world ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... landed her in Standard Oil is not a part of this drama. But meanwhile she had shuddered. Like many another widow, to whom New Haven was as good as Governments, she might have been in the street. Pointing at her had been that spectre—Want! ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... as if Cedric's words had raised a spectre; for, scarce had he uttered them ere the door flew open, and Athelstane, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard, and like something arisen from the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... an endless rotation of thought and wild alarms, she looked like a spectre, when Jemima entered in the morning; especially as her eyes darted out of her head, to read in Jemima's countenance, almost as pallid, the intelligence she dared not trust her tongue to demand. Jemima put down the tea-things, and appeared very busy in arranging the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... politely tempered tension in the dignified house, during the stately meals, even as the servants saw it. Yet my father would sometimes hum a tune from an opera and joke and laugh boisterously with his friends; but mother always went about silently and gravely, gliding over the thick carpets like a spectre and, at her best, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... fail, Whereby my prophet-soul is onwards led? Look! for their flesh the spectre-children wail, Their sodden limbs on ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... the soft bundle, held it out. There were the eyes. She chilled. No imagination here. No spectre from ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... Partly see what causes this. 'Tis men; 'Tis men that force you to it: they themselves Have cast away their own nobility, Themselves have crouch'd to this degraded posture. Man's innate greatness, like a spectre, frights them; Their poverty seems safety; with base skill They ornament their chains, and call it virtue To wear them with an air of grace. Twas thus You found the world; thus from your royal father Came it to you: how in this distorted, Mutilated ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in his sleeve from the very commencement. Instance, as yet more strikingly to the point in respect to what we are here maintaining, the wonderfully comic effect of the bantering remarks addressed by him to the Ghost of Jacob Marley all through their confabulation, even when the spectre's voice, as we are told, was disturbing the very marrow in his bones. True, it is there stated that, all through that portentous dialogue, he was only trying to be smart "as a means of distracting his own attention." But the jests themselves are ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... castled height— Ho, Burghers of the town; Apulia's strength, Romagna's pride, And Tusca's old renown! Why quail ye thus? why pale ye thus? What spectre do ye see? "The blood-red flag, and trampling march, Of Montreal's Companie." Oh, the sunshine of your life— Oh, the thunders of your strife! ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... within me does forebode me ill; I stumbled when I entered first this wood; My nostrils bled three drops; then stopped the blood, And not one more would follow.— What's that, which seems to bear a mortal shape, [Sees ISA. Yet neither stirs nor speaks? or, is it some Illusion of the night? some spectre, such As in these Asian parts more frequently appear? Whate'er it be, I'll venture to approach it. [Goes near. My Isabinda bound and gagged! Ye powers, I tremble while I free her, and scarce dare Restore her liberty of speech, for fear Of knowing ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... mighty heart, A million lie, in mutest slumber bound. Or, panting like the ocean, when a dream Of storm awakes her:—Heaven and Earth are still; In radiant loveliness the stars pursue Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,— What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves, The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... her vision surprised her; she paused a moment and then continued. He must always be amused, he could not bear to be alone. Distraction, distraction, distraction was his one cry. She had to combat the spectre of boredom and save the man from himself. Hitherto she had done this, it had been her pleasure, but if she married him it would become her mission, her duty, her life. Could she undertake it? Her heart sank. He had worn her out, she could do no more. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... was changed. The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now—I felt that acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous hate of this spectre exercised ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... withdrawn. Twice was this ghostly Jack-in-the-box obtruded on the stage before his time; twice removed again; and yet he showed so little hurry when he was really wanted, that, after an awkward pause, Macbeth had to begin his apostrophe to empty air. The arrival of the belated spectre in the middle, with a jerk that made him nod all over, was the last accident in the chapter, and worthily topped the whole. It may be imagined how lamely matters went throughout these ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to foot, she slowly realized the suspicious significance of the disappearance of the will, which was the sole obstacle that debarred her from her grandfather's wealth. Although sustained by an unfaltering trust in the omnipotence of innocence, she was tormented by a dread spectre that would not "down" at her bidding; how could she prove that the money and jewels had been given to her? Would the shock of the tidings of her arrest kill her mother? Was there any possible way by which she might be kept in ignorance of this ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... started Like one who sees a spectre, and exclaimed, 'Blind that I was to know him not till ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of God; for Sewall records in his ever-helpful Diary: "Sept. 20. Now I hear from Salem that about 18 years agoe, he [Giles Cory] was suspected to have stamp'd and press'd a man to death, but was cleared. Twas not remembered till Ann Putnam was told of it by said Cory's Spectre the Sabbath day night ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... bell toll sullenly to vespers. The young boys of the seminary were moving in a body to their dark inclosure, all dressed in black. Many of them looked pale and wan. I wished to ask them whether the solitude of Valombrosa suited their age and vivacity; but a tall spectre of a priest drove them along like a herd, and presently, the gates opening, I saw them no more. A sadness I could scarcely account for came over me. I shivered at the bare idea of being cooped up in such a place, and seeing no other living objects than ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... remains of that portion of the tribe swept off by the fell disease which had left such marks on all who survived. There were no trees on this hill save one quite dead, which seemed to point, with its hoary arms, like a spectre to the tombs. A melancholy waste, where a level country and boundless woods extended beyond the reach of vision, was in perfect harmony with the dreary foreground of ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... importunities In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not All things be there forgot, Save the sea's golden barrier and the black Close-crouching promontories? Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade, A spectre self-destroyed, So purged of all remembrance and sucked back Into the primal void, That should we on that shore phantasmal meet I should not know ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp, brown hair; "that would never do. How would it work to see the same ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That would elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane. Don't you think that would ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... end of the room in speechless amazement was the late gay party of gamblers, including Senator Danfield himself. They had reckoned on toying with any chance but this. The pale white face of DeLong among them was like a spectre, as he stood staring blankly about and still insanely twisting the roulette ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet-fever—an anxiety which so infected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear that the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever that had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stood before the throne of that warrior-king. In the waving glitter of the countless swords raised on high, she saw the murderous blade against the boy-heir of Lancaster descend—descend! Her passion, her terror, at the spectre which fancy thus evoked, seized and overcame her; and ere the last hurrah sent its hollow echo to the raftered roof, she sank from her chair to the ground, hueless and insensible ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank. If, at the count of "Eleven!" one character registers surprise and points excitedly at an unoccupied corner of the room, it is the first step in introducing the fairy, or the spectre, who is to appear there in the picture as shown on the screen. After the scene has been gone through with, following this rule, the film is run through the camera a second time, the "stage" being ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... invidious comments. I have not, in conversations industriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches of this House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... coming as it were from that merry and populous chamber of life and health, once again I met the Spectre I derided, a red-headed, red-visaged Thing that chose me out to stop and grin at. Somehow I was not minded to ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... that living spectre Is not my gallant friend. I seek in vain The full cheek's healthful glow, the eye of fire, The martial mein, proud gait, and limbs Herculean! Oh! is that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... cherubim, to have been born of a disgraced father, and the unhappy man seemed to ask his pardon for his existence. It was the year 1829; four years had elapsed since the colonel arrived from America, and he looked a very spectre. He slept well, ate well, and nothing seemed to worry him; but his life seemed slipping away, in a slow but sure consumption. His wife sent for a doctor, and then another and another. But they all said the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... examination fees consequent on your callous failures," he had said, "terrifies me. I am haunted by the spectre of ruin. The Bank of ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the doorway, a worn, and troubled spectre of dismay, now put in a confirmatory word. "You are quite right, Simeon. That house reeks with the talk of wine-bibbers and those who make life a witticism. Such an atmosphere profoundly ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... right, how account for these dreadful and agonizing glimpses of my inner life which occasionally visit me? But I dare say every man feels them. What are they, after all, but the superstitious operations of conscience—of that grim spectre which is conjured up by the ridiculous fables of the priest and nurse? Conscience! Why, its fearful tribunal is no test of truth. The wretched anchorite will often experience as much remorse if he neglect to scourge his miserable carcass, as the murderer who sheds the blood of man—or more. Away ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... barbarous Unionist general, Guzman Bento. It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later Perpetual President, famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, readied his apotheosis in the popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been carried off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... would be happy," he said, and kissed her. "You promised you would not let Fontenoy and the things of Fontenoy stand like a spectre between us. Forget this, too. Everywhere there is dying. But it is our wedding day—and I love you madly—and life and the kingdoms of life lie before us! If you are not happy, how can ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... reeling and blind as if drunk. He went mad. He had lived with her in a close, living, pulsing world, where everything pulsed with rich being. Now he found himself struggling amid an ashen-dry, cold world of rigidity, dead walls and mechanical traffic, and creeping, spectre-like people. The life was extinct, only ash moved and stirred or stood rigid, there was a horrible, clattering activity, a rattle like the falling of dry slag, cold and sterile. It was as if the sunshine that fell were unnatural light exposing the ash of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... these vain struggles, his love for Anne grew stronger, more overpowering. He was hollow-eyed and gaunt, ravenous with the hunger of love. A spectre of his former self, he watched himself starve with sustenance at hand. Bountiful love lay within his grasp and yet he starved. Full, rich pastures spread out before him wherein he could roam to the end of his days, blissfully gorging ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... which thou porest, for under all thy dignity and formalism there beats a loving father's heart. The shadows are gathering, dear sir, around thy fifth son in a far country, and in the gathering shadows there stalks, noiselessly, relentlessly, that grim, gray spectre, Death. On thy knees, then, oh Rector of St. Agnes, and blend thy prayers with the feeble petitions of her who even now, for thy house, entreats the Throne of Grace. Pray, oh thou on whom the bishop's hands have been ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... but, with a precision such as the somnambulist so strangely exerts, she trod the well-known paths slowly, but surely, toward that summer's bower, where her dreams had not told her lay crouching that most hideous spectre of her imagination, Sir Francis Varney. He who stood between her and her heart's best joy; he who had destroyed all hope of happiness, and who had converted her dearest affections into only so many causes of greater disquietude than ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... present then uttered a terrified shout; All turned with disgust from the scene; The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out, And sported his eyes and his temples about While the spectre ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... it?" ejaculated Sir Edmund, gazing with something very like fear, as the spectre bore down ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that was said to haunt Oak Ridge did much to draw the boys, and it can be readily understood that before they left their camp in the hills they had succeeded in discovering the astonishing truth about that same spectre. Just how this was done, together with many other thrilling episodes, you will find in the record of the outing as given in the third volume, called: "The Outdoor Chums in the Forest; or, Laying the ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... "Suspiria de Profundis," Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1845, p. 748., speaking of the spectre of the Brocken, and of the conditions under which that striking phenomenon is ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... "But what will you do with materializations such as Dr. Richet studied at the Villa Carmen in Algiers? What will you do with the photographs of the spectre of the helmeted soldier which he obtained under what ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure—Dr. Renton, himself—came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement to his own door, his over-coat ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... the midnight chime Ring out the yawning peal of time, When shrouded Paul, unlucky knave! Rose like a spectre from the grave; And cried, "Fair maiden, come with me. For I ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... earth into four it can shake, Can reach up to the heights of the sky And a neck with its might it can break, Nor from fight with a spectre ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted, close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt, unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya, meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him in every look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the thought of holding ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... funnier figure in my life. The coat was once my grandfather's—a colonel of West India Militia, I believe. Now my grandfather had been a rather short man, but very broad and stout, particularly round the stomach. Old Clump was tall and thin as a spectre, so the epaulettes fell over his shoulders, the waist flapped loosely eight inches above his trousers, and the short swallow-tails did not sufficiently cover the spot which the venerable darky usually placed on the chair to hide a patch, the bigness of a frying-pan ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... a special chapter to this plague of our Somme warriors. It is not only when systematic gas attacks are made that they have to struggle with this devilish and intangible foe." He refers to the use of gas shell, and says: "This invisible and perilous spectre of the air threatens and lies in wait on all roads leading ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... that gliding o'er the meadow yonder? Is it the misty vapors of the moor That form a picture in the morning chill? Now it draws near.—The shade of Catiline! His spectre—! I can see his misty eye, His broken shield, his sword bereft of blade. Ah, he is surely dead; one thing alone,— Remarkable,—his wound ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all." The spectre and the Prince pass successively through the same series of rooms; but it takes the former fifty-one words to cover the distance, whereas it takes ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... I about the night? No spectre can meet me anywhere that is worse than the horrible thing that dwells at the bottom of my heart. God bless your ladyship. You shall ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... seems to be meant a mode of seeing, superadded to that which Nature generally bestows. In the Earse it is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre, or a vision. I know not, nor is it likely that the Highlanders ever examined, whether by Taisch, used for Second Sight, they mean the power of seeing, or ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... books, and it was scarcely less easy to ascertain the truth of this conjecture. I entered, not without tremulous sensations, into the apartment which had been the scene of the disastrous interview between Watson and Welbeck. At every step I almost dreaded to behold the spectre of the former ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... condemned to expiate eternally a foul crime done at the bidding of the Holy Office, walks at midnight on the Quai Vert, like Hamlet's father on the terrace at Elsinore; and superstitious people might well fancy that a spectre appears in the market-place of Furnes on the summer's night when the town is preparing for the annual ceremony. The origin of the procession was this: In the year 1650 a soldier named Mannaert, only twenty-two years old, being in garrison at Furnes, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... pleasure in every increase of Knowledge, every problem solved, every witty thought, whether of his own or another's; and so his mind will have no further aim than to be constantly active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of delight; and boredom, that spectre which haunts the ordinary man, ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... black spectre spaniel that haunted the guard-room of Peeltown in the Isle of Man. One day a drunken trooper entered the guard-room while the dog was there, but lost his speech, and died within three days.—Sir W. Scott, Lay of the Last ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... earth shook, and spiral columns of vapour rose around the altar, and from each column came a spectre of fire and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... his gold-colored robe vanish into the gold of the sun through the copper color of the columns. And I was quite alone in the "thinking-place" of Rameses. It was a brilliant day, the sky dark sapphire blue, without even the spectre of a cloud, or any airy, vaporous veil; the heat already intense in the full sunshine, but delicious if one slid into a shadow. I slid into a shadow, and sat down on a warm block of stone. And the silence flowed upon me—the silence of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Dismay and confusion overwhelmed all that quarter of the crowded scene, that was particularly threatened by its first advance. The affrighted multitude rolled back like a tumultuous sea. The horrid spectre stopt; and left a wide interval between itself and the retiring host. A ray of heavenly light illumined the vacant space. I fixed my eye on the brilliant spot, and soon beheld the meek and gentle form of HOWARD ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... was disgruntled, so they heard, because he had not been given the bishopric of Vesteras. In one of his appeals Gustavus warned the rebels to be still, lest Christiern might be encouraged to return. The spectre of their gory tyrant seems not, however, to have haunted them, and in February we find that Knut, the deposed dean of Vesteras, had joined their ranks. To him Gustavus wrote a note, assuring him that the archbishopric would have been conferred upon him had he but done his duty. ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the brave Wattawamat Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage. 820 Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre of terror, Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish; Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles, He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... household charge, his annual rents, 30 Increasing debts, perplexing duns, And nothing for his younger sons. Straight all his thought to gain he turns, And with the thirst of lucre burns. But when possessed of fortune's store, The spectre haunts him more and more; Sets want and misery in view, Bold thieves, and all the murd'ring crew, Alarms him with eternal frights, Infests his dream, or wakes his nights. 40 How shall he chase this hideous guest? Power may perhaps protect his rest. To power he rose. Again ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... these exorcise the spectre host of the brain and quell the horrid brood of fear. The noble purpose of self sacrifice enables us to smile upon the grave, "as some sweet clarion's breath stirs ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold lips, the long, lax limbs of the poor doll were at his service. She saw nothing through her dim eyes, made no motion with her lips, sobbed rather than breathed, endured tearlessly rather than lived awake her misery. Misery is ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... I am come, and now must thou die." His beating heart told him this was indeed true; but he pressed his hands over his eyes, and said: "Do not bewilder me with terror in my last moments. If thy veil conceals the features of a spectre, hide them from me still, and let me die in peace."—"Alas!" rejoined the forlorn one, "wilt thou not look upon me once again? I am fair, as when thou didst woo me on the promontory."—"Oh, could that be true!" sighed Huldbrand, "and if I might die in thy embrace!"—"Be it so, my dearest," said she. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... eye upon her from his watchtower, and observing her costume and noting her silence, he concluded that it must be some witch or sorceress that was coming in such a guise to work him some mischief, and he began crossing himself at a great rate. The spectre still advanced, and on reaching the middle of the room, looked up and saw the energy with which Don Quixote was crossing himself; and if he was scared by seeing such a figure as hers, she was terrified at the sight of his; for the moment she saw his tall yellow form with the coverlet and the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... standing at the door, and the person who had caused the alarm, a boy of about fourteen, at a little distance, surrounded by some of the priests, who had come out of their cells on hearing the noise. The boy said he had seen a spectre; and it was a considerable time before the agitations of his body and voice subsided. Next morning at breakfast, the inquisitor apologized for the disturbance, and said the boy's alarm proceeded from a phantasma animi,—phantom ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... this hour, the bitterest of my life—yes. It has followed me like a spectre through every waking and sleeping hour. Please make the wide distinction. My care for you, the giving up of my life for you, is nothing. That I should have done in any case, as far as I could. But with my knowledge of your nature and your past, I could not ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... in the section of this country containing the inhabitants of the South understands better than you do the gravity of that great problem which confronts them. It is "like the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." It confronts us all the day; it is the spectre that ever sits beside our bed. No doubt we make mistakes about it; no doubt there are outbreaks growing out of some phases of it that astound, and shock, and stun you, as they do ourselves. But believe me, the Anglo-Saxon race has set itself, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... not change—born, it may be, like Pinetop, self-poised, yet with an untaught intellect, grasping, like him, after the primitive knowledge which should be the birthright of every child. Even the spectre of slavery, which had shadowed his thoughts, as it had those of many a generous mind around him, faded abruptly before the very majesty of the problem that faced him now. In his sympathy for the slave, whose bondage he and his race had striven to make easy, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... of him, what a commotion would not the tale have roused—of the spectre of a boy with a baby in his arms, gliding noiseless in the moon and the middle night, along the top of the high brick wall of a deserted house, where no one had lived ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... fences gleamed through the darkness, and sharp gable ends loomed up against the dull sky, one after another, and the horse's hoofs flashed sparks from the paved street before the church, that showed its white spire, spectre-like, directly in their path. Here, by some evil chance, the child awoke, and, between cold and hunger and fear, began one of those long and loud shrieks that no power can stop this side of strangulation. In vain Hitty kissed, and coaxed, and half-choked her boy, in hope to stop the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... open it, when a sigh from Captain Nemo nailed me to the spot. I knew that he was rising. I could even see him, for the light from the library came through to the saloon. He came towards me silently, with his arms crossed, gliding like a spectre rather than walking. His breast was swelling with sobs; and I heard him murmur these words (the last ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... discoveries that unlocked to the world the vast interior of this hitherto unknown continent, to find that they were just too late to be saved! Despair and death seemed staring them in the face: their long overtaxed powers of endurance failed them utterly, and the gaunt spectre of famine that had been journeying with the brave men for weeks threatened now to enfold them in its terrible embrace. Should they yield without another struggle? Burke suddenly remembered Mount Despair, a cattle-station about one hundred and fifty leagues away, and with his indomitable resolution ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... than obtruded upon us are kept in the background, so as not to invite, nor indeed to render possible, the application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss Bronte, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have been haunted by a shadowy terror of which we could render ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the cliff he started back as if some terrible spectre were before him, and mechanically caught hold of the parapet. His cheeks suddenly blanched, his jaws fell, and his chest heaved, in hurried and ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the cardinal, in the scornful face of Eck, even in the thoughts of his own soul. He knew how powerful they had been in Rome. Even in his youth apparitions had tormented him; now they reappeared. From the dark shadows of his study the spectre of the tempter lifted its claw-like hand against his reason. Even while he was praying the Devil approached him in the form of the Redeemer, radiant as King of Heaven with the five wounds, as the ancient Church represented Him. But Luther knew that Christ ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the bedroom, and I followed perforce. I shall never forget the scene, though I had but the one glimpse of it,—the raving, yellowed woman in the bed, not a spectre nor yet even a semblance of the beauty of Temple Bow. But she was his mother, upon whom God had brought such a retribution as He alone can bestow. Lindy, faithful servant to the end, held the wasted hands of her mistress against the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said he to himself, "a mental, like an optical, illusion. In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre. If we dare not face the apparition,—dare not attempt to touch it,—run superstitiously away from it,—what happens? We shall believe to our dying day that it was not an illusion, that it was a spectre; and so we ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... true that he entered the dreaded shades with fear, yet no spectre ever crossed his path. But perhaps that was because the thoughts of the old man were pure, or perhaps because he never entered the forest without singing a hymn ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Cass, an overwhelming awareness of parting, and he gave to the landscape the expression of sentiment he had yearned to give his friend. His fear of seeing the spirits of the drowned sailors, or as he passed the churchyard gate of perceiving behind that tamarisk the tall spectre of his grandfather, which on the way down from Pendhu had seemed impossible to combat, had died away; and in his despair at losing this beloved scene he wandered on past the church until he stood at the edge of the tide. On this humid autumnal night the oily sea collapsed upon the beach as if ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... hissing swoop would plant a shell close to our whereabouts. Lights rose and sank, flickering. Red and green rockets, as if to ornament the tragedy of war, were dancing in the sky. Occasionally a gust of foul wind, striking the face, could make one fancy that Death's Spectre ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the Elliott section a white-lipped girl strained forward, silently intreating. Her face was tear-streaked. There was something desperately compelling about her attitude. The spectre of defeat to her was as grim as the spectre of death. Almost unconsciously her lips parted and she started to sing ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, theatre, zaffre,{.} ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... die in peace," he said; And calmly yielding up his breath, There trod the shadowy realms of death A good man and a brave; Through all the regions of the dead, Behold his spirit, spectre-led, Crowned with the amaranthine wreath That blooms not for ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Rembrandt van Rijn, we cannot help opening the flood-gates of language, as the Spanish say. Rembrandt exerts an especial fascination. Fra Angelico is a saint, Michelangelo is a giant, Raphael is an angel, Titian a prince, Rembrandt is a spectre. What else can this miller's son be called? Born in a windmill, he arose unexpectedly without a master, without example, without any instruction from the schools, to become a universal painter, who depicted life in every aspect, who painted figures, landscapes, sea-pieces, animals, saints, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... richest virtues in others; their poison, as one may say, serving as a dark and terrible safeguard, which Providence has set to watch over their preciousness; even as a dragon, or some wild and fiendish spectre, is set to watch and keep hidden gold and heaped-up diamonds. A dragon always waits on everything that is very good. And what would deserve the watch and ward of danger of a dragon, or something more fatal than a dragon, if not this treasure of which Septimius was ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn anger. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... spectre, though a beneficent angel with healing on his wings in truth, will push yet many traitorous or cowardly sycophants from the stools they disgrace, and substitute in their stead men who will quiet Agitation by Justice. Let the men of Kansas remember that a yet greater trust ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... on: "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a lord, nor a serf! Yet ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the term second sight seems to be meant a mode of seeing superadded to that which nature generally bestows. In the Erse it is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre or a vision.' Johnson's Works, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... are human institutions, and being human, they are not animal, and, therefore, they are spiritual. Thus, any man with enough money to take a shop, stock his shelves, and pay for advertisements shall be able to evoke the pure and censorious spectre of the circulating libraries whenever his own ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... inner consciousness are the basis of our belief that there is a future. One cannot be at the Front very long before he is compelled to examine his thoughts in regard to immortality. Death is brought home very closely. The grim spectre points his finger at a man—perhaps in the first flush of manhood—who has just commenced to appreciate the joy of living. Death challenges, and with no shadow of faltering, but perhaps with a smile, the challenge is accepted, and the lad goes under. It is no triumph for death. It is the ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... fell in and the river was raised above them. It is a strange, weird sight, this forest beneath the river; the waters wash over the broken tree-tops, fish swim among the leafless branches: it is desolate, spectre-like, beyond all words. Scientific men who have examined the field with a view to determining the credibility of the legend about the bridge are convinced that it is essentially true. Believed in by many tribes, attested by the appearance of the ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Day hovered in the sky, and that solemn change which is Death was somewhere near, hiding and waiting; and Pilchard and Death and the breaking Day were for one second alone. And Pilchard was overwhelmed with terror. Some spectre had seized him, and he could not shake it off. He looked once more at the dying man, at his closed eyes and his still body, momentarily convulsed by the final signs of life, like a great piece of machinery when the steam power is gradually running down. Then he turned and broke ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Melchior were holding converse with the broom, or the peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be able to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... higher and higher, but at length Dickson stops, unable to go farther. Gaveston feels assured of his triumph, when George Brown, recalling his vow to the white Lady, advances boldly, bidding one thousand pounds more. Anna is beside him, in the shape of the spectre, and George obediently bids on, till the castle is his for the price of three hundred thousand pounds. Gaveston in a perfect fury, swears avenge himself on the adventurer, who is to pay the sum in the afternoon. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the steep paths where the spectre-like fir Moaned of death in the distance; we ceased not to spur! Death! what that to us, with our duty before! Then onward, still on our stern hoof-thunder bore. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Her incurable disease was for the time forgotten, and although pain would occasionally draw down the muscles of her face, as soon as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation. Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing with the fashionable world, and talked of chaperoning Isabel to private parties and public amusements, when she was standing at the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Camille with frightful tenacity. Hitherto the drowned man had not troubled him at night. And behold the thought of Therese brought up the spectre of her husband. The murderer dared not open his eyes, afraid of perceiving his victim in a corner of the room. At one moment, he fancied his bedstead was being shaken in a peculiar manner. He imagined Camille was ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that there was no looking behind me. But as poverty brought me into it, so fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it quite off, if I could but come to lay up money enough ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... for urns beyond urns who know How sweet they are, yet bitter, not enough? Eternity will quench your thirst, O soul— But never the Desert's spectre, cup of love! ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... a social way By a body of ghosts in dread array; But no conventional spectres they— Appalling, grim, and tricky: I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert |
