"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... croaking?" demanded Mr. Marwig. "Look here, Mistress Beelzebub! Do you know that you are a very lucky woman to live in a land where not only may a barefooted boy rise to the highest honors by talent and perseverance, but where a malignant old witch may torture and terrify her neighbors without fear of the ducking stool or ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... curs,' said Mr Jonas, 'that when you know a man's in real earnest, you pretend to think he's joking, so that you may turn it off. But that won't do with me. It's too stale. Now just attend to me for a bit, Mr Pitch, or Witch, or Stitch, or whatever your ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... black thread through the woof of the spirit tales was the mention of witch-craft—witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in the black art, the Indians of Katleean were not bringing in the amount of furs expected, and this meant a loss ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... for. But, to be sure, how can we do eneugh for his Honour, when we and ours have lived on his ground this twa hundred years; and when he keepit my puir Jamie at school and college, and even at the Ha'-house, till he gaed to a better place; and when he saved me frae being ta'en to Perth as a witch—Lord forgi'e them that would touch sic a puir silly auld body!—and has maintained puir Davie at heck and manger maist feck ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... plunging like a colt, rolling like a drunken man. Giles saw Morley; near him Dane with a savage look on his face. Morley, with terror in his eyes, tried to get away, but Dane reached him, flung his arms round him, and with a wild shout both men went down into the furiously bubbling witch-caldron, never ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... his great Amanda, masterfully. "It's the shades down. I'm nervous as a witch. My land! if the front door ain't open ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... friend of the little witch of a girl, and of Buddy, who had been the baby the year before, but whose place had been usurped because of the advent of another tow-head into the family, the others of "them Trimminses," as they were ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... his capital, several are reflected in the waters of Vltava. There is, for instance, the bridgehead tower on the Mala Strana side, a graceful monument to Charles's gracious days. You may notice on passing under the gateway from the bridge the figure of a witch carved in stone, complete with broom and general air of nocturnal enterprise. I often wonder as I pass by here whether this figure inspired Marion Crawford when he was casting about for a title to his novel ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... whom I had taught to make mats, threw himself before the horses of our carriage, crying out that we might as well drive over him and kill him at once; and an old woman stood up almost like a witch or prophetess, crying out: 'Ah! that is the way with you all. You are like all the rest! You gave us hope once, and now you are gone to your pleasure which you squeeze out of our ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... city we were met by an old female mendicant, who, by her beggings and importunities, disturbed him in his story. "Pack yourself off, old witch!" said he, and walked by. She shouted after him the well-known retort,—only somewhat changed, since she saw well that the unfriendly man was old himself,—"If you did not wish to be old, you should have had yourself hanged in your youth!" He turned round violently, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... from the church-yard after she met him. She took her path away from the park and the hamlet, between two cottages, the ragged boys at the doors of which called her "Old Witch," and spoke about ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... luxury and display, growing vain as he grows sordid; thus, while submitting, conquering, and tyrannizing over him, content with present worldly pleasure, unmindful of the past, the future, or the above. This may react to intersexual antagonism until man comes to hate woman as a witch, or, as in the days of celibacy, consider sex a wile of the devil. Along these lines even the stage is beginning to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... within sight of the Mediterranean. Liberty from oppressive thought he had long recovered; the old zeal for labour was so strong in him that he found it difficult to imagine the mood in which he had bidden good-bye to his life's purposes. But there was always the danger lest that witch of the south should again overcome his will and lull him into impotence of vain regret. For such a long time he had believed that Italy was for ever closed against him, that the old delights were henceforth converted into ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... a muttering of protest, then the bolts were drawn, and the door opened. A woman stood in the aperture. A woman, old and bent, and looking not unlike the witch she called herself. A hood of brown sat on her white hair; a brown lappet was thrown about her, and she supported herself by means of a staff. Her black eyes regarded the girl with keenness from ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... pulled Pierre's blanket over him, but his fatigue and his desire for sleep seemed to have left him, and it was a long time before slumber finally drove from him the thought of what he had done. After that he did not move. He heard none of the sounds of the night. A little owl, the devil-witch, screamed horribly overhead and awakened Jeanne, who sat up for a few moments in her balsam bed, white-faced and shivering. But Philip slept. Long afterward something warm awakened him, and he opened his eyes, thinking that it was the glow of the fire in his face. It was the sun. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... to stand guard in that case myself, Miss Loring; for I have a prejudice against allowing witch-doctors ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a witch!" shrieked the child, flinging his face, butter and all, at these portentous words, into his ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself—only for knowing it. She was not naturally ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry Cleaning." The name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old "Addams Family" TV show. See ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Heaven from the bottom of my heart that she, in her innocency, did not suspect the conclusions I had drawn from the words and manner of the old witch. ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... want you to. He's as nervous as a witch about how you are going to take it. You see, he thinks more of your opinion than he does of anybody's, and he wants your approval. If you could jump right in and say you think it's a bully idea, and that you are coming out to see ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a deep-rooted ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... dreaded and fainted sore, he cried for to have counsel of our Lord. And our Lord answered him not, ne by swevens ne by priests, ne by prophets. Then said Saul to his servants: Fetch to me a woman having a phiton, otherwise called a phitoness or a witch. And they said that there was such a woman in Endor. Saul then changed his habit and clothing, and did on other clothing, and went, and two men with him, and came to the woman by night, and made her ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... O Black and Unknown Bards Sence You Went Away The Creation The White Witch Mother Night O Southland ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... and illuminative treatment of this subject I would refer my readers to the essays of Professor Karl Pearson, The Chances of Death, Vol. II.—"Woman as Witch: Evidences of Mother-Right in the Customs of Mediaeval Witchcraft"; "Ashiepattle, or Hans Seeks his Luck"; "Kindred Group Marriage," Part I.; "The Mother-Age Civilisation," Part II.; "General Words for Sex and Kinship," Part III.; "Special ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. "Ah, Mother! How do you do?" said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. "Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch. Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near." And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother's heart, for she received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. On ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... breakfast-time, you must not count on my services—I am taking my rest. I have no choice but to remain in bed (sleeping when I can) for twelve hours or more. The long repose seems to keep my life in me. Have I and my cats surprised you very much? Am I a witch; and are they my familiar spirits? Remember how few amusements I have, and you will not wonder why I devote myself to teaching these pretty creatures their tricks, and attaching them to me like dogs! They were slow at first, and they taught me excellent lessons of patience. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... If she were a witch, the stake would surely be hers; but she is a crafty and wily woman who has lured you on ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the wisest man of Greece. Socrates was put to death for this Voice of his, on the charge of 'bringing in new gods.' Joan of Arc died for her Voices, because her enemies argued that she was no saint, but a witch! These two, the old philosopher and the untaught peasant girl of nineteen, stand alone in the endless generations of men, alone in goodness, wisdom, courage, strength, combined with a mysterious and fatal gift. More ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the people were so completely absorbed in the movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor, as the man in the jaguar skin proved to be, that they were quite oblivious of the presence of the two Englishmen; but suddenly the piache caught sight of them and stopped short in his leapings and howlings, and glared, open-mouthed, at ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... light that glowed in the stranger's deep-set eyes was not the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant orbs of some night-prowling jungle beast. Rather was it the blue-green glow of phosphorescent witch-light that flickers and dances in the night mists above steaming ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... a woman, though she is a bad old witch that did ought to be drowned," he said, and with that he popped the creature into a big armchair and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... die. And then, Mere Jeanne she tell how she run to Jeannot's house,—she fear nossing, Mere Jeanne! the good God protect her always. She cry, 'Where is Marie? where is my child?' And Jeannot's Manon, she laugh, she say, 'Cross the sea after her, old witch! Who keeps thee?' Then—see, p'tit Jacques! see, Petie! I have not seen this wiz my eyes, no! but in my heart I have seen, I know! Then Mere Jeanne run at that woman, that devil; and she pull off her cap and ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Wedding Ring, A Nameless Dell Nora Queen Bess Ruby's Reward Sibyl's Influence Stella Rosevelt That Dowdy Thorn Among Roses, A Sequel to a Girl in a Thousand Thrice Wedded Tina Trixy True Aristocrat, A Two Keys Virgie's Inheritance Wedded By Fate Welfleet Mystery, The Wild Oats Winifred's Sacrifice Witch Hazel ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the Christian churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shaft not suffer a witch to live". The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit", or generally practising any "infernal arts". This was not repealed until ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh
... said the little boys, crying more bitterly than ever. "We have no father and no mother, and a cruel witch troubles us. She tries all the time to do us harm, and we are going to run away where she can ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... of a flame, or the quivering of midsummer sunshine. It was hard to associate with the man as one saw him, still, shy, stiff, the passion of his verse. This imbued not only his antislavery utterances, but equally his ballads of the old witch and Quaker persecution, and flashed a far light into the dimness where his interrogations of Mystery pierced. Whatever doubt there can be of the fate of other New England poets in the great and final account, it seems ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... disloyalty to have witness that he wished, at least, to spend his life for his country? Moreover, there is work for you to do which fighting will hinder for this turn— go to, Heregar, I will tell you no more. Now do my bidding and go, and never will you forget that you helped an old witch with her burden." ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no concern. There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the Greeks, known to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and witch-hanging;—but time will show,—time will show, as the old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... Rabba Kega, the witch-doctor. Tarzan hated them all; but Rabba Kega he especially hated. As the blacks filed along the winding path, Rabba Kega, being lazy, dropped behind. This Tarzan noted, and it filled him with satisfaction—his being radiated a grim and terrible content. Like an angel of death ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sometimes she would even disguise herself as an old woman, that her young face might peep out the fresher from under the cap; and so utterly in this way did she confuse and mix together the actual and the fantastic, that people thought they were living with a sort of drawing-room witch. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he were the son of a witch, if curds and cream won his heart, and new clothes put an end to his labours, it does not pretend to tell. His history is less known than that of any other sprite. It may be embodied in some oral tradition that shall one day be found; but as yet the mists of forgetfulness hide it from the storyteller ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... she's not dull," Nanny answered. "My word! but she's like a bit of witch fire dancing—with her colour and her big silk curls in a heap. Donal stares at her like a young man at a beauty. I wish, ma'am, we knew more ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 'Execution of a Witch'—filled with gruesome and poignant detail—excellent in some of its ideas and single figures, but as a whole crude, horrible, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tub of hot water is most helpful where there is much tenderness, or inflammation. Witch-hazel in hot water douches or a weak solution of hot salt water is a wonderful ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Imagination, where human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, but deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these with the guileless, humble graces which alone can become them. . . . The ordinary lovers of witch and fairy matter will remark a deficiency of spectres and enchantments, and complain that the whole is rather dull. Cultivated free-thinkers, again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves exist in this country, will smile at the crack-brained dreamer, with his spelling-book prose and doggerel ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... can't get free of it. I'd like every drop of New England blood drained out of me, and something—say Hebrew or—or Middle-West," he laughed, "substituted in place of it. To you this is 'pretty' and 'cozy' and—and 'cheerful'; to me—well, it's like an orgy of blue laws; it's the personification of witch-lore—like self-inflicted penance for I don't know what." He glanced at her in excitement, shifting his hands uneasily in and out of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... accurately. It was a sense of vague and yet intense horror, with a conviction of being abroad in the night wind, and dragged through places as if by some invisible power. 'Last night,' he said, 'I felt as if I had been ridden by a witch for fifty miles, and rose far more wearied in mind and body than when I lay down.' So strong was his conviction of having been out, that he had difficulty in persuading himself to the contrary, by carefully examining his clothes in the morning, to see if they were not wet or dirty; ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Forget to visit thy wrath upon these people; For they have sworn away the life of Thy servant Who hath lived long in the land keeping Thy commandments. I am old, Lord, and betrayed; By neighbor and kin am I betrayed; A Judas kiss hath marked me for a witch. Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils! Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent." Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered; But still they suffered her to die. Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... reason why she was so vigorous and showed her sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying[3] (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... getting through, these days," said Aunt Jessica, coming in from the main kitchen. "We always allow an extra day or two on the road. Wasn't there anything at all from Bob or Sidney or Pete, Pris? You little witch, you certainly are hiding something behind ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Mr. Browne had said were interesting, but flippant. He had seen Bob at a college club and declared that he had met a witch of a country girl at the Merrills. He couldn't make her out, because she had refused to see him every time he called again. He had also repeated Cynthia's remark about Bob's father not being quite the biggest man in his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I can't permit it—I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!" ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... believe we have out every plate we own. Martin, do take the babies into the next room where they will be out from under foot. And watch that Nell doesn't eat the candles off the tree. She's always thinking they are candy, the witch!" ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom to lock up his sister at night in a bedroom ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... cowslops, or you'd a seen what they was arter. I thought you'd git nipt a grain, or my name wasn't Troffater. But I dasn't tell you what I thought on 'em. You wouldn't a' b'lieved me, I ben such a witch with my word. I spose you know the fellers have been heern from? They run out of all they cabbaged here perty quick. Frisbie, they say, is jugged up in jail, and there's better men sometimes hung than ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... had a soul, though not that you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... conception of god. So with almost every great change in the form of government or in the notions of right and wrong. In a slave state, God favours slavery. When slavery gives place to another form of labour the gods are equally vigorous in its condemnation. The history of the belief in witch burning, heresy hunting, eternal damnation, etc., all illustrate the same point—religious teachings are all modified and moralised in accordance with the changing moral conceptions of mankind. It is not the gods who moralise man, it is man who ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... Milan, and father of Miranda. He was deposed by his brother, Antonio, who sent him to sea with Miranda in a "rotten carcass of a boat," which was borne to a desert island. Here Prospero practised magic. He liberated Ariel from the rift of a pine tree, where the witch Syc'orax had confined him for twelve years, and was served by that bright spirit with true gratitude. The only other inhabitant of the island was Cal[)i]ban, the witch's "welp." After a residence in the island of sixteen years, Prospero raised ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the whole mystery, who had seemed to the boy to be spinning his very brain into dreams, rose, and, drawing near the bed, as if to finish the ruthless destruction, and with her long witch-broom sweep down the very cobwebs of his airy ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Military experts committed suicide by scores. The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too much for their sanity. Mere human reason could not withstand the shock. As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah. How did he do it? It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly lower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Behring's Straits; waterproof fishing jackets, made from the intestines of the whale; harpoons of bone tipped with meteoric iron; specimens of rude sculpture from these northern regions; clubs; hatchets; the magic dome of an Iceland witch; baskets and mats; calumets of peace; scalps; a model of a cradle, showing the method adopted by the Indians of the Columbia River to flatten their children's heads. The cases 23, 24, are filled with curiosities from more southernly parts of the North American continent; and chiefly with ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... makes man wary of themselves as looking no further? During times inclined to religion more than one hundred thousand witches were condemned to die by Christian tribunals in accordance with the holy text, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. During times inclined to religion it was usual to burn, broil, bake, or otherwise murder heretics for the glory of God, and at the same time to spare the vilest malefactors. During times inclined ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the white man. But the Natives received not only the white man's civilization and his religion, but have even gullibly imbibed his superstitions. Thus is their dread of the figure 13 accounted for. The Native witch-doctors in the early days took advantage of their credulity, whilst civilized people traded on their susceptibilities, and the semi-civilized Natives also traded upon the fears of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... gaze on her! How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg! When brown night falls and mists begin to live, Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge, Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds, Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs, And at their head the foam-begotten witch, Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven! Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight! How all unlike the base desire which leads Misguided men to that infernal cave, Is the pure passion that exalts my soul Like ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland's bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... had begun to take an interest in him as perhaps their oldest fellow-citizen. It was he that remembered the Great Fire and the Great Snow, and that had been a grown-up stripling at the terrible epoch of Witch-Times, and a child just breeched at the breaking out of King Philip's Indian War. He, too, in his school-boy days, had received a benediction from the patriarchal Governor Bradstreet, and thus could boast (somewhat ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I would let you know that my father is dead. I have come here to rest and have found some work to do. I am better now. Have seen Sally. She is very beautiful and kind. She does not know that I am the old witch, I have changed so. The others do not know—it is better that way. I think it was the Lord that brought me here. He has a way of taking care of some people, my boy. Do you remember when I began to call you my boy—you were very little. It is long, long ago since I first saw ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... me? 'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant; And like a bow, buckled and bent together, By some more strong in mischiefs than myself: Must I for that be made a common sink For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues, To fall and run into? some call me witch; And, being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one; urging That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so) Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... been to such people," he answered indifferently. "But if you ask my true opinion—well, no; I am quite sceptical! There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but more often there is nothing. In fact, you must remember that a witch generally tells her client what she believes her ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... done?" he cried; "now you have made us both unlucky, for had you held out only this one year, I had been freed. For I am the White Bear by day and a man by night. It is a wicked witch who has bewitched me; and now I must set off from you to her. She lives in a castle which stands East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and there are many trolls and witches there and one of those is the wife I ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... exasperated the porter almost beyond endurance, was the certainty he felt that she was mocking him. "For she didn't give me her name or address, the old witch!" he growled. "She had better look out, if I ever get hold ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... woods with guile They've led her bound in fetters vile To death, a deadlier sorceress Than any born for earth's distress Since first the winner of the fleece Bore home the Colchian witch to Greece— Seven months with snare and gin They've sought the maid o'erwise within The forest's labyrinthine shade. The lonely woodman half afraid Far off her ragged form has seen Sauntering down the ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... any. She was a queer old woman, and lived alone in a little tumble-down house with nineteen cats. Folks called her a witch, but she wasn't, though she looked like an old rag-bag. She was real kind to me when I lived in that place, and used to let me get warm at her fire when the folks at the ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to her off you theis last wicks, and not Haveing done so must supose you have not got mine witch was saying how me and my man had met in with bad times this season all seems to go cross with us on the farm and which way to look for the rent we have no knowledge of it this been the sad case with us if you would have the great [liberality probably, but the exact spelling ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... as Katherine was putting the last touches to her great picture "The Witch of Atlas," and to her sketch of an elaborate future, Fate stepped in and altered all her arrangements. She called it Fate, for she never could bring herself to say it was Ted. For months she had been living in a dream, in which she was ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... roof-chambers were covered with enormous cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years. That was as it should be. At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved. Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay. It was ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Havana's Witch-fog murks my Horoscope Until my dream-enamoured Senses grope Towards the Light, where in her opal Shrine Smiles Hopefulness, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... comedy!" soliloquised Santa Anna, as the door closed on his subordinate, "in which, before it's played out, I may myself take a part. She's a charming creature, this Senorita Valverde. But, ah! nothing to the Condesa. That woman—witch, devil, or whatever I may call her—bids fair to do what woman never did—make a fool of Lopez ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... thou mother Mab;[284] out, old rotten witch! As white as midnight's arsehole or virgin pitch. Where be ye? come together ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... red coals, goodman,— For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her, And both up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Mr. Copley, half delighted and half conscience-stricken, "you are a little witch, Dolly. Is this the way you are going to rule other folks beside me? Mr. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... such matter, in such a way as to make them think of it in connection with the Shaman.—In every village," the Corn Woman interrupted herself to say, "there is evil enough, if laid at the door of one person, to get her burned for a witch!" ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... against a clothes-line, And all the wash went flying; {278} The good dame cried, "A witch! a witch! The saints ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's no'but another version of what happened at the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... speak Spanish, she leered at us pleasantly from where she lay, occasionally muttering something in her native tongue, that might have been a tribute to our charms of mind or person, but which sounded more like an incantation. I felt she was a veritable witch, and at any moment expected to find myself changed into some animal or other under the baleful light of her eyes. If she had said, "Rumpelstilzchen, rumpelstilzchen," or any other cabalistic thing the witches in our fairy tales used to say, I should not have been surprised; ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... saw the witch-messenger of Fionn coming over the tops of the hills skimming from one to the other ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... fire before them; and when they took their supper they cast away all the bones around them. They then prepared to go to sleep, and laid themselves down upon the benches around the fire. When they, had been asleep a short time, a huge witch came into the house; and when she came in, she carefully swept together all the bones and whatever was of food kind into a heap, and threw it into her mouth. Then she gripped the man who was nearest to her, riving and tearing him asunder, and threw him upon the fire. The others awoke ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... "Helen, you witch, you darling sister," says Frank, kissing her, "I will do it—yes, to-morrow I will set forth, like Coelebs, in search of a wife! Now you must help me farther with your lively imagination; you must choose me a profession to ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... New England till in or near November, the fringed gentian has long been dead. It is in fact killed by the first considerable frost. No, if one were to go botanizing, and take Bryant's poem for a guide, he would not bring home any fringed gentians with him. The only flower he would find would be the witch-hazel. Yet I never see this gentian without thinking of Bryant's poem, and feeling that he has brought it immensely nearer ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... cats, who, lank with hunger, mewed. 20 Teased with their cries, her choler grew, And thus she sputtered: 'Hence, ye crew. Fool that I was, to entertain Such imps, such fiends, a hellish train! Had ye been never housed and nursed, I, for a witch had ne'er been cursed. To you I owe, that crowds of boys Worry me with eternal noise; Straws laid across, my pace retard, The horse-shoe's nailed (each threshold's guard), 30 The stunted broom the wenches hide, For ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... learning and judgment, as it is but too much your nature to do, to investigate the hidden things of another world, you might as well measure with the palm of your hand the waters of the Isis. Indeed, good sir, you err in this, and give men too much pretence to confound your honourable name with witch-advocates, free-thinkers, and atheists, even with such as this man Bletson, who, if the discipline of the church had its hand strengthened, as it was in the beginning of the great conflict, would have been long ere now cast out of the pale, and delivered over to the punishment of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... but this I did not see. All these villages were very lively, as the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was market-day in each of them,—there being quite a bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willingness to receive alms,—witch-like women, such as one sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very unlike anything feminine in America. Their style of dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bandage, a small supply of which Boone always carried with him on his expeditions, he gathered some leaves of the witch-hazel plant and, pounding them to a pulp, spread them upon the cloth. Thoroughly washing the wounded hand of Peleg, he then bound the cloth and pulp of the leaves upon the wound, saying as he did so: "In a week you will be as ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... out in wild and convulsive laughter, and repeated again and again in joyous tones, "Yes, yes, his beautiful Wilhelmina will punish him for calling me an old witch." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Concini, afterwards made a marshal of France, they jointly ruled the kingdom, and became so unpopular that the marshal was assassinated, and the wife, who had been qualified with the title of Marquise d'Ancre, burnt for a witch. This happened about the time of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even MAGISTER ARTIUM, save in right of his hungry belly. Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil's giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.—Now, good sir, I perceive you are impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own way, how have you warrant to think that he ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... rainbow gleamed out in the sky; Natuna dropped back till Charles heard her complain, Grey Glory's forequarters seemed hung on his rein, Cimmeroon clearly was feeling the strain. But the little Gavotte skimmed the clay like a witch, Charles saw her coquet as she went at ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... suspense is banished from the reader's mind, too well enabled to foresee the triumph at the end; but stories of long, painful quests after hidden treasure,—mysterious enchantments thrown around certain persons by witch or wizard, drawing the subject in charmed circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... said in private to Berenger, to whom he had taken a great liking. 'I cannot blame you for not casting your lot into such a witch's caldron as this poor country. My friends think I dallied at court like Rinaldo in Armida's garden. They do not understand that when one hears the name of Bourbon one does not willingly make war with the Crown, still less that the good Calvin left a doctrine bitter to the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to speak of what one has seen," urged the prompter of the uncle's ghost-story, "tell the Padrone of the witch that bewitched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... R.P. as sure as I am alive, and the fortune-teller was a witch. It is all out; it is all out! O the wonderful ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Art mad, young sir? Feed a murderer, a rogue banned by Holy Church, a serf that hath raised hand 'gainst his lord? He should have hanged when the witch his daughter burned, but that Sir Pertolepe, with most rare mercy, gave to the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... should this meane? my Doues are back returnd, Who warne me of such daunger prest at hand, To harme my sweete Ascanius louely life. Iuno, my mortall foe, what make you here? Auaunt old witch and trouble not ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... lights, [8] in semblance of lantern-fires, flit about dangerous places; and to protect yourself from this trick of his, it is necessary to learn that by joining your hands in a particular way, so as to leave a diamond-shaped aperture between the crossed fingers, you can extinguish the witch-fire at any distance simply by blowing through the aperture in the direction of the light and uttering ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... to a certain point; which point Forms the most difficult in punctuation. Appearances appear to form the joint On which it hinges in a higher station; And so that no explosion cry 'Aroint Thee, witch!' or each Medea has her Jason; Or (to the point with Horace and with Pulci) 'Omne tulit ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Clameran detested the countess, Mme. de la Verberie execrated the marquis. If he nicknamed her "the witch," she never called him ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... one moment that she was downright plain, but might probably be that mysterious and incomprehensible and dangerous creature, "a gentleman's beauty," which, to women, means no beauty at all, but a witch-like creature, that goes and hits foul, and eclipses real beauty—dolls, to wit—by some ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... four years is a privilege reserved only for the happy few who have the arts of courting the manager as well as the muse; who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. Our Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then; but the man who under present discouragements ventures to write for the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, at least has no right to be called a conjurer." ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... unboastful charms! whom white-robed Truth Right onward guiding through the maze of youth, Forbade the Circe Praise to witch thy soul, And dash'd to earth th' intoxicating bowl: Thee meek-eyed Pity, eloquently fair, 5 Clasp'd to her bosom with a mother's care; And, as she lov'd thy kindred form to trace, The slow smile ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trees where wind-falls had mowed down the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... them into some wood to be deuoured of wylde beastes. But there is no kynde of puttynge them awaye more cruell, then to geue vp that to beastlye affeccions, whych nature hath geuen to be fashioned by very good waies. If ther wer ani witch could wyth euyl craftes, and wold go about to turne thy sonne into a swyne or a wolfe, woldest thou not thynke that ther were no punyshemente to sore for her myscheuouse deede? But that whych thou abhorrest in her, thou of purpose doest it thy selfe. ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus
... seemed determined to spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind. Here the company were all in unison ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Christian.' 'And would you burn me?' says she. 'God forbid!' replied the priest, 'except for the good of the Church!' Now, this priest must be descended from some of those who attempted to blow up a river with gunpowder, in order to drown a city. Or he must have taken her for a witch, whereas, by his own confession, she 'was no heretic.' A gentleman whom I know declared to me, upon his honor, that he heard Mr. Wesley repeat, in a sermon preached by him in the city of Cork, the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Old Walquitch were ghostly white in the flood of the full moon, just risen, and swimming like a globe of witch's fire over the far, dark, wooded horizon. But the bushy shelf and the spring by the thicket, were still in shadow. Along the trail to the spring, moving noiselessly, yet with a confident dignity, came a paler shadow, the shape of a huge, gray-white ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Queen's new hockey coach being exhausted for the time being, "Got any good stuff for the play in your cubicles, Cathy?" asked Eleanor; "looks to me as if they are a nice lively little bunch. What a little witch Sally May is, and what lovely eyes Judy has! I'm glad she and Nancy are such pals—they make a ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... yellow plush suit and swishy-tail all painted sideways in stripes like a tiger! There was a most furious tiger head with whisk-broom whiskers! There was a green frog's head! And a green frog's suit! There was a witch's hat and cape! And a hump on the back! There were bows and arrows! There were boxes and boxes of milliner's flowers! There were strings of beads! And yards and yards of dungeon chains made out of silver paper! And a real bugle! And ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
