"Witching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wholly delightful. With those who are fond of bed-reading Trollope should ever be a favourite, and it is no small compliment to say this, for small is the noble army of authors who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between waking and slumber. It is probable that all lovers of letters have their favourite bed-books. Thackeray has charmingly told us of his. Of the few novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who—consciously ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a veteran grim and grey, With sling and crutch, I am but fit to watch the fray Where, in the world-old, witching way, In other hands your fingers stay With lingering touch, That may mean nothing, or it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... hosts above Unbar their golden gates, While Nature holds her court of love, And for her client waits. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies To light thee to thy bower. The day we dedicate to care— To love the witching night; For all that's beautiful and fair In hours like these unite. E'en thus the sweets to flowerets given— The moonlight on the tree— And all the bliss of earth and heaven— Are mingled, love, in thee. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... taught my willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held! Who was it did all this for me? O, who, but honest ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... week he had sat at the foot of the Lone Pine and barked and barked until his throat was sore. Every night old Mother Fox had warned him that noisy children would come to no good end, and every night Reddy had promised that he would bark no more. But every night when the first silver flood of witching light crept over the hill and cast strange shadows from the naked branches of the trees, Reddy forgot all about his promise. Deep down under his little red coat was a strange feeling which he could not explain. He simply must bark, so up to the Lone Pine he would ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the witching time for Story-telling. "Our whole life, Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... management. Mr. Eugene Walter's "The Easiest Way," at the last moment, was released from publication in the Drama League Series of Plays; it still stands as America's most cruelly realistic treatment of certain city conditions. In the choice of Mr. Augustus Thomas's "In Mizzoura"—"The Witching Hour" having so often been used in dramatic collections—the Editor believes he has represented this playwright at a time when his dramas were most racy ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... crests and hollows of the sand-dunes, to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle—it was really like the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of a haunted spot on a road, where a "ghost" was seen, not at the witching hour of night, not when evening shadows lengthen, but in broad daylight. It is sent to us by the percipient, a lady, who does not desire to have her name mentioned. She was walking along a country road in the vicinity of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... streams, the pearly streams, The streams in sunbeams flashing, The murm'ring streams, the gentle streams, The streams down mountains dashing, Have been the theme Of poets' dream, And, in wild witching story, Have been renowned for love's fond scenes, Or some great ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time in discussion this evening—What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as you will to-morrow evening admit. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... rein to in any play he has thus far written. The consequence is, when he aimed at mental effect, the result was nearly always pompous, as when Dr. Seelig, in "As a Man Thinks," tries to explain the psychological matrix of the piece, and as when Jack Brookfield, in "The Witching Hour," explains the basis of telepathy. But when he aimed nowhere, yet gave us living, breathing flashes of character, as dominate "The Other Girl" and are typified in the small role of Lew Ellinger, in "The Witching Hour," Thomas was happiest in his humour, most unaffected ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... spring! Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing Their true-pac'd numbers and their holy lays, Which makes them worthy cedar and the bays. But why, why longer do I gaze upon Thee with the eye of admiration? Since I must leave thee, and enforc'd must say To all thy witching beauties, Go, away. But if thy whimpering looks do ask me why, Then know that nature bids thee go, not I. 'Tis her erroneous self has made a brain Uncapable of such a sovereign As is thy powerful self. Prithee not ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... January 8, with three craftsmen of the town, I painted a pack of cards. They were for a senator, in a hurry. I the diamonds. My queen came forth with eyes like spring violets, hair a golden brown, and witching smile. My fellow-craftsmen saw her, and put their arms round my neck and hailed me master. Oh, noble Germans! No jealousy of a brother-workman: no sour looks at a stranger; and would have me spend Sunday with them after matins; and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Spain's maids no race of Amazons, But formed for all the witching arts of love: Though thus in arms they emulate her sons, And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove, Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate: In softness as in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the clock in the stable tower crept from hour to hour, the bell telling off the half-hours. She neither saw nor heard. Then came the twelve long deliberate strokes announcing the witching hour. At the first stroke Beverly started into life. By the time the last had sounded the pretty pink dinner gown she had been wearing lay in a tumbled heap upon the bed ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... anxious endeavours. Occasionally, too, I have beheld a man bestriding a horse in that peculiar fashion which may be described as his being on the outside of the animal, slipping away over the hot stones, possibly at a trot, and fancying ivthough with many suspicions to the contrary; that he is witching the world with noble horsemanship. What a pity that such poor fellows will persist in aiming at what they cannot achieve! What mortification and disappointment they must often know! The horse backs on to the pavement, into a plate-glass window, just as Maria, for whose ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... neither were they brown; but they presented in the most fascinating ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... island to island, freighted with a population just waked up to a realizing sense of the pleasures of existence; then is the atmosphere balmy, and the light wonderfully soft and richly tinted; then come the sweet witching hours, when ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... fortnight now, my dear, I have been living the life of society; one evening at the Italiens, another at the Grand Opera, and always a ball afterwards. Ah! society is a witching world. The music of the Opera enchants me; and whilst my soul is plunged in divine pleasure, I am the centre of admiration and the focus of all the opera-glasses. But a single glance will make the boldest ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... yielded to the bondage of the gay coquette. Now she smiled winningly upon him, and again laughed at his tender speeches. He besought her to dance with him, and she refused, but with such an artless grace, such witching good humor, and playful cruelty, that he could not feel offended. I addressed her and she turned away from him. I had not presumption enough to suppose I could win a maiden's heart where he was my rival, but I thought that, aided ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... decked in long robes were held, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at the dead of night. Notices were sent to obnoxious persons warning them to stop certain practices. If warning failed, something more convincing was tried. Fright was the emotion most commonly stirred. A horseman, at the witching hour of midnight, would ride up to the house of some offender, lift his head gear, take off a skull, and hand it to the trembling victim with the request that he hold it for a few minutes. Frequently violence was employed either officially ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... witching hour of night. Luna illumines my chamber, and falls upon my sleepless pillow. By her light I am inditing these words to thee, my Algernon. My brave and beautiful, my soul's lord! when shall the time come when the tedious night ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... think this was, from his shivering notes. Listen again! how old is the dead Time, whose age the distant town-clock is tolling? I don't care to count—to tell the truth, that owl makes me nervous—and if it is 'the witching time of night,' I don't ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... last the dreadful chase, Till time itself shall have an end; By day, they scour earth's cavern'd space, At midnight's witching ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... things of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio, which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances of the preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case. The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Sir Aymer de Valence held an interview with the old sexton; and who now, drawing into a separate corner some of the straggling parties whom he had collected and brought to the church, kept on the alert, and appeared ready for an attack as well at mid-day as at the witching hour of midnight. This was the more necessary, as the eye of Sir John de Walton seemed busied in searching from one place to another, as if unable to find the object he was in quest of, which the reader will easily understand to be the Lady Augusta de Berkely, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Loses all his pretty smiles; He says they're very far away; At least a hundred miles. He looks as sober as a judge, As stately as a king, As solemn as a parson and As still as anything. And then our little Bertie, The witching willow bringing, Sends all the smiles safe home again, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... Oh, witching as its scenes, and bright As is its cloudless summer light, Be still its maids, the soul's delight Of every truthful callan'! Be health around it ever spread, To light the eye, to lift the head, And joy on every heart be shed That beats ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... pavement; many of the pillars were festooned with ivy; and, in some places, the shattered walls were covered with creepers, and trees had taken root in the crevices of the masonry. Beautiful at all times were these magnificent ruins; but never so beautiful as when seen by the witching light of the moon—the hour, according to the best authority, when all ruins should be viewed—when the long lines of broken pillars, the mouldering arches, and the still glowing panes over the altar, had a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... which, by some means, had been left slightly open. Black Eagle went up to it and pushed the door farther open. An odour came forth—a damp, rancid, familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved odour stirring strongly at old memories of happy days and travels. Black Eagle sniffed at the witching smell as the returned wanderer smells of the rose that twines his boyhood's cottage home. Nostalgia seized him. He put his hand inside. Excelsior—dry, springy, curly, soft, enticing, covered the floor. Outside the drizzle had turned to a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Rambler, of which she was particularly fond, and began to read. For a while she listened, and in her interest forgot her forebodings, but after a time her long silky lashes swept her cheeks, and she slept. The minister laid down the volume and watched the pure girlish face; noted all its witching loveliness, and thought of the homage which it would win her in coming years. He knew as he sat watching her slumber that he loved her above everything on earth; that she wielded a power none had ever possessed before—that his heart was indissolubly linked with hers. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... chapel's altar-stone, And sings her matins there. Her feet are swift All day in labours 'mid the vales below, Cheering sad hearts: each evening she returns To that high fane, and there her vespers sings; Then sleeps, and dreams of heaven.' With witching smile The youngest of that beauteous triad cried: 'That life is sweetest! I would be that maid!' Cuthbert resumed: 'The Christian Wife comes next: She drinks a deeper draught of life: round her In ampler sweep its sympathies extend: An infant's cry has knocked against her heart, Evoking ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... pretty well inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets of Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half— past nine in the evening, and as it was now "the witching time o' night," there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except a solitary town guard now and then, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. These same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch's brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was—supper. In this wise, and thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... all on me, And let me be a story left to time Of blood and Infamy, how base and ugly Ingratitude appears, with all her profits, How monstrous my hop'd grace, at Court! good souldiers Let neither flattery, nor the witching sound Of high and soft preferment, touch your goodness: To be valiant, old, and honest, O ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... incidents which have a plot. In "Travels with a Donkey," by Stevenson, no one cares for the plot of the whole book,—in fact there is none; yet the reader is interested in the purchase of the "neat and high bred" Modestine up to the "last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy." This incident has a plot. The following is a paragraph from "An Autumn Effect" by Mr. Stevenson. The simple events are perfectly ordered, and there is a delightful surprise at the end. This paragraph has a plot. Yet the thirty pages of "An Autumn ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Another witching time is the period of twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. Hence in some parts of Silesia the people burn pine-resin all night long between Christmas and the New Year in order that the pungent smoke may drive witches ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... what Staff wanted with all his heart. He wanted to go home and swelter and be swindled by taxicab drivers and snubbed by imported head-waiters; he wanted to patronise the subway at peril of asphyxiation and to walk down Fifth Avenue at that witching hour when electric globes begin to dot the dusk of evening—pale moons of a world of steel and stone; he wanted to ride in elevators instead of lifts, in trolley-cars instead of trams; he wanted to go to a ball-game at the Polo Grounds, to dine dressed as he pleased, ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the discourse, for it very naturally directed the attention of all present from a subject that was rather tolerated from idleness than interesting in itself, to the different natural phenomena by which they were surrounded. The sunset had now fairly passed, and the travellers were at the witching moment that precedes the final disappearance of the day. A calm so deep rested on the limpid lake, that it was not easy to distinguish the line which separated the two elements, in those places where the blue of the land was ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... witching skies, And with a jocund train, With dancing joy-light in His eyes, God, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... soon, with wondering eye, Take to itself a female form, And hover toward me from on high, As fall the leaves in Autumn storm. Her dress was like the mantle fair Which Autumn to Columbia brings, And bids the moaning forest wear, With rainbow hues of angel's wings; Her voice was like the witching strain Which laughing streamlets gayly sing When Summer o'er the ripening grain Spreads wide ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... a child, on some long winter's night, Affrighted, clinging to its grandam's knees, With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees, Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags who at the witching time Of murky midnight, ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of hell; Cold horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel uncle's ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... In vain he sought for any sign of the girl whose acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly, and he was almost tempted to believe that she was no other than a creature of his own imagination, born of the witching moonlight hour, and absorbed again into the passing shadows of night. But could he have seen through the walls of that old grey house, even now at that early hour, he would have understood what kept the preacher's niece so busily engaged that neither on the shore nor on the banks of the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine |
