"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... sir"—Sally is addressing a promising spectre, an old gentleman of sweet aspect—"have I passed the Hurkaru Club?" The spectre helps an imperfect hearing with an ear-covering outspread hand, and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Darwin just waved Lamarck aside, and said as little about him as he could, while in his earlier editions Erasmus Darwin and Buffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at once raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcised. He said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary." The giraffe did not "acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose, but ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my thoughts and remembrances ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... brought upon the peasantry, increased this hatred. The poor persecuted country people believed that the New Forest was enchanted. They said that in thunder- storms, and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving beneath the branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a terrible spectre had foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King should be punished there. And now, in the pleasant season of May, when the Red King had reigned almost thirteen years; and a second Prince of the Conqueror's blood—another Richard, the son of Duke ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... obtain.—Clarine's husband fell sick—a dangerous illness.—"No hope" said the physician, and shook his awful whig. Bitterly wept Clarine. "O death!" she cried, "O death! might I prefer a petition? Spare my husband; let me be the victim in his stead." Death heard, appeared, and "What," said the grim spectre, "is thy request?" "There," said Clarine sore dismayed, "There he lies; overcome with agony he implores ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... ail her?" whispered Barbara, following Joyce with her eyes. "What did she mean about a spectre?" ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... her into 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 violence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... following had to be performed by the person alone. You took an apple and stood with it in your hand in front of a looking-glass. Then you sliced the apple, stuck each slice on the point of the knife, and held it over your left shoulder, while you looked into the glass and combed your hair. The spectre of your future husband would then appear in the mirror stretching forth his hand to take the slices of the apple over your shoulder. Some say that the number of slices should be nine, that you should eat the first eight yourself, and only throw the ninth over your left shoulder for your ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... sit up?" queried this visitor Lane took for the spectre of a dream. He advanced into the room. He grasped Lane with firm hand. And then Lane realized this was no nightmare. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... woolen wheel, being taken very strangely out of an house at Salem Village, was used by a spectre as an instrument of torture to a sufferer, not being discernible to the standers by until it was by the said sufferer snatched out of the spectre's hand, and then it did immediately appear to the persons present to be ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... her to him, felt new springs of emotion unseal themselves within him. The past few years had not been happy ones. As his profits grew, he was conscious of the spectre of anxiety at his elbow. It had been a simple thing to make a thousand and then ten and then twenty, till, as he marched ever faster toward the siren call, he perceived that he was no longer in his own country, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... to go first to the little square mirror that hung in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely with his hands full ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... pass a man might reduce himself to, at that enormous gaming-table of the gods, if he lingered there: think what considerations these had been for him! So that "his look became FAROUCHE," in the sight of Valori; and the spectre of Ruin kept him company, and such hell-dogs were in chase of him;—till Czaslau, when the dice fell kind again! All this had been didactic on a young docile man. He was but thirty gone. And if readers mark such docility at those years, they will find considerable meaning in it. Here are prudence, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... homewards across the old line. A ghost-peopled dusk was crawling over the devastation and desolation that is Vimy, and in the distance the bare bones of St. Eloy loomed like a spectre skeleton against the frosty after-glow. We hummed past Thelus cross-roads, dipped downhill and, hey presto! all of a sudden I was in China. (No, not Neuville-St.-Vaast; China, China, place where they eat birds'-nests and puppy-dogs' tails.) There were coolies ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... apartments, and bore with an astonishing meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of fashion heaped upon his shoulders. At heart he was restless and unhappy. The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King haunted his thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was his whole life to be passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture which in itself was gall and wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and open? Was he forever to appear a rich man and live ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... congratulation. 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 on the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... classical antiquity Wordsworth has traced the career of Dion,—the worthy pupil of Plato, the philosophic ruler of Syracuse, who allowed himself to shed blood unjustly, though for the public good, and was haunted by a spectre symbolical of this fatal error. At last Dion was assassinated, and the words in which the poet tells his fate seem to me to breathe the very triumph of philosophy, to paint with a touch the greatness of a spirit which makes of Death himself a deliverer, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a central mound or platform—the crown and axis of the whole structure. The view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful notes in celebration of daring, strength, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... MONK Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. He promulgated a new code of laws in the island, for the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... for his head was burning. He entered his chamber, which was hung around with purple, but the walls of which now seemed to distil blood. He advanced a few steps, when, lo! a corpse appeared to rise slowly on his golden couch; his bed was occupied by a spectre, and near the costly lamp, which shed a pale light round the chamber, the chains of the martyr seemed to descend from the ceiling. Diocletian uttered a cry that might have penetrated the grave. His guards ran in, but instantly ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... park, four persons met to do battle for the life of Mr. Manvers, while he lay grumbling and burning in his bed, behind the curtains of it. Don Luis Ramonez was there, the first to come—tall and gaunt, with undying pride in his hollow eyes, like a spectre of rancour kept out of the grave. Behind him Tormillo came creeping, a little restless man, dogging his master's footsteps, watching for word or sign from him. These two stood by the lake in the huge empty park, still under its ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... balcony of my window, to bid him the last farewell, and to follow him with my eyes as far as possible. I know not what effect the sight of me may have produced, but when I now reflect upon it myself; I imagine that the people must have believed it was a spectre welcoming a corpse to ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... him when one should call Upon me by this ring and in his name! Lo, thou hast called upon me; I obey! What wishest thou of me, thou evil ghost With hollow sunken eyes? What wouldst thou have. Thou spectre of the twilight gloom? ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing that my old ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... again, he spied Annie, in the dark twilight, standing on the edge of the descent to the vaults. He had passed the spot not a minute before, and she was certainly not there then. She looked as if she had just glided up that slope from a region so dark that a spectre might haunt it all day long. But Beauchamp was not of a fanciful disposition, and instead of taking her for a spectre, he ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... stranger: surely no man's tongue Was e'er so soft, or half so sweet, as his. Oft as he listened, Nino's heart had sprung With sudden start as from a spectre's kiss; For deep in many a word he deemed had rung The liquid fall of some loved emphasis; And so it pierced his sorrow to the core, The ghost of tones that he should ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... some attention to the occult sciences, and he entered upon these themes with an ardour that delighted the philosopher. Their conversations frequently turned upon astrology, divination, and the great secret. The old man would forget his aches and wounds, rise up like a spectre in his bed, and kindle into eloquence on his favourite topics. When gently admonished of his situation, it would but prompt him to another ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... determination is unalterable. Do not write to me, for your letters would remain unanswered. Prayer will henceforth be my only occupation. Excuse me for leaving you, but I am fatigued from my journey!'—He spoke the truth for he was as pale as a spectre, with a kind of wildness about the eyes, and so changed since the day before, as to be hardly the same man. His hand, when he offered it on parting from me, was dry and burning. The Abbe d'Aigrigny ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of a palace, in order to give more effect to their entree. When the air is finished, whatever may be the violent or affecting situation of his character, the singer must bow to the audience in acknowledgment of their applause. The other day, in Semiramis, after the spectre of Ninus had sung his air, the representative of this shadowy personage made in his ghostly costume a low reverence to the pit, which greatly diminished ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... letter on her bosom. Now she draws it from between the child's fingers, reads it, mutters something between her closed teeth, and then burns it to cinders in the candle; then she shakes her head, and frowning darkly at little Nettie, glides, spectre-like, out of the room. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... was about to join the ranks of the alarmists. But members generally were of his opinion. In vain did Fox, Erskine, Grey, and Sheridan deprecate the attempt to confuse moderate Reform with reckless innovation. Burke illogically but effectively dragged in the French spectre, and Windham declared that the public mind here, as in other lands, was in such a state that the slightest scratch might produce ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... are sending him to his death. (Enter JARVIS on stairs.) Success to you, Mr. Ghost Breaker, when you beard the spectre in his den. (Takes hat and ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... man filled her heart. For unhappy he was! She saw at once that he had had a long slide downhill since his last visit to her. He was frightened—frightened immediately now of Grace and the room and the physical world—but frightened also behind these things at some spectre all his own. Grace sat down and tried to recover herself. She began to talk in her society voice. Maggie knew that she was praying, over and over again, with a monotony possible only to the very stupid, that there would be no ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... fact, it wur th' railway thay saw, An' at th' first o'th' spectre thay all stood in awe, For it wur smashed all i' pieces ashamed to be seen As tho it hed passed throo a sausidge masheen, Wi' horror sum fainted while others took fits, An' theas 'at cud stand it wir piking ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... blight, I charge thee, speak, by all that is most fair. By all most foul, I charge thee to declare; By my bright armor and my trusty sword; I charge thee, speak, by Holy Rood and Word!" He sank exhausted, in such pallid fright The snowy sheets looked dark beside such white. The spectre paused in silence for awhile, Then broke into a most repulsive smile, And answered in a weird and hollow tone, Enough to freeze the marrow in the bone: "I am thy blasted spirit's counterpart, A body fit for thy most evil heart, I am thy life, its psychic image sent ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bells that rose the boughs along, The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover—shadow'd my ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... known that Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth not only palmed off on Sir Waiter Scott several ballads of his own manufacture, but also invented and pretended to have found in a document (since burned) the story of the duel with the spectre knight which occurs in Marmion. In the following letter this ingenious antiquary plays the same game with Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, the celebrated antiquary. A note on the subject is published ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... come, he remembered her face as it had looked on him that night. Often in dreams he would start and cry out, haunted by the sound of her scornful voice, the spectre of ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... hand as though he feared another blow. The gesture was so human and yet so humble that Mary looked into his face. Time, which turns the sweet-eyed girl into a withered spectre, must have touched him with its thumb. His eyes were ringed ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... most likely have had for the regret; and, upon the whole, it is my opinion, that Wallace actually saw the visions, and that the legend originated in the fact. I do not mean to imply that Fawdon became present, embodied or disembodied, whatever may have been the case with his spectre. I only say that what the legend reports Wallace to have seen, was actually in the hero's eyes. The remainder of the question I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... be held in check by natural restraints: neither chains nor dungeons could bind it down or confine it. You might load the witch with irons, you might bury her in the lowest cell of a feudal prison, and still it was believed that she could send forth her imps or her spectre to ravage the fields, and blight the meadows, and throw the elements into confusion, and torture the bodies, and craze the minds, of any who might be the objects ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... always quoted her with delight, as a proof that bloom and strength were not monopolized by English girls. In the parlor I found the mother closeted with the family physician. Soon, Fanny, aged sixteen, glided in,—a pale spectre, exquisite in costume, unexceptionable in manners, looking in all respects like an exceedingly used-up belle of five-and-twenty. "What were you just saying that some of my Fanny's symptoms were, Doctor?" asked the languid mother, as if longing for a second taste of some dainty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! come in!' he sobbed, 'Cathy, do come! Oh, my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catharine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... that point everything had been going nicely, but then and there I spoiled it. Moved by I know not what folly, I wrote her a yet more roundabout letter, which, however, was very pressing. In attempting to fan her flame I kindled myself—for a spectre—and at once I ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... acts repeated rise from joys or pains, And swell Imagination's flowing trains; So in dread dreams amid the silent night Grim spectre-forms the shuddering sense affright; Or Beauty's idol-image, as it moves, Charms the closed eye with graces, smiles, and loves; 70 Each passing form the pausing heart delights, And young SENSATION ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... a Ceylon elephant-hunter would be the first view of a herd of African elephants—all tuskers! In Ceylon, a "tusker" is a kind of spectre, to be talked of by a few who have had the good luck to see one. And when he is seen by a good sportsman, it is an evil hour for him—he is followed till he gives ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the fingers was a mass of lambent flame. When Bill saw this fearful apparition he screamed with hearty good will; but the noise he made was nothing to the yell of terror that came from beneath the shroud of the Yew-lane Ghost, who, on catching sight of the rival spectre, fled wildly up the lane, kicking the white sheet off as he went, and finally displaying, to Bill's amazement, the form and features of Bully Tom. But this was not all. No sooner had the first ghost started, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the lamp, bent for a few seconds over the still sprawling fakir, whipped him again twice, cursed him and kicked him, until he got up and ran like a spectre for the gloom beyond the trees. Then, with a rather stately sweep of the lamp, and a tremble in his voice that was probably intentional—designed to make Cunningham at least aware of the existence of emotion before he looked—he let the light fall on the slab ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... undesirable which could keep an entire community of brave men in dread of some indefinable tragedy. Mobs and riots of much greater magnitude than the John Brown uprising had frequently occurred in the free States, and they were put down by the firm authority of law, without the dread hand of a spectre behind which might in a moment light the horizon with the conflagration of homes, and subject wives and daughters to a fate of nameless horror. Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of Republican principles, the mad scheme of John Brown ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous duplicate only. The ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... became black cobwebs on the sky, then melted away and vanished altogether. At the same time, the water, which the boats had troubled, grew smooth again, reflecting the sunset glow, with the sombre hull and ebon spars painted upon it, until Frank saw the spectre of a double ship ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps to observe whether he had any spectre ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course, getting into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots (if there is a pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at the mast-head thinks he sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor rising on the horizon, many honourable and peaceable men continue their work and studies all the same, and follow out to the end, or as far as they can, their favourite hobbies. I know, at the present time, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality that was M. de Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to judge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceive something of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... our great seaboard merchants, our shippers, our factors, have given their patronage to pro-slavery journals and their votes to pro-slavery politicians, with intent to preserve the Union and lay the red spectre of civil war. Their recompense is found in the repudiation of the immense debts for merchandise due them from the South, and a gigantic war waged by the Slave Power for the overthrow of the Union. The profits of a lifetime of obsequious pandering to the master crime of our ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... spectre insatiable, Ne m'en demande pas si long. L'homme n'ecrit rien sur le sable A l'heure ou passe l'aquilon. J'ai vu le temps ou ma jeunesse Sur mes levres etait sans cesse Prete a chanter comme un oiseau; Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre, Et le ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... lively potentate. She never left her house. None of the present generation of Elmertonians had ever seen her face; and to the rising generation, the boys and girls who passed the outer hedge, if dusk were coming on, with hurried step and quick affrighted glances, she was a kind of spectre, a living phantom of the past, probably terrible to look upon, certainly dreadful to think of. These terrors were heightened by the knowledge, diffused one hardly knew how, that Miss Dane was a spiritualist, and that in her belief at least, the silent house ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... the grim spectre valiantly. He patted Ulana's hand as his weak voice resumed. "You will take care of her I know, Carson. Take her with you to your own world; make her happy." He ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... 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 would fly. ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down. For in George was all ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thing—the old and ever young demand which man slaps into the face of the universe." The colonel searched among the scraps in his note-book. "See," holding up a soiled slip of typed paper, "I copied this out years ago. Listen. 'What a monstrous spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she caught his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... sixty years have passed away since he enriched the columns of the Collegian with the fruits of his muse, more than half of the pieces survive, and are deemed good enough to hold a place beside his maturer productions. "Evening of a Sailor," "The Meeting of the Dryads," and "The Spectre Pig,"—the latter in the vein of Tom Hood at his best,—will be remembered as among those in the collection which may be read to-day with the zest, appreciation, and delight which they inspired more than half a century ago. Holmes' connection ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... King of Persia, thou art blest; But not because the sparkling bowl To rapture lifts thy waken'd soul [1] But not because of Power possest, Not that the Nations dread thy nod, And Princes reverence thee their earthly God, Even on a Monarch's solitude Care the black Spectre will intrude, The bowl brief pleasure can bestow, The Purple cannot shield from Woe. But King of Persia thou art blest, For Heaven who rais'd thee thus the world above Has made ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... no spectre have we here; He growls, doubts, lays him on his belly too, And wags his tail-as dogs are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... remained and obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre that drives men to madness or despair—illimitable omnipotent Malice. In its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority! What ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... universal mourning throughout Albania, and produced a not less deep impression on the mind of her murderer. Emineh's spectre pursued him in his pleasures, in the council chamber, in the hours of night. He saw her, he heard her, and would awake, exclaiming, "my wife! my wife!—It is my wife!—Her eyes are angry; she threatens me!—Save me! Mercy!" For more than ten years Ali ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ways—first, in keenest perception of the main forms and facts in the creature; and, secondly, in the grandeur of line by which their forms are abstracted and insisted on, making every asp, ibis, and vulture a sublime spectre of asp or ibis or vulture power. The way for students to get some of this gift again (some only, for I believe the fulness of the gift itself to be connected with vital superstition, and with resulting intensity ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... may be, there will be reality in it, and force. It is not a manufactured terribleness, whose author, when he had finished it, knew not if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre which the workman indeed saw, and which, as it appalled him, will appal us also. But the other workman never felt any Divine fear; he never shuddered when he heard the cry from the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in flames—none but ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... for him" says the Major and brings him in here. But on the way Mr. Buffle looks about him in his usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and asks him "Do you see a Ghost sir?" "No sir" says Mr. Buffle. "Because I have before noticed you" says the Major "apparently looking for a spectre very hard beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find that supernatural agent, be so good as point him out sir." Mr. Buffle stares at the Major and then nods at me. "Mrs. Lirriper sir" says the Major going off into a perfect steam and introducing me with his hand. "Pleasure ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... accounts for our politeness. Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution. Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright. But here is a damnable spectre who knocks at the door and does not wait to hear you say, 'Come in.' Hateful! If other people think differently it is because they live differently. How do they live? Like a cow that has stumbled ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship. Like ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... has not heard at any time within the memory of man of this expected "rising in the West"? It is the spectre rouge, or, to be more accurate as to local colour, the spectre vert of the Irish alarmist, and a poor, ragged, out-at-elbows spectre it is, altogether very much the worse for wear. Flesh and blood could not bear the mention of this shabby, worn-out old ghost with calmness, and I conveyed to the gentlemen who volunteered the information my opinion that ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... future from our vision. Faith and the 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 ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... tumultuous scene, and is led away, shaking off Elvira's efforts to save him with bitter contempt, and breaking loose from her with the prophecy that in every joy of the future and every incident of her wedded life, the spectre of his murdered love will rise before her, and 'every echo and every breeze repeat the fatal ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spectre had been evoked by that thrilling, though deep-toned roar, a huge unforeseen gray form suddenly arose very loftily and towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as a single ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... 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
... that I must wed him, In spite of yea or nay, Though uglier than the Scaramouch, The spectre in the play; But I will sooner die a maid Than wear a gilded chain, For all the ancient noblemen And ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... horror thrill'd, Melinda's lord Held up the eager hand, and caught the word. "Oh, wondrous faith of ancient days," he cries, "Concealed in mystic lore and dark disguise! Taught by their sires, our hoary fathers tell, On these rude shores a giant spectre fell, What time from heaven the rebel band were thrown: And oft the wand'ring swain has heard his moan. While o'er the wave the clouded moon appears To hide her weeping face, his voice he rears O'er the wild storm. Deep in the days of yore, A holy pilgrim trod the nightly ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... brought fresh news, and the threatening spectre of war drew nearer and nearer. The order for mobilisation had been given. The field-troops were separated from the depot, destined to remain in Chanidigot. The infantry were provided with ammunition, and were daily exercised in firing and bayonet drill. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he had eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all going deranged together?" retorted he, wondering what had come to the house. "Seen a spectre, Joyce?" ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Madame Patey, Madame Trebelli; Messrs. Edward Lloyd, Joseph Maas, Santley, Signor Foli. Herr Richter was the conductor. Works performed were:—Oratorio, "Elijah"; new Cantata, "Sleeping Beauty"; new Oratorio, "Mors et Vita"; new cantata, "Yule Tide"; Oratorio, "Messiah"; new Cantata, "The Spectre's Bride"; new ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... walk, he got to a distance from the fire, the vast apartment was so ill-lighted by a single candle that he could be no longer seen, he could still be heard marching about in the dark, however, and presently returned slowly towards the light, and emerged by degrees from obscurity, looking like a spectre, with his white robe and cap, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... breathing, and advised him to forget them and go back to his lessons. But his lessons never interested Tommy, and he would go into the Den instead, and repeat Blinder's legends, with embellishments which made them so real that Corp and Elspeth and Grizel were afraid to look behind them lest the spectre of Captain Body should be standing there, leaning on ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... through the mist of the morning gray, The spectre and horse rode wide; The dawn came up the old bright way, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to a widely different group, is the "sylph" (Hestia Jasonia), called by the Europeans by the various names of Floater, Spectre, and Silver-paper-fly, as indicative of its graceful flight. It is found only in the deep shade of the damp forest, frequenting the vicinity of pools of water and cascades, about which it sails heedless of the spray, the moisture ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... violet sprung from the sod, By his bedside; pale, beautiful, dewy with tears. The spectre of death bridged the chasm of years: He sighed on her bosom. "Forgive, oh forgive!" She kissed his pale forehead and answered him: "Live, Live, my husband! oh plead with the angels to stay Until God, too, has pardoned your sins. Let ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... speaking from among the bones: 'When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I! They view me like the last of things: They make, and then they dread, my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre-form appears. Death's but a path that must be trod If man would ever pass to God, A port of calms, a state of ease From the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 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, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... The prisoners' counsel, as one of them told Sir Walter Scott, knew that their clients were guilty. A witness had seen them in the act. But the advocate (Lockhart, a Jacobite) made such fun out of the ghost that an Edinburgh jury, disbelieving in the spectre, and not loving the House of Hanover, very logically disregarded also the crushing evidence for a crime which was actually described in ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the flies," said Boardman, snapping the bell which summoned the spectre in the black jersey, and he sat down. "What ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... glance, and he trembled like a leaf. He gazed upon the stranger like one who sees a spectre. And she met his glance, boldly at the first; then the light faded from her eyes, her head drooped, and she fell in a swoon upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Holauba, and straightway the only child of the mansion sickened and died. Mr. Keene's first wife died after the second apparition. Either it was the fancy of an ailing man, or perhaps the general report, but he notes that the spectre was bewailing its woes along the banks of Bogue Holauba when Jasper Keene himself was stricken by an illness which from the ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... in her heart as he spoke them. And yet the sudden whirlabout to all her thoughts and habits and ways, was very confusing. So she sat thinking,with every dress she had in the world gravely presented itself, like a spectre, and all the glove buttons insisting upon being counted then and there. Suddenly, from the waves of blue silk a little foot started out into the firelight,a foot half smothered in trimming; rosetted, buckled, beribboned, belaced. Hazel gazed at it,and then gave up, and broke into a ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... thy honour'd bier! What sighs re-echo'd to thy parting breath, Whilst thou wast struggling in the pangs of death! Could tears retard the tyrant in his course; Could sighs avert his dart's relentless force; Could youth and virtue claim a short delay, Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey; Thou still hadst liv'd to bless my aching sight, Thy comrade's honour and thy friend's delight. If yet thy gentle spirit hover nigh The spot where now thy mouldering ashes lie, Here wilt thou read, recorded on my heart, A grief too deep to trust the sculptor's art. No ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Brown, whom he greatly admired, and he in turn reached out forward toward Poe and other writers of the analytic school. One powerful story of Poe's, indeed, seems to have been suggested by Dana's work: the demon horse in 'Metzengerstein' is a superior copy of the Spectre Horse in 'The Buccaneer.' These stories were not popular in his day: they are too remote from ordinary life, too gloomy and painful; they have no definite locality or nationality; their characters have little in common ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... that looked old and lined and grey; with haggard unseeing eyes gazing forth into space as though fixing some invisible and spectre show. He seemed as if wrapt in a world of his own, to which none of us had entrance; least of all, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... these men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre Rouge to the eyes of a generation incapable, from fright, of distinguishing between a scarecrow and the Apollo. The Red Spectre haunted him, and the people for whom he wrote, as relentlessly as the Gray Spectre came upon the chiefs of Ivor. He saw in the working classes—those men who asked then, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... 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 ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... self: it is a tone, The soul and source of Music, which makes known[kd] Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,[334] Binding all things with beauty;—'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... furnish another reason for Wrayburn's purposeless walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought of it, until he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would let him through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended in the air flitted across the road, like the spectre of one of the many heads erst hoisted upon neighbouring Temple Bar, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... homes are being destroyed and made impossible now by the very causes against which Socialism fights, and because in this world at the present time very few homes are at all like this ideal. In reality every poor home is haunted by the spectre of irregular employment and undermined by untrustworthy insurance, it must shelter in insanitary dwellings and its children eat adulterated food because none other can be got. And that, I am sorry to say, it is only too ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... shadowy brook, That sings her song, half waking, half in dream. What two come here to mar this heavenly tune? A man is one: the woman bears my name, And honour. Their hands touch! Am I still tame? God, what a dancing spectre seems the moon! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was, with the covered face, whom we saw ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of a battalion was pressing past, the spectre of annihilation. West groaned. Then a figure sprang from the shadowy ranks and called West's name, and when he saw it was Trent he cried out. Trent seized ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... lived to a great age. His head was very fine, and I never could quite understand the satirical sayings about his personal appearance which have crept into the literary gossip of his time. He was by no means the vivacious spectre some of his contemporaries have represented him, and I never thought of connecting him with that terrible line in "The ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... gives—of equipages and luxury, which swept away, like ocean-tides, the thoughts which her angel-guardian had written on her conscience. Hesitating no longer, a smile of triumph lit her face, and crowning the spectre with roses, and wrapping a drapery of pale illusions around it, she offered herself to a martyrdom of sin, to secure ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... for dear life, she looked languorously through the foliage towards the river. At first I thought myself the victim of another hallucination, but would not stir lest the vision should vanish. She sighed audibly, and I knew this was no spectre. Then I trembled all the more, for my sudden appearance might ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the smoke-wreath floating in space—those were all that gave assurance of life; for when this solitary returned into his well-chosen solitude he seemed to shed all that was of the earth earthy, and to become a kind of spectre in a dream. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... contributor's explanation with interest and eventual sympathy; and in truth,—briefly told, with a word now and then thrown in by Jonathan Tinker, who kept at the bottom of the steps, showing like a gloomy spectre in the night, or, in his grotesque length and gauntness, like the other's shadow cast there by the lamplight,—it was a story which could ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Perhaps it gives them a pleasing sense of their superiority—a background against which to rejoice in their liberty, while their pleasure in it helps to obscure the gulf between what the man would fain hold himself to be, and what in reality he is. There is no spectre so terrible as the unsuspected spectre of a man's own self; it is noisome enough to the man who is ever trying to better it: what must it appear to the man who sees it for the first time! Sercombe's self was ugly, and he did not know it; he thought himself an exceptionally fine ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... would, in certain circumstances, trust to swift flight for your protection. Very well, my Lord, you are now confronted with something against which your stout arm is as unavailing as it would be if an apparition stood in your path. There is before you the spectre of subtlety. Use arm instead of brain, and you ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast. This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth, and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings all but choking her, aroused Ruth and ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... pressed her foot hard upon the floor as the answer returned ever the same: "The heart of the Intendant is away at Beaumanoir! That pale, pensive lady" (Angelique used a more coarse and emphatic word) "stands between him and me like a spectre as she is, and obstructs the path I have ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... withdrawn—so that the world is bare; As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror Amid a company ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was sitting alone in the little room of the Marylebone Road looking a new spectre in the face, the spectre of hunger, only shadowy as yet, scarcely defined, scarcely visible. And the lady of the feathers wondered, as she gazed, if she and the spectre must become better acquainted, clasp hands, kiss lips, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a wonderful winter to the Bean family. Never before had Mrs. Bean known what it was to be free from the oppressing spectre of want. No longer was she forced to worry about household supplies; neither was it necessary for Steve to go to the store each week with his basket of eggs and a few rolls of butter. He carried, instead, an order from Lois, and Andy Forbes was only too willing to deliver the goods in ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... Roman villa Earth and her ivies eat, Saw coloured pavements sink and fade In flowers, and the windy colonnade Like the spectre ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... The spectre army fades Far up the glimmering hill, But, vaguely lingering still, A group of shuddering shades Infects the pallid air, Growing dimmer as day invades The hush of the dusky square. There is one that seems a King, As if ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... at Barbara's heart. Wherever she went, the hideous spectre of the tragedy of her father seemed to follow her. And now Nur-el-Din had come to upbraid her with losing the treasure she had ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving decks—the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the dredging ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had strength to quell Hope the spectre and fear the spell, Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime And a faith superb, can it ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... strained and quivering, his eyes were lit with something very much like horror. Some words certainly left his lips, but they did not carry to the hearing of any one of those three people. He looked at Maraton with the fierce, terrified intentness of one who looks upon a spectre! ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from self: it is a tone The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding all things with beauty; 'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stony fixedness in their eyes: every other object grew dim before me. The living faces and full-grown forms which until now had mingled with and played their part among my younger phantoms, altogether disappeared. I had no longer any eyes, any soul, but for this my new spectre-world. Life, and the things of life, had lost their interest; and I knew of nothing, conceived of nothing, but those still, inanimate forms from which the informing soul had long ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... foundation to build higher. Don't crowd the waiters. If they are content, give them a chance. We received a warm welcome from the Governor and other officials of the colony, which was cheering. We had no complaint as to business patronage in the State of California, but there was ever present that spectre of oath denial and disfranchisement; the disheartening consciousness that while our existence was tolerated, we were powerless to appeal to law for the protection of life or property when assailed. British Columbia offered and gave protection to both, and equality of political privileges. I ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... struck him he looked round the studio. The corners were dismal and shadowy. Everything not in the immediate circle of the fire looked grey and cheerless. His easel, with a bit of drapery thrown across it, was like a spectre with outstretched arms. It suggested despair. He could think of no one whom he wanted to see. There wasn't a soul he knew whom he would not in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... sought to convince himself that dreams need no ministers from heaven or hell to bring the gliding falsehoods along the paths of sleep; that the effect of that dream itself, on his shattered nerves, his excited fancy, was the real and sole raiser of the spectre he had thought to behold on waking. Long was it before his judgment could gain the victory, and reason disown the empire of a turbulent imagination; and even when at length reluctantly convinced, the dream ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... don't blame me for showing a fondness for gloom and gore when you read the names Casey carried in his mind the next few weeks. Casey crossed Death Valley and the Funeral Mountains—or a spur of them—and headed up toward Spectre Range, going by way of Deadman's Spring, where he filled his water cans. That does not sound cheerful, but Casey was still fairly happy,—though there were moments when he thought seriously of killing William ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Adam Bede who entered the Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... happened, that was precisely what Mr Bickersdyke was doing. He was feeling thoroughly pleased with life. For nearly nine months Psmith had been to him a sort of spectre at the feast inspiring him with an ever-present feeling of discomfort which he had found impossible to shake off. And tonight he saw his way of getting ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the faint rustling of a dress. We saw the youthful Marianina enter the boudoir, even more resplendent by reason of her grace and her fresh costume; she was walking slowly and leading with motherly care, with a daughter's solicitude, the spectre in human attire, who had driven us from the music-room; as she led him, she watched with some anxiety the slow movement of his feeble feet. They walked painfully across the boudoir to a door hidden in the hangings. Marianina knocked softly. Instantly ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... intolerance and its corruption, was instructively shown by the absolute panic into which it was thrown by the election at Paris of General Boulanger on January 27. Here, at the very threshold of the great electoral year, rose the spectre of the 'man ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... unreasonableness, and self-love, and the world's esteem, which are all as dust in the balance, or a feather in the whirlwind, to impetuous love. I was amazed to find myself a daily waiter upon beauty. Yet so it was. The vision of Gertrude was now gone from my path—the spectre had vanished in the broad light of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... hanging on a piece of furniture or a peg, seen in connection with the other things near it, is transformed into a person or animal, in a sitting or standing posture or lying at full length, as if it had been a spectre or phantasm; somewhat like the figures which we all take pleasure in tracing in the strange and mobile forms of clouds. The fantastic figure sometimes appears instantaneously and at the first glance, sometimes it is only gradually made out; but in both cases, as we shall see, its genesis is the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... enough to whistle, he walked across the moorland, through the white morning mist, curling on the sides of the hills in fantastic forms, and now and then catching his lengthened shadow, so as to make him smile by reminding him of the spectre ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the spectre of want. Oftentimes his sick wife could not obtain needed medicines. He made more money than most musicians, yet was always impoverished. But it was his glory that he was never impoverished by sensual indulgence, extravagance, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris |
