"Vampire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ear which is a stumbling-block to the simple theory-monger. It is in fashion among a tribe of bats to which belongs the so-called vampire of India. This monster is fond of coming into your bedroom at midnight through the open windows, but not to suck your blood, for it has little in common with the true vampire of South America. It brings its dinner with it and hangs from the ceiling, "feeding like horses when ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, deg. deg.89 Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; 90 I eased in Asia the Nizam deg. deg.91 Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation Of ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick. Some time afterwards the people wished to drag him from the grave again, that a stake might be driven through his body, in the belief that he had been a vampire, and that the sick women would by this means recover. But they found ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... killed Taung S'Ali his men would be so dispirited that when the night came they would fly. There was so much at stake—Iris, wealth, love, happiness, life itself—all depended on his plighted word. Yet his savage enemy, a slayer of women, a human vampire soiled with every conceivable crime, was stalking back to safety with a certain dignified strut, calmly trusting to ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... ears had infused nothing of the vampire into his character. No—the very type of jollity and fun was the broad black face of "Scipio Besancon," for such was ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... was, was substituted for that of which he had at first thought—the simple throwing up of every scrap of his property, including all but a bare subsistence out of his official incomes, which could not have been touched without difficulty. Had he done, or been able to do this, had he shaken off the vampire in stone and lime and hungry soil which had so long sucked his blood, had he sold the library, and the 'Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck,'[35] and the Japanese papers, and the Byron vase, and the armour, had he mortgaged his incomes by help of insurance, sold his copyrights outright, and, in short, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... vampire, "you must hear more—you must know more ere you speak of the matters that have of late exercised an ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... What! live beside her, knowing that another is buried in her heart. Wilt thou feed, like a dog, even on the bodies of the dead? Poor Babhru, dost thou not understand. She cast thee off and left thee for a lover that she never will forget, and living like a vampire in her body that is dead, he will utterly despise thee, laughing at thee in her eyes. Ah! Wilt thou actually wait to understand, till a little Atirupa comes, to spit, exactly like his ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... feed idlers, why sweated to keep sweaters in luxury? Why should so many admirable lives be sacrificed to the greater prosperity of brigandage? These hateful discords amid the general harmony perplex the thinker, all the more as we shall see the cruel vampire become a model of devotion where ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... expressions into the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers' consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety-valve. He was ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... "Wife or vampire, I intend to rule this house, and I refuse to be shamed by a thick-lipped African. Her airs tell her story. She is insolent to me, but—I sha'n't endure it. She laughs at me. Well, your friends shall laugh ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... I found Von Reuss, lolling against the parapet with other blue flittermice, his peers—he himself no flittermouse, indeed, but of the true Casimir vampire breed, horrid of tooth, nocturnal, desirous of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... vessels of gold, the cup-bearers, the cooks, the attendants, disappeared; the roof flew away; the walls fell in; and Apollonius remained alone, standing with this woman all in tears at his feet. It was a vampire, who satisfied the handsome young men in order to devour their flesh—because nothing is better for phantoms of this kind than the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... we fought in '48 and lost. And that is why we came here, to the Republic. Ach! I fear I will never be the great lawyer —but the striver, yes, always. We must fight once more to be rid of the black monster that sucks the blood of freedom—vampire. Is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... epithets of a general class of demons. At the same time it appears likely that at one time they were differentiated with a greater degree of preciseness. So the ekimmu appears to be the shadowy demon that hovers around graves, a species of ghost or vampire that attacks people in the dead of night and lays them prostrate. Lilu and lilitu are the spirits that flit by in the night. Of a specific character likewise are the conceptions connected with a demon known as ardat lili, 'maid of the night,' a strange ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... she, recovering her self-possession. "do you also seek to frighten me? I am not the cowardly simpleton for which you mistake me. As if the King of Naples were a vampire, to murder his wives at dead of night! No, Caroline, no! If it has pleased the Almighty to afflict me, by taking to Himself the two dear children who were to have been Queens of Naples, it is a sad ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the vampire," said Searles musingly, "landing at the Grand Central with enough hand-luggage to fill a freight-car; a big, raw-boned creature, with a horse face and a horrible mess as to clothes. You will be there to meet her, ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... that I forgot I was a minister; I think I recalled that very thing, and it gave more power to my arm, for I knew the poverty amid which Geordie's poor wife strove to keep their home together; and the pitiful bareness of wee Jessie's death-chamber flashed before me. This well-nourished vampire had sucked the life-blood from them all, and remembering this, I rushed into the unequal conflict and smote the vampire between his greedy eyes with such fervour that he fell where he stood. In a moment he was ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the blest worst to happen, what exchange had she to bestow? Her beauty? She was reputed beautiful. It had made a madman of one man; and in her poverty of endowments to be generous with, she hovered over Mr. Morsfield like a cruel vampire, for the certification that she had a much-prized gift to bestow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one parish with another, such as Roodhall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILIZER than a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor bloodsucker. He does not feed on the public; a great many of the public feed upon him; and, therefore, his practical experience a little staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy of his theoretical dogmas. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... read this, ma'm? I am sure you'll like it. It's by the author of 'The Hooligans of Hackensack.' It is full of love troubles and mysteries and all sorts of such things. The heroine strangles her own mother. Just glance at the title please,—'Gonderil the Vampire, or The Dance of Death.' And here is 'The Jokist's Own Treasury, or, The Phunny Phellow's Bosom Phriend.' The funniest thing!—I've read it four times, ma'm, and I can laugh at the very sight of it yet. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mandane is here and fear. They rode back fast on your horses. 'Twas why I whistle for, twice so quick! They ride north in the morning. I go too, with the devil and his wife! I be gone to the devil this many a while! But I must go, or they suspect and knife me. That vampire! Ha! she would drink my gore! I no more have nothing to do with you. Before morning, you must do your own do alone! Sacredie! Do not forget, I ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... hesitate to insist upon this change, for not only shall we then act in the true interests of the patient, but we shall also confer on those near to her an inestimable benefit. An hysterical girl is, as Wendell Holmes has said in his decisive phrase, a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her; and I may add that pretty surely where there is one hysterical girl there will be soon or late two sick women. If circumstances oblige us to treat such a person in her own home, let us at least change her room, and also have it well understood ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... us, close without! Shut tight the shelter where we lie! With hideous din the monster rout, Dragon and vampire, fill the sky! The loosened rafter overhead Trembles and bends like quivering reed; Shakes the old door with shuddering dread, As from its rusty hinge 'twould fly! Wild cries of hell! voices that howl and shriek! The horrid troop before the tempest ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Pontifical army had ceased to exist, and the Piedmontese, now free to follow out their plans, could go to join the bands of Garibaldi, under the walls of Gaeta, and, together with him, complete "the extirpation of the Papal cancer," or, as one of their school, Pinelli, said, "Crush the sacerdotal vampire." But although right had been trampled down, it knew how to do battle and to die. "For the first time," observed a Protestant journal, the new Gazette of Prussia, "a general of the party of legality has dared to lead his troops against the enemy. For ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... overboard! Better late than never. But this belated act of justice to the country cannot atone for all the deadly disasters, will not remove the fearful responsibility from Lincoln-Seward-Blair, for having so long sustained this horrible vampire. Now is ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... an instant he seemed a vampire with shut eyes sucking at her life-blood to sustain his; and when that horrible fantasy passed, there remained the overwhelming tragedy of a dead man lusting for life. Not this the ghost, who, as Berlioz put it, stood at the window of his grave, regarding and mocking the world in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... behind those smiling lips, And down within those laughing eyes, And underneath the soft caress Of hand and voice and purring sighs, The shadow of the panther lurks, The spirit of the vampire lies. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... in a fictitious piece, Nor treat belief as matter of caprice. If on a child you make a vampire sup, It must not be alive when she's ripped up. Dry seniors scout an uninstructive strain; Young lordlings treat grave verse with tall disdain: But he who, mixing grave and gay, can teach And yet give pleasure, gains a vote from each: His works enrich ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Indoctrined by the words So eloquently voiced by one who long Hath dwelt within this city, where before The bar he wondrous reputation gained, I waited not to form a judgment sound, But leaning on a faith of fiction born, Awoke to find selfseeking underneath Each silver work this vampire spouted forth. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... has contributed as much to make Byron known in France as have his best poems. A certain P—— had impudence enough to attribute indirectly to the noble lord himself the absurd and disgusting tale of the 'Vampire,' which Galignani, in Paris, hastened to publish as an acknowledged work of Byron. Upon this Lord Byron hastened to remonstrate with Messieurs Galignani; but unfortunately too late, and after the reputation of the book was already widespread. Our theatres appropriated ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Mrs. Gradgrind is, in fiction, the only successful portrait of this type of misery, of the woman who wears out and destroys generations of nursing relatives, and who, as Wendell Holmes has said, is like a vampire, sucking slowly the blood of every healthy, helpful creature ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... the rest of the day being employed re-stuffing pack-saddles, etc., while some of the party caught a quantity of fine fish—amongst them an eel, which, however, was allowed to escape, being taken for a water-snake by one of the party who had never seen one before. A large kind of bat, or vampire, was first observed here, measuring about two feet across the ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... more than why 'a lame broken knee' should be 'red' (p. 126). Besides (p. 85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as the night, but as the malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who die what we call a 'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just as Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to become mischievous. There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is worshipped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs are differently pronounced. However that may be, a race which worships ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... a horse of steel Wound up with a ratchet-wheel. Every beast I'd put to rout Like the man I read about. I would singe the leopard's hair, Stalk the vampire and the adder, Drive the werewolf from his lair, Make the mad gorilla madder. Needle-guns my work should do. But, if beasts got closer to, I would pierce them to the marrow With a barbed and poisoned ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Like the vampire that soothes its victim while drawing its life-blood, the parasitic German organism cast a spell over influential Italians of the community and imparted to them a feeling that things were going well ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... said Pepper, shying a piece of clam-shell indignantly at the file jacet on a neighboring gravestone. "You are just going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in thunder ails you, instead of prowling round among the tombs like a jolly old vampire?" ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Agnes; "those poor nurses yonder in the foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of the lane as you go to the river, just beside Monseigneur the bishop! what if this little monster were to be carried to them to suckle? I'd rather give suck to a vampire." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... as now entering the garden, it stooped by the side of a fountain to cull flowers and herbs by the light of the moon, the Moor almost started to behold a countenance which resembled that of some ghoul or vampire haunting the places of the dead. He smiled at his own fear; and, with a quick and stealthy pace, hastened through the trees, and, gaining the spot where the old man bent, placed his hand on his shoulder ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wrought consternation, for no man of ability would attempt to unwind the tangle of Bigot's dishonesty during a critical war. Montcalm wrote home complaints in cipher. The French government bided its time, and Bigot tightened his vampire suckers on the lifeblood of the dying nation. The whole era is a theme for the allegory of artist ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... higher climbed the vine, swaying and squirming, the blood-red flowers opening and closing like lips of a vampire that ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... sank backwards, and her hand was upon the dagger, while she cast such a look as the fabled vampire might cast upon her destined victim, loving gold much, but perhaps blood most, when all at ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... 'the vampire Stavrogin,' as you are called by a lady here who is in love with you! Listen! I have told you already, I've put all my life into one hour and I am at peace. Do the same with yours... though you've no need to: you have plenty of 'hours' and 'moments' of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... beauty by juxtaposition with some frightful Hottentot, took as his competitor in this election a phantom, a vision, a socialistic monster of Nuremberg, with long teeth and talons, and a live coal in its eyes, the ogre of Tom Thumb, the vampire of Porte Saint-Martin, the hydra of Theramenes, the great sea-serpent of the Constitutionnel, which the shareholders have had the kindness to impute to it, the dragon of the Apocalypse, the Tarask, the Dree, the Gra-ouili, a scarecrow. Aided by a Ruggieri of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... directions,—they could even land on the various small islands situated between Jala-Jala and the isle of Talem. There they could find a sort of sport utterly unknown in Europe—that is, immense bats, a species of vampire, designated by naturalists by the name of roussettes. During six months in the year, at the period of the eastern monsoon, every tree on these little isles is covered, from the topmost down to the lowest branch, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... white glass, and there burned for a little while dully before it went out. Never shall I forget the scene illumined by its blue and ghastly light. The dying man lying on the low couch, rocking his head to and fro; the wizard bending over him like some grey vampire bat sucking the life-blood from his helpless throat. The terror in the eyes of the one, the insatiable hate in the eyes of the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... head of the thing, which was to be seen in a corner. It was shaped roughly triangular. The jaws were broad at the base and the thing had, even in the photograph, something of the same repulsive appearance as the head of a vampire bat. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... gala-dress of an emperor. There have always been very strange stories told of this Clarimonde, and all her lovers came to a violent or miserable end. They used to say that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe she was ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... Bowels—(but they were forgotten, Save the Liver, and that's rotten), 10 Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden, Form the Devil would frighten G—d in. Is't a Corpse stuck up for show,[580] Galvanized at times to go? With the Scripture has't connection,[hz] New proof of the Resurrection? Vampire, Ghost, or Goul (sic), what is it? I would walk ten miles ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... and my husband merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a great vampire bat. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... tale; alleging that there must lie buried beneath the house one of those vampires—the dead who retain their bodily form and live on the blood or breath of the living—whose hideous legions send their preying shapes or spirits abroad by night. To destroy a vampire one must, the grandmothers say, exhume it and burn its heart, or at least drive a stake through that organ; and Ann's dogged insistence on a search under the cellar had been prominent in ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!" ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... terrified. However inordinate in her desires, she was dainty in her ways. "It is like a Sabbat of witches to hear you talk, La Corriveau!" cried she, "I will have none of those foul things which you propose. My rival shall die like a lady! I will not feast like a vampire on her dead body, nor shall you. You have other vials in the casket of better hue and flavor. What is this?" continued Angelique, taking out a rose-tinted and curiously-twisted bottle sealed on the top with the mystic pentagon. "This looks prettier, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Indian insects have an almost human strength of purpose. For three consecutive nights I suffered from a sort of vampire cockroach, who crept under my pyjamas whilst I slept, and nibbled my chest. When I awoke, I could feel him hurrying off by way of my arm or leg. The moment worn-out nature reasserted itself in me, and I dozed again, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... is money," she said; "but, believe me, he's wrong. This girl is a vampire. She'll only come back to you for more. She'll keep on threatening to tell the wife, to tell the papers. The way to fix her is to throw a scare into her. And there's only one man can do that; there's only one man that can hush ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... in your power didn't you leap upon my shoulders like a catamount and cling there, shouting to all the world to come and help you, for you had caught Black Donald and would die before you would give him up? Ah! you little vampire, how you thirsted for my blood! And you pretended to like me!" said Black Donald, eying her from head to foot, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... fear my generous friend has been robbing himself. He told me that he had one hundred and forty forcats—slave-prisoners —at the village, whom he meant to put to good use in constructing store and dwelling-houses, &c. The hunters brought on board to-day an East India bat, or vampire, measuring two feet ten inches from tip to tip of wing. Its head resembled that of a dog or wolf more than any other animal, its teeth being very sharp and strong. Among the curiosities of the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Viking exploits have got a really good kind of idea at the bottom of them; so if you hear of fights, and forays, and the like, you will know that I am trying in that way to 'settle' this hideous old vampire of a fend. It's the only way I could think of while Uncle Brues feels as ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... do, I do. In the real things, the things that matter. I cling and suck like a vampire. Why can't you have the courage of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... manner as perverse as everything else about her, but which led some people to call her the 'Judic des salons'. Wanda Strahlberg was now holding between her lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the greenish paleness of her face, which caused others to call her a vampire, one of the cigarettes she had for sale. With one hand, she was playing, graceful as a cat, with her last package of regalias, tied with green ribbon, which, when offered to the highest bidder, brought an enormous sum. Her ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... had brought her into being, her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods; a coquette to some, a love to others, and to many a heartless vampire that sucked from them their hard-wrung dust, scattered their gold to the four winds of avarice that ever circled enticingly about the vortex of shallow joys that the City harbored, and, after intoxicating them with her beauty and her wine, flung them ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... He did so thus: There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... are simple. Most bats feed on insects which they catch on the wing; some of them eat fruit; and a few enjoy a bad name because they suck the blood of other animals. Of these last are the so-called vampire bats, respecting which it used to be said that they fanned their victim with their wings while they sucked its life's blood. Though it is quite true that horses and cattle in South America are attacked by some bats, this hideous tale ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... grateful and tranquil emotions, as people speak of awful things endured in days that are no more. To us the height of human happiness was raising green corn and strawberries, in a retired neighborhood where uncles were unknown. But, sir, when that Phantom, that Vampire, that Fate, loomed before my vision that day, if you had said, "Trover, I'll give ye sixpence for this neat little box of yours," I should have said, "Done!" with the trifling proviso that you should take my uncle in ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... might destroy the enchantment. The third one is on her feet, dancing before this areopagus of idiots, with their lanky locks and pot hats. What a shock when she turns round! She wears over her face the horribly grinning, deathly mask of a specter or vampire. The mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a darling little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a coquette, already a woman,—dressed in a long robe of shaded dark blue china crape, covered with ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... were gain'd; For, never was a man's heart caught By graces he himself had taught. And fancy not 'tis in the might Of man to do without delight; For, should you in her nothing find To exhilarate the higher mind, Your soul would deaden useless wings With wickedness of lawful things, And vampire pleasure swift destroy Even the memory of joy. So let no man, in desperate mood, Wed a dull girl because she's good. All virtues in his wife soon dim, Except the power of pleasing him, Which may small virtue be, or none! I know ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... thumb for two months; the drone-fly hid himself, the bees went home, everything became shrivelled, dry, inhuman. The local direction of the wind might vary, but it was still the same polar draught, the blood-sucker; for, like a vampire, it sucks the very blood and moisture out of delicate human life, just as it dries up the sap in the branch. While this lasted there were no notes to make, the changes were slower than the hour hand of a clock; still it was interesting ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... into the cool galleries of the Palace of the Louvre, and stand before that strange figure 'set in its marble chair in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea,' I murmur to myself, 'She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her: and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... If you wish to please them, you must sell yourself to some rich vampire of the factories or great landlord. If you give yourself away to a poor poet who loves you, their disgust will be unbounded. If a woman wishes to honor her father and mother to their own satisfaction nowadays ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... me have proofs of them all again—I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question!—The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the 'Vampire?' Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... stood in the midst of a grove of fruit-trees and pupunha palms. Past midnight, when all became still, after the uproar of holidaymaking, as I was listening to the dull, fanning sound made by the wings of impish hosts of vampire bats crowding round the Caju trees, a rustle commenced from the side of the woods, and a troop of slender, long-tailed animals were seen against the clear moonlit sky, taking flying leaps from branch to branch through the grove. Many of them ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... creations of their own malignant thought. The ritual with which these beings were worshipped was blood-stained from the very start, and of course every sacrifice offered at their shrine gave vitality and persistence to these vampire-like creations—so much so, that even to the present day in various parts of the world, the elementals formed by the powerful will of these old Atlantean sorcerers still continue to exact their tribute from unoffending ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The Toadies' Magazine got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs' ball—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Bulkeley, from whom, as every one knows, the Dukes of Cheshire are lineally descended. Accordingly, he made arrangements for appearing to Virginia's little lover in his celebrated impersonation of 'The Vampire Monk, or, the Bloodless Benedictine,' a performance so horrible that when old Lady Startup saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year's Eve, in the year 1764, she went off into the most piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy, and died in three ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... kind of vampire or devil, into which the Crees and other tribes suppose all who have ever fed on human flesh ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... refine and make expressive the human form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reveries of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, which has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there study nature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... horrible to the eye. There were great rank growths of toadstools, yellow, blue, livid white, or spotted like adders, which squirmed and squelched underfoot to send up a sickly odour of decay. The only green thing was some ivy, a parasitic vampire which drew its lifeblood from the mouldering ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... codfish, prunes or peas. And then I'd go to Grocer Gregg, and mutter as I went; "I'll take that merchant down a peg, and in him make a dent." He'd spring the same old platitudes when I had reached his den: "That vampire who delivers goods has ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... the long English gun in the waist, to which he had already given a great deal of study, and sighted along the heavy piece. He had not forgotten when he pointed the gun on board of the Bellevite, the shot from which had disabled the Vampire, and he had some confidence in his ability to put a shot where he wished it to go, for he had brought all his mathematics and all his physics to bear on the matter, though the best gunners must sometimes fail. When he was ready ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... fellow-cits, shall we sit still, and never cease the eternal twirl of our dexter around our sinister thumb, while other scribes hand down to future ages the paltry feats of beardless Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten hag, thy power is gone—the murky veil thou'st drawn o'er memory's ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... on the Stand and entered a General Denial. He had been all that a Rattling Good Husband could be, but she had been a regular Rudyard Kipling Vampire. She had continued to make his Life one lingering Day-After of Regret. His Record for Patience and Long-Suffering had made Job's Performance look ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... romance of "Baital Pachisi," or King Vikram and the Vampire, twenty-five different and disconnected trifling stories serve collectively to illustrate in the most pointed manner the highest lesson of wisdom. In this book the gypsies, and the scenes which surround them, are intended to teach the lesson of freedom and nature. Never were such lessons ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and sirens, spoken of by the Prophet, are neither more nor less than jackals, if we examine the Hebrew original. The lamia, a vampire, half woman and half serpent like the wyvern, is a night bird, the white or the screech owl; the satyrs and fauns, the hairy beasts spoken of in the Vulgate, are, after all, no more than wild goats—'schirim,' as they are called in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... must avenge der murder uf our brudders in Shegaco. Deir innocent plood gries ter heffen for revensh. A t'ousan' lifes vill not der benalty bay. Der goundry must pe drench mit plood. Den vill Anarchy reign subreme ofer de gabitalist vampire! Are ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... him on a 'arf-bred' 'oss, an' he rides him like a hangel, nussin' of him, and coaxin' of him, and sendin' of him along, beautiful for ground, an' uncommon liberal for fences. Take an' put him on a thoro'-bred 'un, like our Vampire ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... which sent it flying away. The cry awoke my companions, who jumped out of their hammocks, wondering what was the matter. We were quickly engaged in driving out the intruders, which we now discovered to be vampire bats. "Hillo!" cried Arthur, "what is the matter with my foot? There is blood flowing from it!" We found that one of the creatures had been sucking his too. John bound it up, and in a short time tranquillity was restored, and we were all soon in ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... to depict villainy on a human face seems to have found its highest modern exponent in Aubrey Beardsley. With him man is an animal, and woman a beast. Aye, she is worse than a beast—she is a vampire. Kipling's summing up of woman as "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair" gives no clue to the possibilities in way of subtle, reckless reaches of deviltry compared with a single, simple, outline drawing by Beardsley. Beardsley's heroines are the kind of women who can kill a man with a million ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... drought! When the sky turns to brass; when the clouds are like withered leaves; when the sun sucks the earth's blood like a vampire; when rivers shrink, streams fail, springs perish; when the grass whitens and crackles under your feet; when the turf turns to dust; when the fields are like tinder; when the air is the breath of an oven; when even the merciful dews ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... little German girl, always managing to have a boil either on her forehead or the back of her neck,—I believe in my soul it's from overfeeding,—who follows my footsteps like a misanthropic vampire. By what ingenuity she manages to cajole me out of my money I know not, but I positively assert that in the last fortnight, according to her account, her unhappy mother has suffered from eleven different incurable diseases. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... by this time become in the last degree maudlin, and wept abundantly, inferred from the foregoing avowal, that it was his mission to communicate to others the blight which had fallen on himself; and that, being a kind of unintentional Vampire, he had had Miss Pecksniff assigned to him by the Fates, as Victim Number One. Miss Pecksniff controverting this opinion as sinful, Moddle was goaded on to ask whether she could be contented with a blighted heart; and it appearing on further examination that she could ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... wood, With medicine more strong than his," they said, "Stole in last night and gave the fatal wound." The warriors scoured the country miles around, Seeking for sign or trail, but naught they found: The murderer left behind no clue or trace More than a vampire's flight through darkling space. ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... deck clasped in each other's arms, and shedding tears of bitterness, and heaving the most heart-rending sobs at intervals, yet but rarely conversing. The feelings of both were too much oppressed to admit of the utterance of their grief. The vampire of despair had banqueted on their hearts. Their vitality had been sucked, as it were, by its cold and bloodless lips; and little more than the withered rind, that had contained the seeds of so many affections, had been left. Often had Sir Everard and De Haldimar ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... he said 'I will eat you,' it would have been much nearer the mark, for he was no Brâhman, but a dreadful vampire, who loved to devour handsome young men and slender girls. But, knowing nothing of all this, the couple went home with him quite cheerfully. He was most polite, and when they arrived at his house, said, 'Please get ready whatever you want to eat, for I have no cook. Here are my keys; open all my ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... ambush which demands a tribute of living flesh. If it only had sufficient strength its blood-thirsty appetites, and its horrible perfection of concealment would make it the terror of the countryside. The Prego-Dieu would become a Satanic vampire. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... two or three brief hours of his power out of a lifetime, Coleridge is literally a wizard. People have wanted to know what "Christabel" means, and how it was to have ended, and whether Geraldine was a vampire (as I am inclined to think) or had eyes in her breasts (as Shelley thought). They have wondered that a poem so transparent in every line should be, as a whole, the most enigmatical in English. But does it matter very much whether "Christabel" means this or that, and whether Coleridge ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... facts regarding them, but do our utmost to build up something as noble, and each one of us leave art no worse than he found it, casting reproach and scorn on the utterly indifferent, or the detestable pander or the vampire. ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... free, for she should not work upon me again. With such as she, a vampire and yet a woman, a man's safety lay not in ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the dirty gilt-edged glass, And, oh Salome; there I was— Positively jewelled, half a vampire, With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire Over the brink of the crag of sense, Looking down from perilous eminence Into a gulf of windy night. And there's straw in my tempestuous hair, And ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... Horse-Guards to keep up his character. A person is already upon the stage, for whom you instinctively shudder—you perceive, at once, that he is "in" for dinner, wine, theatre, and supper—you pity him; you see the sponge, speciously, but surely, fasten himself upon his victim like a vampire. Mr. Pye Hilary, being a barrister and a man of the world, resigns himself, however, to his fate. As to shaking off his leech, he knows that to be impossible; and he determines to make what use of him he can. There is a fine opportunity, for Mr. Pye Hilary is in love, in despair, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that a corpse, hastily and shallowly buried, was yielding itself back to the damp cellar in vegetable form, before its resolution into simpler elements. But a darker meaning was that it was the outline of a vampire that vainly strove to leave its grave, and could not because a virtuous spell had been worked ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner |
