"Haunting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was preparing to keep the appointment in the pleasantest and most unsuspecting frame of mind. After answering Caffyn's note he had met the Langtons as they came out of church and returned with them to lunch. Dolly was herself again now, her haunting fears forgotten with the happy ease of childhood, and Mabel had made Mark feel something of the gratitude she felt to him for his share in bringing this about. He had gone on to one or two other houses, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... possible even in Loango to have a fling, but the carouser must be prepared to face, even in the midst of his revelry, the haunting thought that the exercise of the strictest economy in any other part of the world ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... consideration, they seemed to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head, withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to desert-haunting Abraham. The human heart, like the human body, can live without much variety to feed on, but its house is built on a lordly scale for hospitality, and is capable of welcoming every new face as a new revelation. Steadily Cosmo went to his day's work with the master, steadily returned ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... It was not worth while, it had never been worth while, even were that all. But there was something else to be considered. Paolo might now die of his accident, in his bed. There would be no murder done in that case, no haunting horror of a presence, no discovery to be feared, since there would have been no evil. Let him die, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... fell asleep again being "comforted by the feeling that the Lord would take care of her." Next morning the effects of the "chill" had passed off, but there was left a more or less constant feeling of vague dread and fear of death, and with this a haunting idea born of this strongly felt hallucination of external touch that Satan was within her. The feelings of dread and fear grew steadily and became too strong for her faith in the Lord taking care of her, and very quickly her obsession as to possession by Satan, became the definite delusion ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... that last line "was serried in the band," but immediately corrected himself. And the poignant haunting repetition of the last lines of the closing stanza were given out ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... had been. She kept it in her Bible. He had given it to her when she was a child as a reward the day she had kept her little brother from falling in the fire. She brought it out. It was a sketch, hasty, vigorous, suggestive, haunting as the original itself, of the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... soon, and how soon, Vanish shape and beauty's noon! Of thy cheeks a moment vaunting, Like the milk and purple haunting,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... breasts of the stone Witch, and look in the cleft which is between her breasts. There shalt thou see how these men lived. And now this doom is on them: they must wander gaunt and hungry in the shape of wolves, haunting that Ghost Mountain where they once fed, till they are led forth to die at the hands of men. Because of their devouring hunger they have leapt from year to year, striving to reach my bones; and he whom thou hast slain was the king of them, and ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... deny it as he would, he knew now that within the last few weeks his hatred had been strengthened by the force of a newer passion which had recoiled upon itself. Since his parting with Maria Fletcher the day before, he had not escaped for a breath from her haunting presence. She was in his eyes and in the air he breathed; the smell of flowers brought her sweetness to him, and the very sunshine lying upon the September fields thrilled him like the warmth of her rare smile. He found himself fleeing like a hunted animal from ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... after a time a Baba Yaga took to haunting their hut and sucking the breasts of the merchant's daughter. No sooner have the heroes gone off to the chase, than the Baba Yaga is there in a moment. Before long the fair maiden's face began to fall away, and she grew weak and thin. The blind man could ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... recollected the events of the previous night—her retirement to her chamber; her talk there with the housekeeper about Rose Cameron, the "handsome hizzie," who had been haunting the premises and giving trouble all that day; the message from her father; her affecting interview with him in his bedroom; her return to her own apartment through the dimly-lighted, deserted hall, where she met the pale ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... again, of metamorphosis, by which persons under certain peculiar cases were changed into plants, finds a place in many of the modern plant-legends. Thus there is the well-known story of the wayside plantain, commonly termed "way-bread," which, on account of its so persistently haunting the track of man, has given rise to the German story that it was formerly a maiden who, whilst watching by the wayside for her lover, was transformed into this plant. But once in seven years it becomes a bird, either ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... intermingled with the agonies and imprecations of Lear. In the tragedy, this is held to be a consummate stroke of art, and certainly the reader is grateful for the relief. Had Poe a similar design? Closely analyzed, this song seems the very ecstasy of fancy; as if the haunting apparition inspired the poet more than it appalled the man. We can call to mind no one who has ever played with an inexplicable horror more daintily or more impressively; and, whether premeditated or spontaneous, it is an epitome of the life of the writer, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... all these stories, the boy was not afraid; and if he had been informed that any of the uncanny people were, even now, haunting his footsteps, he would not ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... strong woman he had leaned upon was gone, and he was alone with the consumption that was eating his life away. He started forth upon a concert tour, but the chill climates of England and Scotland were not refuges from his haunting disease. He died slowly and in poverty, though he was unconscious of want, thanks to the generosity of a Russian countess and a Scotch woman. Dependent upon women to the last! In his dying hours it is said ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... equality which is perpetually haunting the imaginations of the American people, is, therefore, wholly without foundation in any reality. It is a delusion, which has already driven us, in a sort of madness, far on the road to ruin. It ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her heart concealeth, Lone-sitting, lone in social nature's all! Thirsting for that glad fount thy love revealeth, While still thy look the glad fount turns to gall. In every infant cry my soul is hearkening, The haunting happiness forever o'er, And all the bitterness of death is darkening The heavenly looks that smiled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dead city below had gazed thus upon each other, and in the utter solitude of space poured forth each to each the tale of their lost life and long-departed glory. The white light fell, and minute by minute the quiet shadows crept across the grass-grown courts like the spirits of old priests haunting the habitations of their worship—the white light fell, and the long shadows grew till the beauty and grandeur of each scene and the untamed majesty of its present Death seemed to sink into our very souls, and speak ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... make him repent of his cruelty. This surmise as to the poor boy's fate was confirmed the next morning, when some of his clothes were discovered under the forechains. The next day the chief conversation among the men was about Bobby Smudge's suicide, and of the threats he had uttered of haunting the ship. This led to the recounting of similar circumstances; and many a forecastle yarn was spun that evening, abounding in horrors sufficient to make the hairs of a less stout-hearted auditory stand on end. From the extraordinary remarks I heard as ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... we now? The haunting, vague unrest Of incompleted measures; and we dream Vainly, of the Musician and His theme, How the great Master in a day most blest Shall strike some mighty chords in harmony, And make an end, and set the ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... but it was long before she got to sleep that night, and the vision of his face came again and again to her, pale, haggard, haunting, distressing her exceedingly. She ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... with a haunting sense that something had happened. In a moment he remembered; and with memory came rage and a defiant ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... for, she had gone to her grave beneath the water—unloved, the lovely Harriet cared not to live. What may have happened, it is not for those who may not have been tried to question; of cause and effect it is not for us to judge; but that her memory must have been a haunting shadow to Shelley and to Mary no one would wish to think them heartless enough to deny. Surely the lovely "Lines," with no name affixed, must be the dirge to Harriet's fate, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... at her appearance. White as a bone, her beautiful violet eyes full of haunting fear; her hair, torn down by the wind and flickering in long black strands about her face, far below her waist, she looked like a wraith of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... constrained to be polite and respectful towards it—to open doors, provide chairs and hold myself carefully deferential when it was about. It became very compelling at last, and, if I failed in any little particular, I seemed to know that it pursued me about the house, from one room to another, haunting my very soul in its inmost abode. It certainly came before my wife so far ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... enough to make one shed tears. I don't know anything more affecting except a procession of lantern-lit gondolas and barges on the Grand Canal. It's phantasmal. It's the spectral resurrection of the old dead forms into the present. It's not even the ghost, it's the corpse, of other ages that's haunting Venice. The city ought to have been destroyed by Napoleon when he destroyed the Republic, and thrown overboard——St. Mark, Winged Lion, Bucentaur, and all. There is no land like America for true cheerfulness and ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Luis was nevertheless singularly impressed, as he himself said, by the terrible recollection of the two crimes which he had been unable to prevent and by the haunting vision of the two dead bodies. And he also remembered with real emotion the implacable duel which he had fought with Mme. Fauville, the woman's despair and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there was a look of haunting dread ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... sweetness, Lilies fair of face, Drowsy scents and murmurs Haunting every place; Lengths of golden sunshine, Moonlight bright as day,— Don't you think ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... of Deity. It is the dim unconscious feeling after this attribute which causes the forever recurring dissatisfaction with the finite, which so ruthlessly pursues us through life. It is the source of that vague but tender longing, that restless but dreamy yearning, that haunting melancholy, which characterize human souls created for the enjoyment of the infinite; divining and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will take you to a bowered nook overhanging the river, where I passed the afternoon reading and thinking of many things. There together we will sit in the shadow of the trees and talk and plan together how our happiness, at least, shall be made to endure; and you shall teach me to lose this haunting sense of illusion in the great reality of love. And as the evening descends and twilight steals upon the ever-flowing water, I will take you in my arms a moment, and this shall be my vow: God do so to me and more also, if any darkness falls from my life ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... was a money one. The breaking of another one-hundred-dollar bill was imminent and it frightened her. She reduced her vocal lessons, at three dollars the hour, to one every other week, finally discontinuing entirely, and took to haunting the agencies daily, leaving her address where no initial charges were required and scanning incessantly ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... said Moyse. "You do not fear me now—you cling to me. And why fear me then? I shall be yours still. I shall be Moyse. I shall be about you, haunting you, whether you see and hear me or not. Why not see ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... junction railway station they had ridden to; and thence, boxing the horses, by train to Bevisham. Rosamund understood that some haunting anxiety had fretted Nevil during the night; in the morning he could not withstand it, and he begged Cecilia to change their destination, apparently with a vehemence of entreaty that had been irresistible, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tremendous force of the Catholic Church not having come over to the Tory side, he "decided to play the Orange card, which, please God, will prove a trump," and went, with his hands red from making overtures to what they considered the scarlet woman, to rally the Orangemen with the haunting jingle that Home Rule would be ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... her to look in upon the fight he waged. Then he gave up the idea disdainfully. As well try to leave his hand-print on an iron bar or a gray granite slab as to seek to impress on Kathryn's mind the vital nature of the questions that were haunting him, taunting him, turning his life into a purgatory of uncertainties whether his choice of profession had been aught but a selfish wish for an easy and spectacular ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was the terrible commonplace which held her in its grasp. It could never be wiped out from one human mind, which must bear the burden of it as best it could, till gradually—steadily—the life, had been killed out of the ugly, haunting thing, and it had been buried—drowned, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... A haunting, half-superstitious dread beset Gerrard as he dressed the next morning, the presentiment that he would hear that Partab Singh had died in the night. After the determination the old man had shown in laying his plans, and the earnestness with which he had impressed them upon the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... away. He could feel again the riotous happiness that had surged up in him as he struck that face, felt it yield before him, saw it fade away into dust and nothingness. That face that had for all these months been haunting him, at last he had banished it, and with it had gone those other leering faces that had for so long kept him company. His room was dark, and it was always in the dark that they came to him—Hogg's, the drunken painter's, that old ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... too!' David cried under his breath, carried away by the haunting imagination, and straining his eyes into the dusk. Had the night opened to his sight there and then in a vision of glory, he would ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he seemed to have grown mother-sick, spent all his leisure moments in haunting his mother's steps, helping her in whatever she was about, and telling her everything about his studies and companions, as if she were the great solace of the life that had become so much ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yet, to concentrate my attention upon them; I pushed back my chair, and, rising, went to the piano. Here I remained for perhaps a couple of hours, striking the vague chords that echo wandering thoughts. I was trying to banish this haunting image of Paton from my mind, and at ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging, somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Commencement, when he sang it for the Seniors going out on their adventures, and when he was done they had all been still and quiet like men who have seen ghosts—as perhaps they had, that night, the phantoms of men and times haunting certain low, arched buildings they were to ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the beads of cold perspiration start out upon his forehead as the dreadful indefinable haunting fear at length took shape and presented itself before his mind in all its grisly horror. He had faced Death often enough to look him in the face now or at any time without fear; but to meet him thus—to ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sandals even-thonged; The fair face, wan with haunting pain;— Then sudden, crowding memories thronged ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had shown them to Arthur, everything would have been so different, and I should have been free,' he was thinking, when Jerry knocked timidly at the door, rousing him from his reverie, and making him start with a nameless tsar which was always haunting him. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... signs—these mysterious writings left in the snow by the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety—and when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind, distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the threatening aspect of it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... Well, well, said the father, perhaps I might; but have you spoken to old Joan? Yes, indeed, replied Mr. Carew. And what does the old woman say? she says, if her will is not exactly fulfilled as she desired, she will never leave haunting you; but, if it be, all shall be well and quiet. They then went to the farmer's house, where they were made very welcome, and received the twenty shillings, according to promise, the farmer requesting they would stay the next night ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... panorama of earth and sky; but it had lost its charm to him. The long, cool vistas between the cloud-banks no more lifted the mind above itself, pointing the way into a great and glorious future. A vague dread was perpetually haunting him; he feared that Annunciata did not love him as he wished to be loved; that she regretted, perhaps, having bound herself to him and was not unwilling to break loose from him. But what was life to him without ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... must be the finish," answered Simeon. "We've got to throw him out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will start haunting. The devil with him, let 'em think that he drank himself full and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... wills not that the world forget Suki or Dhritarashtri yet. Then Kraunchi bare the crane and owl, And Bhasi tribes of water fowl: Vultures and hawks that race through air With storm-fleet pinions Syeni bare. All swans and geese on mere and brook Their birth from Dhritarashtri took, And all the river-haunting brood Of ducks, a countless multitude. From Suki Nala sprang, who bare Dame Vinata surpassing fair. From fiery Krodhavasa, ten Bright daughters sprang, O King of men: Mrigi and Mrigamanda named, Hari and Bhadramada famed, Sarduli, Sveta fair to ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... again, and again Laurence had a vague remembrance as though he and she had stood face to face before in some earlier existence. Then his wandering recollections took shape, and he remembered the face and the form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult significance—if significance ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... work consists of a series of portraits of the Old Town of Edinburgh, their haunting ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... killed him? What should I do? These were the two questions haunting my mind, and becoming more and more insistent. The light still burned in the mission house, and I could picture the scene within—the three priests reading, or talking softly to each other, and Cassion asleep on his bench in the corner, wearied with ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... through," he said, and for a moment that seemed to me quite irrelevant. "Well"—and he paused. Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sin wherewith I deal," answered Haldane sternly. "It is thy conscience, not mine, whereon it lieth heavy. Who is it that goeth down the black road—the man that cannot rest for the haunting of dead faces, or the poor, harmless, old woman, that bade him seek peace from the Church ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... a dream I have been trying all day to forget. Through the first part of the night sleep had been impossible. The haunting memory of Lillie's eyes could not be shut out, and the sound of her voice made the stillness of the room unendurable. I tried to read, to write, to do anything but think. I fought, resisted; refused to face what I did not want to see, to listen to ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the intervening half-century wiped out. But, as they would put it in Ireland, these lucky, fresh-faced youngsters of to-day have their futures in front of them, not behind them. Then it is that Howson's words, wedded to John Farmer's haunting refrain, come back to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... thoughtful and impressive, realism that prevails on the stage and in the conversation and conduct of some sets of people in the big cities. The Tagebuch einer Verlorenen has sold 75,000 copies, and it is the story of a German Kamelliendame compared with whom Dumas' lady is moonshine. It is a haunting picture of a woman sinning against the moral and social law, and no one with the least sense or judgment could put it on the low level of certain English novels that sell because they are offensive, and for no other reason ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... feeling which marks even the humblest grade of Irish life sealed their lips; but the dread was always there in the mother's heart, pursuing her as a nightmare through the long watches of the darkness, and haunting her every moment as wearily she carried her basket through the streets in ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... Alb," said I. And then I strolled away again, humming to the air of the Dead March, in Saul, or something equivalent, those haunting words— ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... with a haunting sense of the familiar, though when I found the lake with Verneille we marched ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... measure we may, and shall, eradicate this haunting flavour of the country. The last elm is dead in Elm Row; and the villas and the workmen's quarters spread apace on all the borders of the city. We can cut down the trees; we can bury the grass under dead paving-stones; we can drive brisk streets through ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stood, spellbound in indecision, like the ass of Buridan between two sacks of oats; for on either side, north or south of the Pont-Neuf, were to be found enchanting slums, all more attractive the ones than the others, winding up and down hill and roundabout and in and out, like haunting illustrations by Gustave Dore to Drolatick Tales by Balzac (not seen or read by me till many years later, I beg ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a chair by the table, and Lem on a stool nearby. Crabbe rose as the pale girl appeared before him; but Lon only displayed two rows of dark teeth. It seemed to him that all his waiting was over; that his wife's constant haunting of his strong spirit would cease, if he could tear the girl from her high estate and watch the small head bend under the indignities Lem would place upon her. The very fact that she had come when he had sent for her showed the fear ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... revelations of Gypsy's intelligence. Missy took to spending every spare minute at Tess's. Under this new captivation her own pet, Poppy, was thoughtlessly neglected. And duties such as practicing, dusting and darning were deliberately shirked. Even reading had lost much of its wonted charm: the haunting, soul-swelling rhythms of poetry, or the oddly phrased medieval romances which somehow carried you back through the centuries—into the very presence of those queenly heroines who trail their robes ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... disturbances connected with the affairs of the theater, that were to continue and increase until the miserable subject became literally the sauce to our daily bread; embittering my father's life with incessant care and harassing vexation; and of the haunting apprehension of that ruin which threatened us for years, and which his most strenuous efforts only delayed, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... say of former experience, yet of former reflection, for I had entertained many conjectures concerning what this powerful personage would or might yet do; and, indeed, his wilful waywardness, together with the misery which he represented as continually haunting him, constituted an impressive advertisement to the world, and served to keep human ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... poor child in her strange and sinister position? He was ironically conscious of a sudden heat of missionary zeal. For if the creature to be saved had not possessed such a pair of eyes—so slim a neck—such a haunting and teasing personality—what then? ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of haunting that dinky post office (I've mentioned before that it was in a dead area, so I couldn't watch the insides, only the exits) until at long last I perceived my favorite bit of mail emerging in another bag. It was carted to the railroad station and hung up on another pick-up hook. I bought a ticket ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... berries. After grannie's jam-pots were properly filled, the remnant of these, a gleaning far greater than the gathering, was at the disposal of Robert, and, philosopher although in some measure he was already, he appreciated the privilege. Haunting this garden in the previous summer, he had for the first time made acquaintance with the interior of the deserted factory. The door to the road was always kept locked, and the key of it lay in one of grannie's ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the finest are The Pavilion on the Links, a tale of Sicilian vengeance and English love that is full of haunting mystery and the deadly fear of unknown assassins; Markheim, a brilliant example of this author's skill in laying bare the conflict of a soul with evil and its ultimate triumph; The Sire de Maletroit's Door, a vivid picture of the cruelty and the autocratic power ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... strange, and it made a deep impression upon him. Also it evidently impressed the men, for as they drew rein in front of the store, with its dust-dry shelves and haunting silence, all asked quick questions of the proprietor, a little wizened, gimlet-eyed Mexican who was leaning in the doorway. After glancing over their accoutrements with a nod of understanding, he answered, explaining the reason for ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Egyptian officers, who had been put to death after the defeat in March, had been unjustly executed. He had given way to 'outside influences'; the two Pashas had been 'judicially murdered'. Again and again he referred to the incident with a haunting remorse. "The Times", perhaps, would consider that he had been justified; but what did that matter? 'If The Times saw this in print, it would say, "Why, then, did you act as you did?" to which I fear I have no answer.' He determined to make ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendant bed and procreant ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... no one to care how or where she was buried. He had not mentioned her to his wife or sister, an aching memory at heart forbade that, but underneath the joy of his return home lay this dead secret, haunting him with funereal shadows. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... square of four such sides; and of places for meditation, grave, yet not too somber, it seemed to me one of the best. While we stayed there, a jackdaw was walking to and fro across the grassy enclosure, and haunting around the good bishop's grave. He was clad in black, and looked like a feathered ecclesiastic; but I know not whether it were Bishop Dennison's ghost or that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... possibility of escape, it became a morbid and haunting wish with me to know my exact locality. That it could be no great distance from the city of New York, if not within its limits, I felt assured, from the expedition with which my transit from the ship had ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a dead and stagnant marsh — a huge dreary swamp, within whose bounds the inland rivers lost their individuality and merged into a lifeless morass. A more melancholy picture could not be imagined, and with such an awesome thought constantly haunting his mind there is no wonder that he became morbid, and that the dominant tone of his journal, whilst on the Lachlan, is so ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... had been looking out for the last few weeks and had almost despaired of, was hailed by Mr Meldrum with the deepest joy, for it solved his greatest difficulty at once, taking away the fear of starvation that had been haunting him. With such a plentiful supply of the birds, they might now hope to last out until they could procure more palatable food; and those who were "squeamish" in objecting to the fishy odour of the penguins themselves, would faut ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... appropriately situated as the members of a brotherhood of thieves and the parasites of a brothel than as the holders of high office and the caretakers of a royal conscience. There were men upon the highway, rogues with a bit of crape across their foreheads and a pair of pistols in their holsters, haunting the Portsmouth Road or Hounslow Heath, with the words "Stand and deliver" ever ready on their lips, who seem relatively to be men of honor and probity compared with a man like the first Lord Holland or like Rigby. There were poor slaves ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you knew him?" Latimer enquired, the wretched, dank little figure suddenly assuming the haunting air of something his eye must have ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the charms prolong, In music's haunting tone, Of shores where spring's aye blossoming, And winter is unknown; Where zephyrs, sick with scent of flowers, Along the lakelets play; And lovers, wand'ring through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... blue waters Bathe the sunny isles of Greece; Where Thessalian mountains rise Up against the purple skies; Where a haunting memory liveth In each wood and cave and rill; But no dream of gods could help me— He went ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... bottom of her collar-box, under some unused collars, telling herself that it was for safe keeping, that she might not lose it again; not letting her conscience say for a moment that it was because she wanted to bury the haunting words ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... strong drink; the friends who would flaunt him; the friends who would pity him for his weakness in yielding to the influence of abstaining noodles; the friends who would smile and bid one another wait a bit, and John Gray would be taking his glass with them again; the awful haunting fear that they were right, that he would only make himself ridiculous and never hold out; all these things seemed ranged on one side against him, and on the other ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... be known as a "reserved, isolated, dreamy man, of high-strung nerves, proud spirit, and fantastic moods," with a haunting sense of impending evil. His home was poor and simple, but impressed every visitor by its neatness and quiet refinement; Virginia, accomplished in music and languages, was as devoted to her husband as he was to her. Both were fond of flowers and plants, and of household pets. ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... sorrows rose before him and looked at him with their sad eyes; the sorrows that had helped to make him what he was. He wondered where his sister was. She would be twenty-two years old now. A tenderness, haunting, tearful, invaded his heart. He suffered. At such moments the hard shell of his rough woods life seemed to rend apart. He longed with a great longing for sympathy, for love, for the softer influences that cradle even warriors between the clangors of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... with star-like eyes and ruby lips looked out and smiled upon him; in the distant and ever varying cadences of the breaking surf he heard the sweet melody of her voice; in the dazzling brilliancy of the starry heavens her haunting face, with eyes alight with ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... answered truly. He had seen no face as beautiful of its kind as Lucy's was, and he was glad that he could tell her so. He knew how it would please her, and partly make amends for the tender words which he could not speak for the phantom eyes haunting him so strangely. And Lucy, who took all things for granted, was more than content, only she wondered that he did not kiss her again, and wished she knew the girl who had come so near being in her place. But ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... social intercourse took up a good deal of his time, and the daily record in his journal likewise had to be kept up. But he set to work resolutely to embody, so far as he might, his stray imaginings upon the haunting English theme, and to give them connected form. April 1, 1858, he began; and then nearly two weeks passed before he found an opportunity to resume; April 13th being the date of the next passage. By May he gets fully into swing, so that day after day, with but slight breaks, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and strongly loved her; and yet it had only been a beautiful bewilderment of uncomprehended delight, until this haunting vision of her fair face sinking amid the hungry ice beset him. Then he perceived what would be lost to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... manner as to excite no suspicion of his real errand. His experience thus far had been that Duncan, either to evade pursuit, to gratify bestial passion, or to endeavor by such excitements to drive away the haunting fear that oppressed him, had invariably sought the companionship of the harlot and the profligate. Being possessed of plenty of money, it may be imagined that he experienced no difficulty in finding associates willing to ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... thousand arguments, historical, psychical, metaphysical—which for their setting-forth would require volumes; hears many an opposing, many a scoffing word from men "who surely know, else would they speak?" and finds himself much where he was before. But at least he is haunting the possible borders of discovery, while those who turn their backs upon the idea are divided from him by a great gulf—it may be of moral difference. To him there is still a grand auroral hope about the idea, and it still draws him; the others, taking the thing from merest report ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... reluctant body through the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere of low or ugly life which encompassed it on almost every side. His haunting dream was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilled his mission with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitable career, and to go back to sunshine and beauty again. He learned by degrees to regard London as a home; as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... All undefined by blasphemies of art! Here, pure from finite hues the very night Conceives the mystic harmonies of light, Delicious glooms and gleams; And sorrow falls in rose-leaves on the heart, And pain that yearns upon the passing hour Is but a perfume haunting a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it after more than sixty years, the scene of silent grief, of unutterable helplessness, has still a haunting power over me, the oldest lad not eight years of age, the youngest a girl baby in arms, the young father aghast before the sudden tragedy which had come upon him. There must have been something in my sympathy which drew him toward me, for on his return a few months later he sought me out and we ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... is now Canada, as discoverers of the Saskatchewan, the mighty river which carries to far-distant Hudson Bay the waters melted on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It was by this route up the Saskatchewan that fifty years later was solved the tough and haunting problem of going over the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. La Verendrye now ascended the Saskatchewan for some three hundred miles to the forks where it divides into two great branches. He was going deeper into debt but he hoped ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... was a haunting knowledge that I was going mad, that this man Humphrey was waiting for me out beyond the surf beckoning to me with flapping arms, and had cast on me a spell whereby, as my brain shrivelled to madness, my body was ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... so attractive, that it was impossible for me to obtain a minute's conversation with Susan alone. I departed, wearied and disheartened with her sad, despairing face haunting me. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... When, under the glamor of her radiant skies the faded hues flash forth once more, there is no ruin nor decay, nor touch of conquering hand of man nor time, only a splendid city of dreams, waiting in silence—as all visions wait—until that invisible, haunting spirit has turned the legends of her ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... indicating the sex, is procured, and entrusted to the chief of a village, who sets it up in a funeral hut in the middle of a large taboo house adorned with plants. The survivors believe that the ghostly ogre, being so well provided for, will abstain from haunting them. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... marked a new departure in Ibsen's writings. Here was an end of the purely realistic and prosaic social dramas, which had reigned from The League of Youth to Hedda Gabler, and here was a return to the strange and haunting beauty of the old imaginative pieces. Mr. Archer was happily inspired when he spoke of "the pure melody" of the piece, and the best scenes of The Master-Builder were ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... mind where it may be commanded and utilized by recollection. Doubtless in our own subjective minds lie many of the impressions and experiences of our forebears. These may impinge upon our consciousness in dreams only, or in vague, haunting suggestions that we have before experienced some transient phase of our present existence. Ah, if we had but the power to recall them! Before us would unfold the forgotten story of the lost eons that have preceded us. We might even ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
