"Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few days later the alarm comes again. There is no wind this time, and, what is worse, an ominous silence falls at dusk over the orchard and meadow. "Why is everything so still?" I ask myself. "Oh, of course—the katydids aren't talking—and the crickets, and all the other whirr-y things. Ah! That means business! ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... at all?" she says, in a terrible tone, that contrasts painfully with the ominous silence she has maintained ever since the invitation was brought by ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... adequate to the national defense and the preservation of the Union, can save America from as many standing armies as it may be split into States or Confederacies, and from such a progressive augmentation, of these establishments in each, as will render them as burdensome to the properties and ominous to the liberties of the people, as any establishment that can become necessary, under a united and efficient government, must be tolerable to the former and safe ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... frozen snow ran a torrent roaring. I remembered Colorado, and how I had crossed the Arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the uneasy dawn. The woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped from above that very April and been killed. Then, most ominous and disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his head and said it would be snowing higher up. We went on, and it grew lighter. Before it was really day (or else the weather confused ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... which, read aright, distinguishes the otherwise commonplace occurrence. In the wedding-ring were two words—"To destiny." The words were ominous, for they were indicative of a policy long since formed and never afterward concealed, being a pretense to deceive Josephine as well as the rest of the world: the giver was about to assume a new role,—that of the "man of destiny,"—to work for a time on the imagination ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his voice, raised in some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head sagged forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening paper in his hand, and he gave it to her with his finger ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and bestoweth his mercy upon them not because they are deserving, but because he loveth to be merciful. When the flower buddeth forth in the spring with matchless beauty, no label is tacked on to its stem with ominous reminder: "Not to be gazed at by the eyes of the unworthy. All worthy persons, of good moral character, can obtain tickets by applying to Archangel Michael." When under His eternal laws the cooling spring babbleth forth merrily from the ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... constantly more ominous and menacing, but still we saw no sign of human life. Near the edge of the forest we came to a halt. Plainly it would be unwise to venture within range of the arboreal hailstones without protection, for though our pith-helmets ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... an ominous stillness reigned throughout the usually boisterous population of Masindi. Not a sound was to be heard, although the nightly custom of the people was ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... A pause succeeded this ominous declaration, and the crowd of passengers betrayed dismay, for all believed there was now no hope for the pursued. The wife bowed her head to her knees, for she had sunk on a box as if to hide the sight of her husband's ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... people would pay well to have it opened—that would be good medicine:—and simply keeping it shut would be bad medicine:—delightfully easy! How did it shut, by the by? He fumbled at the stick, but it did not close: he pushed and pulled, it made no difference. He pressed on the cloth; an ominous creaking warned him that Big Flower objected to being shut by force, ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... number of whom were armed, stood in front of Pegloe's tavern. Glancing in the direction of the court-house, he observed that the square before it held other groups. But what impressed him more was the ominous silence that was everywhere. At his elbow ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... type made up the blood-spillers of the French Revolution, and the packs of the earlier Jacquerie, the thugs who burned chateaux and shops, and butchered women as well as men, growling their ominous refrain: ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... you say, Artie," she warned in a quiet, ominous tone, with that in her eyes which should in prudence have halted him. "I am ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... yesterday? Ming-shu, you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?" demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... back into the room which we had just left. As he partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great straining and creaking—whereupon ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a moment or two of ominous silence, observing Hand's averted face and Schryhart's ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... be necessary, I believe, to explain why I have sent for you, Dr. Harpe." His cool, impersonal voice was more ominous, more final than anger, and she found it hard to preserve her elaborate assumption ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... colourless, but for two bright red spots, the size of quarters, beneath either cheek-bone. He was half a head shorter than the shipping clerk, and apparently about half as wide; but there was sincerity in his manner and an ominous snap in the unflinching stare ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Guthrie was turning in at the gate of the Greyfriars, who should cross the street before him, so as almost to run against him, but the city executioner! The omen—for it was a day of omens—made the young minister stagger for a moment, but only for a moment. At the same time the ominous incident made such an impression on the young Covenanter's heart and imagination, that he said to some of his fellow-subscribers as he laid down the pen, 'I know that I shall die for what I have done this day, but I cannot die ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... and gold, the country lay before us. Then, even as we watched from covert, our ears made acquaintance with a new and ominous sound. From an infinite distance the morning breeze from the north carried with it a deadened thumping sound, now regular as the muffled rolling of drums, now softly irregular with intervals of stillness. It ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... nothing. The situation was ominous enough at this point. A sudden gravity and dignity fell upon the young men who sat there, schooled in an etiquette whose first lesson was that of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff's voice, telling him it would go better with him if ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... called these dark areas? "Lake of Dreams" and "Lake of Death." Spud's superstitious mind was a-quiver with dread and an ominous premonition to which the empty, frozen wastes below him ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... recovered this shock, than they were horrified by the sudden discovery in a sequestered spot of some human bones, strewn upon the ground beside a broken-down cart. Whether accident or design had brought these unfortunates to an untimely end, none know; but this ominous appearance seemed to have terrified them even more than the bushrangers themselves. These accounts sobered our party not a little, and it was deemed advisable to double ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... concealed, under the drawing-room sofa. Conversation about the dearness of butchers' meat and the enormities of servants palled upon him, I think, after a time, but he had taken his wife's style of conversation for better for worse when he took her gayly dressed self under those ominous conditions, and he never showed impatience. He loved his wife, but I think it grieved him when smart-colored glass vases were strewn among the cherished bits of old china and enamel which his soul loved. He did not like chromo-lithographs, or the framed photographs which Mrs. Alwynn ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... fairy now entered, and walked straight up to the looking-glass to examine her paint—pronouncedly turning her back to the sofa, where Mr. Pericles still lay at provoking full length. Her panting was ominous of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thoroughly and intimately than any other man was privileged to do. Peel went out of office very soon after he had made Mr. Gladstone Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord John Russell had brought forward a series of motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, and Peel was defeated and resigned. It is almost needless to say that Gladstone went with him. Peel came back again in office in 1841, on the fall of the Melbourne administration, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... a late hour in the evening, and even then there were ominous red lines about her eyes, indicating that she had ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... "You sound alarmingly ominous." He smiled at her, and she had a moment of panic. "You don't look like a young lady with anything eating at her damask cheek, or however ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... answer your desires, and first, I will tell you, that from a child he was very bad; his very beginning was ominous, and presaged that no good end was, in likelihood, to follow thereupon. There were several sins that he was given to, when but a little one, that manifested him to be notoriously infected with original corruption; for I dare say he learned none of them of his father and mother; nor was he admitted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... advice and assistance from someone, he sent for M. des Aulnays. That worthy man had gone back to Saintonge on receiving a letter informing him of the illness of one of his daughters. This appeared an ominous circumstance to Cisy. Luckily, M. Vezou, his tutor, came to see him. Then he ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... ominous word went round, "No statement to-day." Sure enough, when the PRIME MINISTER rose and hushed the buzz of conversation that had rendered Questions inaudible, it was merely to observe that there were still some points outstanding, that no statement would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... A score of men still fought to reach their prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... seas to which inland waters are so liable, was running at the time, and there were evidences, too, of foul weather, for the wind that sets from the north-east for three-fourths of the season in these waters, had hauled more westerly, and dark, ominous looking clouds obstructed the light of the sun as it rose from the horizon. The wind came in sudden and unequal gusts, now causing the clipper to careen till her topsail yards almost dipped, and then permitting her to rise once more to the upright position. Capt. Selim noted these signs well, for ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... side of his theory which reflected harshly on Ferrari. While she was still speaking, the servant interrupted her by entering the room with a visiting-card. It was the card of Henry Westwick; and there was an ominous request written on it in pencil. 'I bring bad news. Let me see you for a minute downstairs.' Agnes ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... for him, also. Other men had wooed and pleaded, but she had ever mentally compared them with Graydon, and they had appeared insignificant. She had felt sure for a long time that he would eventually be at her feet, and she had never decided to refuse him. Now she was ready to accept but for this ominous "if," which her father had emphasized. She could not think of marrying him should he become a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the neighborhood of Rome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it. We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a storm. Don't trust, my Lord, to the appearance of the sky. Nothing is more deceitful. For the last two days the barometer has been falling in a most ominous manner, and is now at 27 degrees. This is a warning I dare not neglect, for there is nothing I dread more than storms in the Southern Seas; I have had a taste of them already. The vapors which become condensed in the immense glaciers at the South Pole ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of Alice on the deck, and turned quickly. He smiled at her, and the smile was in strange contrast to his rather ominous words. As Alice knew very little about the sea or boats, she paid ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... be dull postmen if they don't remark on the shower of envelopes that pass through their hands—ominous money-letters, all with the same address, and no detection remember. You don't know who will ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then he glanced at Alfred, utterly befuddled as to what had happened while he had been on a journey to happier scenes. Apparently Maggie was waiting for an answer to something, but to what? Jimmy thought he detected an ominous look in Alfred's eyes. Letting his hand fall over the arm of the chair so that Alfred could not see it, Jimmy began to make frantic signals to Maggie to depart; she ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... across the levels of the ranch, he heard the engine whistling for Bonneville. Again and again, at rapid intervals in its flying course, it whistled for road crossings, for sharp curves, for trestles; ominous notes, hoarse, bellowing, ringing with the accents of menace and defiance; and abruptly Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... said, and then he happened to glance into a mirror on his left hand between two windows. He saw the reflection of Jules, who stood behind his chair, and he saw Jules give a slow, significant, ominous wink ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... shallow ditch. Upon being questioned they said the ditch was a mile long and would carry water to the big dam in their pasture when the rains fell. They were finishing the ditch just in time, for the first of the season's storms was closing down upon us. There was an ominous stillness, then the black cloud was rent with tongues of flame. And the rains descended—more than descended. They beat and dashed and poured until it seemed that the very floodgates of heaven had opened over ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... dark eyes brightened for a moment, as the mild memories of love and fondness rose in his heart, and a bright smile played upon his haughty lip and lofty brow. Other thoughts arose, and the eyebrows that almost met over the straight Grecian nose of Lemercier, were knit as he recalled the ominous words ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... back to the fort with these ominous tidings was but the work of a few short hours. In a moment all was stir and bustle. The soldiers were not to be disheartened. They were ready and almost eager for the battle, having become weary of inaction and suspense. But the face of Colonel Monro was grave and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... commander, General Cameron and his escort had followed the line of battle for nearly a mile to the right of Ransome's battery, and there learned that the division commander had gone in search of the corps commander. It seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior—an ominous circumstance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron rode on for another half-mile, where by good luck he met General Masterson, the division ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... and ruthless remodellings to which Paris has been subjected. Mr. Hare speaks with just indignation of the destruction of Northumberland House at Charing Cross, but this has so far been an exceptional instance, though it is perhaps an ominous one. The traveller may still step aside from the busy Strand into the silent and beautiful Temple Church with its tombs of Crusaders, pause as he leaves his banker's in Bishopsgate to take a survey of Crosby Hall and Sir Paul Pindar's house with their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... prisoner from below. Looking at this dignitary one gets the poetic impression of a mass of white hair, white moustache, white whiskers, white beard and white wig, with little bits of bright red face appearing in between. From a crevice in one of these patches come the ominous words, of which we catch but a sample or two: "... Prisoner at the bar ... for that you did ... steal, take and carry away ... pairs of boots ... of our Lord the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... return—and then hurried from the room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... long and anxiously the slowly rolling log. Not a glimpse of the motive power could be obtained, but it ground and crushed its way along with ominous certainty, ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... accounts run thus:—Persecuted by Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friends and followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted by the Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain the Peloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from offended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declares that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at sea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for the Corinthian Isthmus. At the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the variety of their resources are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a most unpleasant sound to hear constantly repeated, "Keep a good lookout to leeward." On the 13th the storm raged with its full fury: our horizon was narrowly limited by the sheets of spray borne by the wind. The sea looked ominous, like a dreary waving plain with patches of drifted snow: whilst the ship laboured heavily, the albatross glided with its expanded wings right up the wind. At noon a great sea broke over us, and filled one of the whale-boats, which was obliged to be instantly cut away. The poor "Beagle" trembled ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... hotter and sultrier than ever. We were all seated out in the verandah, men-folk smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning themselves and fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous rumbling was heard which made us ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... it does not yet possess one, but it is a true fly of the family ASILIDAE, and being a veritable monster to merely sportful and persistent if annoying flies of lesser growth, no doubt it will continue to perform its part even though without a formal distinction. Its presence is announced by an ominous, booming hum. It passes on one side with a flight so rapid as to render it almost invisible. You hear a boom which has something of a whistle, and see a yellowish glint; the rest is space and silence. In half a minute the creature returns; and thus he scoops about, booming and making ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... freebooter of all others whom he sought—Capt. Jack Scarfield—seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great Bahama channel. It was the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... singing now seemed to fly off to dense coverts, and uttered only frightened cries. A dense, stuffy sensation seemed to be in the air, and there for a few moments every sound was hushed, and a calm, the most profound and ominous, seemed to fall upon the whole face of nature. Not a blade of grass or a tall reed in the marshy places near the shore made the slightest movement. Nature was absolutely still. It was the dead, weird quiet before the awful hurricane; the quietude of ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... most Cimmerian. But in fifteen days later, where would the Projectile be? In what direction would it have been drawn by the forces innumerable of attractions incalculable? To such a question as this, even Ardan would reply only by an ominous ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... his eyes moved uneasily in their sockets. It seemed almost as if he glanced backwards and forwards in order to look for a way of escape. But no escape was possible. Richard stood waiting, severe, inflexible, with that ominous gleam in his eyes. Hugo rose and followed like a dog at his master's call. From the moment that Brian marked his sullen, hang-dog expression and drooping head, he gave up his hope of proving Hugo's innocence. He would gladly have absented himself ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... beginning, suddenly remembered that some important business required his presence in the low lands where dwelt industry and peace, and accordingly recommending us to the skill of two guides, shook hands cordially with us, and in a few minutes his ominous face and oval form were hidden from our sight by the shrubs and stunted firs which covered the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;—no sophistry of self-delusion,—except only that previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings; and, after the deed done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers,—like delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... am sorry!" the priest exclaimed as Anubis disappeared. "It is an omen. Toth[2] visiteth Ptah; Wisdom seeketh Power! Came he by divine summons or did he seek the great god? It is a problem for the sorcerers and is of ominous import!" ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Shortland) 'it is always ominous to see the figure of an absent person. If the figure is very shadowy, and its face is not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized his prey. If the face of the absent person is seen, the omen forewarns the beholder ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that she had ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... been men of marked personality. Not all great tennis players have personality. Few of the many stars of the game can lay claim to it justly. The most powerful personality in the tennis world during my time is Norman E. Brookes, with his peculiar sphinx-like repression, mysterious, quiet, and ominous calm. Brookes repels many by his peculiar personality. He never was the popular hero that other men, notably M'Loughlin and Wilding, have been. Yet Brookes always held a gallery enthralled, not only by the sheer wizardry of his play, but by the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... avant-courriers of ground-swell: six hours more, and the storm which has been sweeping over 'the still- vexed Bermoothes,' and bending the tall palms on West Indian isles, will be roaring through the oak woods of Devon. The old black buck is calling his does with ominous croakings, and leading the way slowly into the deepest coverts of the glens. The stormy petrels, driven in from the Atlantic, are skimming like black swallows over the bay beneath us. Long strings of sea-fowl are flagging on ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... this camp-meeting hymn he sang in an ominous silence now, for it had crept into their minds that the hymn they had previously sung so loudly was a Protestant hymn, and that this was another Protestant hymn of the rankest sort. When he stopped singing and pushed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conceive it. Until man and woman are placed on exactly the same footing, until they stand on the same plane, so that there can be an intimate communion of thoughts, ideas, and interests, life will always be ominous and unhappy for one or for the other, and humanity will never overcome the evils with which it is now struggling. God made woman as perfect as man, and it is unjust to deprive her of any of the benefits and advantages which man derives from science, arts, and politics. Politics ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit, and enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in him seemed to crave. Such were the more patent attributes of a character that, ominous as it was, yet interested me, and yet appeared to me to be redeemable,—nay, to have in it the rude elements of a certain greatness. Ought we not to make something great out of a youth, under twenty, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... roof of the house to the floor of the cellar, ominous silence reigned in Deerham Court. Mrs. Verner lay in it—dying. She had been conveyed home from the Hall on the morning following the catastrophe. Miss Hautley and Sir Edmund urged her remaining longer, offering every possible hospitality; but poor Sibylla ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... followed, the ominous joggle of a glass at the speaker's elbow, the quick, sympathetic glance that Brant instinctively felt was directed at his own face, and the abrupt change of subject, could not but arrest his attention, even if he had overlooked the speech. His face, however, betrayed nothing. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... large fires, about which they flitted in an ominous and unpleasant fashion, that reminded me of some mediaeval pictures of hell, which I had ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... down to the high price of provisions. Bread at 1s. 3d. the quartern loaf, according to the London test. Wheat at 120s. per quarter, as the home-baking northerners viewed the matter; and then the conversation died away to an ominous silence. John looked at Jeremiah, as if asking him to begin. Jeremiah was the host, and had been a married man. Jeremiah returned the look with the same meaning in it. John, though a bachelor, was the elder brother. The great church bell, brought from the Monkshaven ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to care," she would say to herself, and then when she caught sight of his face and saw the cloud resting upon it she felt puzzled. She had asked regarding his father's illness and learned he was better, so the ominous shadow was not from that source. She felt sure it was not from an impending declaration of love brewing in his heart, for she knew him well enough to feel that when it came to that, he would have the manly courage to express his feelings in his ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... including Albany, were still under the autocratic sway of Clinton. Hamilton's colleagues, Yates and Lansing, had resigned their seats in the Great Convention. Among the signatures to the Constitution his name stood alone for New York, and the fact was ominous of his lonely and precarious position. But difficulties were ever his stimulant, and this was not the hour to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than anything that could have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... quiet, almost too quiet sometimes. On windless nights they are silent as the grave, and the house might be miles in the country. The roar of London's traffic reaches me only in heavy, distant vibrations. It holds an ominous note sometimes, like that of an approaching army, or an immense tidal-wave very far away thundering ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... say," went on Dunwody, "here is that same situation, twice in one lifetime! It's ominous, for somebody. There is trouble in the air, for some or all of us. But I say I offer you fair play, even, man to man. I ask no questions. I will not take any answers, any more than those two would have allowed any, that day on the train there, when they played, ten years ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea herself to find fish for B.'s dinner, &c." Augusta Ada was born in London on the 10th of December, 1815. During the next months a few cynical mutterings are the only interruptions to an ominous silence; but these could be easily explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Ominous, threatening stillness filled the ship again, disturbed only by the whimpers and frightened growls of the dog. Trying to calm his overwrought nerves, Thad listened—strained his ears. He could hear nothing. And he had no idea from which direction ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... mud, and the palm-leaf roof was much damaged. However, it was better than nothing, so they slung their hammocks under it, kindled a fire, and prepared supper. While they were busy discussing this meal, a few dark and ominous clouds gathered in the sky, and the old trader, glancing uneasily about him, gave them to understand that he feared the rainy season was going ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... But more than one cause drove him to a bolder course; his passion, which increased in violence by contact with its beautiful object, and also a great uneasiness he felt at not hearing from Phoebe. This silence was ominous. He and she knew each other, and what the other was capable of. He knew she was the woman to cross the seas after him, if Staines left the diggings, and any explanation took place that might point ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chief boast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinary sensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docent on the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted to deprive of his licentia docendi[51] at the ominous instance of the absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of his peculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first case during the present century in which an assault has been attempted upon the freedom of scientific ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... but Roy's rags on the brookside, and over the brook on the high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... "Bertha Millner's" officers and crew. They seemed to Wilbur to look him straight in the eye. They neither moved nor spoke. The silence and absolute lack of motion on the part of these small, half-naked Chinamen, with their ape-like muzzles and twinkling eyes, was ominous. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... officer was known to the whole table; and the enquiries for the fate of their friends and France were incessant and innumerable. He evidently suppressed much, to avoid "a scene;" yet what he had to tell was sufficiently alarming. The ominous shake of the Jew's head, and the changes of his sagacious visage, showed me that he at least thought the evil day on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... not be alarmed at this rather ominous title. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... (a wild hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland); the signal that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is omitted from the history of the Cathedral, mention must be made of the valiant efforts that have been and are still being made to preserve the stability of the structure. A few years ago the east end showed signs of subsidence, and ominous cracks appeared in the north transept, a part of the old Norman church. An examination of the fabric proved that herculean tasks were essential to save this portion of the edifice. It was agreed that only by extensive underpinning could the work be accomplished. ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... reference; for the children there were only the wild romances of Southey, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish mother, and "some mad Methodist magazines full of miracles and apparitions and preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living," familiar to readers of 'Shirley.' To counterbalance all this romance and terror, the children had their interest in politics and Blackwood's Magazine, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... stiff order, and Ned had some fears for the result. Happily all went well, and in two or three minutes an audience of four trembling and well nigh panic stricken lads was sitting in the darkness, listening to Batter's ominous tale. ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... the children said there was a fire somewhere. They heard the alarm bell, and saw a red light in the sky. Presently we saw flames. Mr. Peabody was uneasy, and I walked out with him to see. Between the house here and the town lies the Common or City Park. As we crossed this, the signs became more ominous. We made our way into the principal street through the crowd, and then, looking down a cross street full of enormous warehouses, saw both sides of it in flames. The streets were full of steam fire-engines, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... appearance was Laurence Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have "anticipated the labours" of the biographer—"my birthday was ominous to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... ominous. The Lady Fani looked at him strangely. As if she tried to tell him something without speaking it. She looked as if she ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Weber. He and his family were unhappily suffocated in the cellars of their establishment during one of the conflagrations which marked the Bloody Week of the Commune. At the time when I met my father, that is about noon, there was nothing particularly ominous in the appearance of the streets along which I myself passed. It was a fine bright Sunday, and, as was usual on such a day, there were plenty of people abroad. Recently enrolled National Guards certainly predominated among the men, but the latter ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... secretary to take the chair for a few minutes," he said, and there was something in his voice that meant business. Something ominous. The delegates pressed closer. The secretary took the chair. "I've got something to say ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... ominous air that was skirling up on the hillside; and Mackenzie's face, as he heard it, grew wroth. "That teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his foot. "What for will he be playing Cha till ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... their talk part of the time; and then again they lowered their voices to rumbling growls. At such times he knew that they were speaking of him, and the hum of the undertone was more ominous than open threats. When they talked aloud there was a confused clamor; when they were more hushed there was always the oily murmur of Scottie's voice, taking the lead and directing the current of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... gusts of popular opinion, now, in spite of a rising hurricane, held on its course. A new spirit, it was clear— a determined, an intractable spirit- - had taken control of the Sudan situation. What was it? The explanation was simple, and it was ominous. Mr. Gladstone ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... look back, I hardly know how we lived through that sorrowful day. The doctor came, and did nothing but shake his head in the ominous way which doctors have when they feel a case is beyond their power. I think Polly had so little hope herself that she did not care to ask him what his real ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... good deal of laughing, I remember, on what the public might be supposed to think, or say, concerning the gloomy and ominous nature of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming hurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable a name in English literature, first saw the light in an humble cottage in an obscure Bedfordshire village. His father, Thomas Bunyan, though styling himself in ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... were old and weather-worn; her sides badly needed paint; and as she rose and fell with the swell, she showed barnacles and "grass" below the water-line. At her mizzen-peak flew the American ensign, and at the fore-truck the ominous quarantine flag. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... in his efforts to wrench the iron bands asunder which bound his wrists, wondering what that ominous silence meant. ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... sun broke out just as they turned to go, and peered curiously through the boughs, till it found out and lighted on the angular ominous heap, shrouded with a cloak, that, ten minutes ago, was a strong, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The birds that sing all day have hushed, and the horned owls, the monster frogs, and that strange and ominous fowl (if fowl it be, and not, as some assert, a spirit damned) which we English call the whippoorwill, are yet silent. Later the wolf will howl and the panther scream, but now there is no sound. The winds are ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... prepostor would be seized with a fit of district visiting, and would make a tour of the passages and hall and the fags' studies. Then, if the owner were entertaining a friend or two, the first kick at the door and ominous "Open here" had the effect of the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard: every one cut to cover—one small boy diving under the sofa, another under the table, while the owner would hastily pull down a book or two and open ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... in the group that surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... became aware of a solid black mass looming in front of the bull's-eye window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... from Peshawur the wires began to flash their quiet and ominous messages. The road had been cut behind Linforth and his coolies. No news had come from him. No supplies could reach him. Luffe, who was in the country to the east of Chiltistan, had been informed. He had gathered together what ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the river on which our finding water depended, and the certainty that, wherever it was, there were our foes before us, exulting perhaps in the thought that we were seeking to avoid them in this vile scrub. On all sides the flat and barren waste blended imperceptibly with a sky as dismal and ominous as ever closed in darkness. One bleak and sterile spot hard by afforded ample room for our camp; but the cattle had neither water nor any ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Ominous news were now coming from all parts to Napoleon, who had not quitted the angle formed by the line between Aspern and Essling. Marshal Massena still kept in the midst of the smoking ruins which marked the spot where ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... continued. The pressure for new issues became stronger and stronger. The Parisian populace and the Jacobin Club were especially loud in their demands for them; and, a few months later, on June 19, 1791, with few speeches, in a silence very ominous, a new issue was made of six hundred millions more;—less than nine months after the former great issue, with its solemn pledges to keep down the amount in circulation. With the exception of a few thoughtful men, the whole nation ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... wanting. Confederate wounded, stragglers, and skulkers were making for the rear; and the rallied brigades were again in disorder, with Bee and Bartow, two first-rate brigadiers, just killed, and other seniors wounded. Another ominous sign was the limbering up of Confederate guns to cover the expected retreat from the ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... funerals are witnessed before they occur, and 'corpse-candles' (some sort of light) are watched flitting above the road whereby a burial procession is to take its way. {228} Though we most frequently hear the term 'second sight' applied as a phrase of Scotch superstition, the belief in this kind of ominous illusion is obviously universal. Theoclymenus, in the Odyssey, a prophet by descent, and of the same clan as the soothsayer Melampus, beholds the bodies and faces of the doomed wooers, 'shrouded in night'. The Pythia at ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... seemed unstinted praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the curtain fell," ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Barbara's heart beat, for a yellow flag went up. She hated the ominous signal, and turning the glasses, followed the doctor's launch. The boat ran alongside Terrier, a man went on board, returned and climbed a ladder to Arcturus' deck. He did not come back for some time and Barbara looked for Lister, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... Neilson, whose position as a recognized opponent of the Union tied his hands, and Johnstone, a disappointed place man. Peace ruled in the Assembly, and the battle passed to the province, the newspapers, and most ominous of all for the governor, to the cabinet and public in Britain. A storm of abuse, criticism, and regrets broke over Bagot's devoted head. The opposition press in Canada called him "a radical, a puppet, an old woman, an apostate, a renegade descendant of old Colonel ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Americas, the three were always spoken of together as the Three J's—Jaggers, the Jockey, and the Jew. Wherever horses raced their fame was great, and amongst the English at least it was evil and ominous. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... outside for a moment, but for a moment only. The advancing cloud of savages were already coming up the slope, gradually spreading out into the form of a fan. The majority were mounted, although several struggled forward on foot. Near their center appeared the ominous gleam of a red blanket, waved back and forth as though in signal, but the distance was too great for my eyes to distinguish the one manipulating it. We were trapped, with our backs to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... now quietly arranging his men in such a manner as to insure the captivity or death of the outlaw, when one of the soldiers stumbled, and his musket struck the ground with a ringing noise. Jack, who had just awakened from his drunken nap, heard the ominous sound. He had no weapons, but relied on the security of his retreat and his activity and strength. He cautiously opened the door, in front of which stood a soldier with his musket pointed towards him. The sergeant cried, "Surrender, or you are a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... innocence and oldish prudence made a queer meeting; the slim little fingers that held the book; above all, the sweet calm of the face. June would not gaze, but she looked and looked, as she could, by glances; and nearly worshipped her little mistress in her heart. She thought it almost ominous and awful to see a child read the Bible so. For Daisy looked at it with loving eyes, as at words that were a pleasure to her. It was no duty-work, that reading. At last Daisy shut the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... by that dread place, He lifts his radiant face, And looks to heaven with reverent love and fear; Then, while the welkin quakes, The muttering thunder breaks, And lightnings shoot and ominous meteors drear, And all the daunted earth doth moan, He from the doors of death rolls back ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... La Barre's effort to maintain French sovereignty over the Iroquois is reflected in his request that they should ask his permission before attacking tribes friendly to the French. When he asked them why they had attacked the Illinois, they gave this ominous answer: 'Because they deserved to die.' La Barre could effect nothing by a display of authority, and even with the help of gifts he could only postpone war against the tribes of the Great Lakes. The Iroquois intimated that for the present ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... seen, to prevent the assailants from ascending their strange scaling ladder. So they determined to follow, hoping to overtake and dislodge some of them. But Herode, who had found the upper branches bending and cracking in a very ominous manner under his great weight, was forced to turn about and make his way back to the main trunk, where, under cover of darkness, he quietly awaited the climbing foe. Merindol, who commanded this detachment of the garrison, was first, and being completely taken by surprise was easily dislodged and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a loud clatter of rising feet, oaths, threats, and even a knife or two drawn; and, in the midst of it all, the ominous click of a pistol, and then dead silence; for it was Ransome who had produced that weapon. "Come, no nonsense," said he. "Door's guarded, street's guarded, and I'm ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... aghast as Zeuramaund uttered these ominous predictions; the whole council were dismayed at his words, and all fell again prostrate on ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Hester! I believe you are right," cried Gladwyn, as he listened to these ominous sounds. "At any rate, I will accept your warning, and make such preparations as will show those devils that we are ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... submit to our fate. The habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he hesitate? Why did he reason when he should have only ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... were heard. "I suspects, sir, as how we're in shoal water; they've let go an anchor," said Paul, calmly, though he knew full well the peril of our position. "But it doesn't hold, d'ye see, sir." Signal guns were heard. A few minutes passed, to most of us the time appeared far longer. A dull, ominous roaring sound reached even to our ears down in the depths of the ship. "We are among the breakers!" I sung out, jumping from my seat; and scarcely were the words out of my mouth when a cry was heard from above, and words of compassion reached our ears. "Pauvres Anglais! pauvres Anglais! ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... open-air pulpit there an impassioned sermon on the sacredness of human life, and referring to Zuleika in terms which John Knox would have hesitated to utter. As he piled up the invective, he noticed an ominous restiveness in the congregation—murmurs, clenching of hands, dark looks. He saw the pulpit as yet another trap laid for him by the gods. He had walked straight into it: another moment, and he might be dragged down, overwhelmed by numbers, torn limb from limb. All that was in him of quelling power ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... are spies—for they have no credentials. They may be imprisoned or executed. They passed through our lines but twenty miles from Richmond, seven days ago. I haven't been able to hear from them. The silence is ominous. ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... dream—a frightful dream— Tho' funny mayhap to wags 'twill seem, By all who regard the Church, like us, 'Twill be thought exceedingly ominous! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Pryor and Gass, met in one of the many little ominous groups that now began to form among the men in camp. Captain ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... An ominous owl, with his solemn bass voice, Sat moaning hard by; sat moaning hard by: "The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice, For he must soon die; for ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... words, yet ominous. Could we restore Our purchases, and make a treaty line, All might be well; but who would ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... ominous vast calm They'll harbour, like enchanted Chill shapes he has strangely conjured from The silence of his masterdom; There float till again they feel the qualm Of hunger ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice |
