"Ill-omened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pale and rayless, as if drowned in the ill-omened yellow clouds. The wind kept puffing and blowing at intervals. A few minutes' lull enabled us to collect a little grass, and then, seated side by side, we watched the approach of night, dark, desolate, and starless; but the comparative coolness of the atmosphere ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... their thirst; when they had heaped up a small bank of snow, as shelter against the wind, they lay down almost helpless. A few carrion moose-birds which had followed them for the last day, but always out of reach of the guns, chattered among the trees. These ill-omened visitors came closer and closer, as they saw the group lying motionless, and chattered and hopped from branch to branch over head, impatient for their prey. Meynell, making the exertion with difficulty, cautiously seized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... beholders an uncanny feeling in which foreboding deepened into alarm. The appearance of the whole audience, still more of the Imperial retinue, was one to cause all beholders to interpret the garb of the spectators as ill-omened, almost as inviting disaster. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to love, dear Heart; and now, as you see, you are teaching me to be orthodox. Do not think I shall give you up; there is only one power greater than my desire, and that is Death. I would not end with so ill-omened a word, but rather with your own sweet ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... getting the better of the unfriendly distrust with which the Wirtemberger regards all strangers. 'From the far north,' she answered shortly. 'You have never been in our country before?' he asked; 'well, you have an ill-omened day for your arrival; the storm greeted you!' The lady started. 'Thank you for reminding me,' she said, 'I dislike ill omens.' The man grinned: it delighted his honest soul to have succeeded in annoying ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... multitudo imperitorum confused the dies religiosi and dies nefasti. The distinction is most clearly seen in the fact that on dies religiosi the temples were (or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was ill-omened (Gell., ib.), while on dies nefasti the latter was regular, such days being made over to the gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular ignorance with such words ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... shall fare forth, comrades for evermore. Though the ill-omened bird Time loves to bear Has brushed this cheek and left an impress there I shall be fierce and dauntless as of yore, Free as a bird o'er the wide world to rove, And strong and fearless, O ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... Wragge being pushed about the house in her noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly to every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned her head ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... their ill-omened repast, when the air above us was darkened by two mighty shadows. The captain of my ship, knowing by experience what this meant, cried out to us that the parent birds were coming, and urged us to get on board with all speed. This we did, and the sails were hoisted, but before we ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming—his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... undress, and on which, if need were, one could buckle a cuirass, for battle: like his father, he was pale; like his father, he was to die young, and, even more than his father, his countenance wore that ill-omened melancholy by which fortune-tellers recognise those who are to die ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they passed through a huddle of huts, tents and lean-tos on the southern ascent. Though the hour was late, many windows were light and sounds of revelry came dimly, as though muffled, from curtain-hid interiors. There was something furtive and ill-omened about this neighborhood which one sensed rather than perceived. Spear rode close and touched ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... land, and the whole of the main road over which I had passed from Sui-fu to Tong-ch'uan-fu (a distance of over four hundred miles) was blocked by infuriated mobs, who were out to kill,—their motto the famous ill-omened Boxer motto of 1900: "Exalt the dynasty; destroy ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the castle walls contained a bride and a corpse. The pale lady from a foreign land has died in the night, and the blind man who is lying in his daughter's arms has but one consolation, that of knowing that he shall soon follow her to her endless rest. And the ill-omened birds scream out to the winds that the old Slavonic curse has fallen on the castle, and the doom has lighted ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks, and it was evident already to an ordinary observer, that something wrong had got into the village. The peasant wore a sullen expression of countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with more ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened interference of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of charming and touching simplicity, which had their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... tell you how often I have thought over this maddening, this puzzling personality, terrifying beyond words, who seems implacably bent on our destruction!... Again and again I have had reason to fear that his ill-omened influence has been directed against my humble self!... As if he guessed something of this, the baron has frequently sought to reassure me; yet, through some singular coincidence, each time we have spoken of Fantomas a tragedy has occurred, a dreadful ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... my sake, to her welcome as night to the weary labourer. She had a heart like yours, formed to love and be loved; and it would be doing honour to yonder proud Baron, to say he had such worth as my father's.— Yet was she most unhappy. Oh! my sweet lady, be warned, and break off this ill-omened match!" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... alas! a worthy vessel, Many months have lain at anchor, I, a war-ship well constructed, Am decaying in the harbor, Never having sailed to conquest; Worms are gnawing at my vitals, In my hull their dwelling-places, And ill-omened birds of heaven Build their nests within my rigging; Frogs and lizards of the forest Play about my oars and rudder; Three times better for this vessel Were he but a valley birch-tree, Or an aspen on ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... "she must be stupid indeed. To drive away any one dear to her. And moreover, into an ill-omened wood. The forest and its mysteries might have waited long enough ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... and yellow garment worn and patched, an ill-omened rag thrown down at the foot of a tree. It bore the convict's original number at the Perth Penitentiary. The felon was not there, but his filthy garments betrayed his passage. This livery of crime, after having clothed some miscreant, was now ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... oak, he invited her to lie down and rest. She was about to accede to his invitation, when they were startled by a shrill and discordant sound accompanied with a heavy flapping of wings, and presently a flight of dull ill-omened ravens issued from their solitary abodes, and hovered about, as if to dispute the possession of their ancient ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... himself to be picked up. The boat returned almost immediately; no one, the crew said, replied to their shouts. Presently the steamer separated from her burning sister and dropped back; then it was seen that the flames now swept the entire stern of the ill-omened Toki Maru. The wheel still stood, but no one was at it, nor could any human form be discerned on ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... furnished with full stores, so that all may be well with her as she enters on her new duties. So is it that England should send forth her daughters. They should not escape from her arms with shrill screams and bleeding wounds, with ill-omened words which live so long, though the speakers of them lie cold in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... following the ill-omened banquet in Park Lane was held a second dinner party, in Cadogan Gardens. Like veritable gourmets, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... the popular leaders that the question of war should be agitated in the greatest assembly which it was possible to gather together. The Coliseum was appointed as the place of meeting, and it was destined to present an unwanted spectacle, a grand but ill-omened scene. All Rome, it may be said, was congregated in the ancient arena, the favorite tribunes at their head. These demagogues were determined that the question of war should be settled by acclamation, hoping thus to influence ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... discussed in Saxony, and in May 1910 a vigorous debate took place in the Bavarian Parliament, in the course of which Dr. Mueller declared that the advocates of the reform would not rest "until this unjust electoral system, this bulwark of short-sighted injustice and ill-omened party spirit, is set aside in the higher interests of justice and of civil and religious freedom." The principle has received a recognition even more general in character, for a ministerial decree issued in June ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... doctor, and M. Plantat exchanged a significant look. What misfortune had befallen M. Courtois, this worthy, and despite his faults, excellent person? Decidedly, this was an ill-omened day! ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Betsy was passing the open door at the time, called her in. The evening was falling quickly, the day had changed from a beautiful bright morning to a rainy gusty afternoon, tearing the leaves and blossoms from the trees, and whirling now and then a shower of snowy petals, beautiful but ill-omened snow, across the dark window. Beyond that the firmament was dull; the clouds hung low, and the day was gone before it ought. When Betsy came in she closed the door, not fastening it, but still, Reginald felt, shutting him out too much ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to sleep, saw the rug upon which Sorez had reclined, saw the very spot where she had sat with the image in her lap, saw where she had stood as she had thrust the revolver into his hand and sent him on his ill-omened errand. But all these things only emphasized her absence. It was as though he were looking upon the scene of events of a year past. She ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... after the heat to which they had been subject. In an instant all hands were in the water swimming about round and round the vessel. The boat was in the water on the starboard side. Murray, intending to bathe afterwards, was alone on deck. Suddenly he saw the ill-omened fin of a shark rising above the water at no great distance off, and then his snout appeared, and his wicked eyes were visible surveying the scene of action. Murray shouted to Adair and the rest of the people to come on board. No one lost an instant in attempting to obey ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... Allah haply deign bring us comfort." So the old woman fared forth and bolted and barred it yet more straitly; and when they knocked a second time she acknowledged the rap by "Who is at the door?" and the lieutenant Shamamah replied to her and said, "O ill-omened old woman, O accomplice of robbers, knowest thou not that he who rappeth is the Master of Police and his young men? So open to us forthright." Quoth she, "We be Harims and ne'er a man with us, therefore we will not open to any;" and quoth he, "Open, or we will break ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... may be sure was the spirit of many another reply to these ill-omened invitations. It would have been well if, on these occasions, the pride he boasted of had stood him in better stead, and repelled such unjustifiable intrusions. But in this, as in so many other respects, Burns was the most inconsistent ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... horror upon horror; then came Clement Hicks, as one having authority, and bade them begone. The ill-omened fowls hopped off; relations began to collect; there was an atmosphere of suppressed electricity about the place, and certain women openly criticised the prominent attitude Hicks saw fit to assume. This, however, did ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... not seem to proceed from anywhere within the library, but from some distant room, far away overhead. A musical sound it was, but breaking in upon the silence of that ill-omened house, its music was the music of terror. In a faint and very sweet cascade it rippled; a ringing as of tiny ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... in which I had so much concern, occurred at the time mentioned by Ludloe, and as all other circumstances were alike, I could not doubt that the person whom the exertion of my mysterious powers had relieved was Mrs. Benington: but what an ill-omened interference was mine! The robbers would probably have been satisfied with the few guineas in her purse, and, on receiving these, would have left her to prosecute her journey in peace and security, but, by absurdly offering a succour, which ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... Godwin, Sweyn, had been at first especially her care and her favourite; and he, of more poetic temperament than his brothers, had willingly submitted to her influence. But of all the brethren, as will be seen hereafter, the career of Sweyn had been most noxious and ill-omened; and at that moment, while the rest of the house carried with it into exile the deep and indignant sympathy of England, no man said of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had never been its owner! that he had never brought it to Ellerslie, to draw down misery on his head! Ill-omened trust! whatever it contains, its presence carried blood and sorrow in its train. Wherever it has been deposited war and murder have followed: I trust my dear master will ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... soon came tumbling up from below, rather astonished at being so soon called. The other officers were also soon on deck Mr Randolph agreed that the stranger, which hung on our quarter like some ill-omened bird of prey, had an exceedingly suspicious appearance, and that we were only acting with ordinary prudence in being ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... "where the accursed woman would have offered sacrifice, and the priests struck me down because I prophesied to them of the wrath to come, and that is now at hand. An ill-omened spot, indeed, and an ill-omened tryst with the fiends for witnesses. Well, lead on, and I pray you to be brief as may be, for this place weighs down my soul, and I feel danger in it—danger to the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... active intervention of Congress to protect slavery in the Territories. Toombs was accused of abetting Brooks's attack on Sumner, which he disclaimed; but he found nothing to hinder his taking part in a banquet in Brooks's honor a few months later, and on this most ill-omened occasion he joined in the threats of disunion if Fremont should be elected. But still the catastrophe lingered, and seemed improbable. Stephens left Congress in 1858. Two years more, and secession became a burning question; Stephens and Toombs took opposite sides, but, the issue decided, they ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... shot up. That ill-omened man Flitch had sidled round by the bushes to within a few feet of him. Flitch primarily defended himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him to account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; but he admitted that he had taken ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not believed the tale, stranger, if this token had not confirmed thy speech:—verily thou hast a better witness than a fool's tongue to thy story. That ill-omened losel may depart. See thou fall not hastily into the like offence, else shalt thou smart from Childermas to All-hallowtide. Hence! to thy place." Barnulf awaited not further dismissal, glad to escape the scrutiny of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... correctly. Cornelia was disappointed from the first moment. She was taken to the dim uncanny drawing-room by Ameer, and left among its ill-omened gods, and odd treasure-trove for nearly half an hour before madame came to her. The rudely graven faces, so marvellously instinct with life, made her miserable; she fancied a thousand mockeries and scorns in them; and no thought of Hyde, or Arenta, or of the happy ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... than escaping with money-bags to Germany. Great as were Murat's faults, an Italian should remember that it was he who first took up arms to the cry which was later to redeem Italy: independence from Alps to sea; and if he stand on the ill-omened shore of Pizzo, he need not refuse to ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... might force you to look again upon the faces of the beings you blaspheme. What worse thing has been done to your Christian God than has been done again and again to our gods by your white kindred? But let us talk no more of this matter, and I pray you, my brother, do not utter such ill-omened words to me again, lest it should strain our love. Do you then believe that the Teules ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... this use of the simple pronouns is common (see Abbott, Sec. 223). Compare l. 163. ominous; literally full of omens or portents: comp. 'monstrous' full of monsters (Lyc. 158); also l. 79. 'Ominous' has now acquired the sense of 'ill-omened'; compare the acquired sense of ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... "Ah! unhappy woman, ill-omened woman. You should have told me that before and I would never have looked. Here take it, take it. Lock it up, hide it. Let no woman ever ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... God's worshippers unsheathe 225 The sword of His revenge, when grace descended, Confirming all unnatural impulses, To sanctify their desolating deeds; And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross O'er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun 230 On showers of gore from the upflashing steel Of safe assassination, and all crime Made stingless by the Spirits of the Lord, And blood-red rainbows ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of lovers what scene could be more propitious?—But such a pair of lovers! Not a nightingale sang to soothe us: the very gypsies who were encamped there during the fair, made no offer to tell the fortunes of such an ill-omened couple, whose fortunes, I suppose, they thought too legibly written to need an interpreter; and the gypsey children crawled into their cabins and peeped out fearfully at us as we went by. For a moment I paused, and was almost tempted to turn gypsey, but the poetical ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... so fell, so long, so evenly sustained, that even now the memory of it is handed down amongst the Cantabrian mountaineers and the ill-omened knoll is still pointed out by fathers to their children as the "Altura de los Inglesos," where the men from across the sea fought the great fight with the knights of the south. The last arrow was quickly shot, nor could the slingers hurl their stones, so close ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... O'Phelan and Reginald, the Dano-Irish chief, held out until the arrival of King Dermid, whose intercession procured them such terms as led to their surrender. Then, amid the ruins of the burning city, and the muttered malediction of its surviving inhabitants, the ill-omened marriage of Eva McMurrogh with Richard de Clare was gaily celebrated, and the compact entered into at Bristol three years ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... threshold force her in. The custom of lifting the bride over the threshold, probably to avert an ill-omened stumble, has prevailed among the most diverse races. For the anointing of the doorposts Brand quotes Langley's translation of Polydore Vergil: "The bryde anoynted the poostes of the doores with swynes' grease, because she ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... present success, had based all their political hopes on an intimate alliance, offensive and defensive, with that institution which Jefferson so eloquently denounced, and the existence of which awakened his most lively fears for the future of his country. And what has been the result of this ill-omened alliance? Precisely what might sooner or later have been expected. Precisely what might have been predicted from the attempt to unite the essentially incongruous ideas of Aristocracy and Democracy. For the system of Slavery is confessedly the very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... him, looking at the work. The instinct of the artist for the moment superseded all other feelings in her mind, and she forgot alike her own troubles and the ill-omened gift with which her husband purposed remembering the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... and thrown into the nearest water. The people think that the ceremony protects them from sickness of every sort in the coming year. In the districts of Wohlau and Guhrau the image of Death used to be thrown over the boundary of the next village. But as the neighbours feared to receive the ill-omened figure, they were on the look-out to repel it, and hard knocks were often exchanged between the two parties. In some Polish parts of Upper Silesia the effigy, representing an old woman, goes by the name of Marzana, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to-do some years ago in the city of New York over an ill-omened young person, Duffy by name, who, falling into the bad graces of the police, was most incontinently dragged to headquarters and "mugged" without so much as "By your leave, sir," on the part of the authorities. Having been photographed and measured (in most ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... yielded. After all, it did not much matter, for of course he would not touch upon the strange sequel of his ill-omened act; so he told the story faithfully and circumstantially, while the inspector took it all down in his note-book, questioning him closely respecting the ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... neither prince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, on whose inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and tallow stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers that passed that way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designated by the snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the place where the wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were but common humanity, traders and adventurers, ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... imitators the only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death while in the performance of the bullet-catching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties chargeable to that ill-omened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth were ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... the tale was known to few, But now from lip to lip it flew:— A youth, the flower of all the band, Who late had left this sunny shore, When last he kist that maiden's hand, Lingering to kiss it o'er and o'er. By his sad brow too plainly told The ill-omened thought which crost him then, That once those hands should lose their hold, They ne'er would meet on earth again! In vain his mistress sad as he, But with a heart from Self as free As generous woman's only ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... war, the maritime towns demanded protection. Government was told by the lord-lieutenant, that the exhausted state of the public revenues rendered it impracticable to embody a militia, whence the people were given to understand that they might take measures to protect themselves. This was an ill-omened step for ministers to take, when the people of Ireland were everywhere displaying the feelings of rebellion. By it the serpent's teeth were sown, and they sprang up armed men. The Irish obeyed the call with alacrity. Volunteers were embodied, equipped, and disciplined at private expense, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... command them when they had prayed, bowed down and left their offerings, to pass on. Upon Von Lembke this unfortunate incident made the gloomiest impression. As I was told, Yulia Mihailovna said afterwards it was from this ill-omened morning that she first noticed in her husband that strange depression which persisted in him until he left our province on account of illness two months ago, and, I believe, haunts him still in Switzerland, where he has gone for a rest after his ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... now stretching before her like summer air, here all gold and blue, yonder with purple glory crowning the dim far away? Intuitively she recognized the fact that she was confronting the first cross roads in her hitherto monotonous life, and a vague dread flitted like ill-omened birds before her, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... I was cutting loose from this ill-omened company and continuing my road Edinburgh-wards. We were lying in a wide trough of the Pentland Hills, which I well remembered. The folk of the plains called it the Cauldstaneslap, and it made an easy path for sheep and cattle between the Lothians and Tweeddale. The camp had been snugly ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... seems to me, the chance of ever discovering his son, it is, after all, mere opinion. Things more wonderful than such a discovery have happened. By me, at least, he shall be sustained and encouraged. Disappointment, if it comes, will come soon enough. I will not be its ill-omened herald." He, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... rich grass, Calvary clover, blood-red anemones, and pale yellow amaryllis, only showed their arid brown or gray remnants. The moat had become a deep waterless cleft; and beneath, on the accessible sides towards the glen, clustered a collection of black horsehair tents, the foremost surmounted by the ill-omened crescent. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came to my dear friends' door, of my hopes the goal, * Whose sight mote assuage my sorrow and woes of soul: No friends found I there, nor was there another thing * To find, save a corby-crow and an ill-omened owl. And the tongue o' the case to me seemed to say, * 'Indeed This parting two lovers fond was cruel and foul! So taste thou the sorrow thou madest them taste and live * In grief: wend thy ways and now in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... "Iron, O thou ill-omened one!" cried Rrisa, with the ancient invocation against the sand-storm. He stretched out his forefinger, making the sign of protection. Neither the meaning of his cry nor of the gesture could he have explained; but both came ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... day Captain Broughton and Miss Woolsworthy did not meet till the evening. She had said, before those few ill-omened words had passed her lover's lips, that she would probably be at Miss Le Smyrger's house on the following morning. Those ill-omened words did pass her lover's lips, and then she remained at home. This did not come from sullenness, ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... tarn en immemores, caecique furore, Et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce.' (Yet we, thoughtless and blind with enthusiasm, urged it on, and in our hallowed citadel stationed the ill-omened monster.)" ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... enjoy the sight. The whole Court was delighted with it. So general was the enthusiasm that (the police not having carefully examined the procession) the grave-diggers had the imprudence to send their deputation also, with the emblematic devices of their ill-omened occupation. They were met by the Princesse Sophie, the King's aunt, who was thrilled with horror at the sight, and entreated the King to have the audacious, fellows driven out of the procession, which was then drawing up on ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... sometimes I believed that the visiters and they were the same individuals. Circumstances, however, unfavourable to this idea, arose, and I turned from one conjecture to another, until I reposed, at length, in the belief that they were sinners—sinners of the deepest dye—such as their ill-omened looks betrayed—and that they sought the kind and ever-ready minister to obtain his counsel, and to share his prayers. At all events, this was a subject upon which I received no enlightening from their confidant. Once I took occasion to make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... silvern voice, "that you, who possess so many beautiful things, should consent to have so ill-omened a curiosity ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... people's good: one, his sending out travelling preachers through the land (2 Chron. xvii. 7-9); another, this provision of local judges and a central court in Jerusalem. The former was begun as early as the third year of his reign, but was probably interrupted, like other good things, by his ill-omened alliance with Ahab. The prophet Jehu's plain speaking seems to have brought the king back to his better self, and its fruit was his going 'among the people,' from south to north, as a missionary, 'to bring them back to Jehovah.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... faltered and sank in his presence. Something of the same unpleasant influence, too, or was it fancy, she thought his approach seemed now to exercise upon Gertrude also, and that she, too, was unaccountably chilled and darkened by his handsome, but ill-omened presence. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and no necessity for any one to do anything. The situation itself vanished in the financial crash as a building vanishes in an earthquake—here one moment and gone the next with only an ill-omened, slight, preliminary rumble. Well, to say 'in a moment' is an exaggeration perhaps; but that everything was over in just twenty-four hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about it; and the phrase that would depict the nature of the change best is: an instant and complete destitution. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... away from a place where such disagreeable things had happened. We accordingly marched about two hours, the marabouts accompanying us, and then pitched tent for the night. Sinister rumours, however, were still about, like a flight of ill-omened birds, and it was said that another troop of people were collecting further on to intercept our passage to Soudan. During this halt, grave conferences were held between the Kailouee merchant, En-Noor, and the marabout, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... assistance might, moreover, at any moment give place to a democratic faction which already harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with the populace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain into anarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all, the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitate before committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory. Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... said Fergus; 'and you may wish Edward Waverley (no longer captain) joy of being freed from the slavery to an usurper, implied in that sable and ill-omened emblem.' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... happiness or accomplish the ruin, to prolong the life or hasten the death, of the objects of private love or hatred. While systematically practising upon the credulity of his dupes, the professed master of this ill-omened art frequently resorted to assassination by poison or dagger in the accomplishment of his schemes. Sorcery by means of waxen images was particularly in vogue. Thus, the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, in her singular collection ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... in the castle of Ellieslaw, destined to be the scene of this ill-omened union, was a building of much older date than the castle itself, though that claimed considerable antiquity. Before the wars between England and Scotland had become so common and of such long duration, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... new born thing, Death o'er my cradle waved his darksome wing; My mother died to give me birth: forlorn I came into the world, a babe of woe, Ill-omened from my childhood's early morn; Yet heir to what the idolators of show Deem life's good things, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... "Since that ill-omened marriage an unbroken succession of misfortunes have attended my husband and myself until they culminated in the most crushing calamity of our lives—the loss of our dear and only daughter in a manner worse ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... possibility that she should show any affection save the affection of a mother for her son? Ah! Pudentilla, you are unhappy in your offspring! Far better have been barren than have borne such children! Ill-omened were the long months through which you bore them in your womb and thankless your fourteen years of widowhood! The viper, I am told, reaches the light of day only by gnawing through its mother's womb; its parent ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... during the training cruise, like us boys on the lower deck each in our respective billet, gave out that we were in latitude 44 degrees 10 minutes north, and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west, thus showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape Finisterre and now safely out ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... were trapped. They realised that they had been out-generalled, and they understood their deficiencies. Not a man among them knew the finer points of warfare. They were thugs and roustabouts and ill-omened fellows who could stab in the back; they were craven in the face of an ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... below it the water washed over a weir near which was a post bearing a board marked "Danger!" To those who knew the waters and had some skill with their oars there was no peril, but to a crew of drink-filled junketers it was an ill-omened place. The wedding-party was too wild and young and rollicking to observe the sign-board. The men rocked the boat, shouted and sang, the women squealed and laughed and shouted with them; the little ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... enough anxiety. He must grow to be a mighty man for their sakes, and I doubt not that his nurse gives him better nourishment to that end than I could who am only a weak woman. But you, you poor, dear, little ill-omened mite, I shall nourish you myself, and if your life is unhappy it shall not be because I have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... infinitely distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that the thing was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... We'll hear no more, Ye tempests howl! Ill-omened owl. Your wrath outpour To joy we soar, With angry growl! Despite your scowl! Do ye your worst, my vengeance The echoes of our festival call Shall rise triumphant over all! Shall rise triumphant over all! Prepare for woe, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and ermine she came from the cabin and stood swaying on the deck before Egil and his men, while round her train played heedlessly the ill-omened black kitten; and ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... sky where'er they bore Their load of water mixt with gore. Above, below, around were spread Thick shades of darkness strange and dread, Nor could the wildered glance descry A point or quarter of the sky. Then came o'er heaven a sanguine hue, Though evening's flush not yet was due, While each ill-omened bird that flies Assailed the king with harshest cries. There screamed the vulture and the crane, And the loud jackal shrieked again. Each hideous thing that bodes aright Disaster in the coming fight, With gaping mouth that hissed and flamed, The ruin of the host proclaimed. Eclipse untimely reft ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... five acts of a portentous drama, full of shifting scenes and striking situations, on the issues of which depended the fortunes of France and of Germany; it was played out with ill-omened rapidity in nine days. In regard to the train of causes and consequences that brought France to the tremendous disaster upon which the curtain fell, diverse accounts have been given to the world by the leading actors—by M. de Gramont, by Bismarck, Benedetti, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... While these ill-omened bickerings went on, the various members of the expedition were mustering at Rochelle. Joutel, a fellow-townsman of La Salle, returning to his native Rouen, after sixteen years of service in the army, found all astir with ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... forefinger, the lady snuffed out one of the candles. The young man answered it by a look of intelligence, and all three passed down the steps together. The lady was disposed to take the cool air, and accompanied them to the garden-gate; but, in passing down the walk, Catalina noticed a second ill-omened sign that all was not right. Two glaring eyes she distinguished amongst the shrubs for a moment, and a rustling immediately after. 'What's that?' said the lady, and Don Antonio answered carelessly, 'A bird flying out of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... that bound them oppressed him as if it had been an ill-omened matrimony, and he sat beside her like an unwilling old husband. All the while, Miss Boke had no appreciation whatever of her companion's real condition, and, when little, spasmodic, sinister changes appeared in his face (as they certainly did from ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... only to that for music, he had exercised it on the walls of the room, originally modelled and tinted to represent a robin's egg. He mixed his colors with the bitter distillations of his heart, and created the beautiful but ill-omened vision which long ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he had arrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of persons of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed to have become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; his calculations rapid and profound. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... eunuch. "Why, many wait three years and many go to the grave still waiting; bigger men than you, Egyptian, though I hear you do claim to be of royal blood yonder on the Nile. But talk not of arrows flying towards the most High, for surely it is ill-omened and might earn you another honour, that of the string," and he made a motion suggestive of a cord encircling his throat. "Man, leave your bow behind! Would you appear before the King armed? Yes, and ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... From the fact that the Ribbonmen used to meet in a shebeen owned by one Molly Maguire, with the Irish adaptability for attaching nicknames to anything short of what is sacred, they became known as "Molly Maguires," or, for short, "the Mollies." In some ill-omened day branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which had seceded from the American order of that name, began to interest themselves in Ulster in political affairs. They called themselves the Board of Erin, but they ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... check the volubility of the little speaker; for as she hastily, and with the license of a petted child, pulled the articles from the parcel, she was startled to find lying among the numerous colored things a black crape veil. Sombre, dark, and ill-omened enough it looked there, with pink, and lilac, and blue, and glittering bijouterie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... are infinite possibilities. Anyhow, Friend Porlock is evidently scared out of his senses—kindly compare the writing in the note to that upon its envelope; which was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened visit. The one is clear and firm. The ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if there was some fatality at work to prevent the attainment of Mrs. Elmslie's great object in life. Hardly was one obstacle to the ill-omened marriage removed by my father's death before another succeeded it in the shape of anxieties and difficulties caused by the delicate state of Ada's health. Doctors were consulted in all directions, and the result of their advice was that ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... public clamor; and so ill-omened a commencement augured badly for the success of the campaign for position, in which both armies were now manoeuvring. The real details of these preliminary movements are scarcely clear to this day. General Bragg's friends declare that he forced Rosecrans to the position; his enemies, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... ill-omened promise of marriage, and a bitter realization of how little it meant was suddenly borne home to Nevill. He touched the girl's hand—more he dared not do, though he longed to take her in his arms and kiss ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... each and all! waft heavenward your cry, Stung to the soul, bereaved, disconsolate! Wail out your anguish, till it pierce the sky, In shrieks of deep despair, ill-omened, desperate! ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... our had when we want them, never running away? But the taking them, for all that, not so easy. One man shrinks from picking flowers, another from cutting down trees. And, it's curious that most of the forest tales and legends are dark, mysterious, and somewhat ill-omened. The forest-beings are rarely gay and harmless. The forest life was felt as terrible. Tree-worship still survives to-day. Wood-cutters... those who take the life of trees... you see a race of ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... abruptly began the tale of his mishaps. As I conjectured, he had totally failed in his attempt to mollify his father, who was furious at his temerity in appearing before him, and whose rage redoubled when he heard of his ill-omened marriage. Unfortunately for Van Haubitz, the jeweller and some other tradesmen at Frankfort, so soon as they learned his departure, had forwarded their accounts to the care of the Amsterdam firm; and, although his father had not the remotest intention of paying them, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... not impossible that she may have imagined, as well as her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the recurrence of further ill-omened shocks. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the snow-clad peaks of the higher Andes lay right before them. One or two guanacos—animals of the lama species—gazed at them from the other side of the gorge, and several ill-omened vultures wheeled in the sky above, as if anticipating a catastrophe which would furnish them with a ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... book when they close, crushing the trees below, piling its ruins in a glacis at the foot of what had been the overhanging wall of the cliff, and filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man's Hollow. This it was which had saved the Dudley mansion. The falling masses, or huge fragments breaking off from them, would have swept the house and all around it to destruction but for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... telescope whirred into life as he spoke and its disk shone bright with the reflected light of Titan as it pictured the body. The Nomad was speeding toward the ill-omened satellite at the rate of more than a ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... compliment or other while he was buying her apples, for he appeared very much pleased after he came home, and he hasn't bestowed a compliment on me since the month after we were married. Ah, fated word! Ah, Percy, Percy!—on that ill-omened day, what caused you to linger? We might even then have retraced our steps, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Katrine's gorge we'll fight, All in our maids' and matrons' sight, Each for his hearth and household fire, Father for child, and son for sire Lover for maid beloved!—But why Is it the breeze affects mine eye? Or dost thou come, ill-omened tear! A messenger of doubt or fear? No! sooner may the Saxon lance Unfix Benledi from his stance, Than doubt or terror can pierce through The unyielding heart of Roderick Dhu! 'tis stubborn as his trusty targe. Each to his post!—all know their charge.' The pibroch sounds, the bands advance, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the worst among the offspring of revolution, and is almost, though not entirely, unknown to the history of England. Yet there is more than one reason why if the Home Rule Bill be carried, reaction should make its ill-omened appearance in the field of English public life. The policy of Home Rule, even should it be for the moment successful, lacks the moral sanctions which have compelled English statesmen to accept accomplished facts. The methods of agitation in ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the mob once more, urging on the executioner, who, his superstitious nature not having overcome the ill-omened fact that the matchlock a moment before had jumped out of his hand (which he probably attributed to the doing of some supreme power and not to the over-charge), seemed quite reluctant ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... was a glorious morning, though a few ill-omened clouds lingered like a night-cap round Penllwyd. Larks were singing, cuckoos calling, bluebells made the woods seem a reflection of the sky, and the gorse was ablaze on the common. The walk was collar-work at first, up, up, up, climbing a steep track between loose-built, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the ill-omened request. A formal delegation of the representatives of the nation comes to Ramah, unsummoned by Samuel, with the demand for a king. There must have been much talk through Israel before the general mind could have been ascertained, and this step taken. Not a whisper of what was passing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not a shade of doubt was in Rosenheim's mind. As I canvassed the possibilities his sotto-voce ecstasies continued, to the vast amusement, as I perceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily in the background. This ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike black frock-coat with trousers of similar funereal shade. A white lawn tie, much soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living creatures visible "like foul lemures flitting ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... hast so often cursed. Look at that pale emaciated form, a figure of wax, rather than flesh and blood—that is thy mother—that is the unhappy Zilia Moncada, to whom thy birth was the source of shame and misery, and to whom thy ill-omened presence has now brought death itself. And behold me"—he pushed the lad from him, and stood up erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit he described—"Behold me," he said; "see you ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Iroquois are cannibals. This allegation evidently touches a sensitive point. It is indignantly denied by the adopted member of the tribe. The Iroquois, he says, like other Indians, never eat human flesh, unless driven to it by hunger. He turns the tables (on which this ill-omened repast is spread) against the worthy Doctor. He charges him (falsely, however) with having represented Charles the Fifth as "a pattern of abstinence," when he was in fact one of the greatest of royal gourmands. On this point he is willing for once to accept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery hung in impenetrable shadow. "She said nothing of her intentions; nothing! But the man who came for me told me where she was to be found. He was waiting ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... very coolly, for what I had heard about Minna since she left me for the last time had forced me to authorise my old friend at Konigsberg to take steps to procure a divorce. It was certain that Minna had stayed for some time at a hotel in Hamburg with that ill-omened man, Herr Dietrich, and that she had spread abroad the story of our separation so unreservedly that the theatrical world in particular had discussed it in a manner that was positively insulting to me. I simply informed Amalie of this, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people, with the grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold, while the French bayonet is startling their eyes? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... hospitality, but it wore the expression like a mask, and he seemed ill at ease. He had been contending all the morning with Narcissa's freakishness, which he thought intensified by the presence of the valley man, who was returning the civility of that ill-omened visit, and who, by reason of the abnormal excitements of the day, had been received with scant formality, and was already upon the footing of a familiar friend. Selwyn stood smilingly in the way hard by, speaking to those ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... ill-omened chase forbear; Yon bell yet summons to the fane: To-day the warning spirit hear, To-morrow thou ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... inhabitants of the Said have, up to our own time, always considered rain in the valley as an ill-omened event. They used to say in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when speaking of Napoleon's expedition, "We knew that misfortune threatened us, because it rained at Luxor shortly before the French came." Wilkinson assures us that rain is not so rare at Thebes as Herodotus thought: he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... indistinctly recall the fact itself—what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance—if ever she, the wan misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... rather than money. Small as she was, her great speed and the fierce character of her master had made her a name of terror along the French coast, and many a bulky Eastlander or Fleming as he passed the narrow seas had scanned the distant Kentish shore, fearing lest that ill-omened purple sail with a gold Christopher upon it should shoot out suddenly from the dim gray cliffs. Now she was clear of the land, with the wind on her larboard quarter, every inch of canvas set, and her high sharp ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... contented in mind, he stood well back beyond the outer fringe of that frantic, swaying, cursing crowd, and cynically watched its proceedings. The scene upon which he gazed was precisely what he had expected from the moment when those three ill-omened lights had burst through the fog and told him that the Golden Fleece was a doomed ship. Here was selfishness supremely triumphant, beating down and eradicating in a moment every nobler instinct of humanity. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... motives which had formerly influenced her to forbid her "little Mary" ever to begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young Thorpe's ill-omened gift. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... without moon, favourable to the robber's plans. For a good fifteen minutes the ill-omened crew continued their retreat by forced march. From time to time Loupart questioned ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... enforced union of the colonies for mutual defence, at the breaking out of the French and Indian war, the inhabitants of Rhode Island bore their share in the defensive efforts, especially when the hostile savages hung along the frontiers of New York like an ill-omened cloud. The history of that commonwealth is identified with that of all New England, from the beginning of King William's war, soon after, to the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... mountains along the same narrow passage by which they had entered. I rode in company with three or four young Indians at the rear, and the moving swarm stretched before me, in the ruddy light of sunset, or in the deep shadow of the mountains far beyond my sight. It was an ill-omened spot they chose to encamp upon. When they were there just a year before, a war party of ten men, led by The Whirlwind's son, had gone out against the enemy, and not one had ever returned. This was the immediate cause of this season's warlike preparations. I was not a little astonished ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... than to deem him capable of forming an alliance with North. We may judge, then, of the general amazement when, in the middle of February, it turned out that Fox had himself done this very thing. An "ill-omened marriage," William Pitt called it in the House of Commons. "If this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnized, I know a just and lawful impediment, and in the name of the public safety I here forbid the banns." ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... before the tall chief, whose ill-omened appearance and conduct we have noted, again darted out into the opening; when, with a quick, wild glance around him, and a yell of fiendish triumph, he rapidly whirled his arm aloft, and, the next instant, the glittering tomahawk was seen, like a shooting gleam of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the mountains. But in an old, cold, and rugged country such as mine, the days of immigration are long at an end; and away up there, which was at that time far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This ill-omened anniversary we sang dirge and mass for the souls of those who were slain by treachery seven years ago. Our forces have returned from the south. They say the Danes have gone into winter quarters on the Thames, and that all ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... with thine ill-omened yell," answered one of the females, a relation of the deceased, "and let us do our duty to our beloved kinsman. There shall never be coronach cried, or dirge played, for thee or thy bloody wolf-burd. [Wolf-brood—that is, wolf-cub.] The ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... herself to act greatly within the margin of power granted to her, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious, ill-tempered and cruel, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold on old master she was considered a first rate cook, and she really was very industrious. She was, therefore, greatly favored by old master, and as one mark of his favor, she was the only mother who was permitted ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... or eight feet thick, which supports one end of the immense Salle des Pas-Perdus. It is entered through the first door in the long dark passage in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between the office window close to the railing of the gateway, and the place where the office clerk sits—a den like a cupboard ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the track, the light-heeled gentlemen of the road may swoop down upon you like birds of prey, and rob you of the little worldly wealth that you possess. Wherefore I counsel you to pause ere you reach that ill-omened waste, and pass the night at the hostel there. The beds may be something poor, but they will be better than the wet bog, and you will be less like to be robbed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shooting; or again, supposing alpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes equivalent to ama polon, which points to both his musical and his heavenly attributes; for there is a 'moving together' alike in music and in the harmony of the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. The Muses are so called—apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget (lethe). Artemis is so called from ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... us, though, the wind had now veered to the southward; and, as we were sailing on the port tack, by giving the ship a good deal of weather helm and bracing round the yards, we were able to bear up to the westward out of the ill-omened bay, steering west by south until we were in longitude 11 degrees 10 minutes west and well clear of Cape Finisterre, when we hauled our wind and shaped ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... such follies away like cobwebs, and, turning back, consider who could have found his interest in such a deed. Against whom did the dead man urge him to be on guard lest Martin's papers should be spirited away? Was there some other claimant of that ill-omened peerage of whom he knew nothing, or was it—And Westray resolutely quenched the thought that had risen a hundred times before his mind, and cast it aside as ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... studded with little islands, each of which is covered with its own thicket of hollies, birch, and dwarfed oaks. The house itself is poor, ill built, with straggling passages and low rooms, and is a sombre, ill-omened looking place. When Josephine Murray was brought there as a bride she thought it to be very sombre and ill-omened; but she loved the lakes and mountains, and dreamed of some vague mysterious joy of life which was to come to her from ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope |
