"Phantom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prospecting about for news, and watching the movements of the English soldiers on shore, or of the fleet anchored a few miles farther off. They had only to steal away unnoticed, and take to their boat before the excitement began, and they could follow the phantom ships upon their mysterious way, and watch the whole attempt against ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sects on the nature of the Buddha and the career of a Bodhisattva. Thus the Andhakas thought that the Buddha was superhuman in the ordinary affairs of life and the Vetulyakas[572] held that he was not really born in the world of men but sent a phantom to represent him, remaining himself in the Tusita heaven. The doctrines attributed to the Uttarapathakas and Andhakas respectively that an unconverted man, if good, is capable of entering on the career of a Bodhisattva and that a Bodhisattva can in the course of his career ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... no longer a dismal mass of darkness, but showed all manner of shadings of glossy green leaves, which the moisture of the night had ornamented with shimmering edges of crystal beads. She found the phantom of the night before browsing among flowers behind the cottage, and very kindly disposed to make her acquaintance. As he had a thistle blossom sticking out of his mouth, she forthwith named him Thistle. She soon returned to the house with her apron full of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... on the wall for Georges and Jeanne. Jeanne laughed delightedly at the shadow and the grimaces of the profile; but when she saw that the shadow was me she cried and screamed. She seemed to say: "I don't want you to be a phantom!" Poor, sweet angel! Perhaps she has a presentiment ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... probability to come back to life again. If one were to follow some of the examples set us in classical imaginings, we might fancy the darkening clouds on the west, where the sun has sunk over the battlefield, to be the phantom shapes of the great English kings who led their people and their armies in the wars. Unkingly, indeed unheroic, little of kin with them they might well have thought that panting George; and yet they might have looked on him ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... you had had such an effect on my lord), in which she had seen the figure of Virginie—as the only light object amid much surrounding darkness as of night, smiling and beckoning Clement on—on—till at length the bright phantom stopped, motionless, and Madame de Crequy's eyes began to penetrate the murky darkness, and to see closing around her the gloomy dripping walls which she had once seen and never forgotten—the walls of ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... inspired by a profound disbelief in Louis XVI. and a pertinacious belief in monarchy. The assembly voted without debate, by acclamation, a Civil List three times as large as that of Queen Victoria. When Louis fled, and the throne was actually vacant, they brought him back to it, preferring the phantom of a king who was a prisoner to the reality of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the young men rushed away from the lighted interior and gained the uncovered space beyond. Loud cries came soaring through the night from different directions, and dim, phantom-like shapes could be ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... on, with their recurrent dreaded anniversaries, carrying misery almost too great to be borne by this woman mated to the loathed phantom of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each year was over, for a few days afterwards she went nowhere, was seen by none. Yet, when she did appear again, it was with her old laughing manner, her cheerful and teasing words, her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... music in the trees To charm thee with its frolic mirth? Must Care's wan phantom still beguile And chain thee ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... all in subordination to them, are strictly speaking, servants and not masters. "The constitution and its laws are the basis of the public tranquility - the firmest support of the public authority, and the pledge of the liberty of the citizens: But the constitution is a vain Phantom, and the best laws are useless, if they are not religiously observed. The nation ought then to watch, and the true patriot will watch very attentively, in order to render them equally respected, by those who govern, and the people destin'd to obey ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... faith has been No evidence of things unseen, But a dim shadow, which recasts The creed of the Phantasiasts, For whom no man of sorrows died: For whom the tragedy divine Was but a symbol and a sign, And Christ a phantom crucified." ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... the sullen sea. It is but a cat's-paw of wind, and yet it looks like a river flowing in silence from some fairy region. The boats start out of the haze and glide away into dimness after having shown their phantom shadows for a few seconds; the cry of the gull rings weirdly; the simulated agony of the staunch bird's scream makes one somehow think of tortured souls; you think of dim strange years, you feel the dim strange weather, you remember the still strange land ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... appeared to merge into the gloom as if he really were a phantom. A warning, "Hist!" ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... stood there beside him, not retreating,—waiting. He told her of that lecture hour Monday morning when he literally divided himself into two parts, one part of him giving the lecture, giving it just as well as he had ever done, the other part battling with the phantom which he would vanquish or surrender to within an hour. And her only cry was: "You should have told me! You should have told me from the first!" And once he answered: "No, dear—no; before I knew I did not want to frighten ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... government is too much occupied with its own wars, and the knowledge could not be procured except at the price of blood. Two young men of good constitution, and who could afford to spend five years, might succeed. If the object of search prove a phantom, in the wild scenes of a new and unexplored country, there are other objects of interest; but, if real, besides the glorious excitement of such a novelty, they will have something to look back upon through life. As to the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... which he had sacrificed every thing, was like a phantom which he had pursued, and which at the moment when he imagined he had grasped it, vanished in a mingled mass of smoke and flame. He was then seized with extreme agitation; he seemed to be consumed by the fires which surrounded him. He rose every moment, paced to and fro, and again sat down abruptly. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... to-night the phantom light That as a sprite flits on the fender Reveals a face whose girlish grace Brings back the feeling, warm and tender; And all the while the old time smile Plays on my visage, grim and wrinkled, As though, soubrette, your footfalls yet ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... and saw phantom figures; but they fled before me so that never could I lay hold of one, and I looked upon the face of O-Mai and I am not mad. I even rested in the chamber ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the boy's flesh crept on his bones, and the hair of his head seemed to rise up from his scalp. The groping of those phantom hands against the wall just beside him was enough to fill the stoutest heart with terror, in an age when superstition was always rife. He strove to call to his brothers; but his voice was no more than a whisper, and his throat felt dry and parched. Failing ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: "It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the neck. See here; that's how near ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... sheep greatly resembles the chamois of Switzerland, and it is hunted in the same manner. The hunter traverses the most inaccessible and broken localities, moving along with great caution, as the least unusual noise causes them to flit away like a phantom, and they will be seen no more. The animal is gregarious, but it is seldom that more than eight or ten are found in a flock. When not grazing they seek the sheltered sides of the mountains, and repose among ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... is memorable in Scottish annals as the time of the defeat of Edward Balliol, the "phantom king" of Scotland. His success was as unreal as a dream. He was solemnly crowned at Scone in the month of September, 1332, fondly imagining that he had permanently conquered the patriotic Scottish nobles who had opposed him. His reign, however, only lasted for a few ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... still have an eye for their true advantage. Indeed, there are spirits among all peoples who still cannot believe that the great promises made to the human race of a reign of justice, of reason, and of truth can be a vain and an empty phantom, and who assume, therefore, that the present iron age is but a transit to a better state. They—and all modern humanity in them—count on you. A great part of this humanity is descended from us; the rest have received from us religion and culture. The former adjure us by the soil of our common fatherland, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... last of the Western Caesars, A.D. 476, three centuries elapsed. The first date is a real point of departure, the commencement of a new stage of decay in the empire. The second is a mere official record of the final disappearance of a series of phantom sovereigns, whose vanishing was hardly noticed. Between these limits the empire passed from the autumnal calm of the Antonine period, through the dreadful century of anarchy between Pertinax and Diocletian, through the relative peace brought about by Diocletian's reforms, the civil wars of the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... had died, but Henry and Paul slept on, although there was full need for them to be awake. The long, distant quaver, like a whine, but with something singularly ferocious in its note came again on the wind, and, far away, a score of forms, phantom and dusky, in the shadow were running fast, with low, slim bodies, and outstretched nostrils that had in them a grateful odor of food, soon ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... remove the tumor and sometimes the entire organ. In a few cases it is possible that the fluid or other contents of the tumor may be absorbed, if the general health and circulation are improved. In some cases we find what is called a phantom tumor. There really is no tumor, although the symptoms may be such that even reliable physicians are misled. The symptoms are due to a nervous condition. These phantom tumors have given many a quack a reputation for removing tumors without ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... any living creature that might chance to be caught thereon. And the desert, receiving that flood from the wide, hot sky, mysteriously wove with it soft scarfs of lilac, misty veils of purple and filmy curtains of rose and pearl and gold; strangely formed with it wide lakes of blue rimmed with phantom hills of red and violet— constantly changing, shifting, scene on scene, as dream pictures shift ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... dream," said Jerry thoughtfully. "It was simply psychical phenomena. I've heard of things just as queer. Awfully funny things happen in India. And look at the 'phantom armies' in France." ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... scouts under Jennie Marlow's protection, slept and dreamed of their next day's quest in search of Mary, the phantom wood nymph, or Mary the ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if they have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunate country in the world, a country which, while it had an independent government, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereign a mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other; the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middle class; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew pedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nearer every moment came the sharp shrill notes of the fifes and the quick detonation of the drum-stick taps. The rattle of the drums came closer and closer, when two folding-doors opened, and through them stalked in grim solemnity the 'Phantom Guard,' led by the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... forgetting the pressure of sorrow and famine, was to rejoice. A sort of monster was prepared, which, by some unaccountable ingenuity, at once represented Atheism and the English, Cobourg and the Austrians—in short, all the enemies of the Convention.—This external phantom, being burned with proper form, discovered a statue, which was understood to be that of Liberty, and the inauguration of this divinity, with placing the busts of Chalier* and Marat in the temple of the Supreme Being, by way of attendant ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... ocean, our escape from insults and depredations, not only on that element, but every part of the other bordering on it, will be truly miraculous. In the present condition of America, the States more immediately exposed to these calamities have nothing to hope from the phantom of a general government which now exists; and if their single resources were equal to the task of fortifying themselves against the danger, the object to be protected would be almost consumed by the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... stars; he, the victim of a senseless bullet; he, stretched here as he had fallen, all thoughts, all activities quenched, gone out into that night of which the darkness gathering in this forsaken glade was but a phantom, to be chased away by to-morrow's sun. To-morrow . . . to-morrow I should go on living and begin forgetting him. To-morrow? God forgive me for an ingrate, I had begun already. . . . Even as I bent over him, my uppermost thought had not been ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless—or like a vampire thirsting for blood—or like a grim prophetess of evil, imprecating that ruin on the head of her enemies, which she lived to see realized. The scene following the murder of the princes in the Tower, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the pages of Woman's Record the roll of honor lengthens, stretching far out like the line of Banquo's phantom-kings. Their names become impressed on our memory; their acts dilate, and their whole lives grow brighter the more closely we ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... passionate and devoted! NOW, who so darkly instructed, who so cold, so absolutely pitiless! The climax to my revenge was nearly reached. I looked through the coming days as one looks through a telescope out to sea, and I could watch the end approaching like a phantom ship—neither slow nor fast, but steadily and silently. I was able to calculate each event in its due order, and I knew there was no fear of failure in the final result. Nature itself—the sun, moon and stars, the sweeping circle of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of her penholder. "Was ever a woman in such a predicament before? So illusionary and yet so ridiculously actual! Shall I send Hedworth away and sit down with this phantom through life? I understand that some women get their happiness out of just that sort of thing. Then when I forget Hedworth would I forget him? Is passion needed to set the soul free? Until Hedworth ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the tips of her graceful fingers; her alert mind, which he saw reflected in the simplest thought she expressed; her mobile lips, which he followed to the least sound they gave forth! The longer he pictured her, figured as she had appeared to him like a phantom on Music Mountain, the more he longed to be back at the foot of it, wounded again and famished. And the impulse that moved him the first moment he could get out of bed and into a saddle was to spur his way hard and fast to her; to make her, against a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... is ever cross down here in the holiday season,—it is good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is when the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom forest, when the heavy breathing of some passing steamer is the only sound that breaks the stillness of the night, and the watchman smokes his only pipe on the bulwark, that the Farm has a mood and an atmosphere all its own, full of poetry which some day a painter's ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... went so far to seek her amongst the Gentiles, it was for Thy sake, and not for mine. It would not be just that I should suffer for what I have done in Thy behalf. Protect me, sweet Jesus! My Saviour, save me! Suffer not the phantom to accomplish that which the body could not. As I have triumphed over the flesh, suffer not the shadow to overthrow me. I know that I am now exposed to greater dangers than I ever ran. I feel and know that the dream ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... beyond, above, A land where wronged souls wait; (Those spirits called to earth by love, And driven back by hate). And each one stood in anguish dumb and wild, As she beheld the phantom of ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... good-night, and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somersett, British man-of-war: A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon, like a prison-bar, And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified By its own ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... went by, and still no dogcart. By this time it was looking shabby and getting shaken by rough usage; perhaps they did not like to return it in such a condition. Five years went by, and after that they seem to have lost all count of the dogcart, which faded away like a phantom. One farmer had been telling another something which his companion seemed to consider doubtful, and disputed; however, he finished up by saying, 'That's no lie, I can assure you.' 'Well, no; but I should certainly have taken it as such.' One fellow happening ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... view of art, Constance is interesting. It is more than we can say of Domizia in Luria. She is nothing more than a passing study whom Browning uses to voice his theories. Eulalia in A Soul's Tragedy is also a transient thing, only she is more colourless, more a phantom than Domizia. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... three paces distant, the image of Death himself rose out of the earth, and stretched forth his skeleton arms to clutch me. It was no phantom. There was the white, naked skull, with its eyeless sockets, the long, flesh-less limbs, the open, serrated ribs, the long, jointed fingers ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... side, approaching every shadowy corner where impurity might lurk under cover of the darkness and solitude, where hands were waiting to swoop down upon a shawl. Belated pedestrians saw her by the light of the street lanterns, an ill-omened, shuddering phantom, gliding along, almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with that appearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which sets the thoughtful man's heart and the physician's mind at work on the brink of deep abysses ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Napoleon was accused of having aspired to universal monarchy. In all ages, this desire has been imputed to powerful and ambitious sovereigns. Let us confess that no monarch was ever better justified in yielding to the seductions of this brilliant phantom than Napoleon. From the summit of his throne he held the reins which guided the greater part of Europe, whose docile monarchs instantly obeyed any direction which he chose to give them. At the first word, at the slightest signal, their subjects were arrayed beneath the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... whole. Then the man who was lucky at one time, was unlucky at another—like a poacher who snares three hares in a night, but does not snare another for a week, while he has been unable to work during the day, and, in the end, his losses have counterbalanced his gains. Then if this phantom had proved a reality, all the mines and mills within a wide range of the place would have been instantly abandoned, and it must have taken a long time, indeed, to reproduce the capital thus lost to the country. In fine, it must have become necessary to fix a rent upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... low beneath the earth, and laid On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade, While you beside the fire, a grandame grey, My love, your pride, remember and regret; Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet, And gather roses, while 't ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... of phenomena or nature is a law of the understanding, from which no departure, and to which no exception, can be admitted. For to except even a single phenomenon from its operation is to exclude it from the sphere of possible experience and thus to admit it to be a mere fiction of thought or phantom of the brain. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? Thou contempt of the brave—oh, rather the grave, Than to pine as the slave that thy fetters have bound. Like the dusk of the day is thy colour of gray, Thou foe of the lay, and thou phantom of gloom; Thou bane of delight—when thy shivering plight, And thy grizzle of white,[129] and thy crippleness, come To beg at the door; ah, woe for the poor, And the greeting unsure that grudges their bread; All unwelcome they call—from the hut to the hall The confession of all is, "'Tis time ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was natural that the Court, and in this case the Court meant the Queen, should attempt to concert measures with Vienna; the phantom of the Austrian alliance, so detested at the time of the Seven Years' War, was reappearing. Marie Antoinette held numerous conferences with the foreign ambassadors on the subject and wrote frequent letters to her brother invoking his aid; all of which was more or less suspected or ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... David indeed was anointed but in secret, so Samuel consented to honour Saul before the people. All the external difference was that Samuel never saw him again, and he was relieved from the incubus of the prophet's 'interference'; that is to say, he ceased to be God's king, and became a phantom, ruling only by his own will and power, as he had wished to do. How profound may be the difference while all externals remain unchanged! When we set up ourselves as our own lords, and shake off God's rule, we cast away His sanction and help in all the deeds of our self-will, however ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... features, dress, or appearance. He was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he knew himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which bore a human form. He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he felt to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited imagination, but still it sat there. Then my brother put down his violin, and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an intensity which he had previously believed impossible. Whether the image which he saw was subjective or objective, I cannot ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... carried far into the mists of that "prehistoric" period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice. The Atlantean "old Greeks" could not be designated even as the Autochthones—a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the Hellenes, meant certainly ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... hailed with renewed appreciation this costly expression of a social ideal. The dining-room at the Nouveau Luxe represented, on such a spring evening, what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its leisure: a phantom "society," with all the rules, smirks, gestures of its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other had been the product of continuity and choice. And the instinct which had ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... elements have become reconciled, and loyalty to England, which seemed at the time of the Boer War, and during the years that had preceded it, to have been confined to a small number of the English, has become the rule. British Imperialism is no mere phantom: the Union of South Africa has proved it to have a very virile body, and, what is more important, a lofty and ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... seriously, for good or evil, it often happens that at the time of the action a certain unaccountable premonition arises in the mind. This is chiefly the case when the act is to be the cause of sorrow. Like the wizard with Lochiel, some dark phantom arises before the mind, and warns of the evil to come. So it was in the present case. The pulling out of that drawer was an eventful moment in the life of Zillah. It was a crisis fraught with future sorrow and evil and suffering. There ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Government to which all those who submit to authority are entitled. Now, as to the negro problem. We southern women feel that the time has come to lay once and for all this old, old ghost that stalks through the halls of Congress. It is a phantom as applied to woman suffrage. In fifteen States south of the Mason and Dixon line there are over a million more white women than negro men and women combined. There are only two States in which the negro race ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... discusses here Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare. She compared Shakespeare first with Corneille, and then with Aeschylus. In contrasting the ghost in Hamlet with the shade of Darius in The Persians, she says:—'The phantom, who was to appear ignorant of what was past, that the Athenian ear might be soothed and flattered with the detail of their victory at Salamis, is allowed, for the same reason, such prescience as to foretell their future ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Egremont, the horrid phantom of settling-day seeming to obtrude itself between his mother and himself; but not knowing precisely at what she was driving, he merely sipped his tea, and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... that are, are on condition of perpetual flux and change. The cloud-rack has the likeness of bastions and towers, but they are mist, not granite, and the wind is every moment sweeping away their outlines, till the phantom fortress topples into red ruin while we gaze. The tiniest stream eats out its little valley and rounds the pebble in its widening bed, rain washes down the soil, and frost cracks the cliffs above. So silently and yet mightily does the law of change work that to a meditative ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were either leaning over the partitions and watching the spectacle or sitting with drink before them at the little marble tables at the back. The gaudy, gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be unreal, the stage but a phantom cloud effect. I wondered why I, a creature from the concrete world, was there. I had an insane impulse to fly from it all, to go out into the streets, and wander, wander for ever, away from the world. I was walking along the promenade, lost ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Pinta! "A stalk loaded with roseberries!" There must be land—or else the devil himself puts these signs in our way. Alonzo Pirzon, in the swift Pinta, kept ahead. Night came down. At ten the admiral, peer into the darkness, saw a light—was it one of those phantom lights reported to dance over these waters? A faint, glimmering light! "Pero Gutierrez, come here. I see a light! Look that way!"—"I see it too," said Pero. "Rodrigo Sanchez, come here—a light!" But Rodrigo Sanchez does not stand in the right place, and sees nothing at all. It ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... felt; for the first time that phantom seized me; the first and only time for it has never since left me—After the first moments of speechless agony I felt her fangs on my heart: I tore my hair; I raved aloud; at one moment in pity for his sufferings I would have clasped my father in ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... refine our minds, and give breadth to our thoughts, and enable us to take a proper position in society! We ought to attract sensible persons to us by the charm of our cultivation and refinement, not by the mere phantom of beauty and personal ornament. Into what gulfs of stupidity have we plunged! Do we not know that the reign of beauty is short, and not enough of itself to be worthy of regard? And even supposing ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... drew quickly back while the world about her—the room, the window, the bare skeleton of the elevated road, the street, and even the rose geranium blooming on the sill—became as remote and impalpable as a phantom. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... scruples!" I cried, emptying my glass; my head was hot and I felt bold. "A fig, I say, for your bogie-man nonsense! Tell me at what time doth this phantom choose to show itself." The landlord shivered and drew his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and this support given to the House of Commons, at issue with the sovereign, what could he do? What could Louis XVI. do one hundred and fifty years afterwards? What could Louis Philippe do in our times? A king, without the loyalty of the people, is a phantom, a mockery, and a delusion, unless he have physical force to sustain him; and even then armies will rebel, if they feel they are not bound to obey, and if it is not for ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... vicegerent over the Moslem world. As Togrul executed and enlarged this important trust, he was called to the deliverance of the caliph Cayem, and obeyed the holy summons, which gave a new kingdom to his arms. [22] In the palace of Bagdad, the commander of the faithful still slumbered, a venerable phantom. His servant or master, the prince of the Bowides, could no longer protect him from the insolence of meaner tyrants; and the Euphrates and Tigris were oppressed by the revolt of the Turkish and Arabian emirs. The presence of a conqueror was implored as a blessing; and the transient mischiefs ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... had died of the terrible disorder during the week, beneath the very roof that sheltered us, and its ravages, we were told, had extended up the country as far as Kingston; so that it was still to be the phantom of our coming journey, if we were fortunate enough to escape from ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... you see sights and visions; I knew a lady once who was continually thinking that she saw an armed man threaten her, but it was only an imagination, a phantom of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Right! The blind leading the blind. Conjure up one phantom to seek for another. How ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... former one, is a pure fallacy, and a petitio principii throughout. The Cartesian form of it is the most glaringly fallacious, and indeed exposes itself; for by that reasoning we might prove the existence of a fiery dragon or any other phantom of the brain. But even King's more concealed sophism is equally absurd. What ground is there for saying that the number of possible things is infinite? He adds, "at least in power," which means either nothing or only that we have the power of conceiving an infinite number of ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... been put into skilful hands. It was well told—all the better because the speaker so earnestly hoped that its existence might turn out a myth—that the phantom so suddenly conjured up might depart as quickly as it had arrived. At last the story came to a conclusion. There was a pause, ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... afraid—horribly afraid. He seemed, in the shadows, to descry weird phantom-shapes, moving stealthily; in the silence to hear ghostly whispers; sometimes he fancied he heard the silence itself! But in the very fear that clutched his throat there was a fascination—a lure—that made it impossible ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Massachusetts, to command an armed ship and harry the pirates of the West Indies and Madagascar. Strangest of all the sea tales of colonial history is that of Captain Kidd and his cruise in the Adventure-Galley. His name is reddened with crimes never committed, his grisly phantom has stalked through the legends and literature of piracy, and the Kidd tradition still has magic to set treasure-seekers exploring almost every beach, cove, and headland from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... Mock-Majesty, which is ascribed to the Prince of the fallen Angels, is admirably preserved in the Beginning of this Book. His opening and closing the Debate; his taking on himself that great Enterprize at the Thought of which the whole Infernal Assembly trembled; his encountering the hideous Phantom who guarded the Gates of Hell, and appeared to him in all his Terrors, are Instances of that proud and daring Mind which could not ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... After the phantom of our Freedom died Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried: "Drink coffee, Lads, for that is all that's left Since our Land of the Free is ...
— The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam - With Apologies to Omar • J. L. Duff
... the editor of "The Firefly" softened. At first, he had taken his visitor for an unpaid contributor; but the American accent banished this phantom of the imagination. He continued to pour into a tumbler the contents ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... month in this retirement, spending all his time in answering the newspapers which accused him of treason to the Emperor. This accusation was his absorbing idea, a phantom, a spectre to him; day and night he tried to shake it off, seeking in the difficult position in which he had found himself all the reasons which it might offer him for acting as he had acted. Meanwhile the terrible ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose: But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream, Tipples imaginary pots of ale, In vain; awake I find the settled thirst Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse. Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarred, Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach, Nor walnut in rough-furrow'd coat secure, Nor medlar, fruit delicious ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... not," he said, gently lowering his eyes upon mine after a moment's pause—"does not your choice of a profession imply that you have not to give chase to a fleeting phantom? Do you not profess to have, and hold, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... We careered on towards the spot where the ships had gone down, for that real ships had been there no doubt could be entertained. A strict look-out was kept for anything that might still be floating to prove that we had not been deceived by some phantom forms. Those on the look-out forward reported an object ahead. "A boat! a boat!" shouted one of them. "No boat could live in such a sea," observed the captain. He was right. As we approached, we saw a grating, to which a human being was clinging. It was, when first seen, on the starboard ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... You may get clear of the difficulty that embarrasses you by a door which opens into a field of honour and liberty. Paris, whose archbishop you are, groans under a heavy load. The Parliament there is but a mere phantom, and the Hotel de Ville a desert. The Duc d'Orleans and the Prince have no more authority than what the rascally mob is pleased to allow them. The Spaniards, Germans, and Lorrainers are in the suburbs laying waste the very ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... ready to split his sides with laughing, when the Chevalier de Grammont, resuming the discourse, "apropos, sire," said he, "I had forgot to tell you, that, to increase my ill-humour, I was stopped, as I was getting out of my chair, by the devil of a phantom in masquerade, who would by all means persuade me that the queen had commanded me to dance with her; and as I excused myself with the least rudeness possible, she charged me to find out who was to be her partner, and desired ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... on this very ride of mine. As evening approached, the settled grey clouds, which had hung overhead like a pall all the afternoon, were driven about by a rough wind, which went on rising steadily. The grim phantom-haunted clouds came closer and closer round about me as darkness grew apace, and now and then the gust brought with it a vicious "spate" of rain. With no immediate prospect of shelter, my position became less and less lively. I had not bargained for a night on the highroad, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... have such feelings as mine? Should you like to live all your life haunted by one pale face? Would you wish never to enjoy a strain of music, a gleam of sunshine, a single, simple, natural pleasure, because of the phantom? Be warned, my dear, before it is too late. I tell you honestly, I never forgot him; I tell you, I never forgave myself. What did I care for any of them, except poor Alphonse—and I only liked Alphonse because he reminded me of the dead. Do you think I was not a reckless woman ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the living, the dying, or the dead, we are familiar with the usual form which these hallucinations take. Indeed their main outlines hardly ever vary. Some one, in his bedroom, in the street, on a journey, no matter where, suddenly see plainly and clearly the phantom of a relation or a friend of whom he was not thinking at the time and whom he knows to be thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa as the case may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom says nothing; its ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... He moved to the window and stood looking out. Across the green of the quadrangle rose the noble mass of the Cathedral. His lips moved in prayer; but all the time it was as though he saw beside the visible structure—its ordered beauty, its proud and cherished antiquity—a ruined phantom of the great church, roofless and fissured, its sacred places open to the winds and rains, its pavements broken ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Oh phantom!" exclaimed Rodolphe, shrinking from one who bore the name and the face of his mistress. "Away, what would you with me?" And he rushed down ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... and in a drizzly storm that I brought her from the station. She was a thin, cold, phantom-like woman, shrouded in water-proofs and green barege veils. Why is it that homely women always wear green barege veils? She did not improve in appearance when her wraps were off, and she was seated by my parlor ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... abandonment of the Masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy seemed a necessary and logical consequence of the long abandonment by thinkers of the anthropomorphic conception of the same." Accordingly he arranged a group of Phantom Intelligences that supply adequately a Chorus and a philosophical basis ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... stolen into and settled down upon the room, "the ghost of this sinful man haunts the Blue Chamber, in this very house. There, from midnight until cock-crow, amid wild muffled shrieks and groans and mocking laughter and the ghostly sound of horrid blows, it does fierce phantom fight with the spirits of the solo cornet- player and the murdered wait, assisted at intervals, by the shades of the German band; while the ghost of the strangled harpist plays mad ghostly melodies with ghostly toes on the ghost ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... held both of them silent for a moment. To her it seemed that he had risen out of the very stones of the pavement, at her bidding, to make her evening wonderful. He looked so strong, so square, so solid after the phantom imaginations of the house that she had left, that the sight of him was a step straight into the heart of ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the passage almost on top of Toto, who was stalking phantom rats. Mrs. Meecher was manoeuvring in the background. Her face lit up grimly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... the laughter that perpetually proceeded from the torrent. The path led us onwards in a manner that was all one with the plot now woven round our feet. We could but follow the path, though we knew with what an evil purpose it was made: that it was as phantom as the rest. At one place it invited us to cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the abyss of a cataract; in another it invited us to climb, in spite of our final weariness, a great barrier of rock that lay between an upper and a lower jasse. We ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... over-turned boat, her chin in her hands, staring out to sea. The soft tide of the bay lapped almost at her feet, and the draperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She looked like a wraith, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjective is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangely enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to herself, over and over, some ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... disdainful of executive power, the constitution emasculated the power of the governor, leaving him a "mere phantom". Elected annually by the combined vote of the General Assembly for a maximum of three consecutive terms, the governor had no veto power and virtually no power of executive action. He could not act between legislative sessions without approval of an eight-man Council of State. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the strange dead night, Under the vast dead sky, Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, And the ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... sun, which, surrounded by mountainous heights of orange and purple cloud, began to touch the water-line with a thousand arrowy darts of flame. The white-sailed vessel on which their eyes were fixed, came curtseying over the waves through a perfect arch of splendid colour, like a fairy or phantom ship ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... from the ground before they burst out far, far above us, into colossal masses of vast-leaved foliage. I cannot sufficiently convey the impressions of awe with which the sight of these monster trees inspired me. There seemed to me something pitiless and phantom-like in the severity of their enormous bare trunks, stretching on without break or branch into the distance—overhead, and there at length giving birth to a sea of dark waving plumes, the rustle of which reached my ears as the sound of tossing ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Sybella returned. The queen burst into tears at the sight of her; but the fairy immediately cried out, 'You may spare yourself, my royal guest, the pain of relating what has happened. I know it all; for that old man, whom I took such pity on, was a phantom, raised by Brunetta, to allure me hence, in order to have an opportunity, in my absence, of seducing the princess from her duty. She knew nothing but a probable story could impose on me, and therefore raised that story of the misery of the old man's son (from motives which too often, indeed, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... while to himself was reserved the contest against a genuine power and one that had grown wiser by losses, for Mithridates was now having recourse to shields, and swords and horses. Lucullus retorting said, that Pompeius was going to fight with a phantom and a shadow of war, being accustomed, like a lazy bird, to descend upon the bodies that others had slaughtered and to tear the remnants of wars; for so had he appropriated to himself the victories over Sertorius, Lepidus and Spartacus, though Crassus, Metellus ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... her bloody lion borne through broken ranks to victory and fame; and, catching the inspiration, to pour the deathless names in song. But, my lord, in the midst of these enthusiastic reveries, a long-visaged, dry, moral-looking phantom strides across my imagination, and pronounces these ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The phantom drew back his veil, and Omar saw with surprise Schadheli himself, grown ten cubits since his death. The mollah dug in the ground, and water miraculously appeared. The spirit of his teacher bade Omar fill a bowl with the water and to proceed on his ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... tossing and tormented with this phantom horror in my eyes and ears, the sound died imperceptibly away into the soft hush of two well-known voices, and I opened my eyes to see mother with Uncle Loveday standing ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... showing Himself to His disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw. But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the literal rope and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin |
