"Phantom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: Deus, Deus meus!—"O God! O my God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantom that withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actual possession of the loving soul. He leant over His poor scarred creature, took him in His arms, and comforted ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... sensuality regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the abrupt inner change in Tannhaeuser, Venus and her world must vanish like a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of Tannhaeuser...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses that sensual pleasure, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... to the mysteries of our own limited life and, as in a far-off phantom parallel, we ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... love you. I thought I loved you when you were only a phantom. Now, you are the being in whose hands I have put my soul. It is true that you are mine! What have I done to obtain the greatest, the only, good of this world? And those men with whom the earth is covered think they are living! I alone live! Tell me, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it must come some day—perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow. And ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... were the angels' notes of praise the joyful shepherds had quickly sped Past rock and shadow, adown the hill, to kneel at the Saviour's lowly bed; While, like the spirits of phantom night, Followed their flocks—their ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... The legate advanced as the king retired; but at every point of the difficult march Numidian spies were hovering around the Roman column. The disgust of the soldiers at the hardships to which they had been submitted in the pursuit of this phantom gold, the last evidence of which had vanished when their commander turned his back on the walls of Suthul, now resulted in a frightful state of demoralisation. The lower officers in authority, centurions and commanders of squadrons of horse, stole from the camp to hold converse with Jugurtha's ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... whether I shell peas or count lentils? The world runs on from one folly to another; and the man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... several stations, might discountenance those malicious rumours, spread by evil-minded persons, to the prejudice of credit, and the eminent hazard of the public peace and tranquillity. The queen's recovery, together with certain intelligence that the armament was a phantom, and the pretender still in Lorraine, helped to assuage the ferment of the nation, which had been industriously raised by party-writings. Mr. Richard Steele published a performance, intituled, "The Crisis," in defence of the revolution and the protestant establishment, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... party: for, whilst they are terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government, they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with little success) to alarm the people with a phantom of tyranny in the Nobles. All this is done upon their favourite principle of disunion, of sowing jealousies amongst the different orders of the State, and of disjointing the natural strength of the kingdom; that it may be rendered incapable of resisting the sinister designs of wicked ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... fields, where Caledonia, rejoicing, saw 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
... that all unknown to him the real Miss Grey might love another, belong to another, tortured him. Tortured him, too, the knowledge that if this was so he had no right to entertain that beloved phantom that he had made of her in his North Woods. Or it tortured him to remember that his love for her could come to nothing—nothing. He must not tell her that he loved her; he must not, upon a night flooded with moonlight ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... somewhat pale lips, or in the dark circle which want of sleep had left round her beautiful blue eyes. I was interested by her beauty, but still more by the shadow of death by which she was overcast, and which made her appear more as a phantom of the night than as a reality. This was all. Our lives rolled on; we continued to live in close proximity as far as distance was concerned, but morally, as widely separated ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... upon losing sight of this beautiful Phantom, with his Exclamations of Joy and Gratitude at the discovery of a real Creature, who resembled the Apparition which had been presented to him in his Dream; the Approaches he makes to her, and his Manner of Courtship; are all laid together in a most exquisite ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuality to actual reality—how has it been evaded! His word, that was spirit! His mysteries, which even the apostles must wait for the parable in order to comprehend! These spiritual things, which can only be spiritually discerned, were—say ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... concealed my person behind a tomb attached to that portion of the cemetery, well adapted to shield me from observation, and by the adoption of this judicious expedient, I succeeded in the accomplishment of my design; but after the "unearthly phantom" had riveted my gaze for a few minutes, he sank into a sepulchre, and left me to a series of vague and unprofitable conjectures. In a short time, however, I observed him quietly proceeding amid the mingled ranks of rose-bowers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... 675 His steed now flounders in the brake, Now sinks his barge upon the lake; Now leader of a broken host, His standard falls, his honor's lost. Then—from my couch may heavenly might 680 Chase that worst phantom of the night! Again returned the scenes of youth, Of confident undoubting truth; Again his soul he interchanged With friends whose hearts were long estranged. 685 They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead; As warm each hand, each brow as gay, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... 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. Yet if truth ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... have! A speaking distance very soon she gains, And "Ship-a-hoy!" is heard in loudest strains. Salute thus courteous is by each addressed, And questions put—in seaman's phrase expressed. This done, away the gallant ship has sped, Like some fair phantom which we ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... pleased with our offering. He is more angry than before," he announced in a sepulchral voice. "My magic tells me so. The terrible god has sent a Black Phantom from the lower world to haunt us and to render our lives more miserable. Dark and filled with forebodings is the season that has ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... hall. Zillah stood there, pale and fearful, bidding her good-night. There was the bed upon which lay the form of a venerable man, whose face was ever turned toward her with its expression of fear, and of piteous entreaty. "Don't leave me," he murmured to the phantom form of Zillah. "Don't leave me with her," and his thin finger pointed to herself. But Zillah, ignorant of all danger, promised to send Mrs. Hart. And Zillah walked out, standing at the door for a time to give her last look—the look which the phantom of this vision now had. Then, with a momentary ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... God. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. There is nothing else that can satisfy. So that when we hear men of this world acknowledge, as they sometimes will do, when they are wearied with this phantom chase of life, sick of gaieties and tired of toil, that it is not in their pursuits that they can drink the fount of blessedness; and when we see them, instead of turning aside either broken-hearted or else made wise, still persisting to trust to expectations—at fifty, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Antonito, the young friend who had planned and accompanied our day's excursion, was to be our guard of honor on the lonely road. A body-servant accompanied him, likewise mounted. Don Antonito rode a milk-white Cuban pony, whose gait was soft, swift, and stealthy as that of a phantom horse. His master might have carried a brimming glass in either hand, without spilling a drop, or might have played chess, or written love-letters on his back, so smoothly did he tread the rough, stony road. All its pits and crags and jags, the pony made them all a straight line for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... look upon her as "possessed." A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... followed this phantom ray of hope. All returned to their accustomed places. Curtis alone remained motionless, but his eye no longer scanned the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened down into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a fleeting phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes, deceived by his mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived in dreams on some far desert. But what was that beating in his ears—sharp, swift, even, rhythmic? Never had his ears played him false. Never had he heard things ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... 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 driven a new class of world-compellers ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... questions," said the doctor very deliberately, "because, according to Mrs. Tosswill, Timmy thinks, or says he thinks, that you are always accompanied by—well, how can I put it?—by a phantom dog." ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... of which the derivation is apparent, I have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to custom; thus I write, in compliance with a numberless majority, convey and inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the primitive, as explain ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of passion that Eve gazed upon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linked listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... a passage from room to room made more deliberately, and when the bed was reached the phantom scrambled into it, dragged the blankets closely about her shoulders and with a sigh of satisfaction settled ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... 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 was something ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... stillness, I should have to relate the perpetration of one of those fearful deeds which, were it for no other peculiarity than its startling suddenness, so utterly at variance with all civilized law, must make our beautiful California appear to strangers rather as a hideous phantom than the flower-wreathed reality which ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... coachman instead. Bryden tried to recall the face, but he could only remember a straight nose, and a somewhat dusky complexion. Mike was one of the heroes of his childhood, and his youth floated before him, and he caught glimpses of himself, something that was more than a phantom and less than a reality. Suddenly his reverie was broken: the carman pointed with his whip, and Bryden saw a tall, finely-built, middle-aged man coming through the gates, and ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... her. This became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure. In the pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet beheld an appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the freedom of one to whom speech is life's last boon, and the ear of the listener quite forgotten in the passion of ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... but few lascivious dreams. In these the phantom partner was almost invariably a dead woman. (When about 8 I had seen the dead body of an aunt ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... soothe my wild distress Or lull me to forgetfulness. I see but him: my lips can frame No syllable but Rama's name. Each sight I see, each sound I hear, Brings Rama to mine eye or ear, The wish was in my heart, and hence The sweet illusion mocked my sense. 'Twas but a phantom of the mind, And yet the voice was soft and kind. Be glory to the Eternal Sire,(848) Be glory to the Lord of Fire, The mighty Teacher in the skies,(849) And Indra with his thousand eyes, And may they grant the truth to be E'en as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... traveling draughtsmen, I predict, as a practical man, that it cannot go on. You cannot even publish what you have gathered in the last five years. Consider that in attempting to give a review of all the fossil fishes which now exist in collections, you pursue a phantom which ever flies before you. Such a work would not be finished in less than fifteen years, and besides, this NOW is an uncertain element. Cannot you conquer yourself so far as to finish what you have in your possession at present? ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... did not shake the dust of his country from his feet. In her wise head she rejoiced to think he was not the donkey she sketched for admiration; and she was partly consoled, or played at the taking of a comfort needed in her perpetual struggle with a phantom of a fact, by the reflection that a young woman on his arm would tense him to feel himself more at home abroad. Her mind's habit of living warmly beside him in separation was vexed by the fixed intrusion of a female third person, who checked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prodigiously confounded, yet made no discovery of what had happened to any but the person who lay with him, though the thing made a very strong impression on his spirits, and might perhaps contribute not a little to his falling ill about the time predicted by the phantom he ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... expecting some one. Not you, miserable! You needn't stop and make signs for them to admit you. There! don't you see you have frightened them? You are not a fitting spectacle for such sweet-eyed darlings. They do well to drop the shade, to shut out the darkness, and the dim, gesticulating phantom. Flit on! 'Tis their father they are looking for, coming home to them with gifts ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... land-marks which guided the pilgrim through the sand-wastes, as he was led on by the alternate hope and disappointment of the mirage, or "serab," as the Arabs term it. Burckhardt describes this phenomenon as seen by him when they were surrounded during a whole day's march by phantom lakes. The color was of the purest assure,—so clear, that the shadows of the mountains which bordered the horizon were reflected with extreme precision; and the delusion of its being a sheet of water was thus rendered perfect. He had often seen the mirage in Syria and Egypt: there he always ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... underwood to give a fine promise for the future. Even myself, as I say, I would not have had changed in one IOTA this forenoon, in spite of all my idleness and Guthrie's lost paper, which is ever present with me - a horrible phantom. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of the garden lawn. Then in a second or two it was solid—a thing like a shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that I was asleep and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... power, no throne, no title, I, who am but a memory in a phantom, That Duke of Reichstadt who with helpless grief Can only wander under Austrian trees, Carving an N upon their mossy trunks, Wayfarer, only noticed when I cough; Who have no longer even the little piece ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... really wonderful. That vague dream which had grown out of Lady Laura's womanly hints, that pleasant phantom which she had conjured up in Mr. Lovel's mental vision a month or two ago, in the midsummer afternoon, had made itself into a reality so quickly as to astound a man too Horatian in his philosophy to be ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... his hard Scotch nature. The knowledge that the man who had stolen his wife from him (as he phrased it to himself in his curious belated mediaeval phraseology) was not a real live man of flesh and blood at all, but an evanescent phantom of the twenty-fifth century, made him all the more ready to patch up for the time-being a nominal reconciliation. His nerves—for even HE had nerves—were still trembling to the core with the mystic events of that wizard morning; but clearer ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... dazzled Empress feels the golden flame Play round her breast, and melt her frozen frame; Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles, Her iron-hearted Lord,—and PLUTO smiles.— 200 His trembling Bride the Bard triumphant led From the pale mansions of the astonish'd dead; Gave the fair phantom to admiring light,— Ah, soon again to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... vitals and the operation hurt like the mischief. Casey kicked him in the flanks and urged him on. It must be a camp fire, Casey thought. He did not connect it with that moving light he had seen the night before; that phantom car was a mystery which he would probably never solve, and in Casey's opinion it had nothing to do with a camp fire that twinkled upon ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... humanity; his heart never breaks because a life is withering in despair? He takes no hurt from the weltering sorrows by which so many are overwhelmed. It is man, it is woman, who bears the agony; the crushing burden of wrong-doing falls on them. Look no more then, we urge, to a phantom deity, to an idol-god in the skies, a figment of a disordered imagination, but think on your brother man before you dare to set mischief in motion. When you apprehend the nearness of danger, think of the future, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... up-risings it is with them, even darkening to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is ever between them and it—not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a vacuum of light, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow, it must be a phantom—it may be of a dead sin—and against such, exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto or for himself, but in entire ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of the Mausoleum to be gradually stolen from their hands, and to drop upon the ground. At this moment a sudden and violent earthquake was felt through all the extensive scene. The centre of the vacant area opened—it threw forth a phantom terrific and enormous—its magnitude seemed to grow upon the sight; its lineaments were shrouded from our view by an immense mantle, on which were represented a thousand different and hideous images of Death. Its name was ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... party down in Washington Square. Papa Claude is trying to get Estelle Linton to play the lead in 'Phantom Love.' You always meet all sorts ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... out into the passage almost on top of Toto, who was stalking phantom rats. Mrs. Meecher was manoeuvring in the background. Her face lit up grimly at the sight ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... and because that church can be hurled as a solid body in any given direction. For these reasons it is more dangerous than other churches; but the doctrines are no more dangerous than those of the Protestant churches. The man who would sacrifice the well- being of man to please an imaginary phantom that he calls God, is also dangerous. The only safe standard is the well-being of man in this world. Whenever this world is sacrificed for the sake of another, a mistake has been made. The only God that ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... - He will die too, and we shall meet again. He will know all when these sad eyes are closed. Ah, cannot he before? must I appear The vilest?—O just Heaven! can it be thus? I am—all earth resounds it—lost, despised, Anguish and shame unutterable seize me. 'Tis palpable, no phantom, no delusion, No dream that wakens with o'erwhelming horror: Spaniard and Moor fight on this ground alone, And tear the arrow from my bleeding breast To pierce my father's, for ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Phantom of being, Protean face, Parasite of rock, of towers and man Since sun and matter erst began, Fleet vanisher from our embrace, Thy fairy forms the faithful ape Of substance; all the landscape In thy mimic loom mere woven air Where naught is real ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... bivouac's fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow—but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline, The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence, Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving, The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; A solemn and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... encountered on his way. But he was not yet to meet the Rutulian king face to face, for Juno, by Jupiter's permission, led Turnus off the field, and saved him for a time from the wrath of the Trojan hero. Out of a hollow cloud she fashioned a phantom with the shape, likeness and voice of AEneas, and caused it to appear before Turnus, as ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... "caught up into Paradise," which in those days was a kind of region that roofed the earth. The Shaykh in question began by showing the Voltairean Sultan of Egypt certain specious miracles, such as a phantom army (in our tale two lions), Cairo reduced to ashes, the Nile in flood and a Garden of Irem, where before lay a desert. He then called for a tub, stripped the King to a zone girding his loins and made him dip his head into the water. Then came the adventures as in the following tale. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... this maiden's music! We, we understand the laws well, Which do regulate and govern Sound, enigma of creation. And we know the charm mysterious Which invisibly through space floats, And, intangible a phantom, Penetrates our hearing organs, And in beasts' as well as men's hearts Wakes up love, delight and longing, Raving madness and wild frenzy. And yet, we must bear this insult, That when nightly in sweet mewing We our love-pangs are ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... he said, smilingly approaching me, "did you heed those chaste instructions I gave concerning the phantom Kissing-Bridge?" ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... through the journey out. I don't know why. It was the only time I was ever sea-sick, and I have seen some pretty bad weather since I became a boat-builder. But that phantom smell of potatoes was peculiarly vile to me. Coming back on the brig we were all ill, every one of us, so soon as we got to sea, poisoned, I firmly believe, by quap. On the way out most of the others recovered in a few days, but the stuffiness below, the coarse food, the cramped dirty accommodation ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... calm and beautiful day they sighted land. Gently, with noiseless dip of paddle, they glided onward like a phantom fleet. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... realities sufficiently frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen. The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the Place de la Madeleine. The girl I mean is that girl you notice leaning against the onyx balustrade at the Opera—that one with lips of Burgundy and cheeks the colour of roses in olive oil. The girl I mean is that phantom girl you see, from your table before the Rotonde across the way, slipping past the iron grilling of the Luxembourg Gardens—that girl with faded blouse but with eyes, you feel, a-colour with the lightning ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... satisfactory test conditions, I have seen phantom forms and faces—a phantom form came from the corner of the room, took an accordion in its hand, and glided about ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... professor gave certain symptoms of alarm for that moment, but then the danger seemed past as the ship darted fairly across the storm-trail, hovering to the east of that aerial phantom. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... The phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,—the latest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning. It is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim fails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal himself, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the Past detain you, Her sunshine and storms forget; No chains so unworthy to hold you As those of a vain regret; Sad or bright, she is lifeless ever; Cast her phantom arms away, Nor look back, save to learn the lesson Of a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... garden walks for a while, long enough to have ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, they sat down, and she said, "I don't know that I've seen the moon so clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last word his heart gave a jump that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... strewn in every field of wheat; and never to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks, of elm and pine and sycamore and logwood, steeped in its unwholesome water; where the frogs so croak at night that after dark there is an incessant sound as if millions of phantom teams, with bells, were traveling through the upper air, at an enormous distance off. It is quite an oppressive circumstance, too, to come upon great tracks, where settlers have been burning down the trees; and where their wounded bodies lie about, like ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... 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 Somerset, 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 ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... ruined stead aye I stand and stay, * Nor shall change or dwelling depart us tway! No distance of homestead shall gar me forget * Your love, O friends, but yearn alway: Ne'er flies your phantom the babes of these eyne * You are moons in Nighttide's murkest array: And with growing passion mine unrest grows * And each morn I find union dissolved ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the same in the summer heat—a phantom ocean of water. Garry's eyes loved to follow the quivering blue expanse that seemed so cool and deep. It rippled softly away to end in a line of white, like distant breakers ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... breeze first blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek kissed; when the ships on the sea below seem to cross each other and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when there are distant concussions in the air and phantom horsemen galloping, ceasing; when the horizon swims blue, green, emotional—then Mrs. Jarvis, heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, "If only some one could give me... if I could give some one...." But she does not ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... may put you on a false scent. Believe me," she cried, with sudden warmth, "I'd be glad to see you measure your wits against the real culprits. Maybe you'd be successful. Who can say? Anyway, you'd get a sound idea of whom you were after, and would not be chasing a phantom, as you are likely to be now, if you listen to the talk of this place. Believe me, I hold no brief for wrongdoers. They must take their chances. If they are discovered and captured they must pay the penalty. But I know how deceptive appearances may be in this valley, and—and it would break my heart ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... as I came out upon a ledge which overlooked the valley, I perceived my horse's shadow floating on the phantom ocean far below me, a dark equestrian statue encircled with a triple-ringed halo of fire. In all my mountain experiences I had ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... now appear, stalking over the plain and circling gradually around me. There is something unearthly in the sight. They resemble creatures of a phantom world. They seem endowed ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the river. The sound of magic songs and of drums filled all the air, and in the fields the spirits were playing lacrosse. All the people of the village had deserted their homes and were enjoying themselves at the game. Outside one hut, however, a perplexed and forlorn phantom was sitting, and to my surprise I saw that he was dressed in European clothes. As we drew nearer I observed that he wore the black garb and white neck-tie of a minister in some religious denomination, and on coming to still closer quarters I recognized an old acquaintance, the Rev. Peter ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of his unexpected news had awakened her roughly, abruptly to a very terrible truth. Since his entrance into the room she had seen her phantom palace of friendship fall about her like a house of cards; had seen, rising from its ruins, that which her brain and will refused to recognise, but which every pulse in her body ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... all her supplicating or imperious notes, what had been his reward? To kiss her hand when she came, to kiss her hand when she went, and all the while her lips burned like a cardinal poppy and her eyes lured like those phantom lakes of the desert. True, he had often kissed her perfumed tresses without her knowledge; but what was that? Why had he never taken by force that which entreaty did not win? Love. Man never uses force where he loves. When would the day come when the hedge of mystery inclosing ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... hearer. The imagination must be sensitized ere it will take the impression of those airy nothings whose image is traced and fixed by appliances as delicate as the golden pencils of the sun. Then that becomes a visible reality which before was but a phantom of the brain. Your own passion must penetrate and mingle with that of the artist that you may interpret him aright. You must, I say, be prepossessed, for it is the mind which shapes and colors the reports of the senses. Suppose you were expecting the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the entrance of the castle. Even at this day, notwithstanding the ruins, as soon as twilight falls, it is said she still descends the steps, runs from story to story, glides through the corridors and the rooms, and passes like a phantom through the gaping windows which open into the desert void. All return. Isabeau, Gudule, Vonne, Austreberthe, all these "happy dead," loved by the stern messenger, who spared them from the vicissitudes of life by taking them suddenly when, in early youth, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a feeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner, and rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth.[Q] The chronology of this period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half, and as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these years, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if the Philistines had held the country, with the exception of Judah, in such force that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that five years passed before the invaders were so far ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... more; and thrice They clash'd together, and thrice they brake their spears. Then each, dishorsed and drawing, lash'd at each So often and with such blows, that all the crowd Wonder'd, and now and then from distant walls There came a clapping as of phantom hands. So twice they fought, and twice they brathed, and still The dew of their great labor, and the blood Of their strong bodies, flowing, drain'd their force. But either's force was match'd till Yniol's cry "Remember that great insult done the Queen," Increased Geraint's, who heaved his blade ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... especial had been stirring on his cot as though trying to throw off some phantom of dread. Now instantly after the sentry's hail this stirring sleeper emitted ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Provence, revisited the tomb of my Eveline, saw my boy, sought absolution, made many prayers, but could not shake off the phantom. It was on a Friday I slew my foe, and on each Friday night he appeared. The young Simon de Montfort was about to form another band of crusaders, and he allowed me to accompany him, with the result I have described. During my stay in the monastery at Acre ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Barnes and Markland, will be vilely dishonoured by my outlandish and adscititious barbarisms. But I am determined to proceed, no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye troops of conjugations and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade and Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my imagination a sudden shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would make me begin to let down my breeches to my calves, and turning ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... to-day in the wild life of the roads and of the sea-haunted islands that Synge knew, but he was wise to put "The Well of the Saints" back a hundred years or more. Aran islanders told him of rye that turned to oats in their fields and of phantom ships that passed them at sea, but a miracle of healing such as that of "The Well of the Saints" they were familiar with only in folk-song such as "Mary's Well," and such a miracle, too, would hardly be attempted by a ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left again—that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... period before his exile, the frightful phantom of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was debated—national independence, individual liberty, liberty of conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of marriage, of education, of the right to work, of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... returning Xerxes, we may well set the grave and dignified patriotism of Atossa, the Queen-mother of the Persian kingdom; the loyalty, in spite of their bewilderment, of the aged men who form the Chorus; and, above all, the royal phantom of Darius, evoked from the shadowland by the libations of Atossa and by the appealing cries of the Chorus. The latter, indeed, hardly dare to address the kingly ghost: but Atossa bravely narrates to him the catastrophe, of which, in the lower world, Darius has known nothing, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... and you spin it with joy, Regardless of all the wiles you employ To gain the pleasure of seeing; No tree is so tall, but you reach its top limb, No water so deep, but in it you swim, No ice is so smooth, but o'er it you skim Like a phantom, a wonderful being. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... possibly cut her off. The blue-lights and the flashes of the guns had dazzled their eyes, and the night seemed darker than ever. In vain Jack peered for some time into the darkness to make out the frigate. A thick bank of mist, blown off the land, lay upon the water. Suddenly, like a dark phantom stalking over the deep, the frigate's hull, with her tall masts towering up into the sky, appeared, and he had barely time to shout out, "Port the helm, pull round the port oars," before the boat was close under her bows, very narrowly escaping being run down. In another minute ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... ordered a halt; we faced to the right, whence the sound proceeded, and as soon as the dim forms of the approaching squadron loomed upon us out of the mist, the word was given to fire. The whole line delivered a volley at a distance of about thirty paces, whereupon the phantom horsemen at once turned and fled back, uttering loud cries as they were swallowed up again in ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... first of the series, a most singular performance, had for centuries been popularly known as the 'Trionfo della Morte.' It is divided by an immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death, personified as a female phantom, batwinged, claw-footed, her robe of linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
