Quotes About Phantoms

All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses. Through the open doors / The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, / With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

His wishes surfaced like ghosts and fled into the night.

Ghosts are both remnants of history and witnesses to it.

Roses blanches, tombez ! vous insultez nos Dieux, Tombez, fantômes blancs, de votre ciel qui brûle : - La sainte de l'abîme est plus sainte à mes yeux !

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

and his body responding with that maddening slowness from which one suffers when chased by the phantoms of nightmare.

I had discovered that the concentration required for crossing new territory seemed to quell the phantoms, dim their shapes, and silence their whispers, which was probably the real reason why I had not headed back to Taparak when the weather turned.

I noticed a still face in the maelstorm of activity; a white-skinned face, that did not smile. Shadow eyes. A veil about the head. I felt suddenly cold. The whirling corynantic dancers became mere phantoms in the aura of this motionless figure, this other woman. Her body was wrapped in a thick, dark cloak; only her face was visible. As if she'd been waiting for me to notice her, she came towards me, this true harpy-woman; her white face expressionless.

But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy—a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason.

The knowledge that they existed, those phantoms that forever haunted the corner of the eye, was a form of haunting in itself.

There is no passion More spectral or fantastical than Hate; Not even its opposite, Love, so peoples air With phantoms, as this madness of the heart.

Qualis Natura formatrix, si talis formata? Oh my God, how fair must be Thy real world, if even Thy phantoms are so fair!

In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.

Always in pursuit of shadows! We lose to-day's substantial good for shadowy phantoms that keep our eyes ever in advance, and our feet ever hurrying forward. No pause--no ease--no full enjoyment of now. O, deluded heart!--ever bartering away substance for shadow!

It was true that he was weary after having spent the last seven days traveling from Kent to the shadowed edges of the Exmoor Forest. It was also true that the wilds of Somerset and Cornwall were said to breed wraiths and other netherworld creatures, and Dunster was right in the middle of dark and mysterious lands. But being a man of logic, Sir Gart Forbes wasn't one to believe in ghosts or phantoms or fairies. Still, he wasn't quite sure what he had seen.

When the images of power overshadow the reality, those without power find themselves fighting phantoms.

Vespers In which the rest of the abbey is visited, William comes to some conclusions about Adelmo's death, there is a conversation with the brother glazier about glasses for reading and about phantoms for those who seek to read too much.   At

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.

That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms.

Wilhelm what is our world like without love? Like a magic lantern without a light. The moment you bring the little lamp into it, the brightest pictures shine on your white wall. And if it were no more than that, only passing phantoms, still it always makes us happy when we stand there like innocent boys enraptured by the wondrous visions. [...] Are they phantoms, Wilhelm, if they make us happy?

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.

The presence of phantoms – everywhere – their faces, ripe with need and unspent passion, trailing their hunger like pollen from flowers that were past their hour but refused to wither and disappear.