Best Phantom Quotes & Sayings

Dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between vaporous grey wave-lapped walls. — Kenneth Grahame

Put your arms around my neck, sweetheart."
"Whatever for?"
He grasped her wrists and lifted her arms himself. "Because," he whispered, "we're going to dance."
...
"This will never work. I appreciate the thought. It's very sweet, but-"
"Shut up," he whispered.
The first notes of the next number drifted to them, and she realized it was the band's rendition of Montgomery's hit song, "I swear." Tears sprang to her eyes, for the instant she recognized the tune, she knew Ryan had requested it.
"Dance with me," he whispered.
"I feel foolish."
"Who'll see? Only me, and I'm our best bud, so I don't count. Besides, why should you feel foolish?"
"My legs are dangling. My feet will thump your shins."
"Those soft slippers won't hurt my shins," he assured her.
And with that, he swept her into a waltz.
-Ryan and Bethany (Phantom Waltz) — Catherine Anderson

I mean, I made The Phantom, although The Phantom was, believe it or not, an independent film. It was just a very large, expensive independent film. — Gerard Butler

There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom. — William George Jordan

Through silent alleys where dark shadows fleeted past them like forest beasts on the prowl; through bustling market-places where bloaters predominated, into crammed gin-palaces where the gas flashed over faces whereon was stamped the indelible impression of a protest against creation; brushing tatters which were in gruesome harmony with the haggard or bloated features.
(The Phantom Model — Hume Nisbet

I am not forsaken! I'm no longer alone in the darkness! Before my eyes I see a thousand little devils lighting black candles along the path which leads toward the edge ... the blindingly beautiful edge. — Susan Kay

I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can't believe I'm here without her.- on losing her best friend — Nora Ephron

There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious badb, which was shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them. — Katharine Mary Briggs

Such phantom blossoms palely shining
Over the lifeless boughs of Time. — Edgar Lee Masters

The technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of them. These young people are among the first to grow up with an expectation of continuous connection: always on, and always on them. And they are among the first to grow up not necessarily thinking of simulation as second best. All of this makes them fluent with technology but brings a set of new insecurities. — Sherry Turkle

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth. — Publilius Syrus

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ah, well ... hell is full of burning boats, did you know that, Nadir? I daresay that's what makes it so bloody hot. — Susan Kay

Like what, baby? Like that you miss me?" She started to protest but he cut her off. "Do not say a word. Just listen a minute, if you can. I miss you too, like a fucking phantom limb, do you understand? You are a crucial, functioning part of me, always will be. But I get it. I'm a shit. I won't deny. But I'll never, ever be happy or complete without you. — Liz Crowe

I admire your courage. I know what you've given up to be here. I know the kind of artist it takes to land a role. I know that you won't receive one on your own. And I imagine you, myshka, two years from now, working at Phantom with the same aspirations, the same dreams, in the same place where you are now. It's wasted courage. And wasted love. You shouldn't have to waste those things."
I'm speechless.
And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand - for no other reason than to see your success - it's powerful. And rare.
He wipes beneath my eye with his thumb. "I'd rather feed your hunger than watch you starve — Krista Ritchie

Fear not the phantom of death,
My Countrymen, for his greatness
And mercy will refuse to approach
Your smallness; and dread not the
Dagger, for it will decline to be
Lodged in your shallow hearts. — Kahlil Gibran

As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind. — Anonymous

Wherever this shadowed path might lead, we were both irrevocably committed to follow it to the end. — Susan Kay

At dusk in the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, Melissa Overton barely heard the constant sound of crickets chirping all around them. Prowling through the dense, tropical rainforest as a jaguar, she listened for the human voices that would clue her in that her prey was nearby.
Waves crashed onto the sandy beaches in the distance as she made her way quietly, like a phantom predator, through the tangle of vines and broad, leafy foliage, searching for any sign of the poachers. Humans wouldn't have a clue as to what she and her kind were when they saw her - apparently nothing other than an ordinary jaguar. And she and her fellow jaguar shifters planned to keep it that way.
Her partner on this mission, JAG agent Huntley Anderson, was nearby, just as wary and observant. The JAG Special Forces Branch, also known as the Golden Claws, was only open to jaguar shifters and served to protect both their shifter kind and their jaguar cousins.... — Terry Spear

Chus Martinez is a transsexual collective phantom. Anybody can be Chus Martinez! — Chus Martinez

Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail. — Benito Mussolini

On Phantom ... I listened to the music while I was reading the script. And it had just blown me away. I really ... I was so excited about it. It's been a long time since I really got so excited about something. — Gerard Butler

Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these ... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else."
Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place. — Terry Brooks

I believe, my lady, that life is the phantom, and love still more fleeting and elusive - here one minute like a sweet scent you can't quite recognize and gone the next. Best enjoy both while you can. — Dawn Hammill

At the rate these illuminations appear, it will no doubt take me a long time to gather the material for even one single book. For my inspired double
this phantom builder of sentences who maliciously impedes my work to dictate his clever discoveries
always comes at those (infrequent) hours of his choosing, drafts (at best) three little pages, then goes away. — Marcel Benabou

Here am bound, the scorn of fate; 'Twas a dream that once a state I enjoyed of light and gladness. What is life? 'Tis but a madness. What is life? A thing that seems, A mirage that falsely gleams, Phantom joy, delusive rest, Since is life a dream at best, And even dreams themselves are dreams. — Pedro Calderon De La Barca

Love is best a phantom than reality, better in the chase than caught. — Jessie Burton

Maybe my work isn't a cry for help. It may just be a baby's need to cry or a dog's need to bark. You know, barks that seem connected to phantom noises and cries that just come; though a baby's cries are usually efficient - something is bothering them. Anyway, I think giving money is a sign of love. If you truly want to help someone, a lot of times giving them money is the best thing you can do. — Jonathan Ames

A moment well spent is the best accomplishment. Yesterday is a phantom and tomorrow a mirage. The only day worth living is this one. If we can do that wekl, the yesterdays and tomorrows take care of themselves — James Gurney

'Phantom' follows some of the best submarine cold-war films made. There's just so much tension, I can't even describe it - you have to see it. — Johnathon Schaech

Her empathy was like a double-edged razor that allowed her to experience the nethermost of human joys and sorrows. The best and worst of emotions cut her to the bone. The pain of her heart was like a tortuous phantom that lived outside her body. She could feel its presence. It clung to her breasts like a nursing infant. Pressure on her chest. Stealing her breath. I don't want to hurt like this, she thought. Then she remembered the alternative. She pictured life without feeling and imagined the sociopath existence. It is better to feel, she said. — C.J. Anderson

It has been a long time since I've been in France. I miss the food like a phantom limb.'
...
'I shall bring you our best dishes,' he promised.
'And the wine to pair with them, she said.
He feigned exasperation. 'But of course, he said, 'would I blaspheme?' ...
She ate, her eyes half closed. All along, she'd known Lotto was with her, across the table, enjoying her food with her. He would've loved this night. Her dress, the food, the wind. The lust welled in her until it was almost unbearable. If she looked up, she knew she would see only an empty chair. She would not look up. — Lauren Groff

The night you gave me my birthday party ... you were a young Lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn't I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o'er the dim weeping dawn

As to Josie's side I returned at last,

And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov'd best

Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!

While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years

Seem'd mingling their voices with the moaning flood:

Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,

My true love's shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kiss'd the cold, cruel mist

Into dancing show'rs of diamond dew,

And the dark flowing stream laugh'd back to his beam,

And the lark soared aloft in the blue:

While no phantom of night but a form of delight

Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,

And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast

Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy. — Amy Harmon

He holds her with the strength of a million-man army, but with all the tenderness of her heart lying naked in the palms of his hands. — Laura Kreitzer

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

My poor sister was forced to be in the plays that I would write. We would go to my grandma's retirement building and perform 'Phantom of the Opera.' — Lindy Booth

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible ... There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. — John Ruskin

...but just to be sitting there meditating and praying for the world with another earnest young man- 'twere good enough to have been born just to die, as we all are. Something will come of it in the Milky Ways of eternity stretching in from of all our phantom unjuandiced eyes, friends. — Jack Kerouac

When I was a vocalist, a lead singer in a rock band, I was a law student at the time. It wasn't a professional rock band, it was for fun. I was already way out of that by the time Phantom came along. Having to learn to sing, it was such duress, having to really try and get to such a quality. — Gerard Butler

I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture chamber in my house... I want to have a nice quiet flat with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! — Gaston Leroux

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost. — Daphne Du Maurier

What does a haunting feel like? Some say that they feel as though they have been watched. Others say that they have seen figures. Have you ever felt as though you are not alone in your house? Weird creaks? Footsteps in the dark? A laugh where there should never have been a voice. A man standing in your room? A figure? A shadow? A phantom? Your house may well be haunted, if you can say yes to any of those questions. The stories you are about to read are all true. All — B. Perry E. Scarze

I could have stayed holding on to Masimo and riding round forever, round and round, like that bloke on that doomed phantom boat, The Flying Dutchman. Of course there are differences - he was not on a scooter, and I don't have a beard and I am not Dutch. — Louise Rennison

Every year I go to Broadway to see a musical - I like the music. I saw 'Mamma Mia;' I saw 'Les Miserables;' I saw 'Phantom of the Opera' like six, seven times. — Rafael Nadal

Thy Banners gleam a little, and are furled; Against thy turrets surge His phantom tow'rs; Drugged with his Opiates the nations nod, Refusing still the beauty of thine hours; And fragile is thy tenure of this world Still haunted by the monstrous ghost of God. — George Sterling

It would hurt someone normal," I whispered. "I'm not normal. It isn't like a phantom limb, something you had, used, needed and missed when it was gone. I never had that. I never had love. Devotion. Loyalty. You can't miss something you've never had. — Kristen Ashley

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed. — Herman Melville

The white scar on his cheek was slightly puckered at one end, as when a seamstress leaves the needle in the fabric, before she quits for the day; this phantom needle lay just beyond the edge of his mouth, and seemed to tug it upward, as if trying to coax his stern expression - unsuccessfully - into a smile. — Eleanor Catton

Gabriel? Are you implying Gabriel had something to with Thompson's death?" Francesca sounded somewhere between outraged and amused. "You can't be serious, Brice."
"He crushed his hand, Francesca. Your Gabriel did that. Crushed his fist with one hand. I watched him do it and he wasn't even straining. I never even saw him come into the room. He was just there. There's something not quite right about him. His eyes. They aren't human. He's not human."
Francesca stared at him wide-eyed. "Not human? As in what? A phantom? A ghost that flies through the air? A gorilla? What? Maybe he lifts weights. Maybe he's strong because he lifts weights and his adrenaline was pumping. What are you saying? — Christine Feehan

She suffered from the opposite of "phantom limb" syndrome; something essential appeared to be present, but it was not. — Amy Bloom

I did a song, "Court and Spark," for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that's yet to see the light of day. So she's someone I'd like to do something with, sure. I worked with the great guitar player Bill Frisell on Phantom Moon - that was fun. I'm such a fan; he's amazing. — Duncan Sheik

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. — Mikhail Bakunin

Whether we assert our rights by sea, or attempt their maintenance by land whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pursues us. Already has it had too much influence on the councils of the nation. — Henry Clay

I'm still wondering about the Phantom in the chair, you know at the end of Phantom [of the Opera], so I guess that's my sort of idiocy. I still haven't figured out how they do that. — Katherine Shindle

This phantom world gave you false signs But you turned from the illusion and journeyed to the land of truth. — Rumi

[Men] suffer, of course... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? ... But what about me [Satan]? I suffer, but still, I don't live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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 no better than a fool. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections.

I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming.

People came here to vanish. — Paul Kwiatkowski

People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterward repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. — Rumi

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. — Carl Sandburg

It breached over my nose and became the shape of The Phantom of the Opera mask underneath my skin — David Krochmal