Quotes & Sayings About Portent

Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown, and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. We think this frost-fire is a portent somehow: a promise that the continent has given us. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen. — Archibald MacLeish

To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of — Emma Cline

It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden. — G.K. Chesterton

It was the judge and the imbecile. They were both of them naked and they neared through the desert dawn like beings of a mode little more than tangential to the world at large, their figures now quick with clarity and now fugitive in the strangeness of that same light. Like things whose very portent renders them ambiguous. Like things so charged with meaning that their forms are dimmed. — Cormac McCarthy

During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence. — J.G. Ballard

She was convinced the country was about to succumb to revolutionary socialism. Her own circumstances encouraged this belief: just on the edge of the really rich country set, she shared their views and opinions but lacked the financial and architechtural insulation from real or imagined political troubles. She found crushed larger cans and cigarette packets in her front garden and interpreted these as menacing signals from the Perthshire proletariat. Every flicker and dim of electric light was a portent of class war. — James Robertson

The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass ...
... and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night.
My God ... what have we done? — Neal Shusterman

At the witching hour, the city was totally silent. Only the wind of portent blew through the gathered council of whispering brick chimneys on the rooftops, delivering the hand that would write upon the wall. — Wyatt Michael

All of us. The Clave and the Law - what Clary can do overturns everything they know to be true. No human being can create new runes, or draw the sort of runes Clary can. Only angels have that power. And since Clary can do that - well, it seems like a portent. Things are changing. The Laws are changing. The old ways may never be the right ways again. Just as the rebellion of the angels ended the world as it was - it split heaven in half and created hell - this could mean the end of the Nephilim as they currently exist. This is our war in heaven, vampire, and only one side can win it. And my father means it to be his." * — Cassandra Clare

My mother watched the skies at evening for a portent of the morrow. A cloud that went over and then turned around and came back was an especially bad sign. — Bobbie Ann Mason

No matter where you go, no matter what you touch, there is cancer and syphilis. It is written in the sky; it flames and dances, like an evil portent. It has eaten into our souls and we are nothing but a dead thing like the moon. — Henry Miller

That night the first frost of autumn struck Tucker's Grove. It crept up from the ground, snaring the fragile roots of plants. It emerged from the air, etching its signature on window-panes. A portent. The year was nearing its end. Things would die soon. — Kevin J. Anderson

Monster" is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, "divine portent," itself formed on the root of the verb monere, "to warn." It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, "Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening. — Susan Stryker

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. — Agnes De Mille

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny. — Winston Churchill

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney

Every Clayr is given the gift to See some portent of her death, though not the death itself, for no human could bear that weight. Almost twenty years ago I Saw myself and your little dog, and in time I realized that this was the vision that foretold my final days. — Garth Nix

The angel leaned down, the scent of fresh air preceding him. "Neither that wall nor that skull will give you what you're looking for."
Tohr narrowed his eyes and wished he were strong enough to fight the guy. "They won't? Well, then they're making a liar out of you. 'Now is the time. Tonight everything changes.' You give portent a bad name, you know that? You are just so full of shit."
Lassiter smiled and idly adjusted the gold hoop that pierced his eyebrow. "If you think being rude is going to get my attention, you'll be really bored before I care."

-Lassiter & Tohr — J.R. Ward

I remind myself that not everything is a sign, that some things simply are what they appear to be and should not be analyzed, deconstructed, or forced to bear the burden of metaphor, symbol, omen, or portent. — Diane Schoemperlen

Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic. — Julia Glass

[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity. — Gottfried Leibniz

Zombies are then a symbol of our own mad urges to destroy ourselves, and a terrifying portent that we might succeed. — Kim Paffenroth

Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go.
[Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.] — Blaise Pascal

The day dawns smiling, rational and bright, We're tangled in a net of dreams at night. From green fields we come home contentedly, 11770 A bird croaks: meaning what? - catastrophe! Bedeviled by superstitions, we imagine The least thing is a sign, a portent, omen. And so we tremble, feeling lost, alone. The door creaks and we stiffen - there's no one. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything that excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically. — Christopher Hitchens

A name could be either a ghost or a portent depending on which side of time you were standing. The name Whaletown had become a mere specter of the past, a crepuscular Pacific shimmer, but the name Desolation Sound still hovered in the liminal space and felt to her both oracular and haunted. — Ruth Ozeki

For people steeped in biblical wonders and supernatural lore, alterations in the night sky, including the aurora borealis in northern latitudes, carried even greater portent. — A. Roger Ekirch

And the centurion who stood by said:
Truly this was a son of God.
Not long ago but everywhere I go
There is a hill and a black windy sky.
Portent of hill, sky, day's eclipse I know;
Hill, sky, the shuddering darkness, these am I.
The dying at His right hand, at His left,
I am - the thief redeemed and the lost thief;
I am the careless folk; I those bereft,
The Well-Belov'd, the women bowed in grief.
The gathering Presence that in terror cried,
In earth's shock in the Temple's veil rent through,
I; and a watcher, ignorant, curious-eyed,
I the centurion who heard and knew — Adelaide Crapsey

When a portent repeats itself three times, like something out of Julius Caesar, even Caliban, a couple of plays over, is bound to notice. — Karen Joy Fowler

When something out of the ordinary happens, it is ridiculous to say that it is a mystery or a portent of something to come ... the mystery is created in (their) minds, and by waiting for disaster, it is from their very minds that it occurs. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities. — Geoffrey Fisher

Awoke to find three vultures sitting on the fence. Realizing they were a portent of impending death I shot them. — Bridget Allison

That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren't hiding anything. — Emma Cline

Children are instinctually afraid of closets in the dark of night, a portent of evil lurking in the background of shadows. It isn't an irrational fear, for monsters come from closets. It's not something easily forgotten, or a fate yet known. As young adults, some of them venture into their closets, some come out. Sean danced with his. — Zea Miller

The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone
Portent or promise
and gives way To pale, meek Dawn. — Herman Melville

It's the rabbits of ill portent! — Van Jensen

Americans live no longer in homes, but in theaters. The members of many families hardly know each other, and the face of some popular TV star is to many wives as familiar as that of their husbands. Let no one smile. Rather should we weep at the portent. It will do no good to wrap ourselves in the Stars and Stripes for protection. No nation can long endure whose people have sold themselves for bread and circuses. — A.W. Tozer

The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent. — Peter Conrad

Believe in yourself. Believe in your capacity to do great and good things. Believe that no mountain is so high that you cannot climb it. Believe that no storm is so great that you cannot weather it. You are not destined to be a scrub. You are a child of God, of infinite capacity.
Believe that you can do it whatever it is that you set your heart on. Opportunities will unfold and open before you. The skies will clear when they have been dark with portent ... He who is our Eternal Father has blessed you with miraculous powers of mind and body. He never intended that you should be less than the crowning glory of His creations. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The unwholesome-looking little moral agent of destruction exulted silently in the possession of personal prestige, keeping in check this man armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society. More fortunate than Caligula, who wished that the Roman Senate had only one head for the better satisfaction of his cruel lust, he beheld in that one man all the forces he had set at defiance: the force of law, property, oppression, and injustice. He beheld all his enemies and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent. He gloated inwardly over the chance of this meeting affirming his superiority over all the multitude of mankind. — Joseph Conrad

We became a tribe recalling the founding
two. Ducked in thru a door, we ate food
from Reunion, island in an ocean some-
where, we forgot which, ducked in, not a
trace
of them there. . . We clutched bodies, rubbed
each other's limbs, less in love with skin than
the memory of skin, skin's image, all the
more
extolling skin. . . Sexed insinuance, nixed
insistence in retreat. . . Would-be what-if,
what
if. . . We wanted it back, big promise, portent,
apocalypse,
urgency, plummet,
plunge — Nathaniel Mackey

There is a portent of stormy weather ahead to which we had better give heed ... No one knows when emergencies will strike ... Set your houses in order. If you have paid your debts, if you have a reserve, even though it be small, then should storms howl about your head, you will have shelter for your wife and children and peace in your hearts. That's all I have to say about it, but I wish to say it with all the emphasis of which I am capable. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The winter was blasting its cold winds of dire portent into the tender face of springtime. — Stefano Benni

Self-parody is the first portent of age. — Larry McMurtry

One last thing I remember which was like a portent of things to come. We had been having tea in Dr Jordan's house in Baghdad. He was a good pianist, and was sitting that day playing us Beethoven. He had a fine head, and I thought, looking at him, what a splendid man he was. He had seemed always gentle and considerate. Then there was a mention by someone, quite casually, of Jews. His face changed; changed in an extraordinary way that I had never noticed on anyone's face before. He said: 'You do not understand. Our Jews are perhaps different from yours. They are a danger. They should be exterminated. Nothing else will really do but that.' I stared at him unbelievingly. He meant it. It was the first time I had come across any hint of what was to come later — Agatha Christie

Mene mene tekel upsharin,' Jace said with a faint smile. 'You don't recognize it? It's from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That's your book, isn't it?'
Just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I've memorized the Old Testament.'
It's the Writing on the Wall. "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." It's a portent of doom
it means the end of an empire. — Cassandra Clare

Anon from the castle walls The crescent banner falls, And the crowd beholds instead, Like a portent in the sky, Iskander's banner fly, The Black Eagle with double head. And shouts ascend on high ... ' Long live Scanderbeg. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow