Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Apparitions
Great Pompey’s shade complains that we are slow,
And Scipio’s ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
Addison—Cato. Act II. Sc. 1.
Who gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
O’er some new-open’d grave; and, (strange to tell!)
Evanishes at crowing of the cock.
Blair—The Grave. L. 67.
Where entity and quiddity,
The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 145.
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she.
Coleridge—The Ancient Mariner. Pt. III.
The unexpected disappearance of Mr. Canning from the scene, followed by the transient and embarrassed phantom of Lord Goderich. (Quoted, “He flits across the stage a transient and embarrassed phantom.”)
Benj. Disraeli—Endymian. Ch. III.
Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. XI. L. 48. Pope’s trans.
So many ghosts, and forms of fright,
Have started from their graves to-night,
They have driven sleep from mine eyes away;
I will go down to the chapel and pray.
Longfellow—The Golden Legend. Pt. IV.
Of calling shapes, and beck’ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s names.
Milton—Comus. L. 207.
For spirits when they please
Can either sex assume, or both.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 423.
Whence and what are thou, execrable shape?
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 681.
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense, and as they please
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VI. L. 350.
What beck’ning ghost along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
Pope—Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. L. 1.
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 115.
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave.
To tell us this.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 126.
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 52.
What are these,
So wither’d, and so wild in their attire;
That look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth,
And yet are on ’t?
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 39.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 33.
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 38.
Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 386.
My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell,
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,
Door-handles turn’d when none was at the door,
And bolted doors that open’d of themselves;
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe.
Tennyson—The Ring.
I look for ghosts; but none will force
Their way to me; ’tis falsely said
That even there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead.
Wordsworth—Affliction of Margaret.