C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Ghosts

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.

Pope.

Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me.

Shakespeare.

It was about to speak, when the cock crew,
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.

Shakespeare.

Many ghosts, and forms of fright,
Have started from their graves to-night;
They have driven sleep from mine eyes away.

Longfellow.

But, soft: behold! lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use a voice,
Speak to me.

Shakespeare.

I can call up spirits from the vasty deep.—
——Why so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?

Shakespeare.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,
Which thou dost glare with!

Shakespeare.

Some have mistaken blocks and posts,
For spectres, apparitions, ghosts,
With saucer-eyes and horns; and some
Have heard the devil beat a drum.

Butler.

I am thy father’s spirit;
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night
And, for the day, confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature,
Are burnt and purg’d away.

Shakespeare.

They gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghostly,
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.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!—
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.

Shakespeare.

O, answer me:
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn’d,
Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again?

Shakespeare.

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