"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and quaint Puck the Antic, Brought Robin Goodfellow, that merry swain; And stealthy Mab, queen of old realms romantic, Came too, from distance, in her tiny wain, Fresh dripping from a cloud—some bloomy rain, Then circling the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... independent sphere of meaning, in which it, and it only, moves. For example, 'divers' implies difference only, but 'diverse' difference with opposition; thus the several Evangelists narrate the same event in 'divers' manner, but not in 'diverse'. 'Antique' is ancient, but 'antic', is now the ancient regarded as overlived, out of date, and so in our days grotesque, ridiculous; and then, with a dropping of the reference to age, the grotesque, the ridiculous alone. 'Human' is what every man is, 'humane' is what every man ought ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to imagine that goosedriving, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk from a ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... true to the oldest traditions of poetry in his successful attempts to make his verses ring and sing. He is both antique and antic. But he is absolutely contemporary, "modern," "new," in his fearlessness. He has this in common with the practicers of free verse, with the imagists, with the futurists; he is not in the least afraid of seeming ridiculous. There can ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... company made the best of it. Mlle. Frahender grew pale and ill, and her hair flew about in the most comic disarray. Cosily ensconced in a corner, Maurice sketched the various attitudes his companions assumed with every antic of the lightly-laden, wave-tossed Soulacroup. Hunched up on the seat, Esperance clung to the rigging. Genevieve clutched at her when a wave pitched the boat too far over. The others, well muffled up, ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed about him thick as flies, flapping at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... stages of liquor—from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits—speaking ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... they have power to do; nor are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosurcian [Rosicrucian] style. They have nothing of the Bible, save collected parcels for ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... manner I have mentioned, in different persons only; but all the variety would appear, in a short succession of moments, in one and the same person. A man that we saw this minute dumb, and, as it were, stupid and confounded, would the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic; and the next moment be tearing his hair, or pulling his clothes to pieces, and stamping them under his feet like a madman; in a few moments after that we would have him all in tears, then sick, swooning, and, had not immediate help been had, he would in a few moments have been dead. Thus ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... little children in this respect, that they interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... it did not appear as if the huge walrus realised the danger approaching so steadily, for every now and then, while performing some antic, the bear continued to lessen the distance between it and its prey, while simulating the greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in the sunshine, could never have approached a walrus ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is to be ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... eyes, and saw a man kneeling above me, rubbing me all over with his hands, and pushing my belly up under my ribs, and blowing into my mouth, and tickling my nostrils with a feather, and performing a great variety of such antic manoeuvres ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and all ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the giant with ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... I suppose you have heard, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner quite antic, He marched from the County Mayo And trundled them into the Atlantic. So not to use water for drink, The people of Ireland determined. And for a mighty good reason, I think, Since St. Patrick has filled it with vermin And ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... network of gnarled and knotted roots. The black limbs grapple with each other; here one has dragged his neighbour over, and he lies with arms outstretched, writhen into antic twists and curves, as if he had died in torment; there, in singular contrast, are two friends,—oaks, were they once?—who have fallen into one another's arms, and, dead, seem still to embrace and ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'—oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air,— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... his warmest admirers, the neighborhood children, who always took his part, no matter what he did, were not prepared for his next antic. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... meet modern demands with devices and procedures, conceptions of rights and property and authority and obligation that dated from the rude compromises of relatively barbaric times. The horse-hair wigs and antic dresses of the British judges, their musty courts and overbearing manners, were indeed only the outward and visible intimations of profounder anachronisms. The legal and political organisation of the earth in the middle twentieth century was indeed ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... out of my senses. She should have told me gradually. I had to do something to express my exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—that is, height—put my hat—which I had been carrying under my arm—on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down. Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured her—with a few of Mary's ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... through a dust of story— A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are ENGLAND'S wonder, and shame, and glory Throng where he walks, an antic of old time; A sense of long immedicable tears Were ever with him, could his ears but heed; The stern Hic Jacets of our bloodiest years Are for his reading, had he eyes to read, But here, where CROOKBACK raged, ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... around and found the place where we had dumped the leavin's of the mash after we had took off the brine. Well, sir, that pig just nat'erly gorged itself and directly it was tipsy as fiddlesticks. I never saw such antic was out of a critter in my life. It reeled to and fro and squealed and grunted and went round and round tryin' to ketch its own tail. Finally it rolled down the hill. Ben packed it back up again and it reeled ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... whimsical suggestion, which was so good a bit of irony that it made him smile, flashed across him: he might borrow it of Mrs. Bowen. She was, in fact, the only person in Florence with whom he was at all on borrowing terms, and a sad sense of the sweetness of her lost friendship followed upon the antic notion. No; for once he could not go to Mrs. Bowen. He recollected now the many pleasant talks they had had together, confidential in virtue of their old acquaintance, and harmlessly intimate in many things. He recalled ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... were logs of wood, And worship was to puppets paid; In antic dress the idol stood, And priests and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... song is clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases the choice ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around and above ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... more Roon than Octo, I take it," sed I, fur I never seed a puttier gal in the hull endoorin time of my life. She had on a More Antic Barsk & a Poplin Nubier with Berage trimmins onto it, while her ise & kurls was enuff to make a man jump into a mill pond without biddin his relashuns good-by. I pittid the Octoroon from the inmost recusses of my hart & hawled out 50 dollars kerslap, & told ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... or last chapters that one would gladly cut away: that of Mercy Pecksniff's pathos, for example; that of Mr. Dombey's installation in his daughter's home; that which undeceives us as to Mr. Boffin's antic disposition. But how true and how whole a heart it was that urged these unlucky conclusions! How shall we venture to complain? The hand that made its Pecksniff in pure wit, has it not the right to belabour him in earnest—albeit ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... unashamed. He turned sharply aside, and for some moments neither spoke. Cornelia was seeing, as in a picture, the lonely ranch, with the solitary figure, sitting with his face towards the East, thinking, thinking. ... Guest was reflecting with amaze on the strange antic of fate, which ordained that it should be in the eyes of this Yankee stranger that he should see the first woman's tears shed on his behalf! She cried like a child; simply, involuntarily, without thought of appearance; the tears rising from a pure well of sympathy. To the end of ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... signifies, no trees are growing thereon. This place is the threshold of the Pass of Killicrankie, through the dark and woody chasms of which the impatient waters of the Gary come with hoarse and wrathful mutterings and murmurs. The hills and mountains around are built up in more olden and antic forms than those of our Lowland parts, and a wild and strange solemnity is mingled there with much fantastical beauty, as if, according to the minstrelsy of ancient times, sullen wizards and gamesome fairies had joined their arts and spells ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... it was impossible to conceal his booty for a moment. Our seamen put on him a jacket and trowsers, which produced great merriment, for he had all the gestures of a monkey newly dressed: We also gave him bread, which he eat with a voracious appetite, and after having played a thousand antic tricks, he leaped overboard, jacket and trowsers and all, and swam back again to his proa; after this several others swam to the ship, ran up the side of the gun-room ports, and having crept in, snatched up whatever lay in their reach, and immediately leaped again into the sea, and swam away at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Rumbold walked from his stall to the pulpit for the sermon. Generally he gave out the number of the short anthem which accompanied this manoeuvre, but today he made no such announcement. A discreet curtain hid the organist from the congregation, and veiled his gymnastics with the stops and his antic dancing on the pedals, and now when Mr Rumbold moved from his stall, there came from the organ the short introduction to Bach's "Mein Glaubige Herz," which even Lucia had allowed to be nearly "equal" to Beethoven. And then came ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... stray, While yonder few search out some green retreat, And arbours shade them from the summer heat: Others, again, a pert and lively crew, Some rough and thoughtless stranger plac'd in view, With frolic quaint their antic jests expose, And tease the grumbling rustic as he goes; 140 Nor rest with this, but many a passing fray Tradition treasures for a future day: "'Twas here the gather'd swains for vengeance fought, And here we earn'd the conquest ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting—that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed—preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not new but old, the oldest thing in history, the departing thing. It depends not upon ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... count the stitches on her needles, the big shadow of her cap-ruffles bobbing on the daubed and chinked log walls in antic mimicry, while down Ethelinda's pink cheeks the slow tears coursed at the prospect of ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep;[214] Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215] Let them in charity to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get, And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them their appetite for laughter feed; I on my Journey all alone proceed. ...
— English Satires • Various
... With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen beauteous thoughts; yet when the wise Seriously strip him of his wild disguise, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... long hours of this trying day Clark had kept up the spirits of his men in every way he could. In telling about it later, he said: "I received much help from a little antic drummer, a boy with such a fun-loving spirit that he made the men laugh, in spite of their weariness, at his pranks ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... Spirit of roses, and of violets, The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber; Which we will take, until my roof whirl round With the vertigo: and my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic. Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales, Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove, Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine: So, of the rest, till we have quite run through, And wearied all the fables of the gods. Then will I have thee in more modern forms, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... whom nor friend nor foe may trust, Think'st thou with tears and plaints to answer this? Do I not know thy heart? do I not know That bribes have purchas'd Ely this escape? Never make antic faces, never bend With feigned humblesse thy still crouching knee, But with fix'd eyes unto thy doom attend. Villain! I'll plague thee for abusing me. Go hence; and henceforth never set thy foot In house or field thou didst this day possess. Mark what I say: advise thee to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... him, but met much the same reception as before. Those faces, alien alike to sympathy or surprise, seemed patiently to say, "We are travelers; and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly put up with, many antic fools, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... it." Then he asked me where I had bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—"Tom Carrodus's in Church Green." He summoned my mother and asked: "Mally, what dos'ta think o' this lot?" She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy's, and "let him have his own way." But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house "touch," and informed ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... in life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds at sight ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the leaves; Where every bush and tree in all the scene, In wind-kiss'd wavings shake their wings of green, And all the objects round about dispense Reviving freshness to the awakened sense; The golden corslet of the humble bee, The antic kid that frolics round the lea; Or purple lance-flies circling round the place, On their light shards of green, an airy race; Or squirrel glancing from the nut-wood shade An arch black eye, half pleas'd ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... CIP: antic'ipate; eman'cipate (Lat. n. ma'nus, hand), literally, to take away from the hand of an owner, to free; incip'ient; munic'ipal (Lat. n. municip'ium, a free town; mu'nia, official duties, and cap'ere, to take); partic'ipate (Lat. n. pars, par'tis, a part); par'ticiple; prince (Lat. n. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... him. On the contrary, I know not, were I to look about me, far and wide, the man I would have wished to have called mine, rather than him. But he is so important about trifles; so nimble, yet so slow: he is so sensible of his own intention to please, and has so many antic motions in his obligingness; that I cannot forbear laughing at the very time that I ought perhaps to reward him ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... dozen Folkestones in rotation. My hand was on Cleopatra's mane, and my off-foot clear of the stirrup; it would be a Christian act to save Foikestone from the father of a batin', and Priestley from that sterner father, namely, old father antic, the law. But imminent as the collision seemed, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... winking and blinking of its great bright eye, that seemed to say, "Well, Uncle Juvinell, what shall we do for the entertainment or instruction of these little people to-night? Shall we tell them of that crew of antic goblins we wot of, who are wont to meet by moonlight, to play at football with the hanged man's head, among the tombstones of an old graveyard? Or may be that dreadful ogre, with the one fiery eye in the middle of his forehead, who was in the habit of roasting fat men on a spit for his ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... cuts as many capers in a lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced-ten to one while you are trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of flip-flaps ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... talk for all the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... little shadows, Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... let other men Love Elia for his antic pen, And watch with dilettante eyes His page for every quaint surprise, Curious of caviare phrase. Yea; these who will not also praise? We surely must, but which is more The motley that his sorrow wore, Or the great heart whose valorous beat Upheld his brave unfaltering feet ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy-proof And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... letting him know he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might in the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... scheming and crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my antic course that brought Kim's favour, not alone to me, but through me to Hendrik Hamel and all our company. I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser, for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... in the centre of a knot of men who began eagerly to press me for further particulars of the Amalgamated subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign satisfaction and my ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere. Somehow, from its form and from the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St. Peter's. The antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for, being newly rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century basilica in 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess. It would be a very bold or ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... study of these antic spirits (approaching them always from the naturalistic side), Maxwell deduces certain helpful rules: 'Use a small room,' he says, 'and have it warm. Medium and sitters must not have cold hands ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,—I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... eventful history; nor even to pity the breathless, flushed, and overheated Babette, who was so ill the next day, as to be unable to quit her bed; nor can we detail the jokes, the merriment, and the songs which went round, the peals of laughter, the loud choruses, the antic feats performed by the company; still more impossible would it be to give an idea of the three tremendous cheers, which shook the Lust Haus to its foundations, when Corporal and Mistress Van Spitter, upon their retiring, bade ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all this is so:—but why Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?— Come,sisters, cheer we up his sprites, And show the best of our delights; I'll charm the air to give a sound, While you perform your antic round; That this great king may kindly say, Our duties did ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and Queen, followed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which ornaments, it seems, were made of rye dough. In modern language the "pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... grounds. As soon as we had finished our dinner we returned towards the ship. I was much delighted in this walk with the number of children that I saw in every part of the country: they are very handsome and sprightly and full of antic tricks. They have many diversions that are common with the boys in England such as flying kites, cats cradle, swinging, dancing or jumping in a rope, ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... in a moment; it was not Concho's nature to suffer long nor brood over an injury. As he raised his head again his eye caught the shimmer of the quicksilver,—that pool of merry antic metal that had so delighted him an hour before. In a few moments Concho was again disporting with it; chasing it here and there, rolling it in his palms and laughing with boy-like glee at its elusive freaks ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... and into the great church, but saw nothing very remarkable there; but going across a broad street near the great church, we saw a crowd of people gazing at a mountebank doctor, who made a long harangue to them with a thousand antic postures, and gave out bills this way, and boxes of physic that way, and had a great trade, when on a sudden the people raised a cry, "Larron, Larron!" (in English, "Thief, thief"), on the other side the street, and all the auditors ran away, from Mr Doctor to see what the matter ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... declared. "A second-hand store is got old furniture from two years old oder ten years old, understand me; aber an antic store carries old furniture from ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... mourn; Your common gift shall two large goblets be Of silver, wrought with curious imagery, And high emboss'd, which, when old Priam reign'd, My conqu'ring sire at sack'd Arisba gain'd; And more, two tripods cast in antic mold, With two great talents of the finest gold; Beside a costly bowl, ingrav'd with art, Which Dido gave, when first she gave her heart. But, if in conquer'd Italy we reign, When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain- Thou saw'st the courser by proud Turnus press'd: That, Nisus, and his arms, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay; Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, With hair that gilds the water as it glides Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, To hide those parts which men delight to see, Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by, One like Actaeon, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... carried to the high mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery and a longing for ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the temples. I soon found my way down to the sea-shore, and used to pretend to be busy in picking up shells, and in stringing them together into necklaces and bracelets for my own adornment. Then I made others, which I presented, with many a strange antic, to anybody I met. Day after day did I continue this employment, my eye wandering anxiously over the blue sea in search of the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the middle of the room, a straying sparkle of light, that threw itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at the same time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his harlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed—'What buffoon is carrying on his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished instantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon gaining her point, when suddenly a loud ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... men, whose hearts are made dark with infidelity, care not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so they bring it to any show of compliance with ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... times they do, why, the spirit of their wildness or frenzy appears even in the mode and way in which they do it. Either the things themselves which they make use of for that purpose are very toys and trifles; or if they seem to be better, they are put on after an antic manner, rather to the rendering of them ridiculous, than to bespeak them sober, judicious, or wise; and so do natural men array themselves with what they would be accepted in with God. Would one in his wits think to make himself fine or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... has thought of. So he leads him outside by an arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... royalty, in truth, yet doubtless in the conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed kings even over death—he ordered his servants to place a golden crown. And thus, during the whole of his long illness, the Antic held his state, while the poor mortal representative of absolute power lay living still, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sudden passion, and called to him with curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry, with an agitated movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic. The next moment the man seemed to reconsider and collect himself, and began to come down the zigzag garden path, but with obvious reluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower rhythm. Through March's mind were throbbing the phrases that ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench of his rude slot," "the hide of a varlet," "such an unswilled hogshead," "such ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... hour for luncheon had arrived. Although I was at work within sound of his voice, these came nearly always in the form of a note, delivered with an unvarying grin by the office-boy, who would drop any other errand, however pressing, to do Field's antic bidding. These notes were generally flung into the waste-paper basket, much to my present regret, for of themselves they would have made a most remarkable exhibit. Sometimes the summons would be in the form of a bar of music like this which ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... see some crooked mimic jeer, And tax my Muse with this fantastic grace; Turning my papers asks, "What have we here?" Making withal some filthy antic face. I fear no censure nor what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose. Think'st thou, my wit shall keep the packhorse way, That every dudgeon low invention goes? Since sonnets thus in bundles are imprest, And every drudge doth dull our satiate ear, Think'st ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... holes of the South Pacific to try and drink me under the table. I remember one, a calcined Scotchman from the New Hebrides. It was a great drinking. He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place. A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on the ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... mistress. He found him so elevated with his success, so enamoured with his daughter, and so satisfied with her reception of him, that the old gentleman began to caper and dance about his hall, and by many other antic actions to express the extravagance of his joy; for he had not the least command over any of his passions; and that which had at any time the ascendant in his mind hurried him to the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What degradation more cruel ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid's strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting in the discovery he had made. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... might be considered as a school of military virtue, was succeeded by a farce, that debased the dignity of human nature. A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange, unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without a change of countenance, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... applied to the parsons; they were called "holy-heavenly," "sweet-affecting," "soul-ravishing," "heaven-piercing," "angel-rivalling," "subtil," "irrefragable," "angelical," "septemfluous," "holy-savoured," "princely," "soul-appetizing," "full of antic tastes" (meaning having the tastes of an antiquary), "God-bearing." Of two of the New England saints ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to yourself," Antonio retorted. "I recall one antic, just before you left us—" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed, looking at me in gloomy speculation, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bold, some untry'd path explore, And do such deeds as Fools ne'er did before; 'Twas on that Morn, when Fancy took her stand Beside my couch, and, with fantastic wand, Wav'd, from her airy cells, the Antic Train That play their gay delusions on the brain: And strait, methought, a rude impetuous Throng, With noise and riot, hurried me along, To where a sumptuous Building met my eyes, Whose gilded turrets seem'd to dare the skies. To every Wind it op'd an ample door, From ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... reminded us of Dante's devils. He immediately ascended the ladder, dragging his prey after him till they had nearly reached the top; he then placed the rope around the neck of the malefactor with many antic gestures and grimaces highly gratifying and amusing to the mob. To signify to the poor fellow under his fangs that he wished to whisper in his ear, to push him off the ladder, and to jump astride his neck ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... where I language want, my signs The bird upon the bough divines. No leaf does tremble in the wind, Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves, Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, I in this light Mosaic read. Under this antic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing at ease, I toss On pallets thick with velvet moss; While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks! And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks! Who, as my hair, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was more ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... through a long life on the sea, to the motion of the sea. There is a rhythm to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding roll to windward. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... go, Liz! Dreaming again! You lodge yourself of your own accord in a house with a drunken—tailor, I suppose—or something of the sort, and a little crooked antic of a child, or old person, or whatever it is, and then you talk as if you were drawn or driven there. Now, do be ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,— As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," Or "If we list to speak," or "There ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high-embowered roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light; There let the pealing organ blow, To the full voiced quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into extasies, And bring all Heaven ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... task, as the packages were so awkward and heavy, the object being to make them secure against any antic on the part of the mules if they became restive, and also to guard against the corners of the plates rubbing the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... help it, wench," said the Queen, laughing. "But we will have this same Sir Nicholas sent to Ireland or Scotland, or somewhere, to rid our court of so antic a chevalier; he may be a good soldier in the field, though a preposterous ass in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... his bed, into the street, come out of Harrow Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts, and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel,—I say, what could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... never lived. The last delicacy of touch is wanting in all his work, whether verse or prose; yet the reader, though unsatisfied, does not turn from it without respect. If it is second-rate, it is not tricksy; its dulness is not antic, but decorous and quiet; its dignity, while it bores, enforces a sort of reverence which we do not pay to the ineffectual fire-works of our own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... at eighteen packed off to Heidelberg to study law, with no special preparation in knowledge of the world, of men or books. But old father antic, the law, was not to his taste. Robert liked music and poetry better. His fine, sensitive, emotional spirit found its best exercise in music; and at the house of Professor Carus he used to sing with the professor's wife. This Professor Carus, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... respecting them in hell: for there they are demons, and when seen in the light of heaven, appear to have their faces full of pimples, their bodies bunched out, their voice rough, and their gestures antic. But it is to be observed, that such are determined and confirmed adulterers, but not non-deliberate adulterers: for in the chapter concerning adulteries and their degrees, four kinds are treated of. Determined adulterers ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of connected dialogues, formally divided into acts and scenes." Colley Cibber has: "It has been conjectured that the actors of the Mysteries of Religion were mummers, a word signifying one who makes and disguises himself to play the fool without speaking. They were dressed in an antic manner, dancing, mimicking, and showing postures." Mr. Wright also observes (in his work on the Mystery Plays of Chester, published by the Shakespearean Society) that the "chief effect seems to have been ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent |
