"Fanciful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that we imagine that all the people said to have been "crucified" were executed by being nailed or otherwise affixed to a cross-shaped instrument set in the ground, like that to be seen in our fanciful illustrations ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... granted, I hold, throughout the Bible. I cannot see how our Lord's parables, drawn from the birds and the flowers, the seasons and the weather, have any logical weight, or can be considered as aught but capricious and fanciful "illustrations"—which God forbid—unless we look at them as instances of laws of the natural world, which find their analogues in the laws of the spiritual world, the kingdom of God. I cannot conceive a man's writing that ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... began to be chanted or sung by traveling minstrels called Rhapsodists. The schools of rhapsodies lasted for about 250 years, when choral and patriotic song began to be developed. In connection with this part of the history, there was in the later portion of it a more ornamental and fanciful development of the smaller and social uses of song, represented by Sappho, Anacreon and others. This period endured for about two centuries and a half, and by insensible degrees passed into the Attic drama, which came to its maturity ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... A fanciful title bestowed, at this time, upon the beautiful Mrs. Langtry, who was a native of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... fanciful, but I suspect that a similar {267} parallelism extends to an allied yet very different class of facts. It is an old and almost universal belief, founded, I think, on a considerable body of evidence, that slight changes in the conditions of life are beneficial to ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... he discussed "Cavalry Tactics," he kept writing up contemporary history to the year 362 B.C., when the star of Thebes set with the death of Epaminondas; he completed his long and perhaps tedious historical novel, the "Education of Cyrus" (the elder), and lastly composed a curious and fanciful tract on the "Revenues of Athens." There is no evidence that he ever changed his residence back to his native city, but that he often went there when no obstacle remained, from the neighboring Corinth, is most probable. An open sailing boat could carry him, with a fair wind, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... "Don't be fanciful, Miss Saunders. You will have to look deeper than that for the spell which has been cast over my wife. Olympia afraid of creaks and groans? Olympia seeing sights? She's much too practical by nature, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... of the interior of the seraglio in Don Juan is also only probably correct, and may have been drawn in several particulars from an inspection of some of the palaces, but the descriptions of the imperial harem are entirely fanciful. I am persuaded, by different circumstances, that Byron could not have been in those sacred chambers of any of the seraglios. At the time I was in Constantinople, only one of the imperial residences was accessible to strangers, and it was unfurnished. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... large manufacturing town, it is difficult to conceive; but, whatever may be the cause, I am tempted to believe the effect has some influence on the manners of the inhabitants of Amiens. I have seen no town in France so remarkable for a rude and unfeeling behaviour, and it is not fanciful to conjecture that the multitude of poor may tend in part to occasion it. The constant view of a sort of misery that excites little compassion, of an intrusive necessity which one is more desirous to repulse than to relieve, cannot but render the heart callous, and the manners harsh. The ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... part in giving meaning to spoken words. Philology, comparing the languages of earth in their radicals, must therefore include the graphic or manual presentation of thought, and compare the elements of ideography with those of phonics. Etymology now examines the ultimate roots, not the fanciful resemblances between oral forms, in the different tongues; the internal, not the mere external parts of language. A marked peculiarity of sign language consists in its limited number of radicals and the infinite combinations into which those ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... perforated paper are to be seen hams from Europe and China, stuffed turkeys, and a big pastry in the shape of an Agnus Dei or a dove, the Holy Ghost perhaps. Among all these are jars of appetizing acharas with fanciful decorations made from the flowers of the areca palm and other fruits and vegetables, all tastefully cut and fastened with sirup to the sides ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... sailor crowd, sent the Queen with her damsels in a very light barge to stay on a little island distant from us a quarter of a league; himself remaining a very long time, discoursing by signs and gestures of various fanciful ideas, examining all the equipments of the ship, asking especially their purpose, imitating our manners, tasting our foods, then parted from us benignantly. And one time, our people remaining two or three days on a little island near the ship for various necessities as is the custom of sailors, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... door opened, and Gustave appeared. The poet was, of course, picturesquely attired. In his day of fashion he had worn within doors a very pretty fanciful costume, designed after portraits of the young Raffaelle; that costume he had preserved—he wore it now. It looked very threadbare, and the pourpoint very soiled. But the beauty of the poet's face had survived the lustre of the garments. True, thanks to absinthe, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... behold it was a dream." But it was not one of those fanciful dreams, that come and go, and mean nothing. It was a dream from God, a great reality, as he was soon ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... peculiarities of the colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to a period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have arrived. If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, represents d'Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their family—and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del Vasto in the Allocution of Madrid does not ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... enough to have enemies will know that all this is far from being fanciful. If one's enemies have any other raison d'etre beyond the fact of their being our enemies—what is it? They are neither beautiful nor clever, wise nor good, famous nor, indeed, passably distinguished. Were they any of these, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... fascination for him, although he was now a rich man with important demands upon his time. It was whispered about that the Pennsylvanians had spent a hundred thousand dollars hunting the criminals down; and some people were fanciful enough to see in Henry Francis the highwaymen's Nemesis. He made a very dignified Nemesis indeed. He looked grave and thoughtful, and his newly acquired wealth lent dignity to his ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Monsieur! You and I and man in general are not alone in this: the whole organic world—nay, some say the entire universe, inorganic as well as organic—is subject to these impalpable sympathetic forces. Is the hypothesis altogether fanciful of chemical election and rejection,—of the kiss and the kick of the magnet? Your Sensitive-Plant, your Dionea, your Rose of Jericho, your Orinoco-blossom that sets itself afloat in superb faith that the ever-moving waters will bring it to meet ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... May, but early in the morning, Laurel Ammidon lay in bed considering two widely different aspects of chairs. The day before she had been eleven, and the comparative maturity of that age had filled her with a moving disdain for certain fanciful thoughts which had given her extreme youth a decidedly novel if not an actually adventurous setting. Until yesterday, almost, she had regarded the various chairs of the house as beings endowed with life and character; she had held ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... few and how simple means was created the impression of purity and repose that this chamber produced! It brought to mind the pearly interior of a shell, and a fanciful person might have listened for the sea-music whispering through. The walls were papered with pale gray, relieved by a light pink tracery, and the white-muslin curtains were set off by a pink lining. A bunch of wild-flowers and grasses, which Cornelia had gathered that morning, and Sophie had arranged, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the rear end of the store was a large fireplace. There were two chairs near the fireplace, both of which were occupied by a man who sat in one while his feet lay on the other. He was sleeping peacefully, his chin resting on his breast. He wore a calico shirt with a fanciful design of morning-glories on it printed in appropriate colors, a collar of the same material and a ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... the Thames is quite frozen over; and the Archbishop came from Lambeth, on Twelfth-day, over the ice to Court. Many fanciful experiments are daily put in practice; as certain youths burnt a gallon of wine upon the ice, and made all the passengers partakers. But the best is, of an honest woman (they say) that had a great longing to encrease her family on the Thames" ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... only assert a thing, however nonsensical, persistently enough, there will always be some who will believe it. I cannot be expected to go through in detail the whole string of aberrations which Nordau finds accumulated in Wagner. They are all of the same kind, and all equally fanciful. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... note that the Holy Spirit, in so far describing the Saviour's transfiguration, has given a literal account of a real transaction. There is no cunningly-devised fable here. There was nothing visionary in the exhibition itself; there is nothing fanciful in the description of it. Jesus was actually metamorphosed; "his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light," and, as on all ordinary occasions in the days of his flesh he was God manifest in the nature of man, so, during the continuance of this splendid scene, he exhibited ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... and turned his attention, to the magnificent solitudes of the West. He purchased a portion of the Island in Virginia, near the mouth of the Little Kenhawa, which has been consecrated by his misfortunes, and executed those embellishments which have since become the theme of many a fanciful ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... sin,—a fact which may point to his younger days, when lofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in his case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in all his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not be altogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy surrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the fold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in his enumeration of the subjects of ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... curious figures on each. (Here we may observe that not a few antiquarians are of opinion that from these practices arose the custom of persons throwing old shoes after newly-wedded pairs and others for luck, and of shoemakers making fanciful outlines on shoes by means of pegging and stitching.) With a magical wand of hazel the magician stretched forth his arm to the four winds, turning himself round to every wind, and beseeching his "master" to consecrate the circle. All ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of the arts in the matter of representing the concrete, is the swiftest, surest agent for attacking the sensibilities. The CRY made manifest, as Wagner asserts, it is a cry that takes on fanciful shapes, each soul interpreting it in an individual fashion. Music and beauty are synonymous, just as their form ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... would appear superfluous in the case of those towers in the shape of stepped pyramids, whose summits could be carried above the plain to any fanciful height by the simple process of adding story to story. But the Mesopotamian constructor went upon the same system as in the case of his palaces. It was well in any case to interpose a dense, firm, and dry mass between ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... her youth and maidenhood had gone by in silent and fanciful dreamings, whilst one of the greatest conflicts the world had ever known was raging between men of the same kith and the same blood. The education of women—even of those of rank and wealth—was avowedly upon a very simple ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... ask them, then, to understand the pathos of things, to be touched by the mysterious and almost fanciful emotion which northern hearts discover and enjoy in the works of the Amsterdam master. No, instead of a forest they want a few trees, standing out clearly against the horizon; instead of a multitude swarming in the penumbra of reality, a few personages, larger ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... another year's interval, "I have preferred and still prefer Raymond to Salem, through every change of fortune." There can be no doubt where his heart placed the home of his boyhood; nor is it, perhaps, fanciful to observe that in his books the love of nature he displays is rather for the woods than the sea, though he was never content to live long ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... a Tub: but if, instead of looking back, we throw ourselves back, the absurdity does not quite persist as it does in the other two instances. There are some who, of course, would say, "Why take this fanciful test of Godwin's ability when you have a real one in Caleb Williams?" The reasons are double: for, historically, such an estimate by contemporaries is of the very first value, and to the present writer ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... word or words by which a person or thing is called or known. If the name be descriptive or characterizing, even though in a fanciful way, it is an appellation. If it particularizes an individual through reference to distinctive quality or nature, perhaps without employing any word the individual is usually known by, it is a designation. If it specifies a class, especially a religious sect or a kind of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... follows, first of the private, and, supervening upon that, of the public grief, if not altogether couched in Homeric phraseology or numbers, has an air, however, of the Homeric painting. But, indeed, neither is the language deficient in fanciful significancy, nor the measure in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every sense but that ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mottoes were taken to point the moral, if any, of heraldic blazonry. Though repudiated and unrecognised by the strict herald, they are now generally considered to be the particular property and distinguishing ensign of certain surnames and families, and as hereditary as the quaint and fanciful charges ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... sweet to the centre, and there you lose yourself in some dream of vast seas, a glory of unimagined oceans; and you say that it was crystallized to any slow flute-like tune, each speck of it floating into file with a musical grace, and carrying its sound with it. There! it's very fanciful, but I'm always feeling the tune in aqua-marina, and trying to find it,—but I shouldn't know it was a tune, if I did, I suppose. How magnificent it would be, if every atom of creation sprang up and said ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... uncritical age, but a hopeless stumbling block to the educated reason of the present day. Every one who brings a free intelligence to the subject will find it impossible not to recognize the same fanciful process of thought, the same poetic ingredients, here as in the schemes of those heathen religions whose principal portrayals we all regard as mythology. To argue that because earthly rulers, in their anger and power, send retributive armies against their rebellious subjects, to bring them to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... affection in these days of political quackery. For, when the worst is said of the imposing array of bosses from Tweed down to the present time, they could be forgiven much because they were what they were. That is why, perhaps, the altogether fanciful picture of Penrose, propped on his pillows with his telephone at his bedside directing the embattled delegates at Chicago, who in sheer desperation turned to Warren G. Harding, is dwelt upon ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... it was a fanciful delusion. Her nervous organization was no longer under the control of reason. Esther gave a quick scream, and fell ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... humour, because they were not in earnest as to religion. Had the ancients been serious in their belief, we should not have had their Gods exhibited in the manner we find them represented in the Poets. The people would not have suffered it. They disputed with good humour upon their fanciful theories, because they were not interested in the truth of them: when a man has nothing to lose, he may be in good humour with his opponent. Accordingly you see in Lucian, the Epicurean, who argues only negatively, keeps his temper; the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... among the crags, under the protecting shelter of the headlands, is the little watering-place of Dawlish, fronted by villas and flower-gardens, and having to the southward strange pinnacles of red rock rising from the edge of the sea, two of them forming a fanciful resemblance to the human figure, being named the Parson and the Clerk. A storm recently knocked off a considerable part of the Parson's head. Upon their sides, piercing through tunnel after tunnel, runs the railway ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the city of self-conscious political activity, variable, cultivated, and ill-adapted by its very freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and solid at the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... triennial catalogues a star designates those who have died. This sign was first used with this signification by Mather, in his Magnalia, in a list prepared by him of the graduates of Harvard College, with a fanciful allusion, it is supposed, to the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Refreshment to the Spirits of Man," he would quote (for he read other things besides the Kreuzzeitung), looking round with satisfaction on reaching this fragrant haven after a hot day in the fields. Well, the cousins did not think so. Less fanciful, and more sensible as they probably would have said, their position plainly was that you cannot eat flowers. Their spirits required no refreshment, but their bodies needed much, and therefore radishes were more precious ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... little attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and method; in place of it they developed the Physiologus and the Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity. In place of research came authority—the authority of the Scriptures as interpreted by the Physio Cogus and the Bestiaries—and these remained the principal source of thought on animated Nature ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... extent and site of their possessions. Pharamond, Clodion, Meroveus, and Childeric cannot be considered as kings of France and placed at the beginning of her history. If they are met with in connection with historical facts, fabulous legends or fanciful traditions are mingled with them; Priam appears as a predecessor of Pharamond; Clodion, who passes for having been the first to bear and transmit to the Frankish kings the title of "long-haired," is represented ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... we had an accident with two of the boats, which necessitated staying at Msala. While we were waiting there, one night after ten o'clock the poor devil came, alone, in a canoe. They had simply cut him in slices—a most beastly sight. I wake up sometimes even now dreaming of it, and I am not a fanciful sort of fellow. Joseph went into his room and was simply sick; I didn't know that you could be made sick by anything you saw. The sleeping sickness was on Durnovo then; he had brought it with him from the Plateau. He ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... objects. This (error) may be compared with one diseased[FN363] in the eye, who imagines that he sees various things (floating in the air) on account of his illness; or with a dreamer[FN364] whose fanciful thoughts assume various forms of external objects, and present themselves before him. While in the dream he fancies that there exist external objects in reality, but on awakening he finds that they are nothing other than the transformation of his ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... who lived about 50,000 years ago, we are told that, in many caverns there are paintings of animals, some of which are extinct, proving that the artists were ape-men of advancing intellect, living in that day. These drawings are rude, and inexact, and the resemblance to extinct animals rather fanciful. If the writer were to try to draw a picture of a horse on the stone walls of a dark cavern, with no light, it would be just as likely to resemble an extinct animal, or possibly an animal that never did live and never will. Many of the paintings ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... story I prefer is the kind that is fanciful, odd and interesting. Some tales deal with a new invention of some sort, but contain no action or plot. However, I fail to see any like that in the present A. S., unless ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... India trade, and in 1773 settled himself for a while in Virginia on the estate of his brother, to whom he had now become heir. This was a grand turning-point of his career, and to signalize it properly, Paul, who was somewhat of a fanciful turn, added the name Jones to his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the extraordinary spectacle of many sovereigns and no subjects. The people, he said, are all sovereigns; and the peculiarity of the case is that they have no subjects, except a few colored persons. This must be rather fanciful. The aggregate community is sovereign, but that is not the sovereignty which acts in the daily exercise of sovereign power. The people cannot act daily as the people. They must establish a government, and invest it with so much of the sovereign ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... allowed for the falsehoods I should have to tell; but I found that in fact when it came to the point I had not. Besides, now that I had an opening there was a kind of relief in being frank. Lastly (it was perhaps fanciful, even fatuous), I guessed that Miss Tita personally would not in the last resort be less my friend. So after a moment's hesitation I answered, "Yes, I have written about him and I am looking for more material. In heaven's name ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... their superiority to all that we have in the Old World, and still more, when I recollect that by a mysterious ordinance of their Creator, these were hid from "learned ken" till modern times, I fell into the fanciful belief that the Western continent was brought forth at a second birth, and intended by Nature as a more perfect specimen of her handiwork. But how in the name of breeding must we account for the degeneracy of the human form in this otherwise mammoth-producing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... bear, wolf, or wildcat skin, for on these the foot of a woman must never tread! They are for men, and symbolical of manly virtues. There are dolls of all sizes, and a play travois leans against the white wall of the miniature lodge. Even the pet pup is called in to complete the fanciful home of the ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... shall I be able to rehearse All of the new, delicious condiments That luxury, from time to time, invents? Soft, hard, and dropped; and now with sugar sweet, And now boiled up with milk, the eggs they eat: In sherbet, in preserves; at last they tickle Their palates fanciful with eggs in pickle, All had their day—the last was still the best But a grave senior thus, one day, addressed The epicures: "Boast, ninnies, if you will, These countless prodigies of gastric skill— But blessings on the man WHO ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... phantoms; while, in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above the veil of smoke that hung around—like some dark and horrid object Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are indebted to the imagination for filling up ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the inhabitants, patronised them, was a question, since all the indications pointed to the fact that there was no trade done with the outside world. The commodities exposed for sale seemed to consist mainly of fruit, vegetables, flowers, confectionery, what looked like bread in various fanciful shapes, embroideries, jewellery, silks, soft woollen materials, paintings, lamps and lanterns, harness, and other goods too ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... the sea; the other, fragile, fair, with dark dreamy eyes. Jeanne, proud, capricious, and inconstant; Micheline, simple, sweet, and tenacious. The brunette inherited from her reckless father and her fanciful mother a violent and passionate nature; the blonde was tractable and good like Michel, but resolute and firm like Madame Desvarennes. These two opposite natures were congenial, Micheline sincerely loving ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... which is confined almost entirely to the painting of the initial letters and the decorating of the borders with flourished scrolls of penwork very neatly drawn and terminating in equally neat but extremely fanciful flowers finely painted. It seems to have been brought at some time from the neighbourhood of Milan, where a similar kind of initial and exceedingly neat penmanship also is found in the choir books. Many South German choir ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it those curious cups which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant, fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne glasses, and with two mighty handles on the sides; they are round below, so that they can only stand on their mouths. Further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware, as, for instance, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... unbearable, and the patient feels the ordinary round of experience, which would never be noticed otherwise, an intolerable burden. Strange feelings all over the body, and an indescribable series of seemingly "fanciful" troubles, come on. It is of no use, and indeed injurious, to treat such cases as merely fanciful. The wrong bodily condition must be righted if the mental condition is to improve. The first thing needed is quiet. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... lendings, their dead birds and cocked hats, their petticoats and coloured hose. Here was one I liked though,' and he set his foot upon a mound. 'He was a fine savage fellow; he had a dark soul; yes, I liked this one. I am fanciful,' he added, looking hard at Herrick, 'and I take ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... he found himself in his room, and sat down before the dull fire in his grate to think. It struck him there was a dull fire in his heart a great deal like it; and he worked out a fanciful analogy with the coals, still alive, and the ashes creeping over them, and the dead clay and cinders. He felt sick of himself, sick of his life and of all his works. He was angry with Fulkerson for having got him into that art ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had been, a great reader; he gave up his mind to pursuits which he found more attractive than the tranquil fields and lanes of literature. Yet he remembered, in a dim sort of way, either that he had read somewhere in his schoolboy days, or that a fanciful old nurse had told him, a story of a person somewhere, who, being possessed of a great chest of money, went one day to look at it, and found that his hard cash had changed to withered leaves. Precisely such a transformation had overtaken that eight thousand pounds, at ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... have given up themselves to fanciful credulity would confine their conceits in their own minds, they might regulate their lives by the barometer, with inconvenience only to themselves; but to fill the world with accounts of intellects subject to ebb and flow, of one genius that awakened ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... what I saw and heard, was, that, the artist, by some unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of enthusiastic and fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself with a person altogether beneath him, and that the natural result, entire and speedy disgust, had ensued. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart—but could not, for that reason, quite forgive his incommunicativeness ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... enter into the mind of the mystics and enthusiasts against whom he wrote. It was perhaps only his sound intellectual training, combined with the English attribute of solid practical sense, that had saved him from running utterly wild in fanciful and visionary speculations. As it is, he has been occasionally[470] classed among the so-called Theosophists, such as Paracelsus and Jacob Behmen. His exuberant imagination delighted in subjects which, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... pocket, settling himself comfortably with his back to the drop-light, and beginning to read aloud to us, as he is accustomed to do in the Skeptic's little rooms. Here was not even a drop-light for him to do it by, only electric sconces set high upon the walls, and a fanciful centre electrolier. He must, perforce—for he needs a strong light for reading—have stood close under one of the sconces to read from his book of essays. I tried to fancy Althea and the Promoter politely listening—or appearing to listen. This ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... the daytime, he neither ate nor drank much. He had great pleasure in hearing minstrels; as he himself was a proficient in the science, and made his secretaries sing songs, ballads, and roundelays. He remained at table about two hours, and was pleased when fanciful dishes were served up to him, which having seen, he immediately sent them to the tables of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... old inn-sign, perhaps, left in England. It looks right across the lake; the road that skirts its margin running by the steps of the hall-door, opposite to which, at the other side of the road, between two great posts, and framed in a fanciful wrought-iron border splendid with gilding, swings the famous sign of St. George and the Dragon, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... painting, for instance, what variety of subject as well as of temper meets us! We see, not historic or domestic scenes alone; not alone scenes in which the rhythmic dream of beauty and of style is aimed at; but works also, not a few, of purely imaginative character—fanciful, mythological, allegorical, symbolic—amongst which latter, one especially, I think, is dominant in its powerful originality and the weird charm of its decorative pomp. In the region of landscape, no less, every mood is touched, and every association evoked, from the infinite ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking of ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the English Languages by Deceased Authors. In his preface Locker gave what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses he was collecting. 'Vers de societe and vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... profuse, and gloomy; their poverty is embittered by fanciful claims to riches and a taste for expence. They work with despair and unwillingness, because they can no longer live by their labour; and, alternately the victims of intemperance or want, they are often to be found in a state of intoxication, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the floor of the sea; a dozen sea-lights and eleven of them yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed to draw a circle of witchcraft around ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from her gown, and Hayden was quick to notice that it was encased in a green satin slipper with a buckle which was a replica of the butterfly on her breast, only smaller in size. The whole idea of her costume struck him as fanciful, original and charming; and then—and then—it was only a coincidence, of course; but it started a train of thought which gradually merged ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... certainly, by sovereign and prescriptive right of beauty, no one better deserved the high title and distinction conferred upon her than this fair girl. Lovelier maiden in the whole county, and however high her degree, than this rustic damsel, it was impossible to find; and though the becoming and fanciful costume in which she was decked could not heighten her natural charms, it certainly displayed them to advantage. Upon her smooth and beautiful brow sat a gilt crown, while her dark and luxuriant hair, covered behind ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... are of mixed blood, and partake of South European characteristics less prominent among the purer blooded Teutons of the north. They have life on easier terms, are less intellectual, are more sensuous, emotional, more fanciful, fonder of artistic enjoyment, more sensitive to color and to those effects called "color," by contrast to form, in other arts than that of painting. The art of music is most germane to the Austrian spirit; and we have a ready key to the peculiarities of the Austrian disposition in the difference ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... us turn from these fanciful speculations to a sober recital of facts in connection with the history of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... was more fanciful; She smiled at mad Suwarrow's rhymes, who threw Into a Russian couplet rather dull The whole gazette of thousands whom he slew. Her third was feminine enough to annul The shudder which runs naturally through Our veins, when things call'd sovereigns ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... over the desk the calendar showed a fanciful figure of Spring, dancing down a flower-strewn path, and Mary, opening her journal for the first time since her arrival, paused to read the couplet at the bottom of the calendar. Then she copied it at the ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... their strong point. They simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm was infectious and we 'caught' it—to our own lasting spiritual benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... turned my head, I think. Once I laughed at all such fanciful things as these. This Scarlet Hunter, how many times have you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... book called, 'Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already preceded by "a selection from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, adapted to the Hamiltonian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... difference between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees—degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful—it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name—and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared—it was now, I say, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... it is true," said Molly, in a sad voice. "I wish it were only my imagination. You would never take me for a fanciful girl, would you, Hester? I am always called matter-of-fact, and I think I am. I really don't care a bit for poetry, and not much for music, and even story-books don't amuse me unless they're the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... dear; but, pardon me, we won't go into the question of how you came by the dress. You are at least ten years too young to be dressed in a fanciful costume of that kind. Your father does not wish you to wear that dress again, Ermie, nor to arrange your hair as you did to-night. Have you got a simple white dress with you, ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... is almost as difficult and dangerous a thing to deal with as ladies' attire; as various in its hues and forms, as fanciful in its conceits, as changeable in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Field With 200 fanciful Illustrations by Charles Robinson. (Uniform with Stevenson's "A Child's Garden") ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... how things ought to be done and partly because he liked to depict certain scenes of horror. He says further, a narrative of certain occurrences is so full of impossibilities that it must be pure invention on the part of the historian. Another German maintains that Thucydides has indulged in "a fanciful and half-romantic picture of events." But Holm, whom the scientific historians claim as one of their own, says, "Thucydides still remains a trustworthy historical authority;" and, "On the whole, therefore, the old view that ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... And, so it is with the varying opinions of the Western thought regarding it—the various cults advocating some form of its doctrine—the original doctrine may be learned and understood in spite of the fanciful dressings bestowed upon it. "The Truth is One—Men ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... falls. The queer shapes of the clouds continued for some time, and once or twice Trot was a little frightened when a monstrous airy dragon passed beside them or a huge giant stood upon a peak of cloud and stared savagely at the intruders into his domain. But none of these fanciful, vapory creatures seemed inclined to molest them or to interfere with their flight, and after a while the umbrella dipped below this queer cloudland and entered a clear space where the sky was of ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... like to know whether her little conceited noddle, or her father's old crazy calculating jolter-pate, breeds most whimsies. But then there's that two hundred pounds a-year in dirty land, and the father is held a close chuff, though a fanciful—he is our landlord besides, and she has begged a late day from him for our rent; so, God help me, I must be comfortable—besides, the little capricious devil is my only key to get at Master George Heriot's secret, and it concerns my character to find that ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was a bright, smiling little thing. Bessy loved her child extravagantly, jealously. But she would have none of the plain or biblical names her husband suggested. She laughed at them with her bright humor and made merry amusement over them, calling the child by endearing and fanciful appellations. To-day she was one kind of a flower, to-morrow another, and Rosebud a great deal of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... you, the analogies are very far-fetched. The hermeneutics of gems are uncertain, and founded on mere fanciful resemblances, on the harmonies of ideas hard to assimilate. In mediaeval times this science was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... nations—one with its barrel superbly damascened in gold with a poppy-flower pattern, another with a stock carved in ivory, with hunting-scenes in cameo. Enamelled and jewelled mountings are seen, with all the fanciful profusion of ornament with which the semi-barbarian will deck his favorite weapon. The splendor of Indian arms is largely due to the lavish use of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones, mainly introduced for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... more. Woodwork devoid of paint or varnish, but carved in most elaborate and capricious openwork, the whiteness of the pinewood being preserved by constant scrubbing with soap and water. The posts and beams of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are cut in precise geometrical forms; others are artificially twisted, imitating trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers. Everywhere are little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets concealed in the most ingenious and unexpected manner ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester's volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare's poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon's elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare's concluding 'Threnos' is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in his Mad Lover in the song 'The Lover's Legacy ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Europeans, before we can receive the above explanation we must believe that the unknown traveler knew the language sufficiently well to ask a question, but not to understand the answer. We may add, that the way in which they still continue to use the word seems to require no fanciful interpretation. When addressed with any degree of scorn, they reply, "We are Bachuana, or equals—we are not inferior to any of our nation," in exactly the same sense as Irishmen or Scotchmen, in the same circumstances, would reply, "We are Britons," or "We are Englishmen." Most other tribes ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... or coffee plantation, or pasture-lands for sheep and cattle, may not bother his head about the beauty of the forests, the rivers, the prairies, and the mountains he is exploring. He is much too absorbed in the practical business of life to be distracted by anything so fanciful—as he thinks. Yet even he does see the beauty, and long afterwards he finds it is that which has stuck most firmly in his mind. And when he has unthinkingly destroyed it, future generations lament his action and take measures to preserve what remains. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... with men dangling, burnt houses, &c. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often fancied there was ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... won my affection. This was Elizabeth Hohenhorst, a child of twelve, remarkably quiet, and disposed to melancholy. She was a devout Catholic; and, knowing that she was fated to become a nun, was fitting herself for that dreary destiny, which rendered her very sentimental She was full of fanciful visions, but extremely sweet and gentle in her manners. My love for her was unbounded. I went to church in her company, was present at all the religious festivals, and accompanied her to receive religious ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... employed in raising them. The rains of centuries, failing upon the extended prairie, had here found a reservoir and vent, and their sapping and undermining of the different veins of earth and stone had formed these strange and fanciful shapes. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... them, he had outlived all poetic notions regarding the "iron horse," and once the rails were laid he was apt to lose interest in them. Nevertheless, he was almost poetic in his own quiet way, interweaving practical thoughts with fanciful visions, and he loved his dreams. He was dreaming now as he leaned upon the bridge rail of the Nebraska, peering into the gloom with watchful eyes. From somewhere to port came the occasional commands of the officer on watch, echoed instantly from the inky interior of the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... sometimes fall to the lot of man. While moving from one position to another as he suggested or commanded, she had playfully broken off one flower from a large plant of "marguerite" daisies growing in a quaint Japanese pot, close at hand, and had begun pulling off the petals according to the old fanciful charm—"Il m'aime!—un peu!— beaucoup!—passionement!—pas du tout!" He stopped her at the word "passionement," and caught her ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... "popularly known as Ebou Yacoub el- Werrek."[FN143] The following is an extract (p. 304) from the Eighth Discourse which consists of three arts (funun).[FN144] "The first section on the history of the confabulatores nocturni (tellers of night tales) and the relaters of fanciful adventures, together with the names of books treating upon such subjects. Mohammed ibn Is'hak saith: The first who indited themes of imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to the libraries, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton |
