"Ignis fatuus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nor commander nor commanded, And left at large, like a young heir, to make His way to—where he knew not—single handed; As travellers follow over bog and brake An "ignis fatuus;" or as sailors stranded Unto the nearest hut themselves betake; So Juan, following Honour and his nose, Rushed where the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... spirit in the form of a monstrous black spider. He inhabits fens and marshes and lies in wait for his prey. At night he often lights a torch (evidently the ignis fatuus or Jack-o' lantern) and swings it on the marshes to decoy the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... earth, sometimes rising to a height of four or five feet, at others remaining quite motionless, and the next second flying off like a ball. In spite of the place and the season of the year, the less ignorant among vagabonds believed the light to be some ignis fatuus, one of those luminous meteors that raise from the marshes and float about in the atmosphere at the bidding of the wind. In point of fact, however, this ignis fatuus was the lantern by the light of which the two police agents ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... I mean to be truly master of my affections, seas must separate us! Impossibility must be made more impossible!—'Tis that, Oliver, which kills me, that ignis fatuus of false hope—Were she even married, if her husband were not immortal, I feel as if my heart would still dwell and feed on the meagre May-be! It refuses to renounce her, and makes a thousand and a thousand efforts to oblige me again to urge its ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... seeing anything resembling a habitation. Still, however, he thought it best to persevere in that direction. It must surely have been a light in the hut of a forester, for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of an ignis fatuus. The ground at length became broken, and declined rapidly, and although Brown conceived he still moved along what had once at least been a pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow concealing those breaches and inequalities, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Marriage of the Arts, by Barten Holiday, 1680, there is a singular poem on the subject of Tobacco, where, in successive stanzas, if is compared to a musician, a lawyer, a physician, a traveller, a crittike, an ignis fatuus, and a whyffler. Beloe's Sketches, vol. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... I get near enough to distinguish flags on the consulates, and the crosses on the mission churches, do I permit myself fully to believe that I am at last actually looking at Kui-kiang, the city that I have begun to think a delusion and a snare, an ignis fatuus that was dancing away faster than ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... my dearest Alan, you are in full possession of my secret—let me as frankly into the recesses of your bosom. How do you feel towards this fair ignis fatuus, this lily of the desert? Tell me honestly; for however the recollection of her may haunt my own mind, my love for Alan Fairford surpasses the love of woman, I know, too, that when you DO ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott |
