"Arabian Nights" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away again if I returned with her in my pocket. Nassirah, old Abdool's pretty granddaughter, brought me a pair of Malay shoes or clogs as a parting gift, to-day. Mr. M-, the resident at Singapore, tells me that his secretary's wife, a Malay lady, has made an excellent translation of the Arabian Nights, from Arabic into Malay. Her husband is an Indian Mussulman, who, Mr. M- said, was one of the ablest men ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the moon complain," in one vociferous, unanimous, continuous "Tu whoo." Shrieking rose from all dark places at the same instant, just the same kind of shrieking that is now raised against the Pre-Raphaelites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is toiling up the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and whispering, that he may look back, and become ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... out of the fact. Why, friends, do you know anything about electricity? Do you know what it is? Do you know why it works as it does? I do not; and I do not know of anybody on the face of the earth who does. The wonder of the "Arabian Nights" is cheap and tame and theatrical compared to the wonder of this everyday workaday world of ours, in the midst of which and by means of which we are carrying on our business and our daily avocations. The wonder of the carpet that would carry the person through the air who sat upon it and wished ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the infuriated failure exclaims, "how like the Gorgon of the Arabian Nights thou art! For does not every one whom thou favorest undergo a pitiful transformation even from the first bedding with thee? Does not everything suffer from thy look, thy touch, thy breath? The rose loses its perfume, the grape-vine ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm?—Why, no,—I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights," or "Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... had taken down, a Volume of Voltaire—curious fascination that Frenchman had, for all his destructive irony!—a volume of Burton's travels, and Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights," he had pitched upon the last. He felt, that evening, the want of something sedative, a desire to rest from thought of any kind. The court had been crowded, stuffy; the air, as he walked home, soft, sou'-westerly, charged with coming moisture, no quality of vigour in it; he felt ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... those wonderful tales of the "Arabian Nights" these things that were happening to her would have seemed more wonderful still: but her young mind was free of similes—a sensitive blank whereon the Senate might duly inscribe whatever tendencies ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... golden-haired grand-daughter. They went home to talk about her. They went to bed to dream of her. They read Mary Lamb's stories from Shakespeare, and Hope Wayne was Ophelia, and Desdemona, and Imogen—above all others, she was Juliet. They read the "Arabian Nights," and she was all the Arabian Princesses with unpronounceable names. They read Miss Edgeworth—"Helen," "Belinda."—"Oh, thunder!" they cried, and dropped the book to ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... 4 ft. in height, some two or three inches less, some as much as eight inches more) was exaggerated by report and tradition, just as the really big eggs of the great extinct ostrich-like bird of Madagascar were represented in the story of Sindbad, in the "Arabian Nights," as being as large as the dome of a temple, and the bird large in proportion. The Egyptians, as we have seen, knew the pygmy Akkas, and Egyptian fact was ever the romance ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the water-ways of Venice. Through lane-like, shop-lined ways, over bridges, and through the Giant's Clock-tower he passed into the great square of St. Mark, with "much surprise and pleasure." By its glittering lamps, and over it all the moonlight, he felt as if "transported to a scene in the Arabian Nights." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... was checked," continued Brettison, "and I could not help thinking, as I found myself hedged in by obstacles, how much safer we all are in London than we think. The difficulty seemed to increase, and at last I began to recall the story in the 'Arabian Nights' about the man choking himself to death with a bone, and the trouble his host had to dispose of the body. You remember about how they propped it up against another man's door, so that he knocked it down and imagined that he had ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... from the "Dream of the Red Chamber." She believes it every word, and wanders about these realms of fiction with as much confidence as was ever placed by western child in the marvellous stories of the "Arabian Nights." ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... is a more or less lurid eastern melodrama, based on the Arabian Nights. A hunchback is in love with a beautiful young dancer, who hates him. He sells her to a fierce old sheik, to get her out of the way of another lover, the sheik's son. Then he takes poison. Sumurun, the sheik's chief wife, favors a handsome cloth merchant ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... is the word which Ali Baba used in the 'Arabian Nights,' and that made the doors in the rocks fly open ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... comprehensive and varied collection of oriental fairy tales ever made available for American readers. There is no child who will not enjoy their novel color, their fantastic beauty, their infinite variety of subject. Yet, like the "Arabian Nights," they will amply repay the attention of the older reader as well. Some are exquisitely poetic, such as "The Flower-Elves," "The Lady of the Moon" or "The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden"; others like "How Three Heroes Came By Their Deaths Because ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... wondrous, dazzling harbour of Marseilles, which he saw for the first time. The poor fellow believed he was dreaming. He fancied his name was Sinbad the Sailor, and that he was roaming in one of those fantastic cities abundant in the "Arabian Nights." As far as eye could reach there spread a forest of masts and ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... word from their lips. Their description of the great plains, where one might look as far as the eye could carry in every direction without seeing house or tree or any obstruction of the vision, fell with all the wonder of the Arabian Nights upon the eager company. Stories of the trail, of Red River cart and ox-team, of duck shooting by the prairie sleughs, the whiff of black powder from their muzzle-loaders and the whistle of sharp wings against the sky; of the clatter of wild geese which made sleep impossible, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... magical operation of the mirror. In the Gesta Romanorum there is a story of a knight who went to Palestine, and who while there was shown by an Eastern magician in a mirror what was going on at home. In the Arabian Nights the story of Prince Ahmed has a variant, an ivory tube through which could be discovered the far-distant—a sort of anticipation of Sam Weller's 'double million magnifying gas microscope ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... me some sketches of St. Non's Sicily and harbour of Malta, forty drawings, given by St. Non himself, each bearing the name in pencil; he also showed me a MS. "Arabian Nights." He studied Arabic very deeply in Paris, and had a Mussulman master. He read to me part of a tale never put into the ordinary edition, translated into English tersely and perspicuously. He is much indebted to Arabic ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... been making slow trips between kitchen and dining-room for some minutes, stopped now to say, in a sort of Arabian Nights measure, "Ef you raddy fuh yo' brekfus, yo' ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... ways that neither she nor anybody else dreamed of. The reader who has shrugged his (or her) shoulders over the last illustration will perhaps hear this one which follows more cheerfully. The physician in the Arabian Nights made his patient play at ball with a bat, the hollow handle of which contained drugs of marvellous efficacy. Whether it was the drugs that made the sick man get well, or the exercise, is not of so much consequence as the fact that he did at ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... add that to this day a very extensive trade is carried on between the Persian Gulf and Lamu and other East African ports as far south as Madagascar, which is of course the ancient Ebony Isle of the 'Arabian Nights'. — Editor. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... elves! Oh my foot! Oh my hand! I would rather tell you all the stories in the Arabian Nights, than go through one such dance as this. Sit down now and be quiet, for if I have really got it to do, I want to begin as soon as possible. Well, what shall ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... virtue is, and where it best can be found—in justice, religion, and truth. The only reason that can possibly be adduced against it is one founded on fiction—namely, the case where an obdurate old geni, in the "Arabian Nights," was bound upon taking the life of a merchant, because he had struck out the eye of his invisible son. I recollect, likewise, a tale in the same book of charming fancies, which I consider not inappropriate: it is a case where a powerful ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... forward suitors, so much had he his daughter's happiness at heart, but nothing could be more absurd than the way in which the impertinent young thing pronounced her verdicts and judged the merits of her adorers. It might have been supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie was rich enough and beautiful enough to choose from among all the princes in the world. Her objections were each more preposterous than the last: one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was short-sighted, this ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... you—grottos haunted by weird forms of the deep, from graceful to grotesque, from almost colorless to gaudy-hued. To your dilated pupils the light itself has the weird glow of unreality. It is all like the wonders of the Arabian Nights made tangible or like a strange spectacular dream. If one were in a great diving-bell at the bottom of the veritable ocean he could hardly feel more detached from the ordinary aerial ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... and for so long a period, buried in sand, that even its existence remained unsuspected. It had been dedicated to Isis by the Queen of Rameses the Great; and the descriptions which travelers give of it, resemble those of the palaces in the "Arabian Nights." Four colossal figures, sixty-one feet in height, are seated in front. Eight others, forty-eight in height, and standing up, support the roof of the principal inner hall, in which gigantic bas-reliefs represent the whole ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... from distant ages of man's history—the old idylls and myths of the Hebrew race; the tales of Greece, of the Middle Ages of the East; the fables of the Old and the New World; the songs of the Nibelungs; the romances of early feudalism; the "Morte d'Arthur"; the "Arabian Nights"; the ballads of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... torn, and awry, with one foot wearing a great overshoe and the other bare, with both black arms entirely denuded of sleeves, with eyes staring from his head, and his whole form quivering and shaking, the young man started as if some afrit of the "Arabian Nights" had come at this dark hour to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... world this was to live in two or three centuries ago, when it was getting itself discovered—when the sunset gave up America, when a steel hand had the spoiling of Mexico and Peru! Then were the "Arabian Nights" commonplace, enchantments a matter of course, and romance the most ordinary thing in the world. Then man was courting Nature; now he has married her. Every mystery is dissipated. The planet is familiar ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... now and then, not understanding, and having a greater fondness for the versifying part than the prose. But she did pore over "Rasselas," and an odd collection of adventures in Eastern lands, very like the "Arabian Nights." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... before the paper is pasted on. The distances in heaven are billions of times greater; angels have to go all over heaven every day; could they do it with their wings alone? No, indeed; they wear the wings for style, but they travel any distance in an instant by WISHING. The wishing-carpet of the Arabian Nights was a sensible idea—but our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... know how it was," said Eleanor, caressing the head and neck of the magnificent animal she rode—"but I think this creature has come out of the Arabian Nights. Tippoo is ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... supervision of his education. In 1836 the family went to live at Moscow, where the boy formed that habit of omnivorous reading which characterised his whole life. Up to his fourteenth year, the books that chiefly influenced him were the Old Testament, the "Arabian Nights," Pushkin, and popular Russian legends. It was intended that he should follow a diplomatic career, and in preparation for the University of Kazan, he studied Oriental languages. In 1844 he failed to pass his entrance examinations, but was admitted some months later. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would come home of a night and tell me of these changes, little imagining that he told me no news, and would sketch airy pictures of himself conducting Clara Barley to the land of the Arabian Nights, and of me going out to join them (with a caravan of camels, I believe), and of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. Without being sanguine as to my own part in those bright plans, I felt that Herbert's way was clearing fast, and that old Bill Barley had ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... costume of this, the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Valiere, upon a form that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and I behold a mask, and yet I recognize the lady; beauty is like that precious stone in the 'Arabian Nights,' which emits, no matter how concealed, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be no bigger than Ugumu's. At this point a big, scraggy, very black man with an irregularly formed face the size of a tea-tray and looking generally as if he had come out of a pantomime on the Arabian Nights, dashed through the crowd, shouting, "I'm for Holty, I'm for Holty." "This is my trade, you go 'way," says Agent number one. Fearing my two Agents would fight and damage each other, so that neither would be any good for me, I firmly said, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... directly?" No, as I believe, or I should have heard of it.— Furness replied, that the promised fifty pounds were sure, and that the debt would have been settled before this time, if Mr. Carey had lived. So as this is no longer a Three Blind Callenders' business of Arabian Nights, I shall rest secure. I have doubted whether the bad name which Philadelphia has gotten in these times would not have disquieted you in this long delay. If you have ever heard directly from Carey and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... richly harnessed, in a robe half red satin and half cloth of gold, embroidered all over with pearls and precious stones; in his cap were two rows of rubies, the size of beans, which reflected so brilliant a light that one might have fancied they were the famous carbuncles of the Arabian Nights; he also wore on his neck a collar worth at least 200,000 livres; indeed, there was no part of him, even down to his boots, that was not laced with gold and edged with pearls. His horse was covered with a cuirass in a pattern ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as the sturgeons are going up stream. On some of the tributaries, when fishing is intermitted for a single day, the sturgeons have been known to completely fill a river 360 feet wide, so that the backs of the uppermost fish were pushed out of the water. (I take this statement, not from the 'Arabian Nights,' as the scoffer might imagine, but from that most respectable authority, Professor Seeley.) Still, in spite of the enormous quantity killed, there is no danger of any falling off in the supply for the future, for every fish lays from two to three million eggs, each of which, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... that I had never walked with the same ease and facility on the flag-stones of a country town as on those of London; so I continued roving about till night came on, and then the splendour of some of the shops particularly struck me. "A regular Arabian nights' entertainment!" said I, as I looked into one on Cornhill, gorgeous with precious merchandise, and lighted up with lustres, the rays of which were reflected from ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... creature is perfectly wonderful," I said. "Many parrots have I seen, but never one like this before. It must have sprung out of the Arabian Nights." ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... ashamed of having been awed by hearing of the little Egyptian that his native tongue was Arabic, and that he spoke nothing more occidental than Turkish. But, indeed, was it wholly absurd to offer a tacit homage to this favored boy, who must know the "Arabian Nights" in the original? ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... building the scene was scarcely less animated or interesting than within. By the aid of colored lights and other pyrotechnic contrivances the garden was made brilliant and gay as an Arabian Nights dream. The air was perfumed with the aroma of flowers and moistened by the delirious play of fountains. Thousands of people, elegantly dressed, were seated on the out-door terraces, enjoying the fireworks and music, and in the promenades other thousands were moving, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau en Espagne [Fr.]; Utopia, Atlantis^, happy valley, millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kindgom of Micomicon; work of fiction &c (novel) 594; Arabian nights^; le pot au lait [Fr.]; dream of Alnashar &c (hope) 858 [Obs.]. illusion &c (error) 495; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; Fata Morgana &c (ignis fatuus) 423 [Lat.]; vapor &c (cloud) 353; stretch of the imagination &c (exaggeration) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... envy;" then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he said in a livelier tone, "But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is! Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the Arabian Nights two weeks ago. And that which strikes me most—I say it with regret and a pang of conscience—is certainly not the Paris of former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte—I beg pardon, which the Emperor—has called up around him, and identified ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... has Mr. Lewis ever read the following: the "Kasidah," by Sir Richard Burton, who gave the world its best literal translation of "The Arabian Nights," which differs as daylight from dark in comparison with the Lane and Payne translations which are only edited for children to read? Or has he read the chapter which Benjamin Franklin added to the Bible? If Mr. Lewis read these for the first time in any magazine he takes he would ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... said Vanna, "and it is only a story of love and fighting like the Arabian Nights. If they had been Hindus, it might well have been of Krishna or of Rama and Sita. Their faith comes from an earlier time and they still see visions. The Moslem is a hard practical faith for men—men of the ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... of their names are even now remembered. Jackson of Exeter still survives as a native composer of original genius. He was also an author of high aesthetical speculation. The heroic poems of Hole are forgotten, but his essay on the Arabian Nights is still a cherished volume of elegant and learned criticism. Hayter was the classic antiquary who first discovered the art of unrolling the MSS. of Herculaneum. There were many others, noisier and more bustling, who are now forgotten, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... could have but one story-book, a better choice could scarcely be made than this storehouse of fables, wonder tales, myths, songs, and ballads. Selections from Andersen, The Arabian Nights, Gulliver, and Munchausen, are included. There are ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... Tales Alice in Wonderland Arabian Nights Black Beauty Mother Goose Pilgrim's Progress Rip Van Winkle Robinson Crusoe Story of the Bible Wood's Natural History ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... was the first introduction to Europe of the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... assassination is inconceivable to-day. The revolution it produced in our Government, and the bold attempt of Thaddeus Stevens to Africanize ten great States of the American Union, read now like tales from "The Arabian Nights." ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Septimius looked at this ugly, rusty, ponderous old box, so worn and battered with time, and recollected with a scornful smile the legends of which it was the object; all of which he despised and discredited, just as much as he did that story in the "Arabian Nights," where a demon comes out of a copper vase, in a cloud of smoke that covers the sea-shore; for he was singularly invulnerable to all modes of superstition, all nonsense, except his own. But that one mode was ever in full force ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... event of my childhood was my father's gift to me of an English version of Monsieur Galland's book, 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.' Then the tinkle of the shop bell assumed a new significance. Might not Haroun al Raschid himself, with Giafar, his vizier, and Mesrour, his man, follow its cracked summons, or some terrible withered creature whom I, and I only, knew to be a genie in disguise, come in to ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... say that the following fragment is founded upon the beautiful, and well-known tale in the "Arabian Nights," entitled, "The two Sisters who were jealous of their younger Sister;" and the reader need only be reminded that the two brothers of Perizade, Bahman and Perviz, had previously gone in search of the treasures described by the Devotee, and had perished in the attempt,—the fate of the ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... by a route no European had yet taken: from Peking to Zaiton; thence by sea through the famous Malacca Straits to Ceylon and India; up to Hormos and across to Tabriz and Trebizond; and so, by way of the Bosphorus, home to Venice, with a tale of experiences rivaling the Arabian Nights, and a fortune stitched up in the seams of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... long array of priests in their white dalmatics, until all Christendom seemed present in its noblest and most showy representatives. Heathendom may have been represented also, for it may be that messengers from the great caliph of Bagdad, the renowned Haroun al Raschid, the hero of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," were present in the church. Many members of the royal family of Charlemagne were present to lend dignity to the scene, and towering above them all was the great Charles himself, probably clad in Roman costume, his garb as a patrician of the imperial ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... first. Here I was interrupted to go and pay a farewell visit, and when we returned Max had packed and nailed the cases of books to be left. Chance thus limited my choice to those that happened to be in my room—"Paradise Lost," the "Arabian Nights," a volume of Macaulay's History that I was reading, and my prayer-book. To-day the provisions for the trip were cooked: the last of the flour was made into large loaves of bread; a ham and several dozen eggs were boiled; the few chickens that have survived the overflow were ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... his comrades themselves might save her. The Russian officer, indeed, is "just a great, big, brave, lovable baby, and nothing else." "Gulliver's Travels" ought to have an immense circulation should it ever be translated into the Russian language. The "Arabian Nights" appears as an unimaginative narrative of humdrum events compared with the stories in current circulation in Omsk ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the grave of the eminent saint, Miniato. This personage was, it seems, the son of the king of Armenia,—very much as all the heroes in the Arabian Nights are sons of the emperor of China. Having been converted to Christianity, he was offered by the emperor Decius great honors and rewards suitable to his royal rank, if he would renounce his faith. (A.D. 250.) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm?—Why, no,—I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or "Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile TOO carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... whiteness, and the blueness, and all the silvery glisten and call it just a kitchen. Besides, I found that grand as it is, it ain't a patch on some of the other things in the house. My eye! It's like the Arabian Nights!" ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the "Constitution of Man" in which the ordinary reader finds amusement to carry him through; whereas the work itself, full of curious miscellaneous information, is eminently readable; and that the "Vestiges of Creation,"—a treatise as entertaining as the "Arabian Nights,"—bids fair, not from the amount of error which it contains, but from the amount of fresh and interestingly told truth with which the error is mingled, to live and do mischief when the various solidly-scientific replies which it has called forth are laid upon the shelf. Both the "Constitution" ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... miscellaneous lumber that had insensibly collected there during the last half century; lugged in a few comfortable broad-bottomed chairs and stanch old tables; set up a bookshelf containing Walton's "Complete Angler," "Dialogues of Devils," "Arabian Nights," Miss Burney's "Evelina," and other equally fashionable and ingenious works; kindled a great fire on the broad hearth; and, upon the whole, rendered the aspect of things more comfortable than would have been anticipated. The room itself was long, narrow, and comparatively low; ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... of the days of Haroun-al-Raschid; only the puppets, poor children of mere magic, had not the traditions of the golden age of science for a setting, and were obliged to content themselves with mere tricks of jars of genii instead of applied electricity and its daring. What an Arabian Nights' Entertainment we might have had if only Scheherazade had ever heard of the Present! As for the thousand-and-one-nights, they would not have contained all her invention. No wonder that the time went trippingly for the two who were concerned in such ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... to enterprise in that region. No doubt the French King thought that Cartier would find his way to the sea of Verrazano, beyond which were probably the lands visited by Marco Polo, that enterprising merchant of Venice, whose stories of adventure in India and China read like stories of the Arabian Nights. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... She tells them how at night she often used to lie awake, curled up in her grey blanket, and hear the men talking together of the gold treasures they were to dig from the ground—treasures, it seemed to her childish mind, more precious than those of which she read in The Arabian Nights. And from a little hole in the canvas cover of the old emigrant wagon she used to see the tired fathers and brothers, worn and footsore from their hard day's tramp, some sleeping restlessly, and others guarding the cattle or watching for Indians, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Van Winkle said good-bye to his sons, and they set out upon their travels somewhat after the fashion laid down by those amiable gentlemen who conceived fables and fairy tales and called them the Arabian Nights. You may recall the Three Sons of the Merchant, and the Three Princes, and the Three Woodmen, not to speak of innumerable trios who served Messrs. Grimm and Andersen with ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the story, in The Arabian Nights, of Aladdin, who in his poverty became possessed of the Wonderful Lamp and—he was poor no longer. He merely had to rub the Lamp—the Genie appeared, and at Aladdin's command he produced an abundance of everything that the youth could ask or dream of. With the discovery of steam machinery, mankind ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... beloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to secure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her friend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian Nights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she was dressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Railway. The giddy heights of the Fraser River Canyon are traversed, and this is but the beginning, for three other great corporations are bending their strength to pierce the passes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. We see to-day scenes more after the manner of the Arabian Nights Entertainments than of the humble dream that Lord Selkirk ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... plaze: my family has been story-tellers on the Nile for many generations, and ef you plaze I shall tell you some Arabian Nights tales." ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... toys, or money, or a new horse, or something nice of that sort; but Joachim looked very grave, so the Genie saw he was in earnest, and he did a most wonderful thing for a Genie; he actually sat down beside the little boy to talk to him. I don't recollect that a single Genie in the Arabian Nights, ever did such a thing before; but this Genie did: What is more, he stroked his beard, and ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... three years ago; and for all that time I have been like the man in the Arabian Nights, seeking old lamps, not for new, but for cash. I dared not say what I was looking for, or attempt to give any description; for such would have defeated my purpose. But I had in my own mind at the start a vague idea of what I must find. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... five o'clock in the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... which he has bestowed on us, at least among Christians; for the Pagans were far more pious in this respect; and Mohammed agreed with them in doing justice to the beauty and dignity of the human frame. It is quite edifying, in the Arabian Nights, to read the thanks that are so often and so rapturously given to the Supreme Being for his bestowal of such charms on his creatures. Nor was a greater than Mahomet of a nature to undervalue the earthly temples of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... appeared to be of very ancient Arabian design; each chair was a perfect masterpiece of wood-carving, picked out and inlaid with gold. The sight of a semi-grand piano, which stood open, brought me back to the realization that I was living in modern times, and not in a dream of the Arabian Nights; while the Paris Figaro and the London Times—both of that day's issue—lying on a side-table, demonstrated the nineteenth century to me with every possible clearness. There were flowers everywhere in this apartment—in graceful vases and in gilded osier baskets—and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... elemental quality conveyed by the Oriental combining of stones, which to the western European and American, seem incongruous. Enormous pearls, regular and irregular, are set together in company with huge sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, cut in the antique way. Looking about, one feels in an Arabian Nights' dream. On the particular occasion to which we refer, the most beautiful woman present was the Princess Metternich, and in her jewels decorative ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... "The Arabian Nights," the motive of the whole series of delightful narratives is that the sultan, who refuses to attend to reason, can be got to listen to a story. May I try whether Cardinal Manning is to be reached in the same way? When I was attending the meeting of the British Association in Belfast nearly forty ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... odor stole out as Mary unwound the veil, an odor of sandalwood, that to her was always suggestive of the "Arabian Nights," of beautiful Oriental things, and of hidden treasures in secret panels ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or Thousand and One Nights is a collection of about four hundred old oriental stories, chiefly from Persia, India, and Arabia. They were brought together probably in the thirteenth century and told orally as stories told to entertain King Shahriyar; but ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... is the show-place of the district. It is a staring white structure covered with gilt business signs and adorned with abortive minarets that give it an air distinctly Oriental. The entrance hall and the banking-rooms are sumptuous. They recall the Arabian Nights and the word-painting of a circus poster. Mirrors, gilding, mosaics—it is all a dream of luxury and impresses one with a realizing sense of the financial standing of the Barowsky Brothers. You must ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and also a Hatchet which refused to cut off the head of an innocent man, who had been condemned to death, and who prayed to the Volto Santo. I suppose it is by way of economy (they being a frugal people) that the Italians have their Book of Common Prayer and their Arabian Nights' Entertainments condensed ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... has no practical relation to gardening; but it occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high board fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a good deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered with fairy-tales, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conduct has been—we will not describe it—we will hope that he means to make amends for it. Unquestionably he will. My dear cousin, nothing can resist you. You will enchant your grandfather. It will all end, like the tales of the Arabian Nights, in your living in a palace. How delightful to think of this long family quarrel at last coming to a close! But how do ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... abroad, is with a great superfluity of milk—very properly called, in France cafe au lait (coffee to the milk). One of the pleasures we receive in drinking coffee is that, being the universal drink in the East, it reminds of that region of the "Arabian Nights" as smoking does for the same reason; though neither of these refreshments, which are identified with Oriental manners, is to be found in that enchanting work. They had not been discovered when it was written; the drink then was sherbet. One can hardly fancy what a Turk or a Persian could ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a few plaintive words of this sort; and had the offending lady of the clock appeared next moment, and given some Arabian Nights' explanation, there is little doubt that Aunt Tipping would have forgiven her on the spot. A tendency to do so was already active in ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Bonaparte. The threads, the wheels, the preparation of forces, are far less visible. It is an honest man, an austere but pious figure, of middling talents, that shoots up one morning, borne upward by I know not what cataclysm. There is nothing like it in the Arabian Nights. And in a moment he goes higher than the throne. He is set upon ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... patterns, but these are painted, not inlaid. Every part is gilded in the most elaborate manner, and, in short, here alone of all places that I have seen, one could fancy himself wandering through the resplendent wonders of the Arabian Nights. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... The Arabian Nights rehearsed in bed! The Fairy Tales in school-time read, By stealth, 'twixt verb and noun! The angel form that always walk'd In all my dreams, and look'd and talk'd Exactly like ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... at Devonshire House reminds him of the 'Arabian Nights.' The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were present, and he describes the beauty of the girls dancing, the lights, the music, the flowers, etc. 'To move among these beautiful pictures and lovely living forms, and to wander about in all that flow of life and ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... came in, looking like another person altogether, although, if anything, bigger than before. He had got out of uniform and was dressed in a medley of Indian and Arab costume that made him look like one of those slaves in the "Arabian Nights" who cut off the heads of women. All he needed was a big curved simitar to ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... them with the dynamite; either the match burned too fast, or papa was full, or both, but the shell went off (in the usual way) before he threw it, and where was papa’s hand? Well, there’s nothing to hurt in that; the islands up north are all full of one-handed men, like the parties in the “Arabian Nights”; but either Randall was too old, or he drank too much, and the short and the long of it was that he died. Pretty soon after, the nigger was turned out of the island for stealing from white men, and went off to the west, where he found men of his own colour, in case he liked that, and ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ancient and dilapidated pleasure-garden, or from our red-tiled rooms in the good Hotel d'Orient, to which we had been driven by a plague of sand-flies in the camp), we step at once into a chapter of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... walked slowly back along the sidewalk. At the corner his foot struck a small, paper-covered volume lying there, sending it sliding to the edge of the turf. By its picturesque cover he recognized it as the book the girl had been reading. He picked it up carelessly, and saw that its title was "New Arabian Nights," the author being of the name of Stevenson. He dropped it again upon the grass, and lounged, irresolute, for a minute. Then he stepped into the automobile, reclined upon the cushions, and said ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of getting her out for a little fresh air, he proposed that she should go for an hour's walk every day, and during her absence invent a story to be told on her return. It was to be a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment, with him as the Sultan and her as Scheherazade. The Dynamiter was suggested by certain attempted outrages in London which had all turned out to be fiascos. She began with the Mormon tale and followed with ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... must think what they chose, it did not matter: he would not be the first student who had dropped out without warning. He went to the free library, and looked at the papers till they wearied him, then he took out Stevenson's New Arabian Nights; but he found he could not read: the words meant nothing to him, and he continued to brood over his helplessness. He kept on thinking the same things all the time, and the fixity of his thoughts made his head ache. At last, craving for fresh air, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of all Mohammedan caliphs was Harun-al-Rashid, which means, in English, Aaron the Just. Harun is the hero of several of the stories of the "Arabian Nights," a famous book, which perhaps you have read. There are many curious and wonderful ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... twilight is raising ghosts and when little imagination would be required to see the fingers of a man's hand come forth and write upon the plaster of the wall, to wander in the moonlight into narrow streets in Old Baghdad, with its recollections of the Arabian Nights: these things are to make enduring pictures in the Palace of Memory, that ideal collection where only the good ones are hung and all ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... cruelly unhappy, she could not quite determine which. She seemed to have what she most wanted in the world lying at her feet, and she was dreadfully uncertain in her more reflective moments whether she really wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. It was all very like some situation in an Arabian Nights tale or a story of Pagan Hellas, and consequently the more puzzling and disconcerting to a girl brought up on the methodical lines of Victorian Christianity. Her appeal court was in permanent session these last few days, but it gave no decisions, at least none ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki |
