"Fanciful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which my ardent fancy invested them, will long outlive the memory of the hardships I have endured among them, the snow-storms that have pelted me on their summits, and the rains that have drenched me in their valleys. Fanciful perhaps, but ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 8, and Lesbros, p. 27. Houssaye, pp. 100-106, relates a pathetic and perhaps wholly fanciful romance, in which Guillaume de Bez and Mlle. Marivaux were the chief actors; but, contrary to the custom of Marivaux's comedies, love did not triumph; the worldly mother married her son unhappily, and the blind father, who thought that he could read so well ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... is the name given by the early Spaniards to this range, meaning both mouse and squirrel. It had its origin either in the fact that one of its several peaks bore a fanciful resemblance to a squirrel, or because of the immense numbers of that little rodent always to be ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... fancy, miss," said Eliza. "I always was fanciful from a child dreaming of the pearly gates and them little angels with nothing on only their heads and wings so cheap to dress, I always think, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... some of the blessings held out to the savage by civilization, and they are only some of them. The picture is neither fanciful nor overdrawn; there is no trait in it that I have not personally witnessed, or that might not have been enlarged upon; and there are often other circumstances of greater injury and aggression, which, if dwelt upon, would have ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... hand. To the Court, and remained till two; then went to look at the drawings for repairing Murthly, the house of Sir John or James Stewart, now building by Gillespie Graham, and which he has planned after the fashion of James VI.'s reign, a kind of bastard Grecian[391]—very fanciful and pretty though. Read Hone's Every-day Book, and with a better opinion of him than I expected from his anti-religious frenzy. We are to dine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... his bride. They were very pleasant, and fastidious as he was he could find fault with nothing. The carpet, the curtains, the new light furniture, the armchair by the window where 'Lina was expected to sit, the fanciful workbasket standing near, and his chair not far away, all were in perfect taste, and passing his arm caressingly about Anna's waist he said: "It's very nice, and I thank my little sister so much; of course, I am wholly ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry! You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... correct explanation of this fact is, in my opinion, that the educational method of the entire Orient has rested on mechanical memorization; during the formative period of the mind the exclusive effort of education has been to develop a memory which acts by arbitrary or fanciful connections and relations. A Japanese boy of Old Japan, for instance, began his education at from seven to eight years of age and spent three or four years in memorizing the thousands of Chinese hieroglyphic characters ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... strangely fanciful in the old game of chess. Its origin is forgotten in a dim past—a past around which is woven historical tales of kings and queens, interesting anecdotes of ancient sports and pleasures. There is perhaps no indoor game as old and as beloved. ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... f(1) A fanciful name constructed from (the word for) a cloud, and (the word for) a cuckoo; thus a city of clouds and cuckoos.—'Wolkenkukelheim' is a clever approximation in German. Cloud-cuckoo-town, perhaps, is the best ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... We are mistaken if we think that Newman devised any short-cut to mental peace, or used any other instrument or method for arriving at his results than we ordinarily employ in sound reasonings of every day. He claimed no intuitions, no vision of theological truth, and he was less arbitrary and fanciful in defending Catholic dogma than I have known "philosophers" to be in defending the being of God and the immortality of the soul. He tells us in his Apologia that he believed in a God on a ground of probability, that he believed in Christianity ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... Eustathius identifies Ileus with Oileus, father of Aias. Here again is fanciful etymology, ILEUS being similar to ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the present day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... proper intervals between the times of giving children suck, the breast of the mother becomes duly replenished with milk, and the stomach of the infant properly emptied to receive a fresh supply. The supposition that an infant wants food every time it cries, is highly fanciful; and it is perfectly ridiculous to see the poor squalling thing thrown on its back, and nearly suffocated with food to prevent its crying, when it is more likely that the previous uneasiness arises from an overloaded ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... a young girl is passionless, pure; a fanciful, poetic devotion to an ideal; the worship of a deified, glorious being who does not, never could, exist. Too often the realisation of the truth that the idol has feet of clay is enough to burst the iridescent glowing bubble. Too seldom the love deepens, develops into the true and lasting devotion ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Charity. "I hope she ain't going to be a fanciful woman. I can't get along with fancy folks. Then she'll be in a fidget about her eating; and I can't stand that. I'll cook for her, but she must take things as she finds them. I can't have anything ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son premier secret a Venus." Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the gallery—pretty, fanciful, naive; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also, Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise." ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contented class, comfortable and looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they embrace. There are little trellises and cornices and fanciful adornments. The solid homeliness is fringed with elegance. The people and the houses do not own each other, but they are married. There is love between them, and pride, and a hearty understanding. I can think of a country where you see little ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... as if it were influenced by the same genius which operates the whole of English life, and allows each to identify himself as the object of specific care, irrespective of the interests of the mass. This may be a little too fanciful, and I do not insist that it is scientific or even sociological. Yet I think the reader who rejects it might do worse than agree with me that the first impression of a foreign country visited or revisited is stamped in a sense of the weather ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... show clearly the influence of even incomplete simplisme, in certain pernicious effects upon literature. Edgar A. Poe entered the realm of the fanciful after Hoffman, and how is it that the initiator is less dangerous than his disciple? It is because of these two simplistes, who have put reason out of consideration, the first addressed himself only to the imagination, while the American poet sounded the emotions to depths where terror ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... just made or hinted of the novelist's genius will be best and most fitly made by a brief successive discussion of the four as they are here presented, with some subsequent remarks on the Miscellanies here selected. And, indeed, it is not fanciful to perceive in each book a somewhat different presentment of the author's genius; though in no one of the four is any one of his masterly qualities absent. There is tenderness even in Jonathan Wild; there are touches in ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Venice. Had he been a traveller from beyond the Alps he could hardly have been more unprepared for the spectacle that awaited him. In aspect and customs Venice differed almost as much from other Italian cities as from those of the rest of Europe. From the fanciful stone embroidery of her churches and palaces to a hundred singularities in dress and manners—the full-bottomed wigs and long gowns of the nobles, the black mantles and head-draperies of the ladies, the white masks worn abroad by both sexes, the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... an artist with intellectual curiosity; and just as he lacked the depth of a philosopher so he wanted the vision of a poet. That he possessed genius will not be denied; but his art is fanciful rather than imaginative and of creative power he had next to none. His life was neither a mission nor a miracle. But he was blessed with that keen delight in his own sensations which makes a world full of beautiful and amusing things, charming people, wine, and warm sunshine ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Bello Gallico in usum Scholarum Liber Tirbius. Author, Mr. C. J. Caesoris. Subject, Religion.'' Still better is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's The Opera. Authors, however, are usually so fond of fanciful ear-catching titles, that every excuse must be made for the cataloguer, who mistakes their meaning, and takes them in their literal signification. Who can reprove too severely the classifier who placed Swinburne's Under the Microscope in his class of Optical Instruments, ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... of such airy beings, glancing through the mists of national superstition, would prove little inferior in poetical interest and association to the fanciful creations of the Greek mythology. The truth is, they are of one family, and we often discover allusions to the beautiful fable of Psyche or the story of Midas; sometimes with the addition, that the latter was obliged to admit his barber into his uncomfortable secret. Odin and Jupiter ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... rarely instruct, he seldom fails to amuse by the exuberance of his fancy, and the rapidity of his elocution. But take any one of his sentences to pieces, analyze it, strip it of its gaudy clothing and fanciful decorations, and you will be astonished what skeletons of bare, shallow, and spiritless ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... decadence, if not yet in his dotage; the profusion of smaller sketches and vignettes everywhere grouped round the mighty central triumph of the adventures of Piper Steenie,—who but Scott has done such things? He never put so much again in a single book. There is something in it which it is hardly fanciful to take as a 'note of finishing,' as the last piece of the work, that, gigantic as it was, was not exactly collar work, not sheer hewing of wood and drawing of water for the taskmasters. And it was fitting that the book, so varied, so fresh, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... her way over the rising waves, aided a little by the tide; and in a few minutes her low hull was just discernible in the streak of light along the horizon, with the dark outline of her sails rising above the sea, until their fanciful summits were lost in the shadows of ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was its surface always smooth, the winds favorable and the sky unclouded, little resolution or physical endurance would be required to navigate the ocean; the energies which call THE SAILOR into life would no longer be necessary; the sea would be covered with pleasure yachts of the most fanciful description, manned by exquisites in snow-white gloves, propelled with silken sails, and decked with streamers, perhaps with flowers, while their broad decks would be thronged with a gay and happy bevy, of both sexes and every ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... The instant when the rim of the sun comes up bright and red is the instant when our expectation is most kindled toward the glory of the dawn and of the day which it foretokens. "The vanguard of his strength" in the next clause suggests the purely fanciful. This mixture of the concrete and the abstract does not go back to sensation, a thing worth noting and so the visualization is destroyed. The dependent clause brings up a new visualization, a V2, in the "dust ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... Tsepha (cockatrice) of the Hebrews), a name given by the ancients to a horrid monster of their own imagination, to which they attributed the most malignant powers and an equally fiendish appearance. The term is now applied, owing to a certain fanciful resemblance, to a genus of lizards belonging to the family Iguanidae, the species of which are characterized by the presence, in the males, of an erectile crest on the head, and a still higher, likewise erectile crest—beset with scales—on the back, and another on the long tail. Basiliscus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... horseback followed, attired like Godfrey, but with gayer ornaments and colors. Their shields, from which floated scarfs of red, green, or white, were ornamented with painted leopards, lions, birds, towers, or other fanciful devices. From each ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... sweet smile, accompanied by a strangely grave and disapproving glare in his large blue prominent eyes. It was only apparently sugar of lead; really, it was sugar of milk—the milk of human kindness. The smile of the lost picture called "La Gioconda" is by fanciful people regarded as something very wonderful. It is really the clever portraiture of the habitual "leer" of a somewhat wearied sensual woman. It had a fascination for the great Leonardo, but no ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... demonstrations of the greater cataract." What else? It may be conveniently reached in a short time from Utica. The blue-book, "beloved of tourists," did not deign to notice its existence if it ever had one. We were not so sure but that it was only a fanciful creation in the brain of some romantic writer. The more we inquired concerning its location, the more we became aware that here was a little spot of beauty for some reason forgotten, lying within easy reach of Utica, yet unknown to the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... now without giddiness, for I was beginning to be accustomed to these sublime aspects of nature. My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting where and who I was, to live the life of elves and sylphs, the fanciful creation of Scandinavian superstitions. I felt intoxicated with the sublime pleasure of lofty elevations without thinking of the profound abysses into which I was shortly to be plunged. But I was brought back to the realities of things by the arrival of Hans and the Professor, who joined ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... about their proposals, which were not thought out, but obviously only superficial expedients hurriedly grasped at by a party in distress. Their reform scheme, introduced by Lord Lansdowne, was revolutionary, and, at the same time, fanciful and confused. It was ridiculed by their opponents, and received with frigid disapproval by their supporters. Still, they acted as if they were confident that in the long run they could ward off the final blow. They were persuaded that the Liberal Government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Boweryite about him, some outcropping of the half-submerged bunco-steerer. Instead of that, both his look and his tone carried some tinge of quiet yet dominant gentility, reminding her, as she had so often been taught before, that the criminal is not a type in himself, that only fanciful and far-stretched generalizations could detach him as a species, or immure and mark him off from ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... afloat, grew in wonder and magnitude through pure love of the marvellous or wild expansion of the fanciful tales of the Indians. Far inland, built on a lofty hill, so the fable ran, was a mighty city, whose very street watering-troughs were made of solid gold and silver, while "billets of gold lay about in heaps, as if they were logs of wood marked out ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Ireland! Oh, would you require a land Where men by nature are all quite the thing, Where pure inspiration has taught the whole nation To fight, love, and reason, talk politics, sing; 'Tis Pat's mathematical, chemical, tactical, Knowing and practical, fanciful, gay, Fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry, There's nothing in life that is out of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Cabala, I am not ignorant of the date of the oldest Rabbinical writings which contain or refer to this philosophy, but I coincide with Eichorn, and very many before Eichorn, that the foundations of the Cabala were laid and well known long before Christ, though not all the fanciful superstructure. I am persuaded that new light might be thrown on the Apocalypse by a careful study of the Book Sohar, and of whatever else there may be of that kind. The introduction (i. 4,) is ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in its little green vase, on a light ebony stand in the window of the drawing-room. The rich satin curtains, with their costly fringes, swept down on either side of it, and around it glittered every rare and fanciful trifle which wealth can offer to luxury, and yet that simple rose was the fairest of them all. So pure it looked, its white leaves just touched with that delicious, creamy tint peculiar to its kind: its cup so full, so perfect its head bending, as if it were sinking and melting away ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and took up my pen. As a rule my work came to me easily. Even now there were shadowy ideas, well within my mental grasp—ideas, however, which I was in the humour to repel rather than to invite. For I knew very well whither they would lead me—back to the creation of those lighter and more fanciful figures flitting always across the canvas of a painted world. A certain facility for this sort of thing had brought me a reputation which I was already growing to hate. More than ever I was determined ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... funny old names were not at all old-fashioned. "Roxy," especially, was considered a very sweet name indeed. All these new names, "Eva," and "Ada," and "Sadie," and "Lillie," and the rest of the fanciful "ies" were not in vogue. Then, if a romantic, highflown young mamma wished to give her tiny girl-baby an unusually fine name, she selected such as "Sophronia," "Matilda," "Lucretia," or "Ophelia." In extreme cases, the baby could ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... has given the figures of the chasms without comment, and speaks decidedly of the indentures found at the extremity of the most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful resemblance to alphabetical characters, and, in short, as being positively not such. This assertion is made in a manner so simple, and sustained by a species of demonstration so conclusive (viz., the fitting of the projections of the fragments found among the dust ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... legend, which modern historians have shown to be a fanciful distortion of facts, relates that this saint, an Israelite, came from Rome to Britain, and that after converting Nectan, King of the Picts, and his people to Christianity, he consecrated 150 bishops, ordained 1000 priests, founded 150 churches, ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... architect can need to know—and more—may be learned in this courtyard, which would be yet more wonderful if it had not its two brick walls. Many styles meet and mingle here: Gothic and Renaissance, stately and fanciful, sombre and gay. Every capital is different. Round arches are here and pointed; invented patterns and marble with symmetrical natural veining which is perhaps more beautiful. Every inch has been ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... distinguish whether certain questions lie within its horizon or not, it can never be sure either as to its claims or possessions, but must lay its account with many humiliating corrections, when it transgresses, as it unavoidably will, the limits of its own territory, and loses itself in fanciful opinions ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... ascribed to him feats ever more wildly heroic. Among the various traditions there is one relating to the Rhenish town of Worms which calls for inclusion here as much on account of its intrinsic merit as because of its undoubted popularity. The legend of the Rose Garden of Worms is a quaint and fanciful tale, and even the circumstance that it ends with the death of several good knights and true does not rob it of a certain ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... over her mother's shoulder, big-eyed, scarce believing the plainly written words she read. It was preposterous, ridiculous, fanciful, a dream from which she must awake in a moment to the full realization of their dreadful need of just ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... poems 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 at the hands of AEschylus, Sophocles ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... certain kinds of food are prohibited, such as squirrel meat, fish, turkey, etc.; but the reason is not that such food is considered deleterious to health, as we understand it, but because of some fanciful connection with the disease spirit. Thus if squirrels have caused the illness the patient must not eat squirrel meat. If the disease be rheumatism, he must not eat the leg of any animal, because the limbs are generally the seat of this malady. Lye, salt, and hot food are always forbidden ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that the remedy was the ingestion of much and diversified intelligible matter. It requires much observation of young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of unassimilated information stupefies the faculties instead of training them. Is it fanciful to think that in Edward Phillips, who was always employing his superficial pen upon topics with which he snatched a fugitive acquaintance, we have a concrete example of the natural result of the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... nearer, pass by the house, and go off in the distance. Those were the happy folks going to see the gold star and the Christmas greens in the church. The gold star, the Christmas greens, had all the more attraction from their vagueness. Dolly was a fanciful little creature, and the clear air and romantic scenery of a mountain town had fed her imagination. Stories she had never read, except in the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, but her very soul had vibrated with the descriptions of the celestial city—something ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the Sioux bands or villages, are as fanciful as those given to individuals. Near Fort Snelling, are the "Men-da-wahcan-tons," or people of the spirit lakes; the "Wahk-patons," or people of the leaves; the "Wahk-pa-coo-tahs," or people that shoot at leaves, and other bands who have names of this kind. Among those chiefs who ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... one of them a pretty little head and legs peeping out; or he went into a still corner, and watched the caddises eating dead sticks as greedily as you would eat plum pudding, and building their houses with silk and glue. Very fanciful ladies they were; none of them would keep to the same materials for a day. One would begin with some pebbles; then she would stick on a piece of green wood; then she found a shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor shell was alive, and did not like at all being taken ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... been a queer little episode, and had I been in my usual clue-hunting humour I should no doubt have dissected it carefully—and then abused myself for being a fanciful fool. But this afternoon I had too much else to think of and the incident passed out of ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... how fanciful you are! your hands have grown cold as ice. Probably when you are seventy you will consider yourself a still fascinating person of middle age, and look upon these thoughts of to-day as the sickly fancies of an infant. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Chartreuse, amber-seed as in Vespetro cordial, and sweet calamus as in Krambambuly; and it would be coloured red with sandalwood. But under what name should they introduce it for commercial purposes?—for they would want a name easy to retain and yet fanciful. Having turned the matter over a long time, they determined that it should be ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed him. The strolls of these short autumn days were never barren of interest and advantage to him. The man carried his treasures within himself; he only needed the slightest touchstone from ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... "Mully of Mountown," a poem; by which, though fanciful readers in the pride of sagacity have given it a poetical interpretation, was meant originally no more than it expressed, as it was dictated only by the author's delight in the quiet ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... A fanciful prologue, "Amphibian," strikes its key-note. The writer imagines himself floating on the sea, pleasantly conscious of his bodily existence, yet feeling unfettered by it. A strange beautiful butterfly floats past him in the air; her radiant wings can be only those of a soul; and it strikes ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... from each other. Always, through the work of these and that of Gautier, and of all the others who immediately or subsequently follow them, this broadening and branching out of the Romantic influence—this opening of fresh channels, historical and fanciful, supernatural and ordinary—shows itself. The contention, common in books, that this somehow ceased about the middle of the century, or at least died off with the death of those who had carried it out, appears to me, I confess, to be wildly unhistorical and uncritical. At no time—the proofs fill ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Socrates, that he must be a good orator because he had learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher supposes, but is rather to be regarded as fanciful. Nor can we say that the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses towards Socrates. Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates expresses that ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... one fancy dress in Diana's wardrobe, that of a Persian lady; and for once she showed herself greedy in the matter of clothes, and calmly commandeered it without consulting April. Yet the latter's fanciful imitation of a well-known poster, composed of inexpensive calicoes (bought from that emporium of all wants and wonders—the barber's shop), had triumphed over the gorgeous veils and jewels and silken trousers of the Persian houri and swept the unanimous vote of the ship into April's ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... that the four persons whom we are seeking to introduce were conscious of this dreamy character of the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps it even contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now their mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gayly as we may, and ask ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... otherwise be probable. In the present instance, after a review of all the circumstances, and an examination of all the documents with which he is acquainted, though the supposition here adopted may be deemed ideal and fanciful, he is inclined to think that the acquiescence in that view will be attended with fewer difficulties than the adoption ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... excite a spirit of rivalry. He contrived means to counteract the influence of painting, and commissioned several famous artists of the times to execute some elaborate pictures. Most of these were subjects taken from old romances, as he conceived that these were always more attractive than mere fanciful pictures. He had also caused to be painted a representation of every month of the year, which would also be likely, he thought, to interest the Emperor. When these pictures were finished he took them to Court, and submitted them to his inspection; but he would not agree that ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Don't interrupt us now," Wilford said, in a voice so much sterner than he was wont to use when addressing the little boy, that Jamie shrank back abashed and frightened; while Mrs. Cameron, still with her back to Katy, asked, what had put that fanciful name into her mind? Where had she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... got the better of Irons, did much toward restoring the artist's naturally buoyant spirits. He fell to reckoning his resources, and by dint of introducing into the account several pleasing but most improbable possibilities, he succeeded in building up between himself and ruin a fanciful barrier which for the moment satisfied him; and beyond the moment ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... constant amusement of my mind; or if I took a fancy to any new companion, that individual was metamorphosed into something equally unreal, and was soon looked upon in the light, not of sober reality, but of fanciful extravagance. Of course my estimate alike of persons and of things was egregiously false; and with a fair portion of common-sense naturally belonging to me, I became most emphatically a fool. Even when employed at the pencil, which I dearly loved, I could not trace a figure on the paper or ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... blazing with lights, directing their steps toward the East River, Fremont turned about and glanced with varying emotions at the brilliant scene he was leaving. He was parting, under a cloud, from the Great White Way and all that the fanciful title implied. He loved the rush and hum of the big city, and experienced, standing there in the night, a dread of the silent places he was soon to ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... from a comfortable sleep just because you have taken a silly notion into your head, Tom? Why, you are going to make me as fanciful as you are yourself!" ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... great towns; but it is pleasing to observe the contrast between the high bred, airy, elegant English hunter, and the majestic, docile, and well-broken war horse of Lombardy. Shall we fancy there is Gothic and Grecian to be found even among the animals? or is not that too fanciful? ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... father of his child? Who could explain it? Why should a happy innocent little lad like Tom o' the Gleam's "Kiddie" have been hurled out of existence in a moment as it were by the mad speed of a motor's wheels,—and a fragile "toy" terrier, the mere whim of dog-breeders and plaything for fanciful women, be plucked from starvation and death as though the great forces of creation deemed it more worth cherishing than a human being! For the murder of Lord Wrotham, Helmsley found excuse,—for the death of Tom there was ample natural cause,—but for the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... truth, &c, as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man, as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings, in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... believes in nothing good, or young, or in any way fresh. He is bad company, and I have shut the window again. You asked me for a story, and you are beginning to wonder why I do not tell you one. Do you like long stories or short stories? Sad or gay? True or fanciful? What shall it be? My true stories are all sad, but the ones I imagine are often merry. Could I not think of one true, and gay as well? There was once a bad old man who said that when the truth ceased to be solemn it became dull. Between ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... two pipes and an earthen jar of tobacco; and with the smoke came musings and with the liquor came fanciful conceits. To them it was a pride that they could drink without drunkenness; in moderation was a continuous pleasure. When Gid arose to go, he took an oath that never had he passed so delightful a time. The Major pressed him to stay to supper. "Oh, no, John," he replied; "supper ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... these, and, having prepared a feast for him, she and her little 'brood,' who are curled up near her, await the fairy stories of the dreamer, who, after his feast and smoke, entertains them for hours. Many of these fanciful sketches or visions are interesting and beautiful in their rich imagery, and have been at times given erroneous positions ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... "Please take her chain, and never give any one else the right to handle it. You will allow me this pleasure, I am sure, if only because of the love I bear Tara's son." (One of the whelps this lady had bought from him was a son of Tara.) "I know Mrs. Forsyth quite well—a whimsical, fanciful little person, who takes up a new fad every month, and is apt to change her pets as often as her gloves. I could not possibly let a stranger buy the beautiful mother of my Dhulert, and it gives me so much real pleasure to be the means of bringing her to your ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... doctors appear to think that it cures nothing. If they are right, we must conclude that the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on nothing better than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the parasitic nature of the plant, its position high up on the branch of a tree seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and animals are subject on the surface of the ground. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hypothesis that the author was content to omit facts with which the Christians around him were well acquainted, than by the hypothesis that he was a spiritualistic writer of the 2nd century who wished to make his Gospel fit some fanciful theory of his own. In fact, the latter hypothesis has proved a signal failure. The critics who say that the writer omitted the story of our Lord's painful temptation as incompatible with the majesty of the Divine Word, may be asked {31} why the writer gives no fuller ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... their curious wrought wampompeage and mowhackees which they put about their necks and loynes; which they count a rare kinde of decking." The same writer adds a description of an Indian king of this country in his attire, which is somewhat less fanciful than that in the letter. "A sagamore with a humberd (humming-bird) in his eare for a pendant, a blackhawke in his occiput for his plume, mowhackees for his gold chaine, good store of wampompeage begirting his loynes, his bow in his hand, his quiver at his back, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... Abbot and first Bishop. All the other five abbots are represented in alb and chasuble, holding a book (signifying, it is said, the statutes of the Benedictine order), in the left hand; while in the right hand is a crosier. In one instance this is not very clear. Four have their feet resting on fanciful creatures, which, in three cases, hold the lower ends of the crosiers in their mouths. Two of these crosiers, at least, are turned outwards: this is contrary to the commonly received opinion that the turning inward ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... one of a Chinese, taken also from the life by Mr. Alexander; and I have no doubt that a close comparison of these portraits will convince the reader, as well as the reviewer, that the resemblance I remarked to have found was not altogether fanciful. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... by means of his piles, was able to wrest from the earth electricity, which is, literally as well as figuratively, the "gleam" of an immense progress. Laying due weight upon a little fact, such as that of a dead being having moved, considering it soberly without any fanciful additions, and fixing the mind upon the resulting problem: Why does it move?—such was the lengthy process by which one of the greatest conquests of civilization ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... sites for rubber 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 ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course every nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding or preceding it; and in the best Greek work you will find some things that are still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false, or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it—it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:—Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... are two fools. She is too fanciful; I am too fond; she behaves too ill, and I put up with too ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there in the night, suffering acutely from the cold, unmoving, staring fascinated across the little stretch of desolation between the lines and to watch fanciful shadows until the mind falls prey to apprehensive imagination construing the posts and wiring into great fantastic grey-cloaked figures. Then at the turn of the head—WHAT is that? In one frenzied movement the rifle is levelled across the parapet, first ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... know at the beginning that there is nothing fanciful and uncertain about this great historic outline reaching to the end of the world, we note first the assurance with which the prophet closed his interpretation: "The dream is certain, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... this class to formulate creeds for the ignorant masses, religious belief and the ceremonies connected with "sacred" worship, during certain periods of the world's history, have assumed a grotesqueness in design unsurpassed by the most fanciful fairy tales which the imagination has ever been able to create, at the same time that they have portrayed a depth of sensual degradation capable of being reached only by that order of creation which alone has been able to develop ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... intense Evangelicalism of Miss Marryat colored the whole of my early religious thought. I was naturally enthusiastic and fanciful, and was apt to throw myself strongly into the current of the emotional life around me, and hence I easily reflected the stern and narrow creed which ruled over my daily life. It was to me a matter of the most intense regret that ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... with which the picture was surrounded. They consisted of whip handles, canes, piano keys, mouth-pieces for wind instruments, all sorts of umbrellas, and many more things, of every sort, made of cane and whalebone. The arrangement was so ingenious, the designs so fanciful, and the execution so good, that nothing could be prettier. But what of course was of the most importance, was the face and head that they were meant to ornament. "What a benevolent, what a beautiful face!" I ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... many carriages, and the poor struggling gentleman, perhaps a married curate, whose dwelling is bare, whose dress is poor, whose fare is scanty, whose wife is careworn, whose children are ill-fed, shabbily dressed, and scantily educated. It is conceivable that fanciful wants, slights, and failures, may cause the rich man as much and as real suffering as substantial wants and failures cause the poor; but the world at large will recognise the rich man's lot as one of success, and the poor man's ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... literature being nothing but the reflex of the life of man, or else of the life of nature, the final quest of every form of literature is that special kind of convincement which is inherently suitable to the special form. For the analogy between nature and true art is not a fanciful one, and the relation of function to organism is the same in both. But what is the difference between the convincement achieved by poetic and the convincement achieved by prose art? Is it that the convincement ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... [FN447] It may serve the home-artist and the home-reader to point out a few of the most erroneous The harp (i. 143) is the Irish and not the Eastern, yet the latter has been shown In i. 228; and the "Kanun " (ii. 77) is a reproduction from Lane's Modern Egyptians. The various Jinnis are fanciful, not traditional, as they should be (see inter alia Doughty's Arabia Deserta, ii. 3, etc.). In i. 81 and ii. 622 appears a specimen bogie with shaven chin and "droopers" by way of beard and mustachios: mostly they have bestial ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... bottles of ordinary quality, but with the art of staining it with divers colors, is sufficiently proved by the fragments found in the tombs of Thebes; and so skillful were they in this complicated process, that they imitated the most fanciful devices, and succeeded in counterfeiting the rich hues, and brilliancy, of precious stones. The green emerald, the purple amethyst, and other expensive gems, were successfully imitated; a necklace of false stones could be purchased at an Egyptian jeweler's, to please the wearer, or ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was real secret harm going on all this time that people spoke of her as a merely fanciful invalid; and that one or two accused him of humouring her fancies. But he only smiled at such accusations. He felt that his visits were a real pleasure and lightening of her growing and indescribable discomfort; he knew that Squire Hamley would have been only too glad if he had come ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... broad jet-black rings at equal distances round its body, each black ring or band divided by a narrow yellow strip in the middle. The symmetrical pattern and vividly contrasted colours would have given it the appearance of an artificial snake made by some fanciful artist, but for the gleam of life in its bright coils. Its fixed eyes, too, were living gems, and from the point of its dangerous arrowy head the glistening tongue flickered ceaselessly as I stood a few yards away ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... John had copied out for me some sweet quaint rhymes which were favourites of his and mine, and because I had thought the writing and the writer could never be glorified enough, I had wrought round the margin of the pages a border of fanciful arabesque, which I had filled ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... situation for Elma, of course, I admit," he was chirping out cheerfully, with his back turned by pure force of habit to the empty grate, and his hands crossed behind him. "I don't deny it was an awkward situation. Still, there's no harm done, I hope and trust. Elma's happily not a fanciful or foolishly susceptible sort of girl. She sees it's a case for mere ordinary gratitude. And gratitude, in my opinion, towards a person in his position, is sufficiently expressed once for all by letter. There's no reason on earth she should ever again see ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... are frequently exceedingly fanciful, and he is capable of attributing the most absurd reasons to the respect which is always shown by the most undeveloped races to dignity and character. You follow ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chaste and beautiful songs which have delighted, and still continue to delight, the hearts of so many. Though not marked with much that can be termed strikingly original, this, instead of militating against them, may have told in their favour. Wayward conceits, fanciful thoughts and expressions in songs, are like the hectic hue on the cheek of the unhealthy; it may appear to give a surpassing beauty, but it is a beauty which forebodes decay. "Oh, are ye sleeping, Maggie?" may be regarded ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the manner of the Queen Anne men, and Hazlitt is always best when he imitates nobody. "Hot and Cold" (which might have been more intelligibly called "North and South") is distinctly curious, bringing out again what may be called Hazlitt's fanciful observation; and it may generally be said that, however alarming and however suggestive of commonplace the titles "On Respectable People," "On People of Sense," "On Novelty and Familiarity," may be, Hazlitt may almost ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... your feelings wound up and kept ready for some sort of half-expected rapture are chilled, and borne down for the time under all this load of real earth and water; but let these once pass out of sight, and then again the old fanciful notions are restored, and the mere realities which you have just been looking at are thrown back so far into distance, that the very event of your intrusion upon such scenes begins to look dim and uncertain, as though ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... month or more the lonesome husband "stevedored," wrestling freight on the lighters, then he disappeared. He left secretly, in the night, for by now he had grown fanciful and he dared to hope that he could dodge his Nemesis. He turned up in Fairbanks, a thousand miles away, and straightway lost himself in ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... poems describes with fanciful charm, sometimes with happy gaiety, love at play with itself. True love makes in the soul an unfathomable ocean in whose depths are the imaginations of love, serious, infinite, and divine. But on its surface the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... its exaggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of esprit.—"Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!"— Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox,—if he is flighty and empty,—if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so much better ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... covered her with glory and brought gold to the god Amun. To me most feminine she seemed when I saw her temple at Deir-el-Bahari, with its brightness and its suavity; its pretty shallowness and sunshine; its white, and blue, and yellow, and red, and green and orange; all very trim and fanciful, all very smart and delicate; full of finesse and laughter, and breathing out to me of the twentieth century the coquetry of a woman in 1500 B.C. After the terrific masculinity of Medinet-Abu, after the great freedom of the Ramesseum, and the grandeur of its colossus, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... of all the heathen, made a point of teaching their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be self- willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness of rule, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... come to the third group of forms—the so-called Cashmere pattern, or Indian palmetta. The developed forms, which, when they have attained their highest development, often show us outlines that are merely fanciful, and represent quite a bouquet of flowers leaning over to one side, and springing from a vessel (the whole corresponding to the Roman form with the vessel), must be thrown to one side, while we follow up the simpler forms, because ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... saw lying on the floor the old slouch hat which Chip had worn the preceding day. His face, however, showed nothing as Nance reappeared bearing in one hand a peculiar lamp, scrolled and formed in a fanciful pattern and in the other a large book bound in parchment, covered with hieroglyphics. Putting the lamp on the table she extinguished the gas, and the pale- blue flame of the alcohol in the lamp cast its ghastly beams over ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton |
