"Fantastical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the isolation. In addition, the various torments of the region are worse at this season. Sitting beside the muddy banks of the Itecoahy at sunset, when the vapours arose from the immense swamps and the sky was coloured in fantastical designs across the western horizon, was the only relief from the sweltering heat of the day, for a brief time before the night and its tortures began. Soon the chorus of a million frogs would start. At first is heard only the croaking of a few; then gradually more ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... whole work) to the truth of judgments. An idea is real when it conforms to its archetype, whether this is a thing, real or possible, or an idea of some other thing; it is adequate when the conformity is complete. The idea of a four-sided triangle or of brave cowardice is unreal or fantastical, since it is composed of incompatible elements, and the idea of a centaur, since it unites simple ideas in a way in which they do not occur in nature. The layman's ideas of law or of chemical substances are real, but inadequate, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... exercise for muscle, nerve, and sinew. Don't lie there wasting all the grit that's in you In idle dreams; cut wood, if that were all; And then I'll say the devil's in't indeed If one brief fortnight does not find you freed From all your whimsies high-fantastical. ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... romantic soul which gets him there," he said. "Bones will not look at a proposition which hasn't something fantastical behind it. He doesn't know much about business, but he's a regular whale on adventure. I've been studying him for the past month, and I'm beginning to sense his method. If he sees a logical and happy end to ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... li to the Western Heaven. This promise, on the whole, he fulfilled in the service of Hsuean Chuang during the fourteen years of the long journey. Now faithful, now restive and undisciplined, he was always the one to triumph in the end over the eighty-one fantastical tribulations which beset them as ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears—a description of the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians, explained by the duke by way of parenthesis—suggested to Sulpice that the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was, after all, the filtering of a woman's glance through the very flesh of a man, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... esprit,[3] his capacity for induing he skin and the soul of other persons at remote times of history; his amazing inventiveness and the ease of it, at which point he beats Tennyson out of the field; his play, so high fantastical, with his subjects, and the way in which the pleasure he took in this play overmastered his literary self-control; his fantastic games with metre and with rhyme, his want of reverence for the rules of his art; his general lawlessness, belong to one side, but to one side only, of the Celtic ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... not reach her ears, and tied under her chin, her venerable white hairs in full view. The dress of old women and young girls in this country is detestable, to speak in the French style; the latter at the age of seven being clothed exactly like a woman of twenty, and the former have such a fantastical appearance that I cannot endure it. The old lady has all the vivacity of a young one. She is the most learned woman in France; her house is the resort of all men of literature, with whom she converses upon the most abstruse subjects. She is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... turrets and sail-like terraces, quite transparent, and floating in the thin air. Our earth hung over his head like a great dark red ball. Presently he discovered a number of beings, which might certainly be called men, but were very different to ourselves. A more fantastical imagination than Herschel's must have discovered these. Had they been placed in groups, and painted, it might have been said, "What beautiful foliage!" They had also a language of their own. No one could have expected the soul of the watchman to understand it, and yet ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... left the ground for the first time at the Pau school on February 17, 1915, in a three-cylinder Bleriot. But these were only short leaps, though sufficiently audacious ones. His monitor accused him of breakneck recklessness: "Too much confidence, madness, fantastical humor." That same evening he wrote describing his impressions to his father: "Before departure, a bit worried; in the air, wildly amusing. When the machine slid or oscillated I was not at all troubled, it even seemed funny.... Well, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... stickle for a closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Zither, and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed her silvery light over the whole country; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches on Hermann's passing. As soon as he approached the Lei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of it: anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution in the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... style was rough in places, but marvellously simple and direct. 'Mardi' is burdened with an over-rich diction, which Melville never entirely outgrew. The scene of this romance, which opens well, is laid in the South Seas, but everything soon becomes overdrawn and fantastical, and the thread of the story loses itself ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... us that it was styled the "Hermitage du Mont d'Or." In the space of not quite an acre of ground, on the side of a wooded hill of the highest natural loveliness, the proprietor had contrived to commit a host of the most outrageous and fantastical absurdities, which were hailed with a smile from Mons. C., and a burst of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, and none large enough for a moderate tea-garden, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... more trouble and inconvenience than others he pays for it; the charges of the tradesmen of fashionable people being excessively high. Here, however there is a distinction to be taken. There is no doubt that all the fantastical plagues and preposterous caprices which the spirit of fashion can engender, will be submitted to for money; but he who supposes that the outward submission will be accompanied by no inward feelings of resentment or contempt, either is wholly ignorant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious convulsions, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... them to the fancy. They are among the last traces, in these matter-of-fact days, of the motley population of former times; and are whimsically associated in my mind with fairies and witches, Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood, and the other fantastical ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... lightens in his eyes, and in his face and gesture is painted the god of hospitality. His great houses bear in their front more durance than state, unless this add the greater state to them, that they promise to outlast much of our new fantastical buildings. His heart never grows old, no more than his memory, whether at his book or on horseback. He passeth his time in such noble exercise, a man cannot say any time is lost by him; nor hath he only years to approve he hath lived till he be old, but virtues. His thoughts ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... hard as nails, but from that day onwards was a very poor creature indeed. The brass and steel wires in his system had degenerated into just those poor little soft grey threads which others have and are subject to many fantastical ailments. He fell into a nervous condition and started and blanched and was confused when suddenly hailed or spoken to even by some harmless old woman. He trembled at a shadow, and the very sight and sound of a wasp in the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... into graces in another. Yet to know Gideon Hayle was to read the riddle. As quick to anger as his sons, as full of mirth as his daughter; open-hearted, wrong-headed, generous, tyrannous, valorous, contemptuous of all book wisdom yet an incessant, keen inquirer with a fantastical explanation of his own for everything in nature, science, politics, or religion. Implacable in his ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... are made on earth, and cracked hearts can be mended like any other cracked ware. 'A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste,' with a woman's name—and it has power to turn the sunshine black! Let him play the man and put ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... a while, even after he had gained the street and made his way again to the subway, that nothing was concrete around him, that he was living through some fantastical dream. His head whirled, and he could not think rationally—and then slowly, little by little, his grip upon himself came back. She had come—and gone! With the roar of the subway in his ears, its raucous note seeming to strike so perfectly in consonance ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... was with Johnson himself. Behind all his learning lay something which no learned language could conceal. "On s'attend a voir un auteur et on trouve un homme." Authors then, as now, were often thought to be fantastical, namby-pamby persons, living in dreams, sharing none of the plain man's interests, eager and querulous about trifles and unrealities, indifferent and incapable in the broad world of life. Nobody ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... that the amorous part which is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge, and create one frivolous and false; as we see that the soul in the exercise of its passions inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own relief, than not to have something to work upon. And after this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are "born of the royal blood." They lack the inspiration and magic of his secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to stir a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may read Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness might have been ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... beneath us along the descending slope. All the rest of the island, spread out at our feet as in a map, was basking in yellow sunshine; and with its one dark shadow thrown from its one mountain-elevated wall of rock, it seemed some immense fantastical dial, with its gnomon rising tall in the midst. Far below, perched on the apex of the shadow, and half lost in the line of the penumbra, we could see two indistinct specks of black, with a dim halo around each,—specks that elongated as we arose, and contracted as we sat, and went ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... very large, and, I must admit, a very respectable saloon, although not exactly what I had expected to see at the very summit of the social Olympus. I dropped into a fauteuil near a centre-table, on which there was a fantastical silver-wrought card-basket. What struck me particularly about the basket was a well-known little Todworth envelope, superscribed in the delicate handwriting of my aristocratic cousin,—my letter of introduction, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt the reader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to retire with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village are pretty ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... these Pope Urban V. and King Charles V. (Fig. 422), inveigh against the poulaines, which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in fashion when they were made as a kind of appendix to the foot, measuring at least double its length, and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. The Pope anathematized this deformity as "a mockery of God and the holy Church," and the King forbad craftsmen to make them, and his subjects to wear them. All this is as nothing in comparison with the profuse extravagance displayed in furs, which was most outrageous ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... with dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the girl had been merged in the fact that, for the present at any rate, he was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and, to him, fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color of so many lives ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... whose figure was draped in a fantastical costume, grinned broadly, and did justice to the host's invitation. The sharply curved nose and the large mouth with dazzling teeth, the full blond hair, and the broad, muscular shoulders, were ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader—(a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... inventor did not know what to answer. How far was Mr. Jenks to be trusted? Were the stones he had real diamonds? Was his story, fantastical as it sounded—true? Would it be safe ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... career, we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion, in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber:—and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley,—and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,—and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... little I deserted my own work-desk, and in my aunt Claire's room, near the china bon-bon bear, I underwent with as much resignation as possible, the torture that the preparing of my tasks imposed. On the wainscoting of the wall, in a hidden recess of the room, there is still visible, among the other fantastical sketches, a pen-portrait of the "Big Ape"; the ink has faded to a light yellow, but the drawing has endured, and when I look at it I again feel a sort of deadly weariness, and a sensation of suffocation chills me ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts, in their various modes, are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... parted from his spirit very pensive and sorrowful, laying him on his bed, altogether doubtful of the grace and favour of God, wherefore he fell into fantastical cogitations. Fain he would have had his soul at liberty again, but the devil had so blinded him, and had taken such deep root in his heart, that he could never think to crave God's mercy; or, if by chance he had any good motion, straightways the devil ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... famous work, 'The Shoemaker's Holiday, or the Gentle Craft', categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy, it reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners. This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the intermingling of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed but idealised king ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... Truly a most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any rate, if not true it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... abandoning to God sail and rudder, and only stopping on their course to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and Easter on the back of the king of fishes, Jasconius. Every step of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on every isle is a monastery, where the wonders of a fantastical universe respond to the extravagances of a wholly ideal life. Here is the Isle of Sheep, where these animals govern themselves according to their own laws; elsewhere the Paradise of Birds, where the winged race lives after the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious lucidity, calling him a fool. G.B.S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, instead of denying or resenting it, says, "Ah, that fellow hides his meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is all so fine-spun and fantastical." G.B.S. calls a statesman a liar to his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy, "Ah, what quaint, intricate and half-tangled trains of thought! Ah, what elusive and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!" I think it is always quite plain what ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... their wishes, instead of their opinion who should win; and I have seen those who reproached them do the very same thing the instant their own vanity or prejudices are concerned. The most mechanical people, once thrown off their balance, are the most extravagant and fantastical. What passion is there so unmeaning and irrational as avarice itself? The Dutch went mad for tulips, and —— —— for love! To return to what was said a little way back, a question might be started, whether as thought relates ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in a dense atmosphere, which became an obstacle to the disclosure of truth as the clouds are to the rays of the sun, his image only appeared in fantastical outlines borrowed from "Conrad the Corsair," or "Childe Harold," or "Lara," or "Manfred," or indeed "Don Juan." Analogies were sought which do not exist, and to the poet were attributed the sentiments, and even the acts, of these imaginary beings, albeit without any of the great qualities ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain, applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] It appears, that this fantastical person had a considerable share in determining the false taste of his age, which soon became so general, that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... she could conceive. During my father's life, she had been made familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to address the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of his own application caused her to banish the idea. She saw therefore no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the loss ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... this should be called Pride, {130c} but rather neatness, handsomness, comeliness, cleanliness, &c. neither would he allow that following of fashions was any thing else, but because he would not be proud, singular, and esteemed fantastical by ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... the book of his spells is the penal code? Break the wand of this political Prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... had been narrowed and embanked, and two tiny rustic bridges, of fantastical wood-work, spanned its dark water. The dreary pollard- willows had vanished, and evergreens occupied their places. The black rushes had been exchanged for flowers. A trim little garden appeared where all had once been waste ground; and a flag-staff, with a bit of bunting, gave a naval aspect ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... subteltie, that she was not able to escape without daunger of her life and honour, whereof she declared herselfe to be so carefull. Alas, what blindnes is that, which captiuateth the wittes and spirite of him, that feedeth himselfe of nothing els, but vpon the rage of fantastical despite and vpon the furie of dispaire. Do wee not see, that after Reason giueth place to desired reuenge of wrong thought to be receiued, man dispoyleth himselfe of that, which appertayneth to the kinde of man, to put on the fierce ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... disappeared, and in the west there gleamed red, golden, and orange lights, similar to ribbons and gauzy veils, stretched over the whole sky. The mountains uplifted themselves in this glow; the cacti assumed different fantastical shapes, resembling people and animals. Jenny felt tired and sleepy, but they still hastened to the mountains, although they knew not why. Soon they saw rocks, and on reaching them they discovered a stream; they drank some water and continued along ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... reminds us of De Foe, that 'Badman did not tell him the reason. He supposed it to be that which was common to all vile persons. They loved their vice, but cared not to bear its name.' Badman said he was unwilling to seem singular and fantastical, and in this way he justified his expensive and luxurious way of living. Singularity of all kinds he affected to dislike, and for that reason his special pleasure was to note the faults of professors. 'If he could get anything by the end that had ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... his duty, and would be thanked for that, and dismissed, with a touch of his employer's hand. The young man would have made a good soldier—a better soldier, good as he might be as a scribe. He ought to have been in his father's footsteps, and he would then have disciplined or quashed his fantastical ideas. Perhaps he was right on the point of toning the Memoirs here and there. Since the scene at Steignton Lord Ormont's views had changed markedly in relation to everybody about ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my thoughts, for I perceived a slight noise at the door of my chamber as of one stealthily turning the handle, and I lay, without making any motion, to watch whereunto this proceeding would tend. The door was put gently open, and a figure did enter the room, so disguised with fantastical apparel that I was much put to it to guess what the issue would be. It was of a woman, tall and majestical, with a red turbaund round her head, and over her shoulders a shawl much bedizened with needlework. Her gown was of green cloth, and I was made aware by the sound, as she passed along the floor, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... of meeting there a minister whom he wants to kill. The employer of the pseudo-lackey, who is not aware of any of his projects, is a masterful presentation of a type which we know as the sybaritical citizen; the character of the valet is so fantastical that the account of his adventures belongs absolutely to the "genre" ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... easily round the memory of his dead mother as it rejoiced in the adventures of the Robinson family, or thrilled over the history of John Silver. It was just a deliberate fancy that he indulged in at will, and the only really fantastical thing about it was that he invariably started his tour with the imaginary Woman from the door of the closed room. At the end of October, when he had fairly settled into the regular routine of Aston House, a tutor was procured for him. School, for more ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... constantly appears as much bewigged and befogged with pseudo-classicism as M. de Jouy himself. He commits himself, in the year of grace 1829, to the statement that "the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth are melting fast from the field of our vision," while he contrasts with this "rapid withering of the laurel" the "comparative absence of marks of decay" on Rogers and Campbell. The poets of his own time whom he praises most heartily, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... cousin, is like a three-footed stool—so tottering on every side that whosoever sits on it may soon take a foul fall. For these are the three feet of this tottering stool: fantastical fear, false faith, ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... himself of the best assistances to explane any genuine author. But in many other instances, where the words are either not ancient or not used in their ancient sense, the interpretations are totally unfounded and fantastical; and at the same time the words cannot be altered or amended consistently with any rules of criticism, nor can the interpretations be varied without destroying the sense of the passage. In these cases, I think, there is a just ground for believing, that the words ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... work hanging on the walls of the great hall. Oblivious of the gorgeous ceremony in which he was playing the principal part, the young Marquis of Montacute stared at the pictures of the Crusader, and a wild, fantastical idea took ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a great deal of mischief. Louis is naturally inclined to be capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have contributed to increase this disposition. Seeking to obtain a reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself of enlarged views, and, at most, competent to local details, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... ignorant you say The thing that's not, elated still to sway The crass credulity of gaping fools And women by fantastical display,— ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... speeded in the direction of the lake; and after him they thundered, straining every sinew in the desperate chase. It was a wild and extraordinary sight, and partook of the fantastical character of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this to the Abbey, where he shut himself up to brood over his disgraces; grew gloomy, morose, and fantastical, and indulged in fits of passion and caprice, that made him the theme of rural wonder and scandal. No tale was too wild or too monstrous for vulgar belief. Like his successor the poet, he was accused of all kinds of vagaries and wickedness. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... into a temporary Elysium by the magic of the Lottery? Which of us has not converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sat brooding in the secret roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with his facile ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... vain and superficial distinctions? Do you not dance in public? What renders you more conspicuous? Do you not dress to be admired, and walk to be observed? Why then this fantastical scruple, unjustified by reason, unsupported by analogy? Is folly only to be published? Is vanity alone to be exhibited? Oh slaves of senseless contradiction! Oh feeble followers of yet feebler prejudice! daring to be wicked, yet fearing to be wise; dauntless in levity, yet shrinking from ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of butterflies—in short, send him ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... disordered Compromise is virtual death Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical Finishing touches to the negligence Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble Gradations appear to be unknown to you He had to go, he must, he has to be always going He stormed her and consented to be beaten His violent ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... features of any remarkable face, and afterward reproducing them on paper; but if any singularly fantastic form or odd face came in his way, he would make a sketch of it on the spot upon his thumbnail, and carry it home to expand at his leisure. Everything fantastical and original had a powerful attraction for him, and he wandered into many out-of-the-way places for the purpose of meeting with character. By this careful storing of his mind, he was afterward enabled to crowd an immense amount of thought ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... circle of the horizon, now held straight, now curved like a hook. At times the company, acting in concert, would shift their base of support from the right hand to the left hand, or vice versa. The whole action, though fantastical, was conducted with modesty. There was no instrumental accompaniment; but while performing the gymnastics above described the actors chanted the words of a mele to some Old World tune, the melody and ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... admirer, and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv.) It is there stated that Willobie, 'being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his familiar friend W. S., who ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... is obvious and I know that many of you will adopt it. It is comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. Yet it is not for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies, has fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of critical thinkers. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... and kinsmen; home, ease, and tenderness, for a whim, a dream, a passing qualm. No, sir; 'tis this Christian's ignorant hardness-of-heart that is his bane. Knowing little, he prateth much. He would pinch and contract the Universe to his own fantastical pattern. He is tedious, he is pragmatical, and—I affirm it in all sympathy and sorrow—he is crazed. Malice, haply, is a little sharp at times. And neighbour Obstinate dealeth full weight with his opinions. But this Christian Flown-to-Glory, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... considers it much inferior to wit, though it may often be more amusing. "Wit expresses something that is more designed, concerted, regular, and artificial; humour something that is more wild, loose, extravagant, and fantastical; something which comes upon a man by fits which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness. Humour, it has been said, is often more diverting than wit; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of humour as ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... land of love was suddenly far away, and there was the sound of china, and the heavy tones of Rem's voice—dissatisfied, if not angry—and Arenta's lighter fret; and they stood once more among fetishes and forms so foreign, fabulous and fantastical, that it was difficult to pass from the land of love, and all its pure delights, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the English reading world and Mr. Symons devoted to him one of his sensitive studies in The Symbolist Movement in Literature. Mr. Hale did the same years ago for American readers in a sympathetic article, The Fantastical Jules Laforgue. He also translated with astonishing fidelity to the letter and spirit of the author, his incomparable Lohengrin, Fils de Parsifal. I regret having it no longer in my possession so that I might quote from its delicious prose. As ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... another year—I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon any ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... effect on either of these sainted personages. They had gained, by visiting the capitals of all Europe, only a due acquaintance with the follies of each; and the only difference that could be observed in their conduct on their return was, that their affectation was rather more fantastical, and therefore more amusing. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... he cried excitedly, "that stout young gentleman with the black face and eyebrows, and the blacker heart, I may say,—the one dressed in the fantastical costume called by a French name,—is Mr. Charles Fox. He has been sent by the devil himself, I believe, to ruin this country. 'Ods, sir, that devil Lord Holland begot him. He is but one and twenty, but his detestable arts have saved North's neck from Burke and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... upon this romance is not easy. We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours.' We read further, and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This is lunatics.' One may venture the not profound remark that it takes all sorts of books to make a literature. Euphues is one of the books ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... long sometimes, that a feller daren't come within a fathom of 'em astarn without runnin' the risk o' trampin' on, an' carrying away some o' the canvas. The savage women frizzes out their hair into most fantastical shapes, till the very monkeys has to hold their sides sittin' in the trees larfin' at 'em—and wot do we do in regard to that? W'y, some of our women puts on a mixture o' hairy pads, an' combs, an' pins, an' ribbons, an' flowers, in a bundle about twice ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the second year the old Marquess, returning from Turin, was accompanied, to the surprise of all, by the fantastical figure of an elderly gentleman in the richest travelling dress, with one of the new French toupets, a thin wrinkled painted face, and emitting with every movement a prodigious odour of millefleurs. This visitor, who was attended by his French barber ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... man and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon, 'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Strange, fantastical, granite kopjes like mighty mausoleums adorned with ilex trees barred their path, and Diana was convinced some of the bones of her ancestors lay buried there, because she felt so weirdly at home ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... frustration. The image of Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly and indignity. That little pink-cheeked dancing-master to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he was. His bitterness took possession of him, and as he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... hidden where he knew no one could possibly steal them away from him. Then the little phial which he carried in the receptacle with his Bible was uncorked and the crimson paint applied with his forefinger to his face. The ornamentation was as fantastical as the imagination of the native ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... rabbet, the year of the cane with the day of the cane, &c., and never with the days which we have mentioned; but we ought to give more faith to Siguenza, who was certainly better informed in Mexican antiquity. The system of this gentleman is fantastical and full of contradictions." ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... Mephistopheles last came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us 'never to write a letter,—and never to burn one'—do you know that? But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall next ask a servant for my paste in the 'high fantastical' style ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... peaceful seasons glide serenely by, Fulfil their missions and as calmly die As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will,— To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence and right, reverend eminence, and holiness around the idea of a priest, as no mortal could deserve and as always must, from the constitution of human nature, be dangerous in society. For ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... has placed me in something of a quandary. In an ordinary way, finding a story with this title, in which moreover the chief characters are spoken of as Princess and Principal Boy, and the narrative is broken every now and then by fantastical little dialogues with Fairies, I should have said at once that here was a clever young writer whom a natural admiration for the work of Mr. DION CLAYON CALTHROP had betrayed into the sincerest form of flattery. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... seem to be suggestive rather of another poetical maxim in great favour with anchorites and recluses—"Retire, the world shut out." We cannot agree with Miss Seward, who describes this hermitage as "a retreat which breathes all the witchery of genius, taste, and sentiment." It is rather fantastical than tasteful, and savours more of eccentricity than sentiment. In the Gothic entrance, there are undoubtedly many fine specimens of carved wood-work, some of which we suspect were the plunder of despoiled convents and churches during the continental wars of the ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... of a meek spirit, and, as she was strictly virtuous herself, so she always put the best construction upon the words and actions of her neighbours, except where they were irreconcileable to the rules of honesty and decency. She was neither one of your precise prudes, nor one of your fantastical old belles that dress themselves like girls of fifteen; as she neither wore a ruff, forehead-cloth, nor high-crowned hat, so she had laid aside feathers, flowers, and crimpt ribbons in her head-dress, furbelow-scarfs, and hooped-petticoats. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... fairy islets appeared actually to float on the surface. We had to row our boats through a dense aquatic forest of mangroves for nearly a mile, along a narrow lane cut through the wood expressly for us the day before by the natives. These fantastical trees, which grow actually in the water, often recall to the imagination those villages one sees in countries liable to frequent inundation, where each house is perched on the top of piles. We saw with astonishment clusters of oysters and other shell-fish clinging to the trunk and branches, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... affected delight and admiration in her up-turned eyes. No contrast could be imagined greater than that between the stately gentleman clothed in black, with his broad intellectual brow, spectacled eyes, and grave, solemn manner; and light, fantastical, frivolous Miss Folly, clad in the most absurd of styles, but looking as though she thought herself the ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... bookseller has the temerity to place some of the latest fiction before our chatty alien, but pays dearly for his rash act. In these words did the Italian let him have it:—"Ai du not laich nov-els et ol, bico-S e nov-el is bat e fichtiscios tel stof-T ov so menE fantastical dids end nonsensical worDs, huicc opset maind end haRt. An-heppe tho-S an-uerE jongh persons, hu spend theaR pre-scios taim in ridin nov-els! The du not no thet nov-ellists, gennerallE spichin, aR thi ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... mass of trumpery novels, French translations, and the best English authors, provided only they were unworldly or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to take what he read and use it in his daily life. He often selected some fantastical motive which he had found set forth as operative in one of his heroes, and he brought it into his business, much to the astonishment of his masters and customers. For this reason he was not stable. He changed employers two or three times; and, so far as I could make ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... The great Eolis papillosa, of a delicate French grey; Eolis pellucida (?) (Plate X. fig. 4), in which each papilla on the back is beautifully coloured with a streak of pink, and tipped with iron blue; and a most fantastical yellow little creature, so covered with plumes and tentacles that the body is invisible, which I believe to be the Idalia aspersa of ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... his head and smiled. "Young enthusiasts like yourself are great at forming theories which well-seasoned men like myself must regard as fantastical. However," he went on, "there is no doubt that Miss Page was a witness to, even if she has not profited by, the murder we have been considering. But, with this palpable proof of the Zabels' direct connection with the affair, I would not recommend ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... debated steadfastly, and the long, slender fingers ran down the beard softly. At times there was a deep meditativeness in the eye, again a dusky fire. But there was a certain charm through it all—a languid precision, a slumbering look in the face, a vague undercurrent in the voice, a fantastical flavour to the thought. The change had come so gradually that only Medallion and the wife had a real conception of how great it was. Medallion had studied Secord from every stand-point. At the very ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and slaughtering our brethren. His pride, cherished by a band of villains who are constantly anxious to offer incense on his shrine, and tolerated by numberless victims who pine in his chains, has caused him to conceive the fantastical idea of proclaiming himself Lord and Ruler of the whole world. There is no atrocity which he does not commit to attain that end.... Shall these outrages, these iniquities, remain unpunished while ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... flocks, those fantastical themes, Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move: Arcadia displays but a region of dreams; What are visions like these to the first kiss ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... nurse and every body in the family left me. The servants settled it, in my hearing, that there was nothing in life the matter with me, that my mother and I were equally vapoursome-ish and timersome, and that there was no use in nursing and pampering of me up in them fantastical fancifulnesses: so the nurse, and lady's maid, and housekeeper, went down all together to their tea; and the housemaid, who was ordered by the housekeeper to stay with me, soon followed, charging the under housemaid to supply her place; who went off also in her turn, leaving ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Sometimes indeed the zeal of his enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use of tobacco. *y It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn association ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... all over the country make it look as if flocks of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them to ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance. The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the. doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... for the wasted arm, thin as a draper's wand, which held aloft the lamp that cast all its light upon him, the face would have seemed to hang in mid air. A gray pointed beard concealed the chin of this fantastical appearance, and gave him the look of one of those Jewish types which serve artists as models for Moses. His lips were so thin and colorless that it needed a close inspection to find the lines of his mouth at all in the pallid face. His great ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... delight the savage and silent shepherd. But when the long month of September comes, a shroud of snow spreads itself from the peak of the mountains down to their base, respecting only this deeply excavated path, a few gorges open by torrents, and some rocks of granite, which stretch out their fantastical forms, like the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... judge of poetry. He might in one sense be a judge of poetry as it falls within the limits and rules of prose, but not as it is poetry. Least of all was he qualified to be a judge of Shakespeare, who 'alone is high fantastical'. Let those who have a prejudice against Johnson read Boswell's Life of him: as those whom he has prejudiced against Shakespeare should read his Irene. We do not say that a man to be a critic must necessarily ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the view that the Hegelian idea of the existence of the absolute idea before the world, the pre-existence of the logical categories before the universe came into being, is nothing else than the fantastical survival of the belief in the existence of an extra-mundane creator; that the material, sensible, actual world, to which we ourselves belong, is the only reality, and that our consciousness and thought, however supernatural they may seem, are only evidences of a material bodily organ, the brain. ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... are bits of delicate landscape, with here and there a group of figures dancing or picnicking in the shadow of tall trees or under fantastical porticos. The furniture of the room is no less marvellous than its hangings. One turns from a harpsichord of vernis-martin to the clock, a relic from Louis XIV.’s bedroom in Versailles; on to the bric-à -brac ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... was a complete coquette, capricious and fantastical. As Mr Alworth was the prettiest man at the place and known to have a good fortune, she soon singled him out as a conquest worthy of her and successfully played off all her arts. By appearing to like him, she enticed him to address her; and by a well managed capriciousness of behaviour kept ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... America and cannot be far from San Francisco. That gives one a start. Swift, writing in 1725 with a world to choose from, selects the Californian coast as the most remote and unknown for the scene of his fantastical adventure. It thrusts 1725 into a gray antiquity. And yet there are many buildings in England still standing that antedate 1725 by many years, some by centuries. Queen Elizabeth had been dead more than a hundred ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... you see, sir, they say I am fantastical; why, true, I know it, and I pursue my humour still, in contempt of this censorious age. 'Slight, an a man should do nothing but what a sort of stale judgments about him this town will approve in him, he were a sweet ass: I'd beg him, i'faith. I ne'er knew any more find fault ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson |
