"Sprites" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sunlight danced like a myriad host of tiny sprites, clad in cloth of gold over the broad blue bosom of the Atlantic and into the windows of little Muriel's cheerful bedroom. The door opened softly, and Rose, in trim uniform and cap, with its three black bands, slipped into the room, silently motioning ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... moved to and fro over the field, ground sparrows rose in countless thousands, flinging themselves against the sky like grains of wheat from out a sower's hand, and their chatter fell upon me like the voices of fairy sprites, invisible and multitudinous. Long swift narrow flocks of a bird we called "the prairie-pigeon" swooped over the swells on sounding wing, winding so close to the ground, they seemed at times like slender air-borne ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... any more fortunate day, or, to be more exact, if he had been in a calmer frame of mind; he himself alone was in fault, he alone, and no spiteful accident, nor malicious and tricky Daimon. Hadrian, to be sure, attributed to these sprites all that he had done, and so considered it irremediable; an excellent way, no doubt, of exonerating oneself from a burdensome duty, or from repairing some injustice, but conscience is a register in which a mysterious hand inexorably ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... playing by a stream, and taunting them with future damnation, which threat never failed to turn the joyful music into pitiful wails. Often priest or children, discovering their mistake, and touched by the agony of their victims, would hasten back to the stream and assure the green-toothed water sprites of future redemption, when they ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... between the female of the Orange Tip butterfly, which is practically colourless, and the cabbage whites, and it would be worse than a crime to destroy so joyous and welcome a creature, whose advent is one of the pleasantest signs that summer is nigh at hand. I have watched these fairy sprites dancing along the hedge sides at Aldington year by year, and in May they were extraordinarily abundant here, happily coursing round and round my meadow, and chasing each other in the sunshine. The Orange Tip is quite innocent of designs upon the homely cabbage, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... delivered, Iris hastened away, for it seemed to her that already her eyelids grew heavy, and that there were creeping upon her limbs, throwing silver dust in her eyes, lulling into peaceful slumber her mind, those sprites born of the blood-red poppies that bring to weary mortals rest ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... said Miranda; "only I am not used to living with sprites and with sheep that talk, and everything here frightens me. It was very kind of you to bring me to this place, but I shall be even more grateful to you if you will take me up into the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... hard for us, at this day, to understand the opposition that sprang up against the telescope. We must remember that at this time belief in witchcraft, fairies, sprites, ghosts, hobgoblins, magic and supernatural powers was common. Men who believe in miracles make rather ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... violently: "In this way the whole world, and above all my glorious mountains, with their glittering subterraneous chambers, will be hocus-pocust into mere store-houses, wretcheder ones than if they were made of wood, into miserable wareshops and stalls. What then would the dwarfish sprites, and the mighty mountain-spirit, and all the goblins and elvish imps, and the swarm of gnomes there below have to do? and yet they are always, some of them cleverly, some of them clumsily, putting their hands to the wheel. And the waters! and the vapours! O thou blind and deaf generation, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the little sitting-room. Her mother, busied with household matters, only looked in upon her occasionally, and, as the eyes were always closed, did not speak, thinking her asleep. Ivy was not asleep. Ten thousand little sprites flitted swiftly through the chambers of her brain, humming, singing, weeping, but always busy, busy. Then another tread softly entered, and she knew her dear old father had drawn a chair close to her, and was looking into her face. Tears came into her eyes, her lip involuntarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... burden bore. That is, sustained the burden, or chorus, of the song. Cf. Shakespeare, Temp. i. 2. 381: "And, sweet sprites, the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... still regards, And tho' she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards. Her joy in gilded Chariots, when alive, 55 And love of Ombre, after death survive. For when the Fair in all their pride expire, To their first Elements their Souls retire: The Sprites of fiery Termagants in Flame Mount up, and take a Salamander's name. 60 Soft yielding minds to Water glide away, And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea. The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome, In search of mischief still on Earth to ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... air, read "The Return of The Birds," written in the early spring of 1864, when, as you know, the country was in great trouble, and the birds saw many a sorry sight. If you like a beautiful fairy-tale in verse, all about children and the elves or sprites that children love, read his "Little People of The Snow." There also is the pretty legend of "The White-footed Deer"; or if you bigger boys and girls wish something more weird and exciting, read his tragic story of "The Strange Lady." Then, on some lovely autumn day, when "the melancholy days ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... thing with which we deal. It can be brutalized beneath the brutes; it can rise into companionship with angels. Our primitive forefathers, as our fairy tales still reveal, believed that men and women could be changed into anything—into trees, rocks, wolves, bears, kings and fairy sprites. One of the most prominent professors of sociology in America recently said that these stories are a poetic portraiture of something which eternally is true. Men can be transformed. That is a basic fact, and it is one of the central emphases of the Christian Gospel. ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... night, though devoured every day, and drank endless cups of hydromel, drawn from the udder of an inexhaustible she-goat, and served out to them by the Nymphs, who had counted the slain, in cups which were made of the skulls of their enemies. When they were wearied of such enjoyments, the sprites of the Brave exercised themselves in single combat, hacked each other to pieces on the floor of Valhalla, resumed their former shape, and returned to their lard ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of looking at things have influenced in each country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make- believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... so, the figures rose in the air and seemed to grow lighter and larger. And suddenly the scene changed! He was out in the woods, with lofty trees towering above him, while all about, laughing and talking, were hundreds of little fairies, gnomes and sprites, and there, too, were the playmates of long ago, just as he had seen them when he had closed his eyes ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... try to imagine what tune it was that could call from the mountain air the 'flower sprites' and 'sunshine elves' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was deep silence in the chamber: dim And distant from each other burned the lights, And slumber hovered o'er each lovely limb Of the fair occupants: if there be sprites, They should have walked there in their sprightliest trim, By way of change from their sepulchral sites, And shown themselves as ghosts of better taste Than haunting some old ruin or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... away, nay pawn their very togs for it, And determined to be up to all, go down to see the show: Giddy pated, hearts elated, cash and courage all to view it, Ev'ry one to learn a bit, and tell his neighbours how to do it; E'en little Sprites in lily whites, are fibbing it and rushing it, Your dashing Swells from Bagnigge Wells, are flooring ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of the Fisher Folk would fill many volumes. They believe in all manner of devils and local sprites. They fear greatly the demons that preside over animals, and will not willingly mention the names of birds or beasts while at sea. Instead, they call them all cheweh—which, to them, signifies an animal, though to others it is meaningless, and is supposed ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying them out in the dark. One's common-sense—at least in matters of this sort—is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make four—they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find wings very readily, for I knew ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... trivial character of London court life at the time when English soldiers were battling for a great continent in the French and Indian wars. Its instant success caused Pope to lengthen the poem by three more cantos; and in order to make a more perfect burlesque of an epic poem, he introduces gnomes, sprites, sylphs, and salamanders,[188] instead of the gods of the great epics, with which his readers were familiar. The poem is modeled after two foreign satires: Boileau's Le Lutrin (reading desk), a satire on the French clergy, who raised a huge quarrel over ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the man was that he had a clan or train of little sprites attending him—small, delicate, aerial creatures, who came and went around him at their pleasure, and showed him wonderful things, and sang to him, and kept him from being discouraged, and often ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... mighty wraith nor spook of Arabian fancy, but a very small girl, or child, with very black hair, very white skin and very dark, beautiful eyes. A daughter of mixed ancestry, yet with her dainty hands and little feet, she seemed descended from sprites or sylphs. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... therfore a keie giuen vnto theim, when thei ware admitted to this ordre. The Reader, in signe and token of libertie to reade the Bible, and holie stories, had a greate booke giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, a Taper, and two emptie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Girl archers on top of columns at four corners of central court, launching arrow at sprites on base of columns. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... Asgard; and of the ghostly heroes in Valhal. Then he sang of the heaven-tower of the thunder-god, and of the shimmering Asa-bridge, or rainbow, all afire; and, lastly, of the four dwarfs who hold the blue sky-dome above them, and of the elves of the mountains, and of the wood-sprites and the fairies. Then he laid aside his harp, and told the old but ever-beautiful story of the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Chaucer, (as I have donne in all the written copyes whiche I haue yet seene,) his meaninge ys not that the intellecte was wholye goonne, as yt wolde bee yf yo{u} sholde reade, "and also the intellecte" for "save only the intellecte." for Chaucers meanynge ys, that all his streng[t]he and vitall Sprites aboute his outewarde partes were gonne, save onlye the intellecte or vnderstandinge, w{hi}che remayned sounde and good, as apperethe after by the followinge woordes, for when deathe approched, and that all outwarde senses fayled, he (Arcite) yet cast eye vppon Emelye, ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... Mrs. Walker's dress," John began, and the sprites, as if in ready obedience, were off in an instant; but in reality they were gone to find vases for the flowers, Emily looking up with all composure, though a good deal of scrambling and arguing were heard through ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... was noticeable upon The Waif. The effect of that ripple of laughter was startling. The sound rebounded from the rocky cliffs, cannoned against the barriers opposite, and then bounced backward and forward till the whole atmosphere of the valley seemed alive with the laughter of sprites. For quite five minutes we stood listening, then the silence chased the last faint echoes out across the cliffs, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... band of sprites, armed with sharp, silver spears, With pearl-encrusted garb and gleaming sandals, Dwelling low down the land, even amid men, The Queen's advance guard, giving due alarm Of all attacks, taking short flights by night, And reconnoitering the southern world,— ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... secluded part of the park, where the bridle-path passed among grassy knolls, and tall trees, flinging their branches across a narrow dell, formed a thick canopy overhead, and gave a somewhat gloomy aspect to the sequestered spot. It was one I seldom visited, and I was wondering whether sprites or fairies, good or bad, of whom I had heard the country people speak, really came there to gambol and play their pranks, when a figure started up from behind a bush with a menacing gesture, and before I could make my pony gallop on to escape ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... the cellar. What supports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports the family. The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into its dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes. Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples. I know not what comical sprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. The feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this underground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... such as to cause the trappers to fear seriously that the poor youth had "gone out of his mind," as they expressed it. But they were wrong—quite wrong—it was only the natural consequence of those demons and sprites having gone into his mind, where they were behaving themselves—as Bounce, when March made him his confidant, said—with ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... chosen—a place overshadowed by broad leaves of ferns and Heliconiae. I thought, as I watched it, that there was no need for poets to invent elves and gnomes while Nature furnishes us with such marvellous little sprites ready at hand. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... tinged the water till it glowed like nut-brown wine; so brown it was that the pools of the river, where it swirled and rushed past the schoolhouse bend, seemed to greet the sun with the soft dark glances of fawn-eyed water-sprites. The glorious sky, the tender colours of the budding wood, the very dandelions on the untrimmed bank, contrived their hues to accord and rejoice with the laughing water, and the birds swelled out its song. In the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... where the melons grew, Streaked with yellow, green and blue, These jolly sprites went wandering Through spangled paths of dew; And the melons, here and there, They made love to, everywhere, Turning their pink souls to crimson With caresses ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... increase the gloom, And awful silence of the tomb. Swift to his thoughts, unbidden, throng Full many a tale, forgotten long, Of ghosts, who at the dead of night Walk round their graves all wrapt in white, And o'er the church-yard dark and drear, Becken the traveller to draw near: And restless sprites, who from the ground, Just as the midnight clock doth sound, Rise slowly to a dreadful height, Then vanish quickly from the fight: And wretches who, returning home, By chance have stumbled near some tomb, Athwart a coffin or a ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... up his sprites And show the best of femail spites, So teach that horrid critter, man, We'll swaller him hul, when ere we can." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... dark-skinned brood, Inhuman, lawless, senseless, rude, Who know not Indra, hate his friends, And spoil the race which he defends. Chase far away, the robbers, chase, Slay those barbarians black and base. And save us, Indra, from the spite Of sprites that haunt us in the night, Our rites disturb by contact vile, Our hallowed offerings defile. Preserve us, friend, dispel our fears, And let us live a hundred years. And when our earthly course we've run, And gained the region of the Sun, Then ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the mark of good is good. Pity does not have the same finger-touch as revenge. Love does not hold the same brush as hatred. Sympathy and gratitude and benevolence have a different sign-manual from cruelty and carelessness and deceit. All these busy little sprites draw their fine lines, lay on their fine colors; the face lights up under their tiny hands; the prisoned soul shines clearer and clearer through, and there is the consecration ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Fairies, fays, genii, sprites, etc., were once supposed to be helpful to some favored men. The stories about these imaginary beings have always had a fascinating interest. The most famous of these stories were told at Bagdad in the eleventh ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... as he descended the stairs. "Before I would call that gray carle my father, or his child my wife, may I feel all the hammers of the elves and sprites he keeps tortured within that ugly little prison-house playing a death's march on my body! Holy Saint Dunstan, the timbrel-girls came in time! They say these wizards always have fair daughters, and their love can ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bills were printed bearing the name of Al. G. Field; when nearing the end of the circus season the management of the Bidwell & McDonough's Black Crook Company applied to Thayer & Noyes for two or three lively young men to act as sprites, and goblins, Mr. Thayer recommended young Mr. Field as a capable person to impersonate the red gnome; this name went on the bills. Alfred never signed a letter or used the newly acquired name until years afterwards circumstances ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... mistress warms, Who looks through spectacles to see your charms! While rival undertakers hover round, And with his spade the sexton marks the ground, Intent not on her own, but others' doom, She plans new conquests, and defrauds the tomb. In vain the cock has summon'd sprites away, She walks at noon, and blasts the bloom of day. Gay rainbow silks her mellow charms infold, And nought of Lyce but herself is old. Her grizzled locks assume a smirking grace, And art has levell'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... tall and gaunt, Our shadows reach across the street; Like giant sprites they seem to haunt The ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... jocund o'er the hills All jubilant, the waving woods display Her gorgeous gifts, magnificently gay! The wond'ring eye beholds these waving woods Reflected bright in artificial floods, And still, the tufts of clust'ring shrubs between, Like passing sprites, the nymphs and swains are seen; 'Till fancy triumphs in th'exulting breast, And care shrinks back, astonish'd! dispossess'd! For all breathes rapture, all enchantment seems, Like fairy visions, and ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... pretty brown pebbles sparkling up through the water; and then it made her think of something sad—she didn't know what; perhaps it was of the babes in the wood and the robins covering them up with leaves—and then again, in a moment, it sounded as if all the merry elves and sprites that ever were heard of had escaped from fairyland, and were rolling over and over with peals of rollicking laughter. And at last, all of a sudden, the song came ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... tactics, I did not follow her, not even with my eye, but looked down at my feet. Ah! the water sprites had been kind, for there was the dainty crib, set on a high tuft of sod raised by the winter's frosts, a little island castle in the wet marsh, cosey and dry. It was my first savanna sparrow's nest, whether eastern or western. The miniature ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... not euery sprit / but proue the sprites / whether they are of Godd or not. For many false prophetes are gone out into the worlde. Hereby shall ye know the spirite of Godd: Euery sprite that confessith that Iesu Christe is comme in the flesh / is of Godd. And ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... cries, Exalted to the heavens up, who, taking chalke in hande, Doth make a crosse on every beame, and rafters as they stande: Great force and powre have these agaynst all injuryes and harmes Of cursed devils, sprites, and bugges,[93] of coniurings and charmes. So much this king can do, so much the Crosses brings to passe, Made by some servant, maide, or childe, or by some foolish asse. Twise sixe nightes then from Christmasse, they do count with diligence Wherein eche maister, in his house, doth ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... from Ovid,[31] who uses it as an epithet of Diana, as being the sister of Sol or Helios, the Sun-god, a Titan. Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft,[32] gives Diana as one of the names of the "lady of the fairies"; and James I, in his Demonology (1597) refers to a "fourth kind of sprites, which by the Gentiles was called Diana and her wandering court, and ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick |
