"Disenchanting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undertakings it was his habit to expend abundant thought and devotion. The class of work was to his taste, for, though the funds at his disposal were not always so large as he desired for artistic effects, yet he enjoyed the opportunity of showing that simplicity need not be homely and disenchanting, but could wear the aspect of grace and poetry. Latterly he had been requested to furnish designs for some blocks of houses in the outlying wards of the city, where the owners sought to provide attractive, modern flats for people with moderate ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... restful," he remarked. "We have certainly had a very busy day. The inside of electioneering may be disenchanting, but it's jolly ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a diabolic ingenuity in sounding the sinister music of decayed souls have never been before assembled under one roof. Power there is and a saturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Toulouse-Lautrec had not the impersonal vision of Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony of Degas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night birds that he pencilled and painted in old Montmartre before the foreign invasion destroyed its native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a resort for easily bamboozled English and Americans, the earlier Montmartre was a rich mine for painter-explorers. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was to be taken away; but more often there was a strange sense of relief from what she was unfit for. She remembered that strange dream of her children turning into statues of gold, and the Magnum Bonum disenchanting them, and a fancy came over her that this might yet be realised, a fancy to whose lulling effect she was indebted for the sleep she enjoyed in the morning, which made her unusually late, but prevented her from looking ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fact Is of marvels all compact, So disguised by common daylight By its disenchanting gray light, Only eyes that see by shining, Inside pierce to its live lining. Loftiest observatory Ne'er unveiled such hidden glory; Never sage's furnace-kitchen Magic wonders was so rich in; Never book of wizard old Clasped such in its ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... that I might grow up as you see me, a true child of the pilgrim fathers? The nurture, I remember, was a particularly hard seat in our particularly gloomy old meetinghouse, and the admonition took up the greater part of the Sabbath day, with a disenchanting prospect of further admonition at home if I failed to keep awake. I do not mean to say that I am not thankful for the experience. In truth I am doubly thankful—thankful that I had it, and thankful ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... and gay. The little episode of missing the train had given her the old dear feeling of adventure and comradeship again. Things couldn't be any worse than they had been at noon, anyway. The experience had been thoroughly disenchanting. What did a few hours, more or less, matter! Let him be disgusted if he wanted to, she ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... between the theatre by gas-light and the theatre by day-light: the gold was pinchbeck, the gems were glass, the flowers were cambric and colored paper, the goblets were gilded pasteboard. Painfully did the ideal light fade away, and the well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... primordial ages of the earth, and buried in its depths as vegetable fossils through immeasurable eras of time, until system upon system of slowly formed rocks has been piled above, come forth at last, at the disenchanting touch of science, and turn the night of civilized man into day." They can paint to you the blush of Rhodope or Phryne, till you see the delicious color blend and mingle on the ivory of their tablets; but until, like Agassiz, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... his head discouragingly, and sought in every way to dissuade me from the step. He drew a disenchanting picture of the existence of a cabin-boy, whose constant duty (according to Pepper) was to have dishes broken over his head whenever the captain or the mate chanced to be out of humor, which was mostly all the time. But nothing Pepper said could turn ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... place beside her. But she was not to be seen when he got into Prickett's Lane. He looked up the weary length of the street, and saw nothing but the children playing on the pavement, and some slovenly mothers at the doors. It was a very disenchanting prospect. He went on again in a kind of gloomy discontent, displeased with everything. What was the good of it all? he said to himself—weariness, and toil, and trouble, and nothing ever to come of it. As ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the grim realities of earth. His pensive fancy pictured there at play From year to year the careless bands of boys, Unconscious victims kept in golden state, While haply they await The dark approach of disenchanting Fate, To hale them to the sacrifice Of Pain and Penury and Grief and Care, Slow-withering Age, or Failure's swift despair. Half-pity and half-envy dimmed the eyes Of that old poet, gazing on the scene Where ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... incomprehensibly, to like it. Their liking it, their businesslike assumption of equality, their incessant appearance (authorized, it is true, by business) at the railings of his pen, the peculiar disenchanting promiscuity of it all, preserved young Ransome in his eccentricity of indifference to their sex. In fact, if you tried to talk about sex to young Ransome (and Mercier did try) he would denounce it as "silly goat's talk," and your ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... is personally disorderly and untidy in her room and dress puts a great strain upon the patience and affection of all those associated with her who are possessed of refined and cultivated tastes. In fact, I believe there is nothing so disenchanting, so contrary to ideal young womanhood as a lack of neatness and tidiness in person and dress. This wonderful physical organism with which we have been endowed depends for its perfection and health and attractiveness ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett |
