"Fanciful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... became mingled with them; and, it is said that later generations of these Indians possessed many physical characteristics which indicated a mixture of the European and Indian races; but this may be, after all, fanciful surmises of the early ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who ...
— The Federalist Papers
... disguises, surprises, love intrigues, battles, jousts and single combats. Although the insurrection of the Helots against the Spartans forms a part of the story, the Arcadia is not the real Arcadia of the Hellenic Peloponnesus, but the fanciful country of pastoral romance, an unreal clime, like the Faery Land ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... listening entranced, sat the child Tara, with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart—a creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy was lost in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... is no fanciful production, but a clear, dispassionate revelation of the dodges of the professional criminal. Illustrated by numerous pen and ink sketches, Mr Power-Berrey's excellent work is useful as well as interesting, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... grandnieces, Elizabeth and Kate, though why Kate I don't know. It is a fanciful name, and new to the family, and I am surprised that you didn't call ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... about it; rather a serenity which reminded me of that sweet look of his boyhood, which had vanished during the manifold cares of his middle life. The expression of the mouth, as I saw it in profile—close and calm—almost inclined me to go back to the fanciful follies of our youth, and call ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... having stood awhile to look, hearing the noisy clamor of the sailor crowd, sent the Queen with her damsels in a very light barge to stay on a little island distant from us a quarter of a league; himself remaining a very long time, discoursing by signs and gestures of various fanciful ideas, examining all the equipments of the ship, asking especially their purpose, imitating our manners, tasting our foods, then parted from us benignantly. And one time, our people remaining two or three days on a little island ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... enjoying the isles of the blest; or of an existence divided between the two; or the Hesiodic, of righteous spirits, who become guardian angels,—had given place in the mysteries and the Orphic poets to representations, partly fanciful, of a future state of rewards and punishments. (Laws.) The reticence of the Greeks on public occasions and in some part of their literature respecting this 'underground' religion, is not to be taken ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Tactics," he kept writing up contemporary history to the year 362 B.C., when the star of Thebes set with the death of Epaminondas; he completed his long and perhaps tedious historical novel, the "Education of Cyrus" (the elder), and lastly composed a curious and fanciful tract on the "Revenues of Athens." There is no evidence that he ever changed his residence back to his native city, but that he often went there when no obstacle remained, from the neighboring Corinth, is most probable. An open sailing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... deny his possession of this very grace. Virchow does not know how ignorant he is of morphology, else he would never have uttered his annihilating verdict on it, else he would not continually designate the study of the theory of descent as dilettanteism and vain dreaming, as "a fanciful private speculation which is now making its way in several departments of natural science." In truth, Virchow does me greatly too much honour when he designates as my "personal crotchet" an idea which for the last ten years has been the most precious common ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... heard some wild legend about a Bloody Footstep," answered Middleton; "indeed, I think I remember hearing something about it in my own country; and having a fanciful sort of interest in such things, I took advantage of the hospitable custom which opens the doors of curious old houses to strangers, to go to see it. It seemed to me, I confess, only a natural stain in the old stone ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thought it floated on the waters like an island. Then they postulated solid pillars, or even supposed it might turn on pivots placed at the poles. But on what would all these imaginary supports have rested? All these fanciful foundations of the Earth had to be given up, and it was recognized as a globe, isolated in every part. This illusion of the ancients, which still obtains for a great many citizens of our globule, arises, as we said, from a ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... the most charming of Father Tabb's lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too prone to merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for example, in the lines where he says of ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... perfumed with frankincense and lime-juice. Before dinner they were amused after the manner of their country; instruments of music were introduced; the song and the dance were promoted; games of chance were furnished them; the men played and sang, while the women and girls made fanciful ornaments from beads, with which they were plentifully supplied. They were indulged in all their little fancies, and kept in sprightly humour. Another of them had said, when the sailors were flogged, it was out of the hearing of the Africans, lest it should ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... his breakfast, Captain Horn went to work. There was to be no more thinking, no more plans, no more fanciful anxieties, no more hopes of doing something better than he had done. Work he would, and when one thing was done, he would find another. The first thing he set about was the improvement of the pier which had been built for the landing of the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... 'Icosameron' a romance in five volumes, dedicated to Count Waldstein, which he describes as "translated from the English." This fanciful romance, which included philosophic and theological discussions, was the original work of Casanova and not a translation. It was criticized in 1789 by a literary journal at Jena. Preserved at Dux were several manuscripts with variants of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dear; but, pardon me, we won't go into the question of how you came by the dress. You are at least ten years too young to be dressed in a fanciful costume of that kind. Your father does not wish you to wear that dress again, Ermie, nor to arrange your hair as you did to-night. Have you got a simple white dress ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work, above all others that I have written, which has given me the most delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which my mind ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... domestic sanctuaries. The page of history informs us, that the progress of any nation in morals, civilization, and refinement, is in proportion to the elevated or degraded position in which woman is placed in society; and the same instructive volume will enable us to perceive, that the fanciful creations of the needle, have exerted a marked influence over the ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... through her. It was as if some one had knocked, loudly, at dead of night at a closed door! That writing—how absurdly fanciful she was getting! ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... this colossal prosperity. The one, tall, brown-haired, with blue eyes changing like the sea; the other, fragile, fair, with dark dreamy eyes. Jeanne, proud, capricious, and inconstant; Micheline, simple, sweet, and tenacious. The brunette inherited from her reckless father and her fanciful mother a violent and passionate nature; the blonde was tractable and good like Michel, but resolute and firm like Madame Desvarennes. These two opposite natures were congenial, Micheline sincerely ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. "This means that a chasm of 30 or 40 years separates Mark's written document from the ministry of Jesus—a long enough time to create a plastic body of oral teachings and a highly colored tradition embellished with fanciful stories." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of the night by the loud clack of their wooden shoes. For at the time of which we speak there were few that despised this comfortable shoe of the country, unless it were some new-fledged medical student from Valladolid, who considered himself above such old-fashioned things, or some fanciful young lady, who pretended that she could not walk in them. But these were the exceptions. There were no carriages in the town, for only three existed in the place, belonging respectively to the Quinones, the Countess of Onis, and to Estrada-Rosa; ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... when I did;" and, after another year's interval, "I have preferred and still prefer Raymond to Salem, through every change of fortune." There can be no doubt where his heart placed the home of his boyhood; nor is it, perhaps, fanciful to observe that in his books the love of nature he displays is rather for the woods than the sea, though he was never content to live long ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... fraud. But the adventurous physician goes on, and substitutes presumption for knowledge. From the scanty field of what is known, he launches into the boundless region of what is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanciful theory of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical powers, of stimuli, of irritability accumulated or exhausted, of depletion by the lancet, and repletion by mercury, or some other ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... evening; the preparations were nearly completed; to-morrow he would launch his boats. In his mind's eye he saw the rich prize in his grasp; and, with tin spoon in his hand, he was forgetting the plateful of rice before him in the fanciful arrangement of some splendid banquet to take place on his arrival in Amsterdam. Nina, reclining in the long chair, listened absently to the few disconnected words escaping from her father's lips. Expedition! Gold! What did she care for all that? But at the name of Maroola mentioned by her ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... stories comprising the seven in this little collection of Stories of the Old Missions, all but one have, as a basis, some modicum, larger or smaller, of historical fact, the tale of Juana alone being wholly fanciful, although with an historical background. The first story of the series may be considered as introductory to the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... a fanciful idea of his that dreams in general imply a subconscious state coexisting constantly with the actual realm of thought, but penetrated by our consciousness only when the will is least active, or during sleep. With ordinary mortals ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... with them, although it hurt him to think that Heller was thus getting the better of him. Instead, he stayed at home with Holdria, who listened to him with radiant smiles or with large, troubled eyes when he growled and cursed or when he drew fanciful pictures of what he would do if any one lent him ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... carry it," said Percy. "I cannot do much to assist the fellow along, but I hope that his weakness is more fanciful than real, and that now he is relieved from the weight of his gun he ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... dog Neptune; and do you think, Rosy, that your dear uncle would call his dog after an imaginary being?—and he a man to beat the wind, and attack ship, and take the sun, moon and stars aboard! No, no, child; fanciful folk may see imaginary beings, but ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... comes. But we are now about to deal with a question which only affects, according to the census, something under 700,000 people. I observe hon. Gentlemen talk of the Protestants of Ireland as being one- fourth of the whole population—of being a million and a half. All that is fanciful exaggeration. According to the census the Episcopalians are not more than 700,000, and let hon. Gentlemen bear this in mind—when the census enumerators go round, if a man is not a Catholic or a Presbyterian, he is put down, unless he can state he is of some other sect, as an Episcopalian. And judging ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... it were ranged, for the princes, less splendid, though still extremely elegant and charmingly fanciful chairs; for the Egyptians are no less clever at carving cedar, cypress, and sycamore wood, in gilding, colouring, and inlaying it with enamels, than in cutting in the Philoe or Syene quarries monstrous granite blocks for the palaces of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... devoted himself. If perfect, unalloyed happiness has ever existed in this weary, work-day world of ours, it has been in the bosoms of some of those old religious artists of the Middle Ages, whose thoughts grew and flowered in prayerful shadows, bursting into thousands of quaint and fanciful blossoms on the pages of missal and breviary. In them the fine life of color, form, and symmetry, which is the gift of the Italian, formed a rich stock on which to graft the true vine of religious faith, and rare and fervid were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... distinguishing merit of Dante's love-poetry over all that had preceded it and most of what has followed it. There are, however, some among his earlier poems in which the "sweet new style" is scarcely heard,—and others, of a later period, in which the accustomed metaphysical and fanciful subtilties of the elder poets are drawn out to an unwonted fineness. These were concessions to a ruling mode,—concessions the more readily made, owing to their being in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing tendencies of Dante's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... letters how hard it went with me, because the rector found his pleasure in making a jest of me, and turning my feelings to ridicule. I never complained of any one, with the exception of myself. I knew that they would say in Copenhagen, "He has not the desire to do any thing; a fanciful being can do no good ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... government,—others, that his expedition was against Mexico only, and that he was sure of foreign aid. He represented to the honest, that he had bought lands, and wished to form a colony and institute a new and better order of society; the ignorant were deluded with a fanciful tale of Southern conquest, and a magnificent empire, of which he was to be king, and Theodosia queen after his death. So thoroughly was this deception carried out, that it is difficult to determine who were actually engaged with him. Without doubt, many acceded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the walls we went, and the fortress was ours. Old D'Aulon thought her mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that she felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in her heart. It was a fanciful expression; but, to my thinking, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... being deeply engraven and afterwards filled with a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, which would give the entire floor the appearance of being covered with inscriptions in gilt characters, the strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole look like an intricate and fanciful design. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... was a fanciful name given to the little boy because his shock of golden curls looked like the nimbus around a saint's head.] ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and so pulled himself ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Henry not to add that he was really a most obedient boy—in short, a good boy, a nice boy. The strangest thing of all in Henry's case was that, despite their united and unceasing efforts, his three relatives had quite failed to spoil him. He was too self-possessed for his years, too prone to add the fanciful charm of his ideas to no matter what conversation might be proceeding in his presence; but spoiled ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... 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; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... wilderness. Physical difficulty is the enemy of early communities, and an incessant conflict with it for generations leaves a mark of reality on the mind—a painful mark almost to us, used to impalpable fears and the half-fanciful dangers of an old and complicated society. The "new Englands" of all latitudes are bare-minded (if I may so say) as compared with ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... sensation produced by the anaesthetic, in passing to and from unconsciousness, was exhilarating and delightful. For some hours, exhausted from loss of blood as I was, I fell into short dozes, accompanied with fanciful dreams. Not all have the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... on the several larger planets. Theories of all kinds have been advanced; some speculative or absurd, others so plausible as to give rise to interesting questions, such as communicating with Mars, and perhaps of taking a journey to the Moon. These suggestions, while fanciful, awaken our interest and excite our curiosity. Can any one predict the excitement that would prevail in our world if a human creature from some other planet were suddenly to set foot upon our soil? We would fling a thousand questions at him ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... of house-hunters to a private room, and unfolded a map of the city before them. On this he traced, with a well-kept finger-nail, a series of lines,—like those fanciful isothermal definitions that embrace the regions of perennial summer on the range of the Northern Pacific Railroad,—within which social respectability made its home. Within certain avenues and certain ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... winter apparel. The publishers understand this. As certainly as the birds appear, comes the crop of summer novels, fluttering down upon the stalls, in procession through the railway trains, littering the drawing-room tables, in light paper, covers, ornamental, attractive in colors and fanciful designs, as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. When the thermometer is in the eighties, anything heavy and formidable is distasteful. The housekeeper knows we want few solid dishes, but salads and cooling drinks. The publisher knows that we want our literature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are like the general conceptions of the big Old Testament prophets. The suggestion is given only because it has often recurred, and therefore with the feeling that there is something more than fanciful in the com-parison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails in one important particular, for none of the prophets seems to have had ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... worse guide than that of the great poet. This accounts for the fact that masterpieces of simple poetry are commonly followed by a host of stale and unprofitable works in print, and masterpieces of the sentimental class by wild and fanciful effusions,—a fact that may be easily verified on questioning ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the free disposition of his own property, have, like the Fourierists, stumbled upon some new, strange, and chimerical system of social government, some wild theory, without precedent in the annals of human nature? It does appear to me, that, if in all this there is any thing doubtful, and of fanciful or theoretic origin, it is not free trade, but protection; not the operating of exchanges, but the custom-house, the duties, imposed to overturn artificially ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... have given up themselves to fanciful credulity would confine their conceits in their own minds, they might regulate their lives by the barometer, with inconvenience only to themselves; but to fill the world with accounts of intellects subject to ebb and flow, of one genius that awakened in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... is not a fanciful case can be shown by noticing how often we speak of "transparent" honesty, or of "absolute" honesty: this is notably one of the words for which we have a sliding scale of values, which vary considerably with the age and the community. "Political honesty" ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... slumberer, that shone like a faultless picture from its frame of golden curls, Theresa adjourned with Gerald to the porch. It was a perfect evening, and the rays of the full moon illumined the little portico, throwing on its floor, in fanciful mosaic, the fantastic shadows of the vines which draperied the pillars, and lighting up with its spiritual radiance, the earnest countenances of the youthful friends. Gerald looked more than usually pale in the blanching beams, and Theresa's gaze ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... pleasant," continued Olaf, running on with the subject until it led him into another subject, which led him into a third and fourth, and so on, with the ever-varying moods of his gay and fanciful mind, until he was led in spirit to Vinland, where he and Snorro remained lost in the woods, perfectly contented and happy, for the remainder of ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... range, from the a priori conceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful,—but, considering the time, none too fanciful,—designation of 'the Idols';—(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading),—'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason—scientific, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... never been equalled. There was a strong feeling of balance in the decorations, and the chief motifs were the acanthus beautifully carved, conventionalized flowers and fruit, horns of plenty, swags and wreaths of fruit and flowers, the scroll, dolphin, human figure, and half figure ending in fanciful designs of foliage. Beautiful and fascinating arabesques were carved and painted on the walls and pilasters. The chief pieces of furniture were magnificently carved chests and coffers which were also sometimes gilded and painted, oblong tables with elaborately carved supports at each ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Luna walked down the cloister, passing by the two doors that opened into the church. The one called del Presentacion is a lovely example of Plateresque art, chiselled like a jewel, and adorned with fanciful and happy trifles. Going on further, he came to the back of the staircase by which the archbishops descended from their palace to the church; a wall covered with Gothic interlacings, and large escutcheons, and almost on the level of the ground ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... which your contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. It had occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a trance, and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time was not the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did this idea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellow physicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponing their experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me, than I set on foot a systematic attempt at ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of individuals. Whatever attractiveness she may have succeeded in giving to her heroine is no doubt the shadow, so to speak, of a real influence so strong that no one writing of the English stage at the present moment can easily escape it; but otherwise everything is fanciful, the outcome, and indeed, too much the outcome, of certain critical ideas. And in the details of the story there has been no chronicling of persons; all the minor and subsidiary figures are imaginary, devised so as to illustrate to the best of the writer's ability the various influences ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seemed to assert equality with the queen of flowers, and would not be eclipsed by the fragrant loveliness of their beautiful dependents. The borders of box, which had once been trimmed and trained into fanciful points and tufts and convolutions of verdure, had grown into misshapen clumps; and the white, pebbly walks no longer sparkled in ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... 200 troops stationed at the castle under Colonel Saleh, to whom we paid an official visit; as also to the Kaid of Gharian. In both cases we were hospitably treated to pipes, coffee, and lemonade. In this canton are said to be the fanciful number of "one hundred and one" Arab districts, inhabited by the Troglodytes. All the villages, indeed, hereabouts, are underground: not a building is to be seen above, except at wide intervals an old miserable, crumbling, Arab fort. The people ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... and eleven of them yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed to draw a circle of witchcraft around ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenading upon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search of exercise and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... had completely armed Hercules for his undertakings, and his great strength enabled him to perform them. This entire fable of Hercules is generally believed to be merely a fanciful representation of the sun in its passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac, in accordance with Phoenician mythology, from which the legend is supposed to be derived. Thus Hercules is the sun-god. In the first month of the year the sun passes through the constellation Leo, the lion; and in his ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... She grew fanciful with regard to the other Americans in the hotel. She imagined they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had nothing to ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting at night, reading under the drop-light, Lynde often had an odd sensation as if the little shoe would presently come tripping across the green table-cloth towards him. He had a hundred fanciful humors growing out of that slipper. Sometimes he was tempted to lock it up or throw it away. Sometimes he would say to himself, half mockingly and half sadly, "That is your wife's slipper;" then he would turn wholly sad, thinking how tragic that would be ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the telephone number of an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included: "Automat," "Birdland," "Cannery," "Catbox," "De-louser," "Easy-go," "Good-by, Mother," "Happy Hooligan," "Kiss-me-quick," "Lucky Pierre," "Sheepdip," "Waring ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... that to 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 ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... word. This account of the "Haunted House," in which Esther Cox suffered so much, and the author had such a remarkable experience, is no fanciful creation of the imagination, but really what it is claimed to be,—"A True ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... my thoughts, real and fanciful, moved the image of a perfect girl, clear-eyed and strong and straight and beautiful, with the carriage of a queen and the supple, undulating grace of a leopard. Though I loved my friends, their fate seemed of less importance ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... trust all but antiquaries will forgive. Hitherto we have been in the land of shadow—we approach the light. The empty names of apocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part as spectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions—invoked to please a fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason or excuse the apparition. If I am blamed for not imitating those who have sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtle conjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hung heavy on my mind were only the morbid, fanciful thoughts of the hour, here was a man whose society would dissipate them. I resolved to try the experiment, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,—the lovely and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his mate, it was he responsible for all the damage done! It was the fault of the elder-tree—of Saint John's night! ... But now—" he broadly dismisses the fancies and aberrations of the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... have included among the data of our reasonings agents or circumstances that do not exist or do not affect the phenomenon in question. In the early days of science purely fanciful powers were much relied upon: such as the solid spheres that carried the planets and stars; the influence of the planets upon human destiny; the tendency of everything to seek "its own place," so that fire rises to heaven, and solids fall to the earth; the "plastic ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... jutting cape, which, when the Northmen spied, A fanciful resemblance they descried To human features; so they gave a name To mark that cape, and still ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... known. Had I not resolved never to quit my Convent, except upon circumstances as urgent as that which has conducted me to your door, I should be frequently summoned upon insignificant occasions: That time would be engrossed by the Curious, the Unoccupied, and the fanciful, which I now pass at the Bedside of the Sick, in comforting the expiring Penitent, and clearing the passage to Eternity ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Genoese Brignoli, and in the portraits of Roman inquisitors. It is as though the whole race had put on mourning for its loss of liberty, its servitude to foreign tyrants and ecclesiastical hypocrites. Nor is it fanciful to detect a note of moral sadness and mental depression corresponding to these black garments in the faces of that later generation. How different is Tasso's melancholy grace from Ariosto's gentle joyousness; the dried-up precision of Baroccio's Francesco ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... and alabaster baths with taps of gold. On one side of the garden was a large aviary; on the other a huge elephant, chained to a tree. The walks were set in mosaic of coloured pebbles, in all kinds of fanciful patterns; and around were groves, bowers, arbours, and trellis-covered paths, with streams, fountains, hedges of box and myrtle, flowers, cypresses, odoriferous plants, and trees groaning under the weight of lemons, oranges, citrons, and fruit in great variety. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... for long afterwards, there were many wonderful little stories, doubtless fanciful enough, but all taking colour from the one charming fact of the royal lovers. How the Queen, whose place it was to choose, had with maidenly grace made known her worthy choice at one of these palace "dances," ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... figures previously exhibited. Even in unexpected engagements the same thing would happen,—which will, it is hoped, be a sufficient proof of the fact that this classification of the different systems or orders of battle is neither fanciful nor useless. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... the immense expanse of the heavens, and as we gaze, the sparkling dots of light appear silently, slowly, one after another, just as beautiful flowers appear as the early morning light gilds the green meadows. We think, too, in the poet's fanciful way, that these are no common flowers, but exquisite tokens of the loving care the angels have over us, and a gentle reminder that always ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... always buoys up the Clouds and keeps them suspended. This has been long observed by, and passes for a settled point amongst Seamen. The Reason of it however cannot be so easily assigned, at least a satisfactory Reason, for as to Suppositions, every fanciful Man ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss. The name brought with it a face—a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes that called. He walked a long way thinking about them and wondering. The eyes haunted him. It will have been reasonably evident that Ste. Marie was a fanciful and imaginative soul. He needed but a chance word, the sight of a face in a crowd, the glance of an eye, to begin story-building, and he would go on for hours about it and work himself up to quite a passion with his imaginings. He should have been a ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Whatever fascinates the senses alone is mere matter, and the rude element of a work of art:— if it takes the lead it will inevitably destroy the poetical—which lies at the exact medium between the ideal and the sensible. But man is so constituted that he is ever impatient to pass from what is fanciful to what is common; and reflection must, therefore, have its place even in tragedy. But to merit this place it must, by means of delivery, recover what it wants in actual life; for if the two elements of poetry, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that we have to consider is the famous Anglo-Saxon 'Chronicle.' It covers with more or less completeness the period from 449 to 1154. This was supplemented by fanciful genealogies leading back to Woden, or even to Adam. It is not known when the practice of jotting down in the native speech notices of contemporary events began, but probably in very early times. It is believed, however, that no intelligent effort ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and steam twenty minutes, or longer for large fish. When the meat easily separates from the bone it is done. Drain well and serve on a very clean white napkin, neatly folded and placed on the platter; decorate the napkin around the fish with sprigs of curled parsley, or with fanciful beet cuttings, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... of youth and hope in Lucia's nature had only waited for some chance touch to set it free, and make it spring up vigorously after its repression. At any rate she found a fanciful omen in the visit of the snow-white bird; and began to believe that in the new country and the new life, there might be as much that was good and happy as in the old one. The last hours, full of excitement and impatience as the voyage drew to a close, were not unpleasant ones. Very ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... and indeed, it was difficult for the most fanciful to imagine Silent Simon married. Even in his youth he had not been attracted by the other sex, and his own qualities certainly did not attract them. Not that there was a word to be said seriously against ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Christian, through the power of faith in that Cross by which 'the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world.' That thought comes over and over again in all forms of earnest presentation in the Apostle's teaching. Do not slur it over as if it were a mere fanciful metaphor. It carries in its type a most solemn reality. The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life. There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His own. The new man, that which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... made a fool of him. He consequently gave way to a fit of wrath; but upon recalling to mind the charms of lady Feng's face, he felt again extremely aggrieved that he could not there and then clasp her in his embrace, and as he indulged in these wild thoughts and fanciful ideas, he could not the whole ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... see to for the supper, and on these occasions Mrs. Malling would not trust their supervision even to Prudence, much less to the hired girl, Mary. Sarah Gurridge remained in her seat by the stove watching the glowing coals dreamily, her mind galloping ahead through fanciful scenes of her own imagination. Had she been asked she would probably have stated that she was looking forward into the future of the pair who were so soon ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... outlines, tender skies, lush luxurious greenery. Italy rings like metal; England is a muffled drum. The one has the ardour of Beauty; the other the charm of the Picturesque. I dwell upon this because I seem to see—perhaps I am fanciful—a kindred distinction between the north and the south in quality of mind. The Greek intelligence, and the Italian, is pitiless, searching, white as the Mediterranean sunshine; the English and German is kindly, discreet, amiably and tenderly confused. The one blazes naked in a brazen ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Burke alludes to such fluctuation is, however, evident, from what that fanciful but deeply-read man says, immediately after: "We have seen some states which have spent their vigour at their commencement. Some have [end of page vii] blazed out in their glory a little before their extinction. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... cold porridge which had been left over from the night before, for I was disinclined to make a fire; and, feeling strengthened and reassured, dismissed all these fanciful terrors from my mind, and lay down ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher; in the eighth of the life and all the works of Cervantes; in the ninth of Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne, with a dissertation "on the nature and constituents of genuine humour, and on the distinctions of humorous from the witty, the fanciful, the droll, the odd, etc." Donne, Dante, and Milton formed the subject of the tenth; the Arabian Nights Entertainment, and the romantic use of the supernatural in poetry, that of the eleventh. The twelfth was to be on "tales of witches and apparitions, etc.," as ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... their general appearance partook of the squirrel, the weasel, and the rat—all three of which they in some respects resembled, and yet were not like any of them. They were a distinct species of animals. They were Marmots, that species known by the fanciful appellation of "prairie-dogs," (Arctomys ludoviciana). Their tails were very short, and not bushy as those of squirrels; and altogether their bodies had not the graceful symmetry of these animals. In a short ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... "Before I retire, my friend," he said, "I would like to express again the admiration which the tasteful luxury of this smoking room has aroused in me, and to ask, if I may, whether those stained-glass windows up there are merely fanciful portraits?" ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the desert is guarded, but it lies like a dark, vast continent behind a dimly visible shore, and he dwells within the shadowy rim of a night that yields no ray to tell of his origin. He is a true pagan, swathed in seemingly dense clouds of superstition, rich in fanciful legend, and profoundly ceremonious in religion. His gods are innumerable. Not even the ancient Greeks possessed a more populous Olympus. On that austere yet familiar height, gods of peace and of war, of the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... "Am I getting fanciful?" I thought—"I whose business it is to give practical account of every bugbear of the nerves. Bah! My liver must be out of order. A speck of bile in one's eye ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... frightened of old Nance,' said Justin, with some contempt, 'she'd think her a witch; girls are always so fanciful.' ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... chair of exaggerated comfort but doubtful taste, sat Hugo. He was exquisitely attired. He read a newspaper and smoked cigarettes. By his side, in a magnificent frame, was a printed notice, giving a rather fanciful biography of the exhibit. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... and daring of our mighty nation, which carried to a successful ending a gigantic task abandoned by another great republic. The whole composition is enjoyable for its many fine pieces of detail. Beginning at the base, one observes the huge bulks of fanciful sea-beasts, carrying on their backs figures representing the four principal oceans of the world: the North and South Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. Some are carrying shells and their attitudes express in unique fashion ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland" and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this connection. They may be found in De Costa, op. cit. pp. 159-177; and see Reeves, The Finding of Wineland the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into his mind, although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they might not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain was more easily climbed, and ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... over that reason which is then so little in unison with our wishes, and forgive much in consideration of the very mystery which first gave a direction to our interest, and subsequently chained our preference. How is it to be lamented, that illusions so dear, and images so fanciful, should find their level with time; or that intercourse with the world, which should be the means rather of promoting than marring human happiness, should leave on the heart so little vestige of those impressions ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... painted arabesques, ascribed by tradition to his hand, amused a little, in this way, through the tedious years. In those vast helmets and human faces and pieces of armour, among which, in great letters, the [122] motto Infelix Sum is woven in and out, it is perhaps not too fanciful to see the fruit of a wistful after- dreaming over Leonardo's sundry experiments on the armed figure of the great duke, which had occupied the two so much during the days of their good fortune ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... are getting too many of those fanciful notions; you will learn in time that the church is meant to go to on Sundays, and that people who know what is demanded of them by the best society, leave socials, aids, missions, and such ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... from these distant cruises so very considerable after all? After they had ceased, memory may have thrown a fanciful glamour over them, and magnified the treasures they had yielded to fabulous proportions: we are told that Solomon would have no drinking vessels or other utensils save those of pure gold, and that in his days "silver was as stone," so common ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... heaven itself were unfolded to receive the returning sun into the golden land of the Hereafter! Dear, dear, I shall get quite poetical in my old age! This is not the first time I have caught myself stumbling unawares on the confines of romance! Miss Lizzie, Miss Lizzie, you must not be fanciful! Do you forget that you are an old maid! Yes, an old maid. Ah, well-a-day, 'tis a very happy, contented, peaceful sound to me now; but twenty years ago,—Here comes dear old Dr. Peyton himself up my garden path! He does not seem to walk so blithely tonight as usual,—surely nothing is the matter; ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... in the principal histories of chemistry. He made no experiments, but depended upon his imagination for his facts; he opposed the tenets of the new French school founded by Lavoisier, and proposed a fanciful scheme of abstract principles that ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... "bubbles," still accessible in many places.[3] Nothing in Brunt is so fantastic as many of the actual schemes suggested and acted upon in the eighteenth century. The possibility of extracting gold from the mountains of the moon is no more fanciful than several of the proposals seriously received by Englishmen under the spell of speculation. As in the kingdom of Cacklogallinia, so in London, men mortgaged their homes and women sold their jewels [4] in order to purchase shares in wildcat companies, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... people pervert. If you examine closely into the circumstances which, in any deliberation, ultimately turn the scale in favor of some particular course, you will generally find that the decision is influenced, not by any clear arrangement of ideas leading to a formal judgment, but by some fanciful picture which seems to stand for one of the ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... politics. They involve much more immediately pressing concerns than to our Asiatic relations, and they involve billions where the latter involve millions. The danger under such conditions that our Asiatic relations will be sacrificed to our European is hardly fanciful. ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... verandas, the diminutive marble steps, the broad bow-windows with their transparent plate-glass, look more like a fairy picture than a reality. The trim shrubbery, the airy little statues, and even the white palings, so frail and fanciful in their ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... result, so correctly, even in the absence of her husband, did the marquise contrive to conduct herself; her cold and serious conversation, rather concise than lively, rather solid than brilliant, contrasted, indeed, with the light turn, the capricious and fanciful expressions employed by the wits of that time; the consequence was that those who had failed to succeed with her, tried to spread a report that the marquise was merely a beautiful idol, virtuous with the virtue of a statue. But though such things might be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... English Languages by Deceased Authors. In his preface Locker gave what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses he was collecting. 'Vers de societe and vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... encroach upon his territory. Standing behind him was his son, Amuba, a lad of some fifteen years of age. The king and his councilors, as well as all the wealthier inhabitants of the city, wore, in addition to the kilt and linen jacket, a long robe highly colored and ornamented with fanciful devices and having a broad rich border. It was fastened at the neck with a large brooch, fell loosely from the shoulders to the ankles, and was open in front. The girdles which retained the kilts and in which the daggers were worn were highly ornamented, and the ends fell down in front and ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... depends [118] upon its harmony in line and color with the accompanying drawing Mr. Lowell has taken the same basic forms as those used by Mr. Penfield, and has played with them until he has developed a series of most ingenious and fanciful letters. The examples reproduced in 136 and 137 but inadequately show a few of the many forms that Mr. Lowell employs with remarkable fertility of invention and delightfully decorative effect of line. The small letters, 135, shown ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... l. 17. Passing by Avanti's city. Avanti, which Bopp makes a mountain, according to Kosegarten and Mr. Wilson is a city, Oujein. Bopp draws a somewhat fanciful analogy between Avanti and the Aventine at Rome. He refers also to Himavan, qu. Mavanten, 'montem.' The philological student will do well to consult this note of Bopp. In ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... you feel for him still, in spite of all his faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him still, in spite of all his faults? For my part," quoth Frank, in his fanciful way, "without believing in that Popish Purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato, that such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness, are hereafter by some strait discipline brought to a better ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley |
