"Puck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina, afterwards Margravine of Baireuth, were in an especial manner objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well understand in what they ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the Detsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place of our Puck. One unwritten formula, which could not be obtained correctly by dictation, was addressed to the "Red-Headed Woman, whose hair hangs down ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... would convey intelligence more than twenty-eight thousand times round the earth, while Puck, at his vaunted speed, was crawling ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the earth in forty minutes," prophesied Puck in "Midsummer Night's Dream." The boastful fairy did not succeed in accomplishing this wonder until midnight on the Fourth of July, 1903. On that day the Pacific cable from the United States to Hawaii, to Midway Island, to Guam, and to Manila, began operations. The men worked ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... so clear. Everything here is as of yesterday, the identity of the actors, the details of their dress, the charm imparted by the sisters Gougenheim, the elegant elder as the infatuated Helena and the other, the roguish "Joey" as the mischievous Puck. Hermia was Mrs. Nagle, in a short salmon-coloured peplum over a white petticoat, the whole bulgingly confined by a girdle of shining gilt and forming a contrast to the loose scarves of Helena, while Mr. Nagle, not devoid, I seem to remember, of a blue chin and the latency of a fine ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... oh, I would do such a lot of things! I'd find out where money was most needed and drop it on the people anonymously so that they wouldn't be bothered about thanking anyone. I would creep about like a beneficent Puck and take worried frowns away, and straighten out things for tired people, and, above all, I'd make children smile. There's no fun or satisfaction got from giving big sums to hospitals and things—that's all right for when you're dead. I want to make happiness while ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... literature needful? By all means let us dream, on midsummer nights, of fond lovers led through devious paths to happiness by Puck; of virtuous dukes—one finds such in fairyland; of fate subdued by faith and gentleness. But may we not also, in our more serious humours, find satisfaction in thinking with Hamlet or Coriolanus? May not both Dickens ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... (which Puck wouldn't put a girdle around for forty dollars) shook gleefully while I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Mallory were sitting together near the door. Perkins Brown, as usual, was crouched on the lowest step, with one leg over the other, and rubbing the top of his boot with a vigor which betrayed to me some secret mirth. He looked up at me from under his straw hat with the grin of a malicious Puck, glanced toward the group, and made a curious gesture with his thumb. There were several empty ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... With Puck's first joke, they did the last Life feed, And there of Judge's Stories sowed the Seed: And the first jokelet that Joe Miller wrote The ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... to "The Tempest;" and the concluding lines of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," and of "All's Well that Ends Well"—which are not described as epilogues, and should, perhaps, rather be viewed as "tags"—are spoken by Puck and the King. The epilogues to "King Henry V." and "Pericles" are of course spoken by the Chorus and Gower, respectively, who, throughout those plays, have favoured the spectators with much discourse and explanation. "Twelfth Night" terminates with the clown's nonsense ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... rode up to the horse-block with which every farm-house was then furnished, rolled off her horse, and went into the house. She then discovered, for the first time, that there was no one at home. After resting awhile, she mounted to depart. But Isaac, as full of mischief as Puck, put the bars up, so that she could not ride out. In vain she coaxed, scolded, and threatened. Finding it was all to no purpose, she rode up to the block and rolled off from her horse again.—Isaac, having ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... were one thing, and his deeds another. Through Puck as his instrument, his jealousy at once begins to make matters worse instead of better for the lovers. Notice the delicate appropriateness of Oberon's means of influence, namely Puck and the two flowers, the first being 'Cupid's flower,'—Love in idleness—the second ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... Where are Oberon and Puck? Without a name? Where Titania?—Mab? Without a motive? Where the godmother of the sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a distinct type in your own recollections, you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... friends of woman suffrage; but the editors of "Puck," it seems, are not. In a certain number of that comic journal, there was an unfavorable cartoon on this reform; and in a following number,—the number, by the way, which contains that amusing illustration of the vast ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for hours. Julien was in the mood for this final and fierce attack upon Le Jour and all the powers that stood behind it. He held up Falkenberg to derision—the charlatan of modern politics, the Puck of Berlin, whose one sincerity was his hatred for England, and one capacity, the giant capacity for mischief! He wound up his article with a scathing and personal denunciation of Falkenberg, and a splendidly worded appeal to the French nation not for one ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tapestry weaving; indeed, a man must have attained the dignity and ability of that position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... lines of stagnant ooze, through coppices of water-loving willows and straggling brier. This, which was difficult by day, was dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped, and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... been goun' from bed tull worse, ploughun' up an' down the fields an' talkun' an' mutterun' tull humself. On the marnun' o' the day I mind me, he was suttun' on the bench outside the kutchen, a-futtun' the handle tull a puck-axe. Unbeknown, the monster eediot crawled tull the door an' brayed after hus fashion ot the sun. I see old Tom start up an' look. An' there was the monster eediot, waggun' uts bug head an' blunkun' an' brayun' like the great bug ass ut was. Ut was too much for Tom. Somethun' went wrong wuth hum ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... either ripple with the laughter of his characters or are lighted with their smiles. We may pass pleasant hours in the company of his joyous creations, such as Rosalind in As You Like It, or Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or Puck as the spokesman for A Midsummer Night's Dream, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... night within, nor yet without: Nor let false whispers, breeding hidden fears, Break gentle sleep with misconceived doubt. Let no deluding dreams, nor dreadful sights, Make sudden sad affrights; Nor let house-fires, nor lightning's helpless harms, Nor let the Puck, nor other evil sprites, Nor let mischievous witches with their charms, Nor let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not: Let not the screech-owl nor the stork be heard, Nor ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Mr. Woolner, informs me of one little peculiarity in the external ear, which he has often observed both in men and women, and of which he perceived the full significance. His attention was first called to the subject whilst at work on his figure of Puck, to which he had given pointed ears. He was thus led to examine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more carefully those of man. The peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... indicating the swinging doors. "Puck was right. What fools these mortals be! Something for nothing will always ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the churn, in vain the dairymaid would labor to change her cream into butter. Nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of such magazines as Life, Judge, Puck and Punch were drawn on extensively; also magazines having humorous pages or columns, such as the Literary Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, Everybody's, Harper's; also Bindery Talk and various other house organs. According to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the long grass, hatless, with her hands clasped round her knees. The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass and had touched her white skin with a warm finger. Wistful and elfish, sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life. She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown cord riding breeches and puttees. Slight and small boned and rather thin she could easily have passed for ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... hastened to the room appropriated to their patron saint, which I entered at one door just as little Eva Dudley appeared at another. Without being in the least a beauty, Eva has the most charming face I know; merry and bright as Puck's, or as her own life, which from its earliest dawn has been joyous as a bird's carol. She gazed now with eager delight on the toys exhibited by her brothers and sisters, without, apparently, one thought of herself, till Robert said, "But see here, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... over-rated. He pays the penalty of his over-whelming reputation: his fame is chiefly in the mouths of those who know him not at all, and use their hats for speaking-trumpets. We have in English no approximately decent translation of him. Someone said that Pope served him as Puck served Bully Bottom, what time Peter Quince was moved to cry: "Bless thee Bottom, how thou art translated!" It is not so; to call Pope an ass would be to wrong a faithful and patient quadruped; than which Pope was as much greater in intellect as he was less in all qualities that call for ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... lay laughing and chuckling for all the world like a wicked Puck, bent upon mischief, joyfully and solely devised for a confusion of his ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... his sleep,' he said. 'Why could they not dance in the day-time?—not when all respectable leaves and flowers were sleeping! making such a noise, especially that mischievous Puck!' ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... he had left off when his master so rudely aroused him. Joan had hushed her sobs, although now and again a long, shuddering sigh shook her little body from head to foot, as with small, smudgy fingers she gently stroked her brother's cheek. Puck, the monkey, had skipped nimbly from his perch on the chimney of the caravan and found another more to his mind on top of Tonio's woolly head, where he sat glowering and grinning at the group, as if he ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... furder nor Leicester—and fur enough too—but I'll take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and let me ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... pursuits; and on the Continent we are told of a certain evil spirit named Kleure who transforms himself into a tree to escape notice, a superstition which under a variety of forms still lingers here and there.[2] It would seem, too, that in some of our old legends and superstitions the terms Puck and Devil are synonymous, a circumstance which explains the meaning, otherwise unintelligible, of many items of plant-lore in our own and other countries. Thus the word "Puck" has been identified with Pogge—toad, under which form the devil was supposed to be personified; and hence probably ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not wanting in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable distance from that of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Puck and Titania are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have Devonshire manners and to live in a miniature England of their own. Like the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and perfume and substantial ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... anything or anybody sometimes, Captain Jack," said Patricia quietly. Then after a few moments she burst forth: "Oh, don't you remember your hockey team? Oh! oh! oh! I used to sit and just hold my heart from jumping. It nearly used to choke me when you would tear down the ice with the puck." ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that rings the air,— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In love's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... them get up some sort of a play in which they could take part. Gyp had asked Miss Gray to be allowed to help in the make-up room, even if she did nothing more than pass the little jars of cream and sticks of paint. And to Jerry had been assigned the especial task of shoving Puck, who was sadly rattle-brained, upon the stage, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... fairies, planning to punish his Queen Titania, orders Puck to procure a juice that will make her dote upon the next ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work] To those traditionary opinions ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... away, Puck, while the dew is sweet; Come to the dingle where fairies meet. Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our mossy dells; Stilly and lightly their vases rest On the quivering sleep of the waters' breast, Catching the sunshine thro' leaves that throw To their scented ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... Meanwhile Venus herself falls a victim to the charms she has bestowed upon the ferryman. Cupid is therefore called in to remedy matters on her behalf. The boy, who plays a part which no one can fail to compare with that of Puck in the Midsummer Night's Dream, succeeds in curing Sapho's passion, but, much to his mother's disgust, won over by the Queen's attractions, refuses to go further, and even inspires Phao with a loathing for the goddess. The play ends with ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Deacon's Orders She Combeth Not Her Head She Cometh Not, She Said Trial of a Servant Trail of the Serpent Essays of a Liar Essays of Elia Soap and Tables AEsop's Fables Pocketbook's Hill Puck of Pook's Hill Dentist's Infirmary Dante's Inferno Holy ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... is very dangerous for the eyes, for it bath been observed that divers have been poreblind even after when some small quantity thereof hath been blown into their eyes." This fungus has been called Molly Puff, from its resemblance to a powder puff; also Devil's Snuff Box, Fuss Balls, and Puck Fists (from feist, crepitus ani, and Puck, the impish king of the fairies). In Scotland the Puff Ball is the blind man's e'en, because it has been believed that its dust will cause blindness; and in Wales it ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... from not knowing where he was going; he had put sugar instead of salt into the salt-cellars at the housekeeper's dining-table, that he might see what she would say; and he had been caught dressing up Miss Jane's Skye terrier in one of the butler's clean cravats; so, though Puck, the aforesaid terrier, liked him better than any other person, Miss Jane not excepted, a regular complaint went up of him to my Lady, and he was sent home. He was abashed, and sorry to have vexed mother and disappointed Miss ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time or another every one has been brilliant about Beardsley. 'Born Puck, he died Pierrot,' said Mr. MacColl in one of the superb phrases with which he gibbets into posterity an art or an artist he rather dislikes. 'The Fra Angelico of Satanism,' wrote Mr. Roger Fry of an exhibition of the drawings. There ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... or with the fantastic machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine anticipate the part played by Oberon and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand, Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a purpose never intended in their original employment. Puck himself must have guided the audacious hand which could turn over the leaves of so respected a Father of the Church as St. Jerome, in order to derive from his treatise "On Perpetual Virginity" materials for the discourse on matrimony delivered, with illustrations essentially ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... work attracted wide attention. Her majestic statue of "Zenobia;" the winsome "Puck;" the impressive statue of "Beatrice Cenci," representing her as she lay in her cell in Castel San Angelo the night before her execution,—these and other works of hers are of an interesting character and will hold their ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... delightful entertainers as Ezra Kendall, Lew Dockstadter, Josh Billings, James Whitcomb Kiley, Marshall P. Wilder, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Opie Read, Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nashby, Artemus Ward, together with the best from "Puck," "Judge," "Life," "Detroit Free Press," "Arizona Kicker," renders this book the best of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... crew, whose bathing trunks and jersey, fitted with surprisingly life-like muslin wings, pointed to Puck, though the quiver slung across his shoulder woke conflicting memories of Diana, chuckled guiltily and took a flying leap from the big boulder into the center of the glade. His wings stiffened realistically, and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon |
