"Disenchanted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that was not Apollo, not the god. This was not Venus, though she Venus seemed A moment. And though fair yon river move, She, all the way, from disenchanted fount To seas unhallowed runs; the gods forsook Long since her trembling rushes; from her plains Disconsolate, long since adventure fled; And now although the inviting river flows, And every poplared cape, and every bend Or willowy islet, win upon thy soul And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... part in a terrible battle; book against book, man against man, party against party; make war you must, and that systematically, or you will be abandoned by your own party. And they are mean contests; struggles which leave you disenchanted, and wearied, and depraved, and all in pure waste; for it often happens that you put forth all your strength to win laurels for a man whom you despise, and maintain, in spite of yourself, that some ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... which smote air, earth, and sea, Stamp'd her strong foot and said she would be free, Bear witness for me, how I hoped and fear'd! With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unaw'd I sang, amid a slavish band; And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand. The Monarchs march'd in evil day, And Britain join'd the dire array, Though dear her shores and circling ocean, Though many friendships, many youthful loves, Had swoll'n the patriot emotion, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... to lowest! Such magic is in a name; and in the want of a name. Like some enchanted Mambrino's Helmet, essential to victory, comes this 'Saviour of France;' beshouted, becymballed by the world:—alas, so soon, to be disenchanted, to be pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber's Bason! Gibbon 'could wish to shew him' (in this ejected, Barber's-Bason state) to any man of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt out of him, and become a caput mortuum, by Ambition, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... but the other went on: "You can swear at me if you like, but you've no business to go through the world cuddling your own troubles closer and closer and squinting at everybody out of disenchanted eyes. It's selfish, for one thing; you're thinking altogether too ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to Venice by a happy instinct, settling in it and treating it, cherishing it, as a sort of repository of consolations; all of which to-day, for the conscious mind, is mixed with its air and constitutes its unwritten history. The deposed, the defeated, the disenchanted, the wounded, or even only the bored, have seemed to find there something that no other place could give. But such people came for themselves, as we seem to see them—only with the egotism of their grievances and the vanity of their hopes. Mrs. Bronson's case was beautifully ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... in the late autumn on the moors. The great hills lose their bold contours, now dying away in a cold gray of sky, through which a blurred sun sheds his watery ray; while the bracken, with its beaten fronds, and the heather with its disenchanted bloom, change the gorgeous carpet of colour into wastes and wilds of cheerless expanse. The wind sobs as though conscious of the coming winter's stress—sad with its prophecy of want, and cold, and decay. Little rivulets that ran ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... owned to thirty-three), and had been a garrison-belle for eleven weary years before she married prim John Vickers. The marriage was not a happy one. Vickers found his wife extravagant, vain, and snappish, and she found him harsh, disenchanted, and commonplace. A daughter, born two years after their marriage, was the only link that bound the ill-assorted pair. Vickers idolized little Sylvia, and when the recommendation of a long sea-voyage for his failing health induced him ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... enjoy the general effect. There might be vulgar units, and one caught notes of talk that disenchanted, but there were so many women of rare and stately beauty, of exquisite loveliness, of charm in manner and figure—so many men of fine presence, with such an air of power and manly prosperity and self-reliance—I doubt if any other assembly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a cantatrice of genius, who, whilst still young, has retired from the world, indifferent to fame, and effectually disenchanted—so she believes—with passion. Despite an experience strange and stormy, even for a member of her Bohemian profession, Lucrezia has miraculously preserved intact her native nobility of soul, and appears as a meet object of worship to a fastidious young prince on his travels, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... beaten time from a sense of duty—why he found himself at the head of his band he understood not. He only knew that the experiment of playing the enchanted symphony backward was a success: that it had become disenchanted; that Luga, his violet, his harpist, his wife was restored to him to bring him the wonderful tidings. He put his arms around her. She drew back in ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... when a whole year had gone by, the time came for Hilda to be disenchanted; for the good little gnomes had declared that if she could live for a twelvemonth in peace with a lion, the charm would then ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... that's Italian all over—hem—as PODBURY would say! Wonder, by the way, if he expected to be asked to come with me. I've no reason for sacrificing myself like that any longer! (He sighs.) Ah, HYPATIA, if you could know what a dreary disenchanted blank you have made of my life! And I who believed you capable of appreciating such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... be heard; the fire-fly was filling the lower grounds with his dazzling light, and seemed the only thing that lived or moved there; when suddenly the sharp roll of a drum, followed by a bugle-call, broke in on this tranquillity, and disenchanted the scene which I had just decided must have been designed by Nature as a ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat, laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... are your shades? Do ye not hear my mournful sighs? Are ye replaced by other maids Who cannot conjure former joys? Shall I your chorus hear anew, Russia's Terpsichore review Again in her ethereal dance? Or will my melancholy glance On the dull stage find all things changed, The disenchanted glass direct Where I can no more recollect?— A careless looker-on estranged In silence shall I sit and yawn And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in love with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to be all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... was bound to give them anything, as they had certain wages from their employers—then what a scene would ensue! Truly the brutality and rapacious insolence of English coachmen had reached a climax; it was time that these fellows should be disenchanted, and the time—thank Heaven!—was not far distant. Let the craven dastards who used to curry favour with them, and applaud their brutality, lament their loss now that they and their vehicles have disappeared from the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... now my ancient Muse, That strong Circaean liquor cease t'infuse, Wherewith thou didst intoxicate my youth, Now stoop with disenchanted wings to truth; As the dove's flight did guide Aeneas, now May thine conduct me to the golden bough: Tell (like a tall old oak) how learning shoots To heaven her branches, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Rome venerable through the blood and the tombs of the martyrs!" Immediately on his arrival he went to the convent of his own order, and celebrated mass with feelings of great excitement. But, alas! he was soon to be disenchanted. He had not been many days in Rome when he saw that the city of the saints and martyrs was wholly given up to idolatry and social corruption, and was as different as possible from the city of his dreams. He cared not for the fine arts which ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... passionate longing for an heir who would carry on her religious work Mary had believed herself to be with child; but in the summer of 1555 all hopes of any childbirth passed away, and the overthrow of his projects for the permanent acquisition of England to the House of Austria at once disenchanted Philip with his stay in the realm. But even had all gone well it was impossible for the king to remain longer in England. He was needed in the Netherlands to play his part in the memorable act which was to close the Emperor's political life. Already King of Naples ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... only be done by a Lady who is neither maid, wife, nor widow. The Spirit blows a magical horn, and the Lady appears, breaks the glass, and puts out the light. A curtain being then withdrawn discovers the sister asleep; she is disenchanted, joins her brothers, and the Spirit vanishes.—The resemblance to Milton's Comus need not be pointed out. The difference of the two pieces in all points of execution is literally immense; Peele's work in this case being all steeped in meanness and vulgarity, without a touch of truth, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... sunsets, the very stones and shells upon the beach, the fresh breezes and the ever-changing sea, all contributed to afford her such pleasure as it would have been impossible for Julia to feel, because she, poor child, was already disenchanted at fourteen, was already wearied with frequent repetition of the amusements which were new to her cousin, and also because she had imbibed the idea that it was ill-bred, and a mark of ignorance, to show or ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... became no more than a blot by comparison; and if Will glanced away from her to her surroundings, the trees looked inanimate and senseless, the clouds hung in heaven like dead things, and even the mountain tops were disenchanted. The whole valley could not compare in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... win me until I am disenchanted. Free me, and I am yours. My enchantment must last until the ogre who dwells in this forest is killed,' ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... such a chaos of turmoil and commotion, in that calm and holy retreat, her thoughts reverted to the pure and innocent period of her youth, to the brilliant and tumultuous past, to the sorrowful and disenchanted present. Embroiled with the Court and her brothers, abandoned by La Rochefoucauld, in the decline of her beauty, upon the eve of maturity, she saw in Heaven alone a refuge against others and herself. But the Divine grace had to be ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a sense of pleasure-taking did not fail him, and he fell naturally into talk with the clerk about the weather and such pastoral topics. Even when he reached the establishment where his own business days were passed some glamour seemed to be cast upon familiar objects. To the disenchanted eye all things were as they were on all other dullish days of summer, even to the accustomed bore leaning up against his favorite desk and transfixing his habitual victim with his usual theme. Yet to the gaze of this pleasure-taker all was subtly changed, and he shook hands right and left ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... perchance there should be a sphere Where all is made right which so puzzles us here, Where the glare and the glitter and tinsel of Time Fade and die in the light of that region sublime, Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, Unscreened by its trappings and shows and pretense, Must be clothed for the life and the service above, With purity, truth, faith, meekness and love, O! daughters of Earth! foolish virgins, beware! Lest in that upper realm ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... were not apparently thirsty when we arrived, but drank more the following day; this completely emptied all the wells, and our supply then depended upon the soakage, which was of such a small volume that I became greatly disenchanted with my new home. There was plenty of the mignonette plant, and the camels did very well; I wanted water here only for a month, but it seemed probable it would not last a week. We deepened all the wells, and were most ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... had been formerly disenchanted from my trance of love, the rudeness of the shock had benumbed all my faculties, and left me scarcely power to think; but now, when thus recovered from the delirium of power, I was immediately in perfect possession of my understanding, and when I was made to comprehend the despicable ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... now they have changed places with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he has come. Such a story might have been very cynically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake, and that the unattainable is not truly unattainable, when we can make the beauty of it our ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indifferent and interesting, certainly not connected with human institutions, and only very slightly with human passions; but d'Alcacer could not help being made aware of her latent capacity for sympathy developed in those who are disenchanted with life or death. How far she was disenchanted he did not know, and did not attempt to find out. This restraint was imposed upon him by the chivalrous respect he had for the secrets of women and by a conviction that deep feeling is often impenetrably obscure, even to ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... gentry, who had only to drink, sleep, play cards, and demoralize the girls of the country. Here and there among them, to be sure, were pink-skinned boys as fresh and sweet as the apple-blossoms under which they rode their horses, but for the most part the emigrants were dissipated, disenchanted, clinging loyally to the traditions of the older country that had discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and inexhaustible richness of the new land that had made them welcome. They were, as a class, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... mourners of the band A sad procession followed, hand in hand; Heroes un-heroed, most unknightly knights, Wand-broken fairies, disenchanted sprites; Dukes no more ducal, even on the bill, Milk-livered murd'rers too ill-fed to kill; Mild-looking demons that a babe might daunt, Witches and ghosts most naturally gaunt; Lovers made pale by keener pangs than love's, Unspangled ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... forehead for a moment and then vanished. Dropping his hand with the opera-glass the baron turned to Maryan: "Tres garconniere ta soeur!" said he. "She is bold and looks down on every thing; she is disenchanted. Une desabusee! Very interesting, and ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... descriptions of Kentucky. Such were Finley's accounts of it—views which went abroad, and created even in Europe an impression of a kind of new El Dorado, or rather rural paradise. Other and very different scenes, in no great length of time, disenchanted the new paradise, and presented it in ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... happy-go-lucky, filled with an immense belief in a future which he was sure would somehow shape itself satisfactorily, felt a little hurt, a little surprised, just a little disenchanted. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... believe it? or if we believed, would it not be a melancholy faith answered the Neapolitan. 'What! all this beautiful world made only human!—mountain disenchanted of its Oread—the waters of their Nymph—that beautiful prodigality of faith, which makes everything divine, consecrating the meanest flowers, bearing celestial whispers in the faintest breeze—wouldst thou deny this, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... addressed him thus: "My brother, I am going to separate from you, but I will leave behind me one of the young wolves to be your hunter." He then departed. In the act Manabozho was disenchanted, and again resumed his mortal shape. He was sorrowful and dejected, but soon resumed his wonted air of cheerfulness. The young wolf who was left with him was a good hunter, and never failed to keep the lodge well supplied with meat. One day he addressed him ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Jenky, "ye Viscounts, ye Earls! "Oh Rank, how thy glories would fall disenchanted, "If coronets glistend with pills stead of pearls, "And the strawberry-leaves ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's distinctions seemed to him equally without a base in fact. He liked the open air; he liked comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades were only a remedy for solitude. And he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all love of the Glen, and that was after Kate flung herself out of the Free Kirk and went on a visit to Muirtown Castle. He was completely disenchanted and saw everything at its poorest. Why did they build the manse so low that an able-bodied man could touch the ceiling of the lower rooms with an effort and the upper rooms easily? What possessed his predecessor to put such an impossible paper on the study and to stuff the room ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... effort to realize its reality, to make eternally sure of it, somehow to wrest possession of it and the transfiguring moment for ever, all the time pierced with the melancholy knowledge that tomorrow all will be as if this had never been, and life once more its dull disenchanted self? ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... is his eye to mere beauty, who, breaking The strong band which passion around him hath furl'd, Disenchanted by habit, and newly awaking, Looks languidly round on a ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdom, and the surest road to happiness. There is nothing sweeter than the return of joy that follows the renouncement of joy, as there is nothing more exquisite, of keener, deeper delight, than the enchantment of the disenchanted." ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... have disenchanted me, the manner of the mother would certainly have had such an effect. She regarded my passion as simply a business affair. She would present me to her daughter that day, and I might contract an engagement, if I would make certain liberal allowances and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you, and, after gazing a moment, take a step to run your eye along the dazzling display, when, presto! the trays of watches and diamonds vanish in a twinkling, and you find yourself looking into the door, or your delighted eyes suddenly bring up against a brick wall, disenchanted so quickly that you ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... an alteration in a small room in a small time as in that parlour when they went back to finish tea. So dark, so deserted, so perfectly disenchanted. It seemed such sheer nonsense to be sitting tamely there, when she was at a dance with more lovers than man could calculate fluttering about her—with the whole party doting on and adoring her, and wanting to marry her. Miggs was hovering about too; and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in the wearisome work, without love for the sickly master, who held aloof from any social intercourse with him when the hours of labor were over, he felt discontented, bored, disenchanted. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... world looked dismal and dreary enough to her. She shrunk within herself. Every thing was withered and disenchanted. All her poor little stock of romance seemed to her as disgusting as the withered flowers and crumpled finery and half-melted ice-cream the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... insidiousness of their pleasant contrast. His style is so beautiful and characteristic that one cannot read the simplest passage of easy narration from his pen without becoming penetrated with his spirit, without feeling saner, wiser, kindlier, and more disenchanted ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the disenchanted rooms, and breathed a long breath of relief when he found himself in the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hailed his assignment with delight, thankfully rid himself of his cooties, reported in Paris, reported in London; received orders to depart via Denmark; and, his mission there fullfilled, he had sailed on the Elsinore, already disenchanted with his job and longing to be back ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... only half disenchanted yet,' said Philip. 'Has Lascelles put you into what my father's old gardener ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of which its agents extend the ramifications from the centre to the extremities, but because the proposition was in accordance with the wishes of the majority. The Republicans were rather shy in avowing principles with which people were now disenchanted;—the partisans of a monarchy without distinction of family saw their hopes almost realised in the Consulate for life; the recollection of the Bourbons still lived in some hearts faithful to misfortune but the great mass were for the First Consul, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... indicate; and, especially, he did not enjoy his work, for, notwithstanding his philosophy of the usefulness of manual toil and regular occupation of an unliterary kind, the touch of work always disenchanted his mind at once. He liked it no better than on the two previous occasions at Boston and Salem; it bored and wearied him, and just as before, though he does not now complain of the fact, it put an end to his literary activity, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... a ball is always a languid, wearisome period, to be dozed or yawned through, on bed or sofa, in a state of total collapse. Life for the time is disorganized, disenchanted; there is a feeling of flatness everywhere, the rooms lately brilliant and joyous with light and color; fade out in the chilling glare of day, and appear like "banquet halls deserted," which each individual ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... had most loved were Narbonne, Talleyrand, and Mathieu de Montmorency. Her friendship for the first of these reached a passionate exaltation, which had a profound and not altogether wholesome influence upon her life. How completely she was disenchanted is shown in a remark she made long afterward of a loyal and distinguished man: "He has the manners of Narbonne and a heart." It is a character in a sentence. Mathieu de Montmorency was a man of pure motives, who proved a refuge of consolation in many storms, but her ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... has prophesied such great things; that Don Quixote of La Mancha I mean, who has again, and to better purpose than in past times, revived in these days knight-errantry, long since forgotten, and by whose intervention and aid it may be we shall be disenchanted; for great deeds are reserved for ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... disenchanted with life by sundry domestic misadventures, Zadig withdrew from the turmoil of Babylon to a secluded retreat on the banks of the Euphrates, where he beguiled his solitude by the study of nature. The manifold wonders of the world of life had a particular ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... face seen again after long separation seemed so disenchanted as Silencieux's. Was this she whom he had worshipped, she who had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she with whom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strange dances ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... of his heavy trials, and his truly Christian fortitude in his final sufferings—these formed a rhetoric which made its way to all hearts. Against such influences the eloquence of Greece would have been vain. The nation was spellbound; and a majority of its population neither could nor would be disenchanted. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... narrow streets, dilapidated houses, etc., offend the stranger's sight at every step. We did not land at any of these fortresses or towns; for us the right bank of the river was a forbidden paradise; so we only saw what was beautiful, and escaped being disenchanted. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... secret; for although our sable and mute minister be present, he cannot, thou knowest, tell it over again, even if he should chance to understand us. I tell thee that, for this fortnight past, I have been under a strange spell, and I would I were disenchanted. There has no sooner any one done me good service, but, lo you, he cancels his interest in me by some deep injury; and, on the other hand, he who hath deserved death at my hands for some treachery or some insult, is sure to be the very person of all others who confers ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... barnacle-geese are flying over the house, and when they have all flown by I shall have no more to say. And I have to tell you yet how the King of Ireland's Son won home with Fedelma, the Enchanter's daughter, and how it came to pass that the Seven Wild Geese that were Caintigern's brothers were disenchanted and became men again. But above all I have to tell you the end of that story that was begun in the house of the Giant Crom Duv—the ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo had, more than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating itself to each man's humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a festive readiness of welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and facility. So frank an appeal for participation—so outspoken a recognition of the holiday vein in human nature—struck refreshingly on a mind jaded by prolonged hard work in surroundings made for the discipline of the senses. As he surveyed ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was made aware that some essential part of himself had in a flash returned into his body, returned finally from a fierce and lamentable region, from the dwelling-place of unveiled hearts. He woke up to an amazing infinity of contempt, to a droll bitterness of wonder, to a disenchanted conviction of safety. He had a glimpse of the irresistible force, and he saw also the barrenness of his convictions—of her convictions. It seemed to him that he could never make a mistake as long ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... cannot possibly affect the truth or falsehood of the representation. If it be impossible for a single man to kill hundreds in battle, the impossibility is not diminished by distance of time. If it be as certain that Rinaldo never disenchanted a forest in Palestine as it is that the Duke of Wellington never disenchanted the forest of Soignies, can we, as rational men, tolerate the one story and ridicule the other? Of this, at least, I am certain, that whatever excuse we have for admiring the plots of those famous poems our children ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no less true that ridicule does no real harm to merit. If this Mrs. Robinson Crusoe's gown had been truly beautiful, my ridiculous comparison could not have so entirely disenchanted my wife with it;—she, mind you, being supposed (for the sake of our argument only) to be a woman of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that my young man was a baronet with a place in Hampshire somewhat disenchanted me. A baronet with a place in Hampshire left too little to the imagination. The description seemed to curtail his potentialities, to prescribe his orbit, to connote turnip-fields, house-parties, and a whole system of British commonplace. Yet, when, the next day at luncheon, I again had ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... modern art can show, saving perhaps the fugue, which involved questions of tonality belonging to a grade of taste and harmonic perception more advanced and refined than that as yet attained. It took nearly another century before the ecclesiastical keys were thoroughly disenchanted in the estimation of classical musicians. It was Bach who finally made true tonality the rule ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews |
