"Fantastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Liblichlein were the first to leave the giddy celebration. They moved through the heaven-bright moonlit streets, whispering. The poet in love cast fantastic shadows with ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... foot of the Alps, three days' journey from Venice, lies the little town of Cadore on the Pieve, and here it was that Titian was born. On every side rise great masses of rugged mountains towering up to the sky, with jagged peaks and curious fantastic shapes. Clouds float around their summits, and the mist will often wrap them in gloom and give them a strange and awesome look. At the foot of the craggy pass the mountain-torrent of the Pieve roars and tumbles on its way. Far-reaching ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... on the point of the promontory, where the land made its final slope, ending in a precipitous descent to the shore. Beneath lay rocks of all sizes and of fantastic forms, some fallen from the cape in tempests perhaps, some softly separated from it by the slow action of the winds and waves of centuries. A few of them formed, by their broken defence seawards, the unsafe natural harbour which ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... prevails for music, the preference is given by the mass to a few ordinary airs, calculated to inspire that love of country which every reminiscence of the struggle for independence calls forth. The favourite air is the so-called national one of "Hail, Columbia," although this is but second to the fantastic drollery of "Yankee Doodle;" the latter is vociferously called for at all places of amusement, and excites in the audience, at such places of resort, almost frantic sensations. This is the more remarkable, as it was originally composed by an Englishman, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... you must understand that the garden is speedily to be remodeled. Yonder you may observe the two whose requirements are to rid the place of all fantastic unremunerative notions; and who will develop the natural resources of this garden according to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... suppose I was a little morbid that night. Perhaps one was excusable, for all knew that we were on the eve of the most desperate battle of the war. I shall not attempt to describe the beauty of the landscape, or the fantastic shapes taken by the huge boulders that were scattered about. My body seemed almost paralyzed with fatigue, but my mind, for a time, was preternaturally active, and noted every little detail. Indeed, I felt a strange ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and encourage a dangerous commerce with evil spirits, who were supposed to take upon themselves, at these unhallowed altars, the names and characters of these foul deities. Not only, therefore, the temple of Cybele, with its gigantic portico, its huge and inelegant statues, and its fantastic hieroglyphics, was thrown down and defaced when the empire was converted to the Christian faith, but the very ground on which it stood was considered as polluted and unhallowed; and no Emperor having ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Moravian preacher happening to come to that quarter where they lived, insinuated himself into their family, and partly by conversation, and partly by the writings of Jacob Behman, which he put into their hands, filled their heads with wild and fantastic ideas. Unhappily for the poor family those strange notions gained ground on them, insomuch that in one year they began to withdraw themselves from the ordinances of public worship, and all conversation with the world around ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... but in the next edition he contrived to introduce them in a manner so easy and so exquisite, as to remind you of the variations which occur in dreams, where one wonder seems softly to slide into the bosom of another, and where beautiful and fantastic fancies grow suddenly out of realities, like the bud from the bough, or the fairy-seeming wing of the summer-cloud from the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band. And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the great writers at their little desks ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... how ancient it is! though its age strikes one less, perhaps, than the quaintness of its structure, which is curious and fantastic to the last degree. Little curved towers and pinnacles, with outlines suggestive of leaping flames, predominate; while the body of the building is in the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... hat with a fantastic politeness. For me, my astonishment grew as I regarded him more closely. A mass of lanky, white hair drooped on either side of a face pale, pinched, and extraordinarily wrinkled; the clothes that wrapped his diminutive body were threadbare, greasy, and patched in all ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... de Janeiro, being one of those who was convinced that the reason why the Jesuits guarded their territories so religiously was that they had mines, bethought him of a plan. His plan, like most of those conceived on the fantastic reasons which are called 'of State', took no account of sentiment, and therefore, as mankind are and will ever be a thousand times more influenced by sentiment than by hard reasoning, was from the first bound of itself ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... gleam the stone on which they were sitting, making it look like an immense pedestal, surmounted by two bronze statues. Any traveller suddenly entering the valley would have recoiled in terror before this fantastic apparition; and if any wild beast had been prowling near us, our gigantic shadows would certainly have made it keep ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... philosopher myself, and do Some good at last in this benighted world! Now how like demons on the ascending smoke, Making grimaces, leaps the laughing flame, Filling the room with a mysterious haze, Which rolls and writhes along the shadowy air, Taking a thousand strange, fantastic forms; And every form is lit with burning eyes, Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fields that were hundreds of yards across; and feeling as if they had escaped a horrible danger, and in perfect ignorance of the fact that their position was as perilous as ever, Steve feasted his eyes on the glorious spread of fantastic beauty before him, and felt as if he had just awakened in a world where everything was silver, even to the vessel in which ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Yellowstone National Park and revel in the wonders thereof, walk in the garden of the Gods and listen to the voice of the Giant Geyser as it sends forth its torrents of boiling water. Bathe in the life-giving springs and mud baths. Note the fantastic forms of the rocks and trees, carved by the hand of nature, then go to Colorado Springs and climb Pikes Peak and behold the world stretch out before you in valley, mountain and plain. Visit the mines of Leadville and Cripple Creek, the store houses of a part ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... noticed, seldom remained the same for a whole year together. This desire (since the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and ghouls, which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing youth attained to as close an ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... which left only the face exposed; and this too might be covered by a species of veil or mask, which, however, was now fastened back on the headpiece, after the manner of a visor. The front of the tunic was embroidered with fantastic devices in gold thread, brightened here and there with precious stones; and other devices appeared on the hood. The face of this figure was pale and calm, with great dark eyes beneath black brows. The stature was no ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... drunken bastard of the multitude, (Begot when father Judgment is away, And, gossip-like, says because others say, Takes news as if it were too hot to eat, And spits it slavering forth for dog-fees meat,) Make me, for forging a fantastic vow, Presume to bear what makes grave matrons bow? Good vows are never broken with good deeds, For then good deeds were bad: vows are but seeds, And good deeds fruits; even those good deeds that grow From other stocks than from th' observed vow. That ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the genius to invent a comic device. This was a very wild creature, half beggar, half laborer, the last of a rapidly dying class in Ireland. He had got hold of a wretched nag of whom the knacker had been defrauded for many years and seated on this in fantastic dress he cudgelled it unmercifully, amid screams of laughter, for around its neck was a placard with the words, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... desert palms. I wondered if the men who carved the stone had travelled in the East and had seen palm trees rising from pale sand, black against a paler sky. And I wondered, too, if queer knots and fantastic holes in the gray trunks of oak had not put into men's minds ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... discussion of questions in which her happiness and destiny are involved. A senseless, though a false fondness, denies her a participation in all questions of the actual world around her. The novel writers therefore create a fictitious world, filled with fantastic and hollow characters, for her to range in. Awhile she believes she is an angel, till some unfortunate husband finds her to be a moth on his fortune, and a baleful shadow stretching across his ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the document in question,' he said. 'Those crooked and fantastic characters are terrible. I often wonder if the writers were able to ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... That's just it—what things? What have I to say, after all? I am going to-morrow because I am a fantastic, capricious ass. Also ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... marionette became a popular subject for the artist's pencil and the storyteller's invention. Brought across the seas, he was welcomed by American children and now appears in a new volume which sets forth his travels in Africa. The lessons underlying his fantastic experiences are clear to the youngest readers but are never allowed to become obtrusive. The amusing illustrations of the original are fully equaled in the present edition, while the whimsical nonsense which delights Italian children has been reproduced as closely as ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... may be compared to that which would be felt, if we should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them simply in a dramatic view, we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... varied and wonderful gifts? Susan's big box from Virginia City was not for her alone, and from the other packages at least a dozen came to her. Betts, a wonderful embroidered kimono slipped on over her house dress, looked like a lovely, fantastic picture; and Susan must button her big, woolly field-coat up to her chin and down to her knees. "For ONCE you thought of a DANDY present, Billy!" said she. This must be shown to Mother; that must be shown to Mother; ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... sickening present conditions, the future long-lasting woe and misery, the barbarous neutrality violations has so made me blush for my mother's country as the "scrap of paper" incident; and it has been most bitter to listen to the extravagant, fantastic eulogies on England, with which we've been so favored without feeling honestly able to make any ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... clear that some miracles require more evidence than others and many old stories are so fantastic that they may justly be put aside because those who reported them did not see, as we can, what difficulties they involve and hence felt no need for caution in belief. Among ancient Indians or Hebrews tales of seven headed snakes ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... their own wild will, while over all the wall and along the woodwork of the roof trailed passion-flowers, roses, honeysuckles, fragrant clematis, ivy, and those tropic vines whose long dead names belie their fervid luxuriance and fantastic growth; great trees of lemon and orange interspaced the vines in shallow niches of their own, and the languid drooping tresses of a golden acacia flung themselves over and across the deep glittering mass ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the churn, in vain the dairymaid would labour 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Mosaic account of creation. Though he knew no Greek, and was not an easy or elegant writer of Latin, he was allied to the humanists by his desire to return to the real sources of Christianity, and by his search for the historical sense of his texts. Though in some respects he was under the fantastic notions of the Areopagite, in others his interpretation was rational, free and undogmatic. He exercised a considerable influence on Erasmus and on a few choice spirits of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... smiled again and gave a signal to the little negro girl. Whereupon the black eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and apparently she began to sing, keeping time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her hands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of time; and finally, turning a somersault or two, she came suddenly down on the carpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious expression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... light was out and darkness made the most fantastic project appear practical, Mark had an inspiration to take the habit of a preaching friar. Why should he not persuade Dorward to join him? Together they would tramp the English country, compelling even the dullest ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... told you four years ago that you'd be a bum hauled off to a concentration camp, you'd have said that was fantastic too." ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams. The haggard aspect ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... false concepts.—Mr. H.G. Wells[2] bitterly complains against the wrong concept of God that was allowed to grow in his mind as a child. These are his words: "He and his hell were the nightmare of my childhood.... I thought of him as a fantastic monster perpetually waiting to condemn and to strike me dead!... He was over me and about my silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in mid-Atlantic." It was only as the child grew into youth, and was able to discard this false idea of God ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... a stormy dawn. Clouds in fantastic masses hung upon the ocean. One of them was like a great mountain, and we watched it idly. It changed its shape, the crest of it grew hollow like a crater. From this crater sprang a projecting cloud, a rough pillar with a knob or lump resting on its top. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... and when temporal rewards and punishments were the immediate consequences of their piety or disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the visible majesty of their Divine King, placed the idols of the nations in the sanctuary of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia. [9] As the protection of Heaven was deservedly withdrawn from the ungrateful race, their faith acquired a proportionable degree ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... fired so much better than the last miserable failure," observed she, going to a shelf and reaching after a dusty vase, massive and fantastic, which had been ruined in ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... delightful day for a sleigh-ride, for every bush and tree was covered with a white fleece of snow, and the morning sun added a tiny sparkle to every crystal. A thicket of spruce was changed to a grove of towering white cones and an alder swamp to a fantastic fairyland. It was all new to Frank, and as he drove away with that bright and vivacious girl for a companion it is needless to say he enjoyed it to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... round little person, complete in her miniature beauties, and now her blue eyes sought him with an extremity of emotion very honest and also timid. She had wrapped herself in a little red shawl, and her hands, holding it tight about her, gave a fantastic impression of being clasped in mute appeal. Jerry looked at her in wonder. For an instant they both stood as still as two wood-creatures surprisingly met and, so far, undetermined upon the degree of hostility it would ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the doors were shut at last on the noise and the crowd, and Daddy sat, with his full cash-box open on his knee, while the solitary gaslight that remained threw a fantastic and colossal shadow of him over the rough floor of the restaurant, Dora came up to him dropping with fatigue. He looked at her, his gaunt face ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the girl's fantastic vagaries; her sound common sense rallied to her aid. "They are the people who remember; sane folk forget. Work is the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... however, recall a few facts to show how fruitless, for the cause of Christendom in the East, was the prolongation of his stay and what strange deeds—at one time of savage barbarism, and at another of mad pride or fantastic knight-errantry—were united in him with noble instincts and the most heroic courage. On the 20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d'Acre, he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a lesson—the fitting of thoughts and remembrance, namely—which he applies to his intent of revenge. Or may it not rather be meant that the putting of these two flowers together was a happy hit of her madness, presenting the fantastic emblem of a document or writing—the very idea of which is the keeping of thoughts ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... prominent position. It was quite bad enough to have to pass through that scene of pillage and riot, but to pose as the partner of an excitable half-breed in the execution of the Red River jig was more than the girl had bargained for. The fantastic shuffling and capering of the long-legged metis were wonderful to behold. The tassel of his long red tuque dangled and bobbed behind him like the pigtail of a Chinaman trying to imitate a dancing Dervish. His flushed face, long ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... my life to revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts) was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in my dreams—utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are opening to me. What experience ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... east coast has become a gamble in which fortunes may be made and lost. Many a boat earns over 2000 pounds from October to December. A lucky skipper may take 200 pounds for his share of the home fishing alone. But such figures would have sounded fantastic in FitzGerald's day, for I have been assured over and over again by herring fishers that in the sixties and seventies, ay, even in the eighties of last century, 20 pounds was a "good season's share" for a prominent ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... in story-telling he simply talks about persons and things and makes them perform in his story. He comes breathless into the house with a harrowing tale of being pursued by a hippopotamus in the woods; or he gives a fantastic account of the doings of his acquaintances. For this he is sometimes accused of being a "little liar"—as indeed he {483} probably is when circumstances demand—and sometimes, more charitably, he is described ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... not do to say that by adopting vulgar methods and appealing to vulgar people, General Booth established his universal kingdom of emotional religion. Let the person inclined to think in this way dress himself in fantastic garments, take a drum, and march through the streets shouting 'Hallelujah.' There is no shorter cut to humility. Many have tried to do what William Booth did. Many men as earnestly and as tenderly have sought to waken ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... for beauty than for expression, and Saskia's face was very expressive, at times merry and almost roguish, and again quite serious. She had also a brilliant complexion and an abundance of silky hair, waving from her forehead. The painter had collected in his studio many pretty and fantastic things to use in his pictures,—velvets and gold embroidered cloaks, Oriental stuffs, laces, necklaces, and jewels. With these he loved to deck Saskia, heightening her girlish charms with the play of light upon ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... discovery," I said non-committally, for the whole thing seemed too fantastic for aught but ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... much conflicting evidence regarding Washington's later dancing exploits. Some writers say that he never tripped the light fantastic after the Revolution and that one of his last participations was at the Fredericksburg ball after the capture of Cornwallis when he "went down some dozen couple in the contra dance." It is certain, however, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... his desk lost in thought. He held a pencil in his hand and mechanically drew fantastic figures on a large sheet of white paper which lay before him. He suddenly came out of his revery. He had just solved a last difficulty; his plan was now entire and complete. He ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... descending from the hills, dressed in a fantastic way, with her robes scorched and partially consumed by fire. She was followed by a band of women and girls, dressed in the same manner. As she drew near, she shouted with a loud voice that she was come to warn the followers ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... the world; that his skill is won by grassers innumerable; that, in short, there is no royal road to the riding of a proper outlaw—a horse that, not with any view of showing-off before girls, but with the confirmed intention of flattening out his antagonist, plays such fantastic jigs before high heaven ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... that the sunrise alone was worth the journey, and the pure air of dawn which, though cold, seemed perfumed by mysterious rose-fields. Just at sun-up the desert was lily pale—then, as the horizon flamed, a dazzling flood of gold poured over the dunes. The sun was a fantastic brooch of beaten copper, caught in a veil of ruby gauze, while here and there a belated star was a dull, flawed emerald sewn into the veil's fringe. Shadows swept westward across the desert like blue water, showing a glitter of drowned jewels underneath; and though last night it ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... as they were, contented with their lot, and receiving all things so unquestioningly and thankfully, filled my life, and brought a great calm to a mind that had, hitherto, been somewhat self-centred and troubled by pessimistic doubts and fantastic dreams culled ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... all discussed in the most bald, prosaic manner, with abundance of Latin phrase, scriptural allusion, and commonplace precept, unenlivened by a single spark of true poetic fire, and presenting altogether a farrago of the most fantastic pedantry. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... intelligent; all the Orgreaves were lovable. The glance of Edwin Clayhanger, and the sincerity of his smile, had affected her in a manner absolutely unique.... But would she ever go back? It seemed to her fantastic, impossible, that she should ever go back. It seemed to her that she was netted by destiny. In any case she knew that she could not, meanwhile, give to that group in Bursley even a part of herself. Hilda could never give a part of herself. Moreover, she was a bad letter-writer. And so, if ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... her return to "Heidelberg," her aunt's interest in these ivories seemed to wane and disappear. Was there not a bowl of specimens in the drawing-room already consigned to oblivion and dust? Aunt Flora's character exhibited an amazing combination of fantastic caprice and invincible ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to her like richly blended music, stirring all her senses and quickening ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not to be silly, and to think no more about it. But her dreams that night were very fantastic and rosy-hued. She awoke in the morning from a vision of a wonderful room of which the walls were painted all over with robins, which suddenly burst out singing her name, 'Jacinth, Jacinth,' to find that Frances was awake and calling ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... and those who had known Hester Prynne before were astonished to perceive how her beauty shone out. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A, and it was that scarlet letter which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... therefore will I live betwixt two shapes; When as I list, in this transform'd disguise, I'll fright the country-people as they pass; And sometimes turn me to some other form, And so delude them with fantastic shows. But woe betide the silly dairymaids, For I shall fleet their cream-bowls night by night. And slice the bacon-flitches as they hang. Well, here in Croydon will I first begin To frolic it among the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Fantastic chatter! hasty, glad, and gay, Whereof the meaning was not ill to tell: "Gossip, how wags the world with you to-day?" "Gossip, the world wags well, the world ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... boiled capons: more I remember not,—except also that he would suffer no mention of the word Death by any mortal. [Hormayr,—OEsterreichischer Plutarch,—iv. (3tes), 231-283.] A most high-sniffing, fantastic, slightly insolent shadow-king;—ruled, in his time, the now vanished Olympus; and had the difficult glory (defective only in result) of uniting France and Austria AGAINST the poor old Sea-Power milk-cows, for the purpose of recovering Silesia from Friedrich, a few years ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in the telling. Hetty did not go forth to encounter drudgery, disdain and obloquy. By no manner of means! She went with a well-filled purse, a definite purpose ahead and a ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Such was the fantastic and almost incredible talk I listened to, but in which, as I say, I found much more meaning than my neighbours. For one thing, although they knew that the Vicar had come from Oxford to this remote College living, they knew ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... no word, as far as I can learn, for "busy." So, when I cannot entertain her, I have to make the nearest approach I can to the truth, and tell her I am sick, or something of that kind; but nothing avails, with her, short of the absolute truth. She is so very fantastic and entertaining, that I should cultivate her acquaintance more, if it were not for this deficiency in the language, which makes it impossible to convey the idea to her when I want to get rid of her. As old as she is, she still ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the latest ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... origins; the last guess I have heard is, that the name merely denotes antiquity; the witty name in Norway for a man growing old having been, in those times, that he was now "becoming a gray-goose." Very fantastic indeed; certain, however, that Gray-goose is the name of that venerable Law Book; nay, there is another, still more famous, belonging to Iceland, and not far from a century younger, the Iceland Gray-goose. ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... various phantoms keep; Of ev'ry one; whence flit, to mock the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train; The gate opposed pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair, encased with polished horn; Where images of truth for passage wait." See Pope's Homer's "Odyssey," bk. xix., 1. 637. See also Virgil, who has pretty closely imitated ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... adorn themselves, whether to maintain the fitness of their estate, or even by adding something thereto, in order to please their husbands, it follows that those who make such means of adornment do not sin in the practice of their art, except perhaps by inventing means that are superfluous and fantastic. Hence Chrysostom says (Super Matth.) that "even the shoemakers' and clothiers' arts stand in need of restraint, for they have lent their art to lust, by abusing its needs, and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and smiled, and offered it me again; but when I refused it, he asked me 'What he should do with money?' I left him to overcome his modesty as he could; but a servant coming after me, saw him give it to a little girl that opened the church door, as she passed by him; which made me reflect upon the fantastic calculation of riches and poverty that is current in the world, by which a man that wants a million, is a prince; he that wants but a groat is a beggar; and this was a poor man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... as the head of France, was accustomed to think and act vigorously for herself in time of revolution. But experience proved no less plainly that the limbs, that is, the country districts, generally refused to follow the head in these fantastic movements. Hence, after a short spell of St. Vitus' activity, there always came a time of strife, followed only too often by torpor, when the body reduced the head to a state of benumbed subjection. The triumph of rural notions accounts for the reactions of 1831-47, and 1851-70. Paris ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... indeed like many other old laws, of England and of other countries, were not over-mild. Was not a woman first strangled and then burned in England for 'coining' in the year 1789, while the States-General were performing at Paris their fantastic overture to the ghastly drama of the Terror? Yet England in 1789 knew a great deal more of personal liberty than France knows now in 1889. The tradition of the seignorial right of hanging boys for killing rabbits originated, it is probable, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was squat and burly and immensely broad across the shoulders. What made him grotesque was a growth of beard which swept almost to his waist and covered his face like a hairy curtain. In it were tied bright streamers of crimson ribbon. Evidently this fantastic monster was proud of his whiskers and ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... to be made acquainted with my change of sentiment; and of my being once more destitute of any plan for my future guidance. It was necessary that he should not deem me a man of unsettled principles; frivolous in propensity, and fantastic in conduct. For, though perhaps my pride would have felt gratification at no longer considering myself a dependent on the favourable opinion or calculations which another might form concerning me, and my good or ill qualities, yet I could not endure ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... reader will believe no one of the fantastic legends here recorded; possibly they were not believed by their very fabricators. They are useful only as tending to show the moral atmosphere of the house and its occupants. There is sometimes a subtile symbolic element inwoven with such tales, which—though not the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... channels and chambers, through which rolls for ever the hoarse murmur of multitudinous waters. It would require the conception of a Milton or the stern Florentine who pictured Malebolge to depict those hollow passages and lofty galleries, wrought into fantastic shapes by carbon chisels, and all pure snow-white, yet unrecognizable in the sublime horror ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... that the use of dialect makes the appeal of poetry provincial instead of national or universal. This is only true when the dialect poet is a pedant and obscures his meaning by fantastic spellings. The Lowland Scots element in 'Auld Lang Syne' has not prevented it from becoming the song of friendship of the Anglo-Saxon race all the world over. Moreover, the provincial note in poetry or prose is far from being a bad ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... the western dyke by means of a board laid from bank to bank, and struck into the sand-dunes beyond. Even in the summer, when the air was still and flowers bloomed and larks sang, these dunes were fantastic and almost unnatural in appearance, with their deep, wind-scooped hollows of pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses. But now, beneath the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... presence of death, convinced him that he was the sport and prey of unseen and malignant powers. The strange and frightful diseases to which he was subject, the freezings and burnings of fever, the contortions of epilepsy, the sudden palsies, the darkness of night, and the wild, terrible and fantastic dreams that filled his brain, satisfied him that he was haunted and pursued by countless spirits of evil. For some reason he supposed that these spirits differed in power—that they were not all alike malevolent—that the higher controlled the lower, and that his very existence depended upon ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in itself the true charm of St. Mammes. It has a fine ambulatory, and a range of eight monolithic columns, removed, says tradition, from an ancient Pagan temple. Their capitals are ornamented with carven foliage, grimacing heads, and fantastic animals. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... scorner—our Lord here addresses. He deals with such elsewhere. It is rather vaunting hypocrites—wearing the garb of religion—the trappings and dress of outward devotion to conceal their inward pollution; like the ivy, screening from view by garlands of fantastic beauty—wreaths of loveliest green—the mouldering trunk or loathsome ruin! We may well believe none are more obnoxious to a holy Saviour than such. He (Incarnate TRUTH) would rather have the naked stem than the counterfeit blossom. He would ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... if we read the gospels without prejudice. When I was young it was impossible to read them without fantastic confusion of thought. The confusion was so utterly confounded that it was called the proper spirit to read the Bible in. Jesus was a baby; and he was older than creation. He was a man who could be persecuted, stoned, scourged, and ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... her opinion of "falling in love" over mutual hair-brushes, but Judith evaded the tentative suggestion. By then she was feeling that the word was a meaningless string of four letters, and the thing she supposed it stood for as fantastic and far-off as the recurring fragment of a dream, which seems so vivid in the dreaming and is a broken kaleidoscope of ill-fitting colours on awaking. She went to bed and slept soundly, better than she ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... one who could speak of his own knowledge concerning Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sardians were left to their own conjectures in her regard; and their conjectures, it must be confessed, were fantastic and altogether fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia, thanks to the veils which shrouded her, became a sort of myth, a canvas, a poem to which each one added ornamentation ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Which, meeting me upon the way, These secrets didst to me bewray, Which now I am in telling; My pretty, light, fantastic maid, I here invoke thee to my aid, That I may speak what thou hast ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... study everything was dark-colored, massive, grand in its proportions, of great price, but not flashy. Not the least object was showy or fantastic; nothing was visible save dignity and comfort. There were books behind the glass of a splendid bookcase, two great pictures on the wall, a desk with piles of papers, in the middle of the room a round table ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Logically, the "Social Contract" is full of gaping flaws. Like its author's other books (see vol. vii, p. 176), it is an outpouring of the heart very imperfectly regulated by a brilliant but eccentric brain. As a political essay it is a tissue of fantastic arguments, based on unreal hypotheses. But it set men's minds on fire; it was the literary inspiration of one of the most tremendous events in history, and those who would comprehend the French Revolution can unravel many of its perplexities by studying the "Social Contract." After its ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... whimsical humor, but there was certainly nothing for him to smile at in this interview. She had so plied the lash that it cut to the quick. His pride and self-confidence were deeply wounded;—his wife's elderly aunt did not believe in his omnipotence! This was a shock in itself; but what fantastic nonsense ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... colonies on Mars and Venus. Talking about something he calls the Terran Federation, some kind of a world empire. Or something he calls Operation Triple Cross, that saved the country during some fantastic war ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... in the most fantastic flights of fancy. They were interminable stories, astounding inventions, from the day of his birth until his final triumph. In the unsophisticated, passionate and moving fancy of this extraordinary little creature, who now lived chastely ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... emissaries there, and—whether or not at their instigation cannot certainly be said—conceived a scheme to capture the President and take him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and winter pursuing this fantastic enterprise, seeming to be always well supplied with money; but the winter wore away, and nothing was accomplished. On March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a disturbance by trying to force his way through the line of policemen who guarded the passage through ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... sketch of its contents, but it is remarkable for coherence and self-restraint no less than for vigor of treatment. Toru Dutt never sinks to melodrama in the course of her extraordinary tale, and the wonder is that she is not more often fantastic and unreal. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... talk to, for her brain seethed with conjectures as to what had happened, was happening and would happen, and discussion was the best method of simplifying a problem, of narrowing it down to the limits of probability, whereas when she was alone now with her own imaginings, the most fantastic of them seemed plausible. She had, however, handed a glorious suggestion to the Padre, the one, that is, which concerned the cause of the duel, and it had been highly satisfactory to observe the sympathy and respect with which he had imbibed it. She had, too, been so discreet about it; she had ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... his troubled lady, who is unaccountably saddened by the untimely farce, struggles with a hysterical desire to laugh—it is all so like a fantastic dream. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... guilty, was, curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than the deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true things he really had to say he generally managed to say quite simply. Thus he ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... leading part in the later and inferior romances, and another distinguishing feature is caricatured in Don Quixote's blind adoration of Dulcinea. In the romances of chivalry love is either a mere animalism or a fantastic idolatry. Only a coarse-minded man would care to make merry with the former, but to one of Cervantes' humour the latter was naturally an attractive subject for ridicule. Like everything else in these romances, it is a gross exaggeration of the real sentiment of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... keep your distance," said Alice, laughing, "for the bite of a dog, possessed by the ghost of a jealous lover, cannot be very safe." And the King carried on the dialogue in the same strain—which, while it led Alice to apprehend nothing more serious than the apish gallantry of a fantastic boy, certainly induced the supposed Louis Kerneguy to think that he had made one of those conquests which often and easily fall to the share of sovereigns. Notwithstanding the acuteness of his apprehension, he was not sufficiently ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... men passing from one bed to another,—to such as these, the road through which we have been traveling will appear to be a delusive passage, and the objects which we have surveyed to be nothing more than fantastic visions, seen only by the eye of imagination, and when seen, idle and vain as ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... to be the breathing of the ocean. But such sounds did not disturb the universal stillness of the hour; neither did the gambols of yonder group of seals and walruses that were at play round some fantastic blocks of ice; nor did the soft murmur of the swell that broke in surf at the foot of yonder iceberg, whose blue sides were seamed with a thousand watercourses, and whose jagged pinnacles rose up like needles of ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... our forces, leaders and speech-makers. When we secure the Crown Prince, he will be put into costume until he can be concealed. They will seek, if there be time, the Prince Ferdinand William Otto. Who will suspect a child, wearing some fantastic garb of the Carnival?" ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from her the hearts of the Russians. They felt that it was no Russian who reigned over them; and because they had no occasion to tremble and creep in the dust before her, they almost despised her, and derided the idyllic sentiments of this good German princess who wished to realize her fantastic dreams by treating a horde of barbarians ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... these years no petitions were presented against granting the suffrage to women. These numbers were undoubtedly a surprise to many members of parliament who were inclined to look upon woman suffrage as an "impracticable fad," "the fantastic crochet of a few shrieking sisters." But the collection and arrangement of the signatures took up incalculable time, and after a few years this method of agitation was discarded to a great extent in the large political centres. Friends ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... base of the rampart,—a true covered way,—we see but the rampart alone. But the dizzy front of black basalt, dark as night, save where a broad belt of light-colored sandstone traverses it in an angular direction, like a white sash thrown across a funeral robe,—the fantastic peaks and turrets in which the rock terminates atop,—the masses of broken ruins, roughened with moss and lichen, that have fallen from above, and lie scattered at its base,—the extreme loneliness of the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... interview with the queen. He had named one of his children for her majesty, and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of them to the illustrious godmother, which had been acknowledged by her secretary. He also had a fantastic notion that he was rightful heir to a rich English estate. The cause of this particular insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart. We still have an unspeakable yearning towards England, and I might fill many pages with instances of this ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... them a decidedly Oriental appearance. On most of them were signs displayed in the Chinese language. You also see scrolls by the doors of the private houses and on the shops. The signs are a study in their bright colours and their mythological and fantastic adornments. Yellow is the predominant colour, and the dragon is in evidence everywhere. This emblem of the Celestial Empire is represented in gorgeous array and with a profusion of ornament. A splendid dragon is the sign and trade mark of "Sing Fat and Co.," who keep a Chinese ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... and dripping meshes slipped down from his ghostly hands into the ghostly movement that was flickering about him, and the circles tipped with light widened towards sea and shore, there was a miracle of delicate and fantastic beauty delivered up tenderly like a marvellous gift to the wanderers of the dark hours. But Sicily scarcely wonders at Sicily. Gaspare was intent only on the catching of fish, and his companions smote the night with their ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his "Royal and Noble Authors," designates the Marquis as a "fantastic protector and fanatic," and describes the " Century of Inventions" as "an amazing piece of folly;" and Hume, who does not even know the title of the book, boldly pronounces it "a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... suspended, in massy frames, the family portraits, painted by Dutch and Italian artists. Near the dais, or upper part of the hall, there projected an oriel window, which, as you beheld, you scarcely knew what most to admire, the radiancy of its painted panes or the fantastic richness of Gothic ornament, which was profusely lavished in every part of its masonry. Here too the Gothic pendent and the Gothic fan-work were intermingled with the Italian arabesques, which, at the time of the building of the Chateau, had been recently ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... aggregation of precipitated matter has gone on to but a small extent, will be found in nebulae of wide diffusion. Again, the irregularity of these large, irresolvable nebulae, might also have been expected; seeing that their outlines, compared by Arago with "the fantastic figures which characterize clouds carried away and tossed about by violent and often contrary winds," are similarly characteristic of a mass not yet gathered together by the mutual attraction of its parts. And once more, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... moment, made her shrink and quiver. His words were often unintelligible to her, until Miss Merriman, silent-footed and efficient, translated them into action, as, before the wide eyes of the mountain child, there began to unfold the swift drama of modern surgical science at its pinnacle, amid that fantastic setting. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... shall be considered very fantastic—but do you know what I thought of at that very moment? Some years ago, I stood at Epsom close to the ropes and saw Fred Archer pass me as he swept like the whirlwind to the winning-post in the last Derby he ever rode. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the northern coast of Ireland, and the Isle of Staffa off the western coast of Scotland. The latter, which, around its whole sea-girt outline, presents ranges of basaltic columns, some of them disposed in curious fantastic groups, most nearly resembles the Sicilian pair. These differ from it chiefly in their having the columns piled in terraces, one above another. Staffa, however, can boast of a far more striking feature —the celebrated Cave of Fingal—its stately basaltic ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... transmitted to the sovereign: they came accompanied with many rare and curious articles, grateful to the taste of one who was not only a religious reformer but a dilettante; golden candlesticks and costly chalices; sometimes a jewelled pix; fantastic spoons and patens, rings for the fingers and the ear; occasionally a fair-written and blazoned manuscript—suitable offering to the royal scholar. Greymount was noticed; sent for; promoted in the household; knighted; might doubtless have ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that it was by no means certain or even likely that Ibsen was as definitely conscious of his thesis as I. All the stupid people, and some critics who, though not stupid, had not themselves written what the Germans call "tendency" works, saw nothing in this but a fantastic affectation of the extravagant self-conceit of knowing more about Ibsen than Ibsen himself. Fortunately, in taking exactly the same position now with regard to Wagner, I can claim his own authority to support me. "How," he wrote to Roeckel on the 23rd. August 1856, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Per), in one ship of three hundred toneladas—[why,] there is no one who will even express an opinion that such a ship can be found that can hold so much. Hence, it is inferred that the above sums are imaginary, fantastic, and fabulous, and consequently, [so is] whatever ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... to stop him. Hibbert recalls only a single incident until he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her along the fringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a bewildering frieze of fantastic shadows. And the incident was simply this—that he remembered passing the church. Catching the outline of its tower against the stars, he was aware of a faint sense of hesitation. A vague uneasiness came and went—jarred unpleasantly ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... never beheld a more ferocious scene but he felt in it, too, a sort of fierce and shuddering attraction. His veins were still warm with the fire of battle, and his head throbbed wildly. Everything took on strange and fantastic shapes, and colors became glaring and violent. The moonlight, pouring down on the lake, made it a vast sea of crumbling silver, the mountains on the farther shores rose to twice or thrice their height, and the forests on the slopes ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... military[7]—career, when, in January, 1652, a treaty had been concluded between Monsieur her father, Conde, and the Duke de Lorraine, the Duchess d'Orleans had signed in her brother's name, and the Count de Fiesque in the name of Conde. On her part, Mademoiselle, somewhat fantastic but loyal and courageous, had joined her mother-in-law, and declared for the Fronde, partly through her liking for eclat and the notoriety of parading at the head of the troops, with her two ladies of honour, the Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac, transformed into aides-de-camp; ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... work at the easel, his human model before him. He was employed on a nymph,—the Nymph Galatea. The subject had been taken before by Salvator, whose genius found all its elements in the wild rocks, gnarled, fantastic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the landscape; in the huge ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace and suavity and unconscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her tresses dripping from the bath. The painter, on a larger canvas (for Salvator's picture, at least ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rode up the broad avenue that led to the Chateau, and halted at the main gate—set in a lofty hedge of evergreens cut into fantastic shapes, after the fashion of the Luxembourg. Within the gate a vast and glowing garden was seen—all squares, circles, and polygons. The beds were laden with flowers shedding delicious odors on the morning air as it floated by, while the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby |
