"Fantastical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attachment: but he was neither a poet nor a judge of poetry. He might in one sense be a judge of poetry as it falls within the limits and rules of prose, but not as it is poetry. Least of all was he qualified to be a judge of Shakespeare, who 'alone is high fantastical'. Let those who have a prejudice against Johnson read Boswell's Life of him: as those whom he has prejudiced against Shakespeare should read his Irene. We do not say that a man to be a critic must necessarily be a poet: but to be a good critic, he ought not to be a bad poet. Such poetry as a man ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... responded Brentwick briefly. His gaze, weary and wistful behind his glasses, rested on the face of the girl on the threshold of his home; and the faint, sensitive flush of her face deepened. He stopped and honored her with a bow that, for all his fantastical attire, would have graced a beau of an earlier decade. "Will you be pleased to enter?" he suggested punctiliously. "My house, such as it is, is quite at your disposal. And," he added, with a glance over his shoulder, "I fancy that a word or two may presently be passed which you would hardly ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... or mythological persons of the ancient world; some being drawn from Plutarch, Pliny, Ovid, Virgil, and other sources, but many springing simply from Lyly's exuberant fancy. In the second place Euphues is a collection of similes borrowed from "a fantastical natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones, to which the most extraordinary virtues are attributed[22]." "I have heard," says Camilla, bashfully excusing herself for taking up the cudgels of argument with the learned Surius, "that ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... a kind of policy in these days to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing, like silly passengers, at an antic picture in a painter's shop that will not look ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... raised his voice two centuries ago against this mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon, 'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... indeed a perfect natural goodness, which neither the uncertainties of his condition, nor the largeness of his wit could pervert. He had a firmness and strength of mind, that was of proof against the Art of Poetry it self. Nothing vain or fantastical, nothing flattering or insolent appeared in his humour. He had a great integrity, and plainness of Manners; which he preserv'd to the last, though much of his time was spent in a Nation, and way of life, that is not very ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... least making a fool of him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious lucidity, calling him a fool. G.B.S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, instead of denying or resenting it, says, "Ah, that fellow hides his meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is all so fine-spun and fantastical." G.B.S. calls a statesman a liar to his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy, "Ah, what quaint, intricate and half-tangled trains of thought! Ah, what elusive and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!" I think ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... anything unreasonably fantastical in making such speculations all but realities. Bantam lived, as we know, in St. James's Square—that very effective enclosure, with its solemn house and rich deep greenery, that recall our own Fitzroy. No. 14 was his house, and ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... coast of America and cannot be far from San Francisco. That gives one a start. Swift, writing in 1725 with a world to choose from, selects the Californian coast as the most remote and unknown for the scene of his fantastical adventure. It thrusts 1725 into a gray antiquity. And yet there are many buildings in England still standing that antedate 1725 by many years, some by centuries. Queen Elizabeth had been dead more than a hundred years. Canterbury was almost as old and probably ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... prince be too important [importunate], tell him, there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero; wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster till he sink into ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... in the direction of the lake; and after him they thundered, straining every sinew in the desperate chase. It was a wild and extraordinary sight, and partook of the fantastical character of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Lochlan (it is given in Mr. Lang's Red Fairy Book). Here it attracted the notice of Thackeray, who gives a good abstract of it in his Irish Sketch-Book, ch. xvi. He thinks it "worthy of the Arabian Nights, as wild and odd as an Eastern tale." "That fantastical way of bearing testimony to the previous tale by producing an old woman who says the tale is not only true, but who was the very old woman who lived in the giant's castle is almost" (why "almost," Mr. Thackeray?) "a stroke of genius." The incident ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Education enjoined upon the Persians (1) to speak the truth; (2) to learn to ride and to use the bow and arrow. There is implied in the first command a recognition of actuality, the negation of all dreamy absorption, of all fantastical indetermination; and in this light the Persian, in distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike practice, but not that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights on horseback, and thus appears in ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... ingenious who can make out the words her hvilir from any characters in the inscription in question, which, whatever else it may be, is certainly not mortuary. And even should the reverend gentleman succeed in persuading some fantastical wits of the soundness of his views, I do not see what useful end he will have gained. For if the English Courts of Law hold the testimony of gravestones from the burial-grounds of Protestant dissenters to be questionable, even ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Sikou a cardboard mask representing the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of wealth; and Sikou replies by a long crystal trumpet, by means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions, which seem the work of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant in his customs, and, for aught we know, the soldier in his muster-rolls, think never the worse of themselves for being guilty of their respective frauds towards the public. This evil is come to such a fantastical height, that he is a man of a public spirit, and heroically affected to his country, who can go so far as even to turn usurer with all he has in her funds. There is not a citizen in whose imagination such a one does not appear in the same light of glory, as Codrus, Scaevola, or any ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the Grating." It did not have an inkling of scientific background. I really am surprised it was published in a Science Fiction magazine. Aside from the fact that the idea of the story was merely a fantastical surmise I was very favorably impressed with the author's style and his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the Pei-ho we observed a number of buildings erected on the right bank, with roofs of matting, but decorated in the most fantastical manner, with different coloured ribbands and variegated silks; and about three hundred soldiers in their uniforms (which appeared to our eye not much adapted to military purposes) were drawn out, with a band of music, near a temporary ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves, and in elegant glass cupboards, there were a thousand knick-knacks; small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their precious and fantastical array. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... exaggerations of such poetical voluptuaries. In them, therefore, such a composition can work neither corruption nor deception; and it will, in general, be despised and thrown aside, as a tissue of sickly and fantastical conceits, equally remote from truth and respectability. It is upon the other sex, that we conceive its effects may be most pernicious; and it is chiefly as an insult upon their delicacy, and an attack upon their purity, that we are ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had been narrowed and embanked, and two tiny rustic bridges, of fantastical wood-work, spanned its dark water. The dreary pollard- willows had vanished, and evergreens occupied their places. The black rushes had been exchanged for flowers. A trim little garden appeared where all had once been waste ground; ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... could vary the artificial face at pleasure. The mask has had its advocates, for some advantages it possesses over the naked face; a mask aggravates the features, and gives a more determined expression to the comic character; an important effect among this fantastical group.[41] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... entirely agree with you as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers and the fantastical conceits of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of thinking, that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. And I give it you on my word, that since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... fantastical experiment was cut short by the interference of the law. A public prosecution was instituted against the St Simonians; and Pere Enfantin, and other chiefs of the sect, were brought before the tribunal at Paris. It will be easily understood that the court that day was crowded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... over-precipitous even for a mere fantasy. I was therefore entertained when I found that what I had refused as too fantastical for fantasy was accepted in certain occult circles as ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... impetuous, imperious, but in that she was her father's daughter, not saved by her wonderful intelligence from being fantastical. There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to perceive at the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making others ridiculous. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... this romance is not easy. We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours.' We read further, and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This is lunatics.' One may venture the not profound remark that it takes all sorts of books to make a literature. Euphues is one of the books ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... little suitable, he continued, to the grave march of criticism to follow this fantastical Peri of whom they had just heard, through all her flights and adventures between earth and heaven, but he could not help adverting to the puerile conceitedness of the Three Gifts which she is supposed to carry to the skies,—a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... who are taught too plainly by every anxious look and word of their parents, by every family-arrangement, by the impressment of every chance guest into the service, that their parents consider their education as the one important matter in creation, are apt to grow up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. The stars cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal improvement, and the sooner children learn this, the better. The great art is to organize a home which shall move on with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Heaven's name, is this?" wrote Jules Neraud, the Malgache. "Where have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book? Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . . This woman is a fantastical creature. She is not at all like you. You are lively and can dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns. You sew and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... In no other country, except in this, would such a revolution ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... such strange way as no man ever saw; And there, within a closet, on the flags Were two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at first In the half light, grew presently distinct— Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort Half toppled forward on the bended knee, Grasping with vise-like grip the other's wrist, As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more! But said it not. If they were quick or dead, No ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... necessary to this curious argument, which is nothing less than an effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it may seem as signification, is real in a certain sense, since it is the perception of a physical impression; but this physical nature of images does not prevent our making a distinction between true and false images. To take an analogous example: we are given a sheet of proofs to correct, we ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... philosophers, so they far exceed our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... exercises commenced. One day, entering the school-room a little before the time, he put on an old coat which his teacher wore in-doors, stuck a quill behind his ear, and made a pair of spectacles from some pasteboard, which he perched upon his nose. Arranged, in this fantastical manner, he seated himself with great dignity in the teacher's chair, and began to "play school-master," to the amusement of several other boys. It so happened that the teacher arrived earlier than usual that day, and he was not a little amused, as he ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... is not always possible to follow with our sympathy that literal, childlike rendering of every incident in the life of the Master, which sometimes looks fantastical and often unmeaning. He was a man of his time, and could live only under the conditions which that time allowed. He made visible to a literal, practical, unquestioning age the undeniable and astounding fact that the highest ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Willobie—is introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv.) It is there stated that Willobie, 'being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his familiar friend ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... They are not always agreeable to the eye, for there is much crude color here; but there are points of sight where these columns, pinnacles, spires and obelisks, with base and capital, are so grouped that the massing is as fantastical as a cloud picture, and the whole can be compared only to a petrified after-glow. I have seen pictures of the Garden of the Gods that made me nearly burst with laughter; I mean color studies that were supremely ridiculous in my eyes, for I had not then seen the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... undeviating the course of nature may have been from the earliest epochs, it was impossible for the first cultivators of geology to come to such a conclusion, so long as they were under a delusion as to the age of the world, and the date of the first creation of animate beings. However fantastical some theories of the sixteenth century may now appear to us,—however unworthy of men of great talent and sound judgment,—we may rest assured that, if the same misconception now prevailed in regard to the memorials of human transactions, it would give ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... is not devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a great deal of mischief. Louis is naturally inclined to be capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have contributed to increase this disposition. Seeking to obtain a reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself of enlarged views, and, at most, competent to local details, Louis acted ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Shoemaker's Holiday, or the Gentle Craft', categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy, it reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners. This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the intermingling of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed but idealised king ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... flame, as if he again beheld without terror the image of the little woman with the muff. His cadaverous emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles intensified by the upward glow from the hearth, his distorted moustache, his extraordinary gravity and a certain fantastical air as the red light flickered over him, all re-enforced his fine likeness to the vision-haunted knight of La Mancha when laid up after some grand exploit. The night passed wholly without speech. Toward its close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke the awakened ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... this circumstance, because it was one upon which a thousand wild and fantastical reports were founded, though one would have thought that the truth scarcely required to be improved upon; and again, because it produced a strong and lasting effect upon my spirits, and indeed, I am inclined to think, upon ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... little Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt the reader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to retire with her favorite, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears—a description of the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians, explained by the duke by way of parenthesis—suggested to Sulpice that the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was, after all, the filtering of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... itself, which was of no inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to the net-work, I had barely time to observe that the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was thickly interspersed with diminutive habitations, ere I tumbled headlong into the very heart of a fantastical-looking city, and into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly little people, who none of them uttered a single syllable, or gave themselves the least trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like a parcel of idiots, grinning ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... this to the Abbey, where he shut himself up to brood over his disgraces; grew gloomy, morose, and fantastical, and indulged in fits of passion and caprice, that made him the theme of rural wonder and scandal. No tale was too wild or too monstrous for vulgar belief. Like his successor the poet, he was accused of all kinds of vagaries and wickedness. It was said that he always went armed, as if ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... was draped in a fantastical costume, grinned broadly, and did justice to the host's invitation. The sharply curved nose and the large mouth with dazzling teeth, the full blond hair, and the broad, muscular shoulders, were on a colossal ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Anaheim, into the blue ocean. After a while it disappeared, and in the west there gleamed red, golden, and orange lights, similar to ribbons and gauzy veils, stretched over the whole sky. The mountains uplifted themselves in this glow; the cacti assumed different fantastical shapes, resembling people and animals. Jenny felt tired and sleepy, but they still hastened to the mountains, although they knew not why. Soon they saw rocks, and on reaching them they discovered a stream; they drank some water and ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lady," answered Rose, "my father discouraged my listening to such discourses. I might see evil spirits enough, he said, without my imagination being taught to form, such as were fantastical. The word Bahr-geist, I have heard used by Gillian and other Saxons; but to me it only conveys some idea of indefinite terror, of which I never asked ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... had a reason of the name. If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons themselves, which in their fronts carry more fantastical names. Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... which it did not settle. This image, or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been compleated into the thing itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of shewing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... less than that separating the summit of Mont Blanc from the level of the sea. The whole region was bristling with spikes and circles. Toward the 60@ Philolaus stood predominant at a height of 5,550 feet with its elliptical crater, and seen from this distance, the disc showed a very fantastical appearance. Landscapes were presented to the eye under very different conditions from those on the earth, and also very inferior ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... to cheat the ignorant you say The thing that's not, elated still to sway The crass credulity of gaping fools And women by fantastical display,— ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... accusations against him have unreservedly retracted them, and that they were only extracted from such persons by the tortures employed by the Spanish officials; that the supposed introduction of arms into the Colony through an estate owned by Pedro P. Rojas is purely fantastical, and that the only arms possessed by the rebels were those taken by them in combat from the Spanish soldiers." [174] But his second cousin, Francisco L. Rojas, a shipowner, contrabandist, and merchant, was not so fortunate. He was also ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... shroud of snow spreads itself from the peak of the mountains down to their base, respecting only this deeply excavated path, a few gorges open by torrents, and some rocks of granite, which stretch out their fantastical forms, like the bones of a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... products, such a man as Schiller could not fail in time to discover what was false in the principles by which he tried them, and consequently, in the end, to retain the benefits of this procedure without its evils. There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... A singular, almost fantastical exaltation took possession of the young girl, an exaltation such as might have possessed itself of a priestess of old, pouring a libation to the gods in behalf of some devout suppliant. He had known her, this mysterious, homeless being that had come floating across the waters ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... and awe. It is the effect of anything completely and consummately artificial in human shape that the person impresses us as an unreality, and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being were akin to the smoke that curled upward from ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... objection to this is probably fantastical, and I state it only because, from the first moment to the last, it has always made me boggle. I don't like a stranger—Query, "The ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... are wearing ashida, high wooden clogs perilous to the balance, which raise them as on stilts above the street level and add to the fantastical appearance of these silent ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... marvellously simple and direct. 'Mardi' is burdened with an over-rich diction, which Melville never entirely outgrew. The scene of this romance, which opens well, is laid in the South Seas, but everything soon becomes overdrawn and fantastical, and the thread of the story loses itself in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the Cortesias, as they termed these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, "To the king our lord," leaving out those fantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... evidently believed in his great powers; for I am informed by Francis Galton, Esq., F.R.S., that there is a fantastical monument on the right-hand side of the central avenue of the Kensal Green Cemetery, about half way between the lodge and the church, which bears the following inscription:—"Tomb of Frederick Albert Winsor, son of the late Frederick Albert Winsor, originator of public ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of the sect of the Antinomians.' One of the first leaders of this sect is said by Wood to have been John Eaton, who was a minister and preacher at Wickham Market, in which situation and capacity Smith succeeded him. This Smith published many other tracts and sermons, chiefly fanatical and with fantastical titles. One is described by Wood, and is called 'Directions for Seekers and Expectants, or a Guide for Weak Christians in these discontented times.' 'I shall not give an extract from these sermons,' ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the fruit of all his toils"—to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was well entitled—sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Call it doubtful—for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... bound to acknowledge our partial, if not entire concurrence, in the general criticism on the central front, and of the two wings. The first impression is far from that produced by unity, grandeur, or elegance; there is a fantastical assemblage of turrets, attics, and chimneys, and a poverty or disproportion, especially in "the temple-like forms" which complete the ends towards the park. The dome, too, has been sarcastically compared with a "Brobdignagian egg." It strictly belongs to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... very much, I am sure the change will benefit you. Go and learn all the good you can, and tell us all about it when you come back. Ah! your mother looks grave: I know she rather fears your picking up some fantastical notions and growing to look down on your own people. But I don't fear it. I look forward to seeing my little Ruth again next summer, grown somewhat taller, perhaps, and wiser too, but still always my ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... Barlingford, be otherwise than delighted by the glare and glitter of foreign cities? Georgy was childishly enraptured with everything she saw, from the sham diamonds and rubies of the Palais Royal, to the fantastical bonbons of Berlin. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... admiration in her up-turned eyes. No contrast could be imagined greater than that between the stately gentleman clothed in black, with his broad intellectual brow, spectacled eyes, and grave, solemn manner; and light, fantastical, frivolous Miss Folly, clad in the most absurd of styles, but looking as though she thought herself the very ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... seizing me," I continued. "At first, when I realized that Dr. Fu-Manchu was back in England, when I realized that an elaborate murder-machine was set up somewhere in London, it seemed unreal, fantastical. Then I met—Karamaneh! She, whom we thought to be his victim, showed herself again to be his slave. Now, with Weymouth and Scotland Yard at work, the old secret evil is established again in our midst, unaccountably—our lives are menaced—sleep ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... evil and tormenting conscience, to superstitious anxieties as to whether he shall be saved or damned, which make him at last ask, 'Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with this, that and the other fantastical action, or great sacrifice of mine?' or at last, perhaps, the old question, 'Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Shall I cheat my own family, leave my property away from my children, desert them to shut myself up in a convent, or to attempt ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... little prejudiced against common-sense; and, for my own part, I confess that I am often tempted to think that a common-sense view is necessarily a wrong one. It was common-sense to see that the world must be flat and that the sun must go round it; only when those fantastical people made themselves heard who thought that the solar system could not be quite so simple an affair as common-sense knew it must be were these opinions knocked on the head. Dr. Johnson, the great exemplar of British ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them to the kermis, *{Fair.} ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... to see thine eyes so red: thou must be patient; I am faine to dine and sup with water and bran: I dare not for my head fill my belly. One fruitful Meale would set mee too't: but they say the Duke will be heere to Morrow. By my troth Isabell I lou'd thy brother, if the olde fantastical Duke of darke corners had bene at home, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... silence had fallen. "Although the statements of Professor Sarakoff and Dr. Harden appear fantastical, I believe that they may be nearer the truth than we suppose." His manner, slow, impressive and calm, aroused general attention. Frowning slightly, he drew himself up and clasped the lapels of his coat. "This afternoon," he continued, "I was at the bedside of ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times, and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical, All people, as their ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... wide gestures, now as if describing the arch of heaven, or sweeping the circle of the horizon, now held straight, now curved like a hook. At times the company, acting in concert, would shift their base of support from the right hand to the left hand, or vice versa. The whole action, though fantastical, was conducted with modesty. There was no instrumental accompaniment; but while performing the gymnastics above described the actors chanted the words of a mele to some Old World tune, the melody and rhythm of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... former in beauty, or are without images and lineaments of graphic distinctness, but they want that air of reality which constitutes the singular excellence of his scenes drawn from nature; and there is a vagueness in them which has the effect of making them obscure, and even fantastical. Indeed, except when he paints from actual models, from living persons and existing things, his superiority, at least his originality, is not so obvious; and thus it happens, that his gorgeous description of the sultan's seraglio is like a versified ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... hobgoblin; and, after having commanded Schemseddin to consent to marry his daughter to this ghastly slave, he caused the contract to be made out and signed by witnesses in his own presence. The preparations for this fantastical wedding, says the fairy, are all ready, and at this moment all the slaves belonging to the lords of the court of Egypt are waiting at the door of the bagnio, each with a flambeau in his hand, for the crook-backed groom to go along ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... his esprit,[3] his capacity for induing he skin and the soul of other persons at remote times of history; his amazing inventiveness and the ease of it, at which point he beats Tennyson out of the field; his play, so high fantastical, with his subjects, and the way in which the pleasure he took in this play overmastered his literary self-control; his fantastic games with metre and with rhyme, his want of reverence for the rules of his art; his general lawlessness, belong to one side, but to ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... scope to the imagination, shrouded the place with a higher degree of horror and with a deeper hue of fantastical gloom. It looked like the favorite ballroom of the witches of hell. The wind sighed so mournfully through the shrivelled-up pines, those vampire heads seemed incessantly to bow to some invisible and grisly visitors: the footsteps of the stranger emitted such an awful and supernatural sound, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain—generating therein strange conceits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... successful enterprise in this country: the sun of the country is set for ever. It may indeed exist as a petty military German despotism, with horsemen parading up and down, with large whiskers, with sabres ringing by their horses' sides, with fantastically-shaped caps of fantastical colours on their heads; but this country cannot thus be made a great military power. A previous speaker has instanced juries as one of the benefits of the Constitution; but I will affirm, with respect to the manner ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... was edged with a row of highly ornamented tiles, called antefixes, on which a mask or some other figure was moulded. At the corners there were usually spouts, in the form of lions' or dogs' heads, or any fantastical device which the architect might fancy, which carried the rain-water clear out into the impluvium, whence it passed into cisterns; from which again it was drawn for household purposes. For drinking, river-water, and still more, well-water, was preferred. Often ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and warned and charged that no man should be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul's steeple-top unless he rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant of his neck"—and so on, in this fantastical style. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and hellebore: Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips: Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips. Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from our little town. No doubt the garden of children at the beginning of his career inspired him likewise; and in it he must have shown the same tender solicitude and benevolence, and beamed upon his young scholars with a love which exquisitely tempered his fantastical suppositions. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... doth belong. Alas! it is easy for men to entertain such apprehensions of God as shall please their own humours, to bear up under the sense of sin, and that shall make their confession rather facile and fantastical, than solid and heartbreaking. The sight and knowledge of the great God is, to sinful man, the most dreadful thing in the world; which makes confession of sin so rare. Most men confess their sins behind God's back, but few to his face; and you know there is ofttimes a vast ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Shakspere altered the narrative of Holinshed, without the prospect of gaining any advantage commensurate to the licence taken in making that alteration? These are the words of the old chronicle: "This (the recontre with the witches) was reputed at the first but some vain fantastical illusion by Macbeth and Banquo, insomuch that Banquo would call Macbeth in jest king of Scotland; and Macbeth again would call him in jest likewise the father of many kings." Now it was the invariable practice of Shakspere to give facts or traditions just as he found them, whenever ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... arm, and who stickle for a closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to give a list of the works so seized. Be this as it may he certainly never derived any advantage from them. He had collected a great variety of old armor, sabres, flags, and fantastical vestments, ironically terming them his antiques, and frequently introducing them into ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part which is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge, and create one frivolous and false; as we see that the soul in the exercise of its passions inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own relief, than not to have something to work upon. And after this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth even execute their revenge ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... informed us that it was styled the "Hermitage du Mont d'Or." In the space of not quite an acre of ground, on the side of a wooded hill of the highest natural loveliness, the proprietor had contrived to commit a host of the most outrageous and fantastical absurdities, which were hailed with a smile from Mons. C., and a burst of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of it: anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... splendid news. Eligi Brancaleone was but moderately flattered, as you will easily believe, by the fisherman's magnanimous intentions towards him; but like the finished seducer that he was, he appeared enchanted at them. Recollecting his character as a fantastical student and an out-at-elbows poet, he fell upon his knees and shouted a thanksgiving to the planet Venus; then, addressing the young girl, he added, in a calmer voice, that he was going to write immediately to his own father, who in a week's time would ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was worthy of its background. Much was required of him in a world where a high fantastical acrobatic mountebankery was almost a matter of ceremony, where riders stand on their heads in passing their rivals and cooks punt a casserole over their heads to the wall behind by way of giving notice: much was required of him and he proved worthy. He saw ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... in spite of myself; all my resolutions are vain; I had the same thoughts yesterday that I have today, and I act today contrary to what I resolved yesterday; I must convey myself out of the sight of the Duke de Nemours; I must go into the country, however fantastical my journey may appear; and if Monseur de Cleves is obstinately bent to hinder me, or to know my reasons for it, perhaps I shall do him and myself the injury to acquaint him with them." She continued in this resolution, and spent the whole evening at home, without going to the Queen-Dauphin ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... themselves in causing the archbishop to return to Manila. These men went about talking and declaiming to everyone in the community about the great difficulties, both spiritual and temporal, which must follow from [the banishment]; but in reality all these were fantastical, since there would be no further difficulties than those which the governor chose—as there were none when the archbishop was banished the previous time; [141] for one would hardly believe how great is the hatred that most persons feel toward ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... the authority of the civil magistrate, much less to take it away or destroy it; yea, rather, by it a most profitable help cometh to the magistrate, forasmuch as by the bond of religion men's consciences are more straitly tied unto him. There has been, indeed, fantastical men, who, under pretence and cloak of Christian liberty, would abolish and cast out laws and judgments, orders also, degrees and honours, out of the commonwealth, and have been bold to reckon the function of the magistrate armed with the sword among evil things and unlawful: ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... that there could be only one end to it—quick death on the sea, or slow death in Philip's prisons. They asked no more than to embrace death for my sake. Many men have prayed to me for life. I've refused 'em, and slept none the worse after; but when my men, my tall, fantastical young men, beseech me on their knees for leave to die for me, it shakes me—ah, it shakes me to the marrow of my old bones.' Her chest sounded like a board as she hit it. 'She showed 'em all. I told 'em that this was no time for open war with Spain. If ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and wonderful ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anywhere unjust or unkind; and nothing is unjust, unkind, or unclean which cannot easily be shown to be so without inventing an eleventh commandment. To him, he said, no uncleanness was more foul than that which, not for kindness, or for righteousness, but for a fantastical, self-centred refinement, invents some eleventh commandment to call that common which God hath cleansed; to call anything brutish which the incarnation of the soul has made ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... of frustration. The image of Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly and indignity. That little pink-cheeked dancing-master to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he was. His bitterness took possession of him, and as he sat in the corner of the underground carriage, he looked as stark an image of unapproachable ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... which, besides the affinity of language, God himself has drawn between the nations. But he forgot that he might be no longer able to master the spirits which he would raise, and that an undesired fanaticism might force sundry fantastical shapes into his framework, by which the frame itself must burst in pieces. He forgot that Russian preponderance cannot be propitious to liberty; he forgot that it cannot be favourable even to the development of the Sclave nationality, because Sclavonic nations would by this idea be degraded into ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... only ornament he wore, although enormous slits in the rim of either ear, which suffered the cartilages to fall two inches below the members, had evidently been used for the purposes of decoration in other days. in his hand he held a small basket of the ash-wood slips, colored in divers fantastical conceits, with red and black paints mingled with ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... in a court off Ludgate Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street—bright, enchanted palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry, harmless sprites,—where are they? Fairburn's shop knows him no more; not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are given to understand, Sweetings Alley has disappeared from the ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... advertisement which feasts the eyes at the expense of the stomach, to which your modern restaurant almost always has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the window ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... sail-like terraces, quite transparent, and floating in the thin air. Our earth hung over his head like a great dark red ball. Presently he discovered a number of beings, which might certainly be called men, but were very different to ourselves. A more fantastical imagination than Herschel's must have discovered these. Had they been placed in groups, and painted, it might have been said, "What beautiful foliage!" They had also a language of their own. No one could have expected the soul of the watchman ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen |
