"Fiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a subject of curious inquiry to those who delight in human absurdities, if ever there were a character drawn in works of fiction so extravagantly ridiculous as some which daily experience presents to our view. We have encountered people in the broad thoroughfares of life more eccentric than ever we read of in books; people who, if all their foolish ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and windows swept the chill of twilight, and while she lighted the big lamp he did her bidding and closed the doors and windows. Those shelves of books, classics and famous, time-tried fiction, leered at him from their racks. The gold of titles, the blues and reds and greens of covers fairly mocked him, and he saw himself struggling with the menace of sin; he saw an honourable career and carefully nurtured ambition fading ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... in the eyes of the Landers the character of a complete fiction, but for what purpose it was so got up, they could not divine. The king could gain little or nothing by their protracted stay in his capital; he had received his presents, and therefore it was ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... seventies the artist illustrated many works of fiction. The most notable instance was Thackeray's Esmond in 1868—a work which he had long wished to be chosen ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... have been unwilling to inform the world that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish had been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of loose character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could not fail to give scandal. (1856.)——It should seem that no transactions in history ought to be more accurately known to us than those which took place ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at Government House,—we exiles of the Temperate Zone,—keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year's Day under a tropic sky and within sound of the tiger's wail was really January first. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp creak of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... another example. Let us suppose some Walter Scott had compiled some purely fictitious history, professedly laid in the Middle Ages (and surely even miraculous occurrences cannot be more unreal than these products of sheer imagination); and suppose some critic had engaged to prove it fiction from internal evidence supplied by contradictions and discrepancies, and so on, would you not think it strange if he were to enforce that argument by saying, 'And besides all this, what is more suspicious is, that they occur in a work of imagination!' Would ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Cooper. He not only has to compete against the best English authors, but as almost all the English works are published without any sum being paid for the copyright, it is evident that he must sell his work at a higher price if he is to obtain any profit. An English work of fiction, for instance, is sold at a dollar and a quarter, while an American one costs ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... I remember right, and even there Lucian laughingly said, that he spread his garments in vain to catch the valuable distillation which poetry had taught him to expect; and Strabo (worse news still!) said that there were no Electrides neither; so as we knew before—fiction is false: and had I not discovered it by any other means, I might have recollected a comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson, to which I was myself a witness;—when ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to describe the mode and working of their professional careers. Had I done the latter I could hardly have steered clear of subjects on which it has not been my intention to pronounce an opinion, and I should either have laden my fiction with sermons or I should have degraded my sermons into fiction. Therefore I have said but little in my narrative of this man's feelings or doings as a clergyman. But I must protest against its being on this account considered that Mr. Robarts was indifferent to the duties of his clerical ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... girl, eighteen years of age, a few years ago escaped from slavery in the South. Through scenes of adventure and peril, almost more strange than fiction can create, she found her way to Boston. She obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member of the Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young man of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They were soon married. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances, to let the potsherds be flung at his head. This was at that time a formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how to boast of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... said Steve, who looked hard at Johannes, as if ready to think that the man was telling him a travellers' tale. But the Norseman was the last man who could be expected to indulge in fiction, and the boy hastened to ask ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... can not, put faith in!—Allegations, so preposterous, that they may be disproved in a moment—"Captain de Camp, alias Boultoff, &c., &c., and three other persons, names unknown, now incarcerated in Dover Jail, for the robbery of John Brown, of Mizzlington"—a mistake—a foul plot—a base fiction!—At least, so thought the worthy gentleman, who was as ignorant of any wrong done him as the lunatic that resides in the moon. Had the sea-serpent been discovered in the back pond, a gold-mine been found in the dust-bin, or a Sphinx and Centaur been captured in Lincoln's Inn ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Resurrection The Voices of the City If Christ came Questioning England, Awake! Be not attached An Episode The Voice of the Voiceless Time's Defeat The Hymn of the Republic The Radiant Christ At Bay The Birth of Jealousy Summer's Farewell The Goal Christ Crucified The Trip to Mars Fiction and Fact Progress How the White Rose Came I look to Science Appreciation The Awakening Most blest is he Nirvana Life Two men Only be still Pardoned Out The Tides Progression Acquaintance Attainment The tower-room Father The new ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... novel, written during his illness, and published in 1864. It has gone through numerous editions, and has been translated into most European languages. It was followed by several other similar works of fiction, of which "Serapis" achieved wide popularity. Ebers died on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... with vast good-nature and a profuse smile, which she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes' duration. Before curtsying, she stops and seems to "shy," and looks at the ladies as a frightened horse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Voyage. the Contract is not Determined. th'o the taken[6] by the Enemy divested the Property out of the Owners, Yet by the Law of War the Possession was defeazable, and being Recovered by battle Afterwards, the Owners became Reinvested, so the Contract by [fiction] of Law became as if she never had been taken and so the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... walter-scottistas, although they were inspired as much by George Sand as by the author of Waverley. These writers were of a romantic order, and Fernan Caballero, whose earliest novel dates from 1849, was at their head. The Revolution of September, 1868, marked an advance in Spanish fiction, and Valera came forward as the leader of a more national and more healthily vitalised species of imaginative work. The pure and exquisite style of Valera is, doubtless, only to be appreciated by a Castilian. Something of its charm may be divined, however, even in the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... in which role he now showed himself, differed in some respects from the conventional blackmailer of fiction. It may be that he was doubtful as to how much James would stand, or it may be that his soul as a general rule was above money. At any rate, in actual specie he took very little from his victim. He seemed to wish to be sent to the village oftener than before, but that was all. Half ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 14, 1811). I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... her body. It was the first intimation he had had that she was dead, and the surprise and horror of the sight so converted him that immediately afterwards he retired from the world. There is nothing true in all this except the foundation upon which the fiction arose. I have frankly asked M. de La Trappe upon this matter, and from him I have learned that he was one of the friends of Madame de Montbazon, but that so far from being ignorant of the time of her death, he was by her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... output was a few precious essays and a few scraggy poems, who had never schemed out a novel before, not even, as far as I am aware, a short story; who had never, in any way, tested his imaginative capacity, setting out, in insane self-conceit, to write, not merely a commercial work of fiction, but a novel which would outrival a universally proclaimed work of genius. And he had no imaginative capacity. His mind was essentially critical; and the critical mind is not creative. He was a clever man. All critics are ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... all this prodigious deal of love-making? These are questions which await a reply in the interests of ethics and of art. Meanwhile an editor of enterprise has selected five-and-thirty separate examples of "popping the question," as he calls it, from the tomes of British fiction. To begin with an early case—when Tom Jones returned to his tolerant Sophia, he called her "Madam," and she called him "Mr. Jones," not Tom. She asked Thomas how she could rely on his constancy, when the lover of Miss Segrim drew a mirror ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... in a decade. So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an unbroken line of adventures or ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... with nothing to do except to be beautiful and gracious, as befitted a well-born woman. It pleased him, in a lofty, generous way, that his father (whom she had taught him to reverence as the most chivalric of gentlemen) had left him wholly dependent upon her. It was a legal fiction, of course. He was the heir—the crown prince. He had always been liberally supplied with money at school and at Harvard. Her income was large. No doubt the dear soul mismanaged the estates fearfully, but now he would have leisure to ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... covers every Grosset & Dunlap book. When you feel in the mood for a good romance, refer to the carefully selected list of modern fiction comprising most of the successes by prominent writers of the day which is printed on the back of every Grosset ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... piece of work we have had in this country since 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite finish of style is beyond that classic." "The book is truly an American novel," says the Boston Advertiser. "Ramona is one of the most charming creations of modern fiction," says Charles D. Warner. "The romance of the story is irresistibly ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... said Scaliger, "qui ab omnibus discere volo; neque tam malum librum esse puto, ex quo non aliquem fructum colligere possum." I think myself repaid, in a monkish legend, for examining a mass of inane fiction, if I discover a single passage which elucidates the real history or manners of its age. In old poets of the third and fourth order we are contented with a little ore, and a great deal of dross. And so in publications of this kind, prejudicial as they are to taste and public feeling, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... had every man the power of making the best of his own personality, and arranging his own destiny according to his private goodwill and pleasure.[9] The greatest of Richardson's successors in the history of English fiction adds to this explanation. "Those," says Sir Walter Scott, "who with patience had studied rant and bombast in the folios of Scuderi, could not readily tire of nature, sense, and genius in the octavos of Richardson." The old French romances in which Europe had found a dreary ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... than fiction, eh?" mused Mr. Bingle. "But, my dear sir, it's such an old story, this yarn about me. The newspapers have worn it to shreds. Suppose we leave out all reference to the Hooper millions. If the public ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... been roused in East Anglia over the fine of one hundred pounds inflicted by the Bench upon a local bookseller, found guilty of the Conditional Sale of Fiction. The chief witness, a retired stockbroker, proved that defendant refused to supply his order for a shilling's worth of O. HENRY unless he also purchased a remainder copy of Wanderings Round Widnes (published at twelve-and-six net). The Chairman, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... pp. 53-54): Perses, it is urged, is clearly a mere dummy, set up to be the target for the poet's exhortations. On such a matter precise evidence is naturally not forthcoming; but all probability is against the sceptical view. For 1) if the quarrel between the brothers were a fiction, we should expect it to be detailed at length and not noticed allusively and rather obscurely—as we find it; 2) as MM. Croiset remark, if the poet needed a lay-figure the ordinary practice was to introduce some mythological person—as, in fact, is done in the "Precepts ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... humour showed her the kind of lurid drama that Pamela no doubt was concocting about her—perhaps with the help of Beryl—the two little innocents! Elizabeth recalled the intriguing French 'companion' in War and Peace who inveigles the old Squire. And as for the mean and mercenary stepmothers of fiction, they can be collected by the score. That, no doubt, was how Pamela thought of her. So that, after her involuntary tears, Elizabeth ended in a laughter that ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... objects, is the creation of nominal and fictitious voters, by conferring on the friends of a political party an apparent, but not a real interest in a landed estate; and this is practised and justified by a legal fiction, and a little casuistry, with which political agents are quite familiar. The ordinary mode in these cases, is to confer such parchment franchises on dependents and personal connections of the great man who needs their support—and the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... went on Sally, flushed and excited, forgetting the man in his story. "Why, he's my hero of all fiction! Think of it, Cousin Mary—there are men near here who are his great—half-a-dozen greats—grandchildren! Cousin Mary," she stopped and looked at me impressively, oblivious of the man so near her, "if I could lay my hands on one of those young Leighs of Burrough I'd marry him in ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... fixed the day and parted from him tenderly, full of satisfaction at the success of her clever fiction. The accident which had occasioned the bruise had been of the commonest, but ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... is the other way. It is Sir Henry who is making all the trouble. He is attacking one of the oldest and dearest platitudes I know." He paused for the general to speak, but the older man nodded his head for him to go on. "He has just said that fiction is stranger than truth," continued the novelist. "He says that I—that people who write could never interest people who read if they wrote of things as they really are. They select, he says—they take the critical moment in a man's life and the ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... always attaches to humour. There is no quality of the human mind about which its possessor is more sensitive than the sense of humour. A man will freely confess that he has no ear for music, or no taste for fiction, or even no interest in religion. But I have yet to see the man who announces that he has no sense of humour. In point of fact, every man is apt to think himself possessed of an exceptional gift in this direction, and that even if his humour does not ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... Besides which, they are already accused of having sold themselves to Mr. Pitt. Very often I have heard my dear father talking of universal suffrage as the bulwark of liberty; well then, we have now, and here, an universal suffrage that is neither a fraud nor a fiction; and as Athanase says, "it is expressing itself every minute, in the crimes of ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable—a new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No one questioned that commercial and geographic union had been effected. So had Rome re-united its ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... from the room to ask for this thing or that, keeping up the fiction that his comrade was sick; and each time he did so he found some person or another guarding the door—at least watching hard by—though apparently bent upon some private errand. He came to the conclusion at last that their movements were most certainly spied upon, and that to ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on this subject, may I be allowed to say that at Tonbridge School, where I was educated, there is a very good general library, consisting of the best classical works in our own language, travels, chronicles, histories, and the best works of fiction and poetry, and I believe all ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of character. But every marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and remained engraven on her imagination. Thus while still a girl, she had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great officers of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with subterranean cookshops. Hundreds ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plays or books, the name of the work may be quoted and the name of a character italicized. This is done to avoid confusion between the play, the character, and the real person portrayed. "William Tell" is a play. William Tell is a character in fiction. William Tell is ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... This is no fiction that I am relating, but a reality that happened to myself, and which it would be impossible to exaggerate. Never shall I forget the last tremendous wave that came down upon me, impelled by a maddening ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... once suspicions how little he's got before him the game's up. He's not a fool and he knows that this is the short road to Amiens, but he imagines we're holding it in strength. If we keep up the fiction for another two days the thing's done. You say he's pushing ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... said it would; for, on the seventh day after his wife's death, he died also. This is not a fiction, but perfectly true. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... years a college of artillery. In one of its rooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his orthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped a royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara will seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "La Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathless ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... anxious times during these journeys in the boat. All was going well, but at any moment the fiction of the watchers by the fires might have been discovered, and the enemy come on to the attack upon a force weakened first by one-fourth, then by half, and later on by three-fourths of its number, the danger increasing at a terrific ratio for those ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... dip. But the romance which fell upon the figures of great writers and illumined their pages was no false radiance in her case. She carried her pocket Shakespeare about with her, and met life fortified by the words of the poets. How far she saw Denham, and how far she confused him with some hero of fiction, it would be hard to say. Literature had taken possession even of her memories. She was matching him, presumably, with certain characters in the old novels, for she came out, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly incredible; nor is it confirmed by any passage now remaining of the Solonian poems. Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having in their minds the comparison with Lycurgus and the equality of property at Sparta, which, in my opinion, is clearly a matter of fiction; and even had it been true as a matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have been likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the forcible way that the biographer supposes. The Seisachtheia must have exasperated the feelings and diminished the fortunes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... precisely for that reason that I don't choose to hear it. There is quite enough of the grim and hideous in reality without hunting it up in pages of fiction. When I read I desire to relax my mind, not put it on the rack, as your favorite books invariably do. Absolutely, Beulah, after listening to some of your pet authors, I feel as if I had been standing on my head. You need not look so coolly incredulous; it is a positive fact. As for that ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... brave, day of the Yesterdays! Brave birthdays of the long ago when Death was not a fact but a fiction! When the years were ages apart, and the farthest reach of one's imagination carried only to being ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... aristocratic class keeps a private servant; yet this happens also to Commoners, and is, besides, no properly college expense. Tutorage is charged double to a Gentleman Commoner—namely, twenty guineas a year: this is done upon a fiction (as it sometimes turns out) of separate attention, or aid given in a private way to his scholastic pursuits. Finally, there arises naturally another and peculiar source of expense to the "Gentleman Commoner," from a fact implied in his Cambridge ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... constructive power bears its part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,—an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is done not merely ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... sampler up to the epic, has now, by way of recreation, or rather by way of opening a necessary safety-valve to ease his restless energies, invented a system of poetic socialism and expounded it in a brand-new kind of prose fiction? ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... nightly charming all London. At last the opposition of Linley was overcome, and on April 13, 1773, the most brilliant man and most beautiful woman of their day were for the second time and more formally married, and a series of adventures more romantic than fiction came ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... contains works of standard quality, on a variety of subjects—history, biography, fiction, science, and poetry—carefully chosen to meet the needs and interests ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... pleasure, will receive no delight from the present publication. The editor apprehends that, in the judgment of those best qualified to decide upon the comparison, these Letters will be admitted to have the superiority over the fiction of Goethe. They are the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... resist the strange charm of Miss Carol's manner. She was obviously a lady by instinct, and she had also been educated after a sort. She had read widely if not altogether wisely, and she seemed just as familiar with the literature, or, at any rate, with the fiction of France and Italy as she was with ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the fatness of other soils—the historical works of Orosius and of Bede; nay, it is said the Fables of Aesop, and the Psalms of David—desirous, it would seem, to teach his people morality and religion, through the fine medium, of fiction and poetry. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the picaresque tale written in English before the days of Defoe. He shows that expressions put in the mouth of Nash's hero, which had been carelessly treated as autobiographical confessions of foreign travel and the like, on the part of the author, were but features of a carefully planned fiction. "Jack Wilton" describes the career of an adventurer, from his early youth as a page in the royal camp of Henry VIII. at the siege of Tournay, to his attainment of wealth, position, and a beautiful ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... the Imperial policy eventually tended to damage. There is in point of fact no logical escape from a theory of popular Sovereignty—once the theory of divinely appointed royal Sovereignty is rejected. An escape can be made, of course, as in England, by means of a compromise and a legal fiction; and such an escape can be fully justified from the English national point of view; but countries which have rejected the royal and aristocratic tradition are forbidden this means of escape—if escape it is. They are obliged to admit the doctrine of popular ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... time, money, hanging not at all, would prove agreeable and acceptable. Cranston's father loved those books, and had grouped them on his shelves according to their subjects, history, art, science, the drama, the classics, standard fiction, and modern literature having received each its allotted space, and not for a heavy reward would the son have changed them; but here already were more than half these prized possessions tumbled promiscuously ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... fellow-creatures, Mr. Mathews was certainly right; we also believe him to have been right in the main, in the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... her "Castle of Otranto"; and after her came Sir Walter Scott who frankly surrendered to the power and charm of the theme. The line of succession has been continuous. The ghost has held his own with his human fellow in fiction, and his tale has been told with increasing skill as the art of the writer has developed. To-day the case for the ghost as an element in fiction is an exceedingly strong one. There has indeed sprung into being within a couple of decades a new school of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... unaware of the number of works of fiction which have been rewritten after publication. I was rather surprised myself when I came to recapitulate them. I wouldn't go so far as to say that second editions, like second thoughts, are the best, because I at once think of "The Light that ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... especial—in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... quiet, reserved, self-intrenched school of modern English manners. With his beauty and his title, though with little or no estate, he had easily married a lady of fortune—the only daughter of a retired banker. And this heiress, Lady ——, is the one whose story I would have told through a veil of fiction. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... place several inquisitive gentlemen received from his own mouth the confirmation of those particulars which seemed dubious, or carried with them the air of romance." The period was certainly unpropitious for any but a writer of fiction, and Drury seems to have anticipated no higher rank for his Treatise, in point of authenticity, than that occupied by the several members of the Robinson Crusoe school. He, however, positively affirms it to be "a plain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... visitors will take a deeper interest in the residence of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch, the "Haven," standing pleasantly by the waterside, facing the mouth of the harbour. Thousands of readers have made the acquaintance of "Troy Town" through the romances of "Q"; and Mr. Couch is not only the writer of fiction that is often delightful, he is also a fine ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... enumerating the qualifications necessary to a writer of fiction, observes, "When he introduces his ideal personage to the public, he enters upon his task with a preconception of the qualities that belong to this being, the principle of his actions, and its necessary concomitants, &c, &c." That such preparation ought to be made, I will not deny; but were I ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... gest^, geste^, extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau en Espagne [Fr.]; Utopia, Atlantis^, happy valley, millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kindgom of Micomicon; work of fiction &c (novel) 594; Arabian nights^; le pot au lait [Fr.]; dream of Alnashar &c (hope) 858 [Obs.]. illusion &c (error) 495; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; Fata Morgana &c (ignis fatuus) 423 [Lat.]; vapor &c (cloud) 353; stretch of the imagination &c (exaggeration) 549; mythogenesis^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fiction comprise only a selection from a very large number of books suitable for supplementary reading. For extended bibliographies see E. A. Baker, A Guide to Historical Fiction (new ed., N. Y., 1914, Macmillan, $6.00) and Jonathan Nield, A Guide to the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Porter's pen had been laid aside for some time, when suddenly she came before the world as the editor of "Sir Edward Seward's Narrative," and set people hunting over old atlases to find out the island where he resided. The whole was a clever fiction; yet Miss Porter never confided its authorship, we believe, beyond her family circle; perhaps the correspondence and documents, which are in the hands of one of her kindest friends (her executor), Mr. Shepherd, may throw some light upon a subject which the "Quarterly" honored ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... this is carping. There are young girls and old girls. Perhaps it is as well to have it in black and white; she was young. She was an American young girl. There is but one American young girl in English fiction. We know by heart the unconventional things that she will do, the startlingly original things that she will say, the fresh illuminating thoughts that will come to her as, clad in a loose robe of some soft clinging stuff, she sits before ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... was preparing an ice-bag in the kitchen, Miles answered a knock. At the front door she saw Vida Sherwin, Maud Dyer, and Mrs. Zitterel, wife of the Baptist pastor. They were carrying grapes, and women's-magazines, magazines with high-colored pictures and optimistic fiction. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... night, between the 18th and the 19th of May, 1864. Like Thackeray and Dickens, he was touched by death's "petrific mace" before he had had time to do more than lay the groundwork and begin the main structure of the fiction he had in hand; and, as in the case of Thackeray, the suddenness of his decease has never been clearly accounted for. The precise nature of his malady was not known, since with quiet hopelessness he had refused to take medical advice. His friend Dr. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... benediction, and now the Pope made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church. All France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his grandeur. Napoleon's journey with Josephine through France, undertaken while they awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single, continuous triumph. It was ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... history has of late years received much attention. One excellent method is to read, in connection with the text-book, good works of fiction, dramas, poetry, and historical novels, bearing upon the different epochs, and also to read the works of the authors themselves of these different periods. We thus make history and literature illustrate and beautify each other. The dry dates become covered ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... insensibly into saint or scoundrel, sage or fool, man or blackleg. He runs in all shapes, and in all degrees of definiteness. Our subject is that insult to common sense, that childish slap in the face of honest manhood, the 'gentleman' of fiction, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... LITERATURE. The vagrant heroes of Petronius are the originals from whom directly, or indirectly, later authors drew that inspiration which resulted in the great mass of picaresque fiction; but, great as this is, it is not to this that the Satyricon owes its powerful influence upon the literature of the world. It is to the author's recognition of the importance of environment, of the vital role of inanimate surroundings as a means for bringing out character and imbuing his episodes ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the foremost theological list of all the publishing houses; its educational list was exceptionally strong; its musical list excelled; its fiction represented the leading writers of the day; its general list was particularly noteworthy; and its foreign department, importing the leading books brought out in Great Britain and Europe, was an outstanding feature of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... is wholly a fiction, "founded on fact." The facts on which it is founded are these,—that Aaron Burr sailed down the Mississippi River in 1805, again in 1806, and was tried for treason in 1807. The rest, with one exception to be noticed, is ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Man. 'No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... and did soften and condone the deserved censure of the strictures that not envy, but mercy, made him utter. Criticism in its true sense was hardly known. In enlarging the message of poetry, the motive of the drama and the functions of fiction, Goldsmith fulfilled the responsibilities of higher criticism, and that power of inspiration and heightening of expression and perceptivity which are its first duty and its highest honour. Whilst in the elevation of criticism and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... towards the one spoken of. Nevertheless I must tell you that your tendency to dreaminess, and your exalted ideas of sentiment, are what mostly constitute the modern young lady. Take those elements out of human life, and one-third of our fiction volumes crumble on the shelf. Society limps into retirement, for her most prominent limbs have been amputated. The curtain must drop for good on the stage, for there is no other part for actors to play in the nineteenth ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Maria's Bay, "in honor of our governor-general and his lady." That a daughter of the same name existed is not improbable, but who can tell whether the Maria Island of Tasmania's coast was named in complaisance to the daughter, or to conciliate the mother! In hope to confirm the agreeable fiction the journal of Tasman has been examined, but ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... least, there can be no supposition of dramatic fiction; the book from which I have made this extract was written by Arthur Hopton, a distinguished mathematician, a scholar of Oxford, a student in the Temple; and the volume itself is dedicated to "The Right Honourable Sir Edward Coke, Knight, Lord Chiefe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... (Hone's) Sixty Curious and Authentic Narratives, pp. 138-140., from the Recreations of a Man of Feeling. The peerage and the pedigree of the Stair family alike prove that there is little foundation for this ingenious fiction.] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... NOVELS" has become an institution, a reliable and unfailing recreative resource essential to the comfort of countless readers. The most available entertainment of modern times is fiction: from the cares of busy life, from the monotonous routine of a special vocation, in the intervals of business and in hours of depression, a good story, with faithful descriptions of nature, with true pictures of life, with authentic characterization, ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... of the negro than any which could be adduced by one not himself a freedman; for it is the argument of facts, and facts are the most powerful logic. Therefore, if I were to imbed these facts in the mud of fiction, I should simply oblige the reader to dredge for the oyster, which in this narrative he has without the trouble of dredging, fresh and juicy as it came from the hand of Nature,—or rather, from the hand of one of Nature's noblemen,—and who, until he was thirty years of age, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... which ensues resembles more the fiction of a poem or romance than an event in true history. The prodigious popularity of Warwick,[*] the zeal of the Lancastrian party, the spirit of discontent with which many were infected, and the general instability of the English nation, occasioned by the late frequent revolutions, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... and signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 741. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p. 514-516.) Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics, reject with contempt this episcopal fiction.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... that "the seemingly impossible of the fiction of today becomes outdone by the facts of tomorrow," as the author aptly ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... to the pages of the poets, to the pictures of the painters, to the melodies of the composers, when in fact we look upon life with the eye of the artist, we have the impression that we are passing from death to life, from the abstract to the concrete, from fiction to reality. We are inclined to proclaim that only in art and in aesthetic contemplation is truth, and that science is either charlatanesque pedantry, or a modest practical expedient. And certainly art has the superiority of its own ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... already that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs. Manderson. The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could withhold a part of the truth under any circumstances is a polite fiction." He still stood as awaiting dismissal; but she was silent. She walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slight movement of her shoulders until it subsided. Then with face averted, looking out on the dismal weather, she ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... phenomenon in the natural world on this farm, which perhaps will be regarded as a fiction of fancy by many a reader. It was a large field of barley grown from oats! We have recently dwelt upon some of the co-workings of Nature and Art in the development of flowers and of several useful plants. But here is something stranger still, that seems to diverge from the line of any law hitherto ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... and charm of the first. Marie de France and Ruteboeuf. Drama. Adam de la Halle. Robin et Marion. The Jeu de la Feuillie. Comparison of them. Early French prose. Laws and sermons. Villehardouin. William of Tyre. Joinville. Fiction. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and honesty, as an ape compares with a man. It was not that, and Dolores knew it, as every maiden knows it; for the honour of woman is the fact on which the whole world turns, and has turned and will turn to the end of things; but what is called the honour of society has been a fiction these many centuries, and though it came first of a high parentage, of honest thought wedded to brave deed, and though there are honourable men yet, these are for the most part the few who talk least loudly about honour's code, and the belief they hold has come to be ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Spread out on a table on the sidewalk in front of this second-hand store was a lot of books, a hundred or more—books of all kind—school books, history, fiction, all of them in good condition, some only a little shopworn, others just like new. Dorian Trent eagerly looked them over. Here were books he had read about, but had not read—and the prices! Dickens' "David Copperfield", "Tale of Two Cities", "Dombey and Son", ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... Ward's latest novel. It has been hailed as undoubtedly her best, while Julie Le Breton, the heroine, has been called "the most appealing type of heroine in English fiction." ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... woman in most of our States could not control her own person, property or earnings; now in most of them these laws have been largely amended or repealed and it is only in regard to the ballot that the fiction of woman's perpetual minority is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... chimed more nearly with his state of unrest. Then there are the galleries, the painted ceilings,—angels, saints, martyrs, holy families,—can art have been leashed through so many ages with a pleasant fiction? Is there not somewhere at bottom an earnest, vital truth, which men must needs cling by if they be healthful and earnest themselves? Even the meretricious adornments of the churches of Genoa afford new evidence of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... touched upon but briefly in the short space of four acts. All this is narrated in the novel with a wealth of fascinating and absorbing detail, making it one of the most powerfully written and exciting works of fiction given to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... a certain patriotic society of which he was an enthusiastic member, and he felt that he must attend it. After he had gone Pen tried to study, but he could not keep his thought on his work. Then he took up a stirring piece of fiction and began to read: but the most exciting scenes depicted in it floated hazily across his mind. His Aunt Millicent tried to engage him in conversation, but he either could not or did not wish to talk. At nine o'clock he said good-night to his aunt, and retired to his room. At half ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... these foreseen events are brought about. In trying this new ground, I am not turning my back in doubt on the ground which I have passed over already. My one object in following a new course is to enlarge the range of my studies in the art of writing fiction, and to vary the form in which I make my appeal to the reader, as ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... hitherto happened served so well to blacken the rulers of Greece in the eyes of the Entente publics, and the mystery which enveloped the affair facilitated the propagation of fiction. It was asserted that the surrendered troops amounted to 25,000—even to 40,000: figures which were presently reduced to "some 8,000: three divisions, each composed of three regiments of 800 men each." The surrender was represented as made by ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... in fiction so piteous as the words that tell of his dreary, mortal sorrow. "Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor none of his fellows ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the serpent him. One from the wound, the other from the mouth Breath'd a thick smoke, whose vap'ry columns join'd. Lucan in mute attention now may hear, Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus! tell, Nor shine, Nasidius! Ovid now be mute. What if in warbling fiction he record Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake Him chang'd, and her into a fountain clear, I envy not; for never face to face Two natures thus transmuted did he sing, Wherein both shapes were ready to assume The other's substance. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... stories in HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE have all the dramatic interest that juvenile fiction can possess, while they are wholly free from what is pernicious or vulgarly sensational. The humorous stories and pictures are full of innocent fun, and the papers on natural history and science, travel and the facts of life, are by writers whose names give the best assurance of accuracy and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of Fiction he would have to do a little Sherlocking and finally locate Katisha in one of those Places where they ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... between outside and inside, I beg of you, my dear sir. I hold that the ship is, at this identical moment, in the United States of America in a positive sense, as well as by a legal fiction; and I think Vattel will ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... what they wrote at the dictation of the Holy Spirit when on earth. They deny the divine origin of the Bible, and thus tear away the foundation of the Christian's hope, and put out the light that reveals the way to heaven. Satan is making the world believe that the Bible is a mere fiction, or at least a book suited to the infancy of the race, but now to be lightly regarded, or cast aside as obsolete. And to take the place of the word of God he holds out spiritual manifestations. Here is a channel wholly ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... pioneers. At missionary gatherings held in England the statement is often made to-day that the first Englishman to go out as a foreign missionary was William Carey, the leader of the immortal "Serampore Three." It is time to explode that fiction. For some years before William Carey was heard of a number of English Moravian Brethren had gone out from these shores as foreign missionaries. In Antigua laboured Samuel Isles, Joseph Newby, and Samuel Watson; in Jamaica, George ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... sublimated by his fiction that for the first time the jury was impressed in his favor. And when Ira Beasley limped across the room, and, extending his maimed hand to the prisoner, said, "Shake!" there was ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... alighted at a very comfortable hotel at Rochester. The amiable Morpheus soon claimed me as his own, nor was I well pleased when ruthlessly dragged from his soft embrace at 6-1/2 A.M. the following morning; but railways will not wait for Morpheus or any other deity of fancy or fiction; so, making the best use I could of a tub of water and a beefsteak, and calming my temper with a fragrant weed, I was soon ensconced in one of their cars, a passenger ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a little fiction of mine, which seemed warranted by the circumstances, and had Penelope pressed me and asked me when her father had made such a definite statement I was ready to go to any extent with like imaginings if only I could keep her with me. She did not, and her cheerier ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... learning, even when the thing learned is uninteresting... yet... means should be taken of making it interesting and instructive and rhythmical.... It seems to me that we want what I may call a Latin novel or romance; that is, a pleasing tale of fiction, which shall convey numerous Latin words, which do not easily find a place in poetry, history, or philosophy.... If anyone had genius to produce, in Terentian style, Latin comedies worthy of engaging the minds and hearts of youth ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... first, when conquering York arose, To Henry meek she gave repose, Till late, with wonder, grief, and awe, Great Bourbon's relics, sad she saw. Truce to these thoughts!—for, as they rise, How gladly I avert mine eyes, Bodings, or true or false, to change, For Fiction's fair romantic range, Or for tradition's dubious light, That hovers 'twixt the day and night: Dazzling alternately and dim, Her wavering lamp I'd rather trim, Knights, squires, and lovely dames, to see Creation of my ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... interesting prisoner now in custody are, the Pilgrim's Progress, an Australian Summary of the Newgate Calendar, and the poetry of the late Dr. Watts. He has also expressed himself as pleased with Mrs. Humphrey Ward's latest work of fiction, though he does not quite approve of the theological ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... ago the Clayton Magazines presented to lovers of Science Fiction everywhere a new magazine with a brand-new policy—Astounding Stories—and now it is the Editor's great pleasure to announce to our thousands of friends that this new magazine ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... much, Mr. Devitt, for this very intriguing story. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. And we want to keep in touch with you, and we want to keep hearing from you, because you have got a big ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... spoke her hand rested upon the little sack of tobacco, which responded accusingly to the touch of her restless fingers; and she found time to wonder why she was building up this fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His discovery of Walter's device for whiling away the dull evening had shamed and distressed her; but she would have suffered no less if almost any other had been the discoverer. In this gentleman, after hearing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the 'Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford,' and prefaced the letters with a biographical sketch. Quite early in his career he also tried his hand at fiction in 'The Nun of Arrouca,' a story founded on a romantic incident which occurred during his travels in the Peninsula. The book appeared in 1822, and in the same year—he was restless and ambitious of literary distinction ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... has the leisure at his disposal to ascertain the true facts of that period before the war, would present to the world a history so interesting and fascinating that he would be accused of having indulged in fiction in his narrative of events. It would be out of place in this book, however, to enter into these historical events, and we must confine ourselves to the details of the period with which this ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... restoration. For myself, I have no hesitation; I prefer in every case the ruined, however ruined, to the reconstructed, however splendid. What is left is more precious than what is added; the one is history, the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of the two—it is so much more romantic. One is positive, so far as it goes; the other fills up the void with things more dead than the void itself, inasmuch as they have never ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... imposition. There are some circumstances, which are sufficient to raise a question, but I think none of them are conclusive, and upon the whole I have little doubt of its authenticity. I shall be much mortified if it proves a fiction, not on account of the importance of the letter, but the stain that a practice so disingenuous will bring upon America. When I first left America, such a fiction, with all its ingenuity, would have ruined ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Hentz too sincerely for the high and ennobling morality and Christian grace, which not only pervade her entire writings, but which shine forth with undimmed beauty in the new novel, Robert Graham. It sustains the character which is very difficult to well delineate in a work of fiction—a religious missionary. All who read the work will bear testimony to the entire success of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... wanderings, too, Ned and Tom learned to know experimentally that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that if the writers of fairy-tales had travelled more they would have saved their imaginations a deal of trouble, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... The Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey, Brougham, Smith The Ballantynes "Marmion" Jeffrey as a critic Quarrels of author and publishers; Quarterly Review Scott's poetry Duration of poetic fame Clerk of Sessions; Abbotsford bought "Lord of the Isles;" "Rokeby" Fiction; fame of great authors "Waverley" "Guy Mannering" Great popularity of Scott "The Antiquary" "Old Mortality;" comparisons "Rob Roy" Scotland's debt to Scott Prosperity; rank; correspondence Personal habits Life ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... called the Cytheria of the southern hemisphere, not only from the beauty and elegance of the women, but their being so deeply versed in, and so passionately fond of the Eleusinian mysteries; and what poetic fiction has painted of Eden, or Arcadia, is here realized, where the earth without tillage produces both food and cloathing, the trees loaded with the richest of fruit, the carpet of nature spread with the most odoriferous flowers, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a nun once myself," she said, and began in a mixture of truth and fiction to prattle of a year she had spent in a convent. "I wanted to turn good, but didn't get very far. I am religious. Really I am. I can say so with a clear conscience. Anybody with whom I don't feel I could pray to God, is disgusting to me. Perhaps, after all, I shall end by being a nun, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... pages claim no interest on the score of authenticity. They are no fiction founded on facts. They profess to be nothing but fiction, used as a vehicle for illustrating certain broad and fundamental truths in ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... much truth which the world has insisted was fiction, and so much fiction which has been received as truth, that, in the present instance, he is resolved to say nothing on the subject. Each of his readers is at liberty to believe just as much, or as little, of the matter here laid before him, or her, as may ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... just about the necklace." Then Lady Eustace explained the nature of her late husband's will, as far as it regarded chattels to be found in the Castle of Portray at the time of his death; and added the fiction, which had now become common to her, as to the necklace having been ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Corsican lawyer, becoming in early manhood the master of the world, what could inflame youthful fiction more than this ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... her away, your majesty obliged me to turn fiction into fact, for I only knew her by speaking to her in various public places, and I had never ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... so amusing to the imagination, that the poets have personified her; and in their hands she has been the occasion of many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... he considered, that, first of all, awe of the gods should be instilled into them, a principle of the greatest efficacy in dealing with the multitude, ignorant and uncivilized as it was in those times. But as this fear could not sink deeply into their minds without some fiction of a miracle, he pretended that he held nightly interviews with the goddess Egeria; that by her direction he instituted sacred rites such as would be most acceptable to the gods, and appointed their own priests for each of the deities. And, first ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... measure of public sympathy, and were warned or concealed by the population, even when they were not actively supported. The traditional outlaw who spared the poor and levied tribute on the rich was, no doubt, always a creature of fiction. The ballad which tells us how "Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred, By brave, free-hearted Bliss" (a rascal hanged for highway robbery at Salisbury in 1695) must have been a mere echo of the Robin Hood songs. But there have been times and countries in which the law and its administration have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... MS. may prove to be Russell's original, as Mr Davenport has most kindly promised to let me copy and print it for the Society. Meantime it is possible to consider John Russell's Book of Norture as his own. For early poets and writers of verse seem to have liked this fiction of attributing their books to other people, and it is seldom that you find them acknowledging that they have imagined their Poems on their own heads, as Hampole has it in his Pricke of Conscience, p. 239, l. 8874 (ed. Morris, Philol. Soc.). Even Mr Tennyson makes believe that Everard Hall ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Egypt was, to outward appearances, preserved, through the nominal possession by Smendes of the suzerainty; but, as a matter of fact, it had ceased to exist, and the fiction of the two kingdoms had become a reality for the first time within the range of history. Henceforward there were two Egypts, governed by different constitutions and from widely remote centres. Theban Egypt was, before all things, a community recognizing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with faire warnings might have beene reform'd, Not these unmanly rages. You have heard The fiction of the north winde and the sunne, 80 Both working on a traveller, and contending Which had most power to take his cloake from him: Which when the winde attempted, hee roar'd out Outragious blasts at him to force it off, That wrapt it closer on: when the calme ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the "real thing," and therefore not at all the kind of Hudson's Bay officer that one ever meets in fiction. For instead of being a big, burly, "red-blooded brute," of the "he-man" type of factor—the kind that springs from nowhere save the wild imaginations of the authors who have never lived in the wilderness . . . he was just a real man . . . just a fine type ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... I! I only know that I love you so dearly that if you were the blackest villain to be found in fiction, it would make no difference ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... A slight fiction; but the boat had turned into the bay, and was following the curve of its shores, which certainly led down deep into the land from ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... of bread-fruit trees and wild plantains, whose sea of greenery was starred with the golden balls of innumerable orange trees; the whole place must really have been lifted bodily out of some boy's book, and put here to prove that writers of fiction occasionally tell the truth, for it seemed perfectly familiar to both of us. Certainly, the oranges were of the bitter Seville variety and were uneatable, and wild plantains are but an indifferent article of diet; still, they satisfied the ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... representation of Alfieri's Mirra, the two last acts of which threw me into convulsions. I do not mean by that word a lady's hysterics, but the agony of reluctant tears, and the choking shudder, which I do not often undergo for fiction. This is but the second time for any thing under reality: the first was on seeing Kean's Sir Giles Overreach. The worst was, that the 'Dama' in whose box I was, went off in the same way, I really believe more from fright than any other sympathy—at least ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... earlier than he did, he would not have dared to offer any excuse for not leading them in the pursuit, and he meant to avert all possibility of that. The reader understands by this time why the guide formulated such an astounding fiction when attempting to explain the cause of his delay. Had his listeners been in cooler mood, they might have tangled him up with a few questions, but their exasperation and ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... remorseless war which he waged against the innocent conjunction car, never to be admitted into polite literature, than for his encyclopaedic romance Polexandre, in which geography is illustrated by fiction, as copious as it is fantastic; yet it was something to annex for the first time the ocean, with all its marvels, to the scenery of adventure. Gombauld, the Beau Tenebreux of the Hotel de Rambouillet, secured a reading for his unreadable ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... education, but with respect to the progress made in science, and the prevailing manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture, painting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be described. Nor should there be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the people—their food, their homes, and their amusements. And lastly, to connect the whole, should be exhibited ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... hands and leafed through the pages of a most attractive magazine, Everybody's Home. It was devoted to poetry, good fiction, and everything concerning home life from beef to biscuits, and ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I chuckled sardonically at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of outline refused to be concealed by the roughest of country garments. Certainly my grace did not survive the ordeal. What good looks I possessed suffered a serious eclipse even ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... work consists of a series of short chapters on books, authors, the circumstances in which they wrote, the moods in which they should be read to be appreciated, the nature and specific qualities of taste, poetry, fiction, the drama, history, and philosophy. The author's turn of mind is chiefly retrospective: he writes more in the spirit of the last age than of the present. Indeed, he seems too much inclined to ignore the value of our later literature; almost the only modern ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... better than human imbecility, were it not that humanity is, a more sacred thing than royalty. A satire upon such an embodiment of kingship is impossible, the simple and truthful characteristics being more effective than fiction or exaggeration. It would be unjust to exhume a private character after the lapse of two centuries merely to excite derision, but if history be not powerless to instruct, it certainly cannot be unprofitable to ponder the merits of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for the prisoner: this offer also was peremptorily refused by the police inspector just as Ross's offer of night clothes had been refused. It is a common belief that in England a man is treated as innocent until he has been proved guilty, but those who believe this pleasant fiction, have never been in the hands of the English police. As soon as a man is arrested on any charge he is at once treated as if he were a dangerous criminal; he is searched, for instance, with every circumstance of indignity. Before his conviction a man is allowed ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred a little by and by come into harmony with it.— But I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... were twin sisters;' and again, 'There is always a certain quantity of fable in history, and there is always an element of history in one particular sort of fable.' The reviews of English and Anglo-Indian fiction, and of 'Heroic Poetry' in the present work, give opportunities of further illustrations from fiction of his views: which reappear from another standpoint in the 'Remarks on the Reading of History'—a ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... as it may appear (but truth, remember, is quite as fantastic as fiction), had proved another link in the chain of suspicious occurrences in which I had been mixed up prior to M. Zola's exile. Other curious little incidents had followed, and thus for many months I had been living—even as we lived long ago ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly |
