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Phantasy

noun
1.
Something many people believe that is false.  Synonyms: fancy, fantasy, illusion.
2.
Fiction with a large amount of imagination in it.  Synonym: fantasy.
3.
Imagination unrestricted by reality.  Synonym: fantasy.



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"Phantasy" Quotes from Famous Books



... he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy. Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well the actuality of humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... what men call Divinity, is only the product of their phantasy, of a psychological aberration. It is not Divinity that has created man, but man who creates Divinity in his own image. In God man only adores his own being. God is only a fiction, but a very harmful fiction. The Christian God is supposed ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... sea. We came down upon everything suddenly; there were in our way the 'bonny Doon', with the brig that Tam o' Shanter crossed, Kirk Alloway, Burns's Cottage, and then the Brigs of Ayr. First we stood upon the Bridge across the Doon, surrounded by every phantasy of green in tree, meadow, and hill: the stream of the Doon, as a farmer told us, is covered with trees 'from head to foot'. You know those beautiful heaths, so fresh against the weather of a summer's evening; there was one stretching along behind ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... for thou * Art malady and remedy! But she whose cure is in thy hand * Shall ne'er be free of bane and blight; Burn me those eyne that radiance rain * Slay me the swords of phantasy; How many hath the sword of Love * Laid low, their high degree despite? Yet will I never cease to pine * Nor to oblivion will I flee. Love is my health, my faith, my joy * Public and private, wrong or right. O happy eyes that sight thy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... lofty resolve burned with a high, present heat in Maximilian's dreamy eyes. But the thing was not statesmanship. The danger dial pointed to some latest darling phantasy. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... glimpse, half believing the vision a phantasy of the brain; he had seen her face, white, frightened, agonized, yet it could not have been real. He tripped over the stone wall and half fell, but ran on, his mind in a turmoil, but certain some ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... himself, by what Means this Vision might actually be continu'd, without Interruption. So he was very intent for a time upon that Being; but he could not stay there long, before some sensible Object or other would present itself, either the Voice of some wild Beast would reach his Ears, or some Phantasy affected his Imagination; or he was touch'd with some Pain in some Part or other; or he was hungry, or dry, or too cold, or too hot, or was forc'd to rise to ease Nature. So that his Contemplation was interrupted, ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... Tom, "upon the point of honour, as you call it. Her engagement I look upon as a mere phantasy, which she will be convinced of ere long. All you have to consider is, whether or not she will accept you. You have had no answer from her you say; then take an early opportunity of seeing her, and pressing for a reply. ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... smoke. In the height of this imaginary turmoil, he awoke, and conceived for a few moments that certain sounds which rang in his ears, were the continuation of those of his dream, in that sort of half-consciousness between sleeping and waking, when reality and phantasy meet and mingle in dim and confused resemblance. He was, however, very soon fully awake to the fact of his guards calling on him to arm, which he did in haste, and beheld the machine in flames, and a furious conflict raging around it. He hurried to the spot, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... damp The fuel that was stored within; which lay Unlighted, waiting for the tinder-touch, Until a chance spark fall'n from Lucia's eyes Kindled the fuel, and the fire was love: Not such as rises blown upon the wind, Goaded to flame by gusts of phantasy, But still, and needing no replenishment, Unquenchable, that would not be ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... taught that nothing was certain, nothing was to be known ([Greek: katalepton]). For the Stoics themselves, their most determined opponents, defined the [Greek: kataleptike phantasia] (the phantasy or impression which involved knowledge[160a]) to be one that was capable of being produced by no object except that to which ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... the other side of the Rhine, a woman at once romantic and practical, of the tenderest sensibility and the severest virtue. This good woman, while she carried her pupil into the land of sentimental phantasy and poetical imaginings, gave her at the same time the most practical instruction in matters relating to actual life. She revealed to Claire all the peculiarities of thought and manner that rendered her grandmother ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... every dream of that wonderful future, of a more splendid and triumphant France, he saw himself on the pinnacle of fame, himself acclaimed by millions the strong great man, the liberator. France outside himself lived only as a phantasy. And now at last his chance had come. The minutes passed unnoticed as he built his way up into the future. He was shrewd and calculating, he took note of the pitfalls he must avoid. One by one he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... saltpetre to charcoal, or charcoal to sulphur, or saltpetre to sulphur, and so were ever unable to make the compound explode. But it has only been discovered within the last few hundred years that all three were needed. Before that gunpowder was a mere imagination, a phantasy of the alchemists. How easy it is to make gunpowder, now the secret ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities". Poe's commentary is most to the point: "Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces as the 'Lady of Shallot'? As well unweave the ventum textilem".—'Democratic Review', Dec., 1844, quoted by Mr. Herne Shepherd. Mr. Palgrave says (selection from the 'Lyric Poems of Tennyson', p. 257) the poem was suggested by an Italian romance upon the Donna di Scalotta. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... sleep. Stretch'd on her couch The delegated Maiden lay: with toil Exhausted and sore anguish, soon she closed Her heavy eye-lids; not reposing then, For busy Phantasy, in other scenes Awakened. Whether that superior powers, By wise permission, prompt the midnight dream, Instructing so the passive [1] faculty; Or that the soul, escaped its fleshly clog, Flies ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... seeing that language is true and false, and that thought is the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and opinion, the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to language, should have an element of falsehood ...
— Sophist • Plato

... vanished with their train. Lonely and lifeless, Nature stood. The scanty number and the rigid measure bound her with fetters of iron. As into dust and air melted the inconceivable blossoms of life into mysterious words. Fled was the magic faith, and phantasy the all-changing, all-uniting friend from heaven. Over the rigid earth, unfriendly, blew a cold north wind, and the wonder-home, now without life, was lost in ether; the recesses of the heavens were filled with beaming worlds. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.

... has its competence—nor deem That better than enough were more; Sure it were phantasy to dream With ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... sweet water misnamed tea, I took a walk in the yard; and on returning to my cell I sat down and wondered how my poor wife was spending the auspicious day. What a "merry Christmas" for a woman whose husband was eating his heart out in gaol! The chapel-bell roused me from phantasy. While the other half of the prison was engaged in "devotion," I did an hour's grinding at Italian, and read a chapter of Gibbon; after which I heard the "miserable sinners" return from ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. "Sufflaminandus erat," {47a} as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too. Many ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... maintain the Baconian hypothesis, I would not weigh heavily on bookless Will's rusticity and patois. Accepting Ben Jonson's account of his "excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility . . . ," accepting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... does not yield to the phantasy that taxation is a blessing and debt a benefit; but it is the duty of public men to extract good from evil whenever it is possible. The burdens of taxation may be lightened and even made productive of incidental benefits by wise, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... or who could praise If one should choose to pass his days In a phantasy of dreams, And, finding thus his own ideal In things dissevered from the real, Be ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... Human Comedy was at first as a dream to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman's face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which must ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac

... see that it would be at the moment Mr. Bernard Shaw so forgot himself as to be interested in something he had not himself written. The Press was charmed with the play and went so far as to say, with a gross burlesque of Chesterton, that it was 'real phantasy and had soul.' Chesterton by his one produced play had earned the right to call himself a dramatic author, who could make the public shiver and think at the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... different shades of gold which the Japanese use for the backgrounds of their lacquered landscapes. It reveals itself everywhere, close to and on the horizon, modifying at its pleasure the colour of things, and giving them a kind of metallic lustre. The phantasy of its changes is unimaginable. Even in the distances of the countryside, it is busy indicating by little trailing clouds of gold the smallest pathways traversed ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... the house, that had so long raised its seedy head, and looked in at the windows, was mowed down, and sociable-looking flowers had taken its place; and then at evening, the traveler returning from the pond by the way of the plain, realized what had once been but the brilliant phantasy of poor Graffam's brain—for though Mrs. Lindsay was a widow, she was neither poor nor deserted. The reason for her coming there was not at that time known among us. A gentleman who was projecting the plan of a settlement at the ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell

... women, and after she had seen her get up, and begin dressing, went to the sultan's apartment, told him that her daughter had got some odd notions in her head, but that there was nothing in them but idle phantasy. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... The phantasy passed, and now the golden gates of the palace of Baaltis rolled open before Elissa. Now, too, the priestesses bore her to the golden throne shaped like a crescent moon, and threw over her a black veil spangled with stars, symbol of the night. ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... a coward and a rag?" cried Lichonin inwardly and wrung his hands. "What am I afraid of, before whom am I embarrassed? Have I not always prided myself upon being sole master of my life? Let's suppose, even, that the phantasy, the extravagance, of making a psychological experiment upon a human soul—a rare experiment, unsuccessful in ninety-nine percent—has entered my head. Is it possible that I must render anybody an account in this, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... changed by illness into "a sad and faded woman." She had a portrait painted from an ivory miniature of herself, taken before the change, and conceives the idea that what she was once must still exist somewhere. The phantasy is played upon by impostors, who undertake to materialize the fancied creature and introduce her as the soul-sister of the credulous spinster. The instrument of the audacious fraud becomes conscience ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... song should I sing to unveil my Isis, if indeed she was present unseen? I hurried away to the white hall of Phantasy, heedless of the innumerable forms of beauty that crowded my way: these might cross my eyes, but the unseen filled my brain. I wandered long, up and down the silent space: no songs came. My soul was not still enough for songs. Only in the silence and darkness ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... that the struggle had commenced, and he was determined to bring this mock phantasy of love to an end. If he could not marry the one woman who had shown him what love really meant, he would at least have done ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... remember Wilde saying to me after it was published that his next Shakespearean book would be a discussion as to whether the commentators on Hamlet were mad or only pretending to be. I think you take Wilde's phantasy too seriously but I am not disputing whether you are right or wrong in your opinion of it; but it strikes me as a little solemn when on Page 116 you say that the 'whole theory is completely mistaken'; but you are quite right when you say that it did Wilde a great deal of harm. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... subtle influence of the moonlight and the night that awoke all the young fires of dreaming, she half closed her eyes and seemed to see a woman who looked like herself yet who—in the phantasy of that moment—was arrayed in a gown of silk and small satin slippers, looking up into the eyes of a man whose hair was dark and whose chin was cleft and whose smile flashed upon white teeth. Only as the dream took hold upon her its spirit changed and the other woman seemed to be herself ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... about him was that with all his gigantic plans he never lost himself in phantasy, but always knew how to keep himself ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... seemed more at ease and presently fell into a deep slumber that lasted until midnight and was broken only by some phantasy of her dreams which intermittently brought from her lips a series of muttered ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... evolution and you realise your hopeless ignorance" (M., p. 11). If we cannot construct a "tree" for fowls, how absurd to adventure into the deeper recesses of Phylogeny. If all that Professor Bateson says is true, is not Driesch right when he speaks of "the phantasy christened Phylogeny"?[4] ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... are tired who follow after Truth, a phantasy that flies; You with only look and laughter Stain ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... her caprice to peril his adventure on this issue. A happy thought crossed his brain; he capered about his little chamber; and could hardly govern himself as the brilliant conception blazed forth on his imagination. This bright phantasy was to be embodied in the shape of a serenade. It would be more in the romantic way of making love—would stimulate her passions—powerfully enlist her feelings in his favour, and doubtless bring on something like an appointment, or a permission, at any rate, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... The "descent into hell," as a Celtic poet paints it, shakes off the mediaeval horror with the mediaeval reverence, and the knight who achieves the quest spends his years of infernal durance in hunting and minstrelsy, and in converse with fair women. The world of the Mabinogion is a world of pure phantasy, a new earth of marvels and enchantments, of dark forests whose silence is broken by the hermit's bell and sunny glades where the light plays on the hero's armour. Each figure as it moves across the poet's canvas is bright with glancing ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... the battalion off. I don't start for another five hours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be out of the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phantasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to please a creature of our imagination. We are no better than ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement.' And again he saith, 'But the very hairs of your head are numbered,' by the hairs meaning the smallest and slightest phantasy or thought. And in harmony herewith is the teaching of blessed Paul, 'For the word of God,' saith he, 'is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... like coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... Though youthful phantasy, while hope inspires, Stretch o'er the infinite her wing sublime, A narrow compass limits her desires, When wreck'd our fortunes in the gulf of time. In the deep heart of man care builds her nest, O'er secret woes she broodeth there, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... phantasy glow, Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove; From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow, Could you ever have tasted the first ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... be all made of sighs and tears; It is to be all made of faith and service; It is to be all made of phantasy; All made of passion, and all made of wishes; All adoration, duty, and observance; All humbleness, all patience, and impatience; All purity, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... your locks and deck yourself as she Goes decked; and, as you can, with cunning heed, Imitate her; then to the gallery You, furnished with the corded stair, shall speed: I shall ascend it in the phantasy That you are she, of whom you wear the weed: And hope, that putting on myself this cheat, I in short time shall quench my ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... when I cried aloud, the sound of my voice penetrated to you through the darkness and distance. Be at peace, beloved; for this rising sun shall not set until I am with you; and no power of fanaticism, nor any brooding phantasy of mine, shall ever draw us apart. Fear not, beloved; be ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... heart exciting wretchedmost furies, Thou, Boy sacrosanct! man's grief and gladness commingling, 95 Thou too of Golgos Queen and Lady of leafy Idalium, Whelm'd ye in what manner waves that maiden phantasy-fired, All for a blond-haired youth suspiring many a singulf! Whiles how dire was the dread she dreed in languishing heart-strings; How yet more, ever more, with golden splendour she paled! 100 Whenas yearning to mate his might ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... a day I shall return to the discussion. I give you so long to change your mind and banish your phantasy; and in the meantime I remain your most ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... where the monuments of its pagan past stand in gigantic disarray. For in the forest is the heart of Arthurian story, the shrine of that wonder which has drawn thousands to this land of legend, who, like old Wace, trusted to have found, if not elfin marvels, at least matter of phantasy conjured up by ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... is to reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold property ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... compassion passed, he once again considered "all that lives," and how they moved within the six portions of life's revolution, no final term to birth and death; hollow all, and false and transient as the plantain tree, or as a dream, or phantasy. Then in the middle watch of night, he reached to knowledge of the pure Devas, and beheld before him every creature, as one sees images upon a mirror; all creatures born and born again to die, noble and mean, the poor and rich, reaping the fruit of right or evil doing, and sharing happiness ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... art— An unseen seraph, we believe in thee; A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine, Up coiling and inveterately convolved, Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... thought of it; yes, his hair lifted and his lip twitched involuntarily, for to Adrian's racked nerves and distorted vision this ghost of the good man whom he had betrayed was no child of phantasy. He had woken in the night and seen it standing at his bedside, plague-defiled and hunger-wasted, and because of it he dreaded to sleep alone, especially in that creaking, rat-haunted mill, whose very board seemed ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... perceived that this artist, in place of giving body to his phantasy in porphyry and marble, or defining his thoughts by the creation of massive caryatides, rather effaced the contour of his works, and, had it been necessary, could have elevated his architecture itself from the soil, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... phantasy, he saw himself rising, appearing a little older, a little stronger, and on his face a look of divine compassion and understanding, yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated Hamlet's words: "For I am cruel only to be kind." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... The broad earth hath not, Through all her bounds, an object like to thee, That travellers e'er recorded. Nor a spot More fit to stir the poet's phantasy; Grey Old Man of the Mountain, awfully There, from thy wreath of clouds thou dost uprear Those features grand,—the same eternally! Lone dweller 'mid the hills! with gaze austere Thou lookest down, methinks, on all ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... It was mere phantasy, of course, the sick imaginings of a mind overwrought. I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by Burke, Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... it; there Remorse sharpened his tooth; there Jealousy tinged his eye with emerald; there was quarried the horse-block from which dark Care leaped into the saddle behind the rider; there were puffed out the smoke-wreaths of Doubt; there were blown the bubbles of Phantasy; there sprouted the seeds of Madness; and there, down in the icy vaults, Death froze his finger for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Io, thou her brazen ass, Or she Dame Phantasy, and thou her gull; She thy Pasiphae, and thou her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... errant phantasy, No more by sense imprisoned, Creates what possibly might be But actually isn't: And this my tale is past belief, Of truth and reason emptied, 'Tis fiction manifest—in brief I was asleep, ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... but does not mention that Mr. Hale labored, throughout, to show that those and other like matters, which had been introduced at the Trials, as proofs of spectral agency, were easily resolvable into the visions and vagaries of a "deluded imagination," "a phantasy in the brain," "phantasma ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... be an impossible thought, Fraeulein. If you but knew who the lady is, you would understand that such a hope on my part were a phantasy. But I have no such hope or wish. I do not now want to win the lady ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... blind Milton's memory of light, The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone, Wrought joys for them surpassing all things known In our restricted sphere of sound and sight,— So while the glaring streets of brick and stone Vex with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night, I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight From dismal now and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... now I know that what had at first seemed to me nothing more than the product of some mad phantasy on the part of the technicians was in reality a ship. It was a ship in which oceans might be crossed, a real ship, to which the heart of an old sailor like ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... It is hardly too much to say that this quality had been almost dormant—a sleeping beauty among the lively bevies of that literature's graces—ever since the Middle Ages, with some touches of waking—hardly more than motions in a dream—at the Renaissance. The comic Phantasy had been wakeful and active enough; the graver and more serious tragic Imagination had been, though with some limitations, busy at times. But this third sister—Our Lady of Dreams, one might call her in imitation of a famous fancy—had not shown herself much in French merriment ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, The Crock of Gold (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his Insurrections (1909) and The Hill of Vision (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... demands a perfectly smooth surface. Undoubtedly a scientific work does, and a philosophical treatise should. When we ask for facts simply, we feel the intrusion of a style. Of fiction it is part. In the one case the classical robe, in the other any mediaeval phantasy of clothing." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Returning, these states are such as they were during a man's abode in the world. Not only the goods and truths, stored up in the memory, remain and return, but likewise all the states of innocence and charity; and when states of evil and the false, or of wickedness and phantasy recur, these latter states are attempered by the former through the Divine operation ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... freakful chance he made retire 230 From his companions, and set forth to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary hills he fared, Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near— Close to her passing, in indifference drear, His silent sandals swept the mossy green; So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen 240 She stood: ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... cities fine; Here now, then there; the world is mine, Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine, Whate'er is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy Presents a thousand ugly shapes, Headless bears, black men, and apes, Doleful outcries, and fearful sights, My sad and dismal soul affrights. All my griefs to this are jolly, None so damn'd as melancholy. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... large, gray eyes, And a pale face, that seemed undoubtedly As if a blooming face it ought to be; Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, Depressed by weight of moving phantasy; Profound his forehead was, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the "phantasy of our Dream"; or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... of that book how God and my sinful soul had been reconciled together; but of that there was nothing to be found therein. They talk much of the union of the will and understanding, but all is mere phantasy and folly. The right and true speculation is this: "Believe in Christ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation," etc. This is the only practice in Divinity. Also, Mystica Theologia Dionysii is a mere ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... the silence broke: Saint Leonard's lay-brother, Who seldom could smother Conception of mischief, or thought of a joke, Drew forth his old rebeck from under his cloak,— And touching the chords To brain-sick words,— While he mimicked a lover's phantasy, Upward rolling his lustrous eye,— With warblings wild He flourished and trilled,— Till mother and maiden aloud 'gan to laugh, And clown challenged clown more ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... Where tears are hung on every tree; For thus my gloomy phantasy Makes all things weep with me! Come let us sit and watch the sky, And fancy clouds, where no clouds be; Grief is enough to blot the eye, And make heaven black with misery. Why should birds sing such merry notes, Unless they ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... crags, and blithely strides to where Our hero stands, amid the poisonous air, And says: "Behold, my King, that glorious Light That shines beyond! and eye no more this sight Of dreariness, that only brings despair, For phantasy of madness reigneth here!" The King in wonder carefully now eyes The messenger divine with great surprise, And says: "But why, thou god of Hope, do I Thus find thee in these realms of agony? This World around me banishes thy feet From paths that welcome here the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... persons say that Dante meant Theology By Beatrice, and not a mistress—I, Although my opinion may require apology, Deem this a commentator's phantasy, Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he Decided thus, and showed good reason why; I think that Dante's more abstruse ecstatics ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... perception, image, eidolon [Gr.], sentiment, reflection, observation, consideration; abstract idea; archetype, formative notion; guiding conception, organizing conception; image in the mind, regulative principle. view &c (opinion) 484; theory &c 514; conceit, fancy; phantasy &c (imagination) 515. point of view &c (aspect) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... in which such Appearance or fact shaped itself,—what sort of fact it became for him,—was and is modified by his own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the Phantasy of Himself; this world is the multiplex 'Image of his own Dream.' Who knows to what unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan Fables owe their shape! The number Twelve, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number,—this ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... rough and rude and filthy did appear, Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye, Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear, When fairer faces were bid standen by: Oh! who can tell the bent of woman's phantasy?" ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... thought profound, When Memory's heart, depress'd with gloom, Laments upon the sculptured mound, And dreams beside the visioned tomb; When voices from the dead arise, Like music o'er the starlit sea, And holiest commune sanctifies The Hour of Phantasy. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... (3) The passions (which, together with the natural appetites, constitute the internal senses, and from which the mental emotions produced by the intellect are quite distinct). (4) The imagination with its two divisions, passive memory and active phantasy. (5) The intellect or reason. (6) The will. These various stages or faculties are, however, not distinct parts of the soul, as in the old psychology, in opposition to which Descartes emphatically defends ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... the rock in imitation of the triforium gallery. The row of piers separates the church proper from what was for centuries the cemetery of Aubeterre: a vast burrow made by the living for the reception of the dead, where they were plunged out of the sunlight teeming with earthly illusion and phantasy, to await the breaking of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... visible, and there was presented to the eye an unbroken expanse of salt bush. It was unbroken but for the mirage that quivered in the dry, hot air. The lake of shining water, with the ferns and trees reflected in it, was but a phantasy, and the girl who leaned idly against the door-post of the hut knew it. Still she looked at it wistfully—it had been so hot, so cruelly hot, this burning January day, and in all the wide plain that stretched away for miles on every side there was not a particle of shade; even the ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... of haunting Indian magic, as Scott's is influenced by legends of foray and feud, by ballad, and song, and old wives' tales, and records of conspiracies, fire- raisings, tragic love-adventures, and border wars. Like Scott, Hawthorne lived in phantasy—in phantasy which returned to the romantic past, wherein his ancestors had been notable men. It is a commonplace, but an inevitable commonplace, to add that he was filled with the idea of Heredity, with the belief that we are all only new combinations of our ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... gas. But Orange did not stop to consider this. It was enough and too much to see his "sad spirit of the elfin race" completely transformed. Was this the child-like, immature being of their strange visit to Miraflores? That whole episode seemed a kind of phantasy—a Midsummer Night's music—nothing more, perhaps something less. The very title of the play—The Second Surprise of Love—carried a mocking significance. Sometimes the soul speaks first, sometimes the senses first influence a life, but the turn, soon or late, must inevitably ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... of his studious labor. The impassioned pedant has written it in heavy prose smothering its brightness in the dull web of his own thought. The brilliant imaginative mind has woven it into romance, making its colors brighter still with the sunlight of inspired phantasy. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... cannot be, Mrs. Logan. It is a phantasy of our disturbed imaginations, therefore let us compose ourselves till we investigate this ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances, (of which I am no judge myself, as the chance of swimming naturally gives self-possession when near shore,) certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes, though not exactly as he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... himself very seriously and has written a preface to his Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy, which is, on the whole, the most interesting part of his volume. We are all, it seems, far too cultured, and lack robustness. 'There are those amongst us,' says Mr. Sharp, 'who would prefer a dexterously-turned triolet to such apparently ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... chest. Though strong men, they had no little difficulty in lifting it; but whether or not it was full of gold, no one could have watched over it more jealously than did the two madmen. It was very remarkable how completely they seemed inspired by the same spirit, and any phantasy which might enter the head of one was instantly adopted ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... pleased, never well in mind or body, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some foolish phantasy or other." ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... peace, as touching my profession. The multiplicity of Scholars, hatcht and nourisht in the idle Calms of peace, makes 'em like Fishes one devour another; and the community of Learning has so played upon affections, and thereby almost Religion is come about to Phantasy, and discredited by being too much spoken off-in so many and mean mouths, I my self, being a Scholar and a Graduate, have no other comfort by my learning, but the Affection of my words, to know how Scholar-like ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... avalanche from the other side of the square. A fifth courier had arrived, and brought the news of the complete defeat of the Russians, and a glorious Prussian victory. Now, one of those memorable, wondrous—grand scenes took place, which no earthly phantasy could contrive or prepare, to which only Providence could give form and color. As if driven by the storm-winds of every powerful earthly passion, this great sea of people fluctuated here and there. At one point, thousands were weeping over the news ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... representing the human emphasis, with the study of geography, representing the natural, is ignored, history sinks to a listing of dates with an appended inventory of events, labeled "important"; or else it becomes a literary phantasy—for in purely literary history the natural environment is ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... Einion, 'there can be no doubt that she comes from a very fair family, for she has two sisters who are as fair as she, and if you saw them together, you would admit that name to be a capital one.' This, then, is the reason why the remarkable family in the land of charm and phantasy (Hud a Lledrith) are ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen



Words linked to "Phantasy" :   pipe dream, fantasy world, dream, wishful thinking, vision, imagination, ignis fatuus, misconception, fantasy life, bubble, fiction, science fiction, fairyland, will-o'-the-wisp, imaginativeness



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