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Cinderella   /sˌɪndərˈɛlə/   Listen
Cinderella

noun
1.
A woman whose merits were not been recognized but who then achieves sudden success and recognition.
2.
A fictional young girl who is saved from her stepmother and stepsisters by her fairy godmother and a handsome prince.






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"Cinderella" Quotes from Famous Books



... work is the 'Early Lessons for Children,' which was written during this period. Coming as it did when, as Hannah More said, there was nothing for children to read between 'Cinderella' and the Spectator, it was largely welcomed, and has been used by generations of English children. The lessons were written for a real little Charles, her adopted son, the child of her brother, Dr. Aikin. For him, too, she wrote ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... glad sunlight; so the glossy waves of golden hair are nicely combed, and the bright dress put on, to heighten, by contrast, the dimpled fairness of the neck and shoulders; then, the little white apron, to keep all tidy; then the Cinderella boots, neatly laced. I can see you, little pet! I wish I had you in my ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... magic upon your Grace. Alas, for the captive princess, whose nod was to command a vassal so costly as your Grace! She runs, methinks, no slight chance of being turned out of doors, like a second Cinderella, to seek her fortune among lackeys ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... of her palanquin came forward, the Queen stepped into it, the sceptre-bearer marched before it, the band struck up their loudest tune, the people shouted till they were hoarse, and the procession returned in due state to old Mama Rosa's abode; where, like Cinderella when the clock had struck twelve, she was again converted into the old ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... this sagacious monitor; and then she offers—"fairy tales and old romance." For ideals of love—here—in America to-day—we are referred to Grimm's Marchen; to Cinderella, the Goose Girl, Beauty and the Beast, and the Sleeping Beauty! Various heroines of mythology and fiction are adduced, and the crowning type of all is Elaine, The Lily ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... a story, though, of one lady Caliph. It isn't precisely an Arabian Nights story, because it brings in Cinderella, who flourished her dishrag in another epoch and country. So, if you don't mind the mixed dates (which seem to give it an Eastern flavour, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... the livery of one of the footmen of Cinderella's coach.... It is just the thing for him: he has the soul of ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... was a pair of number ten shoes. Number tens alone, whether one pair or more, I wot not, represented their gigantic fire sale. And I can not say how many men had come only to be confronted with tens, before this masculine Cinderella triumphantly filled their capacious maws with his number ten feet, and gleefully carried off what may have been the only bargain ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... curling his whiskers after having eaten up the ogre who foolishly changed himself into a mouse; and Beauty and the Beast; and the Blue Bird; and Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Bean Stalk; and the Yellow Dwarf; and Cinderella and her fairy godmother; and great numbers besides, of whom we haven't ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... "buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... crowd and the Empress. The Emperor and the Queen of Holland then passed on, without appearing to have noticed her Majesty's distress, and the Prince of Orange, with one knee on the ground, helped the beautiful sovereign to put on her Cinderella-like slipper. I saw that the Empress leaned more heavily on the Prince's arm than she would have liked, for her pretty foot was evidently ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... which should be considered a side issue of reading; meaningless words or sentences are written wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a purpose that gives life to an apparently meaningless act, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... became Fielding's cousin and her ladyship's self. But while the kind had not conquered, and for a long time did not conquer, any high place in literature from the point of view of serious criticism—while, now and long afterwards, novel-writing was the Cinderella of the literary family, and novel-reading the inexhaustible text for sermons on wasted, nay positively ill-spent, time—the novelists themselves half justified their critics by frequent extravagance; ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... he was frank and kindly, interesting and interested; I was only a lad, and he was verging on seventy. I could tell him about a few 'travellers' whom he had not recently seen—Charlie Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and Mantis Buckland, Cinderella Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver ('Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,' I seem to remember ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... been at Sigmundskron?' continued the sprightly lady. 'Do you know? It would be my dream to live at Sigmundskron! So romantic, so solitary, so deliciously poetic! It is no wonder that you look like Cinderella and the fairy godmother! I am sure they both lived at Sigmundskron—and Greif will be the Prince Charmant with his Puss in Boots—quite a Lohengrin in fact—dear me! I am afraid I am mixing them up—those old German myths are ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... "Alas, poor CINDERELLA!" said the Fairy, in a compassionate tone, "and so your stepmother and sisters have gone to the Prince's ball, and left you to cleanse the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... entitled him to no respect; the heartlessness of her mother to no esteem; the tyranny of her sisters to no affection; yet did she strive to render all. Until the age of sixteen she had been the Cinderella of the family, during which period of seclusion she had learned to think and to act ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... godfathers, what's my gift today?" he laughed. "A golden goose, a magic ring, or a beautiful Cinderella hidden behind the curtain?" and he poked at the portiere playfully. "But you have the appearance of conspirators. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... said, taking me presently upon his knee and brushing the specks of white ash from my clothes and hair, "what a little Cinderella I have made of my guest! This must not happen again, Gretchen. Did you not tell me yesterday ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards

... middle, she can squeak; It quite frightened Towser, for he didn't know that any of us but he and I and Charles were able to speak. I've taken her for my only sister, for of course I may take anybody I choose; I've called her Cinderella, because I'm so fond of the story, and because she's got real shoes. I don't feel so only now there are so many of us; for, counting Cinderella there are five,— She, and I, and Towser, and Charles, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... inherent strength of imagination and faith over against the external fact. Whatsoever is facile to Imagination is also facile to Faith. Easy, therefore, in our thoughts, is the transition from the Cinder-wench in the ashes to the Cinderella of the palace; easy the apotheosis of the slave, and the passage from the weary earth to the fields of Elysium and the Isles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... Newfoundland began with the reign of Charles I. and continued to the end of the eighteenth century. As a recent writer observes: "In the fairy story it is the youngest sister, but the eldest sister is the Cinderella of colonial history. If Newfoundland had experienced only the healthful neglect under which the other colonies prospered, she too would have grown into vigorous life. But a strong and influential class in England was interested in harassing the settlers, in depreciating the resources of the ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... young damsel who presides, there is another, less neatly dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and altogether she seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is evidently a supe or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her superior companion, and while observing the foreigner with a mild stare, unskillfully concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when he makes a faux pas with the chopsticks and drops a bit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... fairy tale. They acted Jack the Giant-killer in fine style, and the giant came tumbling headlong from a loft when Jack cut down the squash-vine running up a ladder and supposed to represent the immortal beanstalk. At other performances Cinderella rolled away in an impressive pumpkin, and one of their star plays was a dramatic version of the story of the woman who wasted her three wishes, in which a long black pudding was lowered by invisible hands and slowly fastened onto ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... coarse-grained," Madeline exclaimed. "I, for one, am going to believe in her, and in a year, with you and Dick and mother and Mrs. Lenox and myself all backing her, you'll be proud of her loveliness and tact. I shall be only Cinderella's ugly sister. But you must not ever quite forget me, Mrs. Percival." And ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... time drew near for the christening party, and the king and queen were sitting at breakfast in their summer parlour talking over it. It was a splendid room, hung with portraits of the royal ancestors. There was Cinderella, the grandmother of the reigning monarch, with her little foot in her glass slipper thrust out before her. There was the Marquis de Carabas, who, as everyone knows, was raised to the throne as prince consort after his marriage with the daughter of the king of the period. On ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... and the question naturally arises, 'Are not these the proper people to talk about men and manners and society in America?' . . . 'NEVER mind, my dear,' says Baron POMPOLINO, while endeavoring to fit the fairy slipper of the lovely CINDERELLA upon the long splay foot of one of his ungainly daughters, 'never mind, my dear, she is not at all like you!' The doting father, it will be remembered, gives this verdict as a flattering compliment. We have sometimes been amused, where the quo animo was apparent, with similar compliments ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... do hard work; to rise early, before daylight, to bring the water, to make the fire, to cook and to wash. She had no bed to lie down on, but was made to lie by the hearth among the ashes, and they called her Cinderella. ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... two now. I wouldn't have been sartin of the matter if I hadn't seen the print of yer mother's small shoe in the snow, and while I was looking I obsarved that of Dot, no bigger than Cinderella hersilf might have made." ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... "Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself seated aloft before quite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... had a somewhat different effect upon the two individuals most concerned. Ruth was frankly elated over the whole thing and found it by no means impossible to believe that she was a princess in disguise though she had played Cinderella contentedly enough. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... successful launch, and the merry little crew set sail with a fair wind and every prospect of a prosperous voyage. When the first performance was over, our two children left their fine feathers behind them, like Cinderella when the magic hour struck, and went gayly home, feeling much elated, for they knew they should go back to fresh triumphs, and were earning money by their voices like Jenny Lind and Mario. How they pitied other boys and girls who could not go ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... the end I insisted upon going without jewels. I had the required plumes in my hair, and the veil that was correct form at court, and my lovely evening gown and pearl-embroidered slippers, which were to me like Cinderella's at the ball. ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... her gray jacket with as much contempt for it as Cinderella may have felt for her rags after her successes at the ball, departed with the delightful sensation of having made a bold first step, and being eager ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... hymn books, and reminds one of cakes of chocolate. But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in height, whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the great Pixerecourt) was at least 130 millimetres high. Beside the uncut example mine looks like Cinderella's plain sister beside the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... marry the good boor Jeannot, just the same after a while; or drift away after him to Paris, and leave her two little wooden shoes, and her visions of Christ in the fields at evening, behind her forevermore, and do as all the others did, and take not only silken stockings but the Cinderella slipper that is called Gold, which brings all other good things in ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... not daring to complain to her father, who was entirely ruled by his new wife. When her daily work was done she used to sit down in the chimney-corner among the ashes; from which the two sisters gave her the nick-name of Cinderella. But Cinderella, however shabbily clad, was handsomer than they were ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... sucked their pieces slowly, so as to make them last a long time, and while they got themselves all sticky with syrup, Jose told them the story of Cinderella and her glass slippers and her pumpkin coach, ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... decided upon three names; Prince Charming for the white kitty, Cinderella for the Maltese and Princess Golden for the kitty with the ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... bloody, terrifying day. She sent little darts of exquisite pain through him by constantly alluding to the real devastator as "that nice Mr. Fairy-fax." It was her pleasure to regard him as a great big fairy who had promised her in secret that she would some day be like Cinderella and have all the riches the slipper showered upon ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat— EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... his wife rose early the next morning, and, leaving the two children still sleeping; crept down the ladder to the floor below. There lay Zeb, also sound asleep, with his toes toward the ashes like a little black Cinderella. The Goodwife's mother heart was stirred with pity as she looked down at him. Perhaps she imagined her own boy a captive in a strange land, unable to speak the language, with no future but slavery and no friends ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... distinguish them. The idle notion attracts attention no less than the one destined to prove significant; often it pleases more. Only watchful eyes and that rare thing, conscience applied to memory, can pluck working notions from the gay and lascivious vegetation of the mind, or learn to prefer Cinderella to her impudent sisters. If a myth has some modicum of applicability or significance it takes root all the more firmly side by side with knowledge. There are many subjects of which man is naturally so ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... cheers vociferously every piece of good fielding, and his voice becomes an inspiriting feature of the innings. But you can see, by the way he is constantly looking at his watch, that his liberty is limited, and that soon, like Cinderella at midnight, he must vanish once more into obscurity. He knows to half a second how long it takes him to run from the tent to the schoolhouse, and at one minute and twelve seconds to six, whatever he is doing, he will bolt like ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... father loosened by that much the chain that prevented her from complete freedom of movement. In her most infamous hours she would dream of the hunger and distress, bankruptcy and despair of her people. Once this state of affairs had been realised, she would no longer have to play the role of Cinderella; she would no longer have to be the first one up in the morning; she would no longer have to chop wood, and polish her brothers' boots: she would have a fair field and no favours in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at any game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she was about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with Judy, and Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... to do things for others," continued their schoolmate gushingly. "When somebody has been looking forward to an event, just think of the bliss of being able to bring it to pass! One would feel a sort of mixture of Santa Claus and Cinderella's ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is then borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe's valuable Cinderella. {60} Pharaoh's wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... of your sex," he said, smiling. "Allow me to talk with your hostess. I'm sure she will let you walk out with your borrowed finery, just like Cinderella. You'll need a nice thick ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... over, when we begin to think of leaving, and of going down again, Chrysantheme replaces her little Bambou astride upon her back, and sets forth, bending forward under his weight and painfully dragging her Cinderella slippers over the granite steps and flagstones. Yes, decidedly low this conduct! but low in the best sense of the word: nothing in it displeases me; I even consider Chrysantheme's affection for Bambou-San engaging and attractive in ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... loose and mussy, and even her very oldest slippers on,—and with Gerald standing beside her in her rich, dainty, becoming attire as if to make the contrast all the more painfully striking! Poor little Cinderella Phebe! She looked up at Denham almost ready to cry, and said ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... forgotten his nursery tales? Who does not remember the stories of aged friends as they sat round the winter fire? We have somewhere read of our nursery tales under eight heads. First, of a hero waging successful war with monsters; (2nd), of a neglected individual mysteriously raised into position, like "Cinderella;" (3rd), of one thrown into a magic trance, like the "Sleeping Beauty;" or (4th) of a person overpowered by a monster, as in the case of "Little Red Riding Hood." "Blue Beard," says the writer from whom we have just ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... ratiocination the Head had thus arrived at the feet, it is not for me to conjecture. All I know is that, from that moment, Mrs. Lyndsay bestowed as much thought upon Caroline's chaussure as if, like Cinderella, Caroline's whole destiny in this world hung upon her slipper. With the feelings and the schemes that have been thus intimated, this sensible lady's mortification may well be conceived when she was startled by Darrell's proposal, not to herself, but to her daughter. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nervously. "No, no; we mustn't spoil the magic of the ring." Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful monotone. "Who knows—Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far greater. Who knows?" She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn cry. "Why, to-night is ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... world did not measure up to her expectations, she had been in the habit of making a world of her own; a beautiful make-believe place that held all her heart's desires. It had given her gilded coaches and Cinderella ball-attire in her nursery days, and enchanted orchards whose trees bore all manner of confections. It had bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age. Friends and social pleasures ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... a queer idea that she spoke as if she were Cinderella and he had made the clock strike twelve. Her voice had such absolute grief in it that he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Mary's feet, on a low stool before the fire, with the old cat blinking and purring with drowsy satisfaction upon my knee, I used to gaze abstractedly at the glowing coals, now thinking myself the prince in "Cinderella," now the happy owner of "Puss in Boots," and now the adventurous Sindbad. There was one story, however—I quite forget its title—which, in strong contrast with the others, instead of affording me gratification, was a source of keen annoyance ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... gentlemen, who heretofore have shown no more of the jockey than Cinderella's feet in the early part of the pantomime disclose of her ball attire, suddenly cast off the pea-jackets and bearskin wraps, and shawls and overcoats of winter, and shine forth in all the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... theatrical sweet-stuff from America is of course a growing industry. The latest consignment, The Cinderella Man, first arrived in this country in the form of a novel, and the difficulty it offered was that the struggling hero, Anthony Quintard, whose fate depended, in the absence of common-sense, on his winning a ten thousand dollar prize for an opera libretto, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... in the hot tropical night, I could only think of a Hindoo blowing the pipes in India, the charming of snakes.... So, as we turned the corner into the Rue Jessaint, I seemed to catch a faint glimpse of a scene on the lawn at Versailles.... Louis XIV—it was the epoch of Cinderella! ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... thrusts, which I somehow instinctively recognised as assegai wounds. By her side lay Sannie, the little prattling girl of three, my constant playmate, whom I had instructed in cat's-cradle, and taught the tales of Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. My hand grasped the lollipops in my pocket convulsively. She would never need them. Nobody else was about. What had become of Oom Jan Willem—and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... transparent gauze which but partially covered them! Her leg, with its exquisite ankle and swelling calf,—faultless in symmetry,—was terminated by a tiny foot which coquettishly played with a satin slipper on the carpet,—a slipper that would have driven Cinderella to the commission of suicide. Her ample waist had never been compressed by the wearing of corsets, or any other barbarous tyranny of fashion; yet it was graceful, and did not in the least degree approach ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... see," said Adams, seating himself on a tree-stump, and knitting his brows with a severe strain of memory. "There's Cinderella; an' there's Ally Babby or the fifty thieves—if it wasn't forty—I'm not rightly sure which, but it don't much matter; an' there's Jack the Giant-killer, an' Jack and the Pea-stalk—no; let me see; it was a beanstalk, I think—anyhow, it was the stalk of a ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... later. The only French writers of the classical period who produced anything at all analogous to the German "Maehrchen" were Charles Perrault, who published between 1691-97 his famous fairy tales, including "Blue Beard," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding-Hood," "Cinderella," and "Puss in Boots"; and the Countess d'Aulnoy (died 1720), whose "Yellow Dwarf" and "White Cat" belong to the same department of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... rare delicacy; her mouth curved and crimson, and her beautiful blue eyes large and expressive; her whole face presents a ravishing expression of innocence and candor. From the edge of her muslin gown appear two feet like Cinderella's, shod in white silk hose and Moorish slippers of cherry satin embroidered with silver, which one could hold in the palm of one's hand. The attitude of this young woman leaves to the imagination an exquisite whole, in spite of her slight figure. Thanks ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... the numerous aunts of the household were concerned more with the spirit of practical rather than pure reason, and the categoric imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation was changed when her parents migrated to Konigsberg, and little Emma was relieved from her role of Cinderella. She now regularly attended public school and also enjoyed the advantages of private instruction, customary in middle class life; French and music lessons played an important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter of Ibsen and Shaw was then a little German ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... girdle, O reluctant Muse, In closest frock and Cinderella shoes, Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display, One zephyr step, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to have been lost in astonishment. But I wasn't. I was very much like people in fairy tales. Nothing ever astonishes them. When a fully appointed gala coach is produced out of a pumpkin to take her to a ball, Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets in quietly and drives away to ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... pressed Mr. Cobb's knee ardently and said in a voice choking with tears of joy and astonishment, "Oh, it can't be true, it can't; to think I should see Milltown. It's like having a fairy godmother who asks you your wish and then gives it to you! Did you ever read Cinderella, or The Yellow Dwarf, or The Enchanted Frog, or The Fair One with ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... "Cinderella did, and had a nice time in the end. This girl out here has a basket of scraps on her arm, and a big old shawl all round her, and doesn't seem to care a bit, though the water runs out of the toes of her boots. She goes paddling along, laughing ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... rejoice the hearts of the Tewan juveniles, by introducing among them the precious lore of the story-books. The rising generation shall no longer remain in heathen ignorance of Cinderella, and Jack of the Bean-stalk, and his still more illustrious cousin, the Giant-killer! The sufferings of Sinbad, the voyages of Gulliver, the achievements of Munchausen, the adventures of Crusoe, shall yet become to ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... Romance stepped into your life and out of it. Think! There will always be the same charm, the same mystery, the same enchantment. Knowing nothing of me, there will follow no disillusions, no disenchantments; I shall always be Cinderella, or the Sleeping Beauty, or what your fancy wills. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... he remarked, presently. "You look quite a different sort of body now. When I first came in you reminded me of Cinderella in a brown dress, sitting all alone, by a very black fire. I do believe you were on the verge of crying. Now, weren't you, Miss Mattie?" And Mattie, with much ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... Moderns, which so keenly occupied French men of letters in the latter part of the seventeenth century. But his fame to-day rests upon his authorship of the traditional Tales of Mother Goose; or Stories of Olden Times, and so long as there are children to listen spellbound to the adventures of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and that arch rogue Puss in Boots, ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... admire my treasures when I got home, and Mary 'Liza was so much interested in Darby and Joan that she brought up her cats, Cinderella and Preciosa, to be introduced and make friends with "their new cousins"—so she said. Cinderella was black-and-white, Preciosa yellow-and-white, very large, and with long fur as soft and fine as raw silk. Mary 'Liza put them down ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... and here The Sleeping Beauty lies in state, The prince will come ere 'tis too late! And this is Cinderella dear. The godmother will soon appear And send her to ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various

... June-like creature should come to them that wintry day—that she had crossed the terrible ocean from a foreign realm far more remote, in the child's consciousness, than fairy-land—seemed quite as strange as if Cinderella had stepped out of the storybook with the avowed purpose of remaining with them until her lost slipper was found. Leonard, big and strong as he was, felt and interpreted the delicate and thrilling organism of his child, and, as Amy turned toward ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... through the columns of the "Gazette;" but these importations, though they show familiarity with Newbery's quaint phraseology in advertising, probably also included an assortment of such little chap-books as "Tom Thumb," "Cinderella" (from the French of Monsieur Perrault), and some few other old stories which the children had long since appropriated ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings of Parliament, receptions by the sovereign,—the interminable procession of state carriages, with gleaming panels, great mirrors, gaudy, gold-bespangled liveries, which passed amid the dazzled throngs, reminding them of fairy tales, the equipages of Cinderella, and arousing the same Ohs! of admiration that ascend and burst with the bombs at displays of fireworks. And in the crowd there was always an obliging police officer, of an erudite petty bourgeois with nothing to do, on the watch for public ceremonials, to name aloud all the people ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... say that if General Sherman's wife resembles mine—and I very much suspect she does—he has a sympathy for me at the present moment. Once upon a festal occasion, a little late, quite after the hour when Cinderella was bidden by her godmother to go to bed, I happened to extol the graces and virtues of the newly wedded wife of a friend of mine, and finally, as a knockdown argument, I compared her to my own wife. "In this case," said he, dryly, "you'll catch it when you get ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... to see Madame Lepelletier. The lovely woman sweeps across the room and bends over the chair to take Violet's hand. It is small and soft and white, and the one slippered foot might vie with Cinderella's. The clear, fine complexion, the abundant hair with rippling sheen that almost defies any correct color tint, and is chestnut, bronze, and dusky by turns, the sweet, dimpled mouth, the serene, unconscious youth, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the children acted simple impromptu plays, Cinderella, Blue Beard, Beauty and the beast, on the lawn outside the long windows. The lawn has been in bad condition for nearly two years, on account of the building of the Morgan memorial, but has now been planted again. One May-day we had an old English festival around a Maypole on the green, with ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... he tried to write something funny. Surely such child's tales as Bluebeard, Cinderella, etc., were easy enough to write. He would make a Kindeslied—a child's song. But he was mistaken; to write a new nursery ballad was the hardest task of all. Time after time he struggled; and, at last, one day when he had written and destroyed a longer ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... to the ball, and change before starting on her journey. Of course she took no count of the time, and was gaily dancing to the tune of 'Money in Both Pockets,' with an agreeable partner, when the horn sounded at the end of the street. Like an Irish Cinderella, away flew Sydney in her muslin gown and pink shoes and stockings, followed by her admirers, laden with her portmanteau and bundle of clothes. There was just time for Molly to throw an old cloak over her charge, and then the coach door was banged-to, and the little governess travelled away ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... some fine music those days. We had the English opera of "Cinderella" (with Henry Placide as the pompous old father, an unsurpassable bit of comedy and music.) We had Bombastes Furioso. Must have been in 1844 (or '5) I saw Charles Kean and Mrs. Kean (Ellen Tree)—saw them in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... reach the cottage. Nature, which pursues her course with serene indifference to human vicissitudes, wore the same smiling aspect it had worn two years before, when she went singing through the woods, like Cinderella, all unconscious of the beneficent fairy she was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... to come down. Liza had not had time to put her hat on, and was holding it in her hand. Sally's was pinned on sideways, and she had to bash it down on her head every now and then to prevent its coming off. Cinderella herself was not more transformed than they were; but Cinderella even in her rags was virtuously tidy and patched up, while Sally had a great tear in her shabby dress, and Liza's stockings were falling over ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... take my meals with the maids and valets at the Majestic Palace, because a change, so sudden and Cinderella-like, after lunching in the restaurant, would cause disagreeable talk in the hotel. As my living in future would be at the charge of the Turnours, I might afford myself a few indulgences to begin with, she argued; and deciding ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... she has the most beautiful little feet. I never see her stepping along without thinking of Cinderella and the glass slipper. As to eyes, they are either dark brown or black, I don't know which; but I do know they are beautiful; and her hair, well, she generally wears that plain in deference to the wishes of her Quaker ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... shall I tell you, children, About Red Riding Hood? Or what befell those little Babes Who wandered in the Wood? Or how sweet Cinderella went So gaily to the ball?" "Yes, yes!" we cried, and clapped our hands; "We want to ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... Here Cinderella you may see, Weeping o'er her destiny; Her sisters to the Ball are gone, And she is ...
— Harrison's Amusing Picture and Poetry Book • Unknown

... now at the hotel, trunk and boxes packed, waiting to start. Cinderella is not going to wait for the stroke of twelve; she has donned her sober garments and is ready to be whisked back to the cinders on the hearth. I am glad hard work is ahead; a solid grind seems necessary for my ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... that his wife governed him entirely. When she had done all her work she used to sit in the chimney corner among the cinders; so that in the house she went by the name of Cinderbreech: the youngest of the two sisters, however, being rather more civil than the eldest, called her Cinderella. And Cinderella, dirty and ragged as she was, as often happens in such cases, was a thousand times prettier than her sisters, drest out in all their splendour. It happened that the king's son gave a ball, to which he invited all the persons of fashion in the country: our two ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... and in all that she did. She had never known what it was to be happy before, because she had never been allowed, until now, to do anything for herself. She was down on her knees at one moment, blowing the fire, and telling us that she felt like Cinderella; she was up on a table the next, attacking the cobwebs with a long broom, and wishing she had been born a housemaid. As for my unfortunate friend, the upholsterer, he was leveled to the ranks at the first effort he made to assume the command of the domestic forces in ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... gratify?—Ask any thing you please, the fairy Goodwill shall contrive to get it for you in a trice. You have thought of a wish at this moment, I know, by your eyes, by your blush. Nay, do not hesitate. Do you doubt me because I do not appear before you in the shape of a little ugly woman, like Cinderella's godmother? or do you despise me because you do not see a wand waving in my hand?—'Ah, little skilled of fairy lore!' know that I am in possession of a talisman that can command more than ever fairy granted. Behold my talisman," continued she, drawing out her purse, and showing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... writing mortals we esteem him who, like Barrie, treads with sure feet the borderland 'twixt fact and faery, stepping now on this side, now on that. One must write with moist eyes many pages of such a fantasy as "A Kiss for Cinderella." There are tears that are not laughter's, nor grief's, but beauty's own. A lovely landscape may bring them, or a strain of music, or a ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... my lady!" he said, "perhaps you think your husband can get along without a lawyer. Perhaps you think the devil will save him, or heaven, or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!" There was biting ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... thought, and the bright, silky hair, somewhat tossed, throws a shadow on it, of which, not only Master Harvey, but a certain other painter, named Rembrandt, would not have been ashamed. The girl at once reminds you of Cinderella and Gretchen, and the leaning posture which she now maintains suggests timidity and ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Rose Cottage years ago, but for a long time she had been away in Dublin. Fly was too much excited to eat her breakfast. The others as they watched her dancing round the room could not help being a little bit envious at her good fortune. They had never heard of anybody before, except Cinderella, who had had a visit from a godmother. Their godmothers were all dead, or away in England. Fly in her happiness had a pang of regret that she could not share this delightful relative with the others. She said she would share the gift. She had thought that morning would never pass. Lull was ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... that the same bright, warm imagination that had made Angila once dream of Ossian-heroes, now endowed Robert Hazlewood with every charm she wanted, and even threw a romantic glow over a small house, low ceilings, small economies, and all but turned the woman-servant into a man. Cinderella's godmother could hardly have done more. Such is the power ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... character. The gentlemen of the smoking-room have it not all their own way quite as much as they think. If, indeed, a new school of Athens were to be pictured, the sages and the students might be represented in exquisite dressing-gowns, with slippers rarer than the lost one of Cinderella, and brandishing beautiful brushes over tresses still more fair. Then is the time when characters are never more finely drawn, or difficult social questions more accurately solved; knowledge without reasoning and truth without logic—the triumph of intuition! ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... 209 Notes on Cunningham's Handbook of London, by E.F. Rimbault 211 Devotional Tracts belonging to Queen Katherine Parr, by Dr. Charlton 212 Suggestions for cheap Books of Reference 213 Rib, why the first Woman formed from 213 Minor Notes:—Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper—Mistletoe on Oaks—Omnibuses—Havock—Schlegel on Church Property ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... member of a committee it would have been obvious that the Stranger was of the Cinderella type, and bound to turn out a heroine sooner or later. But perception goes out of committees. The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... hundred. "Evening dress is indispensable" was printed on the cards. The butlers, footmen, cooks, ladies' maids, housemaids, and housekeepers hoped by this notification to keep the ball select. But the restriction seemed to condemn Esther to play again the part of Cinderella. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... the only one of her children she had ever understood, were playing wonderful games in the twilight among the shadows of a tiny attic. Now she was the wolf, devouring Edith, who was Red Riding Hood, with kisses. Now Cinderella's prince, now both her wicked sisters. But in the favourite game of all, Mrs. Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a wicked dragon, so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But curly-headed Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking-horse, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... Hetty, "you must not say that. Cinderella was a daughter of the house, and I am nobody's child. That is what the village people say. And only think if they had sent me to ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... carried an electric thrill into the dreamy soul of the listener. "You love music and you live in a place where they don't know the difference between Tannhaeuser and a tom-tom. Mary would like to be pretty and she lives in a place where if she was as beautiful as Cinderella, nobody but a bunch of hill-bullies would ever see her. I want power, power that the world's got to bow down to and acknowledge—and I might just as well be locked up in somebody' hen-house. Well, maybe it's enough for you only to dream about the music you don't ever expect to hear, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... were originally interpreted from the old tales and legends by the late Henry R. Schoolcraft, and are now re-interpreted and developed by the Editor, so as to enable them, as far as worthy, to take a place with the popular versions of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and other world-renowned tales of Europe and the East, to which, in their original conception, they bear a resemblance in romantic interest and quaint extravagance of fancy. The Editor hopes that these beautiful and sprightly legends of the West, if not marred in the handling, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... get her," answered Dick blithely, "and she'd be safer with me. I know what you two girls are thinking of. You are going to borrow her clothes and make a Cinderella of her. They are what you care about. But I love her for herself, her useless hands, her golden hair, her lovely smile—well, no, I guess we'll cut out the smile," he corrected when Maudie, agitated by the appraising hands of the two girls, ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... happy day arrived. The two proud sisters set off in high spirits. Cinderella followed them with her eyes until the coach was out of sight. She then began to cry bitterly. While she was sobbing, her godmother, who was a ...
— Cinderella • Anonymous

... old, old stories, the very best; dear Cinderella, wicked old Bluebeard, tiny Thumbling, beautiful Beauty and the ugly Beast, and a host of others. But the old stories, I may tell you, are always new, and always must be so, because there are new children to read ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg

... Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper Fanny's Telephone Order The Raindrops' New Dresses Sir Gobble What is It? John's Bright Idea A Sad Thanksgiving Party Guy and the Bee Mean Boy Naughty Pumpkin's Fate Something About Fires The lee-King's Reign. Malmo, the Wounded Rat ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous

... alertness, and there began that subtle game of under-the-surface thrust and parry that seemed inevitable when the two met. Mr. Westmacote listened with quiet enjoyment. His dinner was to his taste, Hynds House more than came up to his expectations, Alicia was Cinderella after the fairy's wand had passed over her, I had ceased to be a mere person and become a personage; and he found here such men as Doctor Geddes, The Author, and Nicholas Jelnik. The Head smiled at his wife, and was ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... Mother Bunch's collection be similarly indebted to him; may "Jack the Giant Killer," may "Tom Thumb," may "Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his pencil. Is not Whittington sitting yet on Highgate hill, and poor Cinderella (in that sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her lonely chimney-nook? A man who has a true affection for these delightful companions of his youth is bound to be grateful to them if he can, and we pray ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... used to drive their own chariots, as we do our motors, and hold salons, like the French ladies. There was Rhodopis, for instance, who married the brother of Sappho. I wonder if Colonel Corkran could have told you that the story of Cinderella comes from an anecdote of Rhodopis? I hardly think that he's been able to spare enough time from bridge to study Strabo, who was the Baedeker of Egypt for tourists six hundred years before Christ. An eagle saw Rhodopis bathing, and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... We had shrieked out our woes by the voices of five engines. Brave men had dug. Patient men had sat inside and waited for the results of the digging. At last, in triumph, at eleven and three quarters, as they say in "Cinderella," we entered ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... instantly as the tot who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before. Her eyes could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of village carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call her "Cindy,"—short for Cinderella,—which amused and pleased her. She in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally declared that she was ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... tales from the far north. (Quern at the bottom of the sea.) Asbjoernsen. Popular tales from the Norse; tr. by Dasent. Bryant. How to tell stories. (Adapted.) Coussens. Child's book of stories. Lang. Blue fairy book. Lang. Cinderella; and other fairy stories. Tappan. Folk stories and fables. Wiggin and Smith. Tales ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... is left with a cruel stepmother, who has a daughter who is bad-tempered and disagreeable, and extremely jealous of her. She becomes the Cinderella of the house, is ill-treated and beaten, but submits patiently. At last the harsh stepmother is urged by her daughter to get rid of her. It is winter, in the month of January; the snow has fallen, and the ground is frozen. The cruel stepmother in this dreadful weather bids ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... not get up something they could take part in themselves?' said Cherry; 'Cinderella, or some such little play?—Edgar, you know how ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... CINDERELLA, the only scullion maid who had a small foot and two sisters in society. Historians have questioned her claims to fame, but they may easily be substantiated ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... of them in her own manner of recounting. There is practically no limit to the variety of kinds and subjects which may be interpreted and rendered available in this way. The story of Ivanhoe, or Quentin Durward, or Lohengrin, may be just as readily told in this way as Cinderella, or Robin Hood, or Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp. But set any child the task of reading for itself a great volume of Ivanhoe, or many of the other world classics, or of listening to any one who waded through the long descriptions for hours ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... flowers to feathers, in that long-past dynasty of the Humming-Birds? It is strange to come upon his tiny nest, in some gray and tangled swamp, with this brilliant atom perched disconsolately near it, upon some mossy twig; it is like visiting Cinderella among her ashes. And from Humming-Bird to Eagle, the daily existence of every bird is a remote and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... The Cinderella-like episode of the slipper had naturally not entered into Mr. Fennessy's calculations, but he took the unforeseen without a ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... immense tract of country stretching right up through the centre of Australia from the south to the north coast. The Northern Territory came under its administration. This tract of country approached in size nearly to one-third of the whole of Australia. South Australia has been called the "Cinderella" of the Australian Colonies, not only because she was the youngest, but also because of the character of her constitution. The original settlers had landed on virgin soil, untainted by previous settlements of convict prisoners. South Australia had not begun ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"—every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... midnight," she said. "You shall go, now, Stephen Holmes,—quick! before your sovereign lady fades, like Cinderella, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... Tales of Passed Times appeared at Paris in 1697 A.D. It included the now-familiar stories of "Bluebeard," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Little Red Riding Hood." In 1812 A.D. the brothers Grimm published their Household Tales, a collection of stories ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... these fireside tales have been handed down from parent to child for more than a hundred generations; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his evening meal of yava and sipped his fermented mead, listened with his children to the stories of Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days when the squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-skinned Sudra was as yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origin can explain the community in character between the stories told by the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... fortune would have pleased me more. There! And if I've been slow and stupid in taking it in, it is because it's so wonderful, so like a fairy tale of virtue rewarded—as if you were a kind of male Cinderella, old man!" He had no intention of lying—he had no belief that he was: he had only forgotten that his previous impressions and hesitations had arisen from the very fact that he DID doubt the consistency of the story with his belief in Uncle Ben's weakness. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Cinderella" :   woman, fictional character, adult female, character, fictitious character



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