Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Romantic   /roʊmˈæntɪk/   Listen
Romantic

noun
1.
A soulful or amorous idealist.
2.
An artist of the Romantic Movement or someone influenced by Romanticism.  Synonym: romanticist.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Romantic" Quotes from Famous Books



... in all her pretty, romantic little dreams about kindred feelings and a hundred other delightful ideas, that flutter like singing birds through the fairy land of first love. Such an interlude! to be called on by gruff human voices to give up all the cherished secrets ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... time, the husband had to leave her and the children for war service. While he was away, she fell in with another talented and dissipated Bohemian—a romantic-looking musician very much in the public eye. Very quickly their infatuation for each other was a matter of open comment on the part of the veriest on-looker. As he had the same idea that she had about the rights of the individual, and the same contempt for conventions and conventional people, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... at the romantic looks of the camp, back of which the waterfall came tumbling down. He could hardly wait to eat his dinner before he set to work to secure a fac-simile of the picture, with the party gathered around the fire, ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... prospect of fortune waiting for him. These years left, without doubt, an indelible impression on his mind. Mr. Grego, an authority on this artist as well as Gillray, expresses this[12] very happily when he says: "It was the more romantic Paris of Sterne that Rowlandson first viewed, and he seems to have recognised and noted down the characteristics of the same typical personages described by 'Yorick'; their two satirical points of ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... no evidence to show that la Tour's second marriage proved unhappy, though it is a very unromantic ending to an otherwise very romantic story. His second wife had also been the second wife of Charnisay who was a widower when he married her; her maiden name was Jeanne Motin. Descendants of la Tour by his second marriage are to be found in the families of the d'Entremonts, Girouards, ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... the pictures of Blake. There never were, I think, men who gave to the imagination so much of the sense of having broken out into the very borderlands of being, as did the great English poets of the romantic or revolutionary period; than Coleridge in the secret sunlight of the Antarctic, where the waters were like witches' oils; than Keats looking out of those extreme mysterious casements upon that ultimate sea. The heroes and criminals ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... so good a character that every tooth in his head came out on dress parade, and was about to draw from Henny some of her own experiences,—this loyal old servant whose life from her girlhood to her old age had been one of the romantic traditions of the roof that sheltered her,—when Chad, who had gone out with the roses, returned with the news that the colonel and his guests were breathing the morning air on the front porch, and were much disturbed ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... literature tends to be deposited. Is this to be allowed? Not certainly in every case, and yet perhaps in more than rigourists would fancy. It were to be desired that all literary work, and chiefly works of art, issued from sound, human, healthy, and potent impulses, whether grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or religious. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and pointed to the hard facts before his eyes. What a fool he was to go on constructing a romantic theory out of his own consciousness when Bettina, by definite choice and decision, had proved herself to be, what he must compel himself to consider her, both ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... 8. His romantic genius would not long allow him to remain easy. He could not be happy unless he was engaged in daring and adventurous actions. He no sooner heard of an expedition to Virginia, under the command of Christopher Newport, than he resolved to ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... It's true of a lot of us. Most of us. We come over to Europe as if it hadn't anything to do with us except to supply us with old pictures and curios generally. We come sight-seeing. It's romantic. It's picturesque. We stare at the natives—like visitors at a Zoo. We don't realize that we belong.... I know our style.... But we aren't all like that. Some of us are learning a bit better than that. We have one or two teachers over there to lighten our darkness. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... door paneling, and rich and rusty embroideries where the name of Allah could frequently be traced, but Arlee was ignorant of the rare worth of all she saw; she stared about with no more than a girl's romantic sense of the old-time grandeur and the Oriental strangeness, mingled with a disappointment that it was all so empty and devoid ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... the warning of a senior combat commander to the effect that the deployment of black depot units to the Polynesian areas of the Pacific should be avoided. The Polynesians, he explained, were delightful people, and their "primitively romantic" women shared their intimate favors with one and all. Mixture with the white race had produced "a very high-class half-caste," mixture with the Chinese a "very desirable type," but the union of black and "Melanesian types ... produces a very undesirable ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the mountains, the beauties of the lovely isles, and the charm of sailing on the moonlit and mysterious lake. He also made me acquainted with the numerous legends of Loch Awe (he had told them in verse, but I was ignorant of English), which would lend a romantic atmosphere to our island-home. He was so sensitive to the different moods of nature that his descriptions gave to a town-bred girl like me an intense desire to witness them with my own eyes; and when I did see them there was no desillusion, and the effect was so overpowering ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... but first I want you to open your eyes to the position. You may think it's all very pretty and romantic and like Fair Rosamond—without the frailty as yet: that's granted. But how will it end? Eh? That's the question, if you'd bring your common ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... contracted a hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. Whence this romantic turn that all our family are possessed with? Whence this love for every place and every country but that in which we reside—for every occupation but our own? this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate? I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging this splenetic ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Carrigrohane Castle before. This romantic abode was situated in the extreme south-west of Ireland. It was a mile away from the sea, and stood on a rocky eminence which overlooked a very wide expanse of moor and wood, rushing streams and purple mountains, and deep dark-blue sea. In the whole world there could scarcely be found a more ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... he went also, and to the lady's credit it must be recorded that no one beyond herself and Guy Oscard had hitherto noticed this fact. Millicent was nothing if not discreet. It was more or less generally known that she was engaged to Jack Meredith, who, although absent on some vaguely romantic quest of a fortune, was not yet forgotten. No word, however, was popularly whispered connecting her name with that of any other swain nearer home. Miss Chyne was too much of a woman of the world to allow that. But, in the meantime, she rather liked diamond aigrettes ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... official, ideally suited to meet the crisis before him. Nor does this reflect in any way upon the superb soldierly qualities of his predecessor. Johnston was no doubt too manly an officer to take part in the romantic conspiracies about him. He was every inch a brave soldier who did his fighting in the open. Like Robert E. Lee, he joined the Confederacy in conscientious good faith, and he met death bravely at Shiloh ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... volumes recounts the adventures of two brothers, Tom and Jack Somers, one in the army, the other in the navy, in the great Civil War. The romantic narratives of the fortunes and exploits of the brothers are thrilling in the extreme. Historical accuracy in the recital of the great events of that period is strictly followed, and the result is, not only a library of entertaining ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... tiresome!" repeated Thugut. "And our own heavenly liaison, the last romantic dream of my life, would it not also be broken off if you were to become my wife? Why would we then stand in need of secrecy—of hidden staircases and doors, and of this Turkish cabinet?—inasmuch as I should have the right to enter your rooms before the eyes of the whole world. Besides, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... and carried to Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte de C——n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude. This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a lady-in-waiting, though her request ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... face is weakly handsome and done in tones of grey, he is fairish and grey-eyed, and you would suspect him of dyspepsia. It is a justifiable suspicion. Men of this type, the chairman remarks with a sudden intrusion of exposition, are romantic with a shadow of meanness, they seek at once to conceal and shape their sensuous cravings beneath egregious sentimentalities, they get into mighty tangles and troubles with women, and he has had his troubles. You will hear of them, for that is the quality of his type. He gets no personal ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... the outskirts of the town—the tread of an airy foot behind or beside my own. The fancy did not make me nervous; on the contrary, I was pleased with the notion of being thus haunted, and gave myself up to a romantic and genial ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... had been converted into a dais, or out-of-doors seat. It was about the latter end of July, that most exuberantly lovely of all months, when Adam Chalmers, with Rutherford's Letters on his knee, sat gazing upon one of the most beautiful landscapes which our own romantic country can boast of. Before him flowed the Nith, over its blue pebbles, and through a thousand windings; beyond it were the woods and hills of Closeburn, all blooming and blushing in the setting beams of the sun, and rising up, tier above tier, till they terminated in the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... small brooch which her father had left her; but she thought with a feeling of intense satisfaction of her treasures. She need no longer be a penniless girl. She had but at rare intervals to visit Pearce the jeweler, and her pocket would be well lined. She had no romantic feeling with regard to those beautiful things which her father had collected on his travels. She had been so poor all her life that money to her represented power. She even thought of getting a ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... either that all wits jumped and invented the same romantic series of situations by accident, or that all men spread from one centre, where the story was known, or that the story, once invented, has drifted all round the world. If the last theory be approved of, the tale will be like the Indian Ocean shell found lately in the Polish bone-cave, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... and his wife went to London, and wasted their goods until he died, when the mortgages were foreclosed, and no property in Lynton was left to the family. The melancholy fate of their daughter Mary may have suggested the more romantic story of Janifred. Mary Wichehalse married, but later returned to Lynton, where, under the care of a faithful servant, she spent her time wandering over the cliffs looking at the lost inheritance. Some say that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... who loves a little maid of honor, and wishes to marry her?" exclaimed von Manteuffel, laughing loudly. "How romantic! how sublime! what excellent materials for a sentimental romance! My dear baroness, I congratulate you! This discovery does all honor ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... all the loose bullets in his system seemed to have assembled in his chest and taken the place of his once stout heart. But he had a fixed purpose in his mind, and on he went to its fulfillment, grimly determined to make a fitting finish to a romantic life. ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... been a man entirely commonplace; but had he not thrown his cloak about his mouth, or had the witnesses forgot to chronicle the action, he would not thus have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would scarce delay me for a paragraph. An incident, at once romantic and dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture for the eye, how little do we realise its perdurable power! Perhaps no one does so but the author, just as none but he appreciates the influence of jingling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is disposed to regard as exaggerated or romantic the pure fiendishness imputed to Williams, recollect that, except for the luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the anguish of dying despair, he had no motive at all, small or great, for attempting the murder of this young girl. She had seen nothing, heard nothing—was ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... it throughout—God alone must judge which part of it shall preponderate over the rest. But in the last generation— and, alas! in this also—little or no proper care has been taken of the love for all which is romantic, marvellous, heroic, which exists in every ingenuous child. Schoolboys, indeed, might, if they chose, in play-hours, gloat over the "Seven Champions of Christendom," or Lempriere's gods and goddesses; girls might, perhaps, be allowed to devour ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... he knew he must grapple with his trouble before it mastered him. Looking back, he saw that he had been strangely pleased by Agatha's letters, and when he met her had at once felt her charm. This, however, was all; he frankly enjoyed her society and thought she liked his, but he was not romantic and was satisfied that they should drift into a close and confidential friendship. It was obvious now that he had been remarkably dull; Scott had ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... by the coast route from Bombay, which I found so troublesome that I cannot recommend its adoption. The bungalow, which is about thirty-five miles from the western coast, and on ground 1,800 feet above sea level, is situated in a truly romantic spot (in fact rather too romantic if we take the possibility of an earthquake into consideration), for it is close to the edge of a gorge 900 feet deep, and in full view of the face of the precipice over which ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... New England aristocracy. Miss Priscilla was tall and thin and her favorite author was Emerson; she quoted Emerson extensively and was certain that real literature died when he did. Miss Hortense was younger, plumper, and more romantic. She quoted Longfellow and occasionally Oliver Wendell Holmes, although she admitted she considered the latter rather too frivolous at times. Both sisters were learned, dignified, and strict disciplinarians. Also, in the eyes of both a male person younger than forty-five was labeled "Danger—Keep ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... like, but at least you cannot compel me to take it. Make it over to one of the hospitals if you like—that is within your power; but it is not in your power to force me into the mean action of enriching myself because you have romantic notions in your mind. I should scorn myself were I capable of doing such an action. I wonder you think so meanly of me as to suppose for a moment ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... which the Turks (in allusion to Alexander the Great) gave to the brave Castriot, chief of Albania, with whom they had continual wars. His romantic life had just been ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... The famous critics of the Romantic Revival seem to have paid very little attention to this subject. Mr. R.G. Moulton has written an interesting book on Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885). In parts of my analysis I am much indebted ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... had imagination and, like many lads of his time, a romantic temperament and the love of poetry. There were many books in his father's home and the boy had lived his leisure in them. He thought ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... ascend to favorite feeding haunts far above the timber-line, ranging over the slopes of the snowy mountains engirdling their summer home. Then they are in the heyday of blackbird life. Silverspot himself, made famous by Ernest Thompson Seton, did not lead a more romantic and adventurous life, and I hope some day Brewer's blackbird will be honored by ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... Market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town; scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... blood-lusting lion "screwing up his muscles" to spring. Galloway's return brought to Roderick Norton a fresh vigilance, to Virginia a sleepless anxiety, to Florence Engle unrest, uncertainty, very nearly pure panic. During the first few days of his absence she had allowed herself the romantic joy of floating unchecked upon the tide of a girlish fancy, dreaming dreams after the approved fashion which is youth's, dancing lightly upon foamy crests, seeing only blue water and no rocks under her. Then, with the potency of the man's character removed with the removal of his physical being, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... agree in this, but would not say so, lest he should think of me as Colonel Gwynn does of him, "that I am very romantic which, however, I am not, though I never like to anticipate an end ere ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... past. He looked upon Denry as an upstart, a capering mountebank, and he strongly resented Denry's familiarity with the Countess. He further resented Denry's sling, which gave to Denry an interesting romantic aspect (despite his beard), and he more than all resented that Denry should have rescued the Countess from a carriage accident by means of his preposterous mule. Whenever the Countess, in the preliminary chatter, referred to Denry or looked at Denry, in recounting ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... indeed seem that opposition to woman's participation in the totality of life is a romantic subterfuge, resting not so much on belief in the disability of woman as on the disposition of man to appropriate conspicuous and pleasurable objects for his sole use and ornamentation. "A little thing, but all mine own," was one of the remarks of Achilles to Agamemnon in their quarrel over the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... to quit France; and the favourite idea, which he never afterwards relinquished, that the East is a fine field for glory, inspired him with the wish to proceed to Constantinople, and to enter the service of the Grand Seignior. What romantic plans, what stupendous projects he conceived! He asked me whether I would go with him? I replied in the negative. I looked upon him as a half-crazy young fellow, who was driven to extravagant enterprises ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... than once to laugh away her thrilling eulogy. But she would have none of it. Her heart was in her words. He deserved this tribute of praise, unstinted, unmeasured, abundant in its simple truth, yet sounding like a legend spun by some romantic poet, were not the grim evidences of its accuracy ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats would allow; but, in reality she was not seeing anything, least of all fortunately how much she was laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at Dresden and at Florence, and produced in all places and at all times the same romantic and ridiculous fictions. She carried about her box of properties and fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old puppets. She believed in them when others couldn't, and as they were like nothing that ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James

... no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in, the old white coats ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... life of my young hero belongs to history. It would require a pen more powerful than mine to pursue his career, which was as grand, heroic and romantic as that of any knight, prince, or paladin in the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... childhood, whose lov'd recollection, Embitters the present, compar'd with the past; Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection, And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last. ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... which I have heavy on my mind or light on my mind, for it is a happy thought. There are not many romantic things in our family history. The Franklins were men of the farm, forge, and fire. But there was one thing in our history that was ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... day to Austin of Marie-Louise and the fat Armenian. "She shouldn't be going to such shops alone. She has a romantic streak in her, and they ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... disinherited his son, but he has adopted a grandnephew, which, I am afraid, looks bad for Bluebell." And she listened with renewed interest to Mrs. Leigh's diffuse reminiscences, while her protege appeared to her in a new and romantic light, and she pictured half-a-dozen possibilities for ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... modern times, by no means of a prevailing gloomy cast; on the contrary it has been attended by picturesque features and merry pastimes, which rendered it the gayest night of all the year. Amongst the things which in the Highlands of Scotland contributed to invest the festival with a romantic beauty were the bonfires which used to blaze at frequent intervals on the heights. "On the last day of autumn children gathered ferns, tar-barrels, the long thin stalks called ginisg, and everything suitable ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Fair—that found "earnestness" the only amusing thing in the world, that brought to literary art the test of utility, and disparaged what is called the "Knickerbocker School" (assuming Irving to be the head of it) as wanting in purpose and virility, a merely romantic development of the post-Revolutionary period. And it has been to some extent the fashion to damn with faint admiration the pioneer if not the creator of American ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an honest manner! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... frequently placed upon the naturalistic and the sordid, is not a vehicle easily adapted to conveying the American product, the American author of sincerity and belief in the possibility of realistic material has begun to treat it in romantic fashion, always the approved fashion of the short story in this country. So Harry Anable Kniffin's "The Tribute" weaves in 1,700 words a legend about the Unknown Soldier and makes emotionally vivid the burial of Tommy Atkins. Commonplace types regarded in the past as insufficiently drab, on the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the respect which valour, capacity, and success seldom fail to inspire. [624] The Queen, exposed to the night wind and rain, with the infant heir of three crowns clasped to her breast, the King stopped, robbed, and outraged by ruffians, were objects of pity and of romantic interest to all France. But Lewis saw with peculiar emotion the calamities of the House of Stuart. All the selfish and all the generous parts of his nature were moved alike. After many years of prosperity he had at length met with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... lessened by the unexpected pleasure of your company tonight. I hope you have found the hour not entirely unprofitable. It has sometimes seemed to me, my lady—pardon the rudeness of suggesting it—that you may have seen something romantic, something heroic in me from time to time. I trust you have been disillusioned tonight. The fight on the stairs, the open boat—you see them all as they should be, do you not, the necessary parts of a piece of villainy? Pray forget them—and ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... And in this last admonition, we mean that this knowledge should not consist of some vague shopworn generalities about the nature of woman—woman as created in the minds of men, nor woman putting herself on a romantic pedestal above the harsh facts of this workaday world. Women can attain freedom only by concrete, definite knowledge of themselves, a knowledge based on ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... this spirituality both reflectively and imaginatively in his writings, the form that lived in him. The moral world, the supremacy of the soul's interests, how life fared in the soul, was his region; he thought about nothing else. He desired to present what he saw through the medium of romantic art, but he was never able to be wholly content with this medium; he desired to make assurance doubly sure by expressing it in its abstract moral terms also, either explicitly in an idea which shows through the story, or else imperfectly ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... he meant. Between Norham and Berwick, overlooking the Tweed, and on the English side of the river, stood an ancient, picturesque, romantic old place, half-mansion, half-castle, set in its own grounds, and shut off from the rest of the world by high walls and groves of pine and fir, which had belonged for many a generation to the old family of Carstairs. Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs, sixth baronet, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... Rene. Some of these fables are due to the mistaken piety of the great discoverer's son Hernando, and to others, who seem to have thought that they were doing honor to the memory of the Admiral by surrounding his youth with romantic stories. But the simple truth is far more honorable, and, indeed, far more romantic. It shows us the young weaver loving his home and serving his parents with filial devotion, but at the same time preparing, with zeal and industry, to become ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... unnecessary noise, and as we walked through the forest the only sound to be heard was that of our steps and the rustling of the leaves. It was a perfectly lovely night; the sky was so clear, the atmosphere so pure, the forest so romantic, everything seemed so charming and peaceful that I could not imagine that we were on the warpath, and that perhaps in a few hours this forest would be aflame, the soil drenched by human blood, and the fragrant herbs ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... be expected, uncertain—, there is a residue in which he really did original work: some notes on the history and geography of Germany which he composed, and editions of Pliny's Natural History, Tacitus, Tertullian and Velleius Paterculus—the latter having an almost romantic interest from the fortunes of the manuscript on which it is based. A measure of the confidence which Erasmus subsequently reposed in both his judgement and his good faith is that in 1519 and 1521, when he had decided to publish some more of his ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... quite romantic," and he told them what he knew about Nekhludoff's relations with Maslova. When they had spoken a little about it and finished their tea and cigarettes, the Senators returned into the Senate Chamber and proclaimed their decision in the libel ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... facts of the case were very simple, and had nothing romantic about them. Old Lalli was a man of great musical gifts and knowledge. He had been a singing-master in his day; an impresario too for a short time; and sometimes a kind of broker, or middle-man between ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... the most changeable of beings. Now that she was in full retreat, she would not even perceive his hints of a possible correspondence. But in that matter he did a thing that seemed to her at once delicate and romantic. He made a go-between of Fanny. Fanny could not keep the secret, and came and told her that night under a transparent pretext of needed advice. "Mr. Snooks," said Fanny, "wants to write to me. Fancy! I had no idea. But should I let him?" They talked it over long and earnestly, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... strange phenomena related by Sir Emerson Tennent, of musical sounds ascending from the bottom of the sea, and ascribed by him to certain shell-fish, gave rise to the mermaid's song. Sir Emerson's account has in itself a touch of the romantic and marvellous. He says: "On coming to the point mentioned I distinctly heard the sounds in question. They came up from the water like the gentle thrills of a musical chord, or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a moistened finger. It ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... surprised, and a little taken aback, to see so many people in the room. A number of them were known to her; there had been many pleasant gatherings at Troon in the summer, and, as was natural, Miss Graham of Bourhill, with her interesting personality and her romantic history, had received a great deal of attention from the Fordyces' large circle of friends. The warmth of the greeting accorded to her made the lovely colour flush high in her cheek, and her eyes ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... I mentioned a naval enterprise, which might at first appear romantic, but the more it is considered the less danger I shall be in of being taxed on that score. Admiral Montague lately returned from the Banks, where the fishermen have had a wretched season, in consequence of the American privateers. He left ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... romantic life of Goya made him think of his own life. People called him a master; they bought everything he painted at good prices, especially if it was in accordance with some one else's tastes and contrary to his artistic desire; he enjoyed a calm existence, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied it up," he replied. "It took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then I saw there was boodle in the thing; and I figured on the business till no man alive could give me points. Nobody knew I had an eye on wrecks till one fine morning I dropped in upon Douglas B. Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts and figures, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... imaginative composition in which he was henceforth alone and unapproachable. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Legeia", are the most interesting illustrations of his mental organization—his masterpieces in a peculiar vein of romantic creation. They have theunquestionable stamp of genius. The analyses of the growth of madness in one, and the thrilling revelations of the existence of a first wife in the person of a second, in the other, are made with consummate skill; and the strange and solemn ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... the story, while Steptoe listened quietly. There being no elements in it of the kind he called "shydy," he found it romantic. No one had ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled his heart and imagination when he was a poor little scullion boy; but the memory of them, with some of the reality, was still fresh in his hidden inner self. Now it seemed as if remotely and vicariously romance might ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... burned pinkly in the chandeliers and on silver candelabra on the table, giving a half light that was very romantic and fascinating. From a curtained window that opened upon an interior court we could catch strains from the cabaret singers below in the main dining-room. Everything was new ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... to answer for herself. She made the best of the golden opportunity that had fallen into her hands. The Princess was first astonished, then interested, then converted to my aunt's view of the case. In the monotonous routine of Court life, here was a romantic adventure in which even the King's daughter could take some share. Her Highness quoted Boadicea, Queen Elizabeth, and Joan of Arc, as women who had matched the men on their own ground—and complimented Mrs. Wagner as a ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... Charles Alfred de Musset—the son of De Musset-Pathai, he received his education at the College Henri IV, where, among others, the Duke of Orleans was his schoolmate. When only eighteen he was introduced into the Romantic 'cenacle' at Nodier's. His first work, 'Les Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie' (1829), shows reckless daring in the choice of subjects quite in the spirit of Le Sage, with a dash of the dandified impertinence that mocked the foibles of the old Romanticists. However, he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the Gunj Suwaie (Exceeding Treasure). This was the great capture that made Every famous. According to the legend, there was a granddaughter of Aurungzeeb on board, whom Every wedded by the help of a moollah, and carried off to Madagascar. But the story is only the most sensational of the many romantic inventions that have accumulated round Every's name. The native historian[6] who relates the capture of the Gunj Suwaie, and who had friends on board, would certainly not have refrained from mentioning such an event if it had occurred; nor would the Mogul Emperor ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... persons and incidents of the legend with the mystical life of the earth, as symbols of its annual change, yet the merely human interest of the story has prevailed over its earlier significance; the spiritual form of fire and dew has become a romantic lover. And as a story of romantic love, fullest perhaps of all the motives of classic legend of the pride of life, it survived with undiminished interest to a later world, two of the greatest masters of Italian painting having poured their whole power into it; Titian ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... about it she was in a fever of romantic excitement. Bruising knocks in the world, close approaches to the shades of the prison house, hardships which would have banished romance from a nature less robustly romantic, had for Mrs. Presidio but more glowingly suffused with the tints of romance all life—but her own! "Mr. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... loved Silesian home with its castle-crowned wooded hills and its beautiful valleys and streams; a simple childlike piety; and an early acquaintance with the Volksbcher and the Volkslied. The only things in Eichendorff's life that have a romantic glamor are his happy, carefree student days and his participation in the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815). When peace was declared, the poet entered the service of the Prussian state and proved himself a careful and trusted official. Thus, living a busy life, he could write that classic of romantic ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... after the battle of Killiecrankie.[18] Wodrow's work is very far from being the contemptible thing some apologists for Claverhouse would have us believe; but he is not a witness whose unsupported testimony it is always safe to take for gospel-truth. He wrote at a time when the naturally romantic imagination of the Scottish peasantry, stimulated by the memories of old men who had known the evil times, had largely embellished the facts he set himself to chronicle; and following the fashion of his day (indeed, as one may say, the fashion of ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... Then in a great hurry she changed her toilette, and, after ascertaining that the guest had arrived, she came languidly into the breakfast-room, a straw-hat hanging by its strings from her arm, and filled with primroses and other flowers. She felt as she approached that all this looked quite romantic, but it did not look so real and so unpremeditated as ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... are few trees, no running water, no romantic ruins, but an extraordinary width of sea-view, seen as from the deck of a gigantic ship; and yet the island is so small that one can look around it all, and take the sea-line in one ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... ourselves chums," put in Maisie, "but we're not at all romantic at Chessington. We don't swear eternal friendships, and exchange locks of hair, and walk about the College with our arms clasped round each other's necks, and write each other sentimental notes, with 'sweetest' and 'darling' and 'fondest love' in them. That's what Miss Maitland calls 'early Victorian'. ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... never think of anything but gain? I have to spend about so much money every year, in a continual attempt to amuse myself, and it might as well be this way as another. I have a document, signed and solemnly sealed, by which I am to back him against the field in the interest of romantic and realistic literature, and in return he is to give me a third of the net profits of his writings. I don't know that I have done so badly. Perhaps you may live to see Cutt & Slashem pay us a ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... which Allen indicated was on the side of a rather steep grassy slope. I approached it, dragged at the tussock of grass, which came away easily enough, and revealed the entrance to no more romantic hiding-place than an old secret whiskey "still." Private stills, not uncommon in Sutherland and some other northern shires, are extinct in Galloway. Allen had probably found this one by accident in his wanderings, and ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... paintings, are no merely picturesque matter for the pencil he could use so well, but the lively record of a human society. With what appetite! with all the animation of George Sand's Mauprat, he tells the story of romantic violence having its way there, defiant of law, so late as the year 1611; of the family of robber nobles perched, as abbots in commendam, in those sacred places. That grey, pensive old church in the little valley of Poitou, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... was locked up in a separate cell for seventy days till he had finished the whole work, and that when they were let out they were all found to have written exactly the same words. Philo gives us a version of the event, romantic, indeed, but more rational, in his "Life of Moses."[19] He tells how Ptolemy, having conceived a great admiration for the laws of Moses, sent ambassadors to the high priest of Juddea, requesting him to choose out a number of learned ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds to the death: contempt. They plunged into the dissipation of wine and courtesans. Students and artists did the same; love was treated as glory and religion: it was an old illusion. The grisette, that class so dreamy, so romantic, so tender, and so sweet in love, abandoned herself to the counting-house and to the shop. She was poor and no one loved her; she wanted dresses and hats and she sold herself. O, misery! the young man who ought to love her, whom she loved, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... ought to have a beautiful name. But what of my sister Jane? I call her Jenny, and Jin; and that reminds me of the other gin with a g, you know; and that carries me on to trap, and trapper. I sometimes call her Trapper. That sounds quite romantic, and carries one away into North American Indian story life. Have you ever read any North American Indian stories—about Indians, ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield

... that would impel the mind to make a more concrete interpretation. To express feelings of this kind in language is, of course, impossible, for the reason that our emotional vocabularies have been constructed to communicate only the emotions of everyday life. Other types of music—like the romantic tone poetry of a later day—which are more abundant in their associations, and hence richer in their emotional content, are difficult of translation for another reason: the rapidity of succession and subtlety of intermixture of the expressed feelings are beyond the reach of words, even of a poet's, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... explorer of folk-legends and popular beliefs. In the story of Grettir, both the art of the novelist and the lore of the archaeologist have had full scope, with the result that we have a narrative of adventure of the most romantic kind, and at the same time an interesting and minutely accurate account of the old Icelandic families, their homes, their mode of life, their superstitions, their songs and stories, their bear-serk fury, and their heroism by land and sea. The story is told ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... Chapter I), which also survives in Pears and Pearson. Swain may go back to the father of Canute, or to some hoary-headed swain who, possibly, tended the swine. Not all the Seymours are St. Maurs. Some of them were once Seamers, i.e. tailors. Gosling is rather trivial, but it represents the romantic Jocelyn, in Normandy Gosselin, a diminutive of the once very popular personal name Josse. Goss is usually for goose, but any Goss, or Gossett, unwilling to trace his family back to John Goose, "my lord of Yorkes fole," [Footnote: Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York (1502).] may likewise ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... the romantic coast of Northumberland, "over against" an obscure town of the same name. It stands upon a basalt rock, of a triangular shape, high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... a photograph album, and showed her portraits of himself at various ages, slim and romantic at twenty, at forty impressively Byronic, at fifty monumentally successful—and 'present day.' He showed her portraits of his mother and father, his wife, his children, Miss Teresa Chesney in her pieces, his various leading ladies, his sisters who had both married noble lords, and of a large ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... she had cause. Mrs. Octagon behaved very badly in connection with some romantic episode ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... by shreds and patches such as these the all but loss of an early and grand mythology which has undergone the usual transmutation into romantic and nursery legends. By great exertion we might recover it, but the old Indians who retain its fragments are passing away rapidly, and no subject attracts so little interest among our literati. A few hundred dollars expended annually in each ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... a change. Hardly a week goes by without some Yawk boy coming to me and asking to be turned into a Spacer, and I have to refuse him for the same reasons I'm refusing you! That's the usual course of events—the romantic Earther boy wanting to go to space, and not being ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg

... story, will best describe the heroine: A TOAST: "To the bravest comrade in misfortune, the sweetest companion in peace and at all times the most courageous of women."—Barbara Winslow. "A romantic story, buoyant, eventful, and in matters of love exactly what the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... commemoration in Pope's gallery of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man. He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that of Bishop Berkeley' (Pattison's Pope, p. 152). It is very likely that Johnson's regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that he and his brother-trustees in the settlement of Georgia made against slavery (see post, Sept. 23, 1777). 'The first ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... contains incident H from our No. 55. However, it does preserve an allusion to the principal episode of the cycle,—in the ride the monkey takes on the crocodile's back across the stream. Other Oriental versions of the "heart on tree" incident are the following: Chinese, S. Beal's "Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha" (London, 1875), pp. 231-234, where a dragon takes the place of the crocodile; Swahili, Steere, p. i, where, instead of a crocodile, we have a shark (so also Bateman, No. I); ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... entire profession. All doctors, I believe, may be divided into those who go clean-shaven and those who wear beards. The difference is more than one of appearance. It is a difference of temperament and conduct. The smooth-faced physician represents the buoyant, the romantic, what one might almost call the impressionistic strain in the medical profession. The other is the conservative, the classicist. My personal likings are all for the newer type, but I do not mind admitting that if I were very ill indeed, I should be tempted to send for the physician who wears a Vandyke ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... were full of it the next day. Of course, in due time, it appeared as a garbled and romantic item in the San Francisco press. Of course Mrs. Catron, on reading it, fainted, and for two days said that this last cruel blow ended all relations between her husband and herself. On the third day she ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... pupil of his own country, the future Earl of Cassilis, who opened to him a brighter way, and finally led him back to his own country and for a time to higher fortune. When young King James came to Paris to meet Magdalen of France—with the sudden pathetic result of a hasty romantic marriage soon followed by the poor young lady's death—young Cassilis was still there with his tutor, who was himself but little advanced in life beyond his patron. And it was presumably in the train ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... I had been poring over old New York papers, delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I devoured such ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... bicycle; this much was plainly visible to everybody. On Monday he would reappear. The hiatus afforded a peg from which much unprofitable speculation was suspended. The argument most plausible was that he went home, while one romantic youth suggested a girl. The accusation was never repeated. What? The "Lord" a ladies' man? Tut! One would as soon expect a statue ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... the coffins of the imperial ancestors, which have been removed from the Kapuzinergruft, in order to save them from the French," said an honest tailor to his neighbor, and this romantic idea rolled immediately, like an avalanche, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... good deal about Germany itself, I dare say, already; but I must tell you something about the Germans themselves. They are grave and thoughtful, but highly romantic and full of enthusiasm. Their love for their country is most remarkable. All classes in Germany are well-educated, and many painters, poets, and musicians, have been born among them. The art of printing was first ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... Distrustful always, he could not entirely dismiss the fear that his first impressions might prove mistaken in the second interview; yet he tried his best to do so, and amused himself with imagining for Ida a romantic past, for her and himself together a yet more romantic future. In spite of the strange nature of their relations, he did not delude himself with the notion that the girl had fallen in love with him at first sight, and that she stood before him to take or reject as he chose. He had a certain ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... my readers that the cottage of Tim Carthy was situated in the deep valley which runs inland from the strand at Monkstown, a pretty little bathing village, that forms an interesting object on the banks of the romantic Lee, near the "beautiful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... called Blue John, and is only to be found in one spot, where, also, the supply is said to be growing scant. We bought a number of articles, and then came homeward, still with our guide, who showed us, on the way, the Romantic Rocks. These are some crags which have been rent away and stand insulated from the hillside, affording a pathway between it and then; while the places can yet be seen where the sundered rocks would fit into the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... strangers in blood and creed. In the earlier chapters the legendary aspect of the story has been drawn upon rather more perhaps than an austere historical conscience would approve, but it is precisely a familiarity with these romantic stories, which at least are true in impression if not in fact, that the sojourner in Paris will find most useful, translated as they are in sculpture and in painting, on the decoration of her architecture, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... way across the continent is a matter of detail. Sometimes the misguided youth is too proud to beg and too honest to steal, in which case he probably saves up his pocket money and buys a cheap ticket. The more romantic and strictly correct course to adopt is to start out without a dollar, and to beat one's way across the continent, so as to be thoroughly entitled to recognition on the prairie. Many a young man who has commenced the pilgrimage towards glorified badness, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... I would not set the wolf to guard the lamb. Go thou through Genoa to-morrow and sound the temper of the people. Narrowly inquire what they think of the government, and of the house of Doria— what of me, my debaucheries, and romantic passion. Flood their brains with wine, until the sentiments of the heart flow over. Here's money— lavish ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... "That is romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, you are bigger than that life. You can recover—bury it away—and love and have children and find that it is a good ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... nevertheless a taste for gypsy bands and "Gyp's" novels. She read the latter translated, much to the disedification of her guardian, who was a linguist and a patron of the fine arts. This latter clause included subscriptions to the Institute Course and several scientific journals. If Lora were less romantic, all would be well. Once the careful chaperon had feared music and its disturbing influences; but after she had read an article about its healing effect upon the insane she felt that it could work no evil in ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... confesses, "disgusted me rather sooner than might have been expected from my age." He afterward contributed an essay on the authenticity of the poems to the proceedings of the Speculative Club of Edinburgh. In one sense of the word Scott was the most romantic of romanticists; but in another sense he was very little romantic, and there was not much in his sane, cheerful, and robust nature upon which such poetry as Ossian could fasten.[31] It is just at this point, indeed, that definitions diverge and the two streams of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... House, in its palmy days, might appeal irresistibly to the mind of a poet, attuned to the harmonies of artistic design and responsive to the beauties of romantic environment. It was a two-story building with spacious rooms and appointments that suggested the taste of the cultivated mistress of the stately dwelling. On the second floor was "Eddie's room," as she lovingly called it, wherein her affectionate imagination ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... romantic," said Della. "Just like the olden days when smuggling was a recognized industry in England, for instance, and big merchants holding positions of respectability and honor connived ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... being made on all sides. During the course of the next two weeks or so a large number of men would be leaving their homes for the lumber camps, and the chief subject of conversation in all circles was the fascinating and romantic occupation ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley



Words linked to "Romantic" :   creative person, impractical, romance, classicist, dreamer, loving, artist, idealist



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com