"Fantastical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pei-ho we observed a number of buildings erected on the right bank, with roofs of matting, but decorated in the most fantastical manner, with different coloured ribbands and variegated silks; and about three hundred soldiers in their uniforms (which appeared to our eye not much adapted to military purposes) were drawn out, with a band of music, near a temporary landing-place constructed ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... he set himself to oppose and make war against the Pythagorean doctrine, and that of natural philosophy; seeking by means of his logical ratiocination to propose definitions and notions, certain fifth entities and other abortive portions of fantastical cogitations, as principles and substance of things, more anxious about the esteem of the vulgar stupid crowd, which is influenced and governed by sophisms and appearances which are found in the superficies of things rather ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... by modern critics as citizen comedy, it reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners. This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the intermingling of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed but idealised king in the ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... were put into each other's possession out of each other's power. The law of our country has given an ample and generous provision for the wife, even the third of her husband's estate, and left to her good-humour and his gratitude the expectation of farther provision, but the fantastical method of going farther, with relation to the heirs, has a foundation in nothing but pride, and folly: for as all men with their children as like themselves, and as much better as they can possibly, it seems monstrous ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... made formal complaint thereof to Sir Richard, and called on him, as the nearest justice of the peace, to put in force the act of the fourteenth of Elizabeth, that worthy knight only rated him soundly for a fantastical Puritan, and bade him mind his own business, if he wished not to make the place too hot for him; whereon (for the temporal authorities, happily for the peace of England, kept in those days a somewhat tight hand upon the spiritual ones) the worthy parson subsided,—for, after all, Mr. Thomas ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... nothing but foam and glitter, he will, it is true, engage the attention for a time, but build up and confirm nothing in the understanding. His playfulness is, like the gravity of the other, thoroughly unpoetical. To string together at will fantastical images is not to travel into the realm of the ideal; and the imitative reproduction of the actual cannot be called the representation of nature. Both requisites stand so little in contradiction to each other that they are rather one and the same thing; that art is only true insomuch as it altogether ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical Finishing touches to the negligence Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble Gradations appear to be unknown to you He had to go, he must, he has to be always going He stormed her and consented to be beaten His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence I have learnt as much from light ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... anchorites and recluses—"Retire, the world shut out." We cannot agree with Miss Seward, who describes this hermitage as "a retreat which breathes all the witchery of genius, taste, and sentiment." It is rather fantastical than tasteful, and savours more of eccentricity than sentiment. In the Gothic entrance, there are undoubtedly many fine specimens of carved wood-work, some of which we suspect were the plunder of despoiled convents and churches during the ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... down to eat till four of his priests have offered his meat in this manner to the idol; lifting their hands above their heads with many fantastical gesticulations and murmuring voices, they present the meat to the idol, and after many foolish ceremonies bring back the meat to the king. The meat is offered in a wooden tray, after which it is laid on the broad leaves of a certain tree. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... out of the labyrinth into which he had led them. He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the onus probandi on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion, however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the conversation of every other person ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... features of any remarkable face, and afterward reproducing them on paper; but if any singularly fantastic form or odd face came in his way, he would make a sketch of it on the spot upon his thumbnail, and carry it home to expand at his leisure. Everything fantastical and original had a powerful attraction for him, and he wandered into many out-of-the-way places for the purpose of meeting with character. By this careful storing of his mind, he was afterward enabled to crowd an immense amount of thought and treasure observation into his works. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... actor could vary the artificial face at pleasure. The mask has had its advocates, for some advantages it possesses over the naked face; a mask aggravates the features, and gives a more determined expression to the comic character; an important effect among this fantastical group.[41] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... erase mine from that record. I beseech it, in its sparing goodness, to leave me that proof of attachment to duty and to principle. It may draw around it, over it, or through it, black lines, or red lines, or any lines; it may mark it in any way which either the most prostrate and fantastical spirit of man-worship, or the most ingenious and elaborate study of self-degradation, may devise, if only it will leave it so that those who inherit my blood, or who may hereafter care for my reputation, shall be able to behold it where ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a complete coquette, capricious and fantastical. As Mr Alworth was the prettiest man at the place and known to have a good fortune, she soon singled him out as a conquest worthy of her and successfully played off all her arts. By appearing to like him, she enticed him to address her; and by a well managed capriciousness ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... being women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found and seen, and in far greater measure than in women of higher calling. I might here name a sort of hues devised for the nonce, wherewith to please fantastical heads, as goose-turd green, peas-porridge tawny, popingay blue, lusty gallant, the devil-in-the-head (I should say the hedge), and such like; but I pass them over, thinking it sufficient to have said thus much ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... the expression I just made use of—which may have seemed to some of you fantastical—that the fire and the candles in the crowded room were breathing the same breath as you were. It is but too true. An average fire in the grate requires, to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... challenge. She was decidedly a Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears—a description of the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians, explained by the duke by way of parenthesis—suggested to Sulpice that the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was, after all, the filtering of a woman's glance through the very flesh of a man, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... has placed me in something of a quandary. In an ordinary way, finding a story with this title, in which moreover the chief characters are spoken of as Princess and Principal Boy, and the narrative is broken every now and then by fantastical little dialogues with Fairies, I should have said at once that here was a clever young writer whom a natural admiration for the work of Mr. DION CLAYON CALTHROP had betrayed into the sincerest form of flattery. But Mr. (or perhaps Miss) G. B. STERN has disarmed me by an open avowal of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... in a dense atmosphere, which became an obstacle to the disclosure of truth as the clouds are to the rays of the sun, his image only appeared in fantastical outlines borrowed from "Conrad the Corsair," or "Childe Harold," or "Lara," or "Manfred," or indeed "Don Juan." Analogies were sought which do not exist, and to the poet were attributed the sentiments, and even the acts, of these ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the second year the old Marquess, returning from Turin, was accompanied, to the surprise of all, by the fantastical figure of an elderly gentleman in the richest travelling dress, with one of the new French toupets, a thin wrinkled painted face, and emitting with every movement a prodigious odour of millefleurs. This visitor, who was attended by ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... lot to meet. He was an Italian. Now, whenever human nature is truly fine in the lands of the South, it is really sublime. I do not know whether you have ever observed the extreme fairness of Italians when they are fair. It is exquisite, especially under an artificial light. When I read the fantastical portrait of Colonel Oudet sketched by Charles Nodier, I found my own sensations in every one of his elegant phrases. Italian, then, as were most of the officers of his regiment, which had, in fact, been borrowed by the Emperor from Eugene's army, my colonel was a tall man, at least eight or nine ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... part of Hawthorne is not attempted in our music (the 2nd movement of the series) which is but an "extended fragment" trying to suggest some of his wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairylike phantasmal realms. It may have something to do with the children's excitement on that "frosty Berkshire morning, and the frost imagery on the enchanted ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in fashion when they were made as a kind of appendix to the foot, measuring at least double its length, and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. The Pope anathematized this deformity as "a mockery of God and the holy Church," and the King forbad craftsmen to make them, and his subjects to wear them. All this is as nothing in comparison with the profuse extravagance displayed in furs, which was most outrageous and ruinous, and ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... and in the west there gleamed red, golden, and orange lights, similar to ribbons and gauzy veils, stretched over the whole sky. The mountains uplifted themselves in this glow; the cacti assumed different fantastical shapes, resembling people and animals. Jenny felt tired and sleepy, but they still hastened to the mountains, although they knew not why. Soon they saw rocks, and on reaching them they discovered a stream; they drank some water and continued along its course. ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... neighbouring lair by the trumpet call of the dying elephant. It occurred to me even that it was a kind of king of the elephants, to which they felt bound to report themselves, as it were, in the hour of their decease. Certainly what followed gave some credence to my fantastical notion which, if there were anything in it, might account for this great graveyard at that ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... her in the face. The dress was so airy, so fantastical, and so extensive, that to get out in her new clothes by the rift which had admitted her in her old ones was an impossibility. She heard the Baron's steps crackling over ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... in a court off Ludgate Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street—bright, enchanted palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry, harmless sprites,—where are they? Fairburn's shop knows him no more; not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are given to understand, Sweetings Alley has disappeared from the face of the globe. Slop, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forward in defence of their country and families. They are a thick stout dark race of people, something resembling the Achinese; and in general they are addicted to smoking opium. We had no opportunity of seeing the Sungei-tenang women. The men are very fantastical in their dress. Their bajus have the sleeves blue perhaps whilst the body is white, with stripes of red or any other colour over the shoulders, and their short breeches are generally one half blue and the other white, just as fancy leads them. Others again are dressed entirely in blue ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... That so dangerous an illusion had been fostered by a mother was too bewildering, and she hardly knew how to meet and loyally fight it. It did not take her long to decide. With all the strength at her command, she set to work to clear away from his mind the whole fantastical construction. He clung to it firmly at first, and, in the end, almost pleaded to be left with the belief that he had but to step down the dam wall and join his brother in the fair pink palace. She realized now what tragedy had been lurking at her elbow all ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... but in that she was her father's daughter, not saved by her wonderful intelligence from being fantastical. There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to perceive at the moment that she was behaving ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the latest fiction before our chatty alien, but pays dearly for his rash act. In these words did the Italian let him have it:—"Ai du not laich nov-els et ol, bico-S e nov-el is bat e fichtiscios tel stof-T ov so menE fantastical dids end nonsensical worDs, huicc opset maind end haRt. An-heppe tho-S an-uerE jongh persons, hu spend theaR pre-scios taim in ridin nov-els! The du not no thet nov-ellists, gennerallE spichin, aR thi laitest end thi ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... it was with Johnson himself. Behind all his learning lay something which no learned language could conceal. "On s'attend a voir un auteur et on trouve un homme." Authors then, as now, were often thought to be fantastical, namby-pamby persons, living in dreams, sharing none of the plain man's interests, eager and querulous about trifles and unrealities, indifferent and incapable in the broad world of life. Nobody could ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... myself; all my resolutions are vain; I had the same thoughts yesterday that I have today, and I act today contrary to what I resolved yesterday; I must convey myself out of the sight of the Duke de Nemours; I must go into the country, however fantastical my journey may appear; and if Monseur de Cleves is obstinately bent to hinder me, or to know my reasons for it, perhaps I shall do him and myself the injury to acquaint him with them." She continued in this resolution, and spent the whole evening at ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... bound to acknowledge our partial, if not entire concurrence, in the general criticism on the central front, and of the two wings. The first impression is far from that produced by unity, grandeur, or elegance; there is a fantastical assemblage of turrets, attics, and chimneys, and a poverty or disproportion, especially in "the temple-like forms" which complete the ends towards the park. The dome, too, has been sarcastically compared with a "Brobdignagian egg." It strictly belongs to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... themselves in causing the archbishop to return to Manila. These men went about talking and declaiming to everyone in the community about the great difficulties, both spiritual and temporal, which must follow from [the banishment]; but in reality all these were fantastical, since there would be no further difficulties than those which the governor chose—as there were none when the archbishop was banished the previous time; [141] for one would hardly believe how great is the hatred that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... him. You will meet him, I doubt not, like a man of sense,' added Lord Monmouth, looking at Coningsby with a glance such as he had never before encountered, 'who is not prepared to sacrifice all the objects of life for the pursuit of some fantastical puerilities.' ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been compleated into the thing itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of shewing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... fair chance. His sentence is inhuman and unjust, as he was not responsible for the crime he committed; he remembers nothing of the occurrence and consequently must have been insane at the time. He is inclined to a great deal of fantastical day-dreaming, writes poetry and religious dissertations. He is constantly bewailing his unfortunate lot in letters to people of high station, imploring their compassion on the poor, down-trodden martyr. Is clear mentally throughout and ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... whole, he fulfilled in the service of Hsuean Chuang during the fourteen years of the long journey. Now faithful, now restive and undisciplined, he was always the one to triumph in the end over the eighty-one fantastical tribulations which ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... suitable, he continued, to the grave march of criticism to follow this fantastical Peri of whom they had just heard, through all her flights and adventures between earth and heaven, but he could not help adverting to the puerile conceitedness of the Three Gifts which she is supposed to carry to the skies,—a drop of blood, forsooth, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... figures of trees, plants, and flowers among these fantastical creations, gives to the whole grotto the appearance of a petrified garden; but it was no slight drawback on our gratification to find these objects covered with slime and mud, obscuring the brilliant ever-changing hues of the myriads of crystals with which they are studded, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... lighted them in their labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . I have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe I should feel in the presence of a great magician in whom I really believed. Its powers are so enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that I should have a personal fear in being with it alone. Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... foaming water, and a strange-looking hill beyond it, below which, with a wood on either side, stood a white farm-house—sending from a tall chimney a thin misty reek up to the sky. I crossed the bridge, which, however diabolically fantastical it looked at a distance, seemed when one was upon it, capable of bearing any weight, and soon found myself by the farm-house past which the way led. An aged woman sat on ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... setting it forth. Rather shall we feel that we have accomplished much if we have shown that the lad had no slight justification for the budding seeds of religious doubt within his mind, and for concluding that of the constitution of God men know nothing, despite their fantastical theories and their bold affirmations, as if He were a man in their immediate neighborhood, with whom they were ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is not devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a great deal of mischief. Louis is naturally inclined to be capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have contributed to increase this disposition. Seeking to obtain a reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself of enlarged views, and, at most, competent to local ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... "The Corpse on the Grating." It did not have an inkling of scientific background. I really am surprised it was published in a Science Fiction magazine. Aside from the fact that the idea of the story was merely a fantastical surmise I was very favorably impressed with the author's style and his use of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... responded Brentwick briefly. His gaze, weary and wistful behind his glasses, rested on the face of the girl on the threshold of his home; and the faint, sensitive flush of her face deepened. He stopped and honored her with a bow that, for all his fantastical attire, would have graced a beau of an earlier decade. "Will you be pleased to enter?" he suggested punctiliously. "My house, such as it is, is quite at your disposal. And," he added, with a glance over his shoulder, "I fancy that a word ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... counsel, but merely for state. These assumed such an appearance of mingled displeasure and confusion as might best suit with the perplexity of Alexius, while the wily features of the Norman-Italian, Bohemond of Tarentum, who was also present, had a singular mixture of fantastical glee and derision. It is the misfortune of the weaker on such occasions, or at least the more timid, to be obliged to take the petty part of winking hard, as if not able to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... mine heart, to see thine eyes so red: thou must be patient; I am faine to dine and sup with water and bran: I dare not for my head fill my belly. One fruitful Meale would set mee too't: but they say the Duke will be heere to Morrow. By my troth Isabell I lou'd thy brother, if the olde fantastical Duke of darke corners had bene at home, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... deals. He rests assured, moreover, that if he gives more trouble and inconvenience than others he pays for it; the charges of the tradesmen of fashionable people being excessively high. Here, however there is a distinction to be taken. There is no doubt that all the fantastical plagues and preposterous caprices which the spirit of fashion can engender, will be submitted to for money; but he who supposes that the outward submission will be accompanied by no inward feelings of resentment or contempt, either is wholly ignorant of human nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... a planetary intelligence Of Jupiter and Sol; and those great spirits Are proud, fantastical. It asks great charges To entice them from the guiding of their spheres, To ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing about his sentiments, for I always run away from his conversation. A better title! I declare you make me laugh. Did you ever see such fantastical dressing? I vow I never meet him without thinking of Jemmy Jessamy, and the rest of the gossamer ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... flocks, those fantastical themes, Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move: Arcadia displays but a region of dreams; What are visions like these to the first kiss ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... critiques (October 1829) he sums up his critical experience. He doubts whether Mrs. Hemans, whom he is reviewing at the time, will be immortal. 'The tuneful quartos of Southey,' he says, 'are already little better than lumber; and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the field of vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Utopian, Quixotic. ideal, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubsantial^ &c 4; illusory &c (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical^; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic^. Phr. a change came o'er the spirit of my dream [Byron]; aegri somnia vana [Lat.]; dolphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum [Horace]; fancy light from fancy caught [Tennyson]; imagination rules the world [Napoleon]; l'imagination gallope ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... evil custom of aping life and movement on the monuments of dead men, which began to obtain when the motives of pure repose had been exhausted. "Why," asks the Duchess of Malfi, "do we grow fantastical in our death-bed? Do we affect fashion in the grave?" "Most ambitiously," answers Bosola; "princes' images on their tombs do not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands under their cheeks (as if they died of the toothache): they ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... visible was a narrow bleached human face. But for the wasted arm, thin as a draper's wand, which held aloft the lamp that cast all its light upon him, the face would have seemed to hang in mid air. A gray pointed beard concealed the chin of this fantastical appearance, and gave him the look of one of those Jewish types which serve artists as models for Moses. His lips were so thin and colorless that it needed a close inspection to find the lines of his mouth at all in the pallid face. His great wrinkled brow and hollow bloodless cheeks, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... entered the cave, he found himself vis-a-vis with fifty masks, of all shapes, forms and appearances; some horrible, some odd, some commonplace, and some fantastical, and altogether, a medley of strange, undecipherable, yet impressive combination of devices, well calculated to excite a feeling of awe, and, with the timid, of terror, in the mind of the beholder. Into this singular ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils induced the supposition that their owner had long been distracted from his labors by other preoccupations. Meanwhile, this master, bent over a vast manuscript, ornamented with fantastical illustrations, appeared to be tormented by an idea which incessantly mingled with his meditations. That at least was Jehan's idea, when he heard him exclaim, with the thoughtful breaks of a dreamer ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness—possibly the more because he was himself utterly ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... of faith which divide these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious convulsions, the dead to deceive the living. There, the black tribes of Africa exhibit the same ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... other across black clouds. Touki offers Sikou a cardboard mask representing the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of wealth; and Sikou replies by a long crystal trumpet, by means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions, which seem the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... as we wended to and from our little town. No doubt the garden of children at the beginning of his career inspired him likewise; and in it he must have shown the same tender solicitude and benevolence, and beamed upon his young scholars with a love which exquisitely tempered his fantastical suppositions. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... now an hour when there is something indescribably sombre about the country; day was declining, the outlines of the larger objects in the landscape were becoming less distinct, and the trees were assuming any sort of fantastical shape that the mind chose to assign to them. Here and there a bird rustled in the foliage, but otherwise the silence was only broken by ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code? Break the wand of this political Prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... In no other country, except in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... hump on the west coast of America and cannot be far from San Francisco. That gives one a start. Swift, writing in 1725 with a world to choose from, selects the Californian coast as the most remote and unknown for the scene of his fantastical adventure. It thrusts 1725 into a gray antiquity. And yet there are many buildings in England still standing that antedate 1725 by many years, some by centuries. Queen Elizabeth had been dead more than a hundred years. Canterbury was almost ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... he speeded in the direction of the lake; and after him they thundered, straining every sinew in the desperate chase. It was a wild and extraordinary sight, and partook of the fantastical character ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of incipient psychical disease is said to be thoroughly correct. But with all that, the artistic qualities of his novels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russian masters Tolstoi, Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realism are interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of the most incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest are interrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the most unnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such a hurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... of old women and young girls in this country is detestable, to speak in the French style; the latter at the age of seven being clothed exactly like a woman of twenty, and the former have such a fantastical appearance that I cannot endure it. The old lady has all the vivacity of a young one. She is the most learned woman in France; her house is the resort of all men of literature, with whom she converses upon the most abstruse subjects. She is of one of the most ancient, as well as the richest families ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... portrait of himself was worthy of its background. Much was required of him in a world where a high fantastical acrobatic mountebankery was almost a matter of ceremony, where riders stand on their heads in passing their rivals and cooks punt a casserole over their heads to the wall behind by way of giving notice: much was required of him and he proved worthy. He saw himself, I suppose, as ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... literature we meet with men who seem endowed with an obliquity of understanding, yet active and busy spirits; but, as activity is only valuable in proportion to the capacity that puts all in motion, so, when ill directed, the intellect, warped by nature, only becomes more crooked and fantastical. A kind of frantic enthusiasm breaks forth in their actions and their language, and often they seem ferocious when they are only foolish. We may thus account for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... moment, from the controversy, and in the prefatory epistle to a remarkable work, the most bulky of all his books, "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," he waved the white flag. He bade, he declared, "a hundred unfortunate farewells to fantastical satirism," and complimented his late antagonist on his "abundant scholarship." Harvey took no notice of this, and for four years their mutual animosity slumbered. In this same year, 1593, Nash produced the only play which has come down to us as wholly composed by him, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... author's style was rough in places, but marvellously simple and direct. 'Mardi' is burdened with an over-rich diction, which Melville never entirely outgrew. The scene of this romance, which opens well, is laid in the South Seas, but everything soon becomes overdrawn and fantastical, and the thread of the story loses itself in a ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... over the country make it look as if flocks of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them for money ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Indians; and from thence also it came to pass, that many of them, not able to endure so violent a government, leapt over the walls by night, and fled from out the college. Gomez, who could not bear the least contradiction, upon this became more assuming and fantastical; so that one day he turned out all the remaining scholars of the seminary, as if they had been incapable of discipline, and, receiving into their places seven and-twenty Portuguese, who desired to be of the Society, without having any tincture of human learning, he changed the seminary into a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and sought to maintain an absentee guardianship over the affairs of serfs whom I have never met, and of whose capabilities and characters I am yet ignorant! To think that I should have deemed true estate-management inferior to a documentary, fantastical management of provinces which lie a thousand versts away, and which my foot has never trod, and where I could never have effected aught but ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... be, something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like the infinite depth, and we knowing not precisely where we stand between the two immensities of depth and height! The shapes evolved by the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions—strange monstrosities we had almost called them—that are pictured on the background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of the darkness like the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... busy about a thousand things, always alert, decided, uncompromising—not disinclined to snub either Fred or Susan when opportunity offered, totally unconscious even of that delicacy with which a high fantastical heroine of romance would have found it necessary to treat her dependants. It was this unconsciousness, above all, that irritated the doctor. If she had shown any feeling, he said to himself—if she had ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the 'high fantastical' Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... tone-poem was impossible. Concertmeister, head of second violins, all the heads of the other bodies, swarmed to him, each pointing out the various passages deemed by them either unplayable or unmusical; and, finally, the whole number came to an agreement of scorn regarding one fantastical episode—an analysis of Hamlet's yearning to know the mind of his father, and a suggestion of his own indecision and unbalanced mentality. This, a passage of some thirty bars, was universally declared to be contrary ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... which had been imported. Some archery was then witnessed, and joined in, after which, on the return to the palace, the visitors were welcomed by the sound of melancholy music, speedily interrupted, however, by the barking and fantastical dancing of the prince's fool, who showed wonderful agility and suppleness. To this dance, or rather to these postures of a bayadere, succeeded the excitement of vingt-et-un, followed by well-earned repose. Next day there were new entertainments ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... subject, we may notice a certain fantastical tone of depreciation of miracles as an evidence of Christianity, which is occasionally adopted even by some who do not deny the possibility or probability, or even the fact, of their occurrence. They affirm them to be of little moment, and represent them—with ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... stories. He found his way on to the stage under the care of Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of manners was acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high fantastical" in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their wit; the pattern of their ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... philosopher, whose judgment is so riveted to this fantastical system of liberty, as not to acknowledge the force of moral evidence, and both in speculation and practice proceed upon it, as upon a reasonable foundation. Now moral evidence is nothing but a conclusion concerning the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... very sorry for this—for I may not be the chronicler in another year—I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... conditions of secrecy. I might have known it." He stared at the hill-side opposite, with its zigzag path through the vines marked by the figures of zealous pedestrians, and then he said suddenly: "If I asked you not to come and see our show you would set me down as a fantastical coward." ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... short and too narrer, ours come out in toggery far too wide, and so long sometimes, that a feller daren't come within a fathom of 'em astarn without runnin' the risk o' trampin' on, an' carrying away some o' the canvas. The savage women frizzes out their hair into most fantastical shapes, till the very monkeys has to hold their sides sittin' in the trees larfin' at 'em—and wot do we do in regard to that? W'y, some of our women puts on a mixture o' hairy pads, an' combs, an' ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... irresistible rage and sense of frustration. The image of Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly and indignity. That little pink-cheeked dancing-master to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he was. His bitterness took possession of him, and as he sat in the corner of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader—(a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... these in a blue Fly, were much longer then the body, but in other kind of Flies they are of very differing proportions to the body. These films, in many Flies, were so thin, that, like several other plated bodies (mention'd in the ninth Observation) they afforded all varieties of fantastical or transient colours (the reason of which I have here endeavoured to explain) they seem'd to receive their nourishment from the stalks or wires, which seem'd to be hollow, and neer the upper part of the wing LL several of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any rate, if not true it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... speaker." And here she began to imitate Esmond's way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the fantastical ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "these vain and superficial distinctions? Do you not dance in public? What renders you more conspicuous? Do you not dress to be admired, and walk to be observed? Why then this fantastical scruple, unjustified by reason, unsupported by analogy? Is folly only to be published? Is vanity alone to be exhibited? Oh slaves of senseless contradiction! Oh feeble followers of yet feebler prejudice! daring to be wicked, yet fearing to ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the prospect of gaining any advantage commensurate to the licence taken in making that alteration? These are the words of the old chronicle: "This (the recontre with the witches) was reputed at the first but some vain fantastical illusion by Macbeth and Banquo, insomuch that Banquo would call Macbeth in jest king of Scotland; and Macbeth again would call him in jest likewise the father of many kings." Now it was the invariable practice of Shakspere to give facts or traditions just as he found them, whenever the introduction ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... permitted to mediaeval versifiers. The canvas of many an early painter depicts the sacred figures of Madonna and Child on an incongruous background of German or Italian landscape, and the mediaeval poet seldom hesitates to enrich his verse with whimsical allusions, full of fantastical inaccuracy, but valuable as revelations of current thoughts and ideas. Only a slight sketch of the prolonged conflict waged for centuries round the nutmeg groves of the remote Moluccas is possible in this little ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... commentator, who avails himself of the best assistances to explane any genuine author. But in many other instances, where the words are either not ancient or not used in their ancient sense, the interpretations are totally unfounded and fantastical; and at the same time the words cannot be altered or amended consistently with any rules of criticism, nor can the interpretations be varied without destroying the sense of the passage. In these cases, I think, there is a just ground for believing, that the words ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... was not a little astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Chopin put up at the hotel Zur goldenen Gans, changed his dress, and taken some refreshments, than he rushed off to the theatre. During his stay in Breslau he was present at three performances—at Raimund's fantastical comedy "Der Alpenkonig und der Menschenfeind", Auber's "Maurer und Schlosser (Le Macon)," and Winter's "Das unterbrochene Opferfest", a now superannuated but then still popular opera. The players succeeded better than the singers in gaining the approval ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that the apparitions which are produced by magic, and by the evocation of souls, which, forced by enchantments, come out, say they, from the depth of hell (or Hades), are but pure illusions of the demon, who causes to appear to those present a fantastical form, which fascinates the eyes of those who think they see what they see not; "which is not more difficult for the demon," says he, "than to seduce and blind the souls which he leads into sin. Pharaoh thought he ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet |
