"Fairy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and circled toward the shore, the driver standing erect upon the heels of the runners, guiding his team with wide-flung gestures and sharp cries, the rush of air fluttering the many squirrel-tails of his parka like fairy streamers. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the old fairy tales, and the stories of King Arthur's Round Table, and the Knights of the Faerie Queen, they sometimes wonder sadly why the knights that they see are not like those of the ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... such as Chateaubriand describes], "the nearer river, the island where the first birds build—these teach our windows the quiet and the opportunity of the home town, its kindly brooding companionship, its doors to an efficiency as intimate as that of fairy fingers." [Footnote: "Friendship Village," p. vii, author's note.] And this is but one of thousands of "home towns" in that great basin, towns with Daphne streets and Queen Anne houses, and gloomy court-houses and austere churches and miniature libraries, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... over a drawing for which she had no model, but which was intended to illustrate a fairy story. She was using pen and ink, and trying to imitate the fine strokes of a steel engraving. He stood at her side, looking down at her work a moment, and his artist's sense for the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... only brought into service when persons of consequence visited him) he disdained to pull out his best to me, yet I rather judge that he is only clever to the party at Norwich; and as Oberon, though but six inches high, is yet tall for a fairy, he is a great Apollo to the blue and whites [the colours of the liberal party at Norwich]. For corroboration of any opinion of theirs, I should always, like the Recorder of London, think it right to ask ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... he was seen on the Curragh by a blacksmith who was crossing it in an ass-cart from Athgarvan to Kildare. A fairy blast overtook him, and he had just time to say, "God speed ye Gentlemen" to the invisible "Good People," when he heard horses galloping up behind him; pulling to one side of the road he looked back and was terrified at seeing a troop of knights, fully armed, led by one on a ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... Mont St. Michel is strange and weird in the extreme. A vast ghostlike object of a very pale pinkish hue suddenly rises out of the bay, and one's first impression is that one has been reading the "Arabian Nights," and that here is one of those fairy palaces which will fly off, or gradually fade away, or sink bodily through the water. Its solemn isolation, its unearthly color, and its flamelike outline fill the mind ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... on the "pious, honorable birds" alert to escape the fowler's net, or holding a Diet "in a hall roofed with the vault of heaven, carpeted with the grass, and with walls as far as the ends of the earth." Or he wrote to his son a charming fairy-tale of a pleasant garden where good children eat apples and pears and cherries and plums, and where they ride on pretty ponies with golden reins and silver saddles and dance all day and play with whistles and fifes ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the crisp, rustling corn. Red-cheeked apples, dark-skinned winter pears ripened slowly on the orchard trees. Big bronze plums and late Victorias mellowed against the garden wall. And now and then when a breeze, gentle as the flutter of a fairy's wing, fanned the branches of the stately spreading lime tree that was comrade of the shining cedar on the lawn, there dropped on the grass border beside the tall hollyhocks a pale dry leaf, falling softly to the earth from which ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... it, dear papa," said she, "to go up yonder?" and she pointed to a gathering mass of clouds overhead, which, although heavy with dark shadows, had still a few bright, sunny points of resemblance to the fairy realms in which she delighted to wander ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... golden spoil to seize, The Muses yield, as the Hesperides; Who bribes the guardian, all his labour's done, For every maid is willing to be won. Before the lords of verse a suppliant stand, And beg our passage through the fairy land: Beg more—to search for sweets each blooming field, And crop the blossoms woods and valleys yield, To snatch the tints that beam on Fancy's bow; And feel the fires on Genius' wings that glow; Praise without meanness, without flattery stoop, Soothe without fear, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... exquisite face the air of an elf. All the sweet grace of a child was welling out of her maidenhood. Her apple-green frock fitted the form of a shepherdess. Her pretty grey legs and tiny feet were those of a fairy. Its very artlessness trebled the attraction of her pose. Making his sudden way between the boughs, the sun flung a warm bar of light athwart her white throat and the fallen curl. Nature was honouring her ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... worthy of a better cause, declines to believe their report of the cradle's contents, and his wife comes nimbly to his aid with the startling explanation that it is her son without doubt, for she saw him transformed by a fairy into this misshapen changeling precisely on the stroke of twelve. Not so, however, are the shepherds to be persuaded to disbelieve their eyes. Instead Mak gets a good tossing in a blanket for his pains, the exertion of which sentence reduces ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... amiable figure, not very effective. My aunt Ebe I afterwards came to know well, and shall defer mention of her. So I was encompassed by kindly petticoats, and was very happy, but might have been better for a stout playmate of my own sex. I had a hobby-horse, which I rode constantly to fairy-land in quest of treasure to bestow upon my friends. I swung with Una on the gate, and looked out upon the wonder of the passing world. The tragedy of my grandmother's death, which, as I have said, interrupted the birth of The Scarlet Letter, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Nero, so did the aristocracy love Marcus Aurelius; his foster-father Antonin excepted, he was the only gentleman that had sat on the throne. No wonder they loved him; and seeing this early edition of the prince in the fairy tale emerge from the bogs of Germany, his fair face haloed by the glisten and gold of his hair, hearts went out to him; the wish of his putative father was ratified, and the son of a gladiator was emperor ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... play every part well. Jovial, funereal, violent, tender, impetuous, affectionate, he assumed at will a deep or a piping voice; he sighed, he roared, he laughed, he wept. He could transform himself, like the man in the fairy-tale, into a flame, a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... therefrom, and receive from his divinity a little, uncertain pressure of the hand. Then came his respects to Mrs. Pumphrey. Amidon started as he recognized in the bright-haired second person in line his fairy of the balustrade. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... although sowings in the open ground in April and May often prove satisfactory. Unlike the others, it needs a rich soil to insure vigorous growth. When liberally treated the entire plant will be covered with its bright fairy-like flowers, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... morning sun, the island and its sister group looked like a second Eden just emerged from the waters of chaos. With what joy could I have spent the rest of the fall in exploring the romantic features of that enchanting scene! But our bark spread her white wings to the favouring breeze, and the fairy vision gradually receded from my sight, to remain for ever on the tablets ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... four o'clock when the dull roar of Niagara set the air a tremble, and the few remaining passengers left the train. The little town was unusually quiet and deserted, the tide of summer travel having ebbed; and not until the crystal fingers of the ice fairy had built her wonderful Giralda out of foam and spray, would that of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... I'm looking out first of all for myself, but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want to keep solid earth under ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... and expressive, would sit upright, engaged in knitting a stocking; at her feet, in a little arm-chair, sat Liza, also toiling over some sort of work, or, with her bright eyes uplifted gravely, listening to what Agafya was relating to her, and Agafya did not tell her fairy-stories; in a measured, even voice, she would narrate the life of the Most-pure Virgin, the lives of the hermits, the saints of God, of the holy martyrs; she would tell Liza how the holy men lived in the deserts, how they worked out their salvation, endured hunger and want,—and, fearing ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the voices of guards and shunters talking cheerily together. I draw nearer home, and enter the college by the garden entrance. The black foliage of the ilex lowers overhead, and then in a moment, out of an overshadowing darkness, rises a battlemented tower like a fairy castle, with lights in the windows streaming out with straight golden rays into the fog. Below, the arched doorway reveals the faintly-lighted arches of the cloisters. The hanging, clinging, soaking mist—how ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I am not merely the old man you see lying here; I am also a fairy, and am called the Good Old Man of Sunne. By my powers I have been able to keep away all evil and unhappiness from this island, and at one time from all the other islands in this Land of Brightness. But I have ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... from the anagogic fairy tale interpretation as a symbol of introversion shows, of course, also the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... replied the prince. "A wicked fairy condemned me to this form, and forbade me to show that I had any wit or sense, till a beautiful lady should consent to marry me. You alone, dearest Beauty, judged me neither by my looks nor by my talents, but by my heart alone. Take it ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... reproduced in this book. The picture is a work that may perhaps not wholly please at first, the cause largely of the vermilion on the floor, but in the end conquers. The hands are among the most beautiful in existence, and the landscape, with its one tree and its fairy architecture, is a continual delight. Among "Annunciations," as among pictures, it stands very high. It has more of sophistication than most: the Virgin not only recognizes the honour, but the doom, which the painter himself foreshadows in the predella, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... of the rooms—indeed, the lower part of the house was brilliantly illuminated. But as the windows in the beautiful linen-panelled hall were diamond-paned, the brilliance was softened, and there was something deliriously welcoming, almost fairy-like, in the picture the old house presented to its new ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into the open door, skipped down the stair like a fairy, three steps at once, seized me by the hands—both hands—jumped up, and actually kissed me. I was a little ashamed; but what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty could resist the advances of a fair contemporary? So we allowed the full degree of kindness to the meeting—HONI ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... and charming! above all, he has never worn the horrid European dress! And destitute of every resource! This is quite ravishing! It is too much happiness at once! Quick, quick let us improvise a pretty fairy tale, of which the handsome and beloved prince shall be the hero! The poor bird of the golden and azure plumage has wandered into our dismal climate; but he will find here, at least, something to remind him of his native region ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Mr. Miller left us. Oh, dear, how the little man talked! I do not know as the Cataract of Lodore is an adequate exemplification, for that has some airy, fairy jets and overfalls. But the good faith and earnestness with which Mr. Miller coined the air into words were more like the noise and pertinacity of a manufactory. He was certainly a new phase of man to me. When he finally vanished, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Like the bags, they are made the excuse of sweets, and, like them, they add to the decorative effect, for they stand in coquettish fashion before each cover and challenge the admiration inspired in the prince of fairy legend. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... dancers—every one of them—and when you are gliding around, your chin, or perhaps your nose, getting a scratch now and then from a gorgeous gold epaulet, you feel as light as a feather, and imagine yourself with a fairy prince. Of course the officers were in full-dress uniform Friday night, so I know just what I am talking about, scratches and all. Every woman appeared in her finest gown. I wore my nile-green silk, which I am afraid showed off my splendid coat of tan ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... what magic skill Its marvels of beauty it works at will: The well-house now is a fairy hall, And the rough, rude fence is a marble wall; While gates and hillocks where barn fowl ranged To ramparts and bastions ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... four leaved shamrock In all its fairy dells, And if I find its charmed leaves, Oh how I'll weave my spells. I would not waste my magic might On diamonds, pearls or gold, Such treasures tire the weary heart, ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... the inviting hills and woods day by day, week after week, ever to find fresh enchantment. Not a bend of road or winding mountain-path but discloses a new scene—here a fairy glen, with graceful birch or alder breaking the expanse of dimpled green; there a spinny of larch or of Scotch fir cresting a verdant monticule; now we come upon a little Arcadian home nestled on the hill-side, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... sat by the young Duke's side, his spirit weighed upon him, so that not knowing it he groaned, and the Duke, to soothe him, ordered into his private room a fairy thing, which pleased his eyes when he was sad and relieved his own heart; it was a dog, and the varlets brought it in to him, and they put it upon a table there. Now this dog was a fairy dog, and came from the Duke of Avalon; for a fairy had given it him as a love-gift, and no one can ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... you take into bedrooms,—look upon them, look upon them well,—why, they are all children; why, each of them is but eleven years old. Fate has thrust them upon prostitution and since then they live in some sort of a strange, fairy-like, toy existence, without developing, without being enriched by experience, naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what they will say and do half an hour later—altogether like children. This radiant and ludicrous childishness I have seen in the very oldest wenches, fallen ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... made me, oh, so happy, and hopeful—as I have never been before in all my life. It seems like one of the fairy stories in which ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... trees before the house. She made friends with them, and they covered themselves with blossoms for her pleasure. She sat for hours at her window, looking into the trees, sewing, reading, musing—solitary as a fairy ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... human head with cow's ears. She was named the Fair, and all the pure joys of life are in her gift. Later she was regarded as a Muse who beautifies life with enjoyment, love, song, and the dance. She appears as a good fairy by the cradle of children and decides their lot in life. She bears many names: and several, generally seven, Hathors were represented, who personified the attributes and influence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... exactly a paradise, Monterey is certainly a sweet place; 'tis even now a fairy spot in my recollection, although sobered down, and, I trust, a little wiser than I was at that time. There certainly is an air of happiness spread over this small town. Every one is at their ease, every body sings and smiles, and every hour is ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the pure whiteness of the plum or cherry with the delicate color of the pink or rose. How beautiful is the shading! How the pink tint improves the white and the white the pink! Every separate blossom is fit to adorn the head of a fairy; and when you look upon this wilderness of bloom, you feel that the floral world can go no farther with its gift of beauty. As I sit under this bower of loveliness I am inclined ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... the young fairy with an almost distressful expression; but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick, short eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Horse The Story of Prince Ahmed, and the Fairy Perie Banou The Story of the Sisters Who Envied Their Younger Sister Story of the Three Sharpers and the Sultan The Adventures of the Abbdicated Sultan History of Mahummud, Sultan of Cairo Story of the First Lunatic Story of the Second Lunatic ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... whose lack the moon goddess, (or should we call her fairy?) cannot return to the sky, is the red cap whose theft can keep our fairies of the sea upon dry land; and the ghost-lovers in 'Nishikigi' remind me of the Aran boy and girl who in Lady Gregory's story come to the priest after ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... ever sung in Po, A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud, While he did chant his rural minstrelsy: Attentive was full many a dainty ear, Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue, While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung; While to the waters' fall he tun'd for fame, And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name: And yet for all this unregarding soil Unlac'd the line of his desired life, Denying maintenance for his dear relief; Careless care to prevent his ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... in for a lot of trouble, Mr. Raymond," said the captain of the warship, "but I do not see how I can avoid it. I suppose that as the Esmeralda is a British ship and is now in distress I must be a sort of fairy godmother and take these beastly mongrels of Chilenos and Greeks to Sydney to be hanged on the evidence of these men whom you have brought. By the way, Mrs. Marston can have a passage with ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Daughter," was originally published in Harper's "Round Table," and is inserted here by consent of Messrs. Harper and Brothers. Two of the ballads, "Horatius," and "The Pied Piper," belong to literature, and you cannot afford not to know them, and some of the fairy stories are like bits of golden coin, worth treasuring up and reading often. Miss Mary Joanna Porter deserves the thanks of the boys for the aid she has given in the making of this volume, and the bright stories she has contributed ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... splash; when the water-vole rushes for his hole with head just above the water; when a blue flash of kingfisher darts by, and the deep blue or green dragon-flies sit on the sedges, or perhaps a tiny May- fly sits on a rail to shake off its last garment, and come forth a snow-white fairy thing with three ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... as he had a little rested he related to us all his trials and miseries, which seemed like a fairy tale. But when would Mrs. Fairfield return and meet her husband, was the next question, and where? He came every day and spent many an hour at our house playing with his child and wishing for his wife to return. He often said it would be almost too much happiness for him; that he was ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... remain unmoved by the mystery and psychology of Hamlet, the keen suffering and misery of King Lear, the bitter hate and revenge of Othello, the sweet devotion of Romeo and Juliet, the majesty of Richard III, and the fairy beauty of A Midsummer Night's Dream? In this wonderful kaleidoscope of all the human passions one can find a world of inspiration. I am also intensely fond of Goethe, Heine, and Alfred de Musset. It gives me pleasure to compare them to the great masters of music. Shakespeare ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... little Christmas tree and the hare that made it weep by jumping over it because it was so small, belong to the things that come to stay with you always. I hear of people nowadays who think it is not proper to tell children fairy-stories. I am sorry for those children. I wonder what they will give them instead. Algebra, perhaps. Nice lot of counting machines we shall have running the century that is to come! But though we loved Andersen, we were ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... branch of life that had bloomed so fully and freshly in her hand, a scepter and a fairy wand of beneficence, had withered to a thorny scourge for her own shoulders. She looked about her, before her. She realized with a new, a cutting keenness, that Jack was very rich and she very poor. The chill of poverty had hardly reached her as yet, the warm certainty of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... birds from a small aviary beneath the piazza which surrounds the court, which is surrounded by a toldo or linen awning, for it is the commencement of May, and the glorious sun of Andalusia is burning with a splendour too intense for its rays to be borne with impunity. It is a fairy scene such as nowhere meets the eye but at Seville, or perhaps at Fez and Shiraz, in the palaces of the Sultan and the Shah. The Gypsy looks through the iron-grated door, and beholds, seated near the fountain, a richly dressed dame and two lovely delicate maidens; they are busied at their ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... who was born in 1418 and died in 1481. He was the author of the relief illustrating the life of S. Gemignano upon the facade of the Duomo at Modena, and some of the beautiful and delicate marble reliefs set in the polychromatic front of the Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia, and the fairy-like low relief (bassissimi rilievi) panels that decorate the interior of the ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... last evening in the foyer at the Odeon. I shook hands with him. He had a happy look. And then I talked with Duquesnel about the fairy play. He wants very much to know it. You have only to present yourself when ever you wish to busy yourself with it. You will ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... looks, to me more sweet and clear, Than Light's glad beam, than heaven's own blue, The Spring's soft breath, the flower's bright hue; None so true, As his I cherish here, Whose image is so dear. Will he love, and love me duly? Fairy flowers, tell me truly. What shall be my lot hereafter? Shall it end in sighs, or laughter? Pull them lightly! Count them rightly! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... parts, however, the wren is (or at least was) cruelly hunted on certain days. In the Isle of Man the wren-hunt took place on Christmas Eve and St Stephen's Day, and is accounted for by a legend concerning an evil fairy who lured many men to destruction, but had to assume the form of a wren to escape punishment at the hands ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... a young fairy, And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind, Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings; And now the shadows make an Umbrian Mary Adoring, on ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... water on the reef of rocks and on the sandy beach had a weird, melancholy effect. Then came the dull noise of muffled oars commingling with the cawing of the gull and hollow surging of the waters into the Fairy Rocks. There was neither moon nor stars visible, but in the bay the experienced eye could discern the mysterious lugger. There she lay, hove to, or anchored below the Dean House, which could be seen peeping out between two sandy hills. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... river; But it is long ago— It seems forever— Since first I saw thee glance, With all the dazzling other ones, In airy dalliance, Precipitate in love, Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance. When that was, the soft mist Of my regret hung not on all the land, And I was glad for thee, And glad for me, I wist. Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high, That fate had made thee for the pleasure ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... were on the look-out for us as our post-chaise drove up to the cottage, while I saw poor Mrs Lindars looking out at an upper window from the room she occupied, and there in the midst of the ladies downstairs was the Little Lady, a perfect little fairy she looked among the three mature Misses Schank. Miss Anna Maria held her up in her arms, and the little girl cried out, "Oh! Mamma, mamma, I know you are my mamma, though I have got four other mammas here." ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... I wish you could have witnessed the 1st May 1851, the greatest day in our history, the most beautiful and imposing and touching spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved Albert. Truly it was astonishing, a fairy scene. Many cried, and all felt touched and impressed with devotional feelings. It was the happiest, proudest day in my life, and I can think of nothing else. Albert's dearest name is immortalised with this great conception, his own, and my own ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... magnificent illuminations were exhibited,—those of the Elector-Palatine were pre-eminently distinguished,—it was as clear as day. Lest I should be recognized, I had disguised myself to a certain extent; and Gretchen did not find it amiss. We admired the various brilliant representations and the fairy-like structures of flame by which each ambassador strove to outshine the others. But Prince Esterhazy's arrangements surpassed all the rest. Our little company were enraptured, both with the invention and the execution; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the woodland; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that bright girlish dream had faded away. Fancy's enchanted palace had been shattered into a heap of shapeless ruin by those accidental scraps of hard worldly wisdom with which Valentine had pelted the fairy fabric. He a man to love, or to marry for love! Why, he talked like some hardened world-weary sinner who had done with every human emotion. The girl shuddered as she heard him. She had loved him, and believed in his love. She had ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this fairy world has passed away, to live only as shadows in the realms of fancy and of song. SCHILLER gives expression to the poet's lament ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... breezes, and the burnished gold of wheat that rolled in mile-long waves; but it seemed to him that the wild things of the English North were, after all, more wonderful. They matched its deep peacefulness; their beauty was chaste, fairy-like, and ethereal. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... I only knew of some one who wants a good, gentle, young dog.' After another week he said, 'I will keep the dog. I could not bear to give him to some one that might not be kind to him.' So we kept him and named him Pixy, which father said was another name for fairy. I hope nothing will happen to him on this journey, for father ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... and afterwards took me to a fairy palace in the forest, furnished with all comforts and luxuries, where I passed some time with her in ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, and she blushed when her fair friends taxed her with being too religious. In 1421, when Joan was hardly nine, a band of Anglo-Burgundians penetrated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... knighthood from the hands of our present gracious sovereign, then Prince Regent, always appeared to me to differ in some material circumstances from the ordinary routine of court etiquette, and rather to resemble one of those amusing and instructive narratives denominated fairy tales. But on this delicate subject perhaps the safest course is to suffer the reader to judge for himself: so without further circumlocution, I will submit my lamented friend's account to his perusal, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... inkstand and pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some question among themselves; while others of them appeared to be collecting and packing away in tiny trunks certain fairy treasures, preparatory to a general departure. When I looked at the social hearth, at my wife's sofa and work-basket, I saw similar appearances of dissatisfaction and confusion. It was evident that the household fairies were discussing the question of a general ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for it was about Mitch and Zueline. Ma said she'd never seed such children, such a boy as Mitch, that he would be a musician or a poet like Longfellow when he grew up; that he was dreamin' all the time and believed in fairy stories, and made everything real to hisself. Then she said that Mitch thought so much of Zueline that it was enough to scare a body; that if anything happened to her Mitch would go out of his head, and if they ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... that my desire to play with her increased greatly. And she, knowing this, was as perverse as a princess in a fairy tale; she laughed mercilessly at my timid ways, at my awkward manners and my ungraceful fashion of entering the parlor; there was kept up between us a constant interchange of playful raillery, an oral ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... (Confound it! I never can remember names when I want to.) Tell a girl she is an angel, only more angelic than an angel; that she is a goddess, only more graceful, queenly, and heavenly than the average goddess; that she is more fairy-like than Titania, more beautiful than Venus, more enchanting than Parthenope; more adorable, lovely, and radiant, in short, than any other woman that ever did live, does live, or could live, and you will make a very favorable ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... weather (and particularly sharply visible in the strange clearness you get after a tornado) from a hundred miles to seawards, and anything more perfect than Fernando Po when you sight it, as you occasionally do from far-away Bonny Bar, in the sunset, floating like a fairy island made of gold or of amethyst, I cannot conceive. It is almost equally lovely at close quarters, namely from the mainland at Victoria, nineteen miles distant. Its moods of beauty are infinite; for the most part gentle and gorgeous, but I have seen it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... gesture. The description corresponded with that given by the author of the pamphlet. Outside was a parchment cover, dirty, stained and worn in places, and under it, the real binding, in stiff leather. With what a thrill Beautrelet felt for the hidden pocket! Was it a fairy tale? Or would he find the document written by Louis XVI. and bequeathed by the queen ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... listlessly occupied or seeming to be, the women with their work, Clerambault with his eyes, but not his mind, on a book. Maxime went out on the porch and smoked, leaning on the railing and looking down on the sleeping garden and the fairy-like play of the light and shadows on ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... however, to tell the truth, I was more out of humor with myself. I thought I had made the worst first appearance that ever hero made, either in novel or fairy tale. I was out of all patience, when I called to mind my awkward attempts at ease and elegance, in the tete-a-tete. And then my intolerable long lecture about poetry to catch the applause of a heedless auditor! But there I was not to blame. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... white gull skimmed the water's surface on level wings, the pale shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted expanse, while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself looked like ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... "Let me be fairy godmother," said the duchess. "In three weeks from to-day I engage to have such a trousseau as has rarely been seen. You can add dresses and ornaments ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... of spotting their prey. Were it not for lions and hyaenas, we should be in a bad way. For they come to eat all our dead animals, all the wastage of this army, the tribute our transport animals are paying to fly and to horse-sickness. For in spite of fairy tales about lions one must believe the unromantic truth that a lion prefers a dead ox to a man, and a black man to a white one. So you will not be surprised when I tell you that in this army of ours of at least 30,000 men I have only had two cases of mauling by the larger carnivora ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... robbed the "radiant fairy" Perifirime of her daughter, Sidi, and carried off a magic talisman. The magician keeps the damsel in confinement and persecutes her with amatory advances which she is able to resist through a power which is to support her so long as her heart is untouched ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... which all agreed would be very useful. Paul had a box of tapers which he considered equal to a wonder-lamp in a fairy tale, and Fritz had a small compass, so correct in its bearings that if they trusted to it there was not the least danger of ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Swift: "I have been better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical pessimist, "by a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the most perfect and complex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible," read, as Hallam says, "at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or little regarded," the "Pilgrim's Progress" becomes the chosen companion of our later years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching, and enjoyment ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... at the rail, looking out over the water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam's head against an overhanging stanchion announced his approach, that ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... nothing more beautiful than the airy-fairy soap-bubble with its everchanging colors." This outfit gives the best possible amusement for old ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... seen, it seems to be A sort of fairy ground, Where suns unsetting light the sky, And flowers and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song and merry laughter made sylvan echoes ring and brought smiles to the faces of the simple women who watched ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... brew thee no charm, thou Ogre dread! Knowest thou not full well The Princess thou hast stolen away Is guarded by Fairy spell? Her godmother over her cradle bent. "O Princess Winsome," she said, "I give thee this gift: thou shalt deftly spin, As thou wishest, Love's golden thread." So I dare not brew thee a spell 'gainst her. My caldron would grow acold And never again ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... voice afraid, So long had they in silence stood, Looking upon that moonlight flood,— "How sweetly does the moonbeam smile To-night upon yon leafy isle! Oft in my fancy's wanderings, I've wished that little isle had wings, And we, within its fairy bowers, Were wafted off to seas unknown, Where not a pulse should beat but ours, And we might live, love, die alone! Far from the cruel and the cold,— Where the bright eyes of angels only Should come around us, to behold ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Sauiours Birth is celebrated, The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long: [Sidenote: This bird] And then (they say) no Spirit can walke abroad, [Sidenote: spirit dare sturre] The nights are wholsome, then no Planets strike, No Faiery talkes, nor Witch hath power to Charme: [Sidenote: fairy takes,[1]] So hallow'd, and so gracious is the time. [Sidenote: ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... fairy tale," said Daisy. "I'm just as good as a princess, you know, Nora. Don't you want to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... quick shiver of ripples. Then half a mile away, but advancing rapidly, appeared a strange turmoil, and in the sunlight, a stretch of sea, acres in extent, was churned into white foam, looking like some fairy ice- or snow-field. Above this, at a height of about ten feet, glittered a palpitating silver canopy, almost blinding in its sparkle ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... away. She cried with eager response: "Why the night of the Indian Drill I can believe I am a fairy, dancing over snow-topped mountains, and singing, flying clear up ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... particular, was addicted to reminiscence of an incriminating sort, and he totally ignored Rouletta's protests at sharing the secrets of his guilty past. As for the Snowbird, he was fond of telling her fairy-stories. They were queer fairy-stories, all beginning in the ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... go—and—and—O—O—law, how beautiful!" She shrank back as she spoke, starting with wonder and delight as she saw the Royal Gardens blaze before her with a hundred million of lamps, with a splendor such as the finest fairy tale, the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at the theater, had never realized. Pen was pleased with her pleasure, and pressed to his side the little hand which clung so kindly to him. "What would I not give for a little of this pleasure?" ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so I calculate, about the year 2000 B.C., or, to be more precise—for figures are not the strong point of the old chroniclers—when King Heremon ruled over Ireland and Harbundia was Queen of the White Ladies of Brittany, the fairy Malvina being her favourite attendant. It is with Malvina that this story is chiefly concerned. Various quite pleasant happenings are recorded to her credit. The White Ladies belonged to the "good people," and, on the whole, lived up to ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the fiction of the period and by the delightful tales of old New England, which read like fairy stories to this generation, the courtships of those days were too leisurely to be very interesting. Ten-year engagements did not seem to be unusual, and it was not considered a social mistake if a man suddenly disappeared for four or five years, without the formality ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... is the result of seeing so much pain and misery. I have been a machine too long. I want to be thrust into the middle of some fairy story before I die. I have never been in love, in a violent rage. I haven't known anything but work and ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... a fine, frosty morning. The white earth glimmered in the first touch of sunlight. All the fairy lanterns of the frost king, hanging in the stubble and the dead grass, glowed a brief time, flickered faintly, and went out. Then the brown sward lay bare, save in the shadows of rock or hill or forest that were still white. A great glory had fallen over ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... familiarity to the tune. That at least needed no interpreter. The old ballad of troubadours, the French war song of old, the song of raillery, the song of Revolution, this that had been a folk song of the Crusader, a Basque rhyme of fairy lore, the air known in the desert tents of Happy Arabia, known to the Jews coming out of Egypt, known to the tribes in the days without history or fifes—why, if this wasn't the rollicking, the defiant paean of Americans! But how came she by it, and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... I had already gone back to the unfinished palace, and as the work progressed, she forgot her hint of dismissal in watching the fairy towers. We were still absorbed in the building when her mother came down the curving stairway and into the maze ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... of a room half lighted by a lamp hung from the ceiling. You can guess I began again my writhings and cries. Thereupon appeared before me in the open door the most beautiful creature imaginable. I took her for a fairy, and fell to gazing at her with my eyes full of amazement and admiration. You have seen Madelaine, and you can judge of her beauty in her early youth. It was a fabulous beauty joined to a ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to the theatre; and the few plays she had seen were the good old fairy tales, dramatized to suit young beholders, lively, bright, and full of the harmless nonsense which brings the laugh without the blush. That night she saw one of the new spectacles which have lately become the rage, and run for hundreds of nights, dazzling, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the people were? And in private houses, everywhere, how the dishes always resembled the talk—how the very same platitudes seemed to go into people's mouths and come out of them? Couldn't he see just what kind of menu it would make, if a fairy waved a wand and suddenly turned the conversation at a London dinner into joints and puddings? She always thought it a good sign when people liked Irish stew; it meant that they enjoyed changes and surprises, and taking life as it came; ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... more after this came the private theatricals at Tavistock House. Beginning simply, first of all, with his direction of his children's frolics in the enacting of a burletta, of a Cracker Bonbon for Christmas, and of one of Planche's charming fairy extravaganzas, these led up in the end through what must be called circuitously Dickens's emendations of O'Hara's version of Fielding's burlesque of "Tom Thumb," to the manifestation of the novelist's remarkable genius for dramatic impersonation: first of all, as Aaron Gurnock in Wilkie Collins's ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... prosperity in Spain has been called a fairy vision of history. The culture developed under its genial influences pervaded the middle ages, and projected suggestions even into our modern era. One of the most renowned savants at the beginning of the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... sitting at the table, opening his mail! There would be lacking the logical action of his coming into the room, crossing to the table, and sitting down. The whole effect would be much the same as in those "fairy" plays produced several years ago, where "stop camera" work was resorted to to obtain the effect of a supernatural being suddenly appearing on the scene, greatly to the astonishment ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... he exclaimed, rubbing his hands slowly and gently. "You remind me of the queen of a fairy palace. I shall not dare to call you my child or little girl again. Scherezade or Fatima ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Herrick's three chief Fairy poems ("The Fairy Temple; or, Oberon's Chapel," "Oberon's Feast," and "Oberon's Palace") are separated from each other, is greatly to be regretted. The last two, both dedicated to Shapcott, are distinctly connected by their opening ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the location pretty well fixed in his head—unless the whole thing is a fairy tale," was ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... moving thing on which people were being wafted gently upward. It reminded Sunny Boy of the fairy tale he had seen in the motion picture where the Wishing Girl who wanted to fly was suddenly granted ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... most delightful of grown-up fairy-tales of modern times.... The characters ... are finely various and their conversations piquantly fresh and edifying ... a dramatic climax of great strength and beauty ... ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... couldn't help murmuring, half to myself, half to Peterkin—'I believe you've got some rubbish in your head about the parrot being a fairy. If I were mamma I'd stop your——' but at that I stopped myself. If Clement had heard me he would have been down upon me for disrespectfulness in saying to a baby like Pete what I thought mamma should or should not do; and I didn't care to ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish gayety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relationship with men, but seemed to follow him into that region of indefinable remoteness, that dismal Fairy-Land of aged fancy, into which old Grandsir Dolliver had so strangely ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have believed any fairy tale by now. And they started for it, Harley leading; but the tide was too high, and at the farther end of the little pebble isthmus the higher breakers actually came across and poured their foam into the clear ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and discoveries be made, which would open inexhaustible treasures of commerce?[48] We can now boldly take it upon us to discourage all expeditions, formed on such reasonings of speculative philosophers, into a quarter of the globe, where our persevering English navigator, instead of this promised fairy land, found nothing but barren rocks, scarcely affording shelter to penguins and seals; and dreary seas, and mountains of ice, occupying the immense space allotted to imaginary paradises, and the only treasures there to be discovered, to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... years before Mr. Longworth's death, 171,293 inhabitants. The reader can easily imagine the immense profits which a half century's increase placed in the hands of the far-seeing lawyer. It seems almost like reading some old fairy tale to peruse the accounts of successful ventures in real estate in American cities. They have sprung up as if by magic, and it is impossible to say where their development will end. Said a gentleman of less than thirty-five ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... thoughts. None of us yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought—proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure—houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... advanced toward us. The spangles on her net dress seemed to give her a fairy-like appearance; she seemed to float over the carpet like a glowing, fleecy, white cloud ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... that Lotta should not have married a prince—all the grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should ever ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Mr. Leaf would say. There is nothing like this in the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They call the son of Achilles, not Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus. (6) They represent the Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three magically gifted maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in fairy tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Marchen! They bring in ghosts of heroes dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were impossible if the dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric absurdities, save ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... world is here! No wonder; for the stomach sits for four or five assiduous hours at the same meal that the dainty tongue will despatch in a twentieth portion of the time. For the stomach is bound to supply the extended body, while the tongue wafts only fairy gifts to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... just enough work to do about the house and the tower to keep them busy. The weather was fair. The worst thing was the short supply of food. But though they were hungry, they were not starving. And Nataline still played the fife. She jested, she sang, she told long fairy stories while they sat in the kitchen. Marcel admitted that it was not at all a ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... intensity which often characterized her speech, "that now I understood you—now I know why you were so different from other girls, so sweet, so calm and beautiful! You have lived in this lovely place all your life! It is like a fairy palace—a dream-house—to me; and you are the queen of it, Margaret—a ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... would you have me love any one but yourself?" she asked. "Have you not given me happiness? When I am with you, I seem to be living in a fairy-tale." ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... and Tom learned to know experimentally that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that if the writers of fairy-tales had travelled more they would have saved their imaginations a deal of trouble, and produced ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... descended to his present representative. Mount Music House stood about midway of a long valley, on a level plateau of the hill from which it took its name, Cnocan an Ceoil Sidhe, which means the Hill of Fairy Music, and may, approximately, be pronounced "Knockawn an K'yole Shee." The hill melted downwards—no other word can express the velvet softness of those mild, grassy slopes—to the shore of the River Broadwater, a slow and lordly stream, that moved mightily down ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... truth, but only a rusty stove,—had often talked to the little girl about his former wealth, the noble loveliness of his first wife, and the beautiful child whom she had given him. Instead of the fairy tales which other parents tell, he told Priscilla this. And, out of the loneliness of her sad little existence, Priscilla's love grew, and tended upward, and twined itself perseveringly around this unseen sister; as a grapevine might strive to clamber out of a gloomy hollow among the rocks, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... creeping up the mountain side. Overhead the wide sweep of sky began to glitter with white stars. A little chill breeze sprang up in the west and fanned the fire, sending a fairy shower of tiny lemon-yellow sparks into the air. And borne on the breeze came a hoarse pounding and drumming that grew momentarily louder and reverberated from wall to wall. The ground trembled and the grazing burros lifted their shaggy ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! pain has its own way with all of us; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the fairy garden where the child wanders in a dream, no less surely than it rules upon the field of battle, or sends the immortal war-god whimpering to his father; and innocence, no more than philosophy, can protect us from this sting. As for taste, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... makes the spirit sigh with delight. Nowhere in the world can one see such a thing as those great gate-piers, with a cognisance a-top, with a grille of iron-work between them, all sweetly entwined with some slim vagrant creeper, that give a glimpse and a hint—no more—of a fairy-land of shelter and fountains within. I have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned as the buildings of Oxford; but the very blackness of the city air, and the drifting smoke of the town, gives that added ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves—why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville |
