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Fairy tale   /fˈɛri teɪl/   Listen
Fairy tale

noun
1.
A story about fairies; told to amuse children.  Synonyms: fairy story, fairytale.
2.
An interesting but highly implausible story; often told as an excuse.  Synonyms: cock-and-bull story, fairy story, fairytale, song and dance.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fairy tale" Quotes from Famous Books



... very moment Patty was looking at hers. It was so delightful to open the small packages, to find a beautiful paper-doll from Miss Emily, a funny cheap toy from each of the boys: a silly monkey, a quacking duck and a jumping jack; a little fairy tale book from Patty, and oh, wonder! the Roman sash from Miss Dorothy. Even Mr. Robbins and Aunt Barbara had contributed, the former a little purse with a ten cent piece in it, and the latter a box of her famous nut candy. ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard

... 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?" said ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... worship—Buddhist, Hindu, and Mohammedan—may be gathered from the lengthy scroll, heroic and princely exploits, myths and traditions, encumber the sacred text, which Eastern imagination transforms into a fairy tale. Creeds lose their chiselled outline, and crumble away in the disintegrating medium of Javanese thought, which blends them into each other with changing colour and borrowed light. The inconstant soul ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... said coolly. "If you choose to look upon life as a fairy tale, it's not my business to wake you up. The Sleeping Beauty position is very soothing while it lasts. Don't say I didn't warn you, that's all! I don't call it exactly 'poisonous' to try to prevent another girl from suffering as badly as one has ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... had a letter from Osborne, from Marianne Skerrett, describing the arrival of Count Walewski under a royal salute to receive the Queen's recognition of Napoleon III. She, Marianne, says, "How great a man that, is, and how like a fairy tale the whole story!" She adds, that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she never could abide him, he was so cunning and so false, not cunning enough to hide the falseness! Were not you charmed with the bits of sentiment and feeling ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... crystal form horizontally, when all the rest stand upright? But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and quartz, and some other such companions, when they get leave to do anything they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about every one of which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are sadly tried, and have little time for ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... certainly have succeeded was not to be tried. The Deus ex Machina appeared with its flaming sword. The Doubting army was cut to pieces, and Mansoul was saved. Again, however, the work was imperfectly done. Diabolus, like the bad genius in the fairy tale, survived for fresh mischief. Diabolus flew off again to Hell Gate, and was soon at the head of a new host; part composed of fugitive Doubters whom he rallied, and part of a new set of enemies called Bloodmen, by whom we are to understand ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... scattered among them, and the frocks and toys were all dancing up and down as if they were bewitched. Nurse took out the frocks, and there was the children's collar-box, a large round cardboard-box with a lid, jumping from side to side like a box in a fairy tale; and such dreadful pitiful little mews coming from the inside! Nurse undid the lid, and out sprang Spot like a flash of lightning, and ran as if she were running for her life out of the door and down the stairs, and safe into the kitchen, where she cuddled herself up in a corner ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fraudulent sales or conveyances of property without actual and visible change of possession. The notion of a symbol, a paper or writing, which should represent that property would probably have impressed them like a spell or charm in a child's fairy tale. Even theft with asportation could not alter property rights, even in favor of innocent purchasers, when the owner did not intend to part therewith. A moment's recollection of what is now perhaps the most familiar of Teutonic saga to the ordinary reader, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... missions seems like a fairy tale, wonderful and unreal. Into a wilderness inhabited only by savage men and wild animals, hundreds of miles from any civilized settlement, there came these men trained ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... a sort of fairy tale—unless Knox"—glacing across in my direction—"can confirm it. But there was a story current during the latter part of Adderley's stay in Singapore to the effect that he had made the acquaintance of the wife, or some member of the household, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... which the myths appear in the form of simple tales: three from the northland, two from Greece. Each story is attractive in itself, has some of the interest that surrounds a fairy tale and serves as the fore-shadowing of history. That they are something more than fairy tales is shown in the comments and elementary ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... case occurs in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as follows:—'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, happens also to be a lie; secondly, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... great distance from town; and my company was not such as to shorten the way, for Aunt Golding was the only frank and cheerful-spoken person in our party, Althea behaving, as I told her, like an enchanted princess in a fairy tale, so melancholy, proud, and silent, and Andrew being so dashed with her stately ways that the poor youth was not less tongue-tied than she. So I was glad indeed when we rode out of York one fine morning, and Mrs. Golding told us we must reach her house before the day was ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... keen-sighted! For his sake your beautiful Eva, with her saintly gaze, might easily forget to pray. It was not you, but she, who drew him to-night to your house. Had this thought entered my head downstairs in the entry I should probably, to be honest, have omitted my little fairy tale and let matters take their course. St. Clare ought to have protected her future votary. Besides, it pleases the arrogant little lady to show me as plainly as possible, on every occasion, that I am a horror to her. Let those who will accept such insults. My Christianity does not go far enough ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... said that the huge piece was even sighted by electricity. There is really nothing strange in the statement, though it may read like a fairy tale or a metaphor to whoever has never had his attention called to the subject. In a small way, with the name of its inventor almost unknown except to his messmates, it is one of the most wonderful, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... like a fairy tale to Patsy; he could scarcely believe his own ears. Just to think of it; that brown house on the hill had once been their mother's home, and the man who lived there, the man whom David hated with undying hatred, was ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... Jessop!" he said, angrily. "I won't have any back talk." Yet there was something about his tone that told me I had got one in on my own. He seemed all at once less able to appear confident that I was telling him a fairy tale. ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson

... to be a yellow and white wedding, therefore the gowns they had chosen were of white silk net over pale yellow satin, and very youthful in effect. Miriam's gown was a wonderful gold tissue, which made her appear like the princess in some old fairy tale, while Anne, contrary to tradition, had not chosen white satin. Her wedding dress was of soft, exquisite white silk, clouded with white chiffon, and was much better suited to her quiet type of loveliness than satin ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... it is not stupid. Read on. It has hints of the prettiest fairy tale I know, and of the fairy in especial who bewitched my fancies ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... poems was selected. The Knight's, the Squire's, the Man of Law's, the Prioress's, and the Clerk's Tales, were all that she would have of that book by which we know Geoffrey Chaucer best. She liked better the graceful fairy tale of the Flower and the Leaf, written for the deceased Lollard Queen; and best of all that most pathetic lamentation for the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, whom Elizabeth Le Despenser had known personally in her youth. Maude would never have suspected the Dowager of the least ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... that he cannot get his head attended to, because, as a matter of fact, his head is not his own excellent head, but the head of an ass with long ears, a snout, and hair that itches. 'This is exactly like a fairy tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... to say that you must let the men know something of the beauty of the world, and the wonder of it as well. Look here, Blair: do you mean to say that I couldn't make a regular fairy tale out of the geology of these Banks? Pray, ladies, excuse just a little shop; I can't help it. Give me just one tooth of an elephant, dredged up off Scarborough, and if I don't make those men delighted, then I may leave the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... called together to witness the iniquity of spending their lives in the degrading operation of filling the pockets of those who laboured not, by the toil in which their lives were spent. They had been told every flowery fairy tale of the modern communistic doctrine, which possesses as much truth and sanity in it as is to be found in an asylum for the mentally deficient. And they had swallowed the bait whole. The talk had been by the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... like a fairy tale," said Mary when she was told about it, "and I don't know just what to say. I can just look up into the blue sky and say, 'Even so, Father; let me live and be worthy of it all.' It is a grand gift and I am so ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann

... Magi. It is well they should speak. They are voices of the wise. But after having listened and pondered, oh, that someone would arise and shout into our souls how much more fatal it is to refrain. For we miss to hear the fairy tale of time, the aeonian chant radiant with light and color which the spirit prolongs. The warnings are not for those who stay at home, but for those who adventure abroad. They constitute an invitation to enter the mysteries. We study and think these things were well in the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... gold-laced coat and the breeches with the sword-slash in them, the sash, the belt, the plumed hat, the high boots, the pistols, and glittering among them all, the sword. That chest of Father Anthony's and its contents were something of a fairy tale to the boys of the Island, and each of them dreamt of a day when he too might behold them. The chest, securely locked and clamped, stood in the sacristy; and Father Anthony would have seen nothing incongruous in its neighbourhood to the sacred vessels and vestments. He generally displayed ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely Arthur's nephew, not son, in the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to be rather mediaeval French than Celtic—a mingling of the spirit of fabliau and popular fairy tale. The poet has added to its lightness, almost frivolity, the description of the unreal city of Camelot, built to music, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... rest for a moment where the bracken was brown and shriveled beneath an oak-tree. He assented. Once more he gave a great sigh, and wiped his eyes with a childlike unconsciousness, and began to speak without a trace of his previous anger. The idea came to her that they were like the children in the fairy tale who were lost in a wood, and with this in her mind she noticed the scattering of dead leaves all round them which had been blown by the wind into heaps, a foot or two ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... recounted. Remembering the fertility of the Eastern imagination, and the despotic character of Eastern rulers, it is easy to understand that such babads were more often than not reduced in point of veracity to the standard of an average fairy tale. M. Brumund, whose remarks on this subject are embodied in Leemans' work on the Boro-Boedoer temple, deals very severely with the babads. He cannot away with them, and goes near to denying their claims for ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... were as round as a child's awaiting a fairy tale. If Mr. Penrose had needed encouragement they would have furnished it. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... time had a wonderful charm for Daisy; it was, as she thought, better than a fairy tale. The doctor at last let her into the secret that he had a trilobite too; and the next time he came he brought it with him. He was good enough to leave it with Daisy a whole day; and Daisy's meditations over it and her own together were ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner

... with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human pathos that it was more real than if it had been really ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... Oxford as she was when she is first spoken of by history. What she may have been when legend only knows her; when St. Frideswyde built a home for religious maidens; when she fled from King Algar and hid among the swine, and after a whole fairy tale of adventures died in great sanctity, we cannot even guess. This legend of St. Frideswyde, and of her foundation, the germ of the Cathedral and of Christ Church, is not, indeed, without its value and significance for those who care for Oxford. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... NIGHT'S EVE, a Fairy Tale of Love. 8vo., bound in richly gilt cloth, elegantly printed, and illustrated by numerous very beautiful engravings, from designs by Maclise, Stanfield, Chreswich, Ward, Frost, Paton, Topham, Kenny Meadows, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... what one wrote in such solemn seriousness—and that is why I can never feel all the nice things that have been said about "The Young Visiters," are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems almost another person. It has all been like a fairy tale, from the accidental finding of the original note book to the day when, at her request, I left a copy with my friend Miss Margaret Mackenzie, for it is to her I really owe the publication of the book. She ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... or little, should wonder whether there is a meaning in this story deeper than that of an ordinary fairy tale, I will own that there is. But I have hidden it so carefully that the smaller people, and many larger folk, will never find it out, and meantime the book may be read straight on, like "Cinderella," or "Blue-Beard," ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... alike to tremble before. It meant nothing, of course, but, like many inscrutable and unfathomable things, it terrified by its sheer blank, chaotic madness. He hung it in the exhibition. And it was—yes, it was—the hit of the occasion. This is not a fairy tale—not even fiction. The story was told me by the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... "It seems like a fairy tale, Henry," she whispered. "You don't know what a load on my mind that money has been, and how I was growing to detest ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and long ago, When I was but a dreaming boy, This fairy tale of love and woe Entranced my heart with tearful joy; And while with white Undine I wept, Your spirit,—ah, how strange it seems, Was cradled in some star, and slept, Unconscious of ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... that nobody can live happy—ever after, unless they're married—first. So that was why I 'ranged for him to marry you, so you could both be happy, an' all revelry an' joy,—like the fairy tale, you know." ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... journeyed, on a glorious summer night, Through the weird Australian bushland, without feelings of delight? The dense untrodden forest, in the moonlight cold and pale, Brings before our wondering eyes again the dreams of fairy tale." ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... them to you in all the dignity of an honoured old age, because they are only a year or two older to-day than they were when Percy and Jeffreys took that little run together down to Cumberland. Nor can I show them to you, after the fashion of a fairy tale, "married and living happily ever afterwards," because when I met Jeffreys in the Strand the other day, he told me that although he had just been appointed to the control of a great public library in the North, it would still be some ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... about wolves. I know we had some at La Chance, but we probably left them there, nosing round the bunk-house rubbish heap. And anyhow, a wolf or two wouldn't trouble us. They're cowardly things, unless they're in packs." I felt exactly as if I were comforting Red Riding Hood or some one in a fairy tale, for the Lord knows it had never occurred to me to be afraid of wolves. "What on earth put wolves ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... although, in spite of much church-building and a certain amount of Pagan-persecuting, his character did not in any way emulate that of his saintly brother. The early part of his history reads like a fairy tale, and is a favourite subject for Scald songs; more especially his ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... sounds like a fairy tale—a real gold mine belonging to your mother lost through ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... always and always going to the same places with the same person, and hearing the same people say the same things!" Instantly she wished she might recall the sharp words, satisfying as they were to herself, for little Miss Lydia was regarding her much as the aunt of the wretched girl in the fairy tale might have done,—the girl out of whose mouth a frog jumped every time she opened it. Indeed, the sentence seemed actually visible between them, like a squat and ugly small beast on the shining white cloth. "Sorry, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... friend who brought home the fairy tale about the red-bud, or Judas-tree, might well have based his story on the American persimmon, but for the fact that this puckery little globe, so brilliant and so deceptive before frost, loses both its beauty and its astringency when slightly ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... said to Augustus Hare, who happened to be one of the party, "One would think that we all of us were going to Gretna Green." When we approached the castle, whose towers were blots in the November evening, I felt we were approaching a castle in a child's fairy tale. In point of magnitude, combined with ancient and absolutely continuous occupation, there is, so far as my own experience goes, no private dwelling in the kingdom which excels, or even equals, Raby. The duchess ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... herself that they went from one edge of the world to the other? She was glad to slip from the Governor's encircling arm, and from the gay ring beneath the sugar-tree; to take refuge with herself down by the water side, and watch the fairy tale ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... she tells him—so sweet and low, it sounds like a fairy tale— How Jesus has sent His angels down to fetch her; that He won't fail To send His angel to watch o'er him When love ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... early in case you wanted to go to your rooms first. Do you know, I've been to the 'Milan' and chosen my table. There's a lovely band playing, and it's all quite a fairy tale, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... a night such as one might read of in a fairy tale. The full moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their snowy crests seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake glittered with tiny rippling motions. The air was mild, with that kind ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... thing which may come in the future to God only knows what. Talk of the caterpillar which is to develop into the butterfly or the acorn which shall one day be a mighty oak. Why, these miracles are but child's play compared with the miracles potentially wrapped up in this poor little self. No wildest fairy tale can suggest the wonder of its possibilities as it passes out into the new adventure of the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... arms have long confinement and scanty fare, bowed down to this damp floor and withered. What a record of misery and wrong would not these walls give forth, were they for one little hour gifted with the power of speech, like the talking woods in the fairy tale. And yet, evil as the times were, when might, not right, was in the ascendant, they had their redeeming excellencies too. Knightly honour, chivalrous abhorrence of guile, the soul to endure, as well as ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... had ceased to look like a fairy palace to the girl who had only paused long enough in her journey from her old manor to furnish her wardrobe in the darkest and dirtiest of winter cities. She had felt like the enchanted princess in the fairy tale for a few hours, but now she longed for nothing but ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... barber's. I have been so proud of my manliness! But—repulsed with loss! And, to make a clean breast of it, for an opportunity like this I would gladly remain a foolish youth a long while yet; like silly Jack, you know, in the fairy tale, who is always doing foolish things; but the princess with the blue eyes does not think any the worse of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the deep motives which more than fifty centuries ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... Mother and daughter had talked about England, the far-away Mother Land, many many hours full of pleasure to both; to one the subject had all the enchantment of a fairy tale, to the other of the tenderest and sweetest recollections. Lucia had heard, over and over again, each detail of the landscape, each incident in the history, of her mother's birthplace; she knew the gentle invalid mistress and the kind stern ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... Nurse said: "Well, I never!" when she saw Guido, but she felt so sorry for the lonely little girls that she let him come to the table. And such a dinner as he ate! He had never had one like it before. "It is a fairy tale," he said. ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various

... she cried—"to think all my wildest dreams should come true like this, and my life go on like a fairy tale! There is Mr. Walraven, the good genii of the story; Mrs. Walraven, the old but well-meaning fairy godmother; and I'm Cinderella, with the tatters and rags turned to cloth of gold, and nothing to do but wait at my ease for the fairy prince, and marry him when ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... boy!" she said, five minutes afterwards. "Of course, I thought of it all along. I never made any secret of it to your father. I told him that our escape was like a fairy tale, and that it must have the same ending: 'and they married, and lived happy ever after.' He would never have let me have my way with the house, had I not confided in him. He said that I could spend my money as I pleased, on myself, but that not one penny ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... up to his subject, Wilbur thought he was listening to an "Arabian Nights" fairy tale. Despite his customary silence Merritt was an enthusiast, and believed that forestry was the "chief end of man." He assured the boy that twenty different species of tree of immense value could be acclimatized in North America which are of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... come in turn, over and over again, observation, experiment, inquiry from others whether orally or in books, and in this subject books abound more fascinating than fairy tales, and their latest charm is that they are laying aside the pose of a fairy tale and tell the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... house. I have read to them the little journal I kept during the whole life of the brother I am not willing they should forget. His quaint and sagacious sayings were delicious to them; the history of his first steps, his first words sounded to them like a fairy tale. And the story of his last steps, his last words on earth, had for them such a tender charm, that there was a cry of disappointment from them all, when I closed the little book and told them we should have to wait till we got to heaven ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... remember how the horse's feet Went "Plop, plop," in and out of the mud, And you felt the mist blow in on your face When you managed to peer out over the curtain? And didn't you snuggle up close to Grandfather And hug the Fairy Tale book Which he was going to listen to When the rain stopped and ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder

... life; and you nursed him, and fell in love with him, and married him, and his old uncle dies and leaves him a fortune in the nick of time. It sounds like a fairy tale; you ought to finish with—'and they ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... made to the dig when they were room-mates. Jack, however, was describing to Hannah the recent rush and the glory of her class, and Lillian's glances were lost upon him. The lemonade finished, he took the Freshman over to Professor Craig's mother, and left her with a pleasant fairy tale about ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... dream, or fairy tale, Or minstrel's strain of music rare; But ever foremost in its train, Walk ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... old woman peeling onions in her little kitchen, painted by a modern would be realistic and vulgar; but the Dutchman knew that by light and shade the meanest subject could be made as romantic as a fairy tale. As dreamers and thinkers they did not compare with the Italians, but as painters they were equal to any. They were the first to introduce the trivialities of daily life into Art—the toil of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... more or less made friends with her, and forgiven her her marvellous drab poplin, adorned with fresh pink ruchings for the occasion. As for the Provost, Mrs. Elsmere had been told that he was a person of whom she must inevitably stand in awe. But all her life long she had been like the youth in the fairy tale who desired to learn how to shiver and could not attain unto it. Fate had denied her the capacity of standing in awe of anybody, and she rushed at her host as a new type, delighting in the thrill which she felt creeping over her when she ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... especially since that worthy man's son, Severin, had worked his way up to such high honor with the mallet, many of the young men in the village had chosen to follow the mason's calling. The children used to talk of Severin as if he were a prince in a fairy tale. And so Black Marianne's only child had, in spite of her remonstrances, become a mason, and was now wandering around the country. And she, who all her life long had never left the village, nor had ever ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... a fairy tale. But was not everything there as in the fairy tale? So quite different to everywhere else in the world, in reality ugly and yet not ugly, in reality not beautiful and yet so exceedingly beautiful? And she herself, was she not quite a different being there? Did ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... like a veritable fairy tale to many who are not familiar with this Book of God; the unlikeliest thing imaginable. Yet this is the thing seriously set forth throughout these old prophetic pages. I have given a few references in footnotes. But these few scattered passages of themselves will not give an adequate conception ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... Drake, you spoil the fairy tale. You did intend to come here. It was the only place for you to go—and I'm glad of it. My only regret is that the house isn't ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... dwarfed by the balloon she towed. As that bubble tried ponderously to rotate, rainbow gleams ran across it, hiding and then revealing the constellations. Here, on the asteroid's axis, there was no weight, and one moved with underwater smoothness, as if disembodied. "Oh, a fairy tale," ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... factors of variation and selection in social evolution: the instructor shows how Nature loves averages, not only by statistics and experiments with the standard curve of distribution, but also, if he is a really illuminated teacher, by reference, say, to the legend of David and Goliath, the fairy tale of Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eye, Little Three-Eye, and Lincoln's famous aphorism to the effect that the Lord must love the common people because he made so many of them. Sad experience advises that it is unsafe for an instructor ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... Curly woods and coppices had run down from above and had pushed on over the very ravine. And the sheer, white precipice which bathed its foot in the blue river, was all furrowed over with occasional young woods, just like green little veins and warts. Beautiful as in a fairy tale, the ancient town appeared as though it were itself ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... glance from her was as seductive as a kiss; and when she called me, her voice darted like a wine-ray right into my soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he imagine she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was simply a Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... slices of Shakespeare, Augustus Thomas, George Ade, and other great writers, so you see we were giving them bits of the best living and dead dramatists. Our native Shakespeares do the same thing nowadays in all of their original works, and that's no idle fairy tale. We sandwiched comedy, drama, tragedy, and farce, and interlarded the mixture with Victor Herbert and Oscar Hammerstein's opera comique and May Irwin coon songs. Such a presentation of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... possible pantomimic scenes which could not be done otherwise, and the music itself flows more easily under such conditions. But that does not mean that such conditions are indispensable for music. Music in its flexibility and adaptability offers inexhaustible resources. Give Mozart a fairy tale like the Magic Flute or a lively comedy such as Le Nozze di Figaro and he creates without ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... the request, and for the amusement of, the children of a friend; nor would it ever have entered my head to offer any thing in the shape of a Fairy Tale to this enlightened age, when such productions have long been banished from all juvenile libraries. Among the innumerable works which do so much credit to the talents and invention of the writers, that have been substituted ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown

... a symbolic representation of her own resurrection. To the passionate discussions in Germany, England, and France, as to whether this character is true to adolescence, we can only answer with an emphatic affirmative; that her heaven abounds in local color and in fairy tale items, that it is very material, and that she is troubled by fears of sin against the Holy Ghost, is answer enough in an ill-used, starving child with a fevered brain, whose dead mother ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... his intercourse with the wonders of nature: "I have long enjoyed them, never I can honestly say alone, because when man was not with me I had companions in every bee and flower and pebble, and never idle, because I could not pass a swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it a fairy tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or two, and yet found them more interesting than all the books, save one, which were ever written ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... what the story was like. It must have appeared to you like the very defiance of all truth. Would real people go singing through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?" ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... which could not possibly have got into his pockets, and before many days were over, it was very nearly certain to make its appearance, when the top of the hamper was thrown back, imbedded in straw or paper. That dear old hamper always put us in mind of some magic chest in a fairy tale, only I doubt if any magic chest ever afforded so much pleasure, or produced so great a variety of articles as it did. I do not know if our kind father ever was out of humour; if he was, he left the appearance of ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... absurd," said the other, a little cooler again. "But how do you know who watched over your early years and wanted you to be a dreamy, fairy tale kind of person instead of the cayenne pepper sort of man you are. There's always some one there, I tell you, and you can have your choice, whether you'll believe more than you see all your life or less than you see. Every baby knows about it; then, as they grow older, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... scheme of the two elders was, that their young ones should marry and be happy ever after, like the Prince and Princess of the Fairy Tale: and dear Mrs. Mackenzie (have I said that at the commencement of her visit to her brother she made almost open love to the Colonel?), dear Mrs. Mack was content to forgo her own chances so that her darling Rosey might be happy. We used to laugh and say, that as soon as Clive's father ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... just like a fairy tale, Anna? But it is as true as I live, and happened on the third of November of this blessed year 1771. So Kosinski and six others dragged and dragged the king until he lost his shoes, and was all torn and scratched, and even wounded. Whenever the others wanted to stop and kill ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the Coast of Lincolnshire' are truly fine poems, to us the most complete and sustained in the entire collection. In 'Requiescat in Pace,' we are carried so far away from the actualities of life that we scarcely care whether the lover be dead or living. As in a fairy tale, we read for the sake of curiosity, admiring sundry touches here and there, but feeling nothing. Miss Ingelow's rhythm is good, and her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... stage, An utter bridle given to utter vice, Limitless power mad with endless rage Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... the landscape there reigned the most hushed repose, which I almost feared to break, lest, like the enchanted gardens in the fairy tale, a single syllable might dissolve the spell. For a long time, forgetful alike of my own situation, and the vicinity of my still slumbering companion, I remained gazing around me, hardly able to comprehend by what means I had thus ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... swung open. Evelyn stood staring blankly at Grace. She was wrapped in the folds of a pale blue silk kimono. Her hair hung in loose golden waves far below her waist and she reminded Grace of the beautiful Rapunzel of fairy tale fame who was shut up in a tower by a wicked witch and forced each night to let down her golden hair so that her dreadful jailer might climb up and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... tell you what those dry, boulder-strewn watercourses put me in mind of? We read in the English fairy tale of the Babes in the Wood, how the little brother and sister left a trace of their wanderings, through the unknown forest into which their stepmother had turned them out, by dropping pebbles as they went. These streamlets are like lost babes in the great world ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... you that fairy tale, eh? He said his name was Anthony and his father was a railroad president, didn't he? Well, he imposed on me, too, but his name is Locke, and, as near as I can learn, he practically stowed away ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... of artisans, as I am queen of the bobbin. Is a poor woman like me likely to find a lover in a man with a fine house and money in the funds, or in a duke of the realm, or some Prince Charming out of a fairy tale?" ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phaedra-cum-Hippolytus; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... communities.[3] The proprietor of the village of Jabera, in whose mango grove our tents were pitched, conducted me to the ruins of the wall; and told me that it had been broken down by the order of the Emperor Aurangzeb.[4] History to these people is all a fairy tale; and this emperor is the great destroyer of everything that the Muhammadans in their fanaticism have demolished of the Hindoo sculpture or architecture; and yet, singular as it may appear, they never mention his name with any feelings of indignation or hatred. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... And I offer it to you. And I do know what you are. You can't disguise yourself—any more than the Princess in the fairy tale. Do you think all those notes I had from you at the hospital didn't tell the story? I don't know why you are selling books from door to door—and I don't want to know. What I do understand is—that you are the first of your ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... trying part you had to play. How tired you must have grown of the glare and the glitter! And even hope was denied you. The peace you so longed for you knew you had lost the power to enjoy. Like the girl bewitched in the fairy tale, you knew you must dance ever faster and faster, with limbs growing palsied, with face growing ashen, and hair growing grey, till Death should come to release you; and your only prayer was he might come ere your ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... a bit of a fairy tale," came the comment. "Here is none o' yer tin-cint Standard Ile prapositions, but a rale dandy uv a lamp, fit for a lady's cabin on Vandherbilt's yacht. An', for the luv o' Hiven, look at the make uv it, wid a handle where the bottom ought to be, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... stared round-eyed, breathless, like a child listening to a fairy tale which he feared would end ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... place him in a bird-cage, hanging him up on the top wires by his toes, with his head downward. The inverted position of these strange little beings always brings to mind some of the experiences of Gulliver, and indeed the life of a bat is more wonderful than any fairy tale. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... other place in Sicily so faultless as Sta. Catarina? Taormina is a paradise, an epitome of all that is beautiful in Italy,—Venice excepted. Girgenti is a solemn epic, with its golden temples between the sea and hills. Cefalu is wild and strange, and Monreale a vision out of a fairy tale; but Sta. Catarina!— ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... pastel drawings made to illustrate Mrs. Anderson's fairy tale, "The Great Sea Horse," were also exhibited in America last winter. Made immediately after Mr. Elliott's heartbreaking labor on the rocking soil of Sicily, they are none the less quiet, childish, and fanciful in their charm. Only one of them ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... our recollection, is a cupboard budget; otherwise, a poor man's budget. With certain very ugly features, the thing has altogether a good, hopeful aspect, together with very fair proportions. It is not given to any Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a budget fascinating as a fairy tale. Nevertheless, there are visions of wealth and comfort in the present budget that mightily recommend it to us. It seems to add color and fatness to the poor man's beef; to give flavor and richness to the poor man's plum-pudding. The budget ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... divinely-ordained recipient of all the surplus of his income; capital, beyond what is necessary for business, he is to have none. A real good speculator shuts his eyes by instinct, when opening them would not serve the purpose: he has the vizor of the Irish fairy tale, which fell of itself over the eyes of the wearer the moment he turned them upon the enchanted light which would have destroyed him if he had caught sight of it. "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it (the purchase-money) ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... telling me a pleasant fairy tale of a love-lorn knight searching the wilderness for his lost mistress. A moving tale, monsieur, but not the true one. I want the real story. The story of the English spy who wishes to ransom his cousin, but who also treats secretly ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... way out; Ann must walk through this long green passage. No knight in a fairy tale ever entered path that looked more remote from the world's thoroughfares. When she had walked a mile she came to an opening where the ground dipped all round to a bottom which had evidently at some time held water, for the flame-weed that grew thick upon ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... acid which passes from your lips at every breath—ay, even that which oozes from the volcano crater when the eruption is past—is a precious boon to thousands of things of which you have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of hint at physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl, from whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds; for the carbonic acid of your breath may help hereafter to make the pure carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still purer carbon ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... allowed, and Marjorie blissfully kept on nibbling them, while Mr. Maynard sipped his coffee. In the afternoon they went to a matinee. It was one of the gorgeous spectacular productions, founded upon an old fairy tale, and Marjorie was enraptured with the beautiful tableaux, the wonderful scenery, ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells

... the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment he inhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odour behind the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of doing or saying splendid, brilliant things. The moment the cracked orchestra beat out the overture ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... thinking of myself——" he smiled once more—"but of an old fairy tale which I mentioned to you in the Park. You look a very confident Cinderella, but midnight is not far off, and only you can stop the hands ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... they should," answered her hostess in her most appalling tone, "what is that to you? Are you a mouse, that you are afraid they will eat you? Yes, I suppose you are. You are perhaps the princess in the fairy tale, who was a woman by day and a mouse by night. I believe you are bewitched! So I wish your mouseship a good night." And she ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... Pygmalion;—such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man's head, should not have required for its effect the vulgar consummation (and yet to many it WAS the consummation and crest of the whole) that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of romance or the necessities of a fairy tale. Unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society; every tongue was busy in discussing the marvelous young Englishman from morning to night; every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... looked up and blinked at him. "I can't believe it," he murmured. "It's like a fairy tale, ain't it? What ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... because The Ship wouldn't sail off The Rock and insisting that the old woman on Thunder Peak had something in her arms—that ought to have gone on The Ship, not in the ground. The place and the people, Aunt Dorrie, are like a Grimm fairy tale. I'm going to have the time of my life reading them and ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... over." Then because melancholy had no part in her nature, and she was too practical to waste time in useless regrets, she rose quickly from the desk, and went out, while the exhilaration of her mood was still proof against the dangerous weakness of self-pity. "It's life I'm living, not a fairy tale," she told herself sternly as she posted the letter and left the hotel. "It's life I'm living, and life is hard, however you take it." For a few blocks she walked on briskly, thinking of the shop windows and of the brightness and gaiety of the crowd in Fifth ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... present. This time the King was the first to lead off the applause that hailed Pequita's dancing. And how her little feet flew!—how her eyes sparkled with rapture—how the dark curls tossed, and the cherry lips smiled! To her the King remained Pasquin!—a kind of monarch in a fairy tale, who scattered benefits at a touch, and sunshine with a glance, and who deserved all the love and loyalty of every subject in the kingdom! But she had never had any idea of 'Revolution,' poor child!—save such ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... fairy tale," said Daisy. "I'm just as good as a princess, you know, Nora. Don't you want to go, ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... a circle. Probably these were all that remained of some Druidical temple, and archaeologists came from far and near to view the weird relics. And in the middle of the circle stood the cottage: a thatched dwelling, which might have had to do with a fairy tale, with its whitewashed walls covered with ivy, and its latticed windows, on the ledges of which stood pots of homely flowers. There was no fence round this rustic dwelling, as the monoliths stood as guardians, and the space between the cottage walls and the gigantic ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... road and then we suddenly lost you. Seems you turned off at a wagontrail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... know. Often when we were alone Henry Allegre used to pour it into my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind stripped of its clothes as the child sees the king in the German fairy tale, it's I! Into my ears! A child's! Too young to die of fright. Certainly not old enough to understand—or even to believe. But then his arm was about me. I used to laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... Bible and read the story of Christ's birth in Matthew and Luke. What an incongruous jumble of absurdities! A poor fairy tale of the world's childhood, utterly insignificant beside the stupendous wonders which science has revealed to its manhood. From the fanciful little story of the Magi following a star, to Shelley's "Worlds on worlds are rolling ever," what an ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... pleasant enough to have you all next door; but then came this last development,—Cousin Wealthy's illness, and her sending for mamma, and your mother's kindness in bringing me out to this delightful place. It is all like a fairy tale. I used to hear of people's camping out, but I always thought I should hate ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... been fulfilled and our people, free and independent, advances, respected and supported by universal sympathy, into the community of European nations. Are we living in a fairy tale? Politicians of all countries are asking this. I put the same question to myself and yet it ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightened eyes, and talked over the miraculous events through which we were passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn, sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was not only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and that we two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting our coming in the tombs of Kor? Who ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... out-of-doors for those who could not get inside. Several policemen stood around the church door to keep away the crowd. I saw the High Sheriff driving home from church. He was inside a coach that looked as though it had been drawn out of a fairy tale—a huge coach painted red and gold, with crowns or something like them at each of the four corners. Two footmen dressed in George III. liveries were hanging behind by ribbons, and two on the box, all wearing powdered wigs. To be sure, I didn't see much of the Sheriff, but then the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... The Fairy Tale of your youth described the "Sand Man" as the good spirit who brought sleep to your eye-lids. Dr. Windsor has brought restful sleep to thousands by producing a good digestion, without which perfect sleep ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... 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 ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White

... liberal sum to hold her tongue. She looked after the rest herself when she got to town. She renewed an old acquaintance with the carpenter Engstrand; gave him a hint, I suppose, of how much money she had got, and told him some fairy tale about a foreigner who had been here in his yacht in the summer. So she and Engstrand were married in a great hurry. Why, you ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... embrace and shrank from it. She threw her glance about as to discover some means of escape. The gesture, the look, overwhelmed him with sudden remorse. He trusted himself not for a single backward look now, but rushed out of the studio, leaving her sitting there like the princess of the fairy tale who overcame the genii only by recourse to immortal fire which consumed ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... like to be at least as precise as a fairy tale in the matter of dates) there was no Lombardy. And that time was not, geologically speaking, so very remote; for the whole valley of the Po, from Turin to the sea, consists entirely of alluvial deposits—or, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... in this volume have been known in the West in some form or other, and the problem arises how to account for their simultaneous existence in farthest West and East. Some—as Benfey in Germany, M. Cosquin in France, and Mr. Clouston in England—have declared that India is the Home of the Fairy Tale, and that all European fairy tales have been brought from thence by Crusaders, by Mongol missionaries, by Gipsies, by Jews, by traders, by travellers. The question is still before the courts, and one can only deal with it as an advocate. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... most infatuated manner, to another walk round the Cite. It is certainly this general impression that is most striking—the impression from outside, where the whole place detaches itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southern dusk it looked more than ever like a city in a fairy tale. To make the thing perfect, a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out and hung just over the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away—to incommode one's self for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I would gladly have spent the evening in revolving ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... mountains and deserts, rivers like seas; he told of immense buildings and temples, of trees a thousand years old, of birds and flowers of the colours of the rainbow: he named the cities and the peoples he had visited ... their very names seemed like a fairy tale. The whole East was familiar to Muzzio; he had traversed Persia, Arabia, where the horses are nobler and more beautiful than any other living creatures; he had penetrated into the very heart of India, where the race of men grow like stately ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... rolling of wheels or the hoof-tread of horses in her streets, through which the fish swim, while the black gondola glides spectrally over the green water. I will show you the place," continued the Moon, "the largest square in it, and you will fancy yourself transported into the city of a fairy tale. The grass grows rank among the broad flagstones, and in the morning twilight thousands of tame pigeons flutter around the solitary lofty tower. On three sides you find yourself surrounded by cloistered walks. In these ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... "Der Freyschuetz," and the important assistance it brought to the funds of the theater, induced my father to propose to Weber to compose an opera expressly for Covent Garden. The proposal met with ready acceptance, and the chivalric fairy tale of Wieland's "Oberon" was selected for the subject, and was very gracefully and poetically treated by Mr. Planche, to whom the literary part of the work—the libretto—was confided, and who certainly ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... Shokei Song The Fool Errant The Green Bowl Hora Stellatrix Fragment Loon Point Summer "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" The Way Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Roads Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. The Road to Avignon New York at Night A Fairy Tale Crowned To Elizabeth Ward Perkins The Promise of the Morning Star J—K. Huysmans ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... they forgot for a time, at least, how sad it was. They looked with wonder at the lace, and velvet, the golden setting of the coral, and the inscription. It almost seemed to them as if they were taking part in some fairy tale. The impossibility of obtaining any information, as reported by the doctor, only made them regard ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... gaze and gaze again in boundless admiration; for the tropical sun shone down on a scene of dazzling and luxuriant vegetation, so resplendent that it seemed to them the realization of a fairy tale. Plants and shrubs and flowers were there, of the most curious and brilliant description, and of which they neither knew the uses nor the names. Majestic trees were there, with foliage of every shape and size and hue; ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... anybody growing up in America to harm Ardea, will there? You can keep the Soldier of Heron Camp safe by just wishing it! That sounds wonderful as a fairy story come true, does it not? And like the knight in some old fairy tale, could not Ardea's new ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... BEAST, the hero and heroine of a famous fairy tale. Beauty falls in love with a being like a monster, who has, however, the heart of a man, and she marries him, upon which he is instantly transformed into a prince of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... about their movements subsequent to sailing out of the Inlet, that even the ever-romantic and vividly colored imaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied the details of this beautifully childish, yet strangely historical fairy tale. But the voices of the trumpets of war, the beat of drums throughout Europe heralded back to the wilds of the Pacific Coast forests the intelligence that the great Squamish 'charm' eventually reached the person of Napoleon; that from this ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... was empty and we were smoking on the narrow-ledged roof of the prison-house—for he always begged for open air, and with cushions we often sat beneath the stars and against the grimy chimney-pots—that talk I shall never forget. Life became constructed all anew. The power of the greatest fairy tale this world can ever know lay about me, raised to its highest expression. I caught at least some touch of reality—of awful reality—in the idea that this splendid globe whereon we perched like insects ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... any one had told us ten years ago that in this particular year of grace you would be getting ready to be married, and I preparing to come to your wedding, I think we should have listened with some incredulity, as to an agreeable fairy tale which could not possibly come true. We didn't look much like it, did we,—you in your big chair and I on my sofa? Yet here we are! When your letter first reached me it seemed a sort of impossible thing that I should accept your invitation; but the more I thought about it the more I felt as if ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... Ann again she didn't mind it a bit. She just hurried home and took off all of Raggedy Ann's wet clothes and placed her on a little red chair in front of the oven door, and then brought all of the other dolls in and read a fairy tale to them while Raggedy Ann ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... of the endeavor to make stories moral upon the literary merit of the work itself, is as harmful as the motive of the effort is false. For every fairy tale worth recording at all is the remnant of a tradition possessing true historical value;—historical, at least in so far as it has naturally arisen out of the mind of a people under special circumstances, and risen ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... during this visit to town that he heard a conversation which made a great impression upon him, opening up as it did new vistas of childish thinking. Having known but one phase of existence, he was not aware that he had lived the life of a young prince in a fairy tale, and that there were other children whose surroundings were as gloomy as ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... breakfast at 7:30 sharp. I suppose you are to give me a six-shilling thing again as a Christmas present, so I drop you a line not to buy something I don't want, as it is only thirty-nine days to Christmas. I think I'll have a book again, but not a fairy tale or any of that sort, nor the "Swiss Family Robinson," nor any of the old books. There is a rattling story called "Kidnapped," by H. Rider Haggard, but it is only five shillings, so if you thought of it you could make up the six shillings by giving me a football belt. Last year you gave me "The ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... place—that the desire for precedence is one of the deepest and most subtle motives in the soul of man. It is prolific of disguises. It is not merely under the mask which we may put on before other people, but it glides through various transformations of self-deceit; like the evil genius in the fairy tale, now dwindling to a mere seed, now bursting into a devouring fire. When, with an honest purpose, we probe it and pluck at it, still we may detect it in the lowest socket of the heart. Often it is most vital when we feel most sure that it ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... slaves were taken sick, Marse John always called in a doctor. An old woman, who was known as 'Aunt Fannie,' was set aside to nurse sick slaves. Dr. Joe Carlton was Marse John's doctor. What I am going to tell you is no fairy tale. Once I was so sick that Marse John called in Dr. Carlton, Dr. Richard M. Smith, Dr. Crawford Long, and Dr. James Long, before they found out what was wrong with me. I had inflammatory rheumatism and I wore out two and a half pairs of crutches before I could ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... side they sat and listened to a very simple explanation of the mechanism of the eye, finding it as wonderful as a fairy tale, for fine plates illustrated it, and a very willing teacher did his best to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... not to be anything you don't like, my dear," said her father with gentleness. "But you know, child, we have not the whole world to choose from; being kings and queens and princesses doesn't make life a fairy tale." ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman



Words linked to "Fairy tale" :   Bluebeard, taradiddle, narrative, narration, tale, fib, story, fairytale, tarradiddle



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