"Hobgoblin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, on reading that book, and deducing therefrom the foregoing essential summary, that a critic would have little more to do, in order to effectually exorcise this negrophobic political hobgoblin, than to appeal to [13] impartial history, as well as to common sense, in its application to human nature in general, and to the actual facts of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... observed that she did not follow the example of the famous Serena, in "The Triumphs of Temper." "Zeluco!" he exclaimed, in an ironical tone of disdain: "why not the charming 'Sorrows of Werter,' or some of our fashionable hobgoblin romances?" ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... managed to get several naps, curled up in the bottom of the boat. At last, about eleven o'clock, just as Pierre was getting very nervous, and dreading every minute that one of the white ladies of Normandy (those dames blanches who are so cruel to the discourteous) should appear to him, or a hobgoblin or a ghost, in all of which he was, like most Norman peasants, a firm believer, to his intense relief he heard the carpenter whistling in the distance, and a minute or two later Smith arrived, hot and tired, and by no means in a communicative frame ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... the water one of these creatures was flapping slowly in from the sea. Its wings—eighteen feet across from tip to tip—were not the wings of a bird, but of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful, hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Somers has long been dead; the widow died a few years ago. Jane was then educated in the house of another guardian, a cousin of Colonel Somers, who lived near Bath; and, on his lately being sent to India on a high command, she was claimed by this Manchester hobgoblin, and torn from all ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... better holy city, the strong made to exult, the weak robbed of their old sad romance. It would be a pleasure to see the Advocatus Diaboli turn from the table of the prosecution to the table of the defence, and move in solemn form for the damnation of the Naumburg hobgoblin.... ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... are three theories by which men account for all phenomena—for everything that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything that happened some deity produced, some spirit, some devil, some hobgoblin, some dryad, some fairy, some spook, something except nature. First, then, the supernatural; and a barbarian, looking at the wide, mysterious sea, wandering through the depths of the forest, encountering the wild beasts, troubled by strange dreams, accounted for everything by the action of spirits, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... cathedral-windows of Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing from HIS mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror of everything called diabolic, and a hatred of those ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... such a bull goose again,' said my father. 'Here, mother, try and teach this boy to think better, and not go and believe that every sound he hears is all troll and hobgoblin. Feathered wolves that fly, eh, Johannes? That kind of fowl has not been hatched yet, my boy. Now, the next time you hear a flight of fowl going south in the night, you'll ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... heartsinking^, despondency; despair &c 859. fright; affright, affrightment^; boof alarm [U.S.], dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede (of horses). intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo^, ogre, Hurlothrumbo^, raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire [Fr.], enfant terrible [Fr.]. alarmist &c (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c adj.; have qualms &c n.; apprehend, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... here's a thing! If that Jack-o'-lantern of a bwoy ban't back again. He'm delvin' theer, for all the world like a hobgoblin demon, red as blood in the flicker of the light. I fancied't was the Dowl hisself. But 't is Blanchard, sure. Theer's some dark thought under it, I'll lay, or else he wants to come around ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... east, and the following morning, at a very early hour, he began to have most unpleasant dreams. He thought a hobgoblin was seated on his chest, and several brownies were pulling him where he did not wish to go, and finally that a gnome of enormous dimensions was dragging him into a dark cavern, where he could never again behold the daylight. At last, in great perturbation, he opened his ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... in the darkness like an evil sort of beacon, its silly grotesque face grinning like a true hobgoblin of Hallowe'en; for, having scooped out its pulp and seeds, they had set a candle therein and lighted it just before ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity—at the rate of one year per night, if I remember correctly; and—must I confess it?—before the week came to an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... is the shame, the disgrace, the opprobrium, and brand of detestation; the sacrilegious and perjured outcast of society, who would cut any man's throat for one glass of the soul-destroying beverage. This accursed viper and well-known hobgoblin, labors under a complication of maladies: at one time you might see him leaving the Court-house of with the awful crime of perjury depicted in capital letters on his forehead, and indelibly engraven in the recesses ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... knavish sprite Called GRANDOLPH GOODFELLOW. Are you not he That did your best to spill Lord S-L-SB-RY? Gave the Old Tory party quite a turn, And office with snug perquisites did spurn? And now you'd make Strong Drink to bear no barm (Or proper profit.) You would do us harm. Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sly PUCK, Are right; you always bring your friends bad luck. Are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... lay beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide; she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... small base coin, which was odiously applied to them—at length settled in the well-known term of Huguenots, which probably was derived, as the Dictionnaire de Trevoux suggests, from their hiding themselves in secret places, and appearing at night, like King Hugon, the great hobgoblin of France. It appears that the term has been preserved by an earthen vessel without feet, used in cookery, which served the Huguenots on meagre days to dress their meat, and to avoid observation; a curious instance, where a thing still in use proves the obscure circumstance ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... or Hobgoblin, possesses the frolicksome qualities of the French Lutin. For his full character, the reader is referred to the Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The proper livery of this sylvan Momus is to be found in an old play. "Enter Robin Goodfellow, in ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Goodfellow says, "I'll go put on my devilish robes—I mean my Christmas calf's-skin suit—and then walk to the woods." "I'll put me on my great carnation nose, and wrap me in a rousing calf-skin suit, and come like some hobgoblin." And a character of the 18th ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the ghost of Hamlet's father was wont to walk and tell its tale of horrors to any one it might chance to meet and had time to stop and listen to it. Seen in the bright glow of the morning sun, the castle had a pleasing, cheerful aspect, with nothing of the dark, gloomy, hobgoblin style of architecture about it, such as Mrs Radcliffe delighted to describe. It stands on a narrow neck of land a little to the north of the town, and is of a quadrangular form, with three Moorish-looking towers and a square one of modern ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... a bug, and when we stop to think of it, this shows how little there is in a name. For when we say bug, or for that matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very, very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They said it bugge or even bwg, but then they were more afraid of specters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very lights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate here was a bug who seemed ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of the starlings returning. And at night when I thought of Masha I would be filled with an inexpressibly sweet feeling of an all-embracing joy to listen to the rats and the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling; it was like an old hobgoblin coughing ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... bent-up hobgoblin he put hand on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' he mek dat same remark, and dat whole convintion ob ghostes an' spicters an' ha'nts an' yever-thing, which am more 'n a millium, pass by so quick dey-all's hands feel lak de wind whut blow outen de cellar whin de day am hot, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... the newly-born child and placed it in his daughter-in-law's lap and then drove her out of the house and into the jungle. The poor woman walked along until she came to a great, dark forest. In it she met the wife of a hobgoblin, [23] who asked, "Lady, Lady, whose wife are you, and why do you come here? Run away as quickly as you can. For, if my husband the hobgoblin sees you, he will tear you to pieces and gobble you up." The poor woman said she was the daughter-in-law of a ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... of the "records" of his ancestors which Smith unearthed. It was discovered very soon after the organization of the Mormon church was announced that the word was of Greek derivation, uopuw or uopuwv meaning bugbear, hobgoblin. In the form of "mormo" it is Anglicized with the same meaning, and is used by Jeremy Collier and Warburton.* The word "Mormon" in zoology is the generic name of certain animals, including the mandril baboon. The ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... that period, and they were the most strange and terrible monsters that had ever been seen since the world was made, or that have been seen in after days, or that are likely to be seen in all time to come. I hardly know what sort of creature or hobgoblin to call them. They were three sisters, and seem to have borne some distant resemblance to women, but were really a very frightful and mischievous species of dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters were. Why, instead of locks of hair, if you ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the hobgoblin of little minds,'" she quoted. "Inconsistency goes as far toward making life attractive as its pleasures do toward ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... the Poltergeist, who would otherwise vex and disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages, says that a Poltergeist is a "racketing spectre," probably what we who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands' Antiquities I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a Duke of York in Germany, when great quantities of glass and china were smashed at the palace doors ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... I, "be under no apprehension, let him come in, I fear him not, whether he be alguazil or hobgoblin. Stand, however, at the doorway, that you may be a witness of what takes place, as it is more than probable that he comes at this unreasonable hour to create a disturbance, that he may have an opportunity ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... heartsinking[obs3], despondency; despair &c. 859. fright; affright, affrightment[obs3]; boof alarm[obs3][U.S.], dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede [of horses]. intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c. (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo[obs3], ogre, Hurlothrumbo[obs3], raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire[Fr], enfant terrible[Fr]. alarmist &c. (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c. adj.; have qualms &c. n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... time a most marvelous mirror in the world. It belonged to the worst hobgoblin that ever lived, and had been made by his ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... breakfast like a student's, no dinner like a lawyer's, no afternoon's nunchion like a vine-dresser's, no supper like a tradesman's, no second supper like a serving-wench's, and none of these meals equal to a frockified hobgoblin's. All this is true enough. Accordingly, at my Lord Lucifer's first course, hobgoblins, alias imps in cowls, are a standing dish. He willingly used to breakfast on students; but, alas! I do not know by what ill luck ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
