"Fantastical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will I be Spitchcockt, if she han't an Inclination for the Collonel, to coquet, and flirt and fleer, and plague half Mankind, only because they like her, may be what you call a fine Lady, but in my mind she has more fantastical Airs than a ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... eccentricity of the whole race shone out and seemed to be concentrated in him. In one respect he was not unlike Villiers Duke of Buckingham, 'every thing by starts, and nothing long!' Generous, but uncertain; splendid, but fantastical; an admirer of the fine arts, without any just selection: engaging, often licentious in conversation- extremely polite, extremely violent. His distribution of church livings, chiefly, as I have been informed, among the older and respectable clergy in his own diocese, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... archbishop to return to Manila. These men went about talking and declaiming to everyone in the community about the great difficulties, both spiritual and temporal, which must follow from [the banishment]; but in reality all these were fantastical, since there would be no further difficulties than those which the governor chose—as there were none when the archbishop was banished the previous time; [141] for one would hardly believe how great is the hatred that most persons feel ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... one amphitheatre fit for a Caesar to have held his sports in. What could be more striking than these great ragged masses of red rock, thrown one upon another, and mounting up so high above us? Such fantastical and curious shapes the weather-worn stone had taken! Pillars, columns, domes, arches, followed one another in quick succession. Bounding a corner, a huge circle of rocks comes into sight, rising story upon story. There, perched upon the top of the rising ground, is a natural castle, complete ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with his ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... raised his voice two centuries ago against this mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon, 'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... he cried excitedly, "that stout young gentleman with the black face and eyebrows, and the blacker heart, I may say,—the one dressed in the fantastical costume called by a French name,—is Mr. Charles Fox. He has been sent by the devil himself, I believe, to ruin this country. 'Ods, sir, that devil Lord Holland begot him. He is but one and twenty, but his detestable arts have saved North's neck from Burke and Wedderburn on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... more trouble and inconvenience than others he pays for it; the charges of the tradesmen of fashionable people being excessively high. Here, however there is a distinction to be taken. There is no doubt that all the fantastical plagues and preposterous caprices which the spirit of fashion can engender, will be submitted to for money; but he who supposes that the outward submission will be accompanied by no inward feelings of resentment or contempt, either is wholly ignorant of human nature, or grossly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... (HUTCHINSON) has placed me in something of a quandary. In an ordinary way, finding a story with this title, in which moreover the chief characters are spoken of as Princess and Principal Boy, and the narrative is broken every now and then by fantastical little dialogues with Fairies, I should have said at once that here was a clever young writer whom a natural admiration for the work of Mr. DION CLAYON CALTHROP had betrayed into the sincerest form of flattery. But Mr. (or perhaps Miss) G. B. STERN has disarmed me by an open avowal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... and cataplastic, was renowned for removing stains from household linen. Taken in minute doses, under medical advice, it gave relief to patients afflicted with the wolfe, NOLI ME TANGERE, crudities, Bablyonian itch, globular pemphlegema, fantastical visions, koliks, asthma and affections of the heart. It also "fortifies the stomach, comforts the bowels, reduces the gallstone to sand, the sand to mud, the mud to water—water which can be passed out of the system ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... was not a little astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain—generating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... aunt Claire's room, near the china bon-bon bear, I underwent with as much resignation as possible, the torture that the preparing of my tasks imposed. On the wainscoting of the wall, in a hidden recess of the room, there is still visible, among the other fantastical sketches, a pen-portrait of the "Big Ape"; the ink has faded to a light yellow, but the drawing has endured, and when I look at it I again feel a sort of deadly weariness, and a sensation of suffocation chills me through and through—in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... while he was there, busy about a thousand things, always alert, decided, uncompromising—not disinclined to snub either Fred or Susan when opportunity offered, totally unconscious even of that delicacy with which a high fantastical heroine of romance would have found it necessary to treat her dependants. It was this unconsciousness, above all, that irritated the doctor. If she had shown any feeling, he said to himself—if she had even been grandly aware of sacrificing herself and doing her duty—there would have been ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... transparent, and floating in the thin air. Our earth hung over his head like a great dark red ball. Presently he discovered a number of beings, which might certainly be called men, but were very different to ourselves. A more fantastical imagination than Herschel's must have discovered these. Had they been placed in groups, and painted, it might have been said, "What beautiful foliage!" They had also a language of their own. No one could ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... peaceful seasons glide serenely by, Fulfill their missions, and as calmly die, As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will,— To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... strange loneliness. "Am I, in truth, fantastical?" she sighed, "or, if Heaven is witness to the sober truth of that which I conceive, am I so weak as to need other sympathy?" This was the tenor, not the words, of her thought. Yet all the way home, as they talked and walked ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... he lodged with a friend of ours, one Janet Geddes, a most pious woman, who had suffered great molestation in her worldly substance, from certain endeavours for the restorations of the horns of the mitre, and the prelatic buskings with which that meddling and fantastical bodie, King James the Sixth, would fain have buskit and disguised the sober simplicity of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... little woman, whose worldly experience was bounded by the suburbs of Barlingford, be otherwise than delighted by the glare and glitter of foreign cities? Georgy was childishly enraptured with everything she saw, from the sham diamonds and rubies of the Palais Royal, to the fantastical bonbons ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... fantastical as this play is, all the parts, in their various modes, are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... natural goodness, which neither the uncertainties of his condition, nor the largeness of his wit could pervert. He had a firmness and strength of mind, that was of proof against the Art of Poetry it self. Nothing vain or fantastical, nothing flattering or insolent appeared in his humour. He had a great integrity, and plainness of Manners; which he preserv'd to the last, though much of his time was spent in a Nation, and way of life, that is not very famous for sincerity. But the truth of his heart was above the ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... genius, and rigorously to try its products, such a man as Schiller could not fail in time to discover what was false in the principles by which he tried them, and consequently, in the end, to retain the benefits of this procedure without its evils. There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Truly a most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any rate, if not true it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... suitable, he continued, to the grave march of criticism to follow this fantastical Peri of whom they had just heard, through all her flights and adventures between earth and heaven, but he could not help adverting to the puerile conceitedness of the Three Gifts which she is supposed to carry to the skies,—a drop of blood, forsooth, a sigh, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was, as I have said, the fish-pond—a sheet of water that extended the whole length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... not devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a great deal of mischief. Louis is naturally inclined to be capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have contributed to increase this disposition. Seeking to obtain a reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself of enlarged views, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... vulgar-looking house painted red and yellow, informed us that it was styled the "Hermitage du Mont d'Or." In the space of not quite an acre of ground, on the side of a wooded hill of the highest natural loveliness, the proprietor had contrived to commit a host of the most outrageous and fantastical absurdities, which were hailed with a smile from Mons. C., and a burst of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... very curious Survey of all kinds of bodies, beginning with the Point of a Needle, and proceeding to the Microscopical view of the Edges of Rasors, Fine Lawn, Tabby, Watered Silks, Glass-canes, Glass-drops, Fiery Sparks, Fantastical Colours, Metalline Colours, the Figures of Sand, Gravel in Urine, Diamonds in Flints, Frozen Figures, the Kettering Stone, Charcoal, Wood and other Bodies petrified, the Pores of Cork, and of other substances, Vegetables growing on blighted Leaves, Blew mould and Mushromes, Sponges, and other ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... bound to acknowledge our partial, if not entire concurrence, in the general criticism on the central front, and of the two wings. The first impression is far from that produced by unity, grandeur, or elegance; there is a fantastical assemblage of turrets, attics, and chimneys, and a poverty or disproportion, especially in "the temple-like forms" which complete the ends towards the park. The dome, too, has been sarcastically compared with a "Brobdignagian egg." It strictly belongs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... be the more noble in being fantastical: a great man, I'll warrant; I know by the picking ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... cause; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader—(a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to this is probably fantastical, and I state it only because, from the first moment to the last, it has always made me boggle. I don't like a stranger—Query, "The ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... us, that, in Asia, a Sultan reigned, full of fantastical ideas, and very absolute in his whims. By a strange madness, this prince spent his time seated at a table, upon which were placed three dice and a dice-box. One end of the table was covered with pieces of silver, designed to excite the avarice ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... heart of a fantastical adventure. Filled with its spirit, he would carry it bravely to the end, enjoying every step in it, comedy or tragedy. Yet all day, since he had eaten the sacred bread, there had been ringing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... younger—the rigid symbol of an indomitable hauteur. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage. The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... and rudder, and only stopping on their course to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and Easter on the back of the king of fishes, Jasconius. Every step of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on every isle is a monastery, where the wonders of a fantastical universe respond to the extravagances of a wholly ideal life. Here is the Isle of Sheep, where these animals govern themselves according to their own laws; elsewhere the Paradise of Birds, where the winged race lives after the fashion ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... humour the fantastical turn of his ideas; "thou knowest if he sell that grave to another, he shall escape, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... all the sundry activities of life, thus bringing both action and thought under the form of service of the ideal. At the same time it offers a supreme object for the passions, which are otherwise divided against {254} themselves, or vented upon unworthy and fantastical objects. Through being thus economized and guided, these moving energies may be brought to support moral endeavor and bear it with them in ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of manners was acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high fantastical" in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their wit; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition of their hearts; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... our author's style was rough in places, but marvellously simple and direct. 'Mardi' is burdened with an over-rich diction, which Melville never entirely outgrew. The scene of this romance, which opens well, is laid in the South Seas, but everything soon becomes overdrawn and fantastical, and the thread of the story loses itself in a ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... ambition continue to operate with full force on the mind, and are pursued with the greatest ardor, to take a resolution so singular and unexpected. But, while many authors have imputed it to motives so frivolous and fantastical as can hardly be supposed to influence any reasonable mind; while others have imagined it to be the result of some profound scheme of policy, historians more intelligent and better informed neither ascribe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... have read the Scripture. Hundreds of editions of the German and English translations were called for. The people, wrote an Englishman in 1539, "have now in every church and place, almost every man, the Bible and New Testament in their mother tongue, instead of the old fabulous and fantastical books of the Table Round . . . and such other whose impure filth and vain fabulosity the light of God hath abolished there utterly." In Protestant lands it became almost a matter of good form to own the Bible, and reading it has been called, not ineptly, "the opus operatum ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the English Church; went to Paris, where he became a Roman Catholic; fell into pecuniary difficulties, but was befriended by Cowley and recommended to a post; was an imitator of George Herbert, and his poems were of the same class, but more fantastical; his principal poems were "Steps to the Temple" and the "Delights of the Muses"; both Milton and Pope are indebted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the 'high fantastical' Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of answer are necessary to this curious argument, which is nothing less than an effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it may seem as signification, is real in a certain sense, since it is the perception of a physical impression; but this physical nature of images does not prevent our making a distinction between true ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... night-cap; and his revenue, a gratuitous draught of wine at the ale houses of his liege subjects!' Young, another translator of Beranger, not any better informed, tells us that 'the Lords of Yvetot claimed and exercised, in the olden time, some such fantastical privileges as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... do the same to the husband. Others, that a man may have two wives or more at once, for that these things are not prohibited by God's law, but by the Bishop of Rome's law; so that by such evil and fantastical opinions some have not been afraid indeed to marry and keep two wives." Here, as in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our story which spread out in the following century; the branching out of the non-conformists ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... trouble stared her in the face. The dress was so airy, so fantastical, and so extensive, that to get out in her new clothes by the rift which had admitted her in her old ones was an impossibility. She heard the Baron's steps crackling over the dead ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... Rose, "my father discouraged my listening to such discourses. I might see evil spirits enough, he said, without my imagination being taught to form, such as were fantastical. The word Bahr-geist, I have heard used by Gillian and other Saxons; but to me it only conveys some idea of indefinite terror, of which I never asked nor ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... missions and as calmly die As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will,— To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... climber was, the climber was not her father. Then she sighed a little sigh and turned and entered her dwelling and drew the door behind her, and the mountain-top was lonely for a time. Only for a time. Up the hill came a fantastical fellow, alternately singing and sighing, for it seemed that the fierce heat vexed him despite of his melody. He was a strange ape, tall and lean and withered, with a wry shoulder like a gibbous moon and a wry leg like a stricken ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the beginning of his career inspired him likewise; and in it he must have shown the same tender solicitude and benevolence, and beamed upon his young scholars with a love which exquisitely tempered his fantastical suppositions. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... with her! ha! ha! no, not as you understand it! who take it to be that fantastical passion that may be inspired by the first sight of a pretty face. No! I am not in love with her, unless I could be in love with myself. For Lina was my other self. Oh, you who can talk so glibly of being 'in love,' little know that strength of attachment when two ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... for his faith, but the ever-changing vagaries of his own fantastic imagination, could have no belief to-day, of which he had any certainty that he would hold the same to-morrow. He was continually abandoning one after another of the articles of his fantastical creed, and adopting others in their place. At length he settled down upon the following simple belief, which with very considerable tenacity, but without any attempt to promulgate it, he adhered to for many years. It consisted of the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... This "high fantastical" style, ever since called euphuistic, created a sensation. The age was given over to extravagance and the artificial elegance of Euphues seemed to match the other fashions. Just as Elizabethan men and women began to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Education enjoined upon the Persians (1) to speak the truth; (2) to learn to ride and to use the bow and arrow. There is implied in the first command a recognition of actuality, the negation of all dreamy absorption, of all fantastical indetermination; and in this light the Persian, in distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike practice, but not that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights on horseback, and thus appears in distinction from the Indian hermit ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... him in Padua,—a fantastical scholar, like such who study to know how many knots was in Hercules' club, of what colour Achilles' beard was, or whether Hector were not troubled with the tooth-ache. He hath studied himself half blear-eyed to know the true symmetry of Caesar's nose by a shoeing-horn; ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... but half women. They are quickly recognized; vulgar and awkward, they hide under their ungraceful petticoats the instincts of man, and masculinity is displayed up to their corsage. They form the fantastical cohort of learned women, of the disciples of Stuart Mill and rivals of Miss Taylor, hybrid natures which may possess a heart of gold and a manly soul, but are incapable of being the joy of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... dense atmosphere, which became an obstacle to the disclosure of truth as the clouds are to the rays of the sun, his image only appeared in fantastical outlines borrowed from "Conrad the Corsair," or "Childe Harold," or "Lara," or "Manfred," or indeed "Don Juan." Analogies were sought which do not exist, and to the poet were attributed the sentiments, and even the acts, of these imaginary beings, albeit without any of the great qualities which ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... perfections of their nature as the other attempts to go beyond them. You will discover as many silly affections, as much foppery and futility, as much inconsistency and low artifice in one as in the other. I never met the mad woman at Brentford decked out in old and new rags, and nice and fantastical in the manner of wearing them, without reflecting on many of the profound scholars and sublime philosophers of our own ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... depicts the sacred figures of Madonna and Child on an incongruous background of German or Italian landscape, and the mediaeval poet seldom hesitates to enrich his verse with whimsical allusions, full of fantastical inaccuracy, but valuable as revelations of current thoughts and ideas. Only a slight sketch of the prolonged conflict waged for centuries round the nutmeg groves of the remote Moluccas is possible in this little record, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... weary and wistful behind his glasses, rested on the face of the girl on the threshold of his home; and the faint, sensitive flush of her face deepened. He stopped and honored her with a bow that, for all his fantastical attire, would have graced a beau of an earlier decade. "Will you be pleased to enter?" he suggested punctiliously. "My house, such as it is, is quite at your disposal. And," he added, with a glance over his shoulder, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... this circumstance, because it was one upon which a thousand wild and fantastical reports were founded, though one would have thought that the truth scarcely required to be improved upon; and again, because it produced a strong and lasting effect upon my spirits, and indeed, I am inclined to think, upon ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the door of my chamber as of one stealthily turning the handle, and I lay, without making any motion, to watch whereunto this proceeding would tend. The door was put gently open, and a figure did enter the room, so disguised with fantastical apparel that I was much put to it to guess what the issue would be. It was of a woman, tall and majestical, with a red turbaund round her head, and over her shoulders a shawl much bedizened with needlework. Her gown was of green cloth, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... imagination; and to go to the root of that error which encourages our curiosity, sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretense to delusion; to discover the true nature of human knowledge, how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical; that, the gaudy visions of error being dispelled, men may be accustomed to the simplicity of truth."[131] The Scriptures, according to Bolingbroke, are unworthy of our credence. They degrade the Deity to mean and unworthy offices and employments.[132] The New Testament consists of two distinct ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... was a complete coquette, capricious and fantastical. As Mr Alworth was the prettiest man at the place and known to have a good fortune, she soon singled him out as a conquest worthy of her and successfully played off all her arts. By appearing to like him, she enticed him to address her; and by a well managed capriciousness ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... lighted them in their labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . I have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe I should feel in the presence of a great magician in whom I really believed. Its powers are so enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that I should have a personal fear in being with it alone. Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Grecian habit; though I was afterwards told that she varied her dress two or three times during the masquerade. Prince Henri of Prussia wore a white domino. Several persons appeared in the dresses of different nations,—Chinese, Turks, Persians and Armenians. The most humorous and fantastical figure was a Frenchman, who, with wonderful nimbleness and dexterity, represented an overgrown but very beautiful Parrot. He chattered with a great deal of spirit; and his shoulders, covered with green feathers, performed admirably the part of wings. He drew the attention ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Holiday, or the Gentle Craft', categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy, it reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners. This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the intermingling of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed but idealised ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt the reader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to retire with her favorite, Madame ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to proffer in this essay may sound fantastical; most explanations that explain anything usually do— at first. I believe that this vast rush of nature into American literature is more than a mere reflection of a liking for the woods. It represents a search for a tradition, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... all very well be," I assented, though I did not believe it, and I found something almost too fantastical in my friend's scheme. "But when we are expropriated from all our dearest belongings, what is to become of our tender and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the name. If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons themselves, which in their fronts carry more fantastical names. Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Sir, come up of late," answers Ned: "whereby, when a gentlewoman and a gentleman be in treaty of love,—or without the same, being but friends—they do agree to call each other by certain dainty and fantastical names: as the one shall be Perfection, and the other Hardihood: or, the one Sweetness, and the other Fortitude: and the like. I prayed Wat to show me how it were, or else had I wist no more than a baker how to reef a sail. The names whereby he and his ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... the faggot and the rack of the Holy Inquisition distinctly visible behind them. Such were the realities which occupied the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton dancing, and other lewd abominations; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... go down on their knees to beg for my friendship. That is a mirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastical—that's another ball on Lake Como. And so I am bound to slap Zverkov's face! It is my duty to. And so it is settled; I am flying to give him a slap in ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... another point, in which the parliament, this session, showed more the goodness of their intention than the soundness of their judgment. They passed a law against fond and fantastical prophecies, which had been observed to seduce the people into rebellion and disorder:[****] but at the same time they enacted a statute, which was most likely to increase these and such like superstitions: it was levelled against conjurations, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Fantastical and strange, Their purple sails go floating o'er the deep, Like shadows through the summer land of sleep, In never ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of it: anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution in the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... conception; there is a false conception; one which has no prototype in nature, nothing corresponding to it in facts. This is evident in the last two examples, and is equally true in the first; the "properties of the circle" which were referred to, being purely fantastical. There is, therefore, an error beyond the wrong choice of a principle of generalization; there is a false assumption of matters of fact. The attempt is made to resolve certain laws of nature into a more general law, that law ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... news from home reached me seldom and there was no relief from the isolation. In addition, the various torments of the region are worse at this season. Sitting beside the muddy banks of the Itecoahy at sunset, when the vapours arose from the immense swamps and the sky was coloured in fantastical designs across the western horizon, was the only relief from the sweltering heat of the day, for a brief time before the night and its tortures began. Soon the chorus of a million frogs would start. At ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... day and gave her—placed on her finger—the most splendid ring you can imagine, a ruby in the form of a heart, surrounded and crowned with diamonds. Hatty is frankly delighted, and says so with all sorts of fantastical exaggerations. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... fantastical themes, Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move: Arcadia displays but a region of dreams; What are visions like these to the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Armado, the fantastical Spaniard of "Love's Labour's Lost," admits that he is "ill at reckoning," and cannot tell "how many is one thrice told," his page Moth observes "how easy it is to put years to the word three, and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you." This is without doubt an ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... and fantastical," she said, "or she should wed with Jack's old friend Mr Monke, that would fain have her. My Lady my mother desireth the same much. It should ease her vastly as matter of money. This very winter doth she sell two parcels of the Frithelstoke lands, for to raise money; and at after, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the eyes at the expense of the stomach, to which your modern restaurant almost always has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the window for the delectation of the military man and his fellow country-woman ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... anxious look and word of their parents, by every family-arrangement, by the impressment of every chance guest into the service, that their parents consider their education as the one important matter in creation, are apt to grow up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. The stars cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal improvement, and the sooner children learn this, the better. The great art is to organize a home which shall move on with a strong, wide, generous movement, where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the horizontal lines; yet the general impression at a distance and at first sight, is essentially different from that of any of the towns of the middle ages. The outlines are far from being so sharp, so angular, so irregular, so fantastical; a certain softness, a peculiar repose, reigns in those broader, terrace-like rising masses. Only in the creations of Claude Lorraine or Poussin could we expect to find a spot to compare with the prevailing character of this picture, especially when ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... plan, were but a mechanical collocation of the events of Scripture and old legend, carried on by a sort of personal representatives; the second, a mere procession of abstract ideas rudely and inartificially personified, with something of fantastical drapery thrown around them. So that both alike stood apart from the vitalities of nature and the abiding interests of thought, being indeed quite innocent of the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... me," I continued. "At first, when I realized that Dr. Fu-Manchu was back in England, when I realized that an elaborate murder-machine was set up somewhere in London, it seemed unreal, fantastical. Then I met—Karamaneh! She, whom we thought to be his victim, showed herself again to be his slave. Now, with Weymouth and Scotland Yard at work, the old secret evil is established again in our midst, unaccountably—our lives are menaced—sleep ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... teats of witches counterfeit; Kill pigs and geese with powder'd glass, And make it for enchantment pass; With cow-itch meazle like a leper, And choak with fumes of guiney pepper; 320 Make leachers and their punks with dewtry, Commit fantastical advowtry; Bewitch Hermetick-men to run Stark staring mad with manicon; Believe mechanick Virtuosi 325 Can raise 'em mountains in POTOSI; And, sillier than the antick fools, Take treasure for a heap ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... roses"—enables the composer to indulge his strong predilection and fecund gift for Oriental melody. The action hurries to a thrilling climax. One glittering pageant treads on the heels of another, each more gorgeous and resplendent than the last, until the stage, set to represent a fantastical hall with a bewildering vista of carved columns, golden lions, and rich draperies, is filled with such a kaleidoscopic mass of colors and groupings as only an Oriental mind could conceive. Finally all the preceding strokes are eclipsed by the coming of the Queen. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in the shape of classic thanks or compliment: but in Bordeaux he began to produce works of more apparent importance, "four tragedies" intended primarily for the use of his college, where it was the custom to represent yearly a play, generally of an allegorical character—one of the fantastical miracle plays which delighted the time, and which were often as profane in reality as they were religious in pretence. The great classicist considered his boys to be wasting their faculties in representing such inferior performances, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that this should be called Pride, {130c} but rather neatness, handsomness, comeliness, cleanliness, &c. neither would he allow that following of fashions was any thing else, but because he would not be proud, singular, and esteemed fantastical ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... the Cabinet from British public life. It would become possible for Parliament to get rid of a minister without getting rid of a ministry, and to express its disapproval of—let us say—some foolish project for rearranging the local government of Ireland without opening the door upon a vista of fantastical fiscal adventures. The party-supported Cabinet, which is now the real government of the so-called democratic countries, would cease to be so, and government would revert more and more to the legislative assembly. And not only would the latter body resume government, but it would ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... in the Highlands. To hear them talk, it would have been more extraordinary if nothing of the kind appeared. Could there indeed be a better place than a dark and deep coal mine for the freaks of fairies, elves, goblins, and other actors in the fantastical dramas? The scenery was all ready, why should not the supernatural personages come there ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... Spain, my imagination will forge me commodities and afford means and delights wherewith my mind is really tickled and essentially gladded. How often do we pester our spirits with anger or sadness by such shadows, and entangle ourselves into fantastical passions which alter both our mind and body?... Enquire of yourself, where is the object of this alteration? Is there anything but us in nature, except subsisting nullity? over whom it hath any power?... ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... observed a number of buildings erected on the right bank, with roofs of matting, but decorated in the most fantastical manner, with different coloured ribbands and variegated silks; and about three hundred soldiers in their uniforms (which appeared to our eye not much adapted to military purposes) were drawn out, with a band of music, near a temporary ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... afterward reproducing them on paper; but if any singularly fantastic form or odd face came in his way, he would make a sketch of it on the spot upon his thumbnail, and carry it home to expand at his leisure. Everything fantastical and original had a powerful attraction for him, and he wandered into many out-of-the-way places for the purpose of meeting with character. By this careful storing of his mind, he was afterward enabled to ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... a mother was too bewildering, and she hardly knew how to meet and loyally fight it. It did not take her long to decide. With all the strength at her command, she set to work to clear away from his mind the whole fantastical construction. He clung to it firmly at first, and, in the end, almost pleaded to be left with the belief that he had but to step down the dam wall and join his brother in the fair pink palace. She realized now what tragedy had been lurking at her elbow ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... who judged it altogether too fantastical. The most interesting of his opponents was a certain Antonio Roselli, a very judiciously-minded civil lawyer, who goes very thoroughly into the point at issue. He gives Innocent's views, and quotes what authority he can find for them in ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... talks of myself or herself, and I am not (except in soliloquy, as now,) much enamoured of either subject—especially one's works. What the devil shall I say about 'De l'Allemagne?' I like it prodigiously; but unless I can twist my admiration into some fantastical expression, she won't believe me; and I know, by experience, I shall be overwhelmed with fine things about rhyme, &c. &c. The lover, Mr. * *, was there to-night, and C * * said 'it was the only proof he had seen of her good taste.' Monsieur L'Amant is remarkably ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... almost fantastical exaltation took possession of the young girl, an exaltation such as might have possessed itself of a priestess of old, pouring a libation to the gods in behalf of some devout suppliant. He had known her, this mysterious, homeless being that had come ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... shelves, and in elegant glass cupboards, there were a thousand knick-knacks; small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their precious and fantastical array. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... her life and honour, whereof she declared herselfe to be so carefull. Alas, what blindnes is that, which captiuateth the wittes and spirite of him, that feedeth himselfe of nothing els, but vpon the rage of fantastical despite and vpon the furie of dispaire. Do wee not see, that after Reason giueth place to desired reuenge of wrong thought to be receiued, man dispoyleth himselfe of that, which appertayneth to the kinde of man, to put on the fierce nature of the moste ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... astounded state paralyzes his wrath Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical Finishing touches to the negligence Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble Gradations appear to be unknown to you He had to go, he must, he has to be always going He stormed her and consented to be beaten His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... compluvium was edged with a row of highly ornamented tiles, called antefixes, on which a mask or some other figure was moulded. At the corners there were usually spouts, in the form of lions' or dogs' heads, or any fantastical device which the architect might fancy, which carried the rain-water clear out into the impluvium, whence it passed into cisterns; from which again it was drawn for household purposes. For drinking, river-water, and still more, well-water, was preferred. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... sway over the people of the South. The mystery which surrounded this personage, his dignified and polished manners, the important succour he brought, and even the fantastical and semi-Oriental cast of his dress, all contributed to produce a great influence on ardent minds naturally inclined to the marvellous. This was Theodore ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the Poles seems to have given occasion to the renewal, by the parliament of 1562, of a law against "fond and fantastical prophecies," promulgated with design to disturb the queen's government; by which act also it was especially forbidden to make prognostications on or by occasion of any coats of arms, crests, or badges; a clause added, it is believed, for the particular protection of the favorite, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... it is intended that we shall visit some of the watering-places; and, perhaps, if Andrew can manage it with my father, we may even take a trip to Paris. The Doctor himself is not averse to it, but my mother is afraid that a new war may break out, and that we may be detained prisoners. This fantastical fear we shall, however, try to overcome. But I am interrupted. Sir Marmaduke is in the drawing-room, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... him have unreservedly retracted them, and that they were only extracted from such persons by the tortures employed by the Spanish officials; that the supposed introduction of arms into the Colony through an estate owned by Pedro P. Rojas is purely fantastical, and that the only arms possessed by the rebels were those taken by them in combat from the Spanish soldiers." [174] But his second cousin, Francisco L. Rojas, a shipowner, contrabandist, and merchant, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the wedding-ceremony: "Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... in itself disproved by the best physiological reasonings, but the additional assumptions which are requisite to enable its advocates to apply it to the explanation of the geological and other phenomena of the earth, are altogether gratuitous and fantastical[27]. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... English visitor ever troubles its stagnant repose. Yet it boasts its 'grand' place, imposing enough as a memorial of departed greatness, and, as usual, a Flemish relic, in the shape of a charming belfry and town-hall combined. It was really truly 'fantastical' from the airiness of its little cupolas and galleries, and was in tolerable order. Like the old Calais watch-tower, it was caked round by, and embedded in, old houses, and had its four ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... these Pope Urban V. and King Charles V. (Fig. 422), inveigh against the poulaines, which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in fashion when they were made as a kind of appendix to the foot, measuring at least double its length, and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. The Pope anathematized this deformity as "a mockery of God and the holy Church," and the King forbad craftsmen to make them, and his subjects to wear them. All this is as nothing in comparison with the profuse extravagance ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... temerity to place some of the latest fiction before our chatty alien, but pays dearly for his rash act. In these words did the Italian let him have it:—"Ai du not laich nov-els et ol, bico-S e nov-el is bat e fichtiscios tel stof-T ov so menE fantastical dids end nonsensical worDs, huicc opset maind end haRt. An-heppe tho-S an-uerE jongh persons, hu spend theaR pre-scios taim in ridin nov-els! The du not no thet nov-ellists, gennerallE spichin, aR thi laitest end thi most huim-sical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... must be, something better in this world than power and wealth and rank; and surely there must be felicity more rapturous even than securing the happiness of a parent. Ah! dreams in which I have so oft and so fondly indulged, are ye, indeed, after all, but fantastical and airy visions? Is love indeed a delusion, or am I marked out from men alone to be exempted from its delicious bondage? It must be a delusion. All laugh at it, all jest about it, all agree in ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... cease that tuneless song I hear— How can we work while thou art near? There is no other bird, I vow, Half so fantastical as thou, Since all that ugly voice can do, Is to sing ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... of his. The destruction of a year's product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually can be done: for as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away, these are none of nature's goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more account by her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been formerly to an American. And five ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... but his blue-lined face and squat figure together with the obtrusively golden halo, rather worried Mrs. Jasher. And, indeed, in spite of custom, Lucy also felt uncomfortable when this gnome hovered at her elbow. It looked as though one of the fantastical idols from the museum below had come to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... November 6. No sooner had Chopin put up at the hotel Zur goldenen Gans, changed his dress, and taken some refreshments, than he rushed off to the theatre. During his stay in Breslau he was present at three performances—at Raimund's fantastical comedy "Der Alpenkonig und der Menschenfeind", Auber's "Maurer und Schlosser (Le Macon)," and Winter's "Das unterbrochene Opferfest", a now superannuated but then still popular opera. The players succeeded better than the singers in gaining the approval of their fastidious ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... discharge, one of them being shot through the breast, they learnt to pay more respect to the muskets, and to keep their due distance for the future. The savages were lusty, well-proportioned men, and most expert swimmers, but naked and thievish, and very fantastical in the fashion of their hair, some having it short, others long, some curled, and others plaited or folded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... itself, which was of no inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to the net-work, I had barely time to observe that the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was thickly interspersed with diminutive habitations, ere I tumbled headlong into the very heart of a fantastical-looking city, and into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly little people, who none of them uttered a single syllable, or gave themselves the least trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... suggestive rather of another poetical maxim in great favour with anchorites and recluses—"Retire, the world shut out." We cannot agree with Miss Seward, who describes this hermitage as "a retreat which breathes all the witchery of genius, taste, and sentiment." It is rather fantastical than tasteful, and savours more of eccentricity than sentiment. In the Gothic entrance, there are undoubtedly many fine specimens of carved wood-work, some of which we suspect were the plunder of despoiled convents and churches during the continental wars ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of wealth; and Sikou replies by a long crystal trumpet, by means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions, which seem the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... view. The dress of old women and young girls in this country is detestable, to speak in the French style; the latter at the age of seven being clothed exactly like a woman of twenty, and the former have such a fantastical appearance that I cannot endure it. The old lady has all the vivacity of a young one. She is the most learned woman in France; her house is the resort of all men of literature, with whom she converses upon the most abstruse ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... censure all the vain Talk of Jansenius, and of them who preach That earthly joys are damnable! 'Tis plain We need not charge at Heaven as at a breach; No, amble on! We'll gain it, one and all; The narrow path's a dream fantastical, And Arnauld's quite superfluously driven Mirth from the world. We'll scale the heavenly wall, Escobar makes a primrose path ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... them any clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them. He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the onus probandi on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion, however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the conversation of every other ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt |
