"Fabulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buried in the sand. I find a hundred and fifty-seven. This is evidently but a minimum; for Lucilia Caesar and the others, as the observations that follow will tell me, lay in packets at repeated intervals. It is a magnificent family, promising a fabulous legion to come. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... fabulous mountain-range, believed by the Arabs to encompass the world and by which they are supposed to ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Elizabethan model; while an allusion to a copper boat, a marvel of magic like Cinderella's slipper, persuades him that the ancient Irish had forestalled the modern dockyards in the making of metal ships. The man who doubted, let us say, our fabulous ancient kings running up to Adam, or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he had doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so ignorant, that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to drive away amid familiar applause, all those ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... same with Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek," or with "Roses, their sharp spines being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest. Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in Eisen's vignettes ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the "New Yorker," the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeley started "The Log-Cabin," which reached the then fabulous circulation of ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny per copy he made no money. His next venture was "The New York Tribune," price one cent. To start it he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... everything else, it is deprivation only that gives a true sense of value; and, speaking from experience, I maintain that even the British Flag, which covers fabulous millions of our fellow-worms, dwindles into parochial insignificance beside that forky pennon on the farmer's clothes-line, which latter covers, in a far more essential manner, one-half of civilised humanity. Rightly viewed, I say, that double-barrelled ensign is the proudest gonfalon ever ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Berlin, and then went to Paris; he was meditating a tour in Russia. Pressing invitations reached him from St. Petersburg and Moscow. The most fabulous accounts of his virtuosity had raised expectation to its highest pitch. He was as legendary even among the common people as Paganini. His first concert at St. Petersburg realized the then unheard-of sum of L2,000. The roads were crowded to see him pass, and the corridors and approaches to the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... waters of Hombourg were able to cure every disease to which flesh is heir, and that to enable visitors to while away their evenings agreeably a salon had been opened, in which they would have an opportunity to win fabulous sums by risking their money either at the game of Trente et Quarante or at Roulette. From these small beginnings arose the "company" whose career has been so notorious. It has enjoyed uninterrupted good fortune. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Blue Beard Mrs Varden interposed, protesting she could not find it in her conscience to sit tamely by, and hear her child recommended to peruse the adventures of a Turk and Mussulman—far less of a fabulous Turk, which she considered that potentate to be. She held that, in such stirring and tremendous times as those in which they lived, it would be much more to the purpose if Dolly became a regular subscriber to the Thunderer, where ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and other aquatic birds fetched fabulous prices, and their purchase was the occasion of many banquets in houses where such entertainments had become rare. Still there were no signs that the time when Paris was to make its attempt to burst its bonds was at hand. Among the National Guard complaints at the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... are lost in like manner to the City treasury. But this apparent extravagance is not without its advantages. This generous hospitality has rendered the Corporation of London famous throughout the civilized world, and given it a fabulous influence among the nations of the Continent. The chief magistrate of the City is looked upon as only inferior to the sovereign, and far above all other princes and potentates. Thus, in a popular French play the principal personage is made to exclaim ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... upturned countenance did not conceal his amusement while the man drew this picture of him as a living ragged gold-mine, as actually put together and made up of pieces of fabulous treasure. A child's notion of wealth is the power to pay for what it has not. The wealth that childhood is, escapes childhood; it does not escape the old. What most concerned the lad as to these priceless feet and hands and eyes and ears was the hard-knocked-in fact that many a time ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... bells in Oxford rung out for him, being a nobleman, and he was buried next night in St. Peter's in the East. But two years after, being to be moved to his country estate by his successor, it was said the coffin, breaking by mischance, proved quite full of Hair: which sounds fabulous, but yet I believe precedents are upon record, as in Dr. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... evening was the time that most of the Palm Beach visitors lived for. Then came the chance to display beautiful gowns and flashing jewels of fabulous worth. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... nature ("slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism but fuller draughts lead back to religion"); but the doctrines of Christianity are matters of faith. Religion and science are separate fields, any confusion of which involves the danger of an heretical religion or a fabulous philosophy. The more a principle of faith contradicts the reason, the greater the obedience and the honor to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... An Indian slave in one of the villages cheered Coronado and his followers with a fabulous tale about a wonderful city, many days' journey across the plains to the northeast, which he called Quivira. The king of Quivira, he said, took his nap under a large tree, on which were hung little gold bells, which put him to sleep as they swung in the air. Every one in the city had ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... wave, and he didn't go over. She went away. And then the town learned a wonderful thing. The old lady, her aunt, who had been considered just fairly rich, turned out to be the possessor of almost fabulous wealth, owing to her great holdings of stock in a Western gold mine which had suddenly struck it rich. And to the girl she willed it all. It was then, of course, that the girl became the Princess, but the boy did not realize ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... the Chateau de Loches, and who has also the enjoy- ment of a garden - a garden compressed and curtailed, as those of old castles that perch on hill-tops are apt to be - containing a horse-chestnut tree of fabulous size, a tree of a circumference so vast and so perfect that the whole population of Loches might sit in con- centric rows beneath its boughs. The gem of the place, however, is neither the big marronier, nor the collegial ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... friend," interrupted Gawtrey, "whether the officer comes after us or not, our trade is ruined; that infernal Adele, with her fabulous grandmaman, has done for us. Goupille will blow the temple about our ears. No help for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... several intervals during which the entire audience left the salle and perambulated along the wide corridors round the building to greet their friends, and drink champagne out of large flat glasses, served at fabulous prices by fair ladies of the town clad in smart muslin dresses. The French Governor-General, covered with stars and orders, was there in state with his aides-de-camp, and the Belgian General ditto, and everyone shook hands and talked at once. Heasy and I stood and watched the scene fascinated. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... stone complete to his desire, With mystic imagery carven thus, And dark Egyptian symbols fabulous, He drew through it the delicate golden wire, And bent the fastening; and the Etrurian sun Sank behind Ilva, and ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... appeared to me that its true course and character had never been fully illustrated. The world had received a strangely perverted idea of it through Florian's romance of "Gonsalvo of Cordova," or through the legend, equally fabulous, entitled "The Civil Wars of Granada," by Ginez Perez de la Hita, the pretended work of an Arabian contemporary, but in reality a Spanish fabrication. It had been woven over with love-tales and scenes of sentimental ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... himself for L10,000. He had, however, found himself imbued with much too high an ambition to rest content with the income arising from his matrimonial speculation. He had first contrived to turn his real L10,000 into a fabulous L50,000, and had got himself returned to Parliament for the Tillietudlem district burghs on the credit of his great wealth; he then set himself studiously to work to make a second market by placing his vote at the disposal ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... scintillating papers about nothing whatever under titles selected generally from Through the Looking-glass or The Hunting of the Snark)—what with all this, her days were quite as full as the evenings were, when she and Rodney dined and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals, to keep themselves abreast of the minute ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... 21. However fabulous the other parts of Homer's poems may be, this account of the princes, people, and countries, is by far the most valuable piece of history and geography left us in regard to the state of Greece in that early period. Greece was then divided ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Why there are men without any legs, Whizzing along on little trollies With long long arms like apes': Failing to see why God the Topiarist Should train and carve and twist Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, Very remote and happy, ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more. And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 12. Ta-li-fu is a small old city overlooking its large lake (about 24 miles long by 6 wide), and an extensive plain devoid of trees. Lofty mountains rise on the south side of the city. The Lake appears to communicate with the Mekong, and the story goes, no doubt fabulous, that boats have come up to Ta-li from the Ocean. [Captain Gill (II. pp. 299-300) writes: "Ta-li fu is an ancient city ... it is the Carajan of Marco Polo.... Marco's description of the lake of Yun-Nan may be perfectly well applied to the Lake ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... exaggerated, but perfectly sincere, and Isabelle did not doubt for a moment that de Sigognac would be able to accomplish fabulous deeds of prowess in her honour and for her sake; and she was not so very far wrong, for he was becoming hourly more passionately enamoured of her, and ardent young lovers are capable of prodigies of valour, inspired by the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... have seen it, reader. Men call it the Mamertine Prison. It was then called Tullianum, because it was so antique at that time, that vague tradition only told of its origin long centuries before, built by the fabulous King Tullius. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... befall the Southland. In Georgia and Alabama, hundreds believed that God had cursed the land when he sent droughts and floods and destructive pests to visit them. The number of negroes needed in the North was counted in millions; the wages offered were fabulous and the letters that came from the vanguard painted pictures of a land of plenty. From some communities a small group would leave, promising to inform those behind of the actual state of affairs. For a week or more ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... Pascoe and Oxenford. It was not seen in New York until September 3, 1866, when it began a run at the Olympic, and it did not reach Boston until May 3, 1869. From the very first, it was destined to be Jefferson's most popular ri?1/2le. His royalties, as time progressed, were fabulous, or rather his profits, for actor, manager, and author were all rolled into one. He deserted a large repertory of parts as the years passed and his strength declined. But to the very end he never deserted Rip. At his death the play passed ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... property of stretching itself to a fabulous size, no ordinary treasure could suffice to cover it, and the plight of the gods, therefore, was a very bad one. The case, however, became a little more hopeful when Hreidmar consented to liberate one of their number. The emissary selected was Loki, who lost ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... were two water-colour sketches pinned to the wall; one represented, as far as could be made out, a fat man with a guitar in his hand—probably Nedopyuskin; the other portrayed a horseman galloping at full speed.... The horse was like those fabulous animals which are sketched by children on walls and fences; but the carefully washed-in dappling of the horse's grey coat, and the cartridge pocket on the rider's breast, the pointed toes of his boots, and the immense moustaches, left no room ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... excellent library; particularly, a valuable collection of books in Northern literature, with which Johnson was often very busy. One day Mr. Wise read to us a dissertation which he was preparing for the press, intitled, "A History and Chronology of the fabulous Ages." Some old divinities of Thrace, related to the Titans, and called the CABIRI, made a very important part of the theory of this piece; and in conversation afterwards, Mr. Wise talked much of his CABIRI. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... myself, O unconquered knight, as before, what they are, the foundations and pillars of knight-errantry; these feet I desire to kiss, for upon their steps hangs and depends the sole remedy for my misfortune, O valorous errant, whose veritable achievements leave behind and eclipse the fabulous ones of the Amadises, Esplandians, and Belianises!" Then turning from Don Quixote to Sancho Panza, and grasping his hands, she said, "O thou, most loyal squire that ever served knight-errant in this present age or ages past, whose goodness ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... the fabulous hero of Persian history, so much celebrated in the Shah Nameh as a paragon of strength and courage. His duel with Asfendiar, which lasted two whole days, is ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... difference between them, that dragons belong more appropriately to the more fantastic kinds of narrative, while stories of the deliverance of a house from a pestilent goblin are much more capable of sober treatment and verisimilitude. Dragons are more easily distinguished and set aside as fabulous monsters than is the family of Grendel. Thus the story of Grendel is much better fitted than the dragon story for a composition like Beowulf, which includes a considerable amount of the detail of common experience and ordinary life. Dragons are easily scared from the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... he began scooping the gems, hap-hazard, into the pockets of his torn, battle-stained uniform. Jewels of fabulous price escaped his fingers, like so many pebbles in a sand-pit, and fell clicking to the golden floor. With shaking hands the major dredged into the pit before him, mad with a very frenzy ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... a magic yacht of his; and does he slip off privately after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado? Does he run races with Ptolemy, Philopater and Hiero of Syracuse, rare regattas on fabulous seas? ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... were carpets and tissues which he saw at a glance must be of fabulous antiquity and beyond all price; the sacks held golden ewers and vessels of strange workmanship and pantomimic proportions; the chests were full of jewels—ropes of creamy-pink pearls as large as average ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... manifold streams of goodly navigable rivers, which as so many chains environed the same site and temple; and the several degrees of ascent, whereby men did climb up to the same, as if it had been a Scala Coeli; be all poetical and fabulous; yet so much is true, that the said country of Atlantis, as well that of Peru, then called Coya, as that of Mexico, then named Tyrambel, were mighty and proud kingdoms, in arms, shipping, and riches; so mighty, as at one time, or at least within the space of ten years, they both made two ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of the famous bridge across the Rhine, but a hurried examination brought him no comfort. He looked over at Snorky across the aisles and Snorky winked back at him in the triumph of achievement. Still if Snorky was to share in the fabulous returns it was only right that Snorky should contribute to the practical details! The truth is that Skippy in calmer mood had already begun to regret the impulse of the day before. Five million dollars after all was a good ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... they would be past conception, like the sidereal system. The contemplation of a million stupefies: consider the figures of millions and millions! Articles were written on Lombard Street, the world's gold-mine, our granary of energy, surpassing all actual and fabulous gold-mines ever spoken of: Aladdin's magician would find his purse contracting and squeaking in the comparison. Then, too, the store of jewels held by certain private families called for remark and an allusion to Sindbad the sailor, whose eyes were to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... berth, and slept on a saddle-blanket, with the saddle for a pillow and the serape, or blanket, for a cover. We never feared rain except in winter. As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at Sutter's saw-mill. Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and spread throughout the land. Everybody was talking of "Gold! gold!" until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of wagons ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a widow a few days before by a student, who, in order to end the carnival in style, had gone into the country to raise supplies from his family, under one of those fabulous pretences which tradition carefully preserves in colleges of law and medicine—Rose Pompon, we repeat, an example of rare fidelity, determined not to compromise herself, had taken for a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... very worst quality, charging them at the highest prices, and as these consisted principally of tobacco, salt, iron, sirih and pieces of calico they lasted no time, and had to be frequently replaced. As a matter of course this fraudulent manner of trading made the poor Sakais' debts amount to fabulous proportions and then their swindling creditor dictated the conditions he best liked: the man had to follow and serve him or if there was some woman in the family he preferred, he would carry her off either to keep for himself, or privately sell ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... of definite numbers with respect to the aboriginal population of this island are essentially fabulous. Columbus touched at only one port on the western shore. He remained there but a few days and did not come in contact with the inhabitants. Ponce and his men conquered but a part of the island, and had no ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... on, the idea of securing the passage to the fabled lands of the riches gave place to search in the Arctic regions for the scientific knowledge that could be obtained from such expeditious. "The Indies" and their fabulous riches had become known countries which were readily reached through other routes, and the saving in time by going to them by way of the North had been found to be more than offset by the rigor and perils of an Arctic voyage, even if it could by any ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... may be objected that the ancient legends relating to giants are too fabulous to admit of any sound theories being built on them; and some have even gone so far as to reject all the received accounts of families or tribes of men of gigantic stature, as worthy only of the belief of credulous ages. It may indeed be difficult to imagine whole districts and countries ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... adhere to its religion: the latter entertained no scruple of paying court even by the sacrifice of both. But no courtier, even the most prostitute, could go further than the parliament itself towards a resignation of their liberties. In a vote, which they called an offer of duty, after adopting the fabulous history of a hundred and eleven Scottish monarchs, they acknowledged, that all these princes, by the primary and fundamental law of the state, had been vested with a solid and absolute authority. They declared their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to be called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted by the idea of picturing the young conqueror's advance through the fabulous landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt that under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his subject ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... same time I think a person who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless. Could not I give myself up to the general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact.' Samuel Johnson (whose prejudices were equalled only by his ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... country. They brought into it the very first and most essential rudiments of civilization, the art of writing, and that of working metals; it was probably also they who began to dig those canals without which the land, notwithstanding its fabulous fertility, must always be a marshy waste, and who began to make bricks and construct buildings out of them. There is ground to conclude that they came down from mountains in the fact that the name "Accad" means ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... "My father once gave me a silver dollar for keeping quiet a whole hour. I was only five at the time I earned that fabulous sum." ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... tongue would be talking without a Mouth, what could it have done when it had all its Organs of Speech, and Accomplices of Sound about it? I might here mention the Story of the Pippin-Woman, had not I some Reason to look upon it as fabulous. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of histories—one of Rome. What the devil does it signify setting us in these days right as to the Licinian Rogation, and Livy's myths? Every school-boy knew that Livy lied; but the main story was clear enough for all the purposes of experience; and, that being so, the more fabulous and entertaining the subsidiary matter is the better. Tell Thackeray not ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... his death. It may seem a low kind of affectation to say that the memoirs we are now giving of Jonathan Wild are founded on certainty and fact; and that though they are so founded, they are yet more extraordinary than any of those fabulous relations pushed into the world to get a penny, at the time of his death, when it was a proper season for vending such forgeries, the public looking with so much attention on his catastrophe, and greedily catching up whatever pretended ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... of Arsene Lupin that was published in the 'Echo de France' (no once ever knew how the newspaper obtained it), that letter in which Baron Cahorn was impudently warned of the coming theft, caused considerable excitement. The most fabulous theories were advanced. Some recalled the existence of the famous subterranean tunnels, and that was the line of research pursued by the officers of the law, who searched the house from top to bottom, questioned every stone, studied the wainscoting and the chimneys, the window-frames ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... fellows who are tugging at the ropes, do you perceive so dignified, so gratifying a picture, as Ulysses exhorting his dear friends, his ERIAERES 'ETAIROI, to ply their oars with energy? You will say, Ulysses was a fabulous character. But the economy of his vessel is drawn from nature. Every man on board has a character and a will of his own. He talks to them, argues with them, convinces them; and they obey him, because they love him, and know the reason of his orders. Now, as I have said ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... the region of imagination without possessing the faculty! Everybody remembers the remark of Sheridan, when Tierney, the prosaic Whig leader of the English House of Commons, ventured to bring in, as an illustration of his argument, the fabulous but favorite bird of untrained orators, the phoenix, which is supposed always to spring up alive out of its own ashes. "It was," said Sheridan, "a poulterer's description of a phoenix." That is, Tierney, from defect of imagination, could not ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... little expected this blow; she, however, carried him off to the moose-deer, and from moose-deer to round-towers, to various architectural antiquities, and to the real and fabulous history of Ireland, on all which the count spoke with learning and enthusiasm. But now, to Colonel Heathcock's great joy and relief, a handsome collation appeared in the dining-room, of which Ulick opened ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Great War in Europe, freights were low and the schooner skippers earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage of tonnage and immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their masters shared in the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they owned shares in their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently their settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted to ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the license of fiction in the first ages, and so easy the credulity, that testimony of the facts of that time is to be received with great caution, as not only the pagan world, but the church of God, has just reason to complain of its fabulous age." Stillingfleet says, "that antiquity is defective most where it is most important, In the awe immediately succeeding that of the apostles." Now be it recollected, that the Gospels first appeared in this age of fraud and credulity; and be it further ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... are most savage and impertinent, my dear duke. Those insolent creatures—under the fabulous pretext that they have constructed their hives—have the impudence to inhabit them. And, what is more shocking still, they claim their right to the sweet honey on which they have so steadily and intelligently labored ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... It corresponds to the "Mort d'Arthur" of England, the "Cid Chronicles" of Spain, the "Nibelungen Lied" of Germany, and the Longobardian legends of North Italy. Italian mediaeval literature is rich in the Roland romances, founded on the fabulous "Chronicle of John Turpin" and the "Chansons de Gestes," of which the "Song of Roland" is one. Of the Italian romances the "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci was published as early as 1488, Boyardo's "Orlando Innamorata" in 1496, and Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" in 1515. English versions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... instigation, a middle-aged widow had been hired, at a fabulous price, to come and do the most of the work for them, thus releasing Flaxen from the weight of the hard work, which perhaps was all the worse for her. Hard work might have prevented the unbearable, sleepless pain within. She hated the slatternly ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... visiting is not only the country of olden times, which tradition has made known for its fabulous wealth, but it is a modern country, versed in the principles ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... took a letter from his pocket, and with her own eyes she read an editor's acceptance of the new novel for what seemed to her a fabulous sum. No argument could have influenced her as the single typewritten sheet did. Why should she not trust this man, whom all the world admired and trusted? Heart and mind were reconciled now; Susan's eyes, when they were raised to his, were full ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... There was the 'lady' side, and there was the 'actress' side; and unfortunately, thought Logotheti, there was now no longer the slightest doubt as to which was the stronger. Margaret Donne was already a memory; the reality was 'Cordova,' who was going to have a fabulous success and would soon be one of the most successful lyric sopranos ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... full of old-fashioned, diamond-shaped panes of glass, a small desk table, standing on clawed feet; two or three high-backed chairs, on the top of each of which was carved that same crest of the fabulous brute's head, which the carver's fancy seemed to have clutched so strongly that he could not let it go; in another part of the room a very old engraving, rude and strong, representing some ruffled personage, which the stranger only tried to make out with a sort of idle curiosity, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on, the fair wind lasting us till we got to the latitude of the Cape de Verde Islands, and I began to fancy that the stories I had heard of gales and hurricanes were fabulous, and that we were to enjoy the same sort of ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... feature of the episode—Felix Page could never honestly be accused of prodigality in any circumstances. He secured the ruby—at a fabulous price; but in the operation he made at least one bitter, implacable enemy. Alfred Fluette returned to the United States, smarting with the stings of defeat, and pledged to a commercial warfare on the successful millionaire speculator. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... divinity who is fabled to have taught the natives of Anahuac all the useful arts, including those of government and policy, he was white-skinned and dark-haired. Finally he sailed from the shores of Anahuac for the fabulous country of Tlapallan in a bark of serpents' skins. But before he sailed he promised that he would return again with a numerous progeny. This promise was remembered by the Aztecs, and it was largely on account of it that the Spaniards were enabled to conquer the country, for they were supposed to ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... chamber revealed a new chamber secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers, and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of thousands of thousands of pieces of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... represented by his collection of pictures and jewels. There were three hundred and nineteen paintings, all masterpieces. The collection sold for what would be in our money about half a million dollars. This is a large sum at any time but in Rubens' day it was well nigh fabulous. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... side. There was an abundance of boats too, and what strongly resembled a stockade; but what most took up the attention of all on board were a couple of long, low, well-made vessels, each displaying a curious figure-head bearing a faint resemblance to some fabulous monster; and in these armed boats both the soldiers and sailors of the little expedition were quite right in believing that they saw nothing more nor less than the much-talked-of vessels of the kris-bearing pirates of Malaya, the well-known, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... C, D, ETC.—In the chronicles of Robert of Gloucester the age of Brutus is purely legendary. The whole chronicle is partly taken from the fabulous history ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... and, being present both, 'Twas said they saw but one; and no discerner Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns— For so they phrase 'em—by their heralds challeng'd The noble spirits to arms, they did perform Beyond thought's compass, that former fabulous story, Being now seen possible enough, got credit, ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... Christophe thought of it all as of a dead giant lying prone upon the plain. The terror of it clutched at his heart; he stopped to gaze at the gigantic fossils of a fabulous race, long since extinct, that in its life had made the whole earth ring with the tramp of its armies,—the race whose helmet was the dome of the Invalides, whose girdle was the Louvre, the thousand arms of whose cathedrals had clutched at the heavens, who traversed ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and oracle of the committee of public safety, even outstripped Bon Saint Andre in the strength of lying and power of invention: he amused the national convention with an account of the victory of the republican fleet, far more fabulous than the commissioner's. Some of his statements, gross and unfounded as they were, have even been adopted by historians; especially by those who give credit to French writers. Thus Barrere asserted, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fastened by a rich girdle, a loose upper garment of fine muslin, and a massive turban of blue silk wrought in figures of gold. Costly but clumsy Arabic sandals, and a diamond-hilted kris or dagger of fabulous value, completed a costume that looked both graceful and comfortable for a warm climate. He greeted the ladies of our party with marked empressement, thanked them for their visit, and conducted them in person to the entrance of the seraglio to make the acquaintance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... occupied in that part of the Marais, which was at certain hours enveloped by its smoke and its din, Risler's enthusiasm, his fabulous tales concerning his employer's wealth and goodness and cleverness, had aroused that childish curiosity; and such portions as she could see of the dwelling-houses, the carved wooden blinds, the circular ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... continent increasingly attractive, from Fraser's River down to Peru the rivers all bear down treasures of a wealth perfectly inestimable. Emigration must necessarily continue to flow and increase. Gold digging is soon learned, and there will be an immense demand for every kind of labour at almost fabulous prices. ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... written in the Shah Nameh the annals of the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: of Karun, (the Persian Croesus.) the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all his treasures, lies buried not far from the Pyramids, in the sea which bears his name; of Jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted seven hundred years; of Kai ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Constantinople. Something, however, is wrong and has been wrong and will be worse, and this something has power to strike the imagination of every one who visits the great city of Vienna. It is perhaps the contrast of luxury on the one hand and black bread on the other, and the almost fabulous descent of the crown. Wrangel's officers use hundred-rouble notes for shaving-papers, and Americans in Vienna behave as unceremoniously with crowns. The lower denominations of the rouble are much cheaper than ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... takes precious care of his little note-books, both past and present, he has never troubled himself much as to what became of the fair copies of his novels. They remain in the printers' and publishers' hands, and will probably some day attain a fabulous value. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... midst of all this to-do, came the news of Will's rich strike in the hills. He had discovered a "placer" which was yielding a profit of fabulous dimensions. Of how rich his strike really was no one seemed to possess any very definite information. In the calm light of day men spoke of a handsome living wage, but, as the day wore on, and Silas Rocket's whiskey did its work, Will's ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... acorn could develop itself into a violet, or the life of an eagle build itself into the body of a trout, or the soul of a horse put on the organism of a dove. Moreover the Greek religion was mythical or fabulous, and could nowise stand the historic method: the Christian religion is historical both in origin and form; as such it has a natural sympathy and affinity with the historic method, the hardest facts being more in keeping with its spirit than the most beautiful and ingenious fables ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... loudly chirruping. And as I listen, trying to find comfort by thinking of the perils which do environ him, his careless unconventional sparrow-music resolves itself into articulate speech, interspersed with occasional bursts of derisive laughter. He knows, this fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking about and have written. "How would you like it," I hear him saying, "O wise man that knows so much about the ways of birds, if you were shut up in a big cage—in Windsor Castle, let us say—with scores of menials to wait on you and anticipate ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... became dissatisfied with the plodding career of a wage-earner, Payson insisted on mortgaging Sweetwater Ranch for three thousand dollars and in lending Dick the money for a year's prospecting in the mountains of Sonora, Mexico, in search of a fabulous rich ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... apartments on each side, one for the Shogun and the other "for his Holiness the Abbot." Both, of course, are empty. The roof of the hall is panelled and richly frescoed. The Shogun's room contains some very fine fusuma, on which kirin (fabulous monsters) are depicted on a dead gold ground, and four oak panels, 8 feet by 6, finely carved, with the phoenix in low relief variously treated. In the Abbot's room there are similar panels adorned ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... like the dog in the fable dropping the substance for the shadow. He would have gone back to look for them, but he'd spent most of his little capital in that wild-goose chase, and the miserable remnant oozed away like water in a place where the barest necessaries of life cost fabulous prices. Soon ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization, that are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and look with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or "bandit fierce", or to the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has been that "our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir as ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... principal were Adolph, Duke of Holland, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother to the English king Henry III, and Alfonso X, King of Castile. Of these three the most popular was Richard of Cornwall, who was finally chosen by the Electors, more on account of his knightly qualities than because of his fabulous wealth. Among his most ardent followers was Philip of Falkenstein, who was naturally much elated at his master's success. Now, however, the conflict was over, and ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... fabulous preamble, they proceeded to handle the matter of fact with logical precision. It was absurd, they said, that Mr. Wilkes and Lord Leicester should affect to confound the persons who appeared in the assembly with the States themselves; as if those individuals ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sacramento, where a lot of directors and shareholders of the Alba Eldorado were enlarging on the good fortune attending mining schemes in general, and their own especial venture in particular, a proposal was made that, as such fabulous reports had been circulated of the Bonanza mine in Montana, some of the surplus capital of the company should be expended in looking after another lode in the same vicinity. The proposal was eagerly accepted, and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maiden rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse don't you think it would have been much more natural if you had taken a number of ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146] An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age, they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,—who still ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... story, from the free life of the cattle range, and the wide expanse of the boundless prairie, to that rugged mountainous section of Arizona, where many fabulous fortunes have been won through the discovery of rich ore. The Broncho Rider Boys find themselves impelled, by a stern sense of duty, to make a brave fight against heavy odds, in order to retain possession of a valuable mine ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mounted your horse with me in your arms. Behind us screamed and moaned the servants of my house, but you regarded them not, and I trustingly clung to your heart, for I knew that if danger threatened me, you would surely save me! Oh, do you yet remember that fabulous ride? How we rested in out-of-the-way houses, or with poor peasant people, and then proceeded on farther and farther! And how the sun constantly grew warmer, melting the snow, and you constantly became more cheerful and happy, until, one day, you impetuously pressed me to ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... adventurers seized upon the literal meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust, must always remain one of the blackest pages in the history of the white race. The great ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... rule tended to dismember the once powerful Spanish Empire. The same causes have produced the same effects in all Spain's distant colonies, and to-day the mother country is almost childless. Criticism, physical discovery of the age, and contact with foreigners shook the ancient belief in the fabulous and the supernatural; the rising generation began to inquire about more certain scientific theses. The immutability of Theology is inharmonious to Science—the School of Progress; and long before they had finished their course ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... neither dead nor alive, bound down to their conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera—weighed heavily on the independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner, whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well known along the western seaboard of a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... describing them says of the collection: "The Duke of Sussex had a wonderful collection of these, the values attached to some of them being almost fabulous. One example from the work-shop of Vienna—long celebrated for this description of art,—represented the combat of Hector and Achilles, the cover of the pipe being a golden hemlet cristatus of the Grecian type." Swiss and Tyrolean artists ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... family. It is called an Arab child, and sold to the first Arab, or even left at his door. This is the only case the Arabs know of child-selling. Speke had only two Beluch soldiers with him, and the idea that they loaded themselves with infants, at once stamps the tale as fabulous. He may have seen one sold, an extremely rare and exceptional case; but the inferences drawn are just like that of the Frenchman who thought the English so partial to suicide in November, that they might be seen suspended from trees in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... concerning the Earth, they make use of a Name of a certain Genius, whom they call Micaboche, who has cover'd the whole Earth with water (as they imagine) and relate innumerable fabulous Tales, some of which have a kind of Analogy with the Universal Deluge. These Barbarians believe that there are certain Spirits in the Air, between Heaven and Earth, who have a power to foretell future Events, and others who play the part of Physicians, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... pleased with any written remains of the ancients as with those little aphorisms which verbal tradition hath delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden hath chronicled ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon. Indeed, the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the fabulous reminds us of those classical dictionaries, intended for the use of schools, in which Narcissus the lover of himself and Narcissus the freedman of Claudius, Pollux the son of Jupiter and Leda and Pollux the author of the Onomasticon, are ranged under ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had made fabulous strikes, who had captured whole planetoids of rich metal, and he knew weary, white-haired men who had braved the perils of vacuum and absolute cold and bullet-swift meteors for hard years, who ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... worldliness; there is piety and the fear of death and rich superstition. Inger, maybe, felt that she had more reason than others to fear the judgment of Heaven, and it would not pass her by; she knew how God walked about in the evening time looking out over all His wilderness with fabulous eyes; ay, He would find her. There was not so much in her daily life wherein she could improve; true, she might bury her gold ring deep in the bottom of a clothes chest, and she could write to Eleseus and tell him to be converted too; after that, there was nothing more she could find beyond doing ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... is, in the classical part of it. They believe these to have inculcated a system of morality frequently repugnant to that of the Christian religion. And the Heathen mythology, which is connected with their writings, and which is fabulous throughout, they conceive to have disseminated romantic notions among youth, and to have made them familiar with fictions, to the prejudice of an unshaken devotedness to ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... to enter the general admission already formed a long queue. In the ticket-office there were scuffles and fights, talk of filibusterism and races, but this did not produce any tickets, so that by a quarter before eight fabulous prices were being offered for them. The appearance of the building, profusely illuminated, with flowers and plants in all the doors and windows, enchanted the new arrivals to such an extent that they burst out into exclamations and applause. A large ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the realism that works. The fact that the Jews cling to both, thus running, as it were, upon two tracks, is what makes them so puzzling, now and then, to the goyim. In one aspect they stand for the most savage practicality; in another aspect they are dreamers of an almost fabulous other-worldiness. My own belief is that the essential Jew is the idealist—that his occasional flashing of hyena teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the struggle for existence. Perhaps, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... wheeling perambulators—lolling over the handle, which they usually held with their left hands, the right holding a copy of Orange Blossoms or some halfpenny paper, and so interested in the story of the Marquis of Lymejuice—a young man of noble presence and fabulous wealth, with a drooping golden moustache and very long legs, who, notwithstanding the diabolical machinations of Lady Sibyl Malvoise, who loves him as well as a woman with a name like that is capable ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... logic; the old wall, reason; the old main stay of thought, good sense, break down, fall and crumble before their imagination, set free and escaped into the limitless realm of fancy, and advancing with fabulous bounds, and nothing can check it. For them everything happens, and anything may happen. They make no effort to conquer events, to overcome resistance, to overturn obstacles. By a sudden caprice of their ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... entertainment into several different games, arduous and complicated as their games of ball. The mere multiplication of the missiles also lends an additional stimulus, and the statistics of success in this way appear almost fabulous. A zealous English battledoorean informs me that the highest scores yet recorded in the game are as follows: five thousand strokes for a single shuttlecock, five hundred when employing two, one hundred and fifty with three, and fifty-two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... was to present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat's lighter peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he got to Kirk Street, he certainly found that his expectations were, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... first my heart Was opened; [C] tract more exquisitely fair 75 Than that famed paradise often thousand trees, [D] Or Gehol's matchless gardens, [E] for delight Of the Tartarian dynasty composed (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous, China's stupendous mound) by patient toil 80 Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help; [F] There, in a clime from widest empire chosen, Fulfilling (could enchantment have done more?) A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes Of pleasure [G] sprinkled over, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Schopenhauer's, quite metaphysical. It might be a great improvement on an absolute psychology, because it would restore, even if in mythical terms, a background and meaning to life. The unconscious Absolute Will, the avid Genius of the Species, the all-attracting Platonic Ideas are fabulous; but beneath them it is not hard to divine the forces of nature. This volitional school supplies a good stepping-stone from metaphysics back to scientific psychology. It remains merely to substitute ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... war with one of her less powerful neighbors, was elevated to the nobility, it caused no surprise, and the banker at once began a life of pomp and extravagance which he thought suited to his new station. His wealth was fabulous, and was for the greater part invested in large estates, comprising confiscated lands, formerly the property of less fortunate nobles, who, deprived of their rank, were now atoning for their sins in the frozen North. His possessions included about twenty thousand male serfs; consequently, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... his country, and the common creeds about them, and declared his dislike when he heard men attribute "repentance, anger, and other passions to the gods, and talk of wars and battles in heaven, and of the gods getting women with child," and such like fabulous and blasphemous stones. I pick out these particulars, because they are the very same with what the priests have in their Bibles, where repentance and anger are attributed to God; where it is said, there was "war in heaven;" ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he said to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... though not so popular an historian as Herodotus, was a much more philosophical one. He was born near Athens. A pretty story is told of his youth, which must be repeated, though critics have pronounced it fabulous. The tale is that Thucydides, when only fifteen, was taken by his father to hear Herodotus recite his history at the Olympian games, and that the reading and the accompanying applause caused the boy to shed tears, and to resolve ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... experience of my own on Cumberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the shore like the white pillows of fabulous sea-gods. Presently I came upon one of those great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every whitening limb ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... That the Agricultural Department, with no motive but to tell the truth, and with its corps of trained experts, might mislead the public, but they (the promoters) could not possibly be mistaken in their fabulous figures compiled for the purpose of getting money from some ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... pulled down and "sky scrapers" and mansions were erected in their places. Bridges, good for a hundred years to come, were pulled down and millions spent in erecting in place of the old ones others not more serviceable or of more use. Huge docks, not wanted, were built at fabulous outlays—all these buildings stand as monuments ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... introduces his mythical forms; we hear also the fabulous genealogy of the Phaeacian rulers, the meaning of which has been above set forth. They, too, Arete and Alcinous, have come from the Cyclops, and have made the same journey as Ulysses, though in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett |
