"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said. "How I used to believe in all it suggested! And how, when I was a young man, my heart was like that 'casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!' But Love never came,—only a spurious will-o'-the-wisp imitation of Love. I wonder if many people in this world are not equally deceived with myself in their conceptions of this divine passion? All the poets and romancists may be wrong,—and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism encasing her youth like a suit of steel armour, may ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... do?" said Billy, and he went back to the earth, where he and the piece of the devil's nose melted into a ball of fire, and he roves the earth till this day as a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... remain so until the sweating is completely over, or so long as prudence will permit; and when cold weather fairly sets in, add more earth to keep from freezing, leaving only a wisp of straw protruding through to carry off any foul ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked its fire ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... impossible. The aridness, the desiccation, the lifelessness of everything about was somehow shocking. Bordman found himself straining his eyes for the merest, scrubbiest of bushes and for however stunted and isolated a wisp of grass. ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did me ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... went back to his boarding-place—the big brick house on the hill—he was strangely disturbed and troubled. He had told himself years ago that religion was a delusion, a will o' the wisp. But there was something in Pearl's face and in her words that seemed to contradict ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... pervaded the gallery where he sat surrounded by clerks and shop girls, and he pictured to himself the dreary rooms from which they had emerged, drawn by the mysterious fire on that altar. Was it a will-o'-the-wisp? Below him, in the pews, were the rich. Did they, too, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you, sir," said Tucker, bestowing a final polish with her apron, "'twas like satin before, sir—not a wisp ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Point. From this point the land forms a large bay, and near it is a town of great extent, which seemed to swarm like a bee-hive: An incredible multitude came out of it as the ship passed by, holding something in their hands which looked like a wisp of green grass, with which they seemed to stroke each other, at the same time dancing, or running in a ring. About seven miles to the westward of Point Ferrers, is another that was called Carteret Point, from which a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... natives—young, active men—made their appearance. They all had at their backs large baskets bound by withes passing across the forehead and chest. They were but lightly clothed. A small poncho covered their shoulders, and the usual cloth and kilt was worn round the loins, a wisp of leaves preventing their backs being chafed by their burdens. Each man also carried a long staff in his hand, and a bag of roasted corn as provision for the journey. The burdens were soon adjusted. One of them had a sort of chair at his back, which ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... lips and motionless lashes, and the slender fingers of the small, right hand clenched in death. Even now, as I stood bareheaded, my breath in check, one of the fellows grasped this hand, wrenched open these delicate fingers with brutal strength, and finding within them only a wisp of crumpled paper, swore a hoarse oath of baffled cupidity that changed to a howl as my uncle's cane rapped him ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... dropped back in the shadow, but tailed along. She must have been late, that girl, for he cooled his heels on a bench for twenty minutes, growing more impatient all the time. Finally she came—a slender wisp of a girl, but some queen! Plainly dressed, dark hair and eyes, small hands and feet and a face like ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... laughed and then dropped lightly into a big wicker chair, conscious that Koltsoff had not withdrawn his gaze. She leaned forward and flicked her skirts over her ankles, nervously pulled a stray wisp of hair from her neck. Then she slowly met the eyes of the man standing at her side and propounded an inquiry having to do with nothing less banal than his views of America thus far. Prince Koltsoff tossed his head and thus threw off the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgotten—a brand-new old remembrance—a kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs, into ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in the low-growing grain, many eyes of the Sammies turned in the direction of the red mill. It was a French one, of picturesque construction. And as Jimmy and his chums looked they saw a little wisp of smoke come from one of the windows. Then came another staccato discharge, but this time with ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... never seemed to come nearer; rather it receded as the adventurers advanced, a yellow will-o'-the-wisp that had led them through tangled forest and pestilential swamp only to mock them in the end. The natives grew fiercer and more threatening; the guides began to murmur at the length of the way—their river homes seemed so far behind them. Savage faces peered out from bush and rock ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... These results, painfully accumulated, he set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... a wisp of lace to her eyes, "Really, Doris, you are making it very painful for me, but some day you will see that I was wise. For the present, I would rather die than give up the money. I have no more ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... I began, "don't you get to thinking that when you hide your own head in the sand no one can see the colour of your feathers. You might as well try to cover up Bunker Hill Monument with a wisp of straw. Don't you suppose I know you love Gwen Darrow? That's what's ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... considerable height, are seen for hours together in the dryest places; and it is asserted, that, on examining the ground no crevice is perceptible. This fire, which resembles the springs of hydrogen, or Salse, of Modena, or what is called the will-o'-the-wisp of our marshes, does not burn the grass; because, no doubt, the column of gas, which develops itself, is mixed with azote and carbonic acid, and does not burn at its basis. The people, although less superstitious ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... afternoon, I made through the village of Lesbury toward the sea, and before long came in sight of it ... a glorious stretch of blue, smooth that day as an island lake and shining like polished steel in the light of the sun. There was not a sail in sight, north or south or due east, nor a wisp of trailing smoke from any passing steamer: I got an impression of silent, unbroken immensity which seemed a fitting prelude to the solitudes into which my ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... absolutely impossible for him to keep to his subject, or any subject. It is as impossible for him to pull himself up briefly in any digression from that subject. In his finest passages, as in his most trivial, he is at the mercy of the will-o'-the-wisp of divagation. In his later re-handlings of his work, he did to some extent limit his followings of this will-o'-the-wisp to notes, but by no means always; and both in his later and in his earlier work, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... declared the Father. "But all at once, a smart puff o' wind caught that pretty wisp o' veilin' from the young wife, and wafted it away. And as quick as the wind itself after it she darted; but when she was close to it, up and off it whirled again, and she followed it, and he after her, and—shouts ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... crown fall in the dirt," she said, tossing a wisp of hair from her forehead; "but you great, insensible beings are always in mischief when you are in the country. Why don't you stay at home, in your brick cages that stand on heaps of flat stones? You ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... *Duel, The. Macmillan. *House with the Mezzanine, The. Scribner. *Lady with the Dog, The. Macmillan. *Party, The. Macmillan. *Rothschild's Fiddle. Boni and Liveright. *Will o' the Wisp. International Authors' Association. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... when Frank Shabata arrived from the old country and set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck of the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a slightly disdainful expression, proper for a young man with high connections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley. There was often an interesting discontent ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... nothing aloud, only followed his companion as he led him on, and in and out, with the sound playing with their ears as the will-o'-the-wisp is said to play with ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... horse-hair arm-chair where Mrs Verloc's mother was generally privileged to sit, Karl Yundt giggled grimly, with a faint black grimace of a toothless mouth. The terrorist, as he called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow, snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin. An extraordinary expression of underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes. When he rose painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the other hand, escape from the French prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... the primitive cuckold; a vile monkey tied eternally to his brother's tail,—to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a toad, an owl, a lizard, a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny.—Hey day! Will with a Wisp, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... steamer was on the yellow waters of the Congo, and the boys forgot even about the strange couple in their first view of the mighty river; but the sight of a native-manned canoe, shooting out from the mist which hung in wisp over the waters, recalled the incident. They found Mr. Hume in an easy-chair, drinking his early morning cup of coffee, and at his feet, stretching along the scuppers, was the canoe, still with its crew aboard and asleep, though the jackal ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... repeated notes from the horn, the baying of hounds, and the screams that celebrate with orthodox excitement the death of a fox. The rat-hunt was over. Joker lifted his spare, aristocratic head from the grass, and listened, with a wisp of dewy green stuff in his mouth. Christian looked at her watch. It was early still, not eight o'clock. A grey horse and its rider came forth from the dark grove of laurels. Larry was looking for her. She sighed; she did not know why. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... minutes. Set back on the stove and let it settle, then skim very thoroughly. Pare, cut in half, and remove the stones from the peaches. When the syrup comes to a boil, put in enough peaches to fill your jar, whatever the size. Boil until tender enough to pierce with a wisp. Take the fruit out carefully with a spoon and place in the jar. Fill the jar with the boiling syrup, being careful always to cant the jar as you pour it in. If you do this, the jar will never crack, as it ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... gentle family in the Calendar of Monteith, and was celebrated even in boyhood for his feats of strength and daring. While still at school he could hold a hundredweight at arm's-length, and crumple up a horseshoe like a wisp of hay. The fleetest runner, the most desperate fighter in the country, he was already famous before his name was besmirched with crime, and he might have been immortalised as the Hercules of the seventeenth century, had not his ambition been ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to be sole survivor of a shipwreck upon a cannibal isle hid for three days, in terror of his life. Driven out by hunger, he discovered a thin wisp of smoke rising from a clump of bushes inland, and crawled carefully to study the type of savages about it. Just as he reached the clump he heard a voice say: "Why in hell did you play that card?" He dropped on his knees and, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... concerts, beheld Thaddeus, as Robert Macaire, threading the galop with Malaga in the dress of a savage, her head garnished with plumes like the horse of a hearse, and bounding through the crowd like a will-o-the-wisp. ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... a moment, frowning slightly. Something—something like a wisp of memory, something she should be remembering—was stirring in the back of her mind. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... the standard that flouts the Northern light. * * * * * * * * * Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag has flown. I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard—ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its folds o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free. * * * * * * * * * Never the lotos ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... positive paradox. True method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and cannot be applied to the outre. What definite idea can a body attach to such expressions as "methodical Jack o' Dandy," or "a systematical Will o' the Wisp"? ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... these buildings was uninviting, the gloom and squalor of the interior cannot be described. The house No. 5 was, in a special degree, dirty and dilapidated. The water, which oozed from the wall, trickled down the dark and filthy staircase. On the second floor, a wisp of straw had been laid on the narrow landing-place, for wiping the feet on; but this straw, being now quite rotten, only served to augment the sickening odor, which arose from want of air, from damp, and from the putrid exhalations of the drains. The few openings, cut at rare ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... within the hour. He found Joyce at home in the kitchen. She was making pies energetically. The sleeves of her dress were rolled up to the elbows and there was a dab of flour on her temple where she had brushed back a rebellious wisp of hair. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of round steak into small dice, rejecting all skin and fat. Put it into a glass fruit jar with one cup of cold water. Cover the can sufficiently tight to prevent any water from boiling in, and place it on a wisp of straw or a muffin ring in a kettle of cold water. Heat very gradually, and keep it just below the boiling point for two or more hours; or, place the can in a deep dish of hot water, and cook in a moderate oven for three hours. Allow the meat to cook thus four or five hours, or ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the will o' the wisp, Carlotta, for two years now, against his better judgment and to the undoing of his peace of mind and heart. And play days were over for Phil Lambert. The work-a-day world awaited him, a world where there would be neither space nor time for chasing phantoms, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... awakened by a gentle pricking and tickling. It felt as though a wisp of hay were passing lightly over his mouth, backwards and forwards. He snatched at it, and a long stalk remained in his hand. His eyes were slightly dazzled; he was gazing straight at the sun, already considerably ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... funnels, but as we were going up the river under easy steam, only the forward boilers were going, so that whilst our two forward funnels, "Matthew" and "Mark," were smoking bravely, the two after ones, "Luke" and "John," were unsullied by the faintest wisp of a smoke pennant trailing from their black orifices. Our old interpreter was much distressed at this, for, as far as I could judge, his countrymen gauged a vessel's fighting power solely by the amount of smoke that she emitted, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... enigmatical way she had. "You may not know it—but I've been staying here just to see whether you fail or succeed. I thought I understood a little of why you came, and I—I stayed." She leaned and twisted a wisp of Hooligan's mane nervously, and Ford noticed how the color came and went in ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... The rising wind merely made her the more miserable and alone. Nor was it until a disk of gold smote suddenly on the rock before her that she looked up and beheld a twinkle of blue sky. The fog puffed across the blue, the blue looked down again,—a bigger eye than before,—a wisp of fog filmed it again, and again it gleamed out, ever larger and always more blue. The good wind living far to the south had heard that in a few days a little girl was to be alone and comfortless upon a foggy island, and, hearing, had filled his vast chest with warmth and sunshine, and ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... kinds of diseases.—3. That the window, and one window, is considered enough to air a room. Have you never observed that any room without a fire-place is always close? And, if you have a fire-place, would you cram it up not only with a chimney-board, but perhaps with a great wisp of brown paper, in the throat of the chimney—to prevent the soot from coming down, you say? If your chimney is foul, sweep it; but don't expect that you can ever air a room with only one aperture; don't suppose that to shut up a room is the way to keep it clean. It is the best way to foul the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... bag and looked at it. It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a necklace. I drew myself up slowly and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a time could his eyeballs, straining with agony, catch this will-o'-the-wisp, the boat's light. It groped the sea up and down, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... heard the jay's brief musical roulade? It is only a wisp of melody, rarely rich and suggestive, heard a moment, then gone. You know something sweet has passed by, but something so brief and elusive that you scarcely know what it was. Long after it has dropped on your ear, it continues to haunt your memory, and you try again and ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Greek combination of Dr. Paley and Dr. Franklin, indicates a very different impression of him from what would generally be expressed of a poet, certainly what would not have been placed on the grave of an eccentric, erratic will-o'-the-wisp genius, however distinguished. Moreover, the pious author of good Mistress Hall's epitaph records the fact of her being "wise to salvation," as a more especial point of resemblance to her father than even ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... asked Tom, startled, and with reason; yet conscious, in his dark, dreary despair, of a vague glimmer, bearing the same relation to hope that a will-o'-the-wisp does to the light on our ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... little wisp of song played softly in the twilight, Such a happy little song—and oh, the dusk is gray! Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is coming— Coming with the bitter chill that marks the death ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... Gilbert's star has set in the West—why not? Sun, moon, and planets sink into the West: why not the meteors of this lower world? why not a will-o'-the-wisp like me, Amyas?" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... house. He was then a red-haired youth of fifteen, but looking much older, whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neck-cloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of fern or flowers, and brightening the trunks of the interlacing trees. As she saw the lights and shadows dancing before her she became serious for a moment, and fancied they were like the will-o'-the-wisp, and portended no good; but she soon quickened her pace, and at the first opening went out again into the road, where the sun was uninterrupted in his gaze, and her few fanciful ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... And from a hut of wattles and clay a little peasant girl came with a bundle of hay in her arms, and gave first one of the oxen and then the other a wisp. Then she stroked their black muzzles, and laid her rosy face against their white cheeks. Then the Prince Bishop saw the rude teamster rise from his rest on the bank and cry to his cattle, and the oxen strained against the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Standing in the north, grand and solitary, was the massive blue-white shape of old Ruapehu, his fires quenched these many years, and, near him, the active cone of Ngaruahoe, whose angry, ominous smoke-clouds rained ashes sometimes on the surrounding country, but more often his wisp of yellowy-white smoke trailed lazily to leeward, or mounted heavenwards in cumulous shape. Occasionally, on his rounds, Mac dismounted on the summit of a ridge, threw the rein over a stump and settled down for a smoke, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... monster, turning up the white of his undersides, made a dart at a black bottle and a wisp of hay which had been thrown overboard in the morning. Down they went into ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... "Where would be the use? It were a sin to let you set off alone in pursuit of the foolish girl, and my old legs would never overtake such a Will-with-the-wisp—even if we could guess which way ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... good puzzling about it, only if they had been there it would not have seemed so lonely. Suddenly—what was that in the distance? A light, a tiny light, bobbing in and out of sight among the trees? Could it be a star come out of its way to take pity on her? Much more likely a Will-o'-the-wisp; for she did not stop to reflect that a dry pine forest in summer-time is not one of Will-o'-the-wisp's favourite playgrounds. It was a light, as to that there was no doubt, and it was coming nearer. Whether she was more frightened or glad Olive ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... his capacious mouth, he began taking in the valuable papers. First some title-deeds disappeared; then some railway bonds; presently a roll of rent-receipts. All these seemed to be as honey to his tongue; he smiled a smile of tranquil happiness. Finally the newspaper vanished into his face like a wisp of straw ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... brushed back a wisp of hair which had blown across her cheek, and, stooping, kissed her ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... company of young men, relatives of Nimni. They were slender as sky-sail-poles; standing in a row, resembled a picket- fence; and were surmounted by enormous heads of hair, combed out all round, variously dyed, and evened by being singed with a lighted wisp of straw. Like milliners' parcels, they were very neatly done up; wearing ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the hole. He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath him. After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee. Reaching his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper. Into this he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco. The combination became a cigarette, brown and squat, with the ends turned in. Not once did he take his eyes from the body at the bottom of the hole. He lighted the cigarette and drew its smoke into his lungs with ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... then to conclude that there is no such thing as Causality, that in searching for a cause of everything that happens, we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp, using a mere vox nihili which has {36} as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune? Surely, in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality, in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between one physical ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... to the pursuit of this will-o'-the-wisp so long that I gave up hope, and set him down as another fly that had been caught, as it were, by a piece of paper daubed over with some sticky stuff that had not even the merit of being sweet, but to my surprise he at last declared that he was satisfied, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Jon. Nothing but the general hard times and hay shortage. Every farmer at the end of his tether, or almost there, no one with as much as a wisp of hay to spare, and only a few likely to make out till Crouchmas ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... was handed to the master, who heaved it upwards to his head and drank as audibly and nearly as much as a horse. Then holding his hands to receive the remaining contents of the pitcher, which his followers poured into his monstrous palms, he soused his face, which he afterwards wiped in a wisp of grass—the only towel of Jack's which was not then ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... catching his sire by the arm, "I've been looking for you everywhere, but you dance about like a will-o'-the- wisp. Do you know I've invited my friends Jacques and Redfeather to come to-night, and also Louis Peltier, the guide with whom I made my first ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... wide-opened eyes. "Darkness? What do you mean? The fire then was merely a will-o'-the-wisp," she said, her eyes shining with pride, "I see him full of light." Daniel had heard what she said. "Really, Eleanore?" he asked ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... have gone abroad in the train of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been conveyed to him through one of the Emperor's suite. It was tied up with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, "To Master Ambrose Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More, Knight, Under Sheriff of the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... A wisp of a boy, clad in very dirty garments, shrilled the equivalent of "Carry your bag, miss," in the Egyptian tongue, calling down the displeasure of Allah upon the foreign woman when she shook her head, and changed the heavy dressing-case ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... was wakened from her sleep by a wisp of a figure that came slipping to her bedside, announced only by the cautious breathing of ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... coarse and rough planing out that tells of an eye that saw vaguely and that wearied, and in an execution full of uncertain touch and painful effort. Unless the painter is especially endowed with the instinct of anatomies, the sentiment of proportion, and a passion for form, the nude is a will-o'-the-wisp, whose way leads where he may not follow. No one suspects Mr. Watts of one of these qualifications; he appears even to think them of but slight value, and his quest of the allegorical seems to be merely motived by an unfortunate desire ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of the wisdom and foresight of Charley and myself, I should like to mention that we had entrusted that valuable evidence of our status to the keeping of a worthy stranger dressed in an old red jacket and a pair of corduroy trousers fastened with a wisp of hay below ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... troth, but ye be a pair of rude curs, barking from a warm kennel at your betters, who are shivering in the cold, without so much as a bone to pick, or a wisp of straw to their tails! Well, well, 'tis soon said; every dog, you know,—and 'twill be my turn soon. I come hither from the castle at Halton, where my Lady Fitz-Eustace would lay your curs' noses to the grinding-stone; but, rest her soul, she will not long be above ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Two straw figures joined together and reclining side by side: a straw man and a straw woman. The workmanship is childishly clumsy; but still, the woman can be distinguished from the man by .the ingenious attempt to imitate the female coiffure with a straw wisp. And as the man is represented with a queue—now worn only by aged survivors of the feudal era—I suspect that this kitoja-no-mono was made after some ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... sparks denounce their rage, In boot of wisp and Leinster frise engage; What would you do ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... so deep in thought that when the donkey without rhyme or reason came to a halt, half-way down the hill, he too halted, and stood pulling a wisp of grey side-whiskers. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Plushkin, "I am ashamed to say that hardly a wisp of fodder does the place contain. But how can I get fodder? My lands are small, and the peasantry lazy fellows who hate work and think of nothing but the tavern. In the end, therefore, I shall be forced to go and spend my old age in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... guess. Had I been less utterly forwandered and the night less wild, I think I would have sped away from it as fast as my legs had carried me. But I had little choice. After all, I reflected, the worst bedlamite must have food and shelter, and, unless the gleam had been a will-o'-the-wisp, I foresaw a fire. So I hastened in the direction of ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... soldiers who held a lighted stub in one hand while they rolled a cigarette with the other. He knew Red Cross saints who could puff a forbidden cigarette like a prayer. He wondered how he or any one had ever made such a fierce taboo of a wisp of aromatic leaves kindled in a tiny parcel. Such strange things people choose for their tests of virtue—tests that have nothing whatever to do with the case, whether savage or civilized ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... camp he saw a poor woman, "a wisp of bones," feebly struggling up the road in wind and rain. He sent some dhoora to her by one of his men, and thought she had been taken safely to one of the huts. All through that wet and stormy night he heard a baby crying. At dawn he found the woman lying ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... them to be the last, and has just abandoned all hope of seeing another, when the next pair of horns makes its unexpected appearance. They never hurry home; they just come. A particularly tempting wisp in the long sweet grass under the hedge will induce an instant halt. The least thing passing along the road stops the whole procession; and they stare fixedly at the intruder till he is well on his way. And then, with no attempt to make up for lost time, they jog ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... ranges promising pupils in the order of workers, plodders and bright ones. The last are frequently overrated, the memory more quick than retentive. "Wie gewonnen, so zerronnen," "Lightly come, lightly go," mere quickness may prove a will o' the wisp, and may be peculiar to one subject, but the capacity for patient, honest, painstaking work is a vastly more valuable quality, which can be applied with fair success to any pursuit. It gives earnest of the sense ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... turned their horses' heads and fled. They were not a moment too soon; for the Indians, who had been lying in ambush, rose and fired at the boys. Matthews had a narrow escape; for a bullet cut off the wisp of hair (known as a queue) that hung dangling from the back of his head. The danger that he had passed through, and the sight of his murdered neighbors, roused young Matthews to action. He collected a party of men, put himself at the head of ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000—for soon after the opening it soared to 200. The "System's" cohorts were in absolute control, with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... of a night for a ghost story," said Melissa, her eyes going over the group with a strange, sweet compassion in their depths. "The wind ought to be howling with blood-curdling glee and the will-o'-the-wisp ought to be a-hoppin' in the swamp. There ought to be a graveyard close by—and some skeletons standing just outside the winders, trying to look in upon us through their ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... pictures,—Randal Leslie, with an unsatisfactory countenance, from which he could extract nothing; the squire, looking as black as thunder in his study at Hazeldean; his mother trying to plead for him, and getting herself properly scolded for her pains; and then off went that Will-o'-the-wisp which pretended to call itself Thought, and began playing round the pale, charming face of Beatrice di Negra, in the drawing-room at Curzon Street, and repeating, with small elfin voice, Randal Leslie's assurance of the preceding ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a dark room and clean straw in Bedlam, where it would not be in your power to infect others with your fanaticism; whereas, if you have just reflection enough left to maintain the character of a chosen vessel in the meetings of the godly, you and your hearers will be misled by a Will-i'the-wisp, from one error into another, till you are plunged into religious frenzy; and then, perhaps, you will hang yourself in despair' 'Which the Lord of his infinite mercy forbid! (exclaimed the affrighted Clinker) It is very possible I may be under the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Feeble as a will-o'-the-wisp in that enshrouding dark, the torch showed only hints of things—here a fallen pillar, there a shattered mass of wreckage where a huge section of the ceiling had fallen, yonder a gaping aperture left by ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... hobgoblins, from Puck to Will-o'-the-wisp, are apt to play practical jokes and knock people about whom they meet after sunset. A dozen tales of such were rife, and folks were more amused than amazed ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... the partition, almost within touch of her hand, sat the man Warrington and his servant, arguing over their accounts. The former's battered helmet was tilted at a comfortable angle and an ancient cutty hung pendent from his teeth, an idle wisp of smoke hovering ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... would you call her, Ned?" asked Jimmy; while Francois stood and stared and listened, still believing that the boat must be a phantom, such as was likely to vanish before their very eyes, as might a wisp of ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... her guest, who had taken an aimless prowl round the house, returned once more like a wandering will-o'-the-wisp to the dining-room, then she ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... after him. They soon were so close to him, as he hopped and fluttered along the short grass, that the poor little fellow felt their hands would presently be upon him, and as a last chance of escape, he crept and hid himself under a wisp of hay. ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle
... out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will-o'-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... apology: "It isn't very much of a breakfas', darlin', but we'll make believe it's waffles an' chicken an'—an' hot rolls an' batter-bread an'—an' everything." She rose to her little bare feet, holding her wisp of a skirt aside, and made a sweeping bow. "Allow me, Miss Jemima, to make you a ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long- sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... bet Ah knows just the woman for you-all, ef you-all ain't lookin' for a young gal with a figger like a wisp of hay." ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... smelled of smoke, that velveteen doublet of his, with which his stringy red beard was likewise perfumed! It was in his studio that I had the honor to be introduced to his sister, the fair Miss Clara: she had a large casque with a red horse-hair plume (I thought it had been a wisp of her brother's beard at first), and held a tin-headed spear in her hand, representing a Roman warrior in the great picture of "Caractacus" George was painting—a piece sixty-four feet by eighteen. The Roman warrior blushed to be discovered in that attitude: ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could go no farther. At that, two odd little beings sprang to his side; the one brown as the earth itself, with eyes like diamonds for brightness, and deft little fingers, cunning in all works of skill. Pulling off his wisp of a cap, and making a grotesque little bow, he asked, "Will you take a guide for the under-world tour?"—"That I will," said Alba, "for I no longer find myself able to move a step."—"Ha, ha!" laughed the dwarf, "of course you can't move ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... possible that she was led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very first class—the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-minded Erfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil—a type again, as he was evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. She was a devotee of Rousseau, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... he didn't budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable, and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor's presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and made the talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly boyish. The latter must have been a few years over thirty, and was certainly not the sort of individual that gets abashed at the sound of his own voice, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... from his case and gave it to him. Then, striking a match, held it for him, till the wisp of paper and tobacco was well alight; while he lay back, drawing in the fragrant smoke, with a sigh in which contentment and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then, as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff, solemn and pompous—appeared under the lintel, Madame threw back her head ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... shirt-collar was tied with a piece of rope; his jacket was as much too short as his breeches were too long, one being out at the elbows, the other at the knees, the latter of which were tied with a wisp of straw tortured into a true lover's knot; his legs seemed nothing but a pair of short broom-sticks, of neither shape nor substance, ensconced in an old pair of spatterdashes; and the toes of his shoes curled upward like a pair of old-fashioned skates. Altogether he cut a curious figure, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... real man," I said to myself. I felt humble compared with him, an insignificant wisp of a thing, who could never do anything brave or great in life; and so I was proud to be called his "pal." When he asked if I, too, didn't need some cordial, I only laughed, and said I had just had one, the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson |
