"Fabulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... To build a city takes in our time as many years as it formerly required centuries; America offers endless examples of this. Distance has ceased to be an obstacle. The spirit of our age has gathered fabulous treasures into its storehouse. Every day this wealth increases. A hundred thousand heads are occupied with speculations and research at every point of the globe, and what any one discovers belongs the next moment ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... tortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardly of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five long months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom-house officers boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have curiously stared at them, felt of them, and stroked them much as savages serve civilized guests. But instead of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... one of those deposits that Hugh Miller somewhere speaks of, as disclosed by one tide and hidden by another. But all her life long, though she wore jewels and scattered gold, no gem rivalled the blood-red lustre of that sudden sparkle in the sands; and no wealth equalled the fabulous dreams that were born of it. It was to her as precious and irreparable as to the poet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... formerly met one with volubility and the expectation of a fabulous tip have given place to khakied orderlies, the polite customs officials to old-soldier myrmidons of the worried embarkation officer. Store dumps with English markings are packed symmetrically on the cobbled stones. The transport lorries are all British, some of them still branded with the names ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... am as ignorant of the real process as though I had never been in th" vampire's country. I should not feel so mortified at my total failure in attempting the discovery, had. I not made such diligent search after the vampire, and examined its haunts. Europeans may consider as fabulous the stories related of the vampire; but, for my own part, I must believe in its powers of sucking blood from living animals, as I have repeatedly seen both men and beasts which had been sucked, and, moreover, I have examined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... ears, but unfortunately for him, just at that moment we were walking up a steep hill and everybody in the carriage overheard his remark. It was received with such shouts of laughter that any explanation was difficult, and one may imagine the jokes, and the numerous and fabulous conquests that were instantly put down to the great duke's account. The poor fellow was quite bewildered. However, I don't know if an American is bound to know any history but that of his own country. I am quite sure that many people in the carriage didn't know whom Pocahontas ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... be supposed that the character of Elsie Veneer was suggested by some of the fabulous personages of classical or mediaeval story. I remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... translated from the French Original (London, 1780). Ditto, Letters from an English Trader; written originally in French; by the Rev. Martin Sherlock, A.M., Chaplain to the Earl of Bristol, &c. (a new Edition, 2 vols., London, 1802).] Poor Sherlock is nowhere intentionally fabulous; nor intrinsically altogether so foolish as he seems: let that suffice us. In his Dance of Will-o'-wisps, which in this point happily is dated,—26th-27th April, 1776,—he had come to Ferney, with proper introduction to Voltaire; and here (after severe excision of the flabby parts, but without ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ecstacy into the emerald depths of oceans now vanished,—what wouldst thou have said, could the thought have crossed thy brain, that one day thou shouldst be here? Under a glass! ticketted, numbered, pasted to the wall! forming an item in a collection of things fabulous, and exhibiting thy venerable form, thine antediluvian physiognomy, to thousands of badauds, who either pass thee without a glance, or examine thee with unfeeling curiosity, bestowing not a thought upon thy great age or thy cruel fate, or with a whit more ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... them money, more than they could count, Scent from a most ingenious little fount, More beer, in little kegs, Many dozen hard-boiled eggs, And goodies to a fabulous amount. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... great thing—and here Lingard spoke lower, bringing himself to a sudden standstill before the entranced Almayer—the great thing would be the gold hunt up the river. He—Lingard—would devote himself to it. He had been in the interior before. There were immense deposits of alluvial gold there. Fabulous. He felt sure. Had seen places. Dangerous work? Of course! But what a reward! He would explore—and find. Not a shadow of doubt. Hang the danger! They would first get as much as they could for themselves. Keep the thing quiet. Then after a time form a Company. In Batavia or in England. Yes, in ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... he received notice of his appointment to a clerkship in the Treasury Department, at a salary of nine hundred dollars. The sum seemed fabulous and he was in the seventh heaven. For many days the consciousness of wealth, the new duties, the street scenes, and the city life kept him more than busy. He planned to study, and arranged with a professor at Howard University to guide him. He bought an armful of books and a desk, and plunged ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hold of this, and said 'Now look at that mighty mind of Newton, who discovered gravity, and told us such marvels for us all to admire. When he became an old man, and got into his dotage, he began to study that book called the Bible; and it seems, that in order to credit its fabulous nonsense, we must believe that the knowledge of mankind will be so increased that we shall be able to travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The poor dotard!' exclaimed the philosophic infidel Voltaire, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... Fabulous as these stories sound, they still prove that Rhodopis must have been no ordinary woman. Some scholars would place her on a level with the beautiful and heroic Queen Nitokris, spoken of by Julius Africanus, Eusebius and others, and whose name, (signifying the victorious Neith) has been found ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had been stripped bare; many cases of goods were awaiting shipment around Cape Horn to California. California! A land of fable! We knew well enough that our father was there, and had been for two years or more; and that we were at last to go to him, and dwell there with the fabulous in a new home more or less fabulous,—yet we felt that it must be altogether lovely. We said good-bye to everybody,—getting friends and fellow-citizens more or less mixed as the hour of departure from ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... no less famous than these two worthies was Roch Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the very first adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of fabulous value, and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last captured by the Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him go by truculent threats of vengeance ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... By his two great acts,[326] one most criminal and the other heroic, he earned in equal measure the praise and the reprobation of posterity. It would certainly be beneath the dignity of my task to collect fabulous rumours for the amusement of my readers, but there are certain popular traditions which I cannot venture to contradict. On the day of the battle of Bedriacum, according to the account of the local peasants, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Matthew, the lion to St. Mark, and so on, is another question: but their order in Ezekiel corresponds with the order of the Gospels as we have them. Durandus would probably furnish some information. The fabulous legend of the lion savours of a later origin. Some valuable remarks on the subject, and a list of references to early writers, will be found in Dr. Wordsworth's Lectures on the Canon of Scripture (Lect. VI. p. 151.), ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... powers, the great distinction between the Briton even of the humblest rank and the Frenchman or German. The great victories gained by the English over the French—Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt—have been supposed almost fabulous, from the inequality of the contending forces—the small number on the victorious side, the vast host conquered by it. But we cease to wonder when we examine the different qualities of the combatants. At Agincourt, the English army, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... More of the iron pyrites. The metal has driven many a poor fellow mad with anticipations of fabulous ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present: Of our ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... ways and so rapid his pace that he is justly popular for a short spin to the very interesting shopping district, where almost everything may be found, the jewels holding the interest of the stranger above all else. But, alas, the pearl, Ceylon's home product, is to be had only at fabulous prices and not then in its perfection. We had heard of the lure of the pearl in the Gulf of Manaar (separating Ceylon from India), and of all the fairy-tale adventures involved in the search for it, and so we were disappointed in our failure ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... a man offered a fabulous price for a small interest in this spot," remarked Eleanor, taking up a handful of the pebbles and letting them run between her fingers in a speculative manner, while she glanced ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... XCII And saw fabulous Hibernia, where The goodly, sainted elder made the cave, In which men cleansed from all offences are; Such mercy there, it seems, is found to save. Thence o'er that sea he spurred, through yielding air, Whose briny waves the lesser Britain lave; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... hundred and forty-three different narratives, commencing with the fabulous Discovery of the West Indies in 1170, by Madoc, Prince of Wales. It contains the voyages of Columbus; of Cabot and his Sons; of Davis, Smith, Frobisher, Drake, Hawkins; the Discoveries of Newfoundland, Virginia, Florida, the Antilles, &c.; Raleigh's voyages to Guiana; ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Clara, and Charley said the same. But the good old gentleman shook his head, and declared that here ended the history, real or fabulous, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good deal rarer than Talbot. It's pretty much the same with the comic clothes of the parvenu. Jenkins dresses like a character in Punch. But that's because he is a character in Punch. I mean he's a fictitious character. He's a fabulous animal. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... to the Society for Piratical Research, under the patronage of his gracious Majesty, the King of this Island. You behold before you a committee of that Society; the Committee on Doubtful and Fabulous Tales, sometimes called for the sake of brevity, from the initials of its title, the Daft Committee. As Third Vice-President of the Society for Piratical Research, I have the honour to be Chairman of the Daft Committee. The seat of our Society is far from ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... Latin, which he did not industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard Poissonniere. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... society were not altogether unlike his own visions of Babylonia. This authoress was "Ouida." Ouida lived largely in a world of her own creation, peopled with foreign princesses, mysterious dukes—masters of untold millions, and of fabulous English guardsmen whose bedrooms in Knightsbridge Barracks were inlaid with silver and tortoise shell. And yet such was her genius that she invested this phantom world with a certain semblance of life, and very often with ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... with the honour of being the author of an important morphological work; he desired to round off his subject by considering its bearing upon the, to him, wild and fabulous tales concerning pigmy races. The various allusions to these races met with in the pages of the older writers, and discussed in his, were to him what fairy tales are to us. Like modern folk-lorists, he wished to explain, even to euhemerise them, and bring them into line with the ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... bare appearing harsh and severe, it is luxuriantly indefinable to an unusual degree; the fringe of the forest melts away like a vignette. The tops of two or three high trees when they are leafless are so soft that they seem like the gigantic brooms of that fabulous lady who was sweeping the cobwebs off the sky. The outline of a leafy forest is in comparison hard, gross and blotchy; the clouds of night do not more certainly obscure the moon than those green and monstrous clouds ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... had deigned to glance at the escritoire, it was only because he was curious to see how small a space would suffice to contain two millions; and then he had begun to calculate how many years he would be obliged to remain a clerk before he could succeed in amassing such a fabulous sum. However, hearing his superior express the intention of continuing the search for the will, and the missing treasure, he abruptly abandoned his calculation, and exclaimed, "Then, I suppose, I ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... placed the boy, tired as he was from his journey, on horseback, and led him a long and fatiguing ride. From this period to the battle of Pultowa, Max continued to be his constant companion, shared his dangers, and attended him in all his adventures, many of which border almost on the fabulous. The affectionate kindness evinced by Charles toward his pupil could not be surpassed. When the boy, as sometimes happened, was worn down by sickness and fatigue, the monarch attended him with parental care; and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... Triptolemus. He gave a kind reception to Ceres, who taught his son the cultivation of the earth. Ceres (se' rez). The goddess of grains and fruits. chamois (sham' my). A small species of antelope of remarkable agility. chimera (ki me' ra). A fabulous monster in Lycia, which was slain by Bellerophon. Clio (kli' o). The muse of history. Clymene (kli me' ne). Mother of Phaeton. Clytie (kli' ti e). The maiden who was changed into a sunflower. Cupid (ku' pid). The god of love, possessing eternal ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... not be permitted to rot—as it does—on Obscurity's shelf: Thus the national hoard shall with profit be stored (with a trifle of course for myself): For lectures are dear in that fortunate sphere, and are paid for at fabulous rates,— All the gold of Klondike isn't anything like to the sums that are made ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... medical works had an extraordinary vogue, particularly the "De Secretis Mulierum" and the "De Virtutibus Herbarum," but there is some doubt as to the authorship of the first named, although Jammy and Borgnet include it in the collected editions of his works. So fabulous was his learning that he was suspected of magic and comes in Naude's list of the wise men who have unjustly been reputed magicians. Ferguson tells(22) that "there is in actual circulation at the present time a chapbook . . . containing ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... cents in that, and you see I couldn't convince them of the fabulous wealth of my father and my friends by exhibiting that. They said they would take me when they went in, and I could not get anything ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... deluge. What kind of a family had Noah? Was amalgamation practised by any of Noah's sons? If all the human occupants of the ark were Caucasians, how did they produce negro races in forty-eight years? The facts again compel us to announce the fabulous character of this Genesical story ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... arrived there. The purpose of his coming was no different from that of the other gentlemen-adventurers who were bent on acquiring speedy fortunes in a land of supposed riches that formed the theme of fabulous and alluring tales, which often enough had but slender foundation in fact. As his father had already acquired properties in the island, it is probable that Bartholomew came to assume the direction of them. There is nothing to show that he was at that time especially impressed or moved by the sad ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... 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
... her that, a portion of the sky having fallen down (probably owing to the defective work of her predecessor), she rebuilt it with precious stones of many colours. Lien shih pu tien, "to patch the sky with precious stones," is a set phrase by which the Chinese indicate that which is fabulous and absurd. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... everywhere else, are what nature, education, and circumstances have made them. Once an age, once in half-a-dozen ages, nature may make a Brinvilliers, or art allow of a Zeluco; but, in general, monsters are mere fabulous creatures—mistakes often, from bad drawings, like the unicorn." "Yes, mamma, yes; now I feel much more comfortable. The unicorn has convinced me," said Lady Cecilia, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... for having written and published a bitter, cold and pitiless attack on religion, which was the favourite reading of many scholars and literary men, and this notable performance, together with the well accredited reports of his almost fabulous wealth, secured for him two social sets,—the one composed of such human sharks as are accustomed to swim round the plutocrat,—the other of the cynical, listless, semi-bored portion of a so-called cultured ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... reader will also notice upon Toscanelli's map the islands of Brazil and St. Brandan. For an account of all these fabulous islands see Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i. pp. 46-51. The name of "Antilia" survives in the name "Antilles," applied since about 1502 to the West India islands. All the islands west of Toscanelli's ninetieth meridian belong in the Pacific. He drew them from his ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... bring death into the 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
... tree, as the enormous footprints occasionally seen in its vicinity testify. A Manbo of the Kasilaan River assured me that he had seen them and that they were a fathom long. I have heard various accounts of this fabulous ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the advanced age of ninety-three, he is as erect as a pine, and he rides his horse with his usual vigor and grace. He is thin and spare and very tall, and those who knew him fifty years or more remember him as the most skilful horseman in the neighborhood of San Diego. And yet, as fabulous as it may seem, the man who danced this Don Antonio on his knee when he was an infant is not only still alive, but is active enough to mount his horse and canter about the country. Some years ago I attended an elderly gentleman, since dead, who knew this man as a full-grown ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... curved to fit the projectile walls of the ship, Lord took a lightweight jacket, marked with the tooled shoulder insignia of command. He smiled a little as he put it on. He was Martin Lord, trade agent and heir to the fabulous industrial-trading empire of Hamilton Lord, Inc.; yet he was afraid to face Ann Howard without the visible ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... in error: but the error was in himself. Parker did not believe in the possibility of miracles: but the Bible contained accounts of miracles. The Bible therefore must be pronounced, to a great extent, fabulous. But miracles are possible; miracles are actual, palpable realities, and Parker's objection falls to the ground. Many smatterers in science object to the credibility of the gospel history on the same ground, and are answered ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... now return to Philip and Krantz. When the latter retired from the presence of the Portuguese Commandant, he communicated to Philip what had taken place, and the fabulous tale which he had invented to deceive the Commandant. "I said that you alone knew where the treasure was concealed," continued Krantz, "that you might be sent for, for in all probability he will keep me as a hostage: but never mind that, I must take my chance. Do you contrive to escape somehow ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... hour, his love for dollar signs, and he nodded in wise agreement over Felix's decision to give up the quest for gold. Barbara would hearken in awed fascination to that story of the man lost in the desert, whose eyes looked once upon fabulous wealth but who could never find ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and preserves, because it knows that they embalm custom and represent law. And with this you have created the greatest empire of modern times. You have amassed a capital of fabulous amount. You have devised and sustained a system of credit still more marvellous, and you have established a scheme so vast and complicated of labor and industry that the history of the world affords no parallel to it. And these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the essential ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... which the rich paid fabulous prices; motor cars which had escaped military requisition, farmers' carts laden with several families and piles of household goods, shop carts drawn by horses already tired to the point of death because of the weight of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the 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 ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... mariner resumed. 'From this woman, who had recognised your father by a peculiar mark on his hand, I learned that she had kept the papers of your grandmother and the locket, and gave them to your father; but he treated them as fabulous, and her as an impostor. Your mother, however, gave credence to her tale, and even consulted a lawyer; but they were not sufficient without my evidence, and your father would not take any steps in the affair. Your mother ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... found its place and was exhibited for years. It is a striking fact that this precious stone was undisturbed there, in the open air, for over seventy years, until the Shah of Persia, in 1739, invaded India and sacked the palace of the Moguls, and, with other fabulous wealth, carried this diamond also back ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... This fabulous creature was one of those destructive monsters of which many ravaged Greece in the age of fable. It had the body of a man and the head of a bull, and so great was the havoc it wrought among the Cretans that Minos engaged the great artist Daedalus to construct a den from which it could ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a battery which he turns upon the discomfited foe. At Contreras his command proves as impenetrable as a phalanx of Alexander; and when at last the victorious Americans fight their way into Mexico, the city of fabulous treasures and associations well-nigh classical, for the first time he receives a wound. He was breveted captain for his gallantry at Cherubusco, and at the end of the war received the rank of full captain, and was ordered with his regiment to California. No appointment could have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... majesty has given me, I have learned that the Firedrake, like the siren, the fairy, and so forth, is a fabulous animal which does not exist. But even granting, for the sake of argument, that there is a Firedrake, your majesty is well aware that there is no kind of use in sending me. It is always the eldest son who goes out first, and comes to grief on ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... which obstruct cultivation and the productive employment of labour," Wallace ascertained many years later that no single part of the land so enclosed had been cultivated by those to whom it was given, though certain portions had been let or sold at fabulous prices for building purposes, to accommodate summer visitors to the neighbourhood. Thus the unfortunate people who had formerly enjoyed home, health, and comparative prosperity in the cottages scattered over this common land had been ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a Prince, whose history, if related by less trustworthy parties, could not fail to be considered fabulous. His territory is situated on the river Gabon. He speaks English and French fluently, as well as an African dialect called Boulou. He is a man of gentle and polished manners, and possesses the self-control of the most accomplished ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... "Let us make Germans instead of Greeks and Romans! Let us teach our children the practical side of life." All of which does not prevent him from adding: "Let us teach them the fabulous ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... yes, Sir, often in Disguise, in several Shapes and Forms, which did of old occasion so many fabulous Tales of all the Shapes of Jupiter—but never in their proper Glory, Sir, as Emperors. This is an ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... and looks flourishing and prosperous; the way in which property is increasing in value here is wonderful, and the hits some people have made are quite fabulous. A property which had been bought for 30,000l., was, within a month—before even the price was paid in full—resold in lots for 100,000l. The position of the town is admirably adapted for a great commercial city: it possesses a secure harbour; it is situated on ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... enhance its splendors. Herod the Great had lavished upon it both Roman wealth and Jewish treasure, and even the emperor of the world had enriched it with his gifts. Massive blocks of white marble, of almost fabulous size, forwarded from Rome for this purpose, formed a part of its structure; and to these the disciples had called the attention of their Master, saying, "See what manner of stones and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... event and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find something to ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... become known to science. The Indians, when they go out to gather it, simply lop off these little ends as they peep above the earth, dry them, keep what they wish for their own use, and sell the rest for what is to them a fabulous sum. Some people chew the buttons, while a few have lately tried making an infusion or tea out of them. Perhaps to a beginner I had ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... nations echo by a reflex sympathy with England; not always by a friendly sympathy. Like the [Greek: aerobatentes] and funambuli of ancient days, equally when keeping the difficult line of advance, or when losing it, England is regarded with a searching gaze that might seem governed by the fabulous fascination of the rattlesnake. Does she ascend on her proper line of advance? There is heard the murmur of reluctant applause. Does she trip? There arises the yell of triumph. Is she seen purchasing the freedom of a negro nation? The glow of admiration suffuses the countenance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Gerard? His art was honoured, and fabulous prices paid for it; in a year or two he should return by sea to Holland, with good store of money, and set up with his beloved Margaret in Bruges, or Antwerp, or dear Augsburg, and end their days in peace, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... go without clothes so readily; they were forever making use of that fabulous thing—credit! At first it took his breath away to discover that the people here in the town got everything they wanted without paying money for it. "Will you please put it down?" they would say, when they came for their boots; and "it's to be entered," he himself would say, when he made a purchase ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... manufactured. From cylinders placed in central positions in a score of cities it was discharged continuously, covering these centers with an impenetrable pall of night that no light would penetrate. Only by the glow of radium paint, which commanded fabulous prices, could official business be transacted, and that only to a very ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... 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 ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... water in the tin pitcher at his side, he thought of the meals, worthy of Lucullus, of which he had partaken, at the Russian court, by the side of the all-powerful Russian minister Bestuchef; he remembered the fabulous pomp which surrounded him, and the profound reverence which was shown him, as the acknowledged favorite of the prime ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... River and the terror-inspiring gun-boats. In front the hill sloped gently down to the Charles City and Richmond road, and other points by which the enemy must debouch to begin the attack. On this natural plateau not less than three hundred pieces of artillery—a number fabulous in any preceding struggle in the history of the world—were placed in battery; so arranged that they would not interfere With the fire of the infantry along the natural glacis up which the assailants ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... their disciple Spenser." The theory which traces romantic fiction to the Arabs is but partially true. The entire literature of that age was monstrous, full of the most absurd and extravagant fancies. History was fabulous; poetry mendacious and philosophy erroneous. Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... helped me to restore his master and mistress. When they came to, I took the whole party to my hut and cared for them. The next day I rowed the Count and the African out to the wreck of their vessel on that rock you see away over there, and they brought back with them a fabulous amount of money and jewels that they found in the strangest closets I ever saw in the cabin. Then the Count bought this island and has lived here ever since. He took the lady to Athens and was married to her there, and on his return he had the palace they ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... than those offered by money. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick, curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow. Her complexion was of the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe. She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements and gestures betrayed ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... this country have many fabulous stories, which shall be briefly mentioned. They acknowledge three deities as rulers of the world, who are respectively named Batara-guru, Sori-pada, and Mangalla-bulang. The first, say they, bears rule in heaven, is the father of all mankind, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... plain of indefinite extent, and that around the inhabited regions on all sides extended, to vast distances, either desert wastes or trackless oceans. How could that same sun, which plunged into the ocean at a fabulous distance in the west, reappear the next morning at an equally great distance in the east? The old mythology asserted that after the sun had dipped in the western ocean at sunset (the Iberians, and other ancient nations, actually imagined ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... and winter was at hand. I decided not to go to the mining district until the spring sun should return. Provisions commanded almost fabulous prices. Packers got a dollar a pound for packing flour, sugar, rice and other things which the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Expedition and Battles: To which is added, A Criticism on Q. Curtius, as a fabulous Historian. By M. le Clerc, in two ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... probability, not be rejected by a naturalist, although it might be by people without much knowledge of the animal kingdom, who would not be able to judge by comparison whether the existence of such an animal was credible. Even fabulous animals have had their origin from existing ones. The unicorn is, no doubt, the gemsbok antelope; for when you look at the animal at a distance, its two horns appear as if they were only one, and the Bushmen have so portrayed the animal in their caves. The dragon also is not exactly imaginary; for, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it seems to have had the power of inspiring fabulous tales, for Miss Celia Fiennes, who looked at it in her journey from Cornwall, makes a statement almost as wonderful as some of Sir John Mandeville's tales of Barnacle Trees and other marvels. She ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Fabulous relations are given in connection with the career of Cromwell. We are told he was in league with the devil, to whom he sold himself for a brief period of power among a people whom he ruled with a rod of iron, and trampled their rulers under his feet. That Cromwell used ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... were figured out at a fair interest on the capital, would be something fabulous," he declared. "You see, the place was extravagantly built—without any regard to cost. The dressing rooms, as you may have noticed, are wonderful, and all the appointments are unique. I don't fancy the old man's ever had a quarter's rent yet that's paid him one per cent, on the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that these islands have not been known to any mortal, almost up to our time. For whatever statements of ancient authors we have hitherto read with respect to the native soil of these spices, are partly entirely fabulous, and partly so far from truth, that the very regions, in which they asserted that these spices were produced, are scarcely less distant from the countries in which it is now ascertained that they grow, than we ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... many fabulous relations of such things as have dropped thence. There is a tale of the Nemean Lyon that Hercules slew, which first rushing among the heards out of his unknowne den in the Mountaine of Cytheron in Boeotia, the credulous ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... and an halfe, he departed this life, hauing 7 daies warning giuen him (as it is reported) from aboue, before he should die, after a miraculous maner, which because in the iudgement of the most it may seeme meere fabulous, we will omit and passe ouer. His bodie was first buried in the church of our ladie, but after that the church of saint Peter the apostle were builded, his bones ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... believed that these treasures had been carried far away by the servants of those unhappy monarchs. Guiana, the northeastern section of South America, was looked upon by the Spanish adventurers as the hiding-place of this fabulous wealth. Others fancied that Guiana was the true El Dorado in itself, a land marvellously rich in gold, silver, and precious stones. Gonzalo Pizarro, in his expedition in 1540, had heard much from the Indians of this land of wealth, and Orellana brought back from his famous ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... large salaries as heads of these departments, have given adequate satisfaction, as has been proved by the prosperity of the Corporations. The recompense of the heads of these various departments, requiring as it does men of the greatest commercial understanding, is said to be in some instances fabulous. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... and our shore roared diffuse Abysmal seas and fabulous hurricanes Which, thought on, blanched the faces of the bold; For the dread secret of the heavens was then The Western world. Yet on the Italian coasts A boy grew into manhood, in whose soul The instinct of the unknown continent ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... morning was a Sunday, the twenty-fourth of September. Branwell awoke to it perfectly conscious, and through the holy quiet of that early morning he lay, troubled by neither fear nor suffering, while the bells of the neighbouring church, the neighbouring tower whose fabulous antiquity had furnished him with many a boyish pleasantry, called the villagers to worship. They all knew him, all as they passed the house would look up and wonder if "t' Vicar's Patrick" were better or worse. But ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... her, disposing them to listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people have a weakness for this kind of confidence. Madame Guillaume wanted to know the most trivial details of that alien life, which to her seemed almost fabulous. The travels of Baron da la Houtan, which she began again and again and never finished, told her nothing more ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... pays with his right hand he will get back with his left, either out of the pocket of a man who isn't looking, or out of the envy of the poor neighbour who IS looking, but can't afford the figure. The seats are cheap. Why should A People, fabulous and lofty giraffe, want to charge or pay high prices? If it were THE PEOPLE now.—But it isn't. It isn't Plebs, the proletariat. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... wrote Telemaque. "It is a fabulous narrative," he himself says, "in the form of an heroic poem, like Homer's or Virgil's, wherein I have set forth the principal actions that are meet for a prince whose birth points him out as destined to reign. I did it at a time when I was charmed with the marks of confidence ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... these ghostly [fabulous, figurative] Scots? I will go bail they be wrapped of their foldings [plaids] fast asleep on some moor an hundred miles hence. 'Tis but Robin, the clown! that is so clumst [stupid] with his rashness, that he seeth a Scot full ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... beings, plants, animals or man is formed by the mingling of yang and yin. While the mountain, enveloped in mists, recalls the union of these two principles, the legend of forces thus revealed by no means pauses here. Fabulous or real, the animals and plants habitually seen in Chinese paintings express a ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... passion, but a great means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this, nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners of those "sentiments" of the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was reserved for—but one never names contemporaries ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... place in London, at a hundred and twenty a year. This seemed a fabulous sum. His mother doubted almost whether ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... from thee the dearest treasure of thy heart, is Roderic. His mother—attend, oh Edwin, for whatever the incredulous may pretend, the tales related by the bards in their immortal songs, of ghosts, and fairies, and dire enchantment, are not vain and fabulous.—You have heard of the inauspicious fame and the bad eminence of Rodogune. She withdrew from the fields of Clwyd within the memory of the elder of shepherds. Various were the conjectures occasioned by her disappearance. Some imagined, that for the haughtiness of her humour, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... 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 gold."—Gibbon's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was taken by a fabulous wonderworld, full of the most fantastic and romantic scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all distorted. For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht) Alexander the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... origin of those princes and nations. It is evident what fruitless labour it must be to search, in those barbarous and illiterate ages, for the annals of a people, when their first leaders, known in any true history, were believed by them to be the fourth in descent from a fabulous deity, or from a man exalted by ignorance into that character. The dark industry of antiquaries, led by imaginary analogies of names, or by uncertain traditions, would in vain attempt to pierce into that deep obscurity which covers the remote ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... ovens in the old building by the Church of the Descalzas, and the business began to yield fabulous profits. Being a devotee of the life of pleasure, Marti died three or four years after the business had been established, and Don Matias continued his gallinaceous evolutions until he was utterly ruined, and had pawned everything ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Magazine. A Frenchman named Favyn, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, published {330} a folio book on Orders of Knighthood, and, giving to many of them an antiquity of several centuries,—often either fabulous or greatly exaggerated,—provided them all with imaginary collars, of which he exhibits engravings. M. Favyn's book was republished in English, and his collars have been handed down from that time to this, in all our heraldic ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... commonly known and famous, are now become in a manner obscure and obsolete names. Camillus, Cieso, Volesius, Leonnatus; not long after, Scipio, Cato, then Augustus, then Adrianus, then Antoninus Pius: all these in a short time will be out of date, and, as things of another world as it were, become fabulous. And this I say of them, who once shined as the wonders of their ages, for as for the rest, no sooner are they expired, than with them all their fame and memory. And what is it then that shall always be remembered? all is vanity. What is ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... better moderation, do either entertain the vulgar history of Jurgen as a fabulous addition unto the true and authentic story of St. Iurgenius of Poictesme, or else we conceive the literal acception to be a misconstruction of the symbolical expression: apprehending a veritable history, in an emblem or piece of Christian poesy. And this emblematical construction hath been ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... enterprise first gives to the public. Lord Beauvoir's career since his arrival here has been one of unexampled extravagance and mad immorality. His days and nights have been passed in the gilded palaces of the fickle goddess, Fortune, in Thomas Street and College Place, where he has squandered fabulous sums, by some stated to amount to over L78,000 sterling. It is satisfactory to know that retribution has at last overtaken him. His enormous income has been exhausted to the ultimate farthing, and at latest accounts he had quit the city, leaving behind him, it is shrewdly suspected, a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... harem of fair Circassians for what one of those little square boxes costs. A lady whose entrance caused no sensation would feel bitterly disappointed. As a rule, she knows little about music, and cares still less, unless some singer is performing who is paid a fabulous price, which gives his notes a peculiar charm. With us most things are valued by the money they have cost. Ladies attend the opera simply and solely to see their ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... 'it is only one of those fabulous stories which the ingenious French naturalist, Buffon, so much delighted to recount. The porcupine's quills may be pulled out easily by anything which presses too rudely against them, such as the mouth ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would distinguish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... two other paintings, one on each of the rocks which stood on either side of the natural seat; they were carefully executed and yet had no apparent design in them; unless they were intended to represent some fabulous species of turtle; for the natives of Australia are generally fond of narrating tales of fabulous and extraordinary animals such as gigantic ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... twenty hours more in that spot; and the Kolimsk men declared that the river must be the Vchivaya, they could draw the seine all day, for the river was deep, its waters warmer than others, and its abundance of fish such as to border on the fabulous. They went accordingly down to the side of the stream, and then the happy Kolina gave free vent to her joy. She burst out into a song of her native land, and gave way to some demonstrations of delight, the result of her ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... 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
... These fabulous geese made no sound when he picked them up with lead-lined gloves and put them in his bag, also lined with lead-leaf. They were not even aware of him. Laboratory-bred, retort-shaped, their protoplasm a blend ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... Columbus, and seen cattle standing in long lines of booths, quilts, and plows, and chickens, pies, bread, and fancy knitting, horses, cake stands, and crowds of people. They considered it the finest sight in the world, except, perhaps, a fabulous crystal palace which was or had been somewhere a great ways off, and which everybody talked about a great deal, and some folks had pictured on their window blinds. But a fair got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise money ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... turned to stones Of all the unknown elder world, As in a wonderful museum, Ranged in its myriad mummy shelves. Insects and worms,— All lower forms Of fin and scale, Of gnat and whale, Fish, bird, and the monstrous mastodon, The fabulous megatherium, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... 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 and packmules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... French which had been declared off filled Spain with needy cavaliers who had started out for an adventure and were greatly desirous of having one. Encisco and Zamudio had both enflamed the minds of the Spanish people with fabulous stories of the riches of Darien. It was curiously believed that gold was so plentiful that it could be fished up in nets from the rivers. Such a piscatorial prospect was enough to unlock the coffers of a prince as selfish as Ferdinand. He was willing to risk fifty thousand ducats in ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... which the child was born was very different to the one in which we live. Europe was known, and northern Africa, and western Asia; but to the east stretched the fabulous country of the Grand Khan, Cathay, Cipango, and farthest Ind; while to the west rolled the Sea of Darkness, peopled ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Battas and Malays. When these events happened, is not so easy to ascertain; it was probably not very lately, as they are extremely populous, and have no tradition of their own origin, but what is perfectly fabulous; whilst, on the other hand, the unadulterated state of their general language, and the similarity which still prevails in their customs and manners, seem to indicate that it could not have been at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous blues and pinks of the great Boucher series looked as livid as withered roses. "I suppose they ought to be taken down and aired," ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,—beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to lay aside these sublime studies, 'Le solite arte e l' uso mio'? No! but to cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conception ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of needlework reached its climax long ago, and is now very old. History and faded rags are the only witnesses to its fabulous glories, in Classical, Oriental, and early Mediaeval days. It would appear that nothing new remains to be invented. Copies of past styles, and selections from the scraps we retain and value as models, are all that we can ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... patrons were married ladies who, finding themselves likely to become mothers, and being too heartless and frivolous to desire the pains and cares of maternity, sought this woman's aid and, in some instances, paid her fabulous sums to have their innocent offspring destroyed before they saw the light. Others who sought her services were unmarried girls, who, having sacrificed their honor were prepared to pay any price to conceal their shame, by the destruction of the little ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Esteban had quietly installed Hurlstone in a small cell-like apartment off the refectory. The household of the priest consisted of an old Indian woman of fabulous age and miraculous propriety, two Indian boys who served at mass, a gardener, and a muleteer. The first three, who were immediately in attendance upon the priest, were cognizant of a stranger's presence, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... to the North. Former residents of some of the rural districts of the South who had gone North and secured a foothold wrote letters back to their friends and relatives telling them of their success in the new environment. They depicted in these missives wages which seemed fabulous sums when compared with those received in the South, told of the good conditions of their surroundings, and of numerous advantages and opportunities which they were enjoying, but which had been ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... had known him longest, were astonished. It was an effort of unequaled power, sweeping down, like a very tornado, every opposing barrier, whether of sentiment or opinion. For a moment, he possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a single individuality—the orator wielding a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by the simple majesty of his ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... to do?" asked Melmount. "We have awakened; this empire in our hands. . . ." I know this will seem the most fabulous of all the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group of men who constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable land of the earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... In history, nothing fabulous can be agreeable; and flattery is disgusting to all readers, except the very dregs of the people; good judges look with the eyes of Argus on every part, reject everything that is false and adulterated, and will admit nothing but what is ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... 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
... condolence on Mr. Thrale's death, Johnson speaks of her having enjoyed happiness in marriage, "to a degree of which, without personal knowledge, I should have thought the description fabulous." The "Autobiography" and "Thraliana" tell a widely different tale. The mortification of not finding herself appreciated by her husband was poignantly increased, during the last years of his life, by finding another offensively preferred to her. He was so fascinated by one of her ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... natural history, we see there hath not been that choice and judgment used as ought to have been; as may appear in the writings of Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and divers of the Arabians, being fraught with much fabulous matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural philosophy with the grave and sober kind of wits: wherein the wisdom and integrity of Aristotle is worthy to be observed, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... assume a number of 84,000 burgesses who were freeholders and capable of bearing arms; for such, we are told, were the numbers ascertained by Servius at the first census. A glance at the map, however, shows that this number must be fabulous; it is not even a genuine tradition, but a conjectural calculation, by which the 16,800 capable of bearing arms who constituted the normal strength of the infantry appeared to yield, on an average of five persons ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... knowing full well if he had no chance to spend it, it would all come back to him in the end. Then he set about deceiving him by an offer to buy the Sea Fox and pay what he believed the Indian would consider a fabulous price. It was a fatal mistake. The Indian had no real idea of the value of his sloop. It had come to him as payment for his share of a successful fishing-trip to The Banks years before, and he had become attached to that craft. It ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... not only be accumulated in Africa, but attracted from the white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as legitimate ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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, ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... which was most uncertain as the coach journeys soon overlapped, there was always a lengthy, well-attended "roll-up" at the Store. Here we first made acquaintance with Messrs. Browne and Lyon, then negotiating for the purchase of Bayley's fabulous mine of gold. No account of the richness of this claim at that time could be too extravagant to be true; for surely such a solid mass of gold was never seen before, as met the eye in ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... from the ancient Grecian Colony of Tanagra, which no modern work of plastic art can imitate in grace of form and delicacy of color,—dating three or four hundred years before the Christian era; and in other rooms, a fabulous collection of jewels, and numberless precious vases, illustrating especially the ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... really there, and its amount must be fabulous. I have been told that there are jewels there which would bring a Rajah's ransom, and gold enough to offset the taxes of the whole of India for a year or two. I've no doubt the stories are exaggerated, but the treasure is real enough, and big enough to make the throne worth fighting for. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... may attempt to vindicate the fame of Robespierre, and strive to wash the blackamoor white. Are not our old historical assurances everywhere asserted? Has it not been proved to us that crooked-backed Richard was a good and politic King; and that the iniquities of Henry VIII are fabulous? whereas the agreeable predilections of our early youth are disturbed by our hearing that glorious Queen Bess, and learned King James, were ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... much of the ambition formidable in its day, collected in a family meeting round a tomb, formed a spectacle which led one to profound reflection: there you saw Philip the Good, Charles the Rash, and Mary of Bergundy; and in the midst of these historical personages Dietrich of Berne, a fabulous hero: the closed visor concealed the countenances of the knights, but when this visor was lifted up a brazen countenance appeared under a helmet of brass, and the features of the knight were of bronze, like his armour. The visor of Dietrich of Berne is the only one which cannot be lifted ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory; One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... mayest 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 ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... question me as to my mind—life and where I stood, and expressed himself surprised to hear that I still held to the creed in which we had been reared. How, he demanded, did I reconcile these ancient fabulous notions with the doctrine of evolution? What effect had Darwin produced on me? I had to confess that I had not read a line of his work, that with the exception of Draper's History of Civilisation, which had come by chance in my way, I had during all those five years read nothing ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... such far back ages that we have almost lost the clue to their story—glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of place in the rich fields of later eras; songs of rude periods, nature myths, legends of semi-fabulous heroes, folk lore of the tribes, scraps from long-forgotten books, entries from ancient annals, pages torn from the histories of other peoples to fill out the story; the whole worked over many times by many hands ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton |
