"Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... damsel, and without remorse, The king condemned her guiltless to the fire, Her veil and mantle plucked they off by force, And bound her tender arms in twisted wire: Dumb was the silver dove, while from her corse These hungry kites plucked off her rich attire, And for some deal perplexed was her sprite, Her damask late, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... old. The king was so much perplexed that he threatened the princess's playfellows with all sorts of punishments if they would not confess something about her disappearance; but as they only repeated the same story he presently put down the whole affair to the work of some sprite or goblin, and tried to console himself for his loss by ordering a grand hunt; for kings cannot bear to be troubled about ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... all thy might, Here's goblin foul or woodland sprite Come for to steal our souls away, So on thy knees quick, Fool, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... she complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow. "He is behaving badly," she said; "he ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... his design Respectful. That black, bitter element, As if obedient to his wish, gave way; So, comforting Phraerion, on he went, And a high, craggy arch they reach at dawn of day, Upon the upper world; and forced them through That arch, the thick, cold floods, with such a roar, That the bold sprite receded, and would view The cave before he ventured to explore. Then, fearful lest his frighted guide might part And not be missed amid such strife and din, He strained him closer to his burning heart, And, trusting to his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... rude stock this saddle sprite Is grosser grown with savage things. Inured to storms, his fierce delight Is lawless as the beasts he swings His swift rope over.—Libidinous, obscene, Careless of dust and dirt, serene, He faces snows in calm disdain, Or makes his ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... had finished his second ballad, and sometimes even sooner, concupiscent looks appeared in their eyes. The boatman of their dreams, the water-sprite of fairy tales, vanished in the mist of their childish recollections, and the singer re-assumed his real shape, that of musician and strolling player, whom they wished to pay, to be their lover. And the coppers ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... God gave the sprite To know and utter princes' acts to come, Like to the Jewish prophets did recite In shade of beasts their doings all and some; Expressing plain by manners of the doom That kings and lords such properties should have As have the beasts whose name ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... gonne, save onlye the intellecte or vnderstandinge, w{hi}che remayned sounde and good, as apperethe after by the followinge woordes, for when deathe approched, and that all outwarde senses fayled, he (Arcite) yet cast eye vppon Emelye, remembringe her, thoughe the cheifest vitall sprite of his harte and his streng[th]e were gonne from hym. but he colde not haue cast his eye vppon Emelye, yf his intellecte had fayled hym. Yet yf you liste to reade, "and also the intellecte," for saue only the intellecte, yt may after ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... Association could hardly inaugurate a year of promised activity more auspiciously than it has by the sterling issue of its president's Sprite. It is just about everything that one could ask for in amateur journalism. The modest grey of the cover, the excellence of the paper stock, the flawlessness of the typography, the exquisite taste with which the component parts are blended—all these strike the eye ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... 'There the sprite had decidedly the advantage. You could "gar her greet," but you could not "gar her know." She had only to hold out; and when Miss Martindale found it time to go home to dinner, and began to grow ashamed of her position, the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his heart, like ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... common object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a wee brown sprite, very pretty, very serious, very winning, delicately moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the strangers, but in the beginning preferring to hold her father's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wandered with a timid step Beneath the moon's pale light, And every blazing dew-drop seemed To be a tiny sprite; And listened with suspended breath, Among the grand, old trees, For fairy music floating soft Upon ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... The short, sharp bark of the 75's, the boom of the death-dealing enemy guns, the shrieks of the shells and the fall of masonry parting from houses to which it had been attached for centuries, whilst from the shattered window frames the familiar sprite of the household looked ever for the children who came no longer across the thresholds of the homes. Verdun is no longer a refuge for all that is good and beautiful and tender, and so the sounds of the voices ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... You feel us near In many a ghastly dream; With fancy's eye Our forms you spy, And hear our fatal scream. With clearer sight Ere falls the night, Just when to weal or woe Your disembodied souls take flight On trembling wing—each startled sprite Our choir ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... that had he looked upon her face—the face of a withered sprite, subdued by time. The hurt of that look was still fresh in him, making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had the seed of revolt been in her, from his own revolt ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... had three servants whom he employed to attend to his most important business. These were a Gryphoness, a Water Sprite, and an Absolute Fool. This last one was very valuable; for there were some things he would do which no one else would think of attempting. The Dwarf called to him the Gryphoness, the oldest and ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... used to sit down in the pit And see you flit like elf or fairy Across the stage, and I'll engage No moonbeam sprite were half so airy. Lo! everywhere about me there Were rivals reeking with pomatum, And if perchance they caught a glance In song or dance, how did ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... fearless; nor, O Prince! Had Aswatthaman more than marked the birds, When, lo! there fell out of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the wings from this, the legs from that, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... where I observed this wee feathered fantasy, the tantalizing sprite of the rushes, and where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think about him, calls for a fuller description. On one side the wooded hill sloped downward to the stream; on the other side spread the meadows where the rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand about motionless, looking ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... to warm up to her," contradicted Mademoiselle Eloise, a pale, light-haired sprite, who had arrived late and was making undignified efforts to get out of her clothes by way of her head. She was Polly's understudy and next in line for the star place in ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... little alteration here, excepting in the case of Jacquelina, who had grown up to be the most enchanting sprite that ever bewitched the hearts, or turned the heads of men. She was petite, slight, agile, graceful; clustering curls of shining gold encircled a round, white forehead, laughing in light; springs under springs of fun and frolic sparkled up from the bright, blue eyes, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Pleasure Now indeed make marvellous meeting. See with suasion firmly sweet That brisk trio, gaily greeting To that portal guide his feet. Neptune's hoarse hails his friend's approach declare, Probate, the winged sprite, about must play; With wanton wings that winnow the soft air In gliding state Lord Cupid leads the way To where grave Law must mark, assay, reprove Wanderings of young Desire, and lures ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... his back, or whispering in his ear, There stood a sprite ycleped Phantasy; Which, wheresoe'er he went, was always near: Her look was wild, and roving was her eye; Her hair was clad with flowers of every dye; Her glistering robes were of more various hue Than the fair bow that ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... only her looks, though she's beautiful, as some blithe sprite met by chance in a forest. It isn't only her youth, for she is too absurdly young. A girl, to be taken seriously by a grown man, should be at least one-and-twenty. She is, I believe, on the lilied edge of eighteen. Ridiculous! Yet where she is, other women, also beautiful ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; and though ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when one is sitting safely in the middle of civilisation—and yet still lives as a natural power in the people—is represented, on the whole, in pigmy proportions in the south. Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... to make him doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... good sprite to you, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said after musing a little while,—"you are so ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... chains to the rack, by reason of his having promised the bitter coquette he would be there. So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the antidote face of the wood-sprite before he was to undergo it. But, as he was not by nature a dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one, he soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief to come from the state of ruminating animal, and jumped up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or Elb, the water sprite who gave its name to the Elbe River in Germany, the Neck, from whom the Neckar derives its name, and old Father Rhine, with his numerous daughters (tributary streams), the most famous of all the lesser water divinities ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... heart, and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... villagers was the head man, swarthy-faced, clean-shaved Kusis; beside him Tulpe, his wife, a graceful young woman of about five-and-twenty, and her husband's little daughter by a former wife. This child was named Kinie, a merry-faced, laughing-voiced sprite, ten years of age, with long, wavy, and somewhat unkempt hair hanging down ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... a man who hadn't the politeness to perform this little ceremony. He made a cradle for his baby out of the elder tree. But the sprite was offended, and she used to come and pull the baby out of the cradle by its legs, and pinch it and make it cry, so that it was quite impossible to leave the poor little thing in the elder cradle, and they had to weave one of basket-work ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... sibilant aspiration. These words are general names for any kind of spirit, and correspond to the 'pouk' of Piers Ploughman. In Danish 'spog' means a joke, trick, or prank, and hence the character of Robin Goodfellow. In Iceland Puki is regarded as an evil sprite; and in the language of that country, 'at pukra' means both to make a murmuring noise and to steal clandestinely. The names of these spirits seem to have originated in their boisterous temper—'spuken,' Germ. to make ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and spiritual entities wrapped in the garments of isolation, robed with questioning. Her genius is in this sense essentially local, as much the voice of the spirit of New England as it is possible for one to hold. If ever wanderer hitched vehicle to the comet's tail, it was the poetic, sprite woman, no one ever rode the sky and the earth as she did in this radiant and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... willow by a brook, went to it, and took therefrom some touchwood, to which he set a light with his knife and a stone, while Amyas watched, a little puzzled and startled, as Yeo's fiery reputation came into his mind. Was he really a salamander-sprite, and going to warm his inside by a meal of burning tinder? But now Yeo, in his solemn methodical way, pulled out of his bosom a brown leaf, and began rolling a piece of it up neatly to the size of his little finger; and then, putting the one end into ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... some men who dwell for years Within the battle's hem, Almost impervious, it appears, To shot or stratagem; Some well-intentioned sprite contrives By hook or crook to save their lives (It also keeps them from their wives), And Jones was one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, wolves, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... monarch hovered the benignant influences that had watched his infancy, and now rightly interpreted the sorrow of his heart. In sooth, that this sorrow was matter of rejoicing in the Air, I gather from the joyous mien of that river-sprite which one day surprised him as he languidly mused in a balcony that overhung the water, and spoke to him in accents strange to his ear ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... sent us, or some mischievous sprite, I know not," growled the Hebrew, "but there is no need for more than ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the violence which he threw into his words. At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within her led her on to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... only intensity of feeling—nervous feeling. I don't know ... perhaps.... She has lived her life ... yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, little, and merry—a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had good times together. She never lost sight of me, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a fairy sprite, possessed with a wild spirit of glee. She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... school-boys with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... this little sprite, "fetch me the flower called Love-in-idleness. The juice of that little purple flower laid on the eyes of those who sleep will make them, when they wake, to love the first thing they see. I will put some of the juice ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... A fairy or water-sprite that resides in the neighbourhood of the Orkneys is popularly known as Tangie, so-called from tang,, the seaweed with which he is covered. Occasionally he makes his appearance as a little horse, and at other ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge, because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strange misshapen thing, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... which he finally comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na.nefer.ka.ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... hone! widow machree,— But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree! With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled; Could you sleep in your bed Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to sapphire richness, her obvious pride in the skill, the humanitarian achievement, of her lover. Dr. George must be due here this evening, he fancied. For she was all freshly bedight; her gown was embellished with delicate laces, and its faint green hue gave her the aspect of some water-sprite, posed against that broad expanse of the Mississippi River, that was itself of a jade tint reflected from a green and amber sky; at the low horizon line the vermilion sun was sinking into its ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Then an impish sprite of mischief whispered in her ear and her eyes danced merrily. On that chance meeting with Cora and Linda in the hall Cora had told her and Grace that they were staying in a suite of rooms on the third floor, and had asked them to come to see her ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... ferocity and mirth. Savage, and almost brutal in their expression, still an atmosphere of fun hovered about them—a Will-o'-the-wisp sort of playfulness, unnatural and decoying, like the capricious gambols of that renowned and mischievous sprite. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... family of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... compelling her to meet his ardent eyes. A change came over the girl, a sudden red flashed up into her temples and down into her white throat. She drew herself impetuously away from her lover's arms and fled from the room. 'I am not sure but that she is a water-sprite, after all,' grumbled Waring, as he followed her. But it was a pleasure now to grumble and pretend to doubt, since from ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Ulnor's walls at noon; I heard no bell for passing sprite; And saw no henchman straik'd for tomb; Thou hast not told thy bourne aright." "O let me pass—a monk doth dwell In lowly hut by Ulnor's shrine; I seek the holy friar's cell, That he may shrive this ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... "Nay;" and quoth the other, "He who owned this skull was a King of the Kings of the world, who dealt tyrannously with his subjects, specially wronging the weak and wasting his time in heaping up the rubbish of this world, till Allah took his sprite and made the fire his abiding-site; and this is his head." He then put forth his hand and produced another skull and, laying it before Iskandar, said to him, "Knowest thou this?" "No," answered the conqueror; and the other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and fathers, to wonder what has become of your children's lost ages? Look at your little boy of five years old. Is he at all, in any respect, the same breathing creature that you beheld three years back? I think not. Whither, then, has the sprite vanished? In some hidden fairy nook, in some mysterious cloud-land he must exist still. Again, in your slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in vain for the sturdy elf of five. Gone? No; that cannot be—'a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... note it; and from her couch she rose, the following morning, delighted with her dreams, and benevolently disposed towards mankind in general. She lingered at her toilet, grew hypercritical in articles of taste, and found defects in beauty without the shadow of a blemish. Had some wicked sprite but whispered in her ear one thought injurious to the memory of her departed husband, Margaret would have shrunk from its reception, and would have scorned to acknowledge it as her own. Time, she felt and owned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Linton next day at the Cross Roads, where a little figure, clad in white linen, sat in the buggy, holding the brown ponies, while the dusky Billy was an attendant sprite on ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... slighted her, wounded her.... He knew what it had cost him not to take those offered hands.... He was tortured and wrung in body and in soul as he took a key that hung upon his chain and unlocked a deep drawer, and took a flask from it that gurgled as if some mocking sprite had laughed aloud when he shook it close to his ear. He whom she had praised as honourable was a traitor no less than the dead man. He had said to her, months ago in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... avenging sprite Till blood for blood atones. Ay, tho' he's buried in a cave, And trodden down with stones, And years have rotted off his flesh, The world shall see ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Percy Blakeney guess that for the space of one second his most cherished secret hovered upon his wife's lips, one turn of the balance of Fate, one breath from the mouth of an unseen sprite, and Marguerite ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wistful alto; and leaping up here and there above the throng of sounds, delicate treble shrieks and trills of trembling joy. I know not whether you can fit it into your laws of music, any more than you can the song of that Ariel sprite who dwells in the Eolian harp, or the roar of the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... roads; high level Pass, of good width, across the Giant Range; pleasant painted hamlets sprinkling it, fine mountain ridges and distant peaks looking on; Schneekoppe (SNOWfell, its head bright-white till July come) attends you, far to the right, all the way:—probably Sprite Rubezahl inhabits there; and no doubt River Elbe begins his long journey there, trickling down in little threads over yonder, intending to float navies by and by: considerations infinitely indifferent to Schwerin. 'The road,' says my Tourist, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... it should rise twenty-five?" cried Erma. She was running about excitedly like a water-sprite. Her red sweater gleamed in the sullen gray light. The rain was trickling from her Tam-o-Shanter; but she was oblivious of all, save the far ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... blackening wave is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode that ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... a restless, wayward sprite, So young, so tender, and so fair, I dare not trust thee from my sight, Nor let thee breathe the common air! Home to my heart, then, quickly flee, It is the only place ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Small and shapely feet, bare, peeped from under her filmy frills. Her eyes were the large, limpid orbs of the typical Marquesan, like sepia, long-lashed; her nose straight and perfect, her mouth sensuous and demanding. Ghost Girl, her name signified, and she flitted about the islands like a sprite. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of these whims, and lived in a world of their own, peopled with lovely or grotesque creatures, to whom they gave the queerest names, and with whom they played the queerest games. One of these nursery inventions was an invisible sprite called "The Naughty Kitty-mouse," whom the children had believed in, feared, and served for a long time. They seldom spoke of it to any one else, kept their rites as private as possible; and, as they never tried to describe it even to themselves, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... owns that as far as Fifine is concerned, he cannot defend his taste: he can scarcely account for it. "Beautiful she is, in her feminine grace and strength, set forth by her boyish dress; but with probably no more feeling than a sprite, and no more conscience than a flower. It is likely enough that her antecedents have been execrable, and that her life is in harmony with them." Still, he does not wish it supposed that he admires a body without a soul: and he tries to convince ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... come the little fantastic creatures of the night as though drawn thither by a spell to do her bidding. Like a fat sprite a speckled toad hopped and hobbled and scrambled from their path; a tiny snake, green as the grass blades that it stirred, slipped from a pool of moonlight into a lake of shadow. Somewhere a small owl, tremulously melodious, called and called: and from the salt ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... adviser and stay in council, shoulder-comrade in stress of fight when warriors clashed and we warded our heads, hewed the helm-boars; hero famed should be every earl as Aeschere was! But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither, {20a} proud of the prey, her path she took, fain of her fill. The feud she avenged that yesternight, unyieldingly, Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst, — seeing how long these liegemen mine he ruined and ravaged. Reft of life, in arms he fell. Now another ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... last I raised my eyes, I became aware of the fact that I was still not alone; and peering through the dim spaces about me I beheld Jack sitting hunched up on the root of his tree like a small toad of fidelity! The little owl sprite in him never quite slumbers, I think; and seeing me leave the parsonage, he had crept out and followed bravely after through the shadows. But the picture he made now startled me ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... quite willing to give up our little sprite," replied the Colonel with Old World courtesy. "We couldn't get along without ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... I lived happy, with a temper haught and high, * My hoarding-place defending like a lion in the fight, I took no rest, and greed of gain forbad me give a grain * Of mustard seed to save from the fires of Hell my sprite, Until stricken on a day, as with arrow, by decree * Of the Maker, the Fashioner, the Lord of Might and Right. When my death was appointed, my life I could not keep * By the many of my stratagems, my cunning and my sleight: My troops I had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... stillness came the sound of exquisite music; clear, thrilling notes, unreal—fairylike! Almost hesitatingly Mrs. Lee turned as though she expected to see a fairy sprite in gauzy robes approaching her from the shadows of the house! She rose and crept toward the window. No sprite was there—only Keineth sitting before the piano, her small hands softly touching the keys ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... Beth nor Van could speak. The girl, like a startled moon-sprite, wide-eyed and grave, had taken on a mood of beauty such as the man had never seen. She seemed to him strangely fragile, a trifle ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... men and women of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, Blazing ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... "Joseph's coat was just as bloody as Goliath's head was." Then Budge turned to me and explained that "all Tod likes Goliath for is 'cause when his head was cut off it was all bloody." And then Toddie—the airy sprite whom his mother described as being irresistibly drawn to whatever was beautiful—Toddie glared upon me as a butcher's apprentice might stare at a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... only know that such a rover there is, and that he is here to-day, and there to-morrow. Some say, it is only a craft of mist, that skims the top of the seas, like a sailing water-fowl, and others think it is the sprite of a vessel that was rifled and burnt by Kidd, in the Indian Ocean, looking for its gold and the killed. I saw him once, myself, but the distance was so great, and his manoeuvres so unnatural, that I could hardly give a good account of his hull, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and went out. It was cold and still; the stars glittered, the earth was white. He walked far on the frozen snow, with a feeling as hard and cold as the bitter air. Some impish sprite seemed to mock him with the closing strain ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... in the Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with the sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the light ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... honest; but among the other races of beings who inhabit this world the penalty of mocking and imitating the vices of you, the superior race, is, that if ever one of us can be convicted of it, that one, be it gnome, sprite, or fairy, is never permitted to appear in the likeness of humanity again, nor to walk about on the face of the land which is your inheritance. Now the gnomes hate one another, and if it should be discovered by the ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... double knock of the wood-pecker, or the drowsy croak of some early roosting bird; all suggestion of the settlement, with all traces of human contiguity, were left far behind. It was therefore with a strange and nervous sense of being softly hailed by some woodland sprite that he seemed to hear his own name faintly wafted upon the air. He turned quickly; it was Cressy, panting behind him! Even then, in her white closely gathered skirts, her bared head and graceful arching ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... humanity. But the great man looking with truth and kindliness into men's natures, and reading their characters and abilities in their words and acts, has a higher and better power than that attributed to the wandering sprite, for such a man holds in his hand the surest key to success. Washington, quiet and always on the watch, after the fashion of silent greatness, studied untiringly the ever recurring human problems, and his just conclusions were powerful ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... nowhere to be seen. She was nervous about going out, as Miss Sallie had made dreadful suggestions about wolves and wild cats, yet she slipped out on the tiny porch. Far away through the trees and up the steep hillside she saw flying like a deer, a thin, brown creature. Was it human or a sprite? Mollie could not guess. She caught a glimpse of it, but it had been impossible to observe it accurately, so fast it flew. There was only a whirr of flying feet, and a flash of brown and scarlet to be seen. Could it be the famous ghost of Lost ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... recalling that wild legend?" thought she. "I am getting to be as weak and superstitious as Helen. Why, when it seems to me that the wing of an angel is fluttering against my cheek, should I remember that demon-sprite?" ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of life! God love thee for a merry sprite! Sing on! for though the sun be coy I sense with thee a budding joy, And all my heart with ranging rhyme Is ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... thought of me, and the affection that I shall ever bear you, will soften your melancholy and decrease the bitterness of your tears. But if my friendship can make you look on life with less disgust, beware how you injure it with suspicion. Love is a delicate sprite[75] and easily hurt by rough jealousy. Guard, I entreat you, a firm persuasion of my sincerity in the inmost recesses of your heart out of the reach of the casual winds that may disturb its surface. Your temper is made ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... on the yellow sand. He was so grey and dwarfish that he looked like a mountain sprite. The old fellow was at home in the bare, big rocks. He loved the desert, for it is the home of great thoughts. He loved the desert where he hoped to find the entrance to Nirvana. Now when the disciples passed near him as they ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... Offering in fealty thy sweet simple songs To the abode of man? Hath the rude wind Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled Of all its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though terrors flutter at thy panting heart,— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; and I would rather have no fire than one that required no tending,—one of dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of the forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice of danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as springing, changing flame,—it was the last freak of the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as on fire, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... its ills, Duns and their bills, Bid we to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite, Leave us to-night Round ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... now the only wonder was that I had been so slow to penetrate the secret of their charm. That eager, radiant elf, the Princess Somdetch Chow Fa-ying, [Footnote: "First-Born of the Skies."] the king's darling (of whom, by and by, I shall have a sadder tale to tell), had become a sprite of sunshine and gladness amid the sombre shadows of those walls. In her deep, dark, lustrous eyes, her simple, trusting ways, there was a springtide of refreshment, a pure, pervading radiance, that brightened the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Blunder Sprite deliberately pits himself against author, proof reader, and all their allies. The books printed by Aldus are famous for their correctness, yet a few errors crept into them, so much to the disgust of the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... hare. She runs and calls the other sisters; whereupon they all scamper out of their cells, and down the steps, to see the miracle, and behold, there sits the three-legged hare; but when Agnes Kleist took off her slipper, and threw it at the devil's sprite, my hare is off, and never a trace of him could be found again in the whole brew-house or in the whole convent court. Hereat the nuns shuddered, and each virgin has her opinion on the matter, but speaks it not; for just then, too, comes Sidonia forth, with old Wolde and the cat, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... quizzing shank of a son, Jefferson, who lived upon quinine, ague and deviltry; and there were the two daughters, Fanchon and Virginia. The latter was three years older than Fanchon, as dark as Fanchon was fair, though not nearly so pretty: a small, good-natured, romping sprite of a girl, who had handed down the heart and hand of Crailey Gray to her sister with the best grace in the world. For she had been the heroine of one of Mr. Gray's half-dozen or so most serious affairs, and, after ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... "Nay, wife, nay," he replied, and his voice had a sad ring in it as he spoke. "This is no wood sprite, if such there be, but a little maiden of flesh and blood. Let me rest, I pray thee, and lay the little one on the bed; and whilst I take my supper I ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a child, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... always better for his living in it; and because no one can watch the black-capped sprite without catching, for a moment at least, a message of cheer and courage and service, does he not ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about themselves. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... I find some wizard sprite, To bear my words to her I love, Beyond the shades of envious night, To where ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fallen solemn, "haven't time. I'm going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman," he added as an afterthought, "is stringing booms across ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... to part; yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Mans fancy-made Omniscience knows, who ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the girl listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in her cheeks was wilder than the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... And passed through many perilous assays: He knew the divers want of mortal ways, And in the minds of men had great insight; Which with sage counsel, when they went astray, He could inform and them reduce aright; And all the passions heal which wound the weaker sprite. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Tarquin, however, he had been deposed—one of those fatuous acts which the wisest will commit. No more could the Honourable Hilary well be likened to Pandora, for he only opened the box wide enough to allow one mischievous sprite to take wings—one mischievous sprite that was to prove a host. Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr. Tooting had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make it worth his while the mysterious acts by which the puppets on the stage were moved, and who moved ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ease, to provide liberally and expensively for their own recreation and refreshment. A bald utility has been the anticipated genius of our public policy. Our national Mercury was to be simply the god of the post-office, or the sprite of the barometer,—our Pan, to keep the crows from the corn-fields,—our Muses, to preside over district-schools. It begins now to appear that the people are not likely to think anything too good for themselves, or to higgle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... the strongest wine ever vinted by man. Yesterday she was a charming girl, radiantly good-looking, and likely to attract attention even in circles where pretty women were plentiful as blackberries in a September thicket, but to-day, in Medenham's eyes, she was a woodland sprite, an ethereal creature cast in no mortal mold. So enthralled was he by the vision that he failed to note her attire. She wore the muslin dress of the previous night, and this, in itself, might have prepared him for ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... That blessing ye brought forth, Behold! it lies in fetters On the soil that gave it birth: But the trumpet must be heard And the charger must be spurr'd; For your father Armin's Sprite Calls down from heaven, that ye Shall gird you for the fight And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph, sylphid; Ariel^, peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie^, Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad^, naiad, mermaid, kelpie^, Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c (bad spirit) 980. mythology; heathen-mythology, fairy-mythology; Lempriere, folklore. Adj. god-like, fairy-like; sylph-like; sylphic^. Phr. you moonshine revelers and shades of night ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... invoke the playful sprite To chill, with magic spell, The tender feelings of delight, And anguish sung ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sprite of subtile frame, With rainbow tints invested.— On clouds of dazzling light she came, And stars her forehead crested; Her sparkling eyes of azure hue, Seemed borrowed from ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... sprite. You reproached me just now with bringing her here, here under your very eyes, you said. Faustina, I brought her here, to this remote hold, that she might be the more completely in my power. That I might, at ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... sphere and came gradually towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,—with the same look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,—with a peculiar surprised look in her wide-open ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... she would say to Dora,—"insufferably so. She told Madame A. that she looked like an apple-tree; which might have been taken for a compliment, had not the saucy little sprite explained herself by pointing to that old tree in the garden which the flowering shrubbery has decked with every variety of blossom: Mrs. A. is extremely fond of fancy colors. And when I took her to Bowker's ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... wanderings found a goal in heaven. But when I reach'd a winding of the stream, By hazels overarch'd, whose swollen nuts Hung in rich clusters, from his marginal bank Of yellow sand, ribb'd by receding waves, I scared the ousel, that, like elfin sprite, Amid the water-lilies lithe and green, Zig-zagg'd from stone to stone; and, turning round The sudden jut, reveal'd before me stood, Silent, within that solitary place— In that green solitude so calm and deep— An aged angler, plying wistfully, Amid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... that of the Inner Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells are those which once stood out from the facade of St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tower erects its battlements bravely; my Anecdotes of Painting thrive exceedingly: thanks to the gout, that has pinned me to my chair: think of Ariel the sprite in a slit shoe! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... been glad to keep the picture for ever on its surface—Margery with her sleek braids and serene forehead; with Polly, saucy nose and mischievous eyes, laughing at you like a merry water-sprite; Bell, with her brilliant cheeks glowing like two roses just fallen in the brook; and Gold Elsie, who, if you had put a frame of green leaves about her delicate face and yellow locks, would have looked up at you ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cheeks, ears, and nostrils are "touched up" by an artist. Their hair is dressed by another artist, and every defect of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the front ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... conceal within his own breast the true reason for the operation, Ling placed himself before the person in question, and exhibited the matter to him so that it would appear as though his desires were promoted by the presence of a small but persistent sprite which had taken its abode within his left thigh, and there resisted every effort of the most experienced wise persons to induce it to come forth again. Satisfied with this explanation of the necessity of the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... bright as Daisy's, And who as Maud so fair? Who does not sing the praises Of Lucy's golden hair? There's Sophie—she is witty, A very sprite is Nell, And Susie's, oh, so pretty— ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive and supplicating ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... delightfully. Matilda sometimes lifted her eyes to look at her opposite neighbours; they had a fascination for her. Judith was such a sprite of mischief, to judge from her looks; and David was so utterly unlike Norton. Norton was always acute and frank, outspoken when he had a mind, fearless and careless at all times. Fearless David might ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... masses of images heaped themselves in utter disorder in his brain: passages of verse, bits of his trained laboratory jargon, phrases from half-forgotten books, the delicate curves of the Water Sprite at the exposition, and, above all, a fierce gnawing pain in ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June, Or reminiscence of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... pretty, mischievous sprite was left fatherless; Mr. Earnshaw died quietly, sitting in his chair by the fireside one October evening. Mr. Hindley, now a young man of twenty, came home to the funeral, to the great astonishment of the household bringing a wife ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... thought we should never arrive. I imagined that the sprite was going to triumph, and I wept those tears that were like a brook that runs on and on ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
