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Fairy story   /fˈɛri stˈɔri/   Listen
Fairy story

noun
1.
A story about fairies; told to amuse children.  Synonyms: fairy tale, fairytale.
2.
An interesting but highly implausible story; often told as an excuse.  Synonyms: cock-and-bull story, fairy tale, fairytale, song and dance.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fairy story" Quotes from Famous Books



... fact that the language must be varied to suit the character of the reader or listener, tell a fairy story to a sleepy five-year old so that he will not go to sleep. Do not hesitate at exaggerations. Only remember it must ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... collegiate control meant little in effect, except waste of time and efficiency, because at worst work was delayed by disputes and at best the workmen members of the college merely countersigned the orders decided upon by the specialists. The enthusiastic work was said to be a fairy story. If it were really to be found then there would be no need for a conference to ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... the man before him, Bill was as fussed as the giant of the fairy story had been by a display of yellow. He was uncertain whether he was giving his own ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... beautiful than a fairy story, and so does his aunt; for ever since that snowy night she has been ready to agree that the dear dog is better than all the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... story about victuals," sulked Tommy. "It makes me think of the bread. O Granny dear! do tell us a fairy story. You never will tell us about the Fairies, and ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared-for, on this dark, cooling star: but even so—and all the more—what marvelous creatures we are! What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is—blind or not—a ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... They are trying to cure her and they can't. But mysteriously in the night they hear her singing. Her lover is with her, and they try to solve the mystery. Maybe they kill him, I don't know. Or maybe they make him faithless to her. I don't know whether there is a fairy story like that or whether I just made it up. And I haven't worked it out at all. I haven't any words for it, no book, nor anything. But I tell you it comes in waves, whole scenes from it. I'd like a hundred hands to write it down with. I'd like to take one header into it and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... consequences, blind as to who are its friends and who are its foes, blind as to earth, blind as to another world, blind as to God. The man who walks in the 'vain show' of transgression, whose heart is set upon evil,—he fancies that ashes are bread, and stones gold (as in the old fairy story); and, on the other hand, he thinks that the true sweet is the bitter, and turns away from God's angels and God's prophets, with, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' That is the reason, my friend, of not a little of the infidelity that haunts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... told her a rather stupid fairy story. She was too old for such ridiculous things as ladies in their shining hair on a leopard. She remembered clearly seeing one of the latter at a zoological garden. It had yellow eyes, but no one would care to ride on it. Her mother, she was certain, knew more about love than any ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... imaginative and poetic explanations of the world and of the life of man in it at a time when scientific knowledge and habits of thought had not come into existence. The fairy story was "a free poetic dealing with realities in accordance with the law of mental growth, ... a poetic wording of the facts of life, ... an endeavour to shape the facts of the world to meet the needs of the imagination, the cravings of the heart." The legend, dealing originally with incidents ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Lear is based upon a fable and a fairy story. It illustrates the most terrible forms of treachery, that of child against father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the grandest ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... this book the children are transported to the land they love best, the land of magic, of the fairies and all kinds of wonderful happenings. It is one of the best fairy story books ever ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks

... them. This sounds as if your example had had no real effect after all, but it is not so. Outward circumstances may remain the same, but some of the inward bitterness has gone! Do you remember the old fairy story about the unfortunate king who had three iron bands clamped tightly round his heart? It was the result of a spell, of course, and the only thing which could break their hold was when some mortal did some really fine and noble deed, then with a great bang one of the bands broke loose ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... for he had had to realize that Apollonie was not in the least backward now that she had the master's full support. She first sought out her old chamber, and Loneli was extremely puzzled to see her grandmother wiping her eyes over and over again. The whole thing was like a beautiful fairy story to the child, and she loved the charming room with the ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri

... the pine root to which he held, and gazed over, she lifted an outstretched finger of a gauntleted hand in illustration of some particularly wonderful point of what was palpably a particularly wonderful fairy story. A third burst of delight came from the listening and responsive auditors, who had no idea by ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... The new fairy story by the author of "The Wizard of Oz" begins in November,—superbly illustrated in color; runs through the year. One ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency

... "It's a fairy story, surely!" she said, trying to laugh. "There are so many beautiful girls in the world for a ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... sees Cecil in the hammock, and Violet is telling her a fairy story. The doll lies on her arm, and her eyes are half closed. It is such a lovely picture of content, home happiness, that he hates to break in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Christmas presents, Jane says; maybe that's why they're obliged to come back always on Christmas Eve, if they've been lost. Do you know, even if there aren't any fairies, it's just like a fairy story having my father come back, and take me to Angel in a motor car ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... of whom you speak is like the girl in the fairy story, who has a cruel step-mother and an ogre of a father," he commented when the story ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... said Klein. "That's his trouble. He's clever, but he doesn't know much. I guess he only began to read books a couple years ago. They excite him too much. He wouldn't read a fairy story. He'd ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller

... increasing inclination for him and her increasing dependence. Having already won so much it seemed as though his passionate devotion could not fail to turn the scale and bring her to that admission he felt it was on her lips to make. So he strode through the narrow streets, telling himself a fairy story of how it all might be, with a little house of their own and she waiting for him on the wharf when his ship made fast; a story that never grew stale in the repetition, but which, please God, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... tears and anger. He could not make up his mind how to kill Edith. Nothing seemed quite bad enough. He thought of boiling her in oil or rolling her down hill in a cask full of spikes, after the manner of some fairy story that Christine had told him. It was not the pain, though his arm felt as though it had been wrenched out of its socket, and the blood trickled in a steady stream from his bumped forehead. It was ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... that sets the court by the ears. From the first Champlain has encouraged young Frenchmen to winter with the Indian hunters and learn the languages. Brule is with them now. Nicholas Vignau has just come back from the Ottawa with a fairy story of a marvelous voyage he has made with the Indians through {49} the forests to the Sea of the North—the sea where Henry Hudson, the Englishman, had perished. As the romance gains the ear of the public, the young man waxes ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... cottage. Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now standing. I saw many faces I knew, but even in six years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. Some of the very old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. I felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep. Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near them. Entering ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Do you think it's a silly dragon in a fairy story? Of course it doesn't. How can ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... seemed to hear footsteps outside, her heart beat so violently, she pressed her hand to her breast. And it was a relief when no one came after all, and she hoped and hoped he would not come at all, to spoil the pretty fairy story. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... Beauty is a most happy instance of woman's right attitude toward love and marriage—she is to remain starkly unconscious, using absolutely no discretion; and cheerfully marry the first man that kisses her! In the fairy story he was a noble prince—but the average sleeping beauty of to-day is often waked up by ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the blur on the distant horizon, which all of them had agreed must be smoke hovering close to the water. Perhaps he half-believed the fanciful suggestion made by Teddy, with reference to Captain Kidd, and was wildly hoping to discover some positive sign that would stamp this fairy story with truth. All the previous adventures that had befallen himself and chums would sink into utter insignificance, could they go back home and show evidences of having made such a romantic discovery up there in the ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... the islands in the Lakes of Killarney, give me Innisfallen— "sweet Innisfallen," as the melodious Moore calls it. It is in truth a fairy isle, although I have no fairy story to tell you about it; and if I had, these are such unbelieving times, and people of late have grown so sceptical, that they only smile at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... heaven of her own each night. This privilege was granted; it being felt, no doubt, that she owed me some compensation for my early secretarial work on her behalf. We used to spend the ten minutes in listening to my telling a fairy story, always the same one. One day the authorities stepped in and announced that in future the ten minutes would be reduced to five. The procedure seemed to me absolutely illegal (and I should like to bring a test action against somebody), ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... word at all. They did not linger, as their custom was, to cuddle in or hear a fairy story. To-night they were ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... been wonderful weeks!—wonderful! Which of us could have hoped to see the spread of such a force in the dusty modern world! You remember the fairy story of the prince whose heart was bound with iron bands—and how one by one, the bands give way? I have seen it like that—in ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... satisfied, my good angel! I can hardly realize my good fortune! I am eager to begin the work. What a delightful time we shall have! To have you introduce me to our wealth, by the way of this unique, honeymoon program; is something very like a fairy story! I could not devise or imagine ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... word about the sixth book of this series. Trembling with a deep responsibility, I have ventured to write a fairy story, (that enchanted ground for the little ones,) through the whole of which I trust this thread of my theory has run unbroken. It is the last of our little friend, Lame Charley; and if the dear children who have made his Nightcaps theirs, will bear him, and me for his sake, in ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... I have given some directions to Zibbie, and I will read you a fairy story, and then you can go up into the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... like hell!" he remarked, quite disregarding the presence of Miss Maitland in the background. "What kind of a fairy story are you trying to put across on me? I suppose you're claiming that Pendleton, the automobile man, is your brother-in-law. Well, he moved out about a month ago. The card hasn't been changed yet, but the firm in there now is a bunch of Kikes that make boys' ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... "It's no fairy story, Sarah. I tell you there is no one on earth that I love as I do you. I've felt bad seeing you living this way and I've done the best I could; but I am to be let into the greatest gang on earth. I will make money from the start, ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey

... like a fairy story," said Helen, telling her mother about it afterwards, "because even while the nurse was telling how the little girl had not spoken a word, or even looked at anybody, Rosanna just opened those big eyes of hers, and said, 'Hello, Helen!' And I simply ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... one of his art treasures. I happen to catch one, and he immediately becomes the son of the owner of the place. I am so fortunate as to bag the other bird, and he resolves himself into a relative of my host's. And you really expect me to believe a Hans Andersen fairy story like that!" ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... legends have sprung from the same germ, so that often we have practically the same fairy-story all over Europe. But this, it seems to me, is no fairy story." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... when introduced into philosophy shows how, lamentably philosophy has got itself imprisoned in dull, mechanical, mathematical formulae; in formulae so arid and so divorced from life, that the conception of personality, applied to man or to the gods, seems to us as exciting as an incredible fairy story when ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... of the world to pleasant languor; and a morning came that was like a brightly coloured picture in a child's fairy story. Miss Margaret Schofield, reclining in a hammock upon the front porch, was beautiful in the eyes of a newly made senior, well favoured and in fair raiment, beside her. A guitar rested lightly upon his knee, and he was trying to play—a matter of some ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... her for a moment and repeating some rigmarole that set her laughing, followed by the request for him to say it again, he stood her on the bar. Then he danced in front of her, swung his arms like a jumping-jack, and told some outlandish fairy story from the stock that no one had ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... Celeste. And the next day came Aunt Varina, hardly able to contain herself. "Oh, Sylvia, such a horrible thing! To hear such words coming from your little sister's lips—like the toads and snakes in the fairy story! To think of these ideas festering in a young girl's brain!" And then again: "Sylvia, your sister declares she will never go to a party again! You are teaching her to hate men! You will make her a STRONG-MINDED woman!"—that was another phrase they had summing ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... simply cannot remember the price of pots and pans and sheet-iron and plows and ax-handles, when one is living in the beginning of an astounding fairy story, when the most momentous change is impending, when one's whole way of life is about to be diverted into different channels. The things one hates, like being a hardware clerk, for instance, automatically slide into the background when the desire ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... lively groups, that filled the streets, and she almost fancied herself again at Venice; but here was no moon-light sea—no gay gondolas, dashing the waves,—no PALLADIAN palaces, to throw enchantment over the fancy and lead it into the wilds of fairy story. The Arno rolled through the town, but no music trembled from balconies over its waters; it gave only the busy voices of sailors on board vessels just arrived from the Mediterranean; the melancholy heaving of the anchor, and the shrill ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... rare exceptions, and the experience has been rather widely gathered all over the country, that this interest—or call it what you will—has been entirely without spite or bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a fairy story. For people are rarely envious of things far removed from their grasp. You will find that a woman who is bitter because her neighbor has a girl "help" or a more comfortable cottage, rarely feels envy towards the owners of opera-boxes or yachts. Such ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... "Your Rupert have offered for Minnie and wants to be married in six weeks. It sounds like a fairy story; but there's no doubt seemingly; and don't you put him off her, or I'll never speak to you ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... redressing injuries; defeating base designs; rewarding patience and virtue; crowning true love with happiness; placing the powers of darkness under control of man and making their ministers his servants. In the fairy story, men are not set entirely free from their limitations, but, by the aid of fairies, genii, giants and demons, they are put in command of unusual powers and make themselves masters ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... much I was longing for you, just as you are now, Brandon, and in the midst of it all you came. It is like a fairy story, and oh, I shall ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... however, was still before him. In 1796 he was created Viceroy of Peru, and thus became the highest official throughout the New World. No fairy story has ever produced a more startling study of career and contrast than that which had fallen to the lot of the ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... a fairy story, isn't it Ike? Let me rehearse the conditions again, so as to be sure I am not dreaming. With this loan, which I shall never be called on to pay back unless I choose, I am to establish in New York the house of Francis Prime and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... children) and instantly like a fairy story, every hole gave up its little baby-partridge, and the wee fellow on the chip, the biggest of them all really, opened his big-little eyes and ran to the shelter of her broad tail, with a sweet little 'peep peep' which an enemy could not have heard three feet ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... arrived at a solution that removed all his doubts, and this was that Smithy Caldwell had saved him for the same reason that the old lady in the fairy story was told to preserve ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... children, from our favourite fairy story-books, how at all christenings and marriages some one is invariably disappointed, and vows vengeance; and so need not wonder that good cousin Will should curse and rage energetically at the news of his brother's engagement with the colonial ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... performed at home by Boys and Girls. All the Stories in "A SHIPFUL OF CHILDREN" are from the pens of Authors with whose writings readers of "LITTLE FOLKS" are familiar, including the Author of "Prince Pimpernel," Henry Frith, Julia Goddard (who contributes a Fairy Story), Robert Richardson, the Author of "Claimed at Last," and others; while the Illustrations—humorous and otherwise, and about Forty in number—have been specially drawn by Harry Furniss, Hal Ludlow, Lizzie Lawson, Gordon Browne, C. Gregory, W. Rainey, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... all, how rarely in this wicked world we meet with other than respect in answer to a frank avowal of our determination to be on the Lord's side. They were all quiet for an instant; and again Flossy caught a glimpse of Dr. Dennis' face. It looked perplexity and distrust. Was she telling them a fairy story, or teaching them ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... on your fairy story, boy. I don't see for the life of me how your health could have broken studying such a mild mixture as that. You must have been real run down at the start. But never mind, don't lay the laugh up against me, kid, I ain't enjoyed myself so much in ten ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... "are the pictures of the end of the fairy story. But you'll never know the end unless you ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... didn't think there could be another such man after knowing father and the Admiral. Isn't it all as wonderful as a fairy story?" ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... I know not, but about the middle of the first term the mental fog broke away suddenly, and before the term ended I could construe the Latin in less time than it took to recite it, and the demonstrations of Euclid were as plain and clear as a fairy story. My memory came back so completely that I could recite long poems after a single reading, and no member of the class passed a more brilliant examination at the end of the term than I. At the end of the second term I could recite the whole of Legendre's geometry, plane and spherical, from beginning ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... friends save two, and they are helpless. And now I am to make a sacrifice for him to repay him for all he has done for me. I have promised my hand to one I do not love; even he forsakes me. But love is not the portion of princesses. Love to them is a fairy story. To secure my father's throne I have sacrificed my girlhood dreams. Ah! and they were ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... the funniest of capers. He argued (with every appearance of comical gravity and earnestness), that because Shakespeare might alter an Italian story, or Sir Walter Scott use history for the purposes of the drama, poetry, or romance, therefore, "any one might take the liberty of altering a common fairy story to suit his purpose and convey his opinions." Aye, and so he might, honest Rip; but he would set about his task in a very different fashion to Shakespeare or Sir Walter Scott, and I fear too that the literary results and value would be vastly different. It never seemed to occur ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... ten days, and twelve. Then came a golden October afternoon when the twins sat in the haymow looking out upon a mellow world. Constance was in the yard, reading a fairy story. The situation was a tense one, for the twins were hungry, and time was ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... girls fared badly in this book, and it was not surprising that they preferred the "Pilgrim's Progress" (for instance), where women had a fair show, and there was generally enough of 'em to go round; or a good fairy story, wherein princesses met with a healthy appreciation. But indeed we were all best pleased with a picture wherein the characters just fitted us, in number, sex, and qualifications; and this, to us, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... treat by opposition; the power lies in the contrast. Such, to give examples, are "The White Old Maid," "Edward Fane's Rosebud," and with less distinctness, "The Wedding Knell," where the contrast goes back to lost youth for effect. In the very artificial fable, which has elements of the fairy story in it, "The Three-fold Destiny," there is this simple construction, and it is found also in "The Prophetic Pictures," though that tale is primarily a study in the idea of fate, a subject seldom touched by Hawthorne, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... Brossard was likely to whip you again, I'd suddenly appear on the scene and shriek out like a banshee and make him stop. Wouldn't it be lovely?" she cried, more carried away with the idea the longer she thought of it. "Why, it would be like acting our fairy story. You are the Prince, and I will be the giant scissors and rescue you from the Ogre. Now let me see if I can think of a rhyme for you to say ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston

... there was no need to know who the king in the fairy story was. It didn't matter whether he was called Shiladitya or Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a seven-year-old boy's heart go thump, thump with delight was this one sovereign truth; this reality ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... to the mystery; only a number of words which Tode did not understand, and something about God, which he could not see had anything to do with the fairy story. I wonder if we Christian people ever fully realize how utterly ignorant the neglected poor are of Bible truth. One more ignorant in the matter than was Tode can hardly be imagined. He knew, to be sure, that there was a day called Sunday, and that stores and shops ...
— Three People • Pansy

... that the girl had strolled away and was standing in the gathering darkness a few yards distant, gazing at the boat. The clumsy looking hull, in which the boys had taken refuge, seemed trim and graceful now, and Roy was reminded of the fairy story of the ugly duckling, who was really a swan, but whose wondrous beauty was unappreciated until it found ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... a moment's serious consideration. Mr. Ernest Newman suggests that perhaps Wagner was using the savage's notion that in giving up your name you are placing yourself in some one's power; but there is not a hint of that in the drama. The thing to me is simply a fairy story. We must accept Lohengrin and the conditions in which he lives, moves and has his being. He is not his own master: somewhere far away he has an all-powerful over-lord who, for no useful purpose to be comprehended by ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... for its own sake, half so well as such a wish for it. Dear John, your wishes are as real to me as the wishes in the Fairy story, that were all fulfilled as soon as spoken. Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as got it, John. I have ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... beak between his deep, fierce eyes. What the Earl saw was a graceful, childish figure in a black velvet suit, with a lace collar, and with love-locks waving about the handsome, manly little face, whose eyes met his with a look of innocent good-fellowship. If the Castle was like the palace in a fairy story, it must be owned that little Lord Fauntleroy was himself rather like a small copy of the fairy prince, though he was not at all aware of the fact, and perhaps was rather a sturdy young model of a fairy. But there was a sudden glow of triumph and exultation in the fiery old Earl's heart ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... as one could desire, but he had only to wave his hand and say so-and-so and lo! the old cabin grew and became beautiful, a factory sprang up, then a dream of a school which included everyone and everything. It was like a modern fairy story—the most exciting and compelling thing ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... the counter, and turning over the leaves of books, side by side with grown people! Miss Dimple was never very bashful; and what did she care for the people in New York, who never saw her before? She soon became absorbed in a fairy story. Seconds, minutes, quarters; it was a whole hour before she came to herself enough to remember that Horace was to call for her, and she was not where he had ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)

... know what I saw when I got into that room for the first time? The guy in charge was locking away in a desk three guns and about ten packets of shells. It sounds like a fairy story, but it's true, and it's a desk with a lock that you could ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... just as much chance that no one has passed over this rock since the early days and that we may find a fortune hidden." The professor smiled around at the group with a happy, child-like stare as if he were one of the characters of a fairy story. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... was most worried about the error of my ways, I entered on a new chapter of adventures, even more remote from the cash girl's career than Latin and geometry. But I ought not to name such harsh things as landladies at the opening of the fairy story of my girlhood. I have reached what was the second transformation of my life, as truly as my coming to America was the first ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... "The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... I laid the five hundred-dollar bill in it. "Now, shut your fingers tight over that," said I, "and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother to do what she likes with it." And we left them gaping after us, speechless before this fairy story ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... declared Millicent. "Caroline knows all about them. Let's go out in the yard where she is sitting with her sewing and get her to tell us a fairy story." ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... would have been such a sinful waste of words. Can't you imagine me trying to make those men believe such a fairy story—under such circumstances?" ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... interest her. She listened with so intent and childlike an expression on her face that I could scarcely realize that I was talking to one in whose bosom beat the heart of a woman. I felt rather as if I were telling Zillah a fairy story. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... Mr. Bingle. "Make room for Miss Fairweather. She's going to be the new governess. Lively, Harkins! The nearest telephone. No! Not that saloon over there. Tackle an apartment house. Well, well, Miss Fairweather, this is just like a fairy story after all. I told you that I believed ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... emphatically still in her eyes. Then suddenly she felt as if there had been some invisible sword-play between them. Her instinct told her he resented her silent watching, and that his cool, collected front now and his silence were the expression of his resentment. It was not in the least like a fairy story, of course; here was the prince, surly, stony, and bearish, and the princess, red and brown with sunburn, on the point of being caught at a disadvantage. But there Diana's native wits came to her aid, and she ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... happy state to sit enthroned upon a big boy-uncle's knee, and listen, listen, listen, with eyes like the dog's in the fairy story—"as big as the great round tower at Copenhagen"—more ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... resemblance ceased. He was fair, with such delicate colouring that he might have looked womanish but for the dark fiery blue of his eyes, and his little curled moustache. He looked the way you fancy a prince looking, Melody, when Auntie Joy tells you a fairy story, though he was ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... D'Annunzio's great fame had seized upon the popular imagination. His career in the war would have been interesting in itself, but when one recognizes that he was already a world figure, the greatest modern Italian dramatist and novelist, his life seems almost like a fairy story. Before the war began he made addresses all over his country, urging Italy's participation in the war, and when war was declared, to him, as much as to any other man, was due the credit. He entered the navy, and has written some fascinating descriptions ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... a beautiful new fairy story to-day. I made them go to the spruce wood to hear it. A spruce wood is the proper place to tell fairy stories in. Felicity says she can't see that it makes any difference where you tell them, but oh, it does. I wish you had been there to hear ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Nell!" she cried, in the subdued tones due to the sick room above. "Why, it's like a fairy story! Why didn't I or some of us know you were here, till last night? You remember ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... closely over a drawing for which she had no model, but which was intended to illustrate a fairy story. She was using pen and ink, and trying to imitate the fine strokes of a steel engraving. He stood at her side, looking down at her work a moment, and his artist's sense for the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... exclaimed Ned, breathing in the sweetly-scented air, as he stuck his head from the car window. "It's like reading about some fairy story!" ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... on a kind of sewing machine. She told us to come and see you, so we came. I called her None-so-pretty, out of a fairy story. She does not mind. Gran says she thinks she ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... began again to describe the greenhouses, the meadows and wheat fields, the forests of oaks and beeches she had seen during her school days in Edinburgh. Peter listened to her as if she was telling a wonderful fairy story, but he liked it, and, as he cut slice after slice from his smoked goose, he enjoyed her talk of roses and apple-blossoms, and smacked his lips for the thousandth time when she described a peach, and said, "It tasted, father, as if it had been grown ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... fairy story it 'ud be ridiculous to let a boy of fifteen beat a trained teacher," said Josiah Nummler. "He didn't quite, and it come this way. Leander asked Pinky Binn if he had eleven apples and multiplied them by five how many was they left. She says sixty-five. 'Figure it out agin,' he says, wery ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... "Bahadur" and king of elephants, and great prince, and dozens of other names that never hurt anybody with a sense of pageantry and humor. He acted the part for them just as they wanted him to, sitting bolt upright in the howdah like a prince in a fairy story, with jeweled aigrette in his turban and more enormous diamonds flashing on his silken clothes than a courtesan would wear at Monte Carlo. And all the other princes were likewise in degree, only that they rode rather smaller ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... This is not a fairy story. Neither need it be set lightly down as a curious coincidence. I know the charm that the old man said. I cannot give it here. It will only work successfully if taught by man to woman or by woman to man; ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... undermined and partially ruined, its style could not be transformed, but, clad in its northern ivy, it wore at once a new aspect. To races without experience—that is, without cumulative traditions or a visible past—Christianity could be nothing but a fairy story and a gratuitous hope, as if they had been told about the Sultan of Timbuctoo and promised that they should some day ride on his winged Arabian horses. The tragic meaning of the Christian faith, its immense renunciation of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... fairy story he had read in his youth, where a magic power was given to the hero of discovering what beast each human being was growing into by grasping their hands. And he wondered, if the gift had been his, what he should now find was the destiny of those ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... accomplished in this world where caution does not play a great part. In war, in business, in sports, the man who looms the biggest after the game is done and people have the time to study things, is the man who had never once failed to exercise a proper amount of caution. In a fairy story this warning is given: "Be bold; be bold ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston

... atmosphere. The impossibility of a red horse demands an unreal world. It is possible that this combination of colour and form will appeal as a freak—a purely superficial and non-artistic appeal—or as a hint of a fairy story [Footnote: An incomplete fairy story works on the mind as does a cinematograph film.]—once more a non-artistic appeal. To set this red horse in a careful naturalistic landscape would create such a discord as to produce ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... the language have captivated his imagination. Then he must attempt to put his pupils into the same frame of mind. At this point it is helpful to discuss the differences between prose and poetry, the beauty or horror of a vivid dream, and the real truth that often underlies a fairy story or a dream story. Next, the translation of the Latin quotation that is prefixed to the poem may be read and discussed simply, especially the first sentence. The teacher must try to secure from his class, if possible, what Coleridge calls ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely

... yet, Mr. Jevons. I am so accustomed to penury and debt that it sounds like a fairy story. There is one other matter I wish to speak to you about. My son—my son is in trouble. Two checks, signed by my father, for small amounts were altered to larger ones, and cashed at our local bank. The amount ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... all the critics to suggest that the beginner might do well to postpone the famous novels of Thackeray, and to meet the author at his best, or cheerfulest, in such forgotten works as the Book of Ballads and The Rose and the Ring. The latter is a kind of fairy story, with a poor little good princess, a rich little bad princess, a witch of a godmother, and such villainous characters as Hedzoff and Gruffanuff. It was written for some children whom Thackeray loved, and is almost the only book of his which leaves the impression that the author ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, never been written, I doubt much if we should ever have seen Maggie in Mythica, by F.B. DOVETON, who announces it apologetically, as "his first"—perhaps it maybe his "unique" fairy story,—and he adds, that he has "kept out of the beaten track as far as possible." "As far as possible" is good, for never was there such an example of the "sincerest flattery" than in this undeniable imitation of Alice in Wonderland. Some of the illustrations, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various

... simple fairy story. It is the only opera in which character, a personal idiosyncrasy as distinct from an overwhelming passion, produces the dramatic action. It has been urged that Lohengrin's stipulation is monstrous; but seeing ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... Fancy. The story begins with a vivid description of the little sweep and his master, and it is not till we have read several pages that we have reason to suspect that we are reading a fairy story. In fact the "poor Irishwoman" might be a veritable Irishwoman till we have read page 247. From this point on, the work of the fairies is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... me," said he, "of some old fairy story that my childish ears received, in which the fountains of the sweet and bitter waters of life were said to stand very near each other, and to mingle their streams but a little way from their source. Your tears and smiles seem to be brothers ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... difficult to believe (par parenthese) that the pearls and diamonds that dropped from the mouth of the good little princess in the old fairy story, every time she opened the ruby portals of her lips, dissolved themselves into air and came out in breath suggestive of spice-fields and orange-groves, and that the toads and scorpions falling from the mouth of her ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... pedlar as No. 1. A genuine story. The narrator says you seldom hear a fairy story in Anglesea unless there is a ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson

... little. It does not follow that the chronological order of the individual plays could be exactly determined by their percentage of riming lines, for subject matter makes a great difference. In a staged fairy story, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, the poet would naturally fall into couplets. But, other things being equal, a large amount of rime is always a sign of early work. This is especially true when the rimes occur, not in pairs, but in quatrains ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... said, "that they are the two most disagreeable old cats I have ever met. They hardly ever open their lips, and when they do it is only to answer some question of their brother. I remember in a fairy story there was a girl who whenever she spoke let fall pearls and diamonds from her lips; whenever those women open their mouths I expect icicles and daggers to ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... Columbia and the Star Spangled Banner. His Culprit Fay, published in 1819, was the best poem that had yet appeared in America, if we except Bryant's Thanatopsis, which was three years the elder. The Culprit Fay was a fairy story, in which, following Irving's lead, Drake undertook to throw the glamour of poetry about the Highlands of the Hudson. Edgar Poe said that the poem was fanciful rather than imaginative; but it is prettily and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... you with all my heart, my dear Stafford, and I hope you'll both be as happy as the happiest pair in a fairy story." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... I write that again because it has such a pleasant sound—rather like the beginning of a fairy story—as if Jim were nice. It somehow gives me a picture of him with a round, appetizing face and all sort of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... bring a fairy story for my dowry,' said he, and so they parted. But the princess gave him a sabre set with gold pieces which he ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... fairy story, and though nobody could have suspected it, the fairy queen was Miss Goodall, much diminished in stature, of course, with all her indubitable excellencies, her nobility of character, and her beauty of person sublimated to an essence that only a Lilliputian vessel could hold. Her instincts were domestic, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various



Words linked to "Fairy story" :   fairy tale, tarradiddle, narrative, tale, story, narration, taradiddle, Bluebeard, fairytale, song and dance, cock-and-bull story, fib



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