"Fairy tale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does sound like a fairy tale, Dave; but it is absolutely true. The mine was owned by my uncle, Maurice Harrison, of Butte, Montana, and when he died he left it to my mother, who was his sister. On the day he died there was a big landslide in the mountains, where the mine was located,—and ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... that you must let the men know something of the beauty of the world, and the wonder of it as well. Look here, Blair: do you mean to say that I couldn't make a regular fairy tale out of the geology of these Banks? Pray, ladies, excuse just a little shop; I can't help it. Give me just one tooth of an elephant, dredged up off Scarborough, and if I don't make those men delighted, then I may leave the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... satisfactory, and that I had obtained the post. And what do you think it is? Oh, the most delightful of all work—the very thing I would have chosen! It is to arrange, and catalogue, and generally take care of a large library. And the salary—this is the most wonderful part of the whole fairy tale—is to be L150 a year. Think of ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... give up the hope. "Maybe some one will 'dopt you, Maggie," she said, "and then, of course, you can have Moggins back again. Your new mamma would want you to have him." And so the two children talked over this possibility, as if it were a delightful fairy tale. ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... the mountains and smiled up at Johnny Byrd very much as the young princess in the fairy tale must have smiled at the all-conquering prince, and Johnny Byrd's blue eyes grew bluer and brighter and his voice ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in Sicily so faultless as Sta. Catarina? Taormina is a paradise, an epitome of all that is beautiful in Italy,—Venice excepted. Girgenti is a solemn epic, with its golden temples between the sea and hills. Cefalu is wild and strange, and Monreale a vision out of a fairy tale; but ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... was actually libellous or literally indecent. But the modern editor regards himself far too much as a kind of original artist, who can select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a poet or a caricaturist. He "makes up" the paper as man "makes up" a fairy tale, he considers his newspaper solely as a work of art, meant to give pleasure, not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he thinks it clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he thinks them silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it wrong. He suppresses ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... licentious poet over whose salon she presided brilliantly; discreet and penniless widow, governess of the illegitimate children of the king, adviser and finally wife of that king, friend of Ninon, model of virtue, femme d'esprit, politician, diplomatist, and devote—no fairy tale can furnish more improbable adventures and more striking contrasts. But she was the product of exceptional circumstances joined to an exceptional nature. It is true she put a final touch upon the purity ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... himself that he knew a heresy or two that were like belief. His mother and the bishop at Tuebingen and on the Baltic! Curiously enough, they did not seem very remote. He adored his mother and the bishop, and so the thought of them was a part of this fairy tale. All pleasant thoughts whether of adventure or impression boast kinship, perhaps have identity. And the name of that identity was Olivia. So he "drove the night ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... her room almost as fast as if she had been on the "Flying Trunk," in the Fairy Tale. When there, she could not read, and in displeasure with herself and with every one, dashed the little volume away and cried long and bitterly. Edith had not been an insensible spectator of the constantly and self-denying gentle conduct of Emilie. Her ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... So called from his hair, and from Riquet with the Tuft, the fairy tale. We read in the Cowden Clarkes' Recollections of Writers: "The latter name ('Cowden with the Tuft') slyly implies the smooth baldness with scant curly hair distinguishing the head of the friend addressed, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in return for her labor and kindness was the story of their adventure. She listened eagerly to every word. "I shall tell this to my grandchildren," she said when the story was done, "and they will think it just a fairy tale. They'll never believe it's fairy truth! Oh, if they would only stop pretending to be so wise they themselves might some time get the chance of a ride over the tree tops with Tree Mother. But they never will. Come play with them again ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... hailed Pequita's dancing. And how her little feet flew!—how her eyes sparkled with rapture—how the dark curls tossed, and the cherry lips smiled! To her the King remained Pasquin!—a kind of monarch in a fairy tale, who scattered benefits at a touch, and sunshine with a glance, and who deserved all the love and loyalty of every subject in the kingdom! But she had never had any idea of 'Revolution,' poor child!—save ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed? there, too, the same necessity meets us: an antecedent unity must here, too, be supposed. Analyse the seeds with the finest tools, and let the solar microscope come in aid of your senses, what do you find?—means and instruments; a wondrous fairy tale of nature, magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences; a house of many chambers, and the owner and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... opened for him seemed to respect neither distance nor politeness, nor hold any fear for strength. Friendly insults, and uncritical friendliness mingled oddly with the mock-solemn pretense of the fairy tale, and that part was genuine and spontaneous. It didn't seem to be a different kind of people he was meeting exactly: it was the same kind of people approached differently. He didn't know exactly how it was done, and he let the other two take ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... won't believe that it can be done like that—in a moment. But that boy was ready. He had dreamed and until now no one had ever put the dreams into words for him. He cannot read, has probably never heard a fairy tale—the lore of this region is gruesome and ghostly, rather than ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... said Moore, "accordingly electric; his fame had not to wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but seemed to spring up like the palace of a fairy tale, in a night. As he himself briefly described it in his memoranda:—'I awoke one morning, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... earlier than the others, and had wished her parents and the king and queen 'Good night,' she turned round once more at the half-closed door, and nodded to me in a friendly manner, and as though we were old acquaintance. I was her prince of the fairy tale." ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... they whispered, as if talking to one another about a creche. Little ones, be good! Here is a new fairy tale! ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... astonished to find that she had taken the fantastic little tale invented to amuse her as truth; but the poor babe had never read books or heard stories, and the fairy tale had been too much for her starved little imagination. I remember that once on another occasion I told a pathetic story of a little child, lost in a great wilderness, to a girl about Anita's age, and just as unaccustomed to this kind ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... presently all sorts of parcels, big and little, began to arrive for their new protege. Myrtle was amazed and awed by the splendor of her new apparel, and could scarcely believe her good fortune. It seemed like a fairy tale to her, and she imagined herself a Cinderella with two fairy godmothers who were young and pretty girls possessing the purse of Fortunatus and the generosity of Glinda the Good. At night, when she was supposed to be asleep, Myrtle crept from her bed, turned on the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... the rest stand upright? But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and quartz, and some other such companions, when they get leave to do anything they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about every one of which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are sadly tried, and have little time ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the request, and for the amusement of, the children of a friend; nor would it ever have entered my head to offer any thing in the shape of a Fairy Tale to this enlightened age, when such productions have long been banished from all juvenile libraries. Among the innumerable works which do so much credit to the talents and invention of the writers, that have been substituted for them, it may ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... Iceland upon the map. I do not know where it is, or what it is. I only know that it has a beautiful name, and that I have written a beautiful thing about it. This age is an age of identification, in which our god is the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and our devil the fairy tale that teaches nothing. We go to the British Museum for culture, and to Archdeacon Farrar for guidance. And then we think that we are advancing. We might as well return to the myths of Darwin, or to the delicious fantasies of John Stuart Mill. They at least were entertaining, and no ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... backward, physically speaking. I was confronted with the vastitude of the universe at once, without the ingratiating introduction of the fairy tale. I had early made the not so inane decision that I would not read a book until I really wanted to. One of the rarest women in the world, having listened to my remark, said she had a book she knew I would like because it was ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however, that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on, like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now. In a day's wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was overcast; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... cousin, Henry Nelson C. She translated Dobrizhoeffer's Account of the Abipones, and The Joyous and Pleasant History ... of the Chevalier Bayard. Her original works are Pretty Lessons in Verse, etc. (1834), which was very popular, and a fairy tale, Phantasmion. She also ed. her father's works, to which she added ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... she had been brought up on a chessboard. Dartmouth used to tell her that her peculiarly erect carriage and lofty fashion of carrying her head gave her the effect of surveillance over an invisible crown with an unreliable fit, and that she stepped like the maiden in the fairy tale who was obliged to walk upon peas. He made a tin halo one day, and put it suddenly on her head when her back was turned, and she avenged herself by wearing it until he went down on his knees and begged her to take it off. When she sat in ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he ponders on life's meaning much, Investigates the origin of things But irreligious are his ways of thought. He shows no reverence for Issara, And Indra is to him a fairy tale. He grudgeth to the gods a sacrifice And sheddeth tears at immolated lambs. Oh no! he's not religious. If he were, His ills could easily be cured by faith, By confidence ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... the precincts, had discovered this kitchen garden, found it to her mind, and thereafter made free of it with the cheerfullest insouciance. The dark tunnel, to begin with, put her in mind of some adventure in a fairy tale she could not recall; but it opened of a sudden and enchantingly upon sunshine and beds of onions, parsley, cabbages, with pale yellow butterflies hovering. Old Battershall, too, though taciturn, was ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ends like a fairy tale, which says "they lived happy ever after," for the record says the jailer "rejoiced, believing in God, with all his house." And in this one word, "Rejoiced," I would like to hand you the strangely wonderful and fine thing in to-day's lesson. Rejoicing puts the climax of ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... And he was as good as his word. Arriving in Boston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my room allotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with every attention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had done nothing whatever to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... civilities with no better grace than the implacable Beauty; unscrewing her mouth into a most acid smile, and looking as though she could bite a piece out of him. In short, the poor general seems to have as formidable foes to contend with as a hero of ancient fairy tale, who had to fight his way to his enchanted princess through ferocious monsters of every kind, and to encounter the brimstone terrors of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... father. They went out to go to the market. Father has been helping a lot here. He has given the hospital all sorts of things that were badly needed. The Princess will send him in as soon as she comes. Isn't it like a fairy tale to think that we had little Rika ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... to make this danger clear, give all particulars, or the king will laugh at my story and consider it a fairy tale." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Professor Chamberlains version of it in The Japanese Fairy Tale Series, with charming illustrations ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... I can make out, all the evidence you've given me ain't against her, but against you. She was out drivin' when it happened, you say, and you expect me to arrest her for it. It ain't against the law to go driving, seh. And as for that ditch fairy tale, on your own say-so you wiped out all ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... minds and sinewy arms have long confinement and scanty fare, bowed down to this damp floor and withered. What a record of misery and wrong would not these walls give forth, were they for one little hour gifted with the power of speech, like the talking woods in the fairy tale. And yet, evil as the times were, when might, not right, was in the ascendant, they had their redeeming excellencies too. Knightly honour, chivalrous abhorrence of guile, the soul to endure, as well as the temper ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... dwarfed by the balloon she towed. As that bubble tried ponderously to rotate, rainbow gleams ran across it, hiding and then revealing the constellations. Here, on the asteroid's axis, there was no weight, and one moved with underwater smoothness, as if disembodied. "Oh, a fairy tale," Ellen sighed. ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... the world like a young girl telling a fairy tale. "He said"—she breathed it in wonder—"that Mr. Randolph's wealth was so fabulous that it was beyond computing! And this is his ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... of the prison-house—for he always begged for open air, and with cushions we often sat beneath the stars and against the grimy chimney-pots—that talk I shall never forget. Life became constructed all anew. The power of the greatest fairy tale this world can ever know lay about me, raised to its highest expression. I caught at least some touch of reality—of awful reality—in the idea that this splendid globe whereon we perched like insects peeping timidly from tiny cells, might be the body of a glorious Being—the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... prejudicial to those who practice it, experience would have avenged them; but experience has, on the contrary, made it more universal and more holy. We only accuse it of being a faithless debtor because we demand an immediate payment, and one apparent to our senses. We always consider life as a fairy tale, in which every good action must be rewarded by a visible wonder. We do not accept as payment a peaceful conscience, self-content, or a good name among men—treasures that are more precious than any other, but the value ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dark curls, and large wondering eyes—not an ordinary child, and certainly not a pretty one, and looking, at the present moment, with her wrinkled eyebrows and huddled-up figure, like a little old witch in a fairy tale. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... accomplishes things—hm—that is a fairy tale, a girl's dream; and yet, perhaps it is as it should be. [He shrugs his shoulders] How can I tell? [Gaily] On my honour, Sasha, I really am quite a respectable man. Judge for yourself: I have always liked to discuss things, but I have never in ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... right into my soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he imagine she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was simply a Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... alone and aloud at them. The sides of this road across the swamp were covered with a thick and close embroidery of creeping moss or rather lichens of the most vivid green and red: the latter made my horse's path look as if it was edged with an exquisite pattern of coral; it was like a thing in a fairy tale, and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... few small flakes of snow were beginning to flit aimlessly about; their soft, wavering motion suggested nothing ruder than that same purposeless drift towards which Diana's whole soul was going out in yearning. If she had been in a German fairy tale, the snow-flakes would have seemed to her spirits of peace. She welcomed them. She put out her hand and caught two or three, and then brought them close to look at them. The little fair crystals lay still on her glove; it was too cold for them to melt. O to be like ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... she said, five minutes afterwards. "Of course, I thought of it all along. I never made any secret of it to your father. I told him that our escape was like a fairy tale, and that it must have the same ending: 'and they married, and lived happy ever after.' He would never have let me have my way with the house, had I not confided in him. He said that I could spend my money as I pleased, on myself, but that not one penny should be laid out on ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... a fairy tale, all right," Benson went on. "He was as full of fancies as a fig is of seeds. I have been trying to believe that what he told me isn't altogether a pipe-dream, but it sounds mightily like one. He says that about two o'clock in the morning of Saturday, two weeks ago, an engine and a single ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Ellie's bed, she told how she upset the pyramid of note-paper; and what trouble she would have been in, but for the kind lady who so promptly came to the rescue. To Ellie's quick imagination the story had all the charm of a fairy tale. And when, at the close, her sister placed in her hands the orange and the tiny box wherein lay the rose, still quite fresh and fragrant, her face beamed with delight; and Katy went to bed very happy, feeling herself more than repaid for having ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... do believe that, just as in a fairy tale, when that clock strikes twelve, Lupin will ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... fulfilling the promise of your youth, Evadne," her aunt remarked after a thoughtful pause. "I remember reading a fairy tale of Jean Ingelow's aloud to you children in the nursery long ago. I forget the name of it, but it was the one into which 'One morning, oh, so early,' comes; and you started a controversy as to whether, speaking of the dove, when the lark said 'Give us glory,' she should ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... instinctively realizing this, Sanda ceased to feel that the Arab girl was of an entirely different world from hers, remote as a creature of another planet. The Agha's daughter was transformed in the eyes of her guest. From a mere picturesque figure in a vivid fairy tale, she became pathetically, poignantly human. Sanda began to hear the call of another soul yearning to have her soul as its friend, and all that was warm and impulsive in her responded. A thrill of expectation stirred in her veins when, on the evening of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... is charmingly told. The author makes up the story from the various myths in a fascinating way which cannot fail to interest the reader. It is as enjoyable as any fairy tale."—HARTFORD COURANT. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... up and down. Not one of us is too old to learn some new mystery in the inner workings of the human machine. To Janet it was a fairy tale, what had been life and death to the Rev. Samuel Bishop. But she had achieved her object. Sally was quieter after the relation of that little story and, seeing in her mood a good opportunity for suggesting some plans about the future, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably spent in receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came to pay their respects to the noble new-married couple, and, like Bluebeard's wife in the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the furniture, and the numerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge old place, built as far back as Henry V.'s time, besieged and battered by the Cromwellians in the Revolution, and altered and patched ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... even become religion. When all around a man is wavering and changing, when everything is growing dark and featureless to him in the far distance of an unknown future, when the world seems but a fiction or a fairy tale, and the universe a chimera, when the whole edifice of ideas vanishes in smoke, and all realities are penetrated with doubt, what is the fixed point which may still be his? The faithful heart of a woman! There he may rest his head; there he will find strength to live, strength to believe, and, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... symbolic representation of her own resurrection. To the passionate discussions in Germany, England, and France, as to whether this character is true to adolescence, we can only answer with an emphatic affirmative; that her heaven abounds in local color and in fairy tale items, that it is very material, and that she is troubled by fears of sin against the Holy Ghost, is answer enough in an ill-used, starving child with a fevered brain, whose dead mother taught ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the cellar and scatter the whole crowd with her kitchen tongs! It was almost a little too lifelike; even the smell of pancakes came drifting down from where the well-to-do Olsens lived, so that one could hardly call it a real fairy tale. But then perhaps the dwarf Vinslev would come out of his den, and would once again tell them the story of how he had sailed off with the King's gold and sunk it out yonder, in the King's Deep, when the Germans ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that the death of any animal of the respective species might entail his or her own; just as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the Wotjobaluk tribe of South-Eastern Australia "held that 'the life of Ngunungunut (the Bat) is the life of a man, and the life of Yrtatgurk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,' ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... his face grow red. His lean hands folded and unfolded as he watched Farry Pierce disappear around the corner of the bank building. If any one felt like murdering old Gabe with a pea-shooter at that moment, Philo Gubb did. Shadow and trail Farry Pierce! The old skin-flint, coming with a fairy tale and getting the only fully graduated deteckative in Riverbank to shadow and trail a son-in-law and report daily! Divorce case evidence, hey? Talking murderer and working a deteckative into doing scandal sleuthing ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... feel all the nice things that have been said about "The Young Visiters," are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems almost another person. It has all been like a fairy tale, from the accidental finding of the original note book to the day when, at her request, I left a copy with my friend Miss Margaret Mackenzie, for it is to her I really owe the publication of the book. She showed it to Mr. Frank Swinnerton, and thus I was lucky enough to have it brought to the ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... Silver Fleece all her possibilities were beginning to find expression. These new-born green things hidden far down in the swamp, begotten in want and mystery, were to her a living wonderful fairy tale come true. All the latent mother in her brooded over them; all her brilliant fancy wove itself about them. They were her dream-children, and she tended them jealously; they were her Hope, and she worshipped them. When the rabbits tried the tender plants she watched hours to drive them ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our family history, my dears? It's quite a fairy tale. The first Jolyon Forsyte—at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be your great-great-grandfather—dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an 'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put it, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will sound like a veritable fairy tale to many who are not familiar with this Book of God; the unlikeliest thing imaginable. Yet this is the thing seriously set forth throughout these old prophetic pages. I have given a few references in footnotes. But these few scattered passages of themselves will not give an adequate conception ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... convoy be found certain ships which sail worse than others, and that, although these tubs, as they are most deservedly called, crowd all their canvas, the rest are obliged to shorten sail in order to keep them company; as Lightfoot, in the fairy tale, was obliged to tie his feet in the race. If it be the commodore who gives the dinner, he either heaves to, while the boats of the several captains come on board, or he edges down to the different ships in succession, passes them ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... takin' in that fairy tale of Crane's any more'n I am, Dick. Why can't we do a bit for ourselves over this; it won't hurt the boss none. Won't throw him down. This horse was a good youngster, an' Crane didn't get him without seein' him ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... crowd came out as on the first day, and Koku had little trouble in keeping them far enough away so that Tom and the others could get some rest. Koku walked about, brandishing a big club, and looking as fierce as a giant in a fairy tale. It was afternoon when a message came from Mr. Whitford to the effect that Andy's airship was not out the previous night, and that so far no clews had developed from the letter, or ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Augustus Hare, who happened to be one of the party, "One would think that we all of us were going to Gretna Green." When we approached the castle, whose towers were blots in the November evening, I felt we were approaching a castle in a child's fairy tale. In point of magnitude, combined with ancient and absolutely continuous occupation, there is, so far as my own experience goes, no private dwelling in the kingdom which excels, or even equals, Raby. The duchess kept a great album in which each of her guests was asked to inscribe some record ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... with inimitable vividness into music. He could suggest with as definite and unmistakable a musical atmosphere, the simple beauty of a little wild flower, as the might of the sea; as well the fanciful and imaginative scenes of fairy tale as the wild and lonely vastness of the great American prairies; as well the joviality and humour of his countrymen as the elemental strength, and rude, stern manliness of the North American Indian, and the heroic, stirring atmosphere of the ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... after the first swift glance of inquiry. "It is doubtless a fairy tale, handed down by tradition. I take no stock in it. My principal object in acquiring Rothhoefen is to satisfy a certain vanity which besets me. I have it on excellent authority that my ex-father-in-law,—the man Titus, you know,—talks of buying the property and ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... dollars in one week!" he said to himself. "What would Oscar say to that? It seems like a fairy tale." ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "that sounds like a fairy tale. Babs and I love fairy tales, particularly the old, old ones—the Jack the Giant Killer ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale. It is true that only in certain bits of England and in pictures in books of fairy tales did one see cottages of its kind, and in them always lived with their grandmothers—in the fairy stories as Robin remembered—girls who would in good time ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... much for something which could not possibly have got into his pockets, and before many days were over, it was very nearly certain to make its appearance, when the top of the hamper was thrown back, imbedded in straw or paper. That dear old hamper always put us in mind of some magic chest in a fairy tale, only I doubt if any magic chest ever afforded so much pleasure, or produced so great a variety of articles as it did. I do not know if our kind father ever was out of humour; if he was, he left the appearance of it behind him in the city. Out of spirits ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was published in February 1678. Soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified the imagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like himself, and struggling with temptations from within and from without, which every moment drew a smile from him by some stroke of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... inn before, our former home being no great distance from town; and my company was not such as to shorten the way, for Aunt Golding was the only frank and cheerful-spoken person in our party, Althea behaving, as I told her, like an enchanted princess in a fairy tale, so melancholy, proud, and silent, and Andrew being so dashed with her stately ways that the poor youth was not less tongue-tied than she. So I was glad indeed when we rode out of York one fine morning, and Mrs. Golding told us we must reach her house before ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... Game-Slaughter Case.—Here is a story from California that is no fairy tale. It was published, most innocently, in a western magazine, with the illustration that appears herewith, and in which please notice the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... That was the fairy tale of my childhood. Far into the night I lay on the dewy grass listening to Mr. Boone's talk. It did not at first flow in a steady stream, for he was not a garrulous man, but my father's questions presently ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stirring events must have taken place. That time must have been full of brave deeds such as the minstrels loved to sing. But that part of our history is very dark. Much that is written of it is little more than a fairy tale, for it was not until long afterwards that anything about this ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Louis Kepler printed a "Dream of Lunar Astronomy," which first his father and then his brother-in-law had been preparing for publication at the time of their respective deaths. It is a curious mixture of saga and fairy tale with a little science in the way of astronomy studied from the moon, and cast in the form of a dream to overcome the practical difficulties of the hypothesis of visiting the moon. Other writings in large ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... is also related to life standards, for it presents to the child a criticism of life. By bringing forward in high light the character of the fairy, the fairy tale furnishes a unique contribution to life. Through its repeated impression of the idea of fairyhood it may implant in the child a desire which may fructify into that pure, generous, disinterested kindness and love of the grown-up, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... a grey squirrel. Long before the seventeenth century the word vair had passed out of use, except as a heraldic term, and had ceased to convey any meaning to the people. Thus the pantoufles de vair of the fairy tale became, in the oral tradition, the homonymous pantoufles de verre, or glass slippers, a delightful improvement on the ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... approach of poison. Some part of the quarrel with the Baroness Steinfeldt was about the right of the Persian maiden to wear this stone, which an ancestor of my family won in battle from the Soldan of Trebizond. All these things were confused in popular tradition, and the real facts turned into a fairy tale." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... a quaint old fairy tale of a friendly pitcher that came and took up its abode in the home of an aged couple, supplying them from its magic depths with food and drink and many other comforts. Of this tale one is reminded in considering the place of the milk pitcher in the home. How many housewives ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... now; for it may come to pass as the man's wish in the fairy tale did, and the black pudding flew up and stuck tight to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... would have believed any fairy tale by now. And they started for it, Harley leading; but the tide was too high, and at the farther end of the little pebble isthmus the higher breakers actually came across and poured their foam into the clear stillness. Ann and Jane were afraid; even Dolly hesitated; as for Harley, he was ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Mary what the kiss of the Prince was to the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale. It awakened her heart to happiness, leading her into that new world which is the old. Hitherto the love which had been her portion was that which ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... stuff to the same purpose. Then she expatiated on the arrival of his grandfather, and the awful man, armed with pistol, dirk, and claymore, (the last weapons existed only in Nurse's imagination,) the very Ogre of a fairy tale—then all the circumstances of the carrying off his mother, while bank-notes were flying about the house like screeds of brown paper, and gold guineas were as plenty as chuckie-stanes. All this, partly ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... or little, should wonder whether there is a meaning in this story deeper than that of an ordinary fairy tale, I will own that there is. But I have hidden it so carefully that the smaller people, and many larger folk, will never find it out, and meantime the book may be read straight on, like "Cinderella," or "Blue-Beard," ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... little journal I kept during the whole life of the brother I am not willing they should forget. His quaint and sagacious sayings were delicious to them; the history of his first steps, his first words sounded to them like a fairy tale. And the story of his last steps, his last words on earth, had for them such a tender charm, that there was a cry of disappointment from them all, when I closed the little book and told them we should have to ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... won't be!" cried Margaret. "They wouldn't have the heart to spoil our party. I have read about house-parties all my life, and to think that I am going to have one! Why, it is a fairy tale, ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... flashed. "I'm no such thing. But I'm not quite a fool. A babe in arms wouldn't swallow that fairy tale." ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... talking their own old language. The English called them Welsh, a name that meant strangers, and we call them Welsh still, and their country Wales. They made a great many grand stories about their last brave chief, Arthur, till, at last, they turned into a sort of fairy tale. It was said that, when King Arthur lay badly wounded after his last battle, he bade his friend fling his sword into the river, and that then three lovely ladies came in a boat, and carried him away to a secret island. The Welsh ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that is the way to hunt down a work of art. You are face to face with antagonists that dispute the game with you. It is craft against craft! A work of art in the hands of a Norman, an Auvergnat, or a Jew, is like a princess guarded by magicians in a fairy tale." ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... you forget your fairy tale," said Pamela. "Cinderella had a happy ending. She wasn't left to the drudgery, but reigned with the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... character belongs to every province, but though many details of temple worship—Buddhist, Hindu, and Mohammedan—may be gathered from the lengthy scroll, heroic and princely exploits, myths and traditions, encumber the sacred text, which Eastern imagination transforms into a fairy tale. Creeds lose their chiselled outline, and crumble away in the disintegrating medium of Javanese thought, which blends them into each other with changing colour and borrowed light. The inconstant soul of the Malay knows nothing of that ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... without venturing to open their lips. They did not know who Porthos was, for they had never seen him before. The race of those Titans who had worn the cuirasses of Hugh Capet, Philip Augustus, and Francis I. had already begun to disappear. They could hardly help thinking he might be the ogre of the fairy tale, who was going to turn the whole contents of Planchet's shop into his insatiable stomach, and that, too, without in the slightest degree displacing the barrels and chests that were in it. Cracking, munching, chewing, nibbling, sucking, and swallowing, Porthos occasionally said ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... like him. Nothing, therefore, pleased her better than to get him into her little room, and talk to him. She would take a little bit of sugar-candy or liquorice out of her cupboard for him, and tell him some strange old fairy tale or legend, while she sat spinning, until at last she had made him so fond of her that he would often go and stay for hours with her. Nor did it make much difference when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give him something ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... child listening to a long fairy tale, every page a new adventure of wizardry, a story of elf, or mermaid, or gnome, of treasures underground guarded by enchanted monsters, of bells heard silverly in the depth of old forests, of castles against the sunset, of lakes beneath the quiet moon? Know ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... high, arched entrance across the room. A platform before it was raised some six feet above the floor, and on this were seats—ornate chairs, done in sweeping scrolls of scarlet and gold. A massive seat in the center was like the fantastic throne of a child's fairy tale. From the corridor beyond that entrance came a stir and rustling that rivetted the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the ladies who moved about the castle, seeing themselves reflected from Marie's pages as in a polished mirror, I am not competent to speak. The type of beauty preferred by the old romancers was that of a child's princess of fairy tale—blue-eyed, golden-haired, and ruddy of cheek. The lady would wear a shift of linen, "white as meadow flower." Over this was worn a garment of fur or silk, according to the season; and, above all, a vividly ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... Bible through together, the poor man explaining everything, especially the historical parts, so clearly and beautifully, with such an intimate knowledge of the countries and peoples and customs of the remote East, that it was all more interesting than a fairy tale. Finally he gave his copy of the Bible to Isaac, and told him to carry it in his pocket every day when he went out on the downs, and when he sat down to take it out and read in it. For by this time Isaac, who was now ten years old, had been engaged as a shepherd-boy ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale; you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new dresses, as Miss Thackeray did so well in 'Five Old Friends.' If ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... seen few attractive women of late, the ladies of Baku being inclined to run to fat and diamonds, and he thought Lena Meredith the most lovely and the most wonderful creature that ever stepped out of a fairy tale. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... partner," she returned lightly. "I wish I could do my share. I'm even afraid to say I'll pray for your success for, to the present, I've never made a prayer that's been answered. But," and she sobered, "I want to tell you I do believe in you. It's like a fairy tale—too wonderful and good to be true—but I'm going to bank on it and whatever happens now—no matter how disagreeable—I shall be telling myself that it is of no importance for in a few months my hard times ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... for they are rapidly exhausting the stores of the "Contes des Fees." Alexander will probably give you something for it, or you can try our old friend Miller at the Green. The process is shortly this. Select a fairy tale, or a chapter from the Arabian Nights; write out the dramatis personae, taking care that you have plenty of supernaturals, genii, elves, gnomes, ghouls, or vampires, to make up a competent corps de ballet; work out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... but that of my friend was ample; and he delighted in the anticipation of indulging her in elegant pursuit, and administering to those delicate tastes and fancies that spread a kind of witchery about the sex.—"Her life," said he, "shall be like a fairy tale." ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... that you had used me as a plaything and it—it made me furious. But it is different now. I see, oh, so plainly. And just as I had resigned myself to the thought of spending the rest of my life in a cottage, away outside the pale of this glorious life! Oh, it is like a fairy tale!" ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in that vehicle of improvisation, that modern fairy tale—our daily paper—we read words such as these: "What has become of the boasted renascence of our stage?" or: "So much for all the trumpeting about the new drama!" When we come across such words, we remember that it is only ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... two sticks by rubbing them together. I tried it once for an hour, and I know now I never would have got it in a thousand years as I was doing it. Others have had the same experience; consequently, most persons look upon this as a sort of fairy tale, or, if they believe it to be true, they think it so difficult as to be worth no second thought. All scouts, I find, are surprised and greatly interested to learn that not only is it possible, it is easy, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... wonder how they came on by degrees; and, to cut a long tale short, at length found themselves in a great big room, like a palace in a fairy tale, full of grand pictures with gold frames, and looking-glasses like the side of a house, where they could see down to their very shoes. For a while they were like men in a dream, perfectly dazzled and dumfoundered; and it was five minutes before they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... "Is it a fairy tale, daddy?" she asked, as The Pilot paused. "It isn't true, is it?" and her voice had a pleading note hard for the old man ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... he said, angrily. "I won't have any back talk." Yet there was something about his tone that told me I had got one in on my own. He seemed all at once less able to appear confident that I was telling him a fairy tale. ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... behind Will Underhill's. I stole thy father's apples fifteen years. What! go wi' me? Get on the wain, thou little fool—get on all the wains I own, and a plague upon thine eightpence, lad! Why, here; Hal telled me thou wert dead, or lost, or some such fairy tale! Up on the sheepskin, both ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... their little idiosyncrasies; her aunt, her brother, her father, her maid and even the fat man cook. The young man soon had the picture of the private car with all its luxuries, and the story of the days of travel that had been one long fairy tale of pleasure. Only the man Hamar was not mentioned; but the missionary had not forgotten him. Somehow he had taken a dislike to him from the first mention of his name. He blamed him fiercely for not having ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... about the world a great deal, and perished in Hungary just as she reached womanhood. Her mother had died when she was born, and an old woman had taken care of her out of friendship. People called the lass 'beautiful Susel,' and she was wonderfully charming. Pink and white, like the maiden in the fairy tale, and with glittering golden hair just like my Wawerl's. The old woman with whom she lived—her aunt or some other relative—had long practised the healing of all sorts of infirmities, and when a young Spanish count, who had come here with the Emperor Charles to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cleared up some day," she murmured, putting out her strong, beautiful hand to touch her sister's knee. "Whether it is a fairy tale or not, one must cherish ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... enchanted precincts, equally gorgeous. It was the brightest and the last full display of magnificent pseudo chivalry, and to Stephen's dazzled eye, seeing it beneath the slant rays of the setting sun of June, it was a fairy tale come to life. Hal Randall, who was in attendance on the Cardinal, declared that it was a mere surfeit of jewels and gold and silver, and that a frieze jerkin or leathern coat was an absolute refreshment to the sight. He therefore spent all the time he was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was inserted in the Magazine as an "Old-Fashioned Fairy Tale," and Julie wrote another this year (1876) under the same heading, which was ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... world, that surpassed any fairy tale, had opened to Jerry in these last few days, it seemed only fitting to go to school in a building that was like a palace. She thrilled at the thought of the new school life, the girls and boys who would ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... A Fairy Tale of Home was here related, that in its graceful and fantastic freaks of fancy might have been imagined by the Danish poet, Hans Christian Andersen. In its combination of simple pathos and genial drollery, however, it was a story that no other could by possibility have ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... intentions, and for the first time the third termer realized the magnitude and importance of the third term tradition and most men of influence in those used their power to scare him out of office at the same time comforting him with the fairy tale that if not succeeded by two consecutive terms another term would not be a third term but such was his fear that his machine built up in seven and a half years would be destroyed over night, that he threatened not ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... cultivate is to think in your own mind that new people are all packages in a grab-bag, and that you can never tell what any of them may prove to be until you know what is inside the outer wrappings of casual appearances. To be sure, the old woman of the fairy tale, who turns out to be a fairy in disguise, is not often met with in real life, but neither is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... early fancy of the ballad-mongers and fairy tale-tellers that has dwelt longingly on the idea of suspended animation. All the mystics, who all follow the same dim track that leads to nothing, have believed in various forms of the imaginary Australian ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... thunder-cloud pushed slowly, and on a sudden a mighty gale sat heaped blank on the mountain-top and blew. Down went the heads of the poplars, the river staggered in its leap, the vale was shuddering grey. It was like the transformation in a fairy tale; Beauty had taken her old cloak about her, and bent to calamity. The poplars streamed their length sideways, and in the pauses of the strenuous wind nodded and dashed wildly and white over the dead black water, that waxed in foam and hissed, showing its teeth like a beast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you. Seems you turned off at a wagontrail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dawdler,' said Claude, getting as interested as if he were listening to a fairy tale. 'So you ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... had filled with wonder; she cast them down, and a strange smile began to play about her sweet strong mouth. All at once she was in the middle of a fairy tale, and had not a notion what was coming next. Her dumb shepherd boy a baronet!—and, more wonderful still, a Galbraith! She must be dreaming in the wide street! The last she had seen of him was as he was driven from the house by her father, when he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in the picture looks suspiciously like a magician. It seems as if he must have bewitched the rats which crawl friskily about him, one perching on his shoulders. He reminds one of some ogre out of a fairy tale, with his strange tall cap, his kilted coat, and baggy trousers, the money pouch at his belt, the fur mantle flung over one shoulder, and the fierce-looking sword dangling at his side. But there is ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the story passed through many forms and many phases—the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson |
