"Fancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toad, which was still countenanced by at least one medical authority of note. I have read recently in some medical journal, that an American practitioner, whose name is known to the country, is prescribing the hoof of a horse for epilepsy. It was doubtless suggested by that old fancy of wearing a portion of elk's hoof hung round the neck or in a ring, for this disease. But it is hard to persuade reasonable people to swallow the abominations of a former period. The evidence which satisfied Fernelius will not serve ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 'Purity.' Then quick, With restless hands, she culled the floral star— Queen of the wave—emblem of innocence, And hung it in the lion's matted mane, And twined it round the serpent's glittering neck; Thus humoring her fancy in the play Till half the morning hours had slipped and gone. Then, startled by the voice she loved so well, She left the sport, the creatures, and the flowers, And hastened back with Adam to the trees Where God was walking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fancy distanced the tree on its imaginary voyage, but his memory lagging behind some twenty years or more in point of time saw a young and slim Almayer, clad all in white and modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on the dusty jetty of Macassar, coming ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a fretful woman who cannot get her way—a woman driven mad by baseless jealousy—in fancy she sees the swan coming to lead Lohengrin away from her; with mournful and dreary effect a fragment of the swan theme sounds from the orchestra. This simple touch is weird to a degree never dreamed of by all the purveyors of operatic horrors; it is unearthly, uncanny, in its wild beauty. The ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... in his dog-cart; the Empress drove with the Princess Metternich in a victoria to the field, where she left her and returned to the chateau. I fancy she was afraid of the dampness of this bleak ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... silly Name, You'll think that you have found the Road to Fame; And though ten thousand other Names are there, You'll fancy you're a Genius, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... vapours and fancy,' says the old woman; 'I tell you their credit depends upon the child's life, and they are as careful as any mother ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... of thrill. Early I discovered that I had not appreciated fully her mental powers, on account of a habit she had of falling into a shy silence when several were present. She had a nimble wit, an alert fancy, and a zest for life as earnest as it was refreshing. A score of times that day she was out of the shabby chaise to pick the wild flowers or to chat with the children by the wayside. The memory of her warm ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... a maximum size for the raw brick, which it was supposed served to keep bricks uniform, and the expectation was entertained that when the duty came off, many fancy sizes of bricks would be used. This has not, however, turned out to be the case. The duty has been taken off for years; but the differences in the size of bricks in England are little more than what is due to the different rate of shrinkage of brick earth under burning. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... note in Marco Polo, I., p. 76. I may remark that I never said nor believed that the statue was Polo's. The mosaic at Genoa is a fancy portrait.] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a bunch before lunch, I fancy," said Mrs. Merrill, "so you can hold them in your hand till we find where we will eat. Then, after lunch, you can dampen your napkin and wrap up the stems and put your posies in the bottom of your basket. That is," she added ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... Century Magazine, the Churchman, and other periodicals, and they were embodied in an earlier collection under the title, "Out of Mulberry Street." Occasionally, I have used the freedom of the writer by stringing facts together to suit my own fancy. But none of the stories are invented. Nine out of ten of them are just as they came to me fresh from the life of the people, faithfully to portray which should, after all, be the aim of all fiction, as it must be ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... officer should never be reduced to ranks, except for grave and sufficient reasons. Nothing demoralizes the noncommissioned officers of a company so much and upsets discipline to such an extent as the feeling that upon the slightest pretext or fancy one is to be sent back to the ranks, to associate with the privates he has been ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... quite agree with him. I much prefer this chair on which I am sitting—this 'wooden lumber,' as you term it— to the most comfortable lump of old red sandstone that the best furnished cave could possibly afford; and I am degenerate enough to fancy that I look very nice in this frock—much nicer than my brothers or sisters to whom it originally belonged: they didn't know how to make the ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... between the concentration and the diffusion of this impulse, although they would be hopelessly bewildered by the use of the terms. They will declare one of their companions to be "in love" if his fancy is occupied by the image of a single person about whom all the newly found values gather, and without whom his solitude is an eternal melancholy. But if the stimulus does not appear as a definite image, and the values evoked are dispensed over the world, the young person suddenly ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod that didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath away his clothes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... congratulation, in a flutter of delight with Mr. Randolf, and intimating a glorious project in the background, devised between herself and Mervyn, then guarding against possible disappointment by declaring it might be all her own fancy. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... literal wings to their shoulders, and facetiously distinguishing them by the names of the four cardinal winds, (Boreas, Aquilo, Notus, &c.) and others as levanters or hurricanes, (Circius, &c.) Thus far he did no more than indulge a blameless fancy; but in his anxiety that his runners should emulate their patron winds, and do credit to the names which he had assigned them, he is said to have exacted a degree of speed inconsistent with any merciful regard for their bodily ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... met the notables. It seemed the fat and handsome captain had taken a fancy to him. And it was as Peter had deduced earlier. These passengers were stodgy Dutchmen, each with a little world of his own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... I am afraid, will smile, and think that I am just indulging in a fancy sketch—drawing on my imagination. And so I pray our Master to burn into our hearts that it is plain, matter-of-fact truth, for every day life. I would say that it is cold fact were it not that such a fact ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... that I am trying to win you because you are rich. You will remember that I loved you when no one thought that you would be rich. I do love you in my heart of hearts. I think of you in my dreams and fancy then that all the world has become bright to me, because we are walking together, hand-in-hand, where none can come between to separate us. But I would not wish you to be my wife, just because ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... particular case, no "Appendix," "Prymer," or "Authorized Vade-mecum" could accomplish the ends that are most of all desired. Fancy putting the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, the Versicles that follow the Creed, and the "Lighten our darkness" into an "Appendix." It would be the defeat of our ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... with a little astonishment—fancy taking his little narrative to heart like that—then with compunction, and then with a momentary horror at himself, and terror at the impassable gulf fixed between them, by her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to himself, trying to fancy that he heard in the distance a Zulu impi and whispering to his cork-bottomed grenadiers to keep a good look-out. One of them who was guarding the play-cupboard fell over on his face, and in the stillness the noise sounded so loud that ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... or grain, with few trees near at hand. Here and there a house, small and unnotable like the trees. Over all the country the moon, near full though not high, threw a gentle light; revealing to the fancy a less picturesque landscape than the sun would have shewn; for there were no strong lines or points to be made more striking by her partial touches, and its greatest beauty lay in the details which she could not light up. The soft and rich colours of grain and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... in the "haunted chamber." The boys told strange tales of that room, and they all believed that the floor was stained with blood. I often examined it, both by day and by candle-light; it was very old, and of oak, dark, and much discoloured. But even my excited fancy could discover nothing like blood-spots upon it. After all, when I was alone in that bed-chamber, for the housekeeper seldom entered before midnight, and the flickering and feeble oil-lamp, that always burned upon her table, threw its uncertain rays upwards, and made the central face quiver ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... other, with an easier trigger action; almost too easy for a novice, he told himself. But it had a pearl handle with a bulldog carved on the side that would show when the gun was in its holster. She'd like that fancy stuff, he supposed. Also he could teach her to shoot straighter with that light "pull." But the other was what Starr called a ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... be thrown among his kinsmen, and would at once gain influence and learn to sympathise with their discontent, or, at any rate, to know where the sore places were, if he ever wanted to inflame them. One can easily fancy the grumblings of the Ephraimites dragged up to Jerusalem to the hated labour, which Samuel had predicted (1 Samuel viii. 16), and how facile it would be for the officer in charge to fan discontent or to win friends by judicious indulgence. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... god could inspire. "But because the Jews accumulated these writings, the subsequent adopters of Christianity, realizing that Jesus was a Jew, and had been a professing Jew, promptly annexed these tales of fancy and of fear, of muddled, sensual, silly things and said they must be accepted with the teachings of Jesus. And in the course of time, people had to believe these old Jewish writings were the Word of God." (W. H. Williamson, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... abandon us. Is he intended only for us to play with, to amuse the leisure of our eyes, to adorn or enliven the home? He clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance, he makes himself smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside, or even consents, should our fancy demand it, to appear a little ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the black devil away. Yea, devils are there, more than ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... that the poet had burned with his chemicals. The one-eyed scout, "the Arimaspian," must have had a time of tribulation (being a conscientious and fatherly man) with this odd master. How characteristic of Shelley it was to lend the glow of his fancy to science, to declare that things, not thoughts, mineralogy, not literature, must occupy human minds for the future, and then to leave a lecture on mineralogy in the middle, and admit that "stones are dull things after all!" Not less Shelleyan ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... Danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword, or axe, feared witches, ghosts, Pucks, Will-o'-the-Wisps, werewolves, spirits of the wells and of the trees, and all dark, capricious, and harmful beings whom their fancy conjured up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome marshes, or the dark wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all things on earth, had its darker aspect. The foul exhalations of autumn called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... and believe that all of them embraced the truth and accepted the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. The three boys were baptized by Bishop Fauquier at St. Luke's Church, Sault Ste. Marie, on the 27th of October; the Bishop took a great fancy to Ningwinnena, became his godfather, and gave him his own name, Frederick. Everyone indeed loved the Neepigon boy; he was so gentle in his ways, so quiet and polite in his manner, and made such quaint efforts to converse ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... Certain novel-writing ladies indeed are given to depicting most royal heroes, types of the ideal man, glorified beings endowed with every charm of physique and of spirit. Such find an irresistible fascination in allowing their fancy to run wild riot and poetic revel in contemplation of a wonderful male creature, so graceful, so beautiful, so strong, so brave, so masterly, so bad or so good as the case may be—a spirit of chivalry incarnate in the perfection of the flesh. They cannot build a shrine too ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... here," he went on sternly, to the black; "you come of your own free will, and here you have got to stop. You will have as much to eat as you can stuff, plenty of rum to drink, and 'bacca to smoke; and if there's anything else you fancy, no doubt you can have it. Only look you, if you put your foot outside that door, unless you are ordered to do so, I will put a bullet through ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... WOOD, chief of the U.S.A. General Staff, has reported that the American Army is, practically speaking, unarmed, and advises the immediate expenditure of L1,200,000 for artillery and ammunition. We fancy, however, that the present state of affairs is the result of a compromise with the American Peace party, who will not object to their country having an army so long as it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... was not ready,—nor was it ready within the prescribed ten minutes. There was some hitch, I fancy, about a saloon. Finally we had to be content with an ordinary old-fashioned first- class carriage. The delay, however, was not altogether time lost. Just as the engine with its solitary coach was approaching the platform someone came running up with ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... remembered being sent by his master on a message to Clifden, the nearest town, and seeing the people crawling along the road, and that, returning the same way a few hours later, many of the same people were lying dead under the walls or upon the grass at the roadside. That this is no fancy picture is clear from local statistics. No part of Ireland suffered worse than Galway and Mayo, both far more densely populated then than at present. In this very region of Connemara an inspector has left on record, having to give orders for the burying of over ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... madam be mad, I shall not care for staying long in the family, so I heartily wish you could get me a place at some neighbouring gentleman's. I fancy I shall be discharged very soon, and the moment I am I shall return to my old master's country seat, if it be only to see Parson Adams, who is the best man in the world. London is a bad place, and there is so little good fellowship that the next-door neighbours don't know one another. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hour Don Felipe was conducting Blanch and Bessie to the canon, Dick was returning to Santa Fe on horseback from his hacienda where he had passed the night. As there was no particular reason why he should reach the Posada before noon, he decided to indulge his fancy by lingering in the cooling shade of the canon close to the river's edge, where he might listen to the voices of the waters as they went singing by him on their way to the old town and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... in the midst of the assembled prelates, and peers, and commons of the whole realm, is the more valuable because it bears on some of those very points in which his reputation has been most attacked. The vague tradition of subsequent chroniclers, the unbridled fancy of the poet, the bitterness of polemical controversy, unite in representing Henry as a self-willed, obstinate young man, regardless of every object but his own gratification, "as dissolute as desperate," under no control of feelings of modesty, with no reverence ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy. I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I first saw you. You say you care—yet you won't even think of marrying me. I can't understand that ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his chances in the race were not seriously regarded by the more active partisans upon either side. As the stage driver explained to an inquisitive party of tourists, "He 's a mighty fine little feller, gents, but he ain't got the git up an' git necessary ter take the boundin' fancy of a high-strung heifer like her. It needs a plum good man ter' rope an' tie any female critter in this ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... 8000, such things can happen. Always such creatures are destroyed after their first psychotests, but my case was different. The Controller who bred me was only a dabbler in such things. I was a failure, but he took a fancy to me. I was allowed to mature secretly—few people knew of my existence. When I reached my majority my presence became dangerous and I was sent back into time to try and find the proper place for myself. And ...
— Field Trip • Gene Hunter
... afloat. Suddenly his almost paralyzed hand grasped a plank; he clambered on it, and reached the shore with its aid. He landed about one hundred feet away from Benedetto. Now he saw the hated wretch. But was it a vision, a play of his excited fancy? It seemed to him as if Benedetto were hurrying toward the water again! Behind him moved a white shadow; it seemed to be pursuing the scoundrel, and they were both ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... I fancy I was rather an industrious little boy, and that I had minded my lessons, and satisfied my teachers—I know I was reading Pinnock's "History of Rome" for pleasure—till "the wicked day of destiny" came, and I felt a "call," and underwent a process which may ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... youngest seek, indeed, reprieve Their hearts in striving to deceive Into oblivion of distress, By vain amusements, gorgeous dress, Or by the noise of living streams, In soft translucency meand'ring, To lose their thoughts in fancy's dreams, Through shady groves together wand'ring. But the vile eunuch too is there, In his base duty ever zealous, Escape is hopeless to the fair From ear so keen and eye so jealous. He ruled the harem, order reigned Eternal there; the trusted treasure He watched with loyalty unfeigned, ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... wholly delectable vision! I view with excusable glee The fate of the shallow precisian Who failed to appreciate Me;— I fancy I see myself tossing With blandly contemptuous mien A penny for sweeping a crossing To ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Lind, smiling, "I believe she is still disengaged; and she professes to be fancy free. She is fond of saying, generally, that she will never marry, and so forth. That is the new fashion with young women—if saying what they dont mean can be called a ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... your wife,'for you are a good man; and better, because you do not know you are good. You may feel uncomfortable or lonely for a little while, because, when you make up your mind, you are not easily thwarted; but you will find that your fancy for me will soon pass. It is only a fancy, Hal. Take a look in the glass, and you will see reflected there the figure of a stalwart man who is purely virile, possessing not the slightest attribute of the weaker sex, therefore your love is merely a passing flame. I do not impute fickleness ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... that even should he never be able to see his brother again, the chances that he would some day run across Kansas Shorty were far more favorable, as he well knew how drifters of his class roved aimlessly over the country as their fancy, the wanderlust, and more often the police ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... particular feeling, and intentionally omits all irrelevant details. It is the expression caught from a glimpse of the soul of nature by the soul of man; the mirror of a mood, passing, perhaps, in fact, but perpetuated thus to fancy. Being an emotion, its intensity is directly proportional to the singleness with which it possesses the thoughts. The Far Oriental fully realizes the power of simplicity. This principle is his fundamental canon of pictorial art. To understand his paintings, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... fellows actually made a line of us walk up and down some of the principal streets with our trousers and coats turned inside out, our stockings down over our shoes, our bare legs tattooed and crazy signs on our backs. Just fancy what a guy your big brother looked on Lexington street, where all the ladies here go shopping! I should have died if I had seen anybody from home. There wasn't any breaking away, because they were too many for us. One "freshy" tried it, and he's going around with a ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... meanwhile, serve you in all ways I can. Here is this child, your young sister, chafing against the life she leads here. I will do my best to persuade my mother to take her in her company to London for the grand show, and it may be that some great lady may take a fancy for her, and she may win a place as waiting-woman about the person of some Court dame. Do you consent? Do you ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... and Verschoyle withdrew, leaving Charles and Clara to make what they could of the confusion in which they were plunged.... Charles's way out of it was simply to ignore it. If people would not or could not live in his fancy world, so much the worse for them. He did not believe that anything terrible could happen to him simply because, though calamities of the most serious nature had befallen him, he had hardly noticed them. He could forget so easily. He could withdraw ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... Captain Smithers, laughing, "I'm afraid if you did brew some beer, and supply it to the men, fancy would go such a long way that they would find medicinal qualities in it, and ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Rhoda's fancy mightily that the Vague Lady (as we call her) should take Lisa before the Commissioners of Lunacy! Rhoda says that if she has an opportunity to talk freely with them, they will inevitably jump at the conclusion that Lisa has ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... harness shop with steel-rimmed spectacles and greasy cap, whom you may see to-day; but instead, the boy in John Barclay's soul looked through his eyes, and he saw another Watts McHurdie,—a dapper little fellow under a wide slouch hat, with a rolling Byronic collar, and fancy yellow waistcoat of the period, in exceedingly tight trousers. And then, flash! the picture changed, and Barclay saw Watts McHurdie under his mushroom hat; Martin Culpepper in his long-tailed coat; Philemon Ward, tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, slim, and sturdy; skinny, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... run ashore. As it is, sleep may invigorate and bring back my memory. When relating facts it is not necessary to call on any muse, or fast, or roam into a shady bower, where so many have found their thoughts. When relating facts, fancy is hot required to soar untrodden heights where thought has seldom reached; but too freely come back all the weary days, the toils, fears and vexations of my early life in Michigan, if not frightened away by the memory of the decision of the ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... place which used to be occupied by the companion of his childhood, and, as if she had still been present, he spoke to her, and offered whatever he knew was most agreeable to her taste; and then, starting from this dream of fancy, he began to weep. For some days he employed himself in gathering together every thing which had belonged to Virginia; the last nosegays she had worn, the cocoa shell in which she used to drink; and after kissing a thousand times those ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... possible way though, at present, I cannot see where the possibility comes in. It is of solid wood, and strong enough to cage a tiger. Still, if I am to get out, I fancy that it must be through ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... upon the daguerreotype? And I am told they expect to do better still. Have you read 'Venetia'? Do you remember that Disraeli makes Lord Cadurcis—Byron—assert that Shakespeare did not write his own plays? Fancy!" ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... existence in a handsome workshop with a lathe; he was a turner! As subsidiary to this pursuit, he took up a fancy for making collections. Philosophical doctors, devoted to the study of madness, regard this tendency towards collecting as a first degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... General Vaughan has amused his savage fancy in burning the whole town of Kingston, in York government, and the late governor of that state, Mr. Tryon, in his letter to General Parsons, has endeavored to justify it and declared his wish to burn the houses of every committeeman in the country. Such a confession from one who ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the elements, which furnish man with a brain competent to give birth to such a work: it is nature, who, through the medium of the imagination, by means of the passions, in consequence of the temperament which she bestows upon man, capacitates him to produce such a masterpiece of fancy; such a never-fading effort of the mind: it is his brain modified in a certain manner, crowded with ideas, decorated with images, made fruitful by circumstances, that alone can become the matrix in which a poem can be conceived—in ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to their origin is offering an ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dear mother!—I fancy I hear her!" cried Frank with deep emotion. "But I did not tell a lie, Randal; I did not say that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... what was necessary for his horse, he went to draw water for himself; and then took his exercise, avoiding carefully, according to instructions, every possible skyline. And it was then, for the most part, that he did his clear thinking.... He tried to fancy himself in a fortnight's retreat, such as he had had at Rheims before ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... "The speculators in this new neighborhood have offered him I don't know how many thousand pounds for the ground that house stands on. It was originally the manor-house of the district. Dexter purchased it many years since in one of his freaks of fancy. He has no old family associations with the place; the walls are all but tumbling about his ears; and the money offered would really be of use to him. But no! He refused the proposal of the enterprising ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Siamese dungeon, whether allotted to prince or peasant, his attention will be first attracted to the rude designs on the rough stone walls (otherwise decorated only with moss and fungi and loathsome reptiles) of some nightmared painter, who has exhausted his dyspeptic fancy in portraying hideous personifications of Hunger, Terror, Old Age, Despair, Disease, and Death, tormented by furies and avengers, with hair of snakes and whips of scorpions,—all beyond expression devilish. Floor it has none, nor ceiling, for, with the Meinam so near, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... came to the throne. During his career in the Navy he had a way of disregarding orders, and when in command of a squadron would sometimes take his own vessel on an expedition according to his own fancy, and leave the remainder of the vessels under his charge to do as well as they could without him until it pleased him to return. Some of his later exploits in this way drew down on him a marked expression of disapproval ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... following morning she said she felt "lonely" and would return at once to the city. As the train came in sight to bear her back to her accustomed surroundings, she gave a snort of relief, and exclaimed: "I'm a scrubwoman, I am. I ain't going to do no fancy dishwashing, no, not for no one; I'm a scrubwoman." And she clambered up into the train with the alacrity of a woman whose dignity had received a ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... the maiden of Thebes, one of the most self- devoted beings that could be conceived by a fancy untrained in the knowledge of Divine Perfection. It cannot be known how much of her story is true, but it was one that went deep into the hearts of Grecian men and women, and encouraged them in some of their best ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a hop in the large dining-room of the hotel. Early in the morning a fresh bouquet had been left at my door. I was tired of my enforced idleness, eager to discover the fair unknown (she was again fair, to my fancy!), and I determined to go down, believing that a cane and a crimson velvet slipper on the left foot would provoke a glance of sympathy from certain eyes, and thus ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... particular objective point, and looked like one of those peripatetic gentry who toil not neither do they spin, the genus "tramp." He complacently puffed a short clay nose-warmer, with his hands in his pockets, and taking first one side and then the other of the road, as his fancy dictated, found himself near the old distillery at the outskirts of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... forefingers on their lips, and their forms deweloped beautiful, in vich last respect they had the adwantage over the gen'lmen, as wasn't allowed but wery little shoulder, and terminated rayther abrupt in fancy drapery. He had also a many hair-brushes and tooth-brushes bottled up in the winder, neat glass-cases on the counter, a floor-clothed cuttin'-room up-stairs, and a weighin'- macheen in the shop, right opposite the door. ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... go," said Tom, "I don't believe they'll ever find the valley of gold. I fancy I threw a scare into Andy, talking as I did about ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Secretary of State. Bolingbroke affects to have taken his dismissal very composedly, but it cannot be doubted that his heart burned within him at what he, {132} doubtless, believed to be the ingratitude of the prince for whom he had done and sacrificed so much. For Bolingbroke had that unlucky gift of fancy which enables a man to see himself, and his own doings, and his own merits, in whatever light is most gratifying to his personal vanity. He had, in truth, never risked nor sacrificed anything for the sake of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... so goaded by this fancy of a dying woman, and at the same time so shaken by her death, that, as his guest was quick to see, he was entirely unreal; almost—if one can say such a thing of Robert Ferguson, artificial. He was artificial when he spoke of David and the money he ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... and in a trice the boys had taken off the bed clothing and turned up the mattress. On the springs they placed one of the bedsheets and on the top of this they distributed all of Nappy's choice neckties and also his fancy-colored socks. Then to this they added his cuffs, his fancy underwear, and all of his loose jewelry. The articles were spread over the bed with care, so that they rested as flat ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... "I fancy you will find it here. Remember that you are nearly thirty years old, and that you are nothing but an obscure Bohemian—a penniless correspondent of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... bountifulness, of his coming years—so filled with a swelling thankfulness for the mere physical fact of birth. He was twenty-five, he believed passionately in his own powers, and he was, he told himself with emphasis, in love for the first and only time. In the confused tangle of his fancy he saw Laura like some great white flower, growing out of reach, yet not entirely beyond endeavour, and the ladder that went up to her was made by his own immediate successes. Then the footlights before his play swam in his picture and he heard already the applause of crowded houses and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... continued to be novel and exciting in the extreme. The palace of the Prince de la Paix, where Murat and his suite had their quarters, was to her the realization of the wonder-land of Perrault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable Prince Fanfarinet. She was presented to him in a fancy court-dress, devised for the occasion by her mother, an exact imitation of her father's uniform in miniature, with spurs, sword, and boots, all complete. The Prince was amused by the jest, and took a fancy to the child, calling her his little aide-de-camp. After a residence ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... would hop on both feet, like a brace of sparrows; now they would walk on their heels, now on their toes; now with their toes turned in, now with their toes turned out—at right angles, in a splay-footed way; now they would walk with their feet crossed, after the manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned piano-players, skipping from base to treble—over cracks. The whole performance would have driven a sensitive drill-sergeant or ballet-master to distraction. And when they came to a brick sidewalk they would go ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... sworn to undress. Why should we look behind the glass of fashion? Why should we prick the bubble that reflects the world, and turn it to a little soap and water? Trust a little to first appearances—leave something to fancy. I observe that the great puppets of the real stage, who themselves play a grand part, like to get into the boxes over the stage; where they see nothing from the proper point of view, but peep and pry into what is going on like a magpie looking ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and bony hand held out to Lord Glenallan a gold bodkin, down which in fancy he saw the blood of his ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... have to go to bed at eight! Just fancy that!!! But then I have an astonishing capacity for sleeping and ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... labourers in the Protium Works. I had read in the outside world of the murder and destruction of these former civil wars of industry. With a working population so cruelly held to the treadmill of industrial bondage the idea of a strike conjured up in my fancy the beginning of a bloody revolution. With so vast a population so utterly dependent upon the orderly processes of industry the possible terrors of an industrial revolution were horrible beyond imagining; and for the moment all thoughts of escape, or of my own plans for negotiating the surrender ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... come upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent. The religion of the Phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their civilisation and their art, and presents a curious mixture of European and Asianic elements. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... broken loose and scampering about; and the captain was very grave; and as for the passenger, he was frightened out of his wits. Still we laughed, because we had heard nothing ourselves, and thought that it must only be fancy on their parts, particularly as the captain used to bowse his jib up pretty taut every night. Well, all went on very well; we arrived at the Rock, got our fresh provisions and vegetables, and then made sail again. The captain complained ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 'I often fancy, Ronald, I can see the same two strains in varying intensity, running through all three of us alike. In Herbert the Whitaker strain is uppermost, and the Le Breton comparatively in abeyance; in me, they're both more or less blended; in you, the Le Breton strain ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Research could note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that has never stood still between Oporto and El ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... pass, Mrs. Preston hurried over to the Everglade School, which was only two blocks west of Stoney Island Avenue. At noon she slipped out, while the other teachers gathered in one of the larger rooms to chat and unroll their luncheons. These were wrapped in little fancy napkins that were carefully shaken and folded to serve for the next day. As the Everglade teachers had dismissed Mrs. Preston from the first as queer, her absence from the noon gossip was rather welcome, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "I just love fancy shirtwaists, an' I spent my life ironing some of the beautifullest I've ever seen. It's funny, an' ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... some concern on so melancholy an occasion; it seems due to decency; but, perhaps (for I always wish to excuse you) you are forbid to cry.' The idea of being bid or forbid to cry struck so strongly on my fancy, that indignation only could have prevented me from laughing. But my narrative, I am afraid, begins to grow tedious. In short, after hearing, for near an hour, every malicious insinuation which a fertile genius could invent, we took our leave, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Company, high in station, chooses to make a visit from Calcutta to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the residence of our principal revenue government,—if he should choose to take an airing for his health, if he has a fancy to make a little voyage for pleasure as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome barges or budgeros of which you have heard so much in his charge against Nundcomar, he can put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket any day he pleases, in defiance of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... she should think of offering him a bribe. 'Ay,' said Isabel, 'with such gifts that Heaven itself shall share with you; not with golden treasures, or those glittering stones, whose price is either rich or poor as fancy values them, but with true prayers that shall be up to Heaven before sunrise,—prayers from preserved souls, from fasting maids whose minds are dedicated to nothing temporal.' 'Well, come to me to-morrow,' said Angelo. And for this short respite of her brother's life, and for this permission ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Amos is only out to entertain me when he onfurls how lucky an' how ferocious he is that time at Deming. Amos is simply whilin' the hours away when he concocts them romances; an' so far from bein' distrustful of him on account tharof, or holdin' of him low because he lets his fancy stampede an' get away with him, once we saveys his little game in all its harmlessness, it makes Amos pop'lar. We encourages Amos ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... manuscript map of Franquelin, 1684, and on the map of Coronelli, 1688. It is, without doubt, the Big Vermilion. Starved Rock, or the Rock of St. Louis, is the highest and steepest escarpment of the long rocher above mentioned.] Now stand in fancy on this same spot in the early autumn of the year 1680. You are in the midst of the great town of the Illinois,—hundreds of mat-covered lodges and thousands of congregated savages. Enter one of their dwellings: they will not think you an intruder. Some ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... said, "Simpson has left. There are new people in there. Grant is their name, I think. Young chap and his sister and their old mother. Came to call the other day; nice people, but very ignorant about gardens. Your aunt has taken a great fancy to the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the elite of the city. The fashionables, the scholars, the artists, and musicians, and whoever was in any degree famous, met with favor from Mrs. Geraldine, who liked nothing better than to fill her house with such people, and fancy herself a second Madame De Stael, in her character as hostess. All this was very pleasing to Burton, who, having recovered from any sentimental feeling he might have entertained for Lucy, blessed the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... of men; the fixed ram, in which the beam was suspended from a scaffold and moved by means of ropes; and lastly, the movable ram, running on four or six wheels, which enabled it to be advanced or withdrawn at will. The military engineers of the day allowed full rein to their fancy in the many curious shapes they gave to this latter engine; for example, they gave to the mass of bronze at its point the form of the head of an animal, and the whole engine took at times the form ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he said, 'his Grace of Canterbury opines rather that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning and in all things to flatter ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... hand, M. Jacquemont, who found "celestial happiness" in a plant of rhubarb, is unable to discover any beauty whatever in the Cashmerian ladies, and has no patience with his neighbour's little flights of fancy in depicting their perfections. "Moore," he writes, in his "Letters from India," "is a perfumer, and a liar to boot. Know that I have never seen anywhere such hideous witches as in Cashmere. The female race is remarkably ugly." Instead ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... in the North, Miss Jean, it is the custom of the young bucks to buy any little girl who takes his fancy. He pays for her while he is strong and a good hunter, you see. When the girl grows up he takes her for ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... some moving chords, he could see how the furtive tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young, neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young man, enamoured of and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play a simple prelude, then, softened by the tones, leaning her rounded arms upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of her lustrous ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... and would be at home again between one and two for a stroll which we had agreed to take in the neighboring meadows. About twenty minutes after this she again came into my study dressed for going abroad; for such was my admiration of her, that I had a fancy—fancy it must have been, and yet still I felt it to be real—that under every change she looked best; if she put on a shawl, then a shawl became the most feminine of ornaments; if she laid aside her shawl and her bonnet, then how nymph-like she seemed in her undisguised and unadorned ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... we only fancy prostitution is an evil, and we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an evil as is generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as much slaveowners, violators, and murderers, as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo, that are described ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of those southern nights under whose spell all the sterner energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by the genius of poetry. The air stirred ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... vanished from the ranges long ago, And the girls are mostly married to the chaps I used to know; My old chums are in the distance — some have crossed the border-line, But in fancy still their glasses chink against the rim of mine. And, upon the very centre of the greenest spot that lies In my fondest recollection, stands the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... ineffective bombing planes and exceedingly effective swarms of flies and also little whirlwinds which rushed across the camp amid howls of execration and collapsing bivouacs. There were many chameleons about and they were in that state of disordered fancy which is supposed to attack the young man in the spring. We would capture them and, after emblazoning our names and numbers in indelible pencil on their flanks, an indignity which completely ruined their carefully ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... rhimes and hoarse, to suit That hole of sorrow, o'er which ev'ry rock His firm abutment rears, then might the vein Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine Such measures, and with falt'ring awe I touch The mighty theme; for to describe the depth Of all the universe, is no emprize To jest with, and demands a tongue not us'd To infant babbling. But let them assist My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... we were not so good friends as we used to be—that something had come between us—I don't know what, I don't know why. I don't know what to call it but a sort of lowering of the temperature. I don't know whether you have felt it, or whether it has been simply a fancy of mine. Whatever it may have been, it 's all over, is n't it? We are too old friends—too good friends—not to stick together. Of course, the rubs of life may occasionally loosen the cohesion; but it is very good to feel that, with a little direct contact, it may easily be re-established. ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... I fancy the Londoners might easily imagine that this town of Ho Nan was London, and perhaps Mrs. Ephrinell did so. Not because there was a Strand with its extraordinary traffic, nor a Thames with its prodigious movement of barges and steamboats. No! But because we ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... her bridle, clasped her hands together, and held them up towards Heaven, muttering, in a voice scarcely audible, "Great God!—If this apparition be formed by my heated fancy, let it pass away; if it be real, enable me to bear its presence!—Tell me, I conjure you, are you Francis Tyrrel in blood and body, or is this but one of those wandering visions, that have crossed my path and glared on me, but without daring ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... exquisite piece of music, "The Lullaby of the Iroquois," simple, yet entrancing! Could anything of its kind be more perfect in structure and expression? Or the sweet idyll, "Shadow River," a transmutation of fancy and fact, which ends with ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... of his fancy, he had assured Mrs. Robinson his love would remain unchangeable till death, and that he would prove unalterable to his Perdita through life. Moreover, his generosity being heated by passion, he gave her a bond promising to pay her L20,000 on his ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... though it were some lesson vouchsafed from above. The queen also, that she might not seem to be driven by compulsion, complied, as women will, and declared that there was no natural necessity to grieve, and that all distress of spirit was a creature of fancy: and, moreover, that one ought not to bewail the punishment that befell one's deserts. And so the brethren celebrated their marriages together, one wedding the sister of the king, and the other his ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... are retentive of long-acquired maxims, and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy or from truth: in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... though I sit in dull routine Schooled to the scholarship of books, My truant spirit outward looks And Fancy fills the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bandit lives!" cried the student of theology, after he had swallowed a few mouthfuls. "You'll try it some day, perhaps, Signor della Rebbia, and you'll find out how delightful it is to acknowledge no master save one's own fancy!" ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... a vengeance!" said the old man with his bitter smile: "you take a fancy to Rose; you hear she is already engaged; this drives you away from me; but before you take leave, your honour must be cleared and furbisht up; and as a remembrance you shoot my most intimate friend, the man after my own soul, and tear him from my side. Now Rose is ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... regarding it is from information received, and amounts to the above. I cannot throw in any personal experience, because I have never passed it at night-time, and seen from Glass it seems just steady. Most lighthouses on this Coast give up fancy tricks, like flashing or revolving, pretty soon after they are established. Seventy-five per cent. of them are not alight half the time at all. "It's the climate." Gombi, however, you may depend on for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... considerable knowledge, and an acquaintance with a vast variety of trades. There were about thirty other pupils in the works at the same time with myself; some were there either through favour or idle fancy; but comparatively few gave their full attention to the work, and I have since heard nothing of them. Indeed, unless a young fellow takes a real interest in his work, and has a genuine love for it, the greatest advantages will ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... little machines are very fascinating, as well as useful; and every lady should have one, as they can make every conceivable kind of crochet or fancy work upon them. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... had but wished to keep out of it. It might after all be his affair a little as well—there was somehow a still more pointed implication of that in his sister's saying to him the next day that she wished immensely he would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. She said more: she said there had been a time when she believed he had done so—believed too that the poor child herself had believed the same. Biddy was far away the nicest girl she knew—the dearest, sweetest, cleverest, best, and one ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the Griffin, "some one has thanked me. Oh! Fancy anybody thanking me. Has everybody heard me publicly ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... partition which separates the present state from that of eternity! We mourn over those who are taken away from us, and we fancy we are left alone. But we are called to be one in Christ. I have great faith in the communion of saints, in the union of saints on earth with saints in heaven. And we are all called to be saints by walking in faith, by leading a life of holiness in the fear of the Lord. We say our beloved friends ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few days, but I'm keeping south of them. There'll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I'd sooner hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it's quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can't head right away for ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss |
