"Hobgoblin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a moonlit revel of elves caught by a musical reporter, a surreptitious "chiel amang 'em takin' notes." A single hobgoblin bassoon croaks ludicrously away, the pixies darkle and flirt and dance their hearts ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... pleasure for her companions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination, and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it a hobgoblin ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... church or to the woman who returns his love, overlooking what may perhaps be the fact that it is not so much a question of loyalty to the church as of loyalty to conscience; a foolish consistency, possibly "a hobgoblin to little minds," but, nevertheless, one to be weighed in the consideration of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... absurd, Hobgoblin rites, and moon-struck reveries, Distracted creeds, and visionary dreams, More bodiless and hideously misshapen Than ever fancy, at the noon of night, Playing at will, framed in the madman's brain. ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... using the same pen-holder which he bought for twopence in 1886, and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate. The best plan seems to be to care not a farthing ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bent-up hobgoblin he put hand on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' he mek dat same remark, and dat whole convintion ob ghostes an' spicters an' ha'nts an' yever-thing, which am more 'n a millium, pass by so quick dey-all's hands feel lak ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... and laugh, too, at the odd-looking blacks, particularly those old scissors-grinders, the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting women, the oakum-pickers; and almost at the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin of all. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... will you scare your friends with these hobgoblin terrors, (43) bidding us all beware of handsome faces, whilst you yourself—yes, by Apollo, I will swear I saw you at the schoolmaster's (44) that time when both of you were poring over one book, in which you searched for ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... the world at present. I am better where I am. Truth will never be had where there are many poets, nor fair dealing where there are many lawyers; no, nor health where there are many physicians." At this moment, a little grey-headed hobgoblin, who had heard that a living man was arrived, flung himself at my feet, weeping abundantly. "Dear me," said I, "what are you?" "One who is grievously wronged every day in the world," said he. "May God ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... "author" of the Bible to stand sponsor for the condensation of the "records" of his ancestors which Smith unearthed. It was discovered very soon after the organization of the Mormon church was announced that the word was of Greek derivation, uopuw or uopuwv meaning bugbear, hobgoblin. In the form of "mormo" it is Anglicized with the same meaning, and is used by Jeremy Collier and Warburton.* The word "Mormon" in zoology is the generic name of certain animals, including the mandril ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... affrightment^; boof alarm [U.S.], dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede (of horses). intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo^, ogre, Hurlothrumbo^, raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire [Fr.], enfant terrible [Fr.]. alarmist &c (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c adj.; have qualms &c n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... moral welfare, according to his light. Alas! "when the light that is in one is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Jacquelina rewarded his serious efforts with laughter, and flattered him with the pet names of Hobgoblin, Ghoul, Gnome, Ogre, etc. Yet she did not dislike her solemn suitor—she never had taken the matter so seriously as that! And he on his part bore the eccentricities of the elf with matchless patience, for he loved her, as I said, to fatuity—doted on her with a ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Gorgons alive at that period; and they were the most strange and terrible monsters that had ever been since the world was made, or that have been seen in after days, or that are likely to be seen in all time to come. I hardly know what sort of creature or hobgoblin to call them. They were three sisters, and seem to have borne some distant resemblance to women, but were really a very frightful and mischievous species of dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... water one of these creatures was flapping slowly in from the sea. Its wings—eighteen feet across from tip to tip—were not the wings of a bird, but of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful, hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... eagle and the Wild Hunter. I could not be sure whether that was a dream or reality. Had I seen this strange old man with his eagle and his wolf pack beside our camp fire or had I dreamed it? Had this hobgoblin man, who might be my own father, rescued me from death at the claws of the grizzly and bound my wounds for me, or was that but a dream too? Had not Big Pete saved me perhaps ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... forlorn as to be a resort for the "good people" or fairies, who in Ireland are supposed to delight in old, crazy, deserted mansions for their midnight revels. All attempts to repair it were in vain; the fairies battled stoutly to maintain possession. A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride the house every evening with an immense pair of jack-boots, which, in his efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through the roof, kicking to pieces all the work of the preceding day. The house was therefore left to its fate, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... "it is a relief to know that that object is an airship, not some hideous hobgoblin. I would like to know, Bab, how you and I are to get the thing ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... as though he had missed the opportunity of his life in spending some time at a haunted mill which was supposed to support a good lively ghost, and never once chancing to come upon the hobgoblin. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the hobgoblin—and the massacre began. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... said to be God's fools. In Tahiti they were called Eatooa, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men into whom a divinity had entered. In German the plica polonica is called Alpzopf, or hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that the malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the assaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... edifice, so perfect is the confusion of its parts. The pavement demands attention, being inlaid so curiously as to represent variety of histories taken from Holy Writ, and designed in the true style of that hobgoblin tapestry which used to bestare the halls of our ancestors. Near the high altar stands the strangest of pulpits, supported by polished pillars of granite, rising from lions' backs, which serve as pedestals. In every corner of the place some chapel or other offends ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... quite pleasant until a hideous truth dawned upon me—I was ugly! That truth has embittered my whole existence. It gives me days and nights of agony. It is a sensitive sore that will never heal, a grim hobgoblin that nought can scare away. In conjunction with this brand of hell I developed a reputation of cleverness. Worse and worse! Girls! girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore a wish for happiness, homes, and husbands ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... to wear a calf's hide. Robin Goodfellow says, "I'll go put on my devilish robes—I mean my Christmas calf's-skin suit—and then walk to the woods." "I'll put me on my great carnation nose, and wrap me in a rousing calf-skin suit, and come like some hobgoblin." And a character of the 18th century "clears ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and many scores of rotten boroughs; in fact, the whole system was in such a state of congestion that it could not be tolerated any longer, and we had a small, but which might have been a very large revolution, in amending that state of things. Last year you, who had seen this hobgoblin for years, who had thought, I have no doubt, many of you, that I was very unwise and very rash in the mode in which I had proposed to extend the suffrage; last year you found out that it was not so monstrous a thing after ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... stopped by the summit of the wall, where it found a sequel in another pipe, that descended to the ground on the opposite side of the wall. Now, on this opposite side was the garden of the prison; in this garden was a watchman, and this watchman was the hobgoblin of Tomlinson's scheme,—"For suppose us safe in the garden," said he, "what shall we do with this ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... naps, curled up in the bottom of the boat. At last, about eleven o'clock, just as Pierre was getting very nervous, and dreading every minute that one of the white ladies of Normandy (those dames blanches who are so cruel to the discourteous) should appear to him, or a hobgoblin or a ghost, in all of which he was, like most Norman peasants, a firm believer, to his intense relief he heard the carpenter whistling in the distance, and a minute or two later Smith arrived, hot and tired, and by no means in ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various |
