"Sprites" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not that the intellecte was wholye goonne, as yt wolde bee yf yo{u} sholde reade, "and also the intellecte" for "save only the intellecte." for Chaucers meanynge ys, that all his streng[t]he and vitall Sprites aboute his outewarde partes were gonne, save onlye the intellecte or vnderstandinge, w{hi}che remayned sounde and good, as apperethe after by the followinge woordes, for when deathe approched, and that all outwarde senses fayled, he (Arcite) yet cast eye ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... canoe. One must be a child again to see all of it; the magic shapes, the haunting tints, the fairy forms. The gardener who had directed the growth of the aquarium believed in kelpies, undines, and mermaids, and had made for them the superbest playground conceivable even by sprites. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... assumed by the stalactite formations in the Sophie Cave in Switzerland, which we had visited. Unfortunately, the book containing it is lost, but I remember the following lines, referring to the industrious sprites which I imagined as the sculptors ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lifts her voice, heard jocund o'er the hills All jubilant, the waving woods display Her gorgeous gifts, magnificently gay! The wond'ring eye beholds these waving woods Reflected bright in artificial floods, And still, the tufts of clust'ring shrubs between, Like passing sprites, the nymphs and swains are seen; 'Till fancy triumphs in th'exulting breast, And care shrinks back, astonish'd! dispossess'd! For all breathes rapture, all enchantment seems, Like ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... said that words and signs have power O'er sprites in planetary hour; But scarce I praise their venturous part Who ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... again. For upon happening to meet Billy that morning—Billy had devoted two hours and a half to the accident of that happening!—he had joyously mentioned that he was trying to buy out another man's berth upon that boat. It wasn't so much his wanting to come that was droll—teasing sprites of girls with peach-blossom prettiness are not unwonted to the thunder of pursuing feet—but the frank and cheery way he had of announcing it. Not many men had the courage of their desires. Not any men that little Miss Arlee had yet ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... made an imperious motion for her attendant sprites in gossamer white to precede her, and turned with her accustomed stately step to follow. The music immediately changed from its doleful dirge to a spirited measure, and the whole company flocked after her, back to the great room of state. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... then again, a little farther on, by the Forest of the South: the vast, mysterious, impenetrable Wood, of which the Ramayana preserves for us the pioneering record and original idea, with its spell of the Unknown and the Adventure (like the Westward Ho! of a later age) with its Ogres and its Sprites, its sandal trees and lonely lotus-tarns, its armies of ugly little ape-like men, and its legendary Lanka (Ceylon) lost in a kind of halo of shell-born pearls, and gems, and their Ten-headed Devil ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... in her robe and sleep, Heard not the storm-sprites wail and weep, As they rode on the winds in the frosty air; But she heard the voice of her hunter fair; For a fairy spirit with silent fingers The curtains drew from the land of dreams; And lo in her teepee her lover lingers; In his tender eyes all the love-light ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... nest, for as yet they were without the slightest sense of fear. They allowed the girls to catch them, fondle them, and stroke their lovely plumage; they would fly delicately away, twittering with pleasure, then flit back to the caressing hands like sprites at play. Anything more innocent and beautiful it would have been impossible to conceive; it was like a glimpse into Paradise before the fear and dread of man had passed over God's lesser creatures. The girls stood absolutely fascinated, till at last, attracted perhaps by some warning ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... giving any pain (to living creatures). He must perform daily the ceremonies ordained in the Veda. In this way he obtains heaven. Let him never neglect the offerings to seers, gods, spirits (sprites), men, and Manes. Some offer sacrifice only in their organs of sense (not in external offerings); some by knowledge alone. Let him not explain law and rites to the C[u]dra (slave) caste; if he does so, he sinks into the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... blew, working its magic upon the land. When day broke again with a clearing sky, and the sun peered between the cloud rifts, his beams fell upon vast areas of brown and green, where but forty-eight hours gone there was the cold revelry of frost sprites upon far-flung fields of snow. Patches of earth steamed wherever a hillside lay bare to the sun. From some mysterious distance a lone crow winged his way, and, perching on a near-by tree-top, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... exultation another feeling as sincere—devout thankfulness that he had gone no further. He drew deep breaths of relief over his escape, but knew that he had not himself to thank. His friends, the little sprites, had done it, in return for the amusement he seemed to give them. They had stayed him in the nick of time, but not earlier; it was quite as if they wanted Tommy to have his fun first. So often they had saved him from being spitted, how could he guess that the great catastrophe was fixed ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... more exact, if he had been in a calmer frame of mind; he himself alone was in fault, he alone, and no spiteful accident, nor malicious and tricky Daimon. Hadrian, to be sure, attributed to these sprites all that he had done, and so considered it irremediable; an excellent way, no doubt, of exonerating oneself from a burdensome duty, or from repairing some injustice, but conscience is a register in which a mysterious hand inexorably ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Girl archers on top of columns at four corners of central court, launching arrow at sprites on base of columns. Originally ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast—falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of nature; and there we floated, in the deep shadow of the cliff and trees Dragonflies and Water Sprites, motionless and silent, the boats floating so lightly that they scarcely seemed to touch the water, the men resting on their oars, and all of us rapt with the magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... around whom he has thrown more grace and loveliness, and for whose imaginary woes he has excited more sympathy, than ever were bestowed on a supernatural being. Sir Walter Scott also endowed the White Lady of Avenel with many of the attributes of the undines or water-sprites. German romance and lyrical poetry teem with allusions to sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders; and the French have not been behind in substituting them, in works of fiction, for the more cumbrous mythology ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shaft watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine; Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms, And dash around with roar and rave; And vain are the woodland spirits' charms— They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... accordance with her own directions had been made in the shape of a great round table, within the hollowed centre of which she and her girl helpers could be protected from the crowd, while without attendant sprites in the persons of the two young men hovered about ready ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Court of Ages. W. Zenis Newton, photo Survival of the Fittest - A Panel, Fountain of Earth. Cardinell-Vincent, photo Lesson of Life - A Panel, Fountain of Earth. Cardinell-Vincent, photo Helios - Separate Group, Fountain of Earth. Cardinell-Vincent, photo Water Sprites - Base of Column, Court of Ages. Cardinell-Vincent, photo A Daughter of the Sea - North Aisle, Court of Ages. W. Zenis Newton, photo The Fairy - Finial Figure, Italian Towers. Cardinell-Vincent, photo Flower ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... challenged the other. When people had banished the old professional clown from the stage, they felt the necessity of running about themselves as clowns. The sober, enlightened age protested against the old folk-tales with goblins, gnomes, elves, and other kindred sprites, but, to make up for it, thousands of living caricatures played in their own rooms the part of goblins and gnomes, and lady shepherdesses appropriated the roles of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Merry, merry sprites are we, Dancing round the Christmas tree. We've a gift for every one Though the last ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... us to share Ugolino's revolting repast? Dante would have less charm, if he had less power. Have the fleshly naiads, the muscular Tritons, the wanton Zephyrs, the diaphanous transparency of our water-sprites and sylphs? Is it not because the modern imagination does not fear to picture the ghastly forms of vampires, ogres, ghouls, snake-charmers and jinns prowling about graveyards, that it can give to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... strings, Love with bow and quiver, Airy sprites on radiant wings, Nymphs of wood and river, Joined the Muses' constant song, As Rhyme and Reason ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the midnight air, Swift as the gos[62] drives on the wheeling hare; Ane on th' Auld Brig his airy shape uprears, The ither flutters o'er the rising piers: Our warlock Rhymer instantly descry'd The Sprites that owre the brigs of Ayr preside. (That Bards are second-sighted is nae joke, And ken the lingo of the sp'ritual folk; Fays, Spunkies, Kelpies, a', they can explain them, And ev'n the vera deils they brawly ken ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... little Man, and tiny Maid, Who love the Fairies in the glade, Who see them in the tangled grass The Gnomes and Brownies, as they pass, Who hear the Sprites from Elf-land call Go, frolic with these Brownies small, And join these merry sporting Elves, But ever ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There Monseigneur turned and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... grounds about his home. When the opening day came there ensued much suppressed tittering and, now and then, an uncontrollable guffaw. Diana, Venus, Vulcan, Apollo, Jove, and Mercury had evidently stumbled into a convention of nymphs, satyrs, fairies, sprites, furies, harpies, gargoyles, giants, pygmies, muses, and fates. The result was bedlam. Parenthetically, I have often wondered how much money it cost that man to make the discovery that he was not a connoisseur of art, and also what process of ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... damnation, which threat never failed to turn the joyful music into pitiful wails. Often priest or children, discovering their mistake, and touched by the agony of their victims, would hasten back to the stream and assure the green-toothed water sprites of future redemption, when they invariably ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Ryls from the Happy Valley, all merry little sprites like fairy elves. A dozen crooked Knooks followed from the great Forest of Burzee. They had long whiskers and pointed caps and curling toes, yet were no taller than Button-Bright's shoulder. With this group came a man so ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... money lies, Is counted king amongst them all, and is, with showtes and cries, Exalted to the heavens up, who, taking chalke in hande, Doth make a crosse on every beame, and rafters as they stande: Great force and powre have these agaynst all injuryes and harmes Of cursed devils, sprites, and bugges,[93] of coniurings and charmes. So much this king can do, so much the Crosses brings to passe, Made by some servant, maide, or childe, or by some foolish asse. Twise sixe nightes then from Christmasse, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... skyes; The nome-depeyncted[32] shields, the speres aryse, Alyche[33] talle roshes on the water syde; Alenge[34] from bark to bark the bryghte sheene[35] flyes; Sweft-kerv'd[36] delyghtes doe on the water glyde. 20 Sprites of the bleste, and everich Seyncte ydedde, Poure owte youre pleasaunce ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... sense, It has nothing to do with a mere pretence. 'Tis one thing to say, that the soul survives, And another to say that a cat has nine lives; But I do not say the one or the other, Nor affirm nor deny that the monkey's my brother. I've nothing to say of angels or sprites, Or the spooks that appear in the darkest of nights. For if we can't see them, nor chase them nor tree them, They can't be detected, nor caught and dissected, So science must be mum—and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... as it is; while the Mythist worshipped it reflected on the outer world and endowed with supernatural attributes, clothed with mist-caps and wishing-caps that gave it dominion over space and time. The restless, glittering, whimsical sprites of fairy mythology, that were believed of old to have so large a share in shaping the course of Nature and of human life, have vanished from the precincts of the schoolmaster at least. They could not endure the clear eyebeam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... sisters, cheer we up his sprites And show the best of femail spites, So teach that horrid critter, man, We'll swaller him hul, when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... our basin; and the spray of it, as it rose in the air and rippled back into the water, was the pleasantest possible sound of a hot day. We used to lie on the sofa in the hall, and look into the court, and fancy we saw some scene of fairy-land, and water-sprites coming up from the fountain. Suddenly a new-comer presented himself,—no other than an immense bullfrog, that had hopped up from the neighboring river, apparently with a view to making a permanent settlement in ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... good sir. Come on, sit down;—come on, and do your best To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... big white brow, who had lounged with her daily at the end of the pier, telling her stories, was the most mordant wit in Europe, "the German Aristophanes"; and that those nursery tales, grotesquely compact of mermaids, water-sprites, and a funny old French fiddler with a poodle that diligently took three baths a day, were the frolicsome improvisations of perhaps the greatest lyric poet of his age. She recalled their parting: "When you go back to England, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lordship in?—My dear Erasmus— I'll hear you, Master Morris, presently.— My lord, I make you master of my house: We'll banquet here with fresh and staid delights, The Muses music here shall cheer our sprites; The cates must be but mean where scholars sit, For they're made all ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... my Arthur, that you steal Thus silently from Dollallolla's breast? Why dost thou leave me in the [1] dark alone, When well thou know'st I am afraid of sprites? ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... lancers, with their plumes, pennons, and tassels, representing the sprites and sylphides of the pantomime, are succeeded by men who look real life. Big bearded men, habited in homespun; some wearing buckskin, others blanket coats; all carrying guns, bowie-knives, and pistols; the first smoking at the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... men are nowadays peculiarly exposed. The modern world is all battle-field; the smoke, the dust, the din fill every eye and ear; and the hill-top of Lucretius, where is it? The indispensable, terrible newspaper, with its late allies, the Titans and sprites of steam and electricity,—bringing to each retired nook, and thrusting in upon each otherwise peaceful household, the crimes, follies, fears, solicitudes, doubts, problems of all kingdoms and peoples,—exasperates the former Scotch mist of impressions into a flooding rain, and almost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... of the reckless hero, Lemminkainen, (chopped to pieces by the Sons Of Nana, as in the myth of Osiris) was raking together the fragments of his body from the river of Tuoui, and fearing that the sprites of the Death-stream might resent her intrusion, the Sun, in answer to her entreaties, throws his Powerful rays upon the dreaded Shades, and sinks them into a deep sleep, while the mother gathers up the fragments of her son's body in safety. This rune of the Kalevala is particularly interesting ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... churche, and to shutte the dores. And had therfore a keie giuen vnto theim, when thei ware admitted to this ordre. The Reader, in signe and token of libertie to reade the Bible, and holie stories, had a greate booke giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... of men. From time to time soared above the trees flocks of parrots, gray, green, white, or a small bevy of gaudily plumaged toucans in a quiet, wavy flight. On the snowy background of the rubber climbing plants glimmered like sylvan sprites, little monkey-mourners, entirely black with the exception of white tails, a white girdle on the sides, and white whiskers enveloping faces of the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the public feeling when a letter was received from the Surveyor-General, saying that the cliffs the headlands, and the grassy shores, where all built up on the basis of the mirage. The elfs and sprites of this desolate region had been playing a hoax on ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to the fairies. It seems as though the dark forests of Germany, the quiet valleys, and the banks of the beautiful rivers, were the natural homes of the fairy-folk, the gnomes and the elves, the water-sprites and the sylphs. Our German cousins listen with wonder and delight to the legends of fearful giants and enchanted castles, and many of the stories they know so well have been translated into other languages ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... a story of a lady, Elfie, who had a great many little unearthly creatures, a kind of sprites, to attend upon her. Some sat in the ringlets of her hair, and took charge of them; some hid in the folds of her dress and made them lie gracefully; another lodged in a dimple in her cheek, and another perched on her eyebrows, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... vividness what a difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying them out in the dark. One's common-sense—at least in matters of this sort—is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make four—they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... or curious tales of the neighborhood. Scottish history was his never-ending delight; he knew every battle-field in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and could tell how the armies had come to meet and what was the result. Stories of sprites and goblins, of witches and magicians, were eagerly sought by him. Many an old woman was led to tell the lame boy with the eager eyes the tales she had heard as a schoolgirl, and was well repaid by the boy's rapt attention. Hardly a stick or a stone, a stream or a hill in the Lowlands that ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... invites special mention, namely, that in which the fairies appear. This, their first entrance into English drama, must have created a mild sensation amongst the surprised and delighted spectators, as, in shimmering dress and gossamer wings, these airy sprites danced around the astonished Corsites and sang the lyrical decree of punishment for his intrusion upon their domain. The incident is worth quoting in full, from the point where ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... There was the mystery of that nocturnal minstrelsy. Seventy-three bells in chromatic diapason—with their tinkling, ringing, tolling, knolling peal! Was not that a chime? a chime of chimes? And all these goblin hammers, like hands and feet of sprites, rising and falling, by magic, by ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
