"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather go to the poor-farm and done with it than resk her life there another night; and she'd like to know what had become of that hunderd dollars her nephew Thomas paid down in bills to get her into the Home, for she'd be thankful to them that laid it away so antic to hand it back afore another night went over her head, so't she could board somewheres decent till 'twas gone, and then ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... notice that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... decorous dulness. They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and Time itself doth drowse; The little stream, too indolent to pass, Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade; The antic water-fly above it skims, And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade, Or knee-deep in the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... have wondered that some of my comrades did not recognize in me the stray sheep that was cried; but they were all, no doubt, occupied by their own concerns. They were all laboring seriously in their antic vocations, for folly was a mere trade with the most of them, and they often grinned and capered with heavy hearts. With me, on the contrary, it was all real. I acted con amore, and rattled and laughed from the irrepressible ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the motion of the sea. There is a rhythm to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... judging by my own average experience,—that besides these gloomy associations, the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of brilliant and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the brightest picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of antic delight, romantic adventure, and lawless prank. But the carnival, with all the old merry- making life of the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving Venice is become as gross a fiction ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... matter that he now felt imperatively called upon to act, and he therefore sent General Whitesides to demand from the "Journal" the name of its contributor. Mr. Francis, the editor, was in a quandary. Lincoln had written the first letter, and the antic fury of Shields had induced two young ladies who took a lively interest in Illinois politics—and with good reason, for one was to be the wife of a Senator and the other of a President—to follow up the game with attacks in prose and verse which, however deficient in wit and meter, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... been the speaker, but whom I could in nowise identify. It was so much the mode with many of us that were young in Florence to come—and sometimes to come unbidden—to such galas as this of Messer Folco's in antic habits and to hide our features with vizards, that there was nothing in this costume to single out the youth whom I believed to be the utterer of that call for Dante. There were many other masked and muffled ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... flaming Sword in the other: She was robed in white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling Diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of Imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the Book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry Devils greatly entertained the Spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated bursts of Laughter. The Prioress had been careful to select a Nun whose disposition ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... ground or reason for hoping, antic-ipation. 5. Breast'ed (pro. brest'ed), opposed courageously. 6. Numb, without the power of feeling or motion. Re-laxed', loosened. 12. E-mo'tion, excited ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and puddings were removed. The company present rose before the dessert appeared, thoroughly disgusted; and I afterwards saw this would-be man peeping into the windows of the ladies'-cabin, and performing a thousand other antic tricks, cigar in mouth, for which he would in England have ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... supplying a nilla-nilla which would make him an over-match for a dozen Folkestones in rotation. My hand was on Cleopatra's mane, and my off-foot clear of the stirrup; it would be a Christian act to save Foikestone from the father of a batin', and Priestley from that sterner father, namely, old father antic, the law. But imminent as the collision seemed, it ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... should have told me gradually. I had to do something to express my exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—that is, height—put my hat—which I had been carrying under my arm—on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down. Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured her—with a few of Mary's messages that I had still ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... singular energy, good will, and admirable effect did he lace Mr. Hourigan, that the latter worthy, after cutting some very antic capers, and exhibiting in a good many other respects several proofs of his agility that could scarcely be expected from his heavy and ungainly figure, was at last fairly obliged to sing out,—"Oh, Misther John, Misther John! you will—Misther John, darlin', what do you mane, you murdh—oh, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... this trying day Clark had kept up the spirits of his men in every way he could. In telling about it later, he said: "I received much help from a little antic drummer, a boy with such a fun-loving spirit that he made the men laugh, in spite of their weariness, ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... the queen was to be conducted, but the uproar and confusion was indescribable; strange and antic figures hurrying to and fro, seeking their companions, and crying lustily for their places. Sir John Finett and Sir George Goring fulfilled the office of whippers-in, attempting to establish order out of these undisciplined elements. Grace drew back; but suddenly there came forth ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... goes well and his song is clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... decease of the Lion, the beasts of the forest assembled to choose another king. The Ape played so many grimaces, gambols, and antic tricks, that he was elected by a large majority; and the crown was placed upon his head. The Fox, envious of this distinction, seeing, soon after, a trap baited with a piece of meat, approached the new king, and said with mock humility: "May it please your majesty, ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... while his countenance was suffused with a grim and ghastly smile, which reminded us of Dante's devils. He immediately ascended the ladder, dragging his prey after him till they had nearly reached the top; he then placed the rope around the neck of the malefactor with many antic gestures and grimaces highly gratifying and amusing to the mob. To signify to the poor fellow under his fangs that he wished to whisper in his ear, to push him off the ladder, and to jump astride his neck with his heels drumming ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... antic, Gesture and shape distort, Like mockery of a demon dumb Out of the hell-din whence they come That dogs them for ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... as if he had been her brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Burke gave Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no use ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... occasionally happened—she became more quiet, placed herself beside him, stroked his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and all ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... my sisters, shall I first lament My own afflictions, or my aged sire's, Whom here I find a castaway, with you, In a strange land, an ancient beggar clad In antic tatters, marring all his frame, While o'er the sightless orbs his unkept locks Float in the breeze; and, as it were to match, He bears a wallet against hunger's pinch. All this too late I learn, wretch that I am, Alas! I own it, and am ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... put my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... With the pretty, laughing fellow; Even the second mate gave sly winks At the noisy mid-day high jinks. Never was a crew so happy With a curly-headed chappy, Never were such sports gigantic, Never dog with joy more antic. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... themselves promiscuously in a ring. The former had each a bone-dagger, or a piece of stick, between the fingers of his right hand, which he kept extended above his head, in continual motion; while he held his left in an horizontal direction. They leaped about, and threw themselves into various antic postures, to the measure of their music, bringing their heels close together at every pause. Sometimes the men howled, like wild beasts; and he who continued to howl the longest, appeared to be considered the best performer. The women suffered ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... truth: I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,— As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," Or "If we list to speak," ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to ..... .. ..... .. .. ...,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... earth with their nails. This ceremony, which was taken to be a kind of idolatry, ended, mats were brought from the houses, whereon the guests were seated, and given to eat bread made of maize, and tobacco to smoke. The savages also entertained them with dancing and singing and antic tricks and grimaces. They were naked except a covering of skins about the loins, and many were painted in black and red, with artificial knots of lovely colors, beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... discuss him with a certain interest, even with a certain wonder. The newspapers occasionally mentioned him as a dandy, a fop, a whimsical, irresponsible creature, yet one whose vagaries were not entirely without interest. He had performed some extravagant antic in a cotillon, or worn some extraordinary coat. He had invented a new way of walking one season, and during another season, although in perfect health, he had never left the house, declaring that movement of any kind was ungentlemanly ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... weary hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Sirs—but I guess frae your manner that ye are no unacquainted wi' the movements o' high life—do you ken how lang the King means to prolong his abode amang our neebors owre the water, his hair-brain'd Irish subjects, whase notions o' loyalty hae excited sae mony preposterously antic exhibitions by that volatile ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... can be the end of those that are proud in the decking of themselves after their antic manner? Why are they for going with their bull's foretops,[63] with their naked shoulders, and paps hanging out like a cow's bag? Why are they for painting their faces, for stretching out their neck, and for putting of themselves unto all the formalities which proud fancy leads ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Dashing them back against the hills, kept on With their reverberations. And these spots The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs; And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise And antic revels yonder they declare The voiceless silences are broken oft, And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet Which the pipe, beat by players' finger-tips, Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race Begins to hear, when, shaking ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral Success Decent Antic Crafty Handsome Savage Usury Solemn Uncouth Costume Parlor Window Presumption Bombastic Colleague Petty Vixen Alderman ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... joys in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God's high figures, which they have ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... here a dance once popular in England, but to which the idea of low is now currently annexed. It was originally adapted from the Moors, and is still known by the name of Morris-dancing, or Moresc-dance. It is danced with swords, by persons odly disguised, with a great deal of antic rural merriment: it is true that this diversion is now almost exploded, being entirely confined to the lower classes of life, and only kept up in some counties. What the reason may be of its going out of use, I cannot ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... as the three paused in the middle of the room. "Hurrah for the old guard! Like Macbeth's immortal witches, I'll perform my antic round, just to show how jubilant I feel." She executed a few fantastic steps about Patience, then paused beside her, one hand on her shoulder. "Where did you acquire ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the cup, 'tis time of roses now; Midst roses let us break each penitential vow; With shout and antic bound we'll in the garden stray; When nightingales are heard, we'll rove where roses blow; Here in this open spot fill, fill, and quaff away; Midst roses here we stand a troop with hearts that glow; The rose our long-miss'd friend retains in full array; No fairer pearls than friends and cups ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... eyes . . . And lo! A flickering snatch of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails of wrath ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... you do not believe in 'antic Fate,' you must be greatly puzzled as you go on," he rejoined, laughing; "especially in Egypt, where the East and the West collide, race against race, religion against religion, Oriental mind against Occidental intellect. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his mistress. He found him so elevated with his success, so enamoured with his daughter, and so satisfied with her reception of him, that the old gentleman began to caper and dance about his hall, and by many other antic actions to express the extravagance of his joy; for he had not the least command over any of his passions; and that which had at any time the ascendant in his mind hurried ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosurcian [Rosicrucian] style. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... popinjay, brought out for my lady's amusement!" said the stranger, smiling; "you make rare sport with your antic tricks, at the fort ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery and a longing for the old ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... they jumped to a conclusion—to which the late Lord Salisbury also jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting—that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed—preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various |
