"Sprites" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Abomination, thou! Know'st thou, at last, thy Lord and Master? What hinders me from smiting now Thee and thy monkey-sprites with fell disaster? Hast for the scarlet coat no reverence? Dost recognize no more the tall cock's-feather? Have I concealed this countenance?— Must tell my name, old ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... they got to shore, though with toil and danger. Here they found no sprites nor demons, nor even men, but a fair, half-tropical verdure and, running ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the mass of clay,—then, gentle reader, thank the ghost, who thus embodies himself for your sake! Will you believe me, if I say that all true and noble thoughts, and elevated imaginations, are but partly the offspring of the intellect which seems to produce them? Sprites, that were poets once, and are now all poetry, hover round the dreaming bard, and become his inspiration; buried statesmen lend their wisdom, gathered on earth and mellowed in the grave, to the historian; and when the preacher rises nearest to the level of his mighty subject, ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bard, The clanging sugh of whistling wings is heard; Two dusky forms dart through the midnight air; Swift as the gos^3 drives on the wheeling hare; Ane on th' Auld Brig his airy shape uprears, The other flutters o'er the rising piers: Our warlock Rhymer instantly dexcried 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 even the very deils ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... from the azure sea The swollen sail did dance before his eyne. Swift as the wish he to the beach did fly, And found his father stepping from the brine. Sprites of the blest, the pious Nigel said, Pour out your pleasance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... addition to these, "Sung Hsing-che causes great commotion in the heavenly palace;" "Ghiang T'ai-kung kills the general and deifies him," and other such like. Soon appeared the spirits and devils in a confused crowd on the stage, and suddenly also became visible the whole band of sprites and goblins, among which were some waving streamers, as they went past in a procession, invoking Buddha and burning incense. The sound of the gongs and drums and of shouts and cries were audible at a distance ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as she had begun to wonder where he was, the door opened again and out came a whole forest of Christmas trees, at least it looked just as if a whole forest had started out for a walk somewhere, but a second glance showed Little Girl that there were thousands of Christmas sprites, and that each one carried a tree or a big Christmas wreath on his back. Behind them all, she could hear some one laughing loudly, and talking in a big, jovial voice that sounded as if he were good friends with ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... they milk cows by electric machinery and use steam launches on the water, most of the water sprites of all kinds have been driven away, for they do not like the smell of kerosene or gasoline. It is for these reasons that, in our day, they are not often seen. In fact, cows from the creameries can wade out into the water and even stand in it, while ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarrelling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Bertram demanded one day. "Really, Will, I'm beginning to think she's a myth. Long years ago, from the first of April till June we did have two frolicsome sprites here that announced themselves as 'Billy' and 'Spunk,' I'll own. And a year later, by ways devious and secret, we three managed to see the one called 'Billy' off on a great steamship. Since then, what? A word—a message—a scrap of paper. ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... three—go!" and they were off like four little black sprites, down the broad stairway and into the living room where the boys were already assembled, talking to ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... add, as elusive for the enchanted mind to hold are these pranks and brilliant parade of tonal sprites. It stands one of the masterpieces of program-music, in equal balance of pure beauty with the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... I am not used to living with sprites and with sheep that talk, and everything here frightens me. It was very kind of you to bring me to this place, but I shall be even more grateful to you if you will take me up into the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... when the mother told me that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he. 'Betty,' says she, 'deals chiefly in fairies and sprites, and sometimes, in a winter night, will terrify the maids with her accounts, till they are afraid ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... for the first time in her life felt his eyes upon her, seeking of her what he had never dared to seek, and then his arms about her, touching her as assuredly he had never dreamed to do. She had denied him once too often, it seems. Here was a sudden attack, a trick of the sprites. She held her breath, she trembled, her breast heaved, she shut her eyes, and her lips relaxed their hold of each other. "Not yet, my blessed one, not yet!" and "Come, Rose of the World!" Thus they murmured to each other ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... did not follow her, not even with my eye, but looked down at my feet. Ah! the water sprites had been kind, for there was the dainty crib, set on a high tuft of sod raised by the winter's frosts, a little island castle in the wet marsh, cosey and dry. It was my first savanna sparrow's nest, whether eastern or western. The miniature cottage ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Before man's waning eyes, An angel true to him more dear Than all beyond the skies! No fabled sprites of chants and creeds, Nor myths of bygone years, For thou suppliest all his needs And ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... plot which 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 Corsites' ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... limbs and vitals o' mine: O thou Well of Poetry well forth thy gems * O'er our drink when our cups overbrim with wine: And sing in her presence, for Envy hath fled * And flies jealous spite and all joys combine. Oh the charms of wine which enthral the mind, * Clear and clearing sprites by its ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... proceed, or rather drift, loosely on a current, but are without oars, rudder or sail. We are hurtled against, or hurried away from the islands of Images or Ideas, that is to say, all kinds of memories, and our course is managed or impelled, or guided by tricky water-sprites, whose minds are all on mischief bent or only idle merriment. In any case they conduct us blindly and wildly from isle to isle, sometimes obeying a far cry which comes to them through the mist—some echoing signal of our waking hours. So in a vision ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... well, doesn't she?" said Susie. "There never was her like. Do you know, there was a sort of insurrection in the lower school early this morning, for naughty sprites had whispered that all the small children were to go in ordinary carriages and dogcarts and wagonettes. Then came the news that Mrs. Haddo meant each girl in the school to have an equal share of enjoyment; and, lo and behold! the cloud has vanished, and the little ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... enjoy itself alone in the shady nook which it had chosen—a place overshadowed by broad leaves of ferns and Heliconiae. I thought, as I watched it, that there was no need for poets to invent elves and gnomes while Nature furnishes us with such marvellous little sprites ready at hand. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... enchanting in a poet who should not confine us in the Tower of Hunger and compel 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 its fairies that incorporeal shape, that purity of essence, of which ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... who were the most active of the sprites, assisted by the more deliberate Teddy and Liz, acted as "the grown-up people" attending as hostesses and host to the requirements of "the children," as they called their father and Mary and Jupp, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt 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 spirit's 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 Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... their first exodus from the 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 mother-signal, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... independent wealth and sound body to paint Life, and what a very pretty picture he will lay before you. He lives in another world—has, as Sir Anthony Absolute says, a sun and moon of his own—a realm of fairies, with attending sprites to perform his every compassable wish. To him life is a most musical monosyllable; making his heart dance, and thrilling every nerve with its so-potent harmony. Life—but especially his life—is, indeed, a sacred thing to him; and loud and deep are his praises of its miracles. Like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... my beads! I cross me for a sinner. This is the fairy land;—O spite of spites! We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites; If we obey them not, this will ensue, They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd The wild waves whist,[388-99] Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Hark, hark! { Burden dispersedly. The watch-dogs bark: { Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear; { Bow-wow. The strain of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the greatest passion amongs all the most greuous, that ordinarily do assault the sprites of men, which after it hath once taken hold of anye gentle subiecte, followeth the nature of the corrupt humour, in those that haue a feauer, which taking his beginning at the harte, desperseth it selfe ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... much the more pleasure before you. But the 'Rape of the Lock'—in that story there is a young lady, a famous beauty, whose dressing-table is attended by sprites or fairies. One of them colours her lips; another hides in the folds of her gown; another tucks himself away in a curl of her hair.—You make me think of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... pirates and outlaws are well known to be the most superstitious of creatures, inclining to the primitive in their religious views, we were naturally led into a sort of dread enthusiasm for—or enthusiastic dread of—the whole pantheon of spooks, sprites, and bugaboos to which savages and children, great and small, bow the knee. My dreams at that time ran something ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... 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
... 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 shadowy spirit with fairy fingers The curtains drew from the land of dreams; And lo in her teepee her lover lingers; The ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... There it remains on his easel, unfinished still, as if to tell of one cut off so suddenly, not indeed in the summer of life, but in a mellow autumn, which seemed to give promise of many years of good work still to be done. But the time had come when the little sprites who peopled his dreams of earth, were to be exchanged for the angel forms who were to welcome the faithful servant to his reward in heaven. On the 10th of December, as he was preparing to return from the Athenaeum club, Mr. Doyle was struck down by apoplexy. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... delivered, Iris hastened away, for it seemed to her that already her eyelids grew heavy, and that there were creeping upon her limbs, throwing silver dust in her eyes, lulling into peaceful slumber her mind, those sprites born of the blood-red poppies that bring to weary ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... discussions, examples, and judgments of the critics. An improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and sprites must have verisimilitude, that is to say, be really sprites and fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible" has been used instead of "verisimilar." As we have already remarked in passing, this word possible is synonymous with that which is imaginable ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Prissy rewarded him by declaring impressively her opinion, that he was worthy to have a voice in the choosing of the wedding-dress; and she actually swooped him up, just in a very critical part of a distinction between natural and moral ability, and conveyed him bodily, as fairy sprites knew how to convey the most ponderous of mortals, into the best room, where three specimens of brocade lay spread out upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... loud and plaintive yell, dashed the torch to the earth, and buried everything in darkness. The whole shuddering group of spectators glided from the lodge like troubled sprites; and Duncan thought that he and the yet throbbing body of the victim of an Indian judgment had now become ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... sprites, goblins, and other such phantasms. The word is not yet endenizened in England, but it will probably take out letters of naturalisation here, settle down, and become a very respectable member of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the other was warm with the light which poured upon it. The Gothic spires, the Moorish domes, the weird and mysterious caves, which last night had given more than a touch of awe to her majestic bedchamber, now looked a good deal less like the ruins of mediaeval castles and the homes of elfin sprites ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... and honour. I was extolling his accomplishments, when his mother told me, 'that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he. Betty,' said she, 'deals chiefly in fairies and sprites; and sometimes in a winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are afraid to go ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a band of 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 ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... harp of golden 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
... streaming from within, Around his eyes and forehead beamed, The Angel with the violin, Painted by Raphael, he seemed. He lived in that ideal world Whose language is not speech, but song; Around him evermore the throng Of elves and sprites their dances whirled; The Stromkarl sang, the cataract hurled Its headlong waters from the height; And mingled in the wild delight The scream of sea-birds in their flight, The rumor of the forest trees, The plunge of the implacable seas, The tumult of the wind at night, Voices of eld, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... but they have left no trace on a people that has suffered so much from the wickedness and stupidity of their human oppressors. The western Slavs in general and the sons of Czech in particular, had their flights of fairies, sprites, pixies and other lovable immortals. They are here still; even I, a stranger, claim to have heard them in "den heiteren Regionen, wo die reinen Formen wohnen," on the sun-kissed snow of the mountains, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... stranger, with a laugh. "What kind of a marriage is this you have made, that you must not speak to your relative? Do you not know I am your uncle Kuehleborn, who brought you to this region, and that I am here to protect you from goblins and sprites? So let ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... realised with 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 not find wings very readily, for I ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... gay, they post away, nay pawn their very togs for it, And determined to be up to all, go down to see the show: Giddy pated, hearts elated, cash and courage all to view it, Ev'ry one to learn a bit, and tell his neighbours how to do it; E'en little Sprites in lily whites, are fibbing it and rushing it, Your dashing Swells from Bagnigge Wells, are ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the bronze David, the two most memorable things are the adorable bronze Amorino in its quaint little trousers—or perhaps not Amorino at all, since it is trampling on a snake, which such little sprites did not do—and the coloured terra-cotta bust called Niccolo da Uzzano, so like life as to be after a while disconcerting. The sensitiveness of the mouth can never have been excelled. The other originals include the gaunt John the Baptist with ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... least, there was no evidence of such a visitation, unless the snoring that abounded all the night did proceed from the pinching of the nose (the nasal orifice being so clamped betwixt the forefinger and the thumb of these devilish sprites that the breath was denied its proper channel). Unless snoring was so caused, it is clear that no ooph had clambered through ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... St. Nick, in royal state, Dwells, until December late Clips the days at either end, And the nights at each extend; Then, with his attendant sprites, Scours the earth on wintry nights, Bringing home, in well-filled hands, Children's ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the pretty brown pebbles sparkling up through the water; and then it made her think of something sad—she didn't know what; perhaps it was of the babes in the wood and the robins covering them up with leaves—and then again, in a moment, it sounded as if all the merry elves and sprites that ever were heard of had escaped from fairyland, and were rolling over and over with peals of rollicking laughter. And at last, all of a sudden, the ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth |
