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Fairy   Listen
adjective
Fairy  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to fairies.
2.
Given by fairies; as, fairy money.
Fairy bird (Zool.), the Euoropean little tern (Sterna minuta); called also sea swallow, and hooded tern.
Fairy bluebird. (Zool.) See under Bluebird.
Fairy martin (Zool.), a European swallow (Hirrundo ariel) that builds flask-shaped nests of mud on overhanging cliffs.
Fairy rings or Fairy circles, the circles formed in grassy lawns by certain fungi (as Marasmius Oreades), formerly supposed to be caused by fairies in their midnight dances; also, the mushrooms themselves. Such circles may have diameters larger than three meters.
Fairy shrimp (Zool.), a European fresh-water phyllopod crustacean (Chirocephalus diaphanus); so called from its delicate colors, transparency, and graceful motions. The name is sometimes applied to similar American species.
Fairy stone (Paleon.), an echinite.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fairy" Quotes from Famous Books



... salmon. The Whitewater came singing down out of the moorland into a rocky valley, and there was a merry curl of air on the pools, and the silver fish were leaping from the stream. The gillie handled the big rod as if it had been a fairy's wand, but to me it was like a giant's spear. It was a very different affair from fishing with five ounces of split bamboo on a Long Island trout-pond. The monstrous fly, like an awkward bird, went ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... furnished by an old fisherman of Ballyconealy Bay, on the Connemara coast, west of Galway. This individual, Dennis Moriarty by name, knew all about the Enchanted Island, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a "fairy man," who obtained his information from "the good people" themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. Mr. Moriarty ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... composition, than from any inherent and constitutional defect in the species of composition itself. If the manners of different ages are injudiciously blended together,—if unpowdered crops and slim and fairy shapes are commingled in the dance with volumed wigs and far-extending hoops,—if in the portraiture of real character the truth of history be violated, the eyes of the spectator are necessarily averted from a picture which excites in every well regulated and intelligent mind the hatred ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... marvelous dreams. Later in his progress it begins to dawn upon him that this same technical department may not be so very obedient to his wishes; it may have laws of its own, which shall change his fairy fancies into sober images, not at all unlike something which has often been done before by others. But let the young soul continue to see visions, the more the better, provided they be of the right sort. We shall in the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... King's death, retired to the castle of Chenonceau: and the widowed queen employed her time, in that 'palace of fairy-land,' at forming a small cabinet of books. The catalogue describes about eighty volumes, mostly bound by Nicolas Eve; and the gay morocco covers in red, blue, and green, were decorated with brilliant arabesques, or sprinkled with golden lilies. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... for January, also presents a varied and select bill of fare, containing among other things, Part XIII. of Robert Dale Owen's novel "Beyond the Breakers," "The Fairy and the Ghost," a Christmas tale, with six amusing illustrations; a curious and interesting article on "Literary Lunatics," by Wirt Sikes, "Our Capital," by William R. Hooper, and very much more excellent matter in the way of stories ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... would be the most touching and edifying fairy-tale imaginable, this true story of H.M. Albert I. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moony sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards

... If these objects were calculated to excite feelings of disgust, the scene which next presented itself was beautiful as fairy land. The ship sailed close under the lofty wall of the seraglio garden, which is separated from the sea by only a narrow wharf. Shady groves, bowers of oranges, roses and jasmine, lofty cypresses, and wide spreading plane trees, embosom the elegant pagoda-shaped ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... smack, which was skipping lightly over the bright waves in the direction of Shargle Head. Her sails gleamed in the sunlight, and she herself skimmed so lightly across the waters, and bounded so merrily through their sparkling ripples, that she seemed more like a fairy craft than a real yacht of boards and canvas. "I'd give a good deal to be in her!" exclaimed Hall, one of our party, a sea captain's son, to whom on all nautical matters we accorded the amplest deference. "So would I," said Hutton. "How jolly ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... Portraying chiefs who knew to tame The goblin's ire, the dragon's flame, To pierce the dark, enchanted hall Where Virtue sat in lonely thrall. From fabling Fancy's inmost store A rich, romantic robe he bore, A veil with visionary trappings hung, And o'er his Virgin Queen the fairy-texture flung."[9] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... missing no detail, he felt Mary's fingers tighten around his hand and, glancing down at her, he saw that her attention, too, was engrossed by the scene below, her eyes large and bright as children's are when they listen to a fairy tale. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... quite evident from the fairy-like delicacy of your appearance," said the Colonel. "One can see that nothing so gross and material has ever entered into ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... something to do to explore a bit," added Mrs. Mackson. "Come along girls. Who knows but what we may find a table all set for us by fairy hands, as we used to read of in ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... they came, field after field, upon those circles which recall to children so many charmed legends, and are fresh and frequent in that month—the Fairy Rings! They thought, poor boys! that it was a good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected them, as in the old time they had often protected the desolate ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... devices to attract customers, the lines that were sold at a loss for advertisement, the history of the famous Silver Shoe that Jonah sold in thousands at a halfpenny a pair profit, astonished her like a fairy-tale ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... with trees, amongst which are many cocoa palms, and each forms a prospect like a beautiful garden placed in the sea. To heighten this, the serene weather we now had contributed very much; and the whole might supply the imagination with an idea of some fairy land realized. It should seem, that some of them, at least, may have been formed, as we supposed Palmerston's Island to have been; for there is one, which, as yet, is entirely sand, and another, on which there is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... could distinctly see that the sometime snow-flake left her sphere and came gradually towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,—with the same look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,—with a peculiar surprised look in her wide-open eyes, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... phantoms of the imagination. At the limits of circumscribed knowledge, as from some lofty island shore, the eye delights to penetrate p 82 to distant regions. The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation; and the realm of fancy — a fairy-land of cosmological, geognostical, and magnetic visions — becomes thus involuntarily blended with ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... loves averages, not only by statistics and experiments with the standard curve of distribution, but also, if he is a really illuminated teacher, by reference, say, to the legend of David and Goliath, the fairy tale of Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eye, Little Three-Eye, and Lincoln's famous aphorism to the effect that the Lord must love the common people because he made so many of them. Sad experience advises that it is unsafe for an instructor any longer to assume ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... was designed to be set here, while Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's Fountain of the Arabian Nights was to have found a place in the Court of Flowers. These two courts were planned as the homes of the fairy tales, one of Oriental, the other of Occidental lore. Many beautiful things were designed for them. The attic of the Court of Flowers, which was intended as the place of Oriental Fairy Tales, was to have carried sculptured stories from the Arabian Nights. But none ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... that lovely cheek, Nor, perchance, my heart have left me; But the sensitive blush that came trembling there, Of my heart it for ever bereft me. Who could blame had I loved that face, Ere my eyes could twice explore her; Yet it is for the fairy intelligence there, And her warm, warm heart I ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands— More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale— Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, Beneath its simple influence, As if with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!) Nor lack there ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... kitchen-range because it was hot there—and a dirty brown book filled with unintelligible dots and marks. Punch was always anxious to oblige everybody. He, therefore, welded the story of the Creation on to what he could recollect of his Indian fairy tales, and scandalized Aunty Rosa by repeating the result to Judy. It was a sin, a grievous sin, and Punch was talked to for a quarter of an hour. He could not understand where the iniquity came in, but was careful not to repeat the offence, because Aunty Rosa ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... little sea room, and go back a bit so we can see the full length, and the real roughness, of the road He came. And lest some of you may think that the telling of the first part of it has the sound of a fairy tale, let me tell you that it is simply the story of what actually took place, as told in the pages of this old Book of God. It will be a help if you will keep your copy of the Bible at hand, and turn thoughtfully to its pages now and ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer about these people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... a-listening Hear the seed sprout in the spring. And for music to their dance Hear the hedgerows wake from trance, Sap that trembles into buds Sending little rhythmic floods Of fairy sound in fairy ears. Thus all beauty that appears Has birth as sound to finer sense And ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... deep wood, softly sighing, and containing all sorts of strange scents and haunting presences. In the garden there was a penetrating aromatic smell from the box-hedges and the hot vegetable-beds. We wandered about, and it used to seem to me, I remember, like the scenes in which some of Grimm's fairy-tales were enacted I suppose that the honey-woman was the wife of a woodman and was a simple soul enough; but there was something behind it all; she knew more than she would say. Strange guests drew nigh to the cottage ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... Paul had "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial prop to Milly's fairy structure was gone. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... timorous chap, showing himself indifferent to spirits, and all such things. What bothered Nuthin concerned material things, like cats, and dogs, and wandering bears; he snapped his fingers at spooks, because he had never seen one, and did not believe in "fairy stories," as ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... like the nickname better myself," Elizabeth replied easily. Her good fairy beckoned her on. "These children are all laughing because they think we are going to pull each other's hair presently. We will show them at least that we are a lady and a gentleman, I trust. Let me see your books." She looked at him with such straightforward sincerity that the boy returned ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... faithful Islam, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of Nature with the 'eruditus oculus,' and his ear has a fairy fineness. There is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has more definiteness and roundness of general conception ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... set off for church the grey sky had changed to blue; the sun had just set, and little pink clouds like fairy cushions hung round the moon. As they passed out of the town, through the crooked path down to the Cove, Harry had again that strong sense of Cornwall that came to him sometimes so suddenly, so strangely, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... her lap and cry. Dear old Margery, it is a shame to abuse her in spite of the mischief her over-kindness did us all. Well, when our new maid came, on the supposition that Miss Woodbourne took care of her own clothes, she never touched them; and as Margaret's work was not endowed with the fairy power of lasting for ever, I soon grew as ragged as any ragged-robin in the hedge. Mamma used to complain of my slovenliness, but I am afraid I was naughty enough to take advantage of her gentleness, and out-argue ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... seemed that he was to be disappointed in this matter; Tenniel was so fully occupied with other work that there seemed little hope of his being able to undertake any more. He then applied to Sir Noel Paton, with whose fairy-pictures he had fallen in love; but the artist was ill, and wrote in reply, "Tenniel is the man." In the end Tenniel consented to undertake the work, and once more author and artist settled down to work together. Mr. Dodgson was no easy man ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... late dinners in the upper hall where the sleepy hounds leaned against our chairs looking at us with suppliant eyes, in the evenings when the fire was dying away in the hooded fireplace in the library, stories. Stories, and legends, and fairy tales, while the stiff old portraits changed countenance constantly under the flickering firelight, and the sound of the drifting Inn came softly across ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... certain?" Mrs. Halliday asked, when Mr. Grey had finished his tale. She was far more surprised than Blythe, for she had had a longer experience of life, to teach her a distrust in fairy-stories. ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... Fairy Godmother impulse strong upon her, Jocantha marched into a ticket agency and selected with immense care an upper circle seat for the "Yellow Peacock," a play that was attracting a considerable amount of discussion ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... pleasure that every person of taste receives from a well-drawn picture of nature. But where the contrary of all these qualities shock the understanding, the extravagant performance will be judged tedious, though no longer than a fairy-tale.' ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... 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 quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... she had done the world but scanty justice. "No," objected Miss Garland, after a pause, "it is like something in a fairy tale." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... life; and of which the first conception, as I have shown, was an afterthought. It quite took the death itself out of the region of pathetic commonplaces, and gave to it the proper relation to the sorrow of the little sister that survives it. It is a fairy vision to a piece of actual suffering; a sorrow with heaven's hues upon it, to a sorrow with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... British soldiers, drawn up before the acclivities of Aliwal. There was no wind, no dust. The sun was bright, but not so hot as might be expected in that climate, and the troops moved with noiseless foot, hoof, and wheel over the hard grass, as if it were a fairy scene, and the baton of the British chief were the wand of an enchanter, every movement of which called into gay and brilliant reality some new feature of the "glorious pomp and circumstance of war." Viewed from the British lines, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistaking gewgaws for things of great price. At such moments, how everything becomes transformed, how everything changes! Berkeley and Fichte seem right, Emerson too; the world is but an allegory; the idea is more real than the fact; fairy tales, legends, are as true as natural history, and even more true, for they are emblems of greater transparency. The only substance properly so called is the soul. What is all the rest? Mere shadow, pretext, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Ariel is introduced thus trifling is, that he and his companions are evidently of the fairy kind, an order of beings to which tradition has always ascribed a sort of diminutive agency, powerful but ludicrous, a humorous and frolick controlment of nature, well expressed by the songs ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... her. But, Oh!—" He was reminded of the day when she had fallen at his feet, and clasped his rigid and reluctant knees. This was something of the same feeble desperation of mood. "Oh, WHY couldn't someone like that have wanted to marry ME! See!" she was like a pathetic fairy as she spread her nymphlike arms, "how PRETTY ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Emma Goldman passed in a small, idyllic place in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her father had charge of the government stage. At the time Kurland was thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic province was recruited mostly from German JUNKERS. German fairy tales and stories, rich in the miraculous deeds of the heroic knights of Kurland, wove their spell over the youthful mind. But the beautiful idyl was of short duration. Soon the soul of the growing child was overcast by the dark shadows of life. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... happy," was my thought, "and if she lives to look back upon it with a woman's eyes, she shall remember it as a shining world in which her Daddy was a rough but kindly councillor, a mortal of whom no fairy need ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... to take off the top and branches of a tree, and then to peel off the bark; terms used to designate violent oppressions under pretended legal authority. "Which pols and pils the poor in piteous wise." Fairy Queen. "Pilling and polling is grown out of request, since plain pilfering came into fashion." Winwood's Memorials. "They had rather pill straws than ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... it must have been fairy glass; but never mind. I ask you, Madame Gironac, whether you intend to be an obedient wife, or intend ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... had much to tell my mother and she listened, as interested as a child in a fairy tale to all that had been said and done in the Noble Rose. But most of all she seemed surprised to hear that a girl was going to sea with us. She questioned me suddenly when I had made an end of ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... is told of him by Mr. Hughes, which I shall present the reader, as it serves to illustrate the great worth and penetration of Sidney, as well as the excellent genius of Spenser. It is said that our poet was a stranger to this gentleman, when he began to write his Fairy Queen, and that he took occasion to go to Leicester-house, and introduce himself by sending in to Mr. Sidney a copy of the ninth Canto of the first book of that poem. Sidney was much surprized with the description of despair in that Canto, and is said to have shewn an unusual kind of transport ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... that little isle had wings, And we, within its fairy bowers, Were wafted off ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... amidst the chaos of eternity each soul had found its mate. There was no need for words. Love, tremendous in its power, unfathomable in its mystery, had cast its spell over them. They were garbed in light, throned in a palace built by fairy hands. On all sides squatted the ghouls of privation, misery, danger, even grim death; but they heeded not the Inferno; they had created a Paradise in an ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... head upon the pillow. He ventured to touch the cheek, with a trace of tenderness in his action and of wistfulness near to reverence. It was not love; it was rather as one might touch a fairy. In both spirit and substance she was truly of another world. Watson gave a soft sigh and looked up at ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... halo of success to natures so privileged as his; his fine eyes, of a soft and velvety black, subdued the hearts of men who could not resist their charm, and his caressing smile made conquest sweet. A child of destiny, he had but to use his will; some power unknown, some beneficent fairy had watched over his birth, and undertaken to smooth away ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... theatre, though but a temporary building, projecting from the ball-room into one of the gardens, was worthy of the very handsome apartment which formed its vestibule. The skill of a famous London architect had been exerted on this fairy erection, and Verona itself had, perhaps, in its palmiest days, seldom exhibited a display of more luxuriant elegance. The audience, too, so totally different from the mingled, ill-dressed, and irregular assemblage that fills ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... beauty and value, and Phil clasped it upon her wrist and contemplated it with awe and delight. It was worth, she assumed, almost or quite as much as the house in which she lived; and yet her mother had bestowed it upon her with gay apologies for its paltriness—this mother out of a fairy-tale, this girlish mother with the wise, beautiful eyes, and most entrancing ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... twentieth century and enlightenment is supposed to prevail throughout this broad land of ours, the majority of people still regard the world of finance as the world of magic. Within the fairy realm of finance the laws of nature apparently are suspended, and, overnight, wonders are worked. The ordinary mortal, wise in all other walks of life, sees the man who yesterday stood beside him at the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... brilliantly; discreet and penniless widow, governess of the illegitimate children of the king, adviser and finally wife of that king, friend of Ninon, model of virtue, femme d'esprit, politician, diplomatist, and devote—no fairy tale can furnish more improbable adventures and more striking contrasts. But she was the product of exceptional circumstances joined to an exceptional nature. It is true she put a final touch upon the purity of manners ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... to his feet, and as he gazed on the fairy-like form and sweet, delicate face his cheeks flushed and ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... sunset-coloured fruit in orchard crofts Hung slowly mellowing under azure noons; And, hushed in darkened leaves, the dreaming air Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died. With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds, The fairy winds that lisped me all was good. Nor marked I when the clogged horizon flew In dusky vapour crowding up the skies; But woke anon when deathlike pallor thrown From wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom; ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... part of the magical Land of Fire, the wonderland of the good and peaceful Ember Fairies. A golden gate gives entrance to it. Shining pathways lead through its bright gardens. Its skies are warm and glowing. Here, decked with flaming banners, stands the home of the good Prince Ember—his fairy Palace of Good Cheer. Here moves the beautiful Shadow Princess, in trailing garments of rose and amethyst. Here she may be seen in her dance of joy and ecstasy followed by ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... version of the Virgin Birth, Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, Zacharias and the Angel Gabriel, Jesus and the Sinner, are on par with the eroticism of the Old Testament. The interpolations, the myth, and fable also compare with the first revelation, and, in his opinion, he prefers Andersen's Fairy Tales, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... passing individual, probably the milkman, leaned over the railing and engaged them in philosophical conversation. The boys, whom we will call Paul and Peter, were at least sharply interested in his remarks. For the milkman (who was, I need say, a fairy) did his duty in that state of life by offering them in the regulation manner anything that they chose to ask for. And Paul closed with the offer with a business-like abruptness, explaining that he had long wished to be a giant that he might ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... mill-pond, sullen and dark, in which two crocodiles, floating about, were looking out for prey." From the high banks Speke looked down upon a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream, which, by dividing its waters, became at once both dam and rapids. "The whole scene was fairy-like, wild, and romantic in the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... friends caught as many as they wanted; and then the Captain said to his little friends, "Put away your fishing-tackle now, and come down below into the little cabin, and I'll surprise you." And, sure enough, he did surprise them,—quite as much, perhaps, as if some fairy queen had come, and called them to a fairy banquet; as much indeed, perhaps, as if they had themselves suddenly been turned to fairies, and were doing something that was never even dreamed of by mortal child before; for, while they had been fishing, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... they called you the Red Fairy—because of your ruby ring. What in the world ever ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... ruffling the tiny lake beneath, and filling the air with a low, dreamy murmur. Never had that lovely creation of art, blending with nature, looked so like an ideal thing as now—a very growth of fairy-land. The play of the waters in the air was as the glad ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... will, Please God we find some one to try it on. But, truly, would not any one believe Some fairy had exchanged us as we lay Two ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... taken for granted would happen to her some day, but that she had not yet longed for? Rachel, it must be confessed, had not been entirely given up to romance; she had not been waiting, watching for the fairy prince who should ride within her ken and transform existence for her. Her life had been too full of love of another kind. But now she had a sudden feeling of experience having been completed, something had come to her that she had wished for, longed for—how much, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... most part all religious beliefs except that in Humanity. To Oliver it was simply maddening. As he looked from his window and saw that vast limit of London laid peaceably before him, as his imagination ran out over Europe and saw everywhere that steady triumph of common sense and fact over the wild fairy-stories of Christianity, it seemed intolerable that there should be even a possibility that all this should be swept back again into the barbarous turmoil of sects and dogmas; for no less than this would be ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... counted most certainly to be in it; but here was he, while the steam of that train yet snorted in his ears, walking out of the station, a wealthy man, come into a proud inheritance, the inheritance of his fathers. In the first moment of tumultuous thought, Lionel almost felt as if some fairy must have been at work ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Seven, ma'am? Certainly, ma'am. It will be a convenience to us this busy evening, ma'am. There will be the band and the arranging of the fairy lights and ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... these a company was recruited from among the Indians held as hostages by General Miles at Fort Sheridan, and the leaders of these hostile braves were such noted chiefs as Short Bull, Kicking Bear, Lone Bull, Scatter, and Revenge. To these the trip to Alsace-Lorraine was a revelation, a fairy-tale more wonderful than anything in their legendary lore. The ocean voyage, with its seasickness, put them in an ugly mood, but the sight of the encampment and the cowboys dissipated their sullenness, and they shortly felt at home. The hospitality ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... then to shadow the opulent sculptures of pillar, and arch, and spandrel, and weirdly illuminating the grim and bearded visages of stone that peer down from doorway and window. It is a sight more gracious and fairy than ever poet dreamed; and I feel that the lights and the music have only got into my description by name, and that you would not know them when you saw and heard them, from any thing I say. In other days, people tell you, the fresco was much more impressive than now. At intervals, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... weather, then fell silent. The one presently sat down upon the root of a tree, and, drawing out a pocket-book, began to look over certain memoranda; the other walked near the river and stood gazing across its falls and eddies and innumerable fairy islands to the misty blue of the farther woods. The seconds returned and proceeded to measure the distance—ten paces, after which they loaded the pistols. Skelton Jones advanced, the ends of two strips of paper showing from his closed hand. "Gentlemen, you will draw ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... gained it, they say, for certain, had it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been at the least a plump two thousand a-year in his way; but things were ordered otherwise, for the best to be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount[2] against my advice, and had no luck afterwards. Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned him that I heard the very Banshee[3] that my grandfather heard under ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Uncle Tad, as he and Mr. Ravenwood were talking about the finding of the floating box and the recovery of Sandy. "If we could only find the lost pocketbook and the diamond ring now, I would say it might be almost like a fairy story." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope

... published A Pleasant Interlude intituled Like will to Like quoth the Devil to the Collier; and in the old play of Grim the Collier of Croydon, the epithet grim was intended to convey a similar idea. In Robin Goodfellow His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests, 1628, however, Grim is the name of a Fairy. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... with the life story of some one animal, and is not merely a collection of animal stories. It is necessary to emphasize this, as the idea of the series has sometimes been misunderstood. Children who have outgrown fairy-tales undoubtedly prefer this form of story to any other, and a more wholesome way of stimulating their interest in the living things around them could ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond

... not, plucked by lover's hand From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be Worthy an order of new chivalry, A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold, More mortal men ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... is the most beautiful present that ever was!" declared Sylvia; and Grace, holding the box with both hands, was hopping up and down saying over and over: "Flora! You are just like the Golden Princess in a fairy story who gives ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... making a start, omitting the preliminary paces that get you well into the swing. It was all plain sailing then, and swift sailing, too; the rest of the performance was completed with perfect unanimity, much to my own satisfaction, and, I trust, not to the discontent of my fairy-footed charge. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... when my eye, wandering from the bewitching scenery around, fell upon the grotesquely-tattooed form of Kory-Kory, and finally, encountered the pensive gaze of Fayaway, I thought I had been transported to some fairy region, so unreal did ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... golden spoil to seize, The Muses yield, as the Hesperides; Who bribes the guardian, all his labour's done, For every maid is willing to be won. Before the lords of verse a suppliant stand, And beg our passage through the fairy land: Beg more—to search for sweets each blooming field, And crop the blossoms woods and valleys yield, To snatch the tints that beam on Fancy's bow; And feel the fires on Genius' wings that glow; Praise without meanness, without flattery stoop, Soothe without ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... from the end of the eighth to the beginning of the thirteenth century. When Christianity entered Scandinavia the spirit of the old tradition still remained with the people, and became their literature under the name of "Folk Sagas," or as we would call them, fairy tales. These legends are found not only in modern Scandinavia, but they have made their way into all the literature of Europe. Jack the Giant Killer, Cinderella, Blue Beard, the Little Old Woman Cut Shorter, and the Giant who smelled the blood of an Englishman ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... honest exteriors, but containing a baser metal within! "The Golden Age" of bee-keeping, in which inferior honey can be quickly transmuted into such balmy spoils as are gathered by the bees of Hybla, has not yet dawned upon us; or at least only in the fairy visions of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... thus alone, and on foot, I espied one day a pavilion, pitched near a fountain, and entered it, intent on adventure. I found therein a damsel of gracious aspect, who replied to my inquiries that the fountain was the work of a fairy, whose castle stood beyond a neighboring hill, where she kept watch over a treasure which many knights had tried to win, but fruitlessly, having lost their life or liberty in the attempt. This treasure was the armor of Hector, prince of Troy, whom ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... coral, sea-plants of every conceivable tint and of the brightest shells—some with their living inhabitants, others deserted—of the most lovely forms, while fish of curious shapes and beautiful colours glided noiselessly in and out amid the rocks and groves of this submarine fairy land. ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... happened? That it was truly a magic ring, as the fairy had told her, she had no doubt; that her wish was a bad one, that she had been bad enough to earn it, she was equally certain. What then had happened? There was only one answer to her question. The bad wish had been granted ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... characteristic of the great painters: that of having put his hand to every kind of subject. His recent studies of the Thames are, at the decline of his energetic maturity, as beautiful and as spontaneous as the Hay-ricks of seventeen years back. They are thrillingly truthful visions of fairy mists, where showers of silver and gold sparkle through rosy vapours; and at the same time Monet combines in this series the dream-landscapes of Turner with Monticelli's accumulation of precious stones. ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... expressed the same thought: "I seem to be recalling a dream, but a dream resembling an Oriental tale, when I describe the lavish luxury of that period, the disputes for precedence, the claims of rank, the demands of every one." Yes, in all that there was something dreamlike, and the actors in that fairy spectacle which is called the Empire, that great show piece, with its scenery, now brilliant, now terrible, but ever changing, must have been even more astonished than the spectators. Aix-la-Chapelle ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... not suspect raising any great terror on this occasion, we have reason to fear some other apprehensions may here arise in our reader, into which we would not willingly betray him; I mean that we are going to take a voyage into fairy-land, and introduce a set of beings into our history, which scarce any one was ever childish enough to believe, though many have been foolish enough to spend their time in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... instantly like a fairy story, every hole gave up its little baby-partridge, and the wee fellow on the chip, the biggest of them all really, opened his big-little eyes and ran to the shelter of her broad tail, with a sweet little 'peep peep' which an enemy ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Mr. M. P. Langford explored the park on a more rational basis, and gave to the world, in reliable shape, a resume of their discoveries. Mr. Langford was himself an experienced Western explorer. For many years he had desired to either verify or disprove the so-called fairy tales which were going the rounds concerning Yellowstone Park. He found a number of equally adventurous gentlemen, including the Surveyor-General of Montana, Mr. Washburn, after whom the expedition was generally known. In 1871, Dr. Hayden, who was then connected with the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... yacht was free to them as a dispensary, and the care they took to avoid doing unnecessary damage was touching. When you are wearing a pair of boots weighing jointly about three stone, you cannot tread like a fairy. Blair knew this, and, though his boat was scrupulously clean, he did not care for the lady's boudoir and oak ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... great a miracle as the manna in the wilderness," on the "pious, honorable birds" alert to escape the fowler's net, or holding a Diet "in a hall roofed with the vault of heaven, carpeted with the grass, and with walls as far as the ends of the earth." Or he wrote to his son a charming fairy-tale of a pleasant garden where good children eat apples and pears and cherries and plums, and where they ride on pretty ponies with golden reins and silver saddles and dance all day and play with whistles and fifes and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... the door open and enjoyed the fun as much as they did, for a more glorious frolic I never witnessed. They played tag and soldiers, danced and sang, and when it began to grow dark they all piled onto the sofa about the Professor, while he told charming fairy stories of the storks on the chimney tops, and the little 'koblods', who ride the snowflakes as they fall. I wish Americans were as simple and natural ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... in the cowslip for the spots which the fairy, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, calls 'rubies.'—How is your ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... adding still greater zest to his enjoyment by pulling the strings of one of those small social dramas so constantly occurring in our midst, which was a thing Pansey Cottrell dearly loved. He felt that he should be the good fairy on board that steamer,—that two or three of the human puppets thereon would dance in accordance with his fingering of the wires; and mischievously as he would interfere at times in such matters, felt upon this occasion that the puppets would jig as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... arrive concomitantly with the Waldron carriage so that he might hand the ladies therefrom, and receive from his divinity a little, uncertain pressure of the hand. Then came his respects to Mrs. Pumphrey. Amidon started as he recognized in the bright-haired second person in line his fairy of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... at Mrs. Burns. "My good fairy begged that I might go early, because it is her little son's birthday. I am to be at a ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night's Dream, to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... noble self-abnegation on the part of the artist, and the finest of all spectacles —that of a triumphant creator of works which are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. Does it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face with such a personality? Must not they who take any part whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings at Bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... separated from his mistress, and that the privilege of being with her, and spending his days in sight of her, were offered him by some fairy, but only on condition that all memory of him should be blotted from her mind, and that she should see in him merely a stranger—is it probable, however great might be the desire of such a lover to behold his mistress, that he would consent to ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... tenderly embraced Beauty and the Prince, who had meanwhile been greeting the Fairy ...
— Beauty and the Beast • Anonymous

... mantle, and the crescent moon blessed us with her mellow light, the notes of the whip-poor-will mingling with the bark of watch-dogs and the barbaric melody of the Ethiopian, floated out on the genial air, and, as stretched on the green sward, we smoked our pipes and drank our beer, thoughts of fairy land possessed us, and we looked wonderingly around and inquired, is Scrougeville a reality or a vision? I fear we shall never see the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... cider gushing in a stream, whereof I had a taste. It was a charming, quiet old homestead, in which books and culture were not wanting, and it has all to me now something of the chiaroscuro and Rembrandt colour and charm of the Mahrchen or fairy-tale. The reality of this charm is apt to go out of life as that of literature or culture comes in. To this day I draw the deepest impression or sentiment of the pantheism or subtle spiritual charm of Nature far more from these early ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... between decks, and in the saloon, was as clean and beautiful as if she had been a royal yacht. The decks were as white as ivory, the polished wood shone in the sun, and the brass-work looked like gold. The saloon itself, with its curtains, its mirrors, tables pillars, and piano, was really fit for a fairy princess to live in. Everything had been prepared under the eye of Professor Peterkin himself, so everything ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables

... authors comprise this series, which contains Adventures by Sea and Land, Manly Sports of England, Boy Life in English Schools, Fairy Tales and ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... minds. They are faithful to their promises, honest, temperate, sober, and benevolent. They fear God, and honour their king. In a word, they are virtuous, innocent, and happy; and when told of vices, they seem to consider it as we do fairy tales:— stories to listen to, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... or the Naughty Girl Reformed. The Sister Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed. Hobby Horse or Christian Companion. Robin Good-Fellow, A Fairy Tale. Puzzling Cap, A Collection of Riddles. The Cries of London as exhibited in the Streets. Royal Guide or Early Introduction to Reading English. Mr Winloves Collection of Stories. " " Moral Lectures. History of Tom Jones ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... half woman, half serpent, bathing in a basin. Taken from the name of a fairy, celebrated in the ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... than your mother, darling, better than your mother. I'm the one gold-medal prize-winner in the combing of his lovely daughter's lovely hair. . . . She's broken out! Give her the wheel aft there! Jib and fore-topsail halyards! Full and by, there! A good full! . . . Ah, she takes it like the beauty fairy boat that she is upon the sea. . . I'll just lift that—sure, the limit. Blackey, when you pay as much to see my cards as I'm going to pay to see yours, you're going to see some cards, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... presence; and who so much the fashion as they? They are, of course, au fait in every matter of taste and fashion; on all questions of foreign life, manners, and opinions, their judgment is the law. Their town-house is in Eaton-square; and what a house is that! What a paradise of fairy splendor! what a mine of wealth, in the most superb furniture, in books in all languages, paintings, statuary, and precious fragments of the antique, collected out of every classical city and country. If you see a most exquisitely tasteful carriage, with a most fascinatingly beautiful ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... moved into town he had found only one city sound that he really welcomed: the rattle and clink that marked the milkman's matutinal visit. The milkman came at six, and he was the good fairy who released Ben Westerveld from durance vile—or had been until the winter months made his coming later and later, so that he became worse than useless as a timepiece. But now it was late March, and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear, at certain seasons, in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were for ever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... when Anson, stiff with cold and haggard with a night of sleepless riding, sprang off the train and looked about him. The beauty of the morning made itself felt even through his care. These rows of resplendent maples, heavy with iridescent frost, were like fairy-land to him, fresh from the treeless prairie. As he walked on under them, showers of powdered rubies and diamonds fell down upon him; the colonnades seemed like those leading to some enchanted palace, such as he had read of in ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... house in a strange place, I would sit up. Of course there was a rocking-chair; in that I took refuge, and there I sat with a quaint old-fashioned clock for company, with such stout lungs as to render sleep an impossibility. No fairy godmother came in at the key-hole to transform my chair into a couch and that talkative clock into a handmaiden. No ghosts beguiled the weary hours. Eleven, twelve, one, two, three, four! As the clock struck this last hour, a porter ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... this, Richard," she commanded. And added, with a touch of her old mischief, "Mind, sir, if I hear a sound out of you, I am to disappear like the fairy godmother." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... may be termed a story. In children's talk, a story is a common euphemism for a falsehood. Tale is nearly synonymous with story, but is somewhat archaic; it is used for an imaginative, legendary, or fictitious recital, especially if of ancient date; as, a fairy tale; also, for an idle or malicious report; as, do not tell tales; "where there is no tale-bearer, the strife ceaseth." Prov. xxvi, 20. An anecdote tells briefly some incident, assumed to be fact. If it passes close limits of brevity, it ceases to be an anecdote, and becomes a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... her only confidante and her only comfort. The Boston girl laughed when she listened to her fears, and braced her up with fairy stories of the winnings of Miss Henders and Slathers and the money they were making; but the relief was ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and they are found in certain geological formations in all parts of the globe. Human imagination always peopled the deep, dark caverns with terrible monsters guarding treasures, and legends and fairy tales still cling about many of them. Shallow caves, however, have from the earliest time attracted man to seek shelter in them, just as the animals took refuge in them against the inclemency of the weather. Prehistoric ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... somewhat acquainted with the change, these lines of communication are doing duty for parts of the body not there. My bad feelings were not at the end of the stump, but down in the foot and ankle, where there were constant beats, and pulls and cramps. I think this is the foundation for the many fairy stories to the effect that an amputated leg or arm buried gave the owner of it great pain, as if something pressed on it, or it was cramped in its box, and when it was opened up there was found a stone between the fingers, or the cover ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... little daughter—is she pretty? Does she coax the young men to play with daggers?—the innocent little thing! And when you start with your dynamite to break open a jail, she blows you a kiss?—the charming little fairy! What is it she has embroidered on the ribbons round her neck?—'Mort aux rois?' 'Sic semper tyrannis?' No; I saw a much prettier one somewhere the other day: 'Ne si pasce di fresche ruggiade, ma di sangue di membra di re.' Isn't it charming? ...
— Sunrise • William Black



Words linked to "Fairy" :   hob, titania, fagot, queer, fairy circle, pixy, faggot, fairy tale, fairy ring, pouf, fairy godmother, poof, fairy armadillo, depreciation, puck, fairy story, pixie, Robin Goodfellow, faery, water nymph, imp, poove, disparagement, queen, tooth fairy, golden fairy lantern, gay man, water spirit, dwarf, fairy cup, fag, derogation, gremlin, pansy, water sprite, Oberson, fairy swallow, brownie, faerie, shirtlifter



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