Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Romance   Listen
noun
Romance  n.  
1.
A species of fictitious writing, originally composed in meter in the Romance dialects, and afterward in prose, such as the tales of the court of Arthur, and of Amadis of Gaul; hence, any fictitious and wonderful tale; a sort of novel, especially one which treats of surprising adventures usually befalling a hero or a heroine; a tale of extravagant adventures, of love, and the like. "Romances that been royal." "Upon these three columns chivalry, gallantry, and religion repose the fictions of the Middle Ages, especially those known as romances. These, such as we now know them, and such as display the characteristics above mentioned, were originally metrical, and chiefly written by nations of the north of France."
2.
An adventure, or series of extraordinary events, resembling those narrated in romances; as, his courtship, or his life, was a romance.
3.
A dreamy, imaginative habit of mind; a disposition to ignore what is real; as, a girl full of romance.
4.
The languages, or rather the several dialects, which were originally forms of popular or vulgar Latin, and have now developed into Italian. Spanish, French, etc. (called the Romanic languages).
5.
(Mus.) A short lyric tale set to music; a song or short instrumental piece in ballad style; a romanza.
6.
A love affair, esp. one in which the lovers display their deep affection openly, by romantic gestures.
Synonyms: Fable; novel; fiction; tale.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Romance" Quotes from Famous Books



... consisted of copies of ancient works. Many thousands of these texts have been recovered from the ruins of Babylon and are now being translated. They cover the whole field of literary activity, religion, law, history, grammar, science, magic, and romance. ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... making of us but a newly-sprung civilisation in the history of the old grey world. After showing us that the East pre-empted originality for all time, the history of tapestry lightly lifts us over a few centuries and throws us into the romance of Gothic days, then trails us along through increasing European civilisation up to the great awakening, the Renaissance. Then it loiters in the pleasant ways of the kings of France during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and finally falls upon modern ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... for twelve days, through scorching sun by day and bitter cold at night; and every march brought its full portion of strange and beautiful sights. All the romance of border rule, outposts among robber tribes, order maintained through the agency of subsidized chiefs, were disclosed; and even when the conditions of travel changed, when a train took them from the Upper Indus to Nowshera and Peshawur, it brought to Sir Charles the opportunity ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... face in his anticipation appealed to him from the midst of howling savages, smoking cabins and mangled victims of lust and massacre. His imagination painted the scene with a merciless realism that chilled his blood. All the sweet romance fell ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... Lucius Apuleius, the work through which his name lives after the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries, is "The Golden Ass," a romance from which the following passage has been selected and translated for these Mystery Stories. Lucius, the personage who tells the story, is regarded in some quarters as a portrayal of the author himself. The purpose of "The Golden Ass" was to satirize false priests and other contemporary ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... This Romance was, by some Mischance or other, dropp'd in the Minster- Yard, York, and pick'd up by a Member of a small Political Club in that City; where it was carried, and publickly read to the Members ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne

... the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color. When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the Venetian Republic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied the passions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor did I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better to master that sublime character. I did not concern myself about a superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of greater or less accentuation of certain ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... fountain of wit; for with respect to the sore temptation of novel reading, it is not the badness of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But the best romance becomes dangerous, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... gathered round it, growing at last to a distinct entity, which excited and urged me on till I ventured to give it artistic expression in the form of a narrative. I was prompted to elaborate this subject—which had long been shaping itself to perfect conception in my mind as ripe material for a romance—by my readings in Coptic monkish annals, to which I was led by Abel's Coptic studies; and I afterwards received a further stimulus from the small but weighty essay by H. Weingarten on the origin of monasticism, in which I still study the early centuries ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... acquaintanceship whatever: they go, each its own course, wide enough apart in the world;—little dreaming that they are to meet by and by, and coalesce, wed for better and worse, and become one flesh. As is the way in all romance. "Marriages," among men, and other entities of importance, "are, evidently, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... think about Shillito. His carelessness was strangely intriguing; he stood for adventure and all the romance she had known. Besides, he was a handsome fellow; she liked his reckless twinkle and his coolness where coolness was needed. For all that, she would not acknowledge him her lover; Barbara did not know if she really wanted a lover yet. She imagined Cartwright had got near the mark when he said ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... after her with a triumphant smile. "She is mine," thought he; "I am here living through a charming romance, and Catharine will be satisfied ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... Schmitz was a man of imposing presence. He stood over six feet high; his curly coal-black hair and pointed beard, his dark, luminous eyes and a certain dash in his manner, gave him a glamor of old-world romance. In a red cap and ermine-trimmed robe, he might have been Richelieu, defying the throne. Or, otherwise clad, the Porthos of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... caught it neatly on her outstretched palm, as a boy would have done, and nibbled squirrel-like as she talked. She did not resent being teased by Amiel—she liked it, rather, as representing a perfect understanding between them. Also, once removed from the high hills of romance, she was ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... for confidence and sympathy," said Miss Spencer. "She has been disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she tells it in her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance. Her father opposed the marriage, and when he discovered that she had secretly disobeyed him he cruelly cast her off. It is really most romantic. They are ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James

... deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press—our English morals would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions of our chroniclers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... an idea, Sasha! Fancy a crusty old badger like myself starting a love affair! Heaven preserve me from such misfortune! No, my little sage, this is not a case for romance. The fact is, I can endure all I have to suffer: sadness, sickness of mind, ruin, the loss of my wife, and my lonely, broken old age, but I cannot, I will not, endure the contempt I have for myself! I am nearly ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... wegan, meaning to move, a different word, even if radically the same. In the "London Literary Gazette" for November 13,1858, I find an extract from Miss Millington's "Heraldry in History, Poetry, and Romance," in which, speaking of the motto of the Prince of Wales,—De par Houmaut ich diene,—she says; "The precise meaning of the former word [Houmout] has not, I think, been ascertained." The word is plainly the German Hochmuth, and the whole would read, De par (Aus) Hochmuth ich diene,—"Out ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... Brun also painted her as a Sibyl—that picture which she took with her wherever she went, from town to town, and which always drew a crowd to her studio; whilst, grimly enough, Nelson's Emma rose to be one of the famed lovers of romance, to sink into want, and so to death in loneliness and ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... Queenstown began to speck the slowly gathering gloom, Miss Brande asked me to point out Rostellan Castle. It could not be seen from the vessel, but the familiar legend was easily recalled, and this led us to talk about Irish tradition with its weird romance and never failing pathos. This interested her. Freed now from the lassitude of sea-sickness, the girl became more fascinating to me every moment. Everything she said was worth listening to, apart from the charming manner in which it ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... me as to a romance of mine concerning ancient Egypt, that it was so full of the "inner spirit of the old Egyptians" that, after kindred efforts of your own and a lifetime of study, you could not conceive how it had been possible for it to spring from the brain of a modern man, I thought your verdict, ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... text with D.G. ROSSETTI'S translation on the opposite page. Introduction and notes by Professor H. OELSNER Ph.D., Lecturer in Romance Literature, Oxford University. Frontispiece after the original water-colour sketch for "Dante's Dream," ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... polluted her fingers with a shred of the Times for any consideration. She spoke of Addison, Swift, and Steele as though they were still living, regarded Defoe as the best known novelist of his country, and thought of Fielding as a young but meritorious novice in the fields of romance. In poetry, she was familiar with names as late as Dryden, and had once been seduced into reading "The Rape of the Lock;" but she regarded Spenser as the purest type of her country's literature in this line. Genealogy was her favourite insanity. Those things which are the pride of most genealogists ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... (18th April), and a little more than a year after his arrival in London, Borrow published a translation of Klinger's Faustus. {53a} He himself gives no particulars as to whether it was commissioned or no. It may even have been "the Romance in the German style" from the Green Box. It is known that he received payment for it by a bill at five or six months, {53b} but there is no mention of the amount. It would appear that the translation had long been projected, for in The Monthly Magazine, July 1824, there appeared, in conjunction ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... act of mischief resulting from the plots of Kate and her maid was a smart tap at the door of Mistress Bridget, her bed-chamber, where she was indulging in reverie and romance; but the day being hot, she had fallen asleep, and was dreaming of "hearts, darts, and love's fires." She started from this mockery of bliss ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... accounts, the marriage, although a wide deflection from the highest canons of romance, was a successful one, and the Montgomerys were living in splendid state in Washington. Lady Mary was approved by even the "Old Washingtonians"—a thoughtful Californian of lineage had given her a letter to Miss Carter, who in turn had given her a tea— and as her husband was brilliant, accomplished, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... assembled to hear the case against Scarlett; the aristocratic members of the League had come to see what fate awaited their president; solitary "hatters" had come to witness the discomfiture of "the boss of the toffs"; the female portion of the concourse had been attracted by the romance which was believed to underlie the tragedy; while the townsmen were there out of sympathy with the young banker whom they had all known. Filling all available space in the hall and overflowing into the great quadrangle outside, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of romance into realism, our ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... of her confidences, and gave unreservedly the outward signs of her friendship for the tender creature committed to her care. She had believed that the kindness of the Herr Hauptmann had meant the beginnings of a romance. But she understood, and aware of the sadness of the sick woman's thoughts, did what she could to delay a meeting which she knew must ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... all that night the herd, as wide and dense as ever, was passing. They might have slain enough to feed a great army, but they did not fire a shot. The sight, whether by daylight or moonlight, did not lose its romance and majesty for the lad. It was a black sea, flowing and living, one of the greatest spectacles of the mighty western wilderness, and it was given to him ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... is singular that those transactions should either have been passed over in silence, or imperfectly represented by most of our national historians." Our modern history would have been a mere political romance, without the astonishing picture of William and his ministers, exhibited in those unquestionable documents. Burnet was among the first of our modern historians who showed the world the preciousness of such materials, in his "History of the Reformation," which he largely drew from the Cottonian collection. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... was vacated by the family of Isaac Cooper, the garden of Edgewater was the scene of a pretty romance. Isaac Cooper's second daughter, Elizabeth Fenimore, was a child of rare beauty, and as she began to grow toward womanhood became renowned for wit and loveliness. Strictly guarded by the conventional proprieties, Elizabeth made glorious excursions into the realm of fancy, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... the baths Mary had finished her romance of Valperga, and read it to her husband, who admired it extremely. He considered it to be a "living and moving picture of an age almost forgotten, a profound study of the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... and if so, what life with him would be like, whether she would find it difficult, whether they would quarrel much, whether—whether they would ever fall in love. Of course there were plenty of people in the world who didn't, excellent people to whom romance in that form came not. Olga had always been quite sure that she was not romantic. She had always loved cricket and hockey and all outdoor sports. She had even—quite privately—been a little scornful over such shreds of romance as had come beneath her notice, dismissing ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... they inaugurated the barest of churches. They were the first to betray Charles Stuart, and the last to lay down arms for the rights of his descendants. They are worldly-wise to a proverb, and yet wildly susceptible to poetry and romance. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... squat by the fire. I'm tired of the table, and prefer the floor for a change. Please don't expect anything extra blood-curdling, for you won't get it, unless you'd like me to romance a little. Where do you want me to begin? All my adventures in all the places I've lived at? That's rather a big order. You'll have to be contented with a piece. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... was publishing, under the title of "The Thousand-and-One Phantoms," a romance, one of the principal personages of which, in a voyage to the Philippine Islands, must have known me when I was residing at Jala-Jala, in the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... the rocks be counted, Which I roaring dashed to pieces, And hurled up like balls at tennis. Fresh and gay I then float onward, Through the Swabian sea, and carry, Unimpaired, my youthful powers Farther to the German country. And once more come up before me All the fragrant recollections Of romance; my youthful dreaming Sweetly then returns transfigured: Foam and surging, strong-walled cities, Rocks and castles, quiet cloisters, Smiling vineyards on the hillside; From the tower calls the watchman, And the pennon gaily flutters, And from yonder ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... moved to the highest point of displeasure; and, relying on his high interest and the justice of his cause, he brought the matter at once before the courts. My brother and I were first examined face to face. His declaration was a mere romance: mine was not the truth; but as it was by the advice of my reverend father, and that of my illustrious friend, both of whom I knew to be sincere Christians and true believers, that I gave it, I conceived myself completely justified on that score. I said I had gone up into the mountain early ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... cultivated, fond of generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest. For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrieres, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament. They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.[1312] They are found detrimental, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... exactly true to nature; these people did not want to be true to nature. And yet they convey a better impression of the place than the modern pictures. Perhaps there are two truths: the truth of fact and that of suggestion. Perrelli is very suggestive; romance grafted upon erudition, and blossoming out of it! So imaginative! He has a dissertation on the fishes of Nepenthe—it reads like a poem and is yet full of practical gastronomic hints. Can you ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... species have been evolved, in the main, by exactly the same process as that by which human inventions and civilisations are now progressing; and this involves that intelligence, ingenuity, heroism, and all the elements of romance, should have had the main share in the development of every herb and living creature around us" (Life and Habit, p. 253). Variations are indubitably the raw material of evolution—"The question is as to the origin and character of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... all behind,—with no sign of human life, but an occasional picket-fire left glimmering beneath the bank, or the yelp of a dog from some low-lying plantation. On such occasions, every nerve is strained to its utmost tension; all dreams of romance appear to promise immediate fulfilment; all lights on board the vessel are obscured, loud voices are hushed; you fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... hold imperial policies and shape the destinies of kingdoms. Wetter and I, each in our way, broke through the crust of seemingly consistent frivolity that was on her, and down to a deep-seated tendency toward romance and the love of power. She could not rule directly, but she could rule rulers. I am certain that some such idea was in her head, alloying, or at least refining, a grosser self-interest. Therefore ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... the truth of this, but still she said she believed that there was a quarrel or was to be a quarrel between her husband and Mr. Waring. Otherwise I believe her throughout. I believe that, no matter what romance there was about her nursing Philippe and his falling in love with her, she did not encourage him, did not call him here again, was true to her old husband. She is simply possessed with the idea that the quarrel which killed her husband was between himself and Mr. Waring, and that it occurred after ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... made to polish or round many of the awkwardly constructed sentences which are characteristic of this volume. Rough, and occasionally obscure, they are far more in keeping with the spirit of the original than the polished periods of modern romance. Taking into consideration the many difficulties which he has had to overcome, and which those best acquainted with the French edition will best appreciate, the translator claims the indulgence of the critical reader for any shortcomings he may discover. The best plea that can be offered ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... are all taller than their father, and take mighty good care that he shall not forget it. But in the quiet, peaceful days that pass now, each as like the other as so many Scotch tups, I can hardly get the young folks to believe that even here we have had our romance, when Jim and I went a-wooing, and the man with the cat's whiskers ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pirates never think of washing a horse's back. They do not shelter the horses in the tents, either—they must stay out and take the weather as it comes. Look at poor cropped and dilapidated "Baalbec," and weep for the sentiment that has been wasted upon the Selims of romance! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Johnson, in his Journey, thus beautifully describes his situation here:—'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head; but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... no doubt hundreds of others have dreamt before and since. There was nothing new or original about his dreams, for he was not a man given to romance. He was too direct and practical for that. No, his were just the thoughts of a young man who has left his home, which thereby gains in beauty as distance lends enchantment to it, and kindly recollection crowns it with a glory that it could never ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... romances of the Victorian era. His affectionate solicitude doubtless kept that great poet alive for many a year beyond what would otherwise have been his lot. Watts-Dunton was, as we have seen, introduced to Borrow by Hake. He has written a romance which, if he could be persuaded to publish it, would doubtless command the same attention as Aylwin, in which Borrow is introduced as 'Dereham' and Hake as 'Gordon,' and here he tells the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... there are no heroes of the kind so dear to all lovers of chivalry and romance. There are heroes, perhaps, but they are the patient sad-faced kind, of whom few take cognizance as they hurry onward. But cannot we all remember some one who suffered greatly, who accomplished great deeds, who died on the battlefield—some ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... attempts to make her understand how greatly she would gain in peace and comfort if she would but marry him. They would move to a larger flat and he would manage the boys. But Leah's view of life and marriage was tinged with no glory of romance. She had no illusions, no ignorances, and she was afraid, she ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... sober thoughts of wedlock came, Suggested by the papers; The Sunday Times soon raised a flame, The Post cured all my vapours; And spite of what Romance may say 'Gainst courtship so on carried, Thanks to the fates and fair "Z.A." I now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... is the Venice of my youth and age, Its spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... one with rock ballast, which my map showed to be a line which runs to Bremen, and a little later we came to the Weser. This river brought up pleasant recollections of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who drowned the rats in the Weser by the magic of his pipe. But there was no romance in it as we came upon it in a gray and misty dawn. It was only another barrier ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... Esther off her feet as he kisses her and then turns to Helen. Evidently he has not broken his heart over that romance in the desert. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... Ah! not the charm of silver-tongued romance, Born of the feudal time, nor whatsoe'er Of dying glory fills the golden realms Of perished song, where heaven-descended Art Still boasts her later triumphs, can compare With that one thought of liberty inherited— Of free life giv'n by fathers who ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... longing for happiness which is a part of the resurrection of the spring, and which may survive not only the knowledge of its own fruitlessness, but a belief in the existence of the very happiness for which it longs. All the unlived romance in her heart had come to life with the young green around her. Middle-age had not deadened, it had merely dulled her. For the pang of desire is not, after all, the divine prerogative of youth, nor has it even a conscious relation to the possibility of fulfilment. Her soul looked out of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... Having gained not only fame but a modest fortune, he retired in 1611 to live at ease in Stratford until his death in 1616. Besides the two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," which first won popularity for him, he has written thirty-seven plays, ranging from the lightest comedy, through romance and historical narrative, to the darkest tragedy. Whatever form his verse takes,—sonnet, song, or dramatic poetry,—it shows the touch of the master hand, the inspiration of the master mind. Of his plays those which are still most ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... remembered the painfully sweet mixture of pride and fear with which she walked up the aisle of the little church behind him. Her pretty new gown rustled, the dim light of the church had something like romance in it, and he was so strong and handsome. Her heart went out in a great silent cry to God-"Oh, let me be ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... at these paradoxical expectations. But the great inventions of latter ages, which altered the face of all things, in their naked proposals and mere suppositions, were to former times as ridiculous. To have talked of a new earth to have been discovered, had been a romance to antiquity; and to sail without sight of stars or shores, by the guidance of a mineral, a story more absurd than the flight of Daedalus. That men should speak after their tongues were ashes, or communicate with each other in differing hemispheres, before the invention of letters, could not ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... had gone by since the war had ended; still, on this October afternoon, as the boy lay stretched out on the porch of the old inn, he dreamed his boyish dreams of romance and heroism. ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel's dark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now, and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her ken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance—to the three times she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... them to premeditated perversion of truth, and not to youthful levity and inaccuracy. Standing as they do, the sole groundwork of that reign's history, I am authorized to pronounce the work, invention and romance. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... accepting my request no words of mine can repay. It has made you overflow into some romance which I should have check'd at another time. I hope it may be in the scheme of Providence that my sister may go first (if ever so little a precedence), myself next, and my good Ex'rs survive to remembr us with kindness many years. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of romance and adventure surrounding the discovery of hitherto unknown lands has from the earliest ages been the lure that has tempted men to prosecute voyages and travels of exploration. Whether under the pretext of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... happened to Mr. Polly that real Romance came out of dreamland into life, and intoxicated and gladdened him with sweetly beautiful suggestions—and left him. She came and left him as that dear lady leaves so many of us, alas! not sparing him one jot or one tittle of the hollowness ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... but nobly thought. You will make a noble fellow if once you were married. I make no reservation of your being well-married: you have so much sense, and knowledge of human nature, that though you may not realize perhaps the ideas of romance, yet you ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... smooth at times as to be almost invisible, and in its place was the indefinite continuation of the opposite shore down toward the nether world. One seemed to be in an enchanted land, and to breathe all day the atmosphere of fable and romance. Not a smoke, but a kind of shining nimbus filled all the spaces. The vessels would drift by as if in mid-air with all their sails set. The gypsy blood in one, as Lowell calls it, could hardly stay between four walls and see such days go by. Living in tents, in groves and on the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... towards converting her to my views for stowing away on the vessel lying alongside of us. However, that important point once reached, the old woman threw herself into the enterprise with a practical knowledge of the realities of the undertaking and a zest for the romance of it which ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... From the desire of pleasing his audience, who were at the same time his judges, he endeavoured to move them in the manner they had been accustomed to be affected; and, by introducing love in his scenes, to bring them the nearer to the predominant taste of the age for romance. From the same source arose that multiplicity of incidents, episodes, and adventures, with which our tragic pieces are crowded and obscured; so contrary to probability, which will not admit such a number of extraordinary and surprising events in the short space of four-and-twenty ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Ellen still in his arms, and the actresses assisting in her recovery. The manager came forward to apologize, stating that the young lady was too ill to proceed, and the audience, who had witnessed the behaviour of O'Brien and myself, were satisfied with the romance in real life which had been exhibited. Her part was read by another, but the piece was little attended to, every one trying to find out the occasion of this uncommon occurrence. In the meantime, Ellen was put into a hackney-coach ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... it not for the anachronism we should be induced to regard this lady as none other than Elen the daughter of Eudav, prince of Erging and Euas, and wife of Macsen Wledig; heroine also of a Romance entitled "The Dream of Macsen Wledig." As Macsen, however, is known to have been put to death as early as the year 388, Elen's life could not possibly have been so protracted as to enable her to take a part ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... In the debate on the question to which this section refers, Mr. Duncombe depicted the heavy public burdens that would be thus imposed: Mr. Macaulay exclaimed, "A penny a-head." Mr. Duncombe's retort, that this statement was a romance was merited. Mr. Macaulay could never have examined the financial bearing of this great question thoroughly, or his acute mind must have discovered the fallacy of the opinion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... circumstances must have been resented with the sword. Tradition describes a grand memorial ceremony organized in Kyoto by Hideyoshi in honour of Nobunaga, and, on that occasion, incidents are said to have occurred which bear the impress of romance. It is, at all events, certain that the immediate issue of this dangerous time was a large increase of Hideyoshi's authority, and his nomination by the Court to the second grade of the fourth rank as well as to the position of major-general. Moreover, the three barons ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... "You know what an anaesthetic does, don't you? It cheats the senses of pain. And a little humbug does the same for the mind. Of course you don't believe anything. I don't myself. But you can't stand for ever and contemplate an abyss of utter ignorance. You must weave a little romance about it for ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... to tell her how he had made his escape and yet not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at all events, and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game to ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other countries. The manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating back to the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... herself lived with her parents in the Bishop's palace at Lichfield. There was also a younger sister, 'Miss Sally,' who died as a girl, and another very beautiful young lady their friend, by name Honora Sneyd, placed under Mrs. Seward's care. She was the heroine of Major Andre's unhappy romance. He too lived at Lichfield with his mother, and his hopeless love gives a tragic reality to this by-gone holiday of youth and merry-making. As one reads the old letters and memoirs the echoes of laughter reach us. One can almost see the young folks all coming together ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... American Indian, attend, and are graciously granted by the King a Royal Charter establishing the Society of the New York Hospital, along with a seal, insignia, and a money gift. A bit of color and romance attaches to the ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... is never so effective if it has no story to tell. There must be something, be it fact or fiction, to attach to a place before its beauties can be fully appreciated. The charm of poetry and romance is a very real one, and can add much to one's enjoyment of a particular view. I suppose that something is needed to interest and attract the intelligence, at the same moment that the sense of sight is captivated, so that a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... volumes, and on the Notes appended to the various Tales, I have found myself led unavoidably into a much more extensive course of reading than I had originally contemplated, and one which in great measure bears directly upon the earlier Mediaeval Romance. ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... as to the time when his betrothal should become an accomplished fact; the thought of having his little cousin Toni for a wife was very pleasant to him. He had known her since childhood, and she suited him exactly. She was a girl absolutely bereft of romance, and Willibald knew she would make no sentimental demands upon him, to which he, with the best will in the world, had not the temperament to respond. Toni, for her part, possessed that good taste for which Frau Regine had given her credit. Will pleased her very well, and the prospect ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... abode at the Court, at his spare hours he composed that incomparable Romance, entituled, The Arcadia, which he dedicated to his Sister the Countess of Pembroke. A Book (saith Dr. Heylin) which, besides its excellent Language, rare Contrivances, and delectable Stories, hath in it ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... clothed in complete armor of steel; of seven hundred elephants, with towers filled with archers on their backs, and of eighteen hundred chariots armed with scythes. This formidable host, the like of which is not to be found in eastern history, and has scarcely been imagined in eastern romance, [49] was discomfited in a great battle, in which the Roman Alexander proved himself an intrepid soldier and a skilful general. The Great King fled before his valor; an immense booty, and the conquest of Mesopotamia, were the immediate fruits of this signal victory. Such ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... few of us for whom a cave does not have a rare attraction, an appeal little short of fascinating, that has in it something of romance perhaps, certainly something of mystery and a dim, vague stirring of primitive and vital feelings, a shadowy harking back to the early life history of mankind. To Wanda Leland, in so many essentials a child of the wild, such a cavern as this was a bit ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... of difficult rhyming which we notice in this piece is still more marked in the strange and beautiful romance named The Flight of the Duchess.[28] Not even in Pacchiarotto has Browning so revelled in the most outlandish and seemingly incredible combinations of sound, double and treble rhymes of equal audacity and success. There is much dramatic appropriateness in the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... novel he has written. But I must not say anything about that yet. Let me say something, rather, about his new book which you who read this have a more immediate prospect of enjoying. On Tiptoe: A Romance of the Redwoods is Stewart Edward White in a somewhat unusual but entirely taking role. Here we have Mr. White writing what is essentially a comedy; and yet there is an element of fantasy in the story which, in the light of a few opening ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... poetry, its romance, its very religion—is little more than a Joseph's coat, woven of Love's celestial warp and Passion's infernal woof in the loom of Time. For sensuous Cleopatra's smiles Mark Antony thought the world well lost; for false Helen's favors proud ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Molly, with a merry laugh: "he always comes pecking at that hour, naughty fellow. Oh, what a tame ending to your romance! Your beautiful ghost come to visit you from unknown regions, clad in white and rustling garments, has resolved itself into a lame bird, rather poverty-stricken ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... they stayed but an hour. As a matter of course, all the French women were exceedingly empressees in their manner towards the Great Unknown; and as there were three or four that were very exaggerated on the score of romance, he was quite lucky if he escaped some absurdities. Nothing could be more patient than his manner, under it all; but as soon as he very well could, he got into a corner, where I went to speak to him. He said, laughingly, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... in the North, where the herds were fattened for the market;—all this formed the background of an attractive romance. Obviously, however, the drive was dependent on great stretches of open country, with free grazing and free access to water, and it is also manifest that these conditions could not long endure in the face of constant westward migration. Homesteaders ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... the central figure of his story. This is, however, the case with My Lady of the Moor, which Messrs. LONGMANS will shortly publish for Mr. JOHN OXENHAM. While wandering on Dartmoor he stumbled into a living actual romance, of which Miss BEATRICE CHASE, author of several popular books about Dartmoor, was the centre. This book tells the tale, which is named after Miss CHASE, My Lady of the Moor, and it has of course been written with her full ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various

... story is soon told. George Shelby, interested, as any other young man might be, by the romance of the incident, no less than by feelings of humanity, was at the pains to send to Cassy the bill of sale of Eliza; whose date and name all corresponded with her own knowledge of facts, and felt no doubt upon her mind as to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin another. If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with different people and different themes, for here at the end, where the romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of my life-work, I say sadly and without ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... out Guinevere was in love with Launcelot," he rather lamely explained as he walked away to the window and stood staring out over the prairie. But for the life of me I can't understand what should have turned his thoughts into that particular channel of romance. Those are matters with which the young and the innocent should have nothing to do. They are matters, in fact, which it behooves even the old ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... Katherine. In point of fact they rarely reached her ears. Alone among her neighbours, Mary Cathcart, of the crisp, black hair and gipsy-like complexion, was still admitted to some intimacy of intercourse. And the girl was far too loyal either to bring in gossip or to carry it out. Brockhurst held the romance of her heart. And, notwithstanding the earnest wooing—as the years went on—of more than one very eligible gentleman, Brockhurst continued to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... purpose to take advantage of this interval of inaction, and direct the reader's attention to a different country from that selected as the scene of our romance, and to such historical events of past years as connect themselves remarkably with the early life of Numerian's perfidious convert. This man will be found a person of great importance in the future conduct of our story. It is necessary to the comprehension ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... discords, the music of the waterfall. One of the little islands has been joined to the main land with gravel carted into the river, and a bleach-house or some other abomination erected upon it. The place is disenchanted. The sad Genius of Romance who once loved to stretch his limbs upon the mossy rocks, and catch inspiration from watching the foam and listening to the roar, has departed with a ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... varieties of one common and more ancient type, and no one of them could have been the original from which the others were borrowed. They have all such an amount of mutual resemblance as to point to a more ancient language, the Aryan, which was to them what Latin was to the six Romance languages. The people who spoke this unknown parent speech, of which so many other ancient tongues were off-shoots, must have migrated at a remote era to widely separated regions of the old world, such as Northern Asia, Europe, and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... Louisa, Hereditary Heir Consumptive of the Imperial Provinz of Maine. The marriage, so it is whispered, although performed in accordance with the wishes of the Emperor as expressed by cable, is in every way a love match. What lends a touch of romance to the betrothal of the Royal Younglings is that the Prince had never even seen the Princess Amelia until the day when the legislature of the Provinz of Maine voted her a marriage portion of half a million dollars. Immediately on this news a secret visit was ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock



Words linked to "Romance" :   stardust, Galician, Rumanian, vamp, mash, Latinian language, novel, flirt, coquette, chat up, quality, Spanish, court, act, Gothic romance, Rhaeto-Romanic, Haitian Creole, intrigue, chase after, dally, romanticism, Romance language, love, story, move, love story, speak, wanton, Italian, bodice ripper, relationship



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com