"Sylph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with most intelligent care. It is all embroidered, fringed, carved in a Greek, Gothic, barbaric style, so fantastic, so light, so aerial, that it might be fancied to have been built expressly for the nest of a sylph. Mlle. Taglioni has pity for these poor, abandoned palaces. She has several of them en pension, which she maintains out of pure commiseration for their beauty; we were told of three or four upon which she has ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... enemy; but a heavy westerly gale drove both squadrons to the lower end of the lake, where each entered its own harbor on the 19th. August 29 the American put out again, having an additional newly built schooner, named the "Sylph," large and fast, carrying three or four long 32-pounders. Chauncey reported that he had now nine vessels with ninety-one guns, but that the enemy was still superior. In number of guns, possibly; but it is difficult to accept the statement otherwise, except ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... special occasions: say on her birthday. Dinner in the middle of the day, one course and nothing else. In the evening, tea and bread-and-butter again. You compare her with your Englishwomen who wolf down from three to five meat meals a day; and naturally you find her a sylph. The difference is not a difference of type: it's the difference between the woman who eats not wisely but too well, and the woman who eats not ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... suppose such beings to exist at all, they could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as he makes them. He has invented for them a language, manners, and sentiments of their own, from the tremendous imprecations of the Witches in MACBETH, when they do 'a deed without a name', to the sylph-like expressions 'of Ariel, who 'does his spiriting gently'; the mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... is here; and the trappings of the wanderers are on board. The young wild man stands alone upon the upper deck. His eyes pierce to where stands the sylph he leaves with reluctance. She is looking at him. He lifts his cap and bows farewell. She waves her kerchief in return. The steamer speeds away. They are parted. Has that brief interview left an impression upon those ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ray, And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, Her guardian Sylph prolonged the balmy rest; 'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed The morning-dream that hovered o'er her head; A youth more glittering than a birth-night beau, (That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow) Seemed to her ear ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... front, behind and on all sides of the Sylph threw up the water in mighty geysers, as if it were a typhoon that surrounded the little vessel. Shells screamed overhead, ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels, and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her justice, it was quite apparent that Miss Flower was no party to the plan, for, though she beamed on Webb as she did on all, she frankly showed her preference for the younger officers who could dance as well as ride, and either dancing or riding was her glory. She danced like a sylph; she seemed to float about the room as though on air; she rode superbly, and shirked no leap that even Ray and Field took with lowered hands and close gripping knees. She was joyous, laughing, radiant ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... he remarked with an amiable grin. "Tex most always does the hirin', yuh see. Glad to know yuh. My name's McCabe—Slim, they calls me, 'count uh my sylph-like figger. These here guys is Bill Joyce an' his side-kick, Butch Siegrist; likewise Flint Kreeger an' Doc Peters over to the table. Bud Jessup yuh ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... was preparing to play the tune which Frank had requested. The Sylph was making very good progress through the water, and the rowers kept pulling ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... that whole gang didn't go as mum as a lot of railroad hands after a smash-up. Why, they hadn't seen no such lady, cross their hearts they hadn't. Maybe it was old Rosa, yes? And Rosa a sylph that would fit tight in a pork ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... with skilful fingers fine, Purpled o'er those wings of thine? Was it some sylph whose tender care Spangled thy robes so fine and fair, And wove them of the morning air? I feel thy little throbbing heart; Thou fear'st ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... liable to degenerate into a mere detailed description of the person. It demands of the writer the ability to catch striking details and to present them vividly and interestingly. Examples: Hawthorne's "Sylph Etherege" and "Old Esther Dudley;" Poe's "The Man of the Crowd;" James' "Greville Fane" and "Sir Edmund Orme;" Stevenson's "Will o' the Mill;" Wilkins' "The Scent of the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... core," thought Jack. "Large grey eyes, rich brown hair— the complexion of the lily tinged with the rose—a figure a sylph might envy." ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... glass bottles, lighting up the glittering liquid contained within them!—why, they look more like soap-bubbles than anything else! ... and the boy who carried them moved with such a lazy, noiseless grace that he might have been taken for a dream-sylph ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... into a large and sepulchral drawing-room in which the good lady and Miss Norsham were partaking of afternoon tea. Mrs Pansey wore her customary skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened the room with a dress of white muslin adorned with many little bows of white ribbon, so that—sartorially speaking—she was very young, and very virginal, and quite angelical in looks. Both ladies were pleased to see their visitor and received him warmly in their several ways; ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... mourning can be very becoming to Lady Mabel," ruminated Mrs. Tempest. "Those small sylph-like figures rarely look well ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... "would that I were she who has the right of seeing you every minute, of speaking to you every instant! would that I were she who might watch over you, she who would have no need of mysterious springs, to summon and cause to appear, like a sylph, the man she loves, to look at him for an hour, and then see him disappear in the darkness of a mystery, still more strange at his going out than at his coming in. Oh! that would be ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be mild; for one too marvellous stops the tide, the sense of climax being strongly implanted in all bosoms. So the Countess told an anecdote—one of Mel's. Mr. George Uplift was quite familiar with it, and knew of one passage that would have abashed him to relate 'before ladies.' The sylph-like ease with which the Countess floated over this foul abysm was miraculous. Mr. George screwed his eye-lids queerly, and closed his jaws with a report, completely beaten. The anecdote was of the character of an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a dance (though rarely on field days, For then the gentlemen were rather tired) Displayed some sylph-like figures in its maze; Then there was small-talk ready when required; Flirtation—but decorous; the mere praise Of charms that should or should not be admired. The hunters fought their fox-hunt o'er again, And then retreated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... artist?—No; I am an author and a plagiarist. Every sketch in my book is taken from some other work, except the "Screecher," which is from the artistic pen of Lady G.M.; and the lovely form and features of the coloured sylph, for which I am indebted to my friend Mr. J.F.C.—You must not be too curious.—I consider myself justified in plagiarizing anything from anybody, if I conceive it will help to elucidate my subject or amuse my reader, provided always ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... should interrupt a sigh!"—How unpoetical is snuff! The most suitable verses which a lover could address to a snuff-taking mistress, would be imitations of Horace's lines to the Sorceress Canidia. What sylph would superintend the conveyance of this dust to the nostrils of a belle? What Gnome would not take a fiendish delight in hovering over ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... What, that graceful sylph, that exquisite creature I see before me now, in all the pride of conscious loveliness!" and the veteran drew his rough hand across his eyes in unfeigned emotion, then hastily recovering himself, he said, "and this ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of light fabrics do best agree with Majoli's sylph-like form. Pearls and feathers are consonant to her artistic taste. Her emblematic flower is the lily, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland |
