Fancies

Fancies are whimsical notions or desires, things which satisfy a whim.

Quotes

• Some things are of that nature as to make
  One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.
  • John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), The Author's Way of Sending Forth his Second Part of the Pilgrim, Part II.

• While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
  Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book IV, line 118.

• The difference is as great between
  The optics seeing as the objects seen.
  All manners take a tincture from our own;
  Or come discolor'd through our passions shown;
  Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies,
  Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle 1, line 31.

• Pacing through the forest,
  Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act IV, scene 3, line 101.

• Tell me where is fancy bred,
  Or in the heart or in the head?
  How begot, how nourished?
  Reply, reply.
  It is engender'd in the eyes,
  With gazing fed; and fancy dies
  In the cradle where it lies.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 2, line 63.

• So full of shapes is fancy,
  That it alone is high fantastical.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act I, scene 1, line 14.

• Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;
  If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act IV, scene 1, line 66.

• Fancy light from Fancy caught.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part XXIII.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 260.

• Ever let the Fancy roam,
  Pleasure never is at home.
  • John Keats, Fancy.

• The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.
  • Charles Lamb, Fancy employed on Divine Subjects, I. 1.

• Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
  • James Russell Lowell, Among My Books, Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.

• Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,
  One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.
  • James Russell Lowell, Sonnet XXXIV (Ed. 1844).

• She's all my fancy painted her,
  She's lovely, she's divine.
  • William Mee, Alice Gray.

• When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
  Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, line 225.

• One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.
  • Willard Van Orman Quine, in Andrew Bailey First Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality: Fundamental Problems and Readings in Philosophy, Broadview Press, 6 August 2004, p. 300

• Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains,
  Winning from Reason's hand the reins,
  Pity and woe! for such a mind
  Is soft, contemplative, and kind.
  • Walter Scott, Rokeby, Canto I, Stanza 31.

• We figure to ourselves
  The thing we like, and then we build it up
  As chance will have it, on the rock or sand:
  For Thought is tired of wandering o'er the world,
  And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.
  • Sir Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde, Part I, Act I, scene 5.

• Sad fancies do we then affect,
  In luxury of disrespect
  To our own prodigal excess
  Of too familiar happiness.
  • William Wordsworth, Ode to Lycoris.