# 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.