Fata Morganas

John Bull will prove himself ungrateful indeed if he neglects to pension him for having demonstrated that those Irish organizations which, for half a century have kept his public servants looking under their beds o 'nights for things neither ornamental nor useful, were mere Fata Morganas, Brocken specters or disease of the imagination.

The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 1. 1898

He sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigour; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels.

On the Choice of Books Thomas Carlyle 1838

For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about, but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels.

At Home And Abroad Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe Margaret Fuller 1830