"Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piece of cloth a thousand yards long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth, glossy, and respectable. His individuality gone, he would in a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a weak timid woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, this thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people would call it, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in keeping ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the one to the other. It had always seemed possible that this dreadful mania might develop into actual insanity, and he had little doubt but that the younger man's brain was slightly affected. But this did not account for the delusion and expectations of the elder. Harry Custer, as the consul remembered him, was a level-headed, practical miner, whose leaning to adventure and excitement had not prevented him from being a cool speculator, and he had amassed more than a competency by reason ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ground, I have done. To talk of that, would be wasting our time on nothing; or 'our eternity,' for with that sect time is altogether a delusion. It may be true, but the believer, even in the act of declaring his faith, must practically prove himself persuaded of the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... his Imperial Majesty or his Ministers of State implicitly accept his divine descent, but this I do know—that those persons who regard the present Emperor of Japan as a State puppet, arrogating more or less divine attributes, are labouring under a profound delusion. There is no abler man in Japan at the present moment. There is no abler man among the sovereigns of the world. In fact, I should be inclined to place the Emperor of Japan at the head of the world's great statesmen. He is no monarch content to reign but not to govern, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... consideration that somebody would win the prize, and that his chance was as good as anybody. It is always unlucky for a boy or young man when he yields for the first time to the fatal fascination of the lottery. He may fail time after time, but continue to hug the delusion that the next time will bring him luck. There are clerks in New York and other large cities who have not only squandered all their own savings, but abstracted money from their employers, led on by this ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... French National Convention (quite contrary to its own Program) became the astonishment and horror of mankind; a kind of Apocalyptic Convention, or black Dream become real; concerning which History seldom speaks except in the way of interjection: how it covered France with woe, delusion, and delirium; and from its bosom there went forth Death on the pale Horse. To hate this poor National Convention is easy; to praise and love it has not been found impossible. It is, as we say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances. To us, in these pages, be it as a fuliginous ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and what if, from his refuge among the Scots, and even with the Scots as his instruments, he could recommence, in some way or other, his struggle with the English? Charles did labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots it was actually with some absurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in the Highlands, might be forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of his Majesty's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... established; men began to collect armor and relics: in this period grew up such an antiquary as Mr. Oldbuck, who curiously sought out every relic of the Roman times,—armor, fosses, and praetoria,—and found, with much that was real, many a fraud or delusion. It was an age which, in the words of old Walter Charleton, "despised the present as an innovation, and slighted the future, like the madman who ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... his piety he was not sure that he himself had escaped the snare of the fowler. He turned first for guidance to some quiet Protestants, and was told by them, to his horror, that the Pope was Antichrist, that the worship of saints was a delusion, and that only through faith in Christ could his sins be forgiven. He was puzzled. As these Protestants were ready to suffer for their faith, he felt they must be sincere; and when some of them were cast ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... they attributed to themselves the lion share in the overthrow, presumably on the ground that masses follow leaders and the Constitutional Democrats were the only ones who had a chance for open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led to a series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, or a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards'; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... But I am not even capable of that. Systematically, I concede no importance to outward forms. Maja does not count me among her devotees. What are houses? What are the phantoms who inhabit them? A transient semblance, a delusion of the senses! And yet, I am conscious that I miss just those houses which happen to stand, in Berlin and that I feel an unspeakable longing for the phantom called Dr. Schrotter. Once again it has been proved to me that I am an unconscious plaything in the hands ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... be caught napping in such a fashion again! Her foolish blindness is partly explained by her delusion that her enemy would not torpedo merchant vessels. Common sense should have told her that her enemy will play the game that suits them best—that they will not inquire what they may do, but they will do it ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he looked at the hill and bethought him of what lay beyond it, he drew a Winchester from the scabbard under his left leg and made sure that he had not forgotten to load it. For Racey laboured under no delusion as to the danger that menaced not only his own existence but that of his friend Swing. He knew that their lives hung by a thread, and a thin thread at that. They were but two against many, and their position had not been aided by the string of uneventful ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... no solid security for happiness; therefore, we should early cultivate the reasoning faculty, instead of always appealing to the imagination. By sentimental persuasives, a child may be successfully governed for a time, but that time will be of short duration, and no power can continue the delusion long. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... written," he thought. "Everything is written. But we are tricked into a semblance of vigorous life and energy by our great delusion that we ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... looked up the wall of the cliff to enjoy one more sight of the magical beauty, when there fell upon my eyes, or seemed to fall, a sight that, though I felt it must be a delusion, took away my breath. Standing on a piece of rock that was flush with one of the steps by which I had descended was a slender girlish figure, so lissom that it might have been the famous 'Queen of the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... would, however, be willing to support any other method which would give a sensible increase in the Cavalry strength of our Peace establishment, and only protest against any scheme which would seek to swell out the ranks or create new units on mobilization; for all these are mere self-delusion, increasing, no doubt, the numbers on paper, but in reality striking at the efficiency of the Arm ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... said, "in one respect seems to be under the delusion that we are still in the Middle Ages, instead of the twentieth century, since he assumes the right to meddle with the lives of his parishioners, to be the sole judge of their actions. That assumption will ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... profess to think that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at me. "They call that being 'locoed' out on the Plains, don't they?" he said with a twinkle in his eye. "You have a delusion mixed up in your gray matter somewhere. One thing more," he added as an unimportant afterthought, "I see Miss Melrose ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... that Indian unrest has been a sudden growth because its outward manifestations have assumed new and startling forms of violence is a dangerous delusion; and no less misleading is the assumption that it is merely the outcome of Western education or the echo of Western democratic aspirations, because it occasionally, and chiefly for purposes of political expediency, adopts the language of Western demagogues. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... enough to take the houses they build. And if in the course of time the families die off, as is so often the case, nobody ever thinks of blaming any but Providence[8] for the result. Ill-informed medical men aid in sustaining the delusion, by laying the blame on "current contagions." Badly constructed houses do for the healthy what badly constructed hospitals do for the sick. Once insure that the air in a house is stagnant, and ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... thank you for the great confidence you place in me. You talk of nonsense; alas! what are all our opinions else? if we search for truth before we fix our principles, what do we find but doubt? And which of us begins the search a tabula rasa? Nay, where can we hunt but in volumes of error or purposed delusion? Have not we, too, a bias in our Minds—our passions? They will turn the scale in favour of the doctrines most agreeable to them. Yet let us be a little vain: you and I differ radically in our principles, and yet in forty years they have never cast a gloom over our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... The witchcraft delusion at Salem Village, in 1692, has attracted universal attention, constitutes a permanent chapter in the world's history, and demands a full exposition, and, if possible, a true solution. Being convinced that it cannot be correctly interpreted without a thorough knowledge of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... entry in his record I call attention to my brother's statement that he did not regard Clifton Hines as entirely sane on this one matter, and to his conviction that the hatred Hines then bore him, amounting to a delusion of persecution, might on his death turn against Judson Clark. He instructed me to go to Clark, tell him the story, and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and anyhow Flannigan was the sanest person I ever saw in my life. But it all seemed a part of the mystery that had been hanging over us for several days. I felt my way across the room and knelt by the pans. Yes, they were there, full of paper and mounted on bricks. It had not been a delusion. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... minds, are too frequently and too fatally attempted to be obliterated by recourse to the Bacchanalian fount. Reason becomes obscured, and all decency and propriety abandoned. Passion rules predominantly until it extinguishes itself, and leaves the wretched victim of early delusion, vitiated both in body and mind, to drag on a miserable existence, without character, without friends, and almost without hope. There is unfortunately, however, no occasion for the exercise of imagination on this subject. The annals of our police occurrences, furnish too many examples of actual ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... should cling to a foolish delusion. You are only preparing trouble for yourself. If my word ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in their delusion, and even to form societies for its propagation. But mankind at large is sufficiently sane to avoid a fall into this abyss of the absurd, and, having paid its tribute of laughter, goes its way without being a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... hope—in fact the most futile hope that any stammerer ever had. I wish I could paint in the sky, in letters of fire, the truth that "Stammering cannot be outgrown," because this, of all things, is the most frequent pitfall of the stammerer, his greatest delusion and one of the most prolific causes of continued suffering. I know whereof I speak, because I tried it myself. I know how many different people held up to me the hope that I ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of brilliant orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks. Even ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'and live with us. Nobler hearts than yours have sat here in this darkness to wait, and they have come to us and we to them; and they have never left us, never. All else is a delusion, but we are real, we are real, we are real. Truth is a shadow; the valleys of superstition are a farce: the earth is of ashes, the trees all rotten; but we—feel us—we live! You cannot doubt us. Feel us how warm we are! Oh, come to us! Come ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... a politic sanction, they despise in their hearts the people who are so barbarous as to maintain such an institution; and the Southern rebel or Northern demagogue who thinks his championship of slavery really earns him any European respect is under that kind of delusion which it is always for the interest of the plotter to cultivate in the tool. It was common, a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. It certainly might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the incomprehensible delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff saw that cannibalism did not commence in the marshes, but in the ministry. He saw that his brother-in-law, for example, and, in fact, all the lawyers and officials, from the usher to the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... it was very pleasant, but, by and by, Rose began to wish Charlie would find something to do like the rest and not make dawdling after her the business of his life. The family was used to his self-indulgent ways, and there was an amiable delusion in the minds of the boys that he had a right to the best of everything, for to them he was still the Prince, the flower of the flock, and in time to be an honor to the name. No one exactly knew how, for, though full of talent, he seemed ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... taken us directly to the garden on our arrival, and now led the way, through large evergreens, and by a winding path, to the house. The land was not half an acre in size, yet I was sure that I had been over a large estate. The same delusion clung to the house, which was in looks like one of Gainsborough's cottages, and ought to have been at least two hundred years old, instead of two. But Downing's advent had already wrought miracles here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and her alarms are those produced by a delusion under which she labours that there are assassins, gnomes, vampires, or what not, in our house at night, and that it is my bounden duty to leave my bed at any hour or temperature, and to do battle with the same, in very inadequate ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... would see the portrait of Dugald looking on them wondering at their folly, and that must daunten him. It would not take long till some extravagance of these elders made him wince, and there was Cornal Colin again in the dolours, poor company for them that would harbour any delusion of youth. It was pitiful then to see them take their departures, almost slinking, ashamed to have sounded the wrong note in that chamber of sober recollections. Miss Mary, lighting them to the door with one of her mother's candlesticks, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... had never quite got over that great grief of earlier years. One felt better and more hopeful for the sight. I suppose many people, after meeting some overwhelming loss or trial, have fancied that they would soon die; but that is almost invariably a delusion. Various dogs have died of a broken heart, but very few human beings. The Inferior creature has pined away at his master's loss: as for us, it is not that one would doubt the depth and sincerity of sorrow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... that not alone pleasure, but happiness, could be bought with money, and in no other way. And the few who were stung by the prevailing suffering and wretchedness into recognition of our parlous state, we, for the most part, cherished my wild delusion, and insisted that the trouble could be remedied if the State would contract and discharge new obligations. We clamoured for more rights, more help, more liberty, more freedom from this and that; never seeing that our trouble was ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... unsinged, however, and it was one of the earliest accomplishments of my infancy to thread my poor, half-blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour I sat by her side drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico, under the delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Pursued by Miss Mullett's admonitions to keep out of the sun as much as possible, they went down the garden and through the gate, and turned countryward under the green gloom of the elms. Alexander the Great, laboring perhaps under the delusion that he was a dog instead of a cat, followed them decorously for some distance, and then, being prevailed on to desist, climbed a fence-post and blinked ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cavern, but only an entrance to a cavern a few feet in depth. Visible from a distance, it must often have been passed by the hunters, although, as we were assured by our companions—who were astonished at the delusion—-no one had ventured to enter it from stress of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... thoughts to work out the solution, but none presented itself. Was he the victim of some strange form of insanity that caused him to lose his identity and believe himself another man? Drunken men he had seen under the delusion that all the rest of the world were drunken and they alone sober. Oh, madness, madness! At least he was sane and knew himself, and this was a confusion brought about by those who had undertaken his arrest. He would wait for the Elder to come, and in the meantime live in his memories, thinking ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... standpoint—evil is a mere negation, a shadow where light should be; or to be quite logical, evil is that which is not—in other words, there is no evil, except to deluded minds, whose business is to get quit of their delusion. The one and only cosmic will being declared good, it follows that for the monist "all's right with the world," in a sense scarcely contemplated by Browning when he penned that most dubious aphorism. We propose briefly to show how this creed works out—what is its ethical counterpart ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... his benefactor that the learned judge should be for a time confined in Graeme's Tower; and, conforming to a private hint of his Lordship before he departed from the jail, he kept up in his wife Margaret's mind the delusion that it was truly "an auld lurdon" whom he was to steal, as a condition for getting out of prison. On the morning after his arrival at Gilnockie, Will held a consultation with two tried friends, whose assistance he required ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... superior for the new institution to be founded at Quebec—Marie of the Incarnation, a woman of some fifty years, a widow like Madame de la Peltrie, and, like Madame de la Peltrie, a mystic dreamer of celestial visions and divine communings and heroic sacrifices. How much of truth, how much of self-delusion, {73} lay in these dreams of heavenly revelation is not for the outsider to say. It is as impossible for the practical mind to pronounce judgment on the mystic as for the mystic to pronounce sentence on the scientist. Both have their truths, both have their ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... disguised sword of Damocles ready to fall upon him. Soon his mate came and alighted on a low branch of the tree. The feeding crow regarded him a moment, and then flew up to his side, as if to give him a turn at the meat. But he refused to run the risk. He evidently looked upon the whole thing as a delusion and a snare, and presently went away, and his mate followed him. Then I placed the bone in one of the main forks of the tree, but the crows kept at a safe distance from it. Then I put it back to the ground, but they grew more and ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... that groove of trees, and mysteriously beckoned to her as she stood at the window, turning her heart to sickness as she gazed? Was it a human being, one to bring more evil to the house, where so much evil had already fallen? Was it a supernatural visitant, or was it but a delusion of her own eyesight? Not the latter, certainly, for the figure was now emerging again, motioning to her as before; and with a white face and shaking limbs, Barbara clutched her shawl around her and went down that path in the moonlight. The beckoning ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stories that are told of the mad dog covered with froth, are altogether fabulous. The dog recovering from, or attacked by a fit, may be seen in this state; but not the rabid dog. Fits are often mistaken for rabies, and hence the delusion. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... as if dazed for a few minutes, striving to think coherently, and master the delusion, under which ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Initiations, Adeptship being the fifth. A general idea of the line of this higher evolution may be obtained by studying the list of what are called in Buddhist books "the fetters" which must be cast off—the qualities of which a man must rid himself as he treads this Path. These are: the delusion of separateness; doubt or uncertainty; superstition; attachment to enjoyment; the possibility of hatred; desire for life, either in this or the higher worlds; pride; agitation or irritability; and ignorance. The man who reaches the Adept level has exhausted all ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... us point-blank that he was extremely dissatisfied with our manner of working. We were too slow: we nursed our tasks. Did we think we were being kept at Sennelager for the benefit of our health or to make holiday? If so that was a fond delusion. Henceforth he was going to estimate a certain time for each task which would have to be completed within the period allowed, even if we had to work every hour God gave us and, if need be, on ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... have told you, Mr Pinch,' said Mary, 'if I could have helped it; but your delusion is so absorbing, and it is so necessary that we should be upon our guard; that you should not be compromised; and to that end that you should know by whom I am beset; that no alternative is left me. I came here purposely to tell you, but I think I should have ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... humorous (save the mark!) point of view! Now I never make jokes myself—at least intentionally—nor do I think it becomes a man of position to do so—and I quite agree with SWIFT or SHERIDAN (I know it was one of these infernal clever literary chaps) who said, "A humorous woman is a delusion and a snare!"—so you may imagine my disgust at finding My Wife writing for a Journal!—why couldn't she have asked Me to help her?—and signing her articles anonymously too!—for I need hardly tell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... everything in order for nursing him. She would have sent at once to Redware to let his father know where and in what condition he was, but not a single person came near the cottage the whole day, and she dared not leave him before the fever had subsided. He raved a good deal, generally in the delusion that he was talking to Dorothy—who sought to kill him, and to whom he kept giving directions, at one time how to guide the knife to reach his heart, at another how to mingle her poison so that it should act with speed ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... marvel of a coat, and was in the last stages of tottering old age before it fell to the blousard. They wear leather boots too sometimes, instead of the wooden shoes belonging to their station, but they are boots which are but a mockery and a delusion, and yield the wearer no comfort. A respectable blousard—a carpenter or a shoemaker or a member of any honest trade—would scorn to be seen in any other dress but his neat blouse, unless on some great day, a fete, his wedding or at church, when he wears his only coat, or his father's or a friend's. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the stupidity and thoughtlessness often betrayed in attendance on public religious services; in the impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of clearness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes retained in the near approach to death.—Rare instances of the admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties, even in the old age of an ignorant man.—Excuses for the intellectual inaptitude and perversion ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... POLICY OF SILENCE.—there is no greater delusion than to suppose that vast number of boys know nothing about practices of sin. Some parents are afraid that unclean thoughts may be suggested by these very defences. The danger is slight. Such cases are barely possible, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... he, in a whisper, "I have heard from Sir Philip; his letter is dated since—since-my good woman told you what I saw,—well, since then. So that it must have been all a delusion of mine, as you told her. And yet, well—well—we will not talk of it, doctor; but I hope you have kept the secret. Sir Philip would not like to hear of it, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... side. One becomes rather tired of the average seaside resort, which is built and designed rather as if the "authorities" believed that God made Blackpool on the Seventh Day, and it was their religious duty to erect replicas of His handiwork up and down the coast. And under this delusion piers, I suppose, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... huge pie that is to be divided according to the capacity of each to absorb and digest his share. The territory is not squared off, that is, taking in whole sections of contiguous country, but in a much more subtle way, so that the delusion of competition may be undisturbed. When several of these concerns are requested to make prices, they readily comply and seem eager for the order. The delusion extends even to their agents, who are as innocent as the would-be purchaser of the real conditions, and are doing their utmost ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the ledger,—and, above all, that there should be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the least use in all this. The poetaster who has tasted type is done for. He is like the man who has once been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. One of these young brains is like a bunch of India crackers; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep hands off until it has done popping,—if it ever stops. I have two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Tarkowski, though he was an exceptionally self-controlled person, in the first moments after the receipt of the despatch, knelt in prayer and began to beseech God that the intelligence should not prove to be a delusion, a morbid chimera, bred from sorrow, longing, and pain. Why, they had both toiled so hard to learn that the children were even alive! Mr. Rawlinson had despatched to the Sudan whole caravans, while Pan Tarkowski, disguised as an ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... first had been published and commented on, public curiosity was quelled by a brief statement from the District Attorney's office, and the rest of his communications remained unprinted. Ascham came to see him, and begged him to travel. Robert Denver dropped in, and tried to joke him out of his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful of their motives, began to dread the reappearance of Dr. Stell, and set a guard on his lips. But the words he kept back engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self became a humming factory ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining back-ground, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... the hearts of struggling human beings. And above all, we daily hear that an education that encourages aspiration, that sets the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end culture and character than bread-winning, is the privilege of white men and the danger and delusion of black. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... evidence, and I am sure that the vast majority of critics would decide against most of De Quincey's stories on that. I do not suppose that he ever, like Lamb, deliberately begat "lie-children": but opium-eating is not absolutely repugnant to delusion, and literary mystification was not so much the exception as the rule in his earlier time. As to his "impenetrability," I can only throw myself on the readers of such memoirs and reminiscences as have been published respecting him. The almost unanimous verdict of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... all, but it was explicable if the motive were imperial—not so if it were financial. No; to accept the suggestion we must declare the whole quest a mare's nest from beginning to end; the attempt on Davies a delusion of his own fancy, the whole structure we had ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... notice, also suffers from a form of the same delusion. When talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering Gaul listens to it all with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... of the Neapolitan clergy; but he keeps up the falsehood for the sake of gain and power. In like manner, he has an extensive Roman laboratory ever at work for the manufacture of all the instruments of delusion which his emissaries propagate throughout Christendom. There he makes false relics, from portions of the true cross downwards; there he sells pardons and indulgences; and there he has a corps of writers employed ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the source of any occult influence, does ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way; they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumulate at compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and that charter is no delusion. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a medieval village. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Beth, "I strongly disapprove of such deceptions. It seems to me that making a poor hen hatch out ducks, under the delusion that they are chickens, is one of the most cruel and treacherous acts that humanity can be guilty of. Imagine the poor thing's feelings when her children take to water! I'm surprised you could suggest such a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... investment began Paris was already afflicted with a spy mania. Sala's adventure, which I recounted in an earlier chapter, was in a way connected with this delusion, which originated with the cry "We are betrayed!" immediately after the first French reverses. The instances of so-called "spyophobia" were innumerable, and often curious and amusing. There was a slight abatement of the mania when, shortly before the siege, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... had asked her to pledge herself to him. Fortunately—oh, how very fortunately!—she had refused, and he had been left free. Now he knew that his fancied love for her had been merely a passing whim, a delusion of the moment. This—THIS which he was now experiencing was the grand passion of his life. He wrote a poem with the title, "The Greater Love"—and sold it, too, to a sensational periodical which circulated largely among sentimental shopgirls. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to be angry?" was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may be added that Junius, though allied with the democratic party by common enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic politician. While attacking individuals ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from every trace of the mental servitude which is the curse of militarism, and stimulated initiative and individuality. Long before the War, most Territorials believed in universal training, not so much on account of the German peril, which to too many Englishmen seemed a mere delusion, as on account of its social value. It is pleasant to remember how solidly Lord Roberts received local Territorial support when he made the most prophetic of all his speeches in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on the ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... day would be only to establish a precedent for day after day of inactivity. The prevailing winds would be head winds. We clung to the shoddy hope held out by that magic name—Milk River. We knew too well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion; but one must fight toward something—it makes little difference what you call that something. A goal, in itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies in the moving ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... in the north of Devon, or even the wisest woman, to reason with young Frida now, or even to let her have the reason upon her side, and be sure of it. She, for her part, was astray from all the bounds of reason, soaring on the wings of faith, and hope, and high delusion. Though the winter-time was coming, and the wind was damp and raw, and the beauty of the valleys lay down to recover itself; yet with her the spring was breaking, and the world was lifting with the glory underneath ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... pools He calls an ocean? or unchallenged sought Britannia's cliffs; then turned his back in flight? Or does he boast because his citizens Were driven in arms to leave their hearths and homes? Ah, vain delusion! not from thee they fled: My steps they follow — mine, whose conquering signs Swept all the ocean (29), and who, ere the moon Twice filled her orb and waned, compelled to flight The pirate, shrinking from the open sea, And humbly begging ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... got over the superstitious dread with which the first sight of white men had inspired them, and now they believed that the strangers held the demon of the plague at their disposal and had let him loose upon the red men in revenge for the murders they had committed. This wholesome delusion kept their tomahawks quiet for a while. When they saw the Englishmen establishing themselves at Plymouth, they at first held a powwow in the forest, at which the new-comers were cursed with all the elaborate ingenuity that the sorcery of the medicine-men could summon for so momentous an occasion; ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... together with his followers, reign over the whole island." Which being heard, the monarch, gathering together a multitude with him, hastened, in the violence of his wrath, to extinguish the fire. And he brought with him thrice nine chariots, for the delusion of foolishness had seduced his heart and persuaded him that with that number he would obtain to himself a complete triumph; and he turned the face of his men and his cattle toward the left hand of Saint Patrick, even as ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... nothing regarding the cause of this demoniac obsession, and the preachers prefer to pass over it rapidly, or else to treat it as a delusion of the insane, notwithstanding the direct statement of the New Testament narrative and its sequel or concluding statement. But the occult traditions have it that these two men were victims of their dabbling into certain phases of psychic phenomena, i.e., the "raising up of spirits" ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... in Joash's life for how long a time a man may go on in this self-delusion of external and barren service and never know it. Joash came to the throne at the age of seven. Up till that age he had lived in the Temple in concealment. Until he was one and thirty he went on in a steady, upright course, never knowing that there was anything ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... side while you deride religion, serious indeed himself while he makes you laugh, not able to laugh at his own jests, while he carries you dancing forward to perdition,—doubtless you would tremble, even as he does while he tempts you. But this you cannot possibly see, you cannot break your delusion, except by first taking God's word in this matter on trust. You cannot see the unseen world at once. They who ever speak with God in their hearts, are in turn taught by Him in all knowledge; but they who refuse to ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... more dismal and more excluding than even Ford's sect: the congregation were all of the very lowest class, with about twelve or thirteen exceptions, and those were decidedly mad. The pastor was an arch rogue, that fattened upon the delusion of his communicants. They held the doctrine of visible election, which election was made by having a call— that is, a direct visitation of the Holy Ghost, which was testified by falling down in a fit—the testification being the more authentic, if it happened in full congregation. The ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... "'Tis a strange delusion this, if it be one; for it is plain they have been ably counselled. Whilst they retain the castle their position may be reckoned as impregnable. It is a powerful support, on which they have placed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... fiat of the people has gone forth proclaiming me the Chief Magistrate of this glorious Union, nothing upon their part remaining to be done, it may be thought that a motive may exist to keep up the delusion under which they may be supposed to have acted in relation to my principles and opinions; and perhaps there may be some in this assembly who have come here either prepared to condemn those I shall now deliver, or, approving them, to doubt the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold. As father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the wondrous delusion of the Spanish marriages. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... if statesmen, either [lvi] with their tongue in their cheek or through a generous impulsiveness, tell them their natural taste for the bathos is a relish for the sublime, there is the more need for culture to tell them the contrary. It is delusion on this point which is fatal, and against delusion on this point culture works. It is not fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for free trade, extension of the suffrage, and abolition of church-rates, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... stuff'—noblenesses and royalnesses which make me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all this on you, though you cannot justify me—you, who are occupied beyond measure, and I, who know it! I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend's claim to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... began the study of law, he was connected with a clique or club of young men, who made light of religion, and read books that treated it as a delusion. It was at this time that he read Paine's "Age of Reason" and Volney's "Ruins," through which he was influenced to array himself against the Bible for a time,—as much of a skeptic, almost, as any one of his boon companions. But his early religious training soon asserted itself, and we ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... rightly understood and generally practiced, is productive of the most salutary and beneficial consequences to society, yet nothing has a more pernicious influence than mistaken notions of it. Of all kinds of delusion, religious enthusiasm is the most deplorable, and has often been attended with the most melancholy and dismal effects. By abusing the best things, they may be made the innocent occasion of the worst. Many ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... wonderful is the power of self-delusion! Here we have two clever well-informed people, persuading themselves that they experience extraordinary raptures mingled with the most exquisite philosophic calm, from believing that unconscious matter ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the evening that he was left to doze quietly in his chair. His family ascribed his condition to weariness and reaction from his long strain of anxiety; and opium had already so far produced its legitimate results that he connived at their delusion if he did not confirm it by actual assertion. It is one of the diabolical qualities of this habit that it soon weakens and at last destroys all truth and honor in the soul, eating them out with a ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... admit—but this is all. The author of the review has wholly failed, in my opinion, to prove his case and the remark he makes on Mr. Britton's theory (as to Col. Barre) may equally well apply to his own, namely, that it affords "a [another] curious instance of the delusion to which ingenious men may resign themselves, when they have a favourite opinion to uphold!" The reviewer, indeed, admits that he has "traced the parallel from the scantiest materials;" and in another passage repeats, that but "few materials ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... plebeian orders of older civilizations. These were the people that seemed to justify Schopenhauer's cynical contention concerning the economy of Nature, who invests youth with just enough transient beauty to ensure the perpetuation of the race, making men and women serve her purpose under the delusion that they are free agents and ministers to their own pleasure. Here were no pomp and circumstance to interpose their false colours before the sordid vista of the future. It lay glaringly before the imagination of the onlookers; and to avoid depths ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... monstrous delusion is this? It can't be! My good creature, you're oddly deceived, I imagine. What is the man's name? I can understand that she has lost her will and distinct sight; but you are clear-sighted, and can estimate. What ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eyes, and looked again. It was no delusion. Things never did come as they are expected to come. There was still no doubtful speck on the horizon; but within eight miles of the island—and in this lovely air that looked nearly close—was a ship, under canvas. She bore S. E. from Mount Lookout, and S. S. E. from ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... up from the hedge, projecting through the foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this individual nightingale, for sharply calling to my mind a common pestilent delusion, which I have always hated, but had never yet raised my voice against—namely, that all wild creatures exist in constant fear of an attack from the numberless subtle or powerful enemies that are always waiting and watching for an opportunity to spring upon and destroy ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... another step nearer him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the delusion. If I'd been a woman with—with more claim, let ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... stone now. The 'Star in the East' has already dimmed the fearful halo which the devotion of bloodshed once wreathed round their forms. Forsaken and alone, they stand but as the gloomy monuments of the greatest delusion ever organised by ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... produced,—that there be likeness in the difference, difference in the likeness, and a reconcilement of both in one. If there be likeness to nature without any check of difference, the result is disgusting, and the more complete the delusion, the more loathsome the effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as wax-work figures of men and women, so disagreeable? Because, not finding the motion and the life which we expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood, every ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge |
