"Fictitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shades are deepened, And I doff my hat and gloves, No sweet bird is there to "cheep and Twitter twenty million loves:" No dark-ringleted canaries Sing to me of "hungry foam;" No imaginary "Marys" Call fictitious "cattle home." ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... not, must not be:— See me now one more submitted To my fate; and since I know Life is but a dream, a vision, Hence, ye phantoms, that assume To my darkened sense the figure And the voice of life — although Neither voice nor form is in them. I no longer now desire A feigned majesty, a fictitious And fantastic pomp — illusions Which the slightest breath that ripples The calm ether can destroy, Even as in the early spring-time, When the flowering almond tree Unadvisedly exhibits All its fleeting bloom of flowers, The first blast their freshness withers, And the ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized, notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in a condition to retreat ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will be recognized by those who were familiar with his early personal history; but for obvious reasons his real name must be veiled under a fictitious one here. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ambition. The wageslavery we live in is a wicked thing. But there is nothing in which the Scotch are more piercing and poetical, I might say more perfect, than in their Scotch wickedness. It is what makes the Master of Ballantrae the most thrilling of all fictitious villains. It is what makes the Master of Lovat the most thrilling of all historical villains. It is poetry. It is an intensity which is on the edge of madness or (what is worse) magic. Well, the Scotch ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... comfort was in the names of some of the directors. Unless that list were fictitious, they would not be likely to allow a concern with which they were identified to collapse in discredit. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Shepherd is represented as a character of marvellous shrewdness and sagacity, whose observations on men and manners, life and literature, uttered, as they are, in the homeliest phrases, contain a depth of philosophy and vigour of criticism rarely exhibited in the history of real or fictitious biography. "In wisdom," writes Professor Ferrier, "the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour, he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakspeare; clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr Johnson in close and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Bret's shoulders and examined his hand. Then the three men raised their heads. Dubois, with the cynicism of the ugly little man who has ever had to play the part of the disdained lover both in real or fictitious life, giggled, leered, and pointed over his shoulder. Montgomery smiled too, but a close observer would detect in him the yearnings of a young man from whose plain face the falling fruit is ever invisibly lifted. Bret looked round also, but his look was the indifferent stare of one ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... and difference of opinion on this subject have arisen from a want of clear and definite distinctions. Now, as it is impossible to define what are novels and what are not, so as to include one class of fictitious writings and exclude every other, it is impossible to lay down any rule respecting them. The discussion, in fact, turns on the use of those works of imagination which belong to the class of fictitious narratives. That this species of reading ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knew Marcoline's capacities till then, for she confessed that her emotion was wholly fictitious, and designed to win the old man's good graces; and that if she had followed her own inclinations she would have laughed heartily. She was designed to act a part either upon the stage or on a throne. Chance had ordained that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... disguises himself in counterfeited merit, and hears those praises with complacency which his conscience reproaches him for accepting. Every man deceives himself while he thinks he is deceiving others; and forgets that the time is at hand when every illusion shall cease, when fictitious excellence shall be torn away, and all must be shown to all in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... citizens, who represented the five classes of the Roman people; a sixth witness attested their concurrence; a seventh weighed the copper money, which was paid by an imaginary purchaser; and the estate was emancipated by a fictitious sale and immediate release. This singular ceremony, [152] which excited the wonder of the Greeks, was still practised in the age of Severus; but the praetors had already approved a more simple testament, for which they required the seals and signatures of seven ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... duties"; the minute and nerve-destroying precision of their housekeeping; their unnecessary overloading of themselves with tasks futile and fictitious; the determination to "appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have their children (their one or two children) particularly spick and span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern civilization ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... that there is no lord, and consequently no serf. Nor is this the case merely within the city walls. The never sufficiently appreciated difference between the Italian free burghs and those of Germany, Flanders, and Provence, is that the citizens depend only in the remotest and most purely fictitious way upon any kind of suzerain; and moreover that the country, instead of belonging to feudal nobles, belong every day more and more completely to the burghers. The peasant is not a serf, but one of three things—a hired labourer, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... as well that at this moment the pent-up feelings which the situation, and above all the remorseful horror with which Laing was regarding his fictitious lady's-maid, overcame Roger Deane. He burst into a laugh. After a moment the General followed heartily. Laing was the next, bettering his examples in his poignant mirth. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... of Shakspeare can scarcely be classed with his dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories; that is, between the Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius Caesar. Cymbeline is a congener with Pericles, and distinguished from Lear by not ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the writer that the key to the explanation of much that has been the subject of dispute, or has remained unexplained, in the story about Bothvar Bjarki in the Hrlfssaga is the influence of the fictitious (in part, also historical) life of Siward, Earl of Northumberland under Canute the ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... occasionally lounge away a little of their time between the acts in sipping soda-water, negus, &c. the party here alluded to cannot but be well known—we mean particularly the laffing- boys and the lads of the village. We are aware that fictitious names are assumed or given to the Ladies of Saloon notoriety, originating in particular circum-stances, and we have reason to believe that Dolly K——lly has been so denominated from the propensity she almost invariably manifests of painting, as remarked particularly ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... separate the negro from the European in America. But we may derive some faint notion of them from analogy. France was formerly a country in which numerous distinctions of rank existed, that had been created by the legislation. Nothing can be more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority; nothing more contrary to the instinct of mankind than these permanent divisions which had been established between beings evidently similar. Nevertheless these divisions subsisted for ages; they still subsist in many ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... like the tragedies of old Greece, is fiction built on truth. Probably this most noble part of it, the Almighty speaking out of the whirlwind, (so suitable to the after-practice of the Greek stage, when there happened dignus vindice nodus,) is fictitious; but is a fiction more agreeable to the time in which Job lived, than to any since. Frequent before the law were the appearances of the Almighty after this manner, Exod. c. xix. Ezek. c. i. &c. Hence ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... for her own from the first hour of my career. I wish she had let me alone. Had I captured a city, or rescued a ship's crew, I could not have been made more of than I was for the simple exploit of being a baby. Nobody else was thought of beside me; everybody conspired to do me honour. A fictitious glory settled upon me then, from which I have never escaped. They called me Hannibal. I was not consulted, or I should have opposed the name. It confirmed me in a false position. There was no chance of not ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... melancholy story as it may be gathered from Scott's preface. In writing his novel that great master of the art of fiction,—never yet displaced from his throne or deprived of his sceptre,—adopted fictitious names, invented fresh circumstances, amplified and elevated the characters, judiciously veiled the localities, and advanced the period of those tragical incidents to about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The delicate taste with which he used his ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... accounted for the origin of the four great divisions of their race. The descent of the Hellenes from a common ancestor, Hellen, was a fundamental article in the popular faith. It was a general practice in antiquity to invent fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names of which the origin was buried in obscurity. It was in this way that Hellen and his sons came into being; but though they never had any real existence, the tales about ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... things and hid them in the earth and men might deceive some men—a part of the time—but there was always a retribution. Debase your currency, and soon it will cease to pass current. No law can long uphold a fictitious value. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... prey swooping down upon an unburied corpse. There was a whole squadron of Russian shop-keepers from the Gostinnui Dvor, and from the old-clothes mart, in blue coats of foreign make. Their faces and expressions were a little more natural here, and did not display that fictitious desire to be subservient which is so marked in the Russian shop-keeper when he stands before a customer in his shop. Here they stood upon no ceremony, although the saloons were full of those very aristocrats before whom, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to some extent depend upon incident and arrangement of incident, but there is a kind of novel which only interests through the excitement of events in their nature fictitious, even when accidentally true. Any really good book which may be spoken of as a "novel of incident" will invariably prove to be very much more. To take the case of Fielding's Tom Jones, one observes that it is an imitation of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... which was death to them; for, as we have indicated, the opinion of a great majority was against the claim of the young woman: nor would the decision have been suspended that day, had not Mr. Andrews risen and made a statement—perhaps as fictitious as a counsel's conscience would permit—to the effect that the agent (Mr. White) had procured some trace of the butler Cowie, who could throw more light on the case than Death had done, and that if some time ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... sanction of one of the most celebrated female writers of the age, in her "Thoughts on the Education of a Young Princess," for supposing that the mind of a child is less likely to be misled by what is avowedly fictitious, than by those high wrought characters of perfection, which they would have little better chance of meeting with in the world, than with ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... indifferent to the shame that devolves upon himself and upon his country, when whole swarms of dissolute rabble, covered with filthy rags, parade the streets, and by tales of real or of fictitious distress—by clamorous importunity, insolence, and rudeness, extort involuntary contributions from every traveller? When no retreat is to be found, no retirement where poverty, misery, and impudent hypocrisy, in ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... that the disputes to which I have alluded prove the necessity of bringing scientific precision of language into the whole domain of thought. If the discussion had been confined to a few, and other philosophers had analyzed the subject, and showed the fictitious character of the discussion, or had pointed out where opinions really might differ, there would be nothing derogatory to philosophers. But the most suggestive circumstance is that although a large proportion ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... away the fair beard and moustache; he bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la Tour." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... three days to her intended victim. The bundle of real treasure is produced and inspected, and again tied up by the Gitana, who then requests the other to open the chest, which done, she formally places A BUNDLE in it; but, in the meanwhile, she has contrived to substitute the fictitious for the real one. The chest is then locked, the lady retaining the key. The Gitana promises to return at the end of three weeks, to open the chest, assuring the lady that if it be not unlocked until that period, it will be found filled with gold and silver; but threatening ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... psychological causes of this intense thirst for reforms arises from the difficulty of determining the real causes of the evils complained of. The need of explanation creates fictitious causes of the simplest nature. Therefore the remedies also ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... in this book are entirely fictitious. But, reader, no person pictured here is you. With one exception. You, Sir, Miss, or Madam—whatever your country or station—are Albert Weener. As I ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of roads and harbours, and nice and critical delineations of views of land, take up much time and attention, and require a good degree of skill, both in planning and drawing, those who are defective in industry and ability supply these wants by bold conjectures and fictitious descriptions; and, as they can be no otherwise confuted than by going on the spot, and running the risk of suffering by their misinformation, they have no apprehension of being detected; and therefore, when they intrude their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... This account is plausible, but will need further explanation of its many discrepancies of dates, and verification of the different documents cited in proof of it, before the public can receive it as fact. So many fables have been published about Poe, and even many fictitious documents quoted, that it behoves the unprejudiced to be wary in accepting any new statements concerning him that are not ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... at night, as with Damiens once upon a time? Were you driven to sup off your own dog in a garret, uncooked and without salt? Have your children ever cried, 'I am hungry'? Have you sold your mistress' hair to hazard the money at play? Have you ever drawn a sham bill of exchange on a fictitious uncle at a sham address, and feared lest you should not be in time to take it up? Come now, I am attending! If you were going to drown yourself for some woman, or by way of a protest, or out of sheer dulness, I disown you. Make your confession, and no lies! I don't at all want a historical ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... clearly implies that the ballad was composed while the monarch was still living. This circumstance is not noticed by Mr Hunter, but it is one of some importance, inasmuch as a poet would hardly have ventured to introduce the name of the reigning monarch into a purely fictitious narrative. But there are three Edwards—the first, second, and third of the name, among whom it is necessary to distinguish the one to whom the poet referred. Now, according to the ballad, this 'comely king,' before he fell ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... into Nokes's, &c.] John a Nokes, and John a Stiles, are two fictitious names made use of in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... were guards to Charlotte. A broad stare was terror to her, and she had many a fictitious horror, as well as better-founded ones. Truly she said, she hated the broad words Martha had used. One who craved a true knight to be twitted with a sweetheart! Martha and Tom Madison were almost equally distasteful, as connected with such a reproach; and the little maiden drew ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the human mind of whatever baffles it is so well known that it scarcely needs elaboration. Mysteries, whether real or fictitious, pique curiosity. Even the scholar and the practical man of affairs find relaxation in the mystery of the detective story. Real life often furnishes events sufficiently mysterious to make a special feature story that ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... thus expressed himself:—"But what is to be done when the Crown is in a deliquium? It was intended, he had heard, to set up a man with black brows and a large wig, a kind of scare-crow to the two Houses, who was to give a fictitious assent in the royal name—and this to be binding on the people at large!" The following remarkable passage, too, in a subsequent Speech, is almost too well known to be cited:—"The other House," he said, "were not yet perhaps recovered from that extraordinary ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Conf. Nieb. ii. n. 754. It may be well to mention that Niebuhr considered that this account regarding the death of Appius was all fictitious. The Greek writers, scil. Dion. ix. 54, Zonar. vii. 17, state that he laid violent hands ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... call out in a loud voice: "Welcome to our city, mirror, beacon, star and cynosure of all knight-errantry in its widest extent! Welcome, I say, valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha! Not the false, the fictitious, the apocryphal one, but the true, the legitimate, the real one that Cid Hamet Benengeli, flower of ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... clean; Could stop one slander ere it found its way, And give to public scorn its helpless prey. By the same aid, the Stage invites her friends, And kindly tells the banquet she intends; Thither from real life the many run, With Siddons weep, or laugh with Abingdon; Pleased in fictitious joy or grief, to see The mimic passion with their own agree; To steal a few enchanted hours away From self, and drop the curtain on the day. But who can steal from self that wretched wight Whose darling work is tried some ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... advantage is to be set, in the first place, the possibility of fraudulent tampering with the price of bullion for the sake of acting on the currency, in the manner of the fictitious sales of corn, to influence the averages, so much and so justly complained of while the corn laws were in force. But a still stronger consideration is the importance of adhering to a simple principle, intelligible to the most untaught capacity. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... when by the various divisions and mixtures of property, a man's superior came to live at a distance from him, and could no longer give him shelter or countenance, the tie gradually became more fictitious than real: new connections from vicinity or other causes were formed: protection was sought by voluntary services and attachment: the appearance of valor spirit, abilities in any great man, extended his interest very far, and if the sovereign were deficient in these qualities, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... be set aside altogether. But if he appeared again for another trial, he was sure to fare no better. He would be set aside at last. I remember an instance in which a member was expelled for a reason purely fictitious,—droll enough to be worth telling, if I could remember it,—and the secretary directed 'to write to his father, and break the matter gently to him, that it might not bring down the gray hairs of the old man with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... monarchs, terminated his labors abruptly with the sixth year of Henry III., the subsequent period of whose administration is singularly barren of authentic materials for history. The editor of Ayala's Chronicle considers the adventure, quoted in the text, as fictitious, and probably suggested by a stratagem employed by Henry for the seizure of the duke of Benevente, and by his subsequent imprisonment at Burgos. See Ayala, Cronica de Castilla, p. 355, note, (ed. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... more experienced members of the company were doing, and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless. But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing phase ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... morning he was questioned briefly. He gave a fictitious name, and mentioned a town he had heard of, but had never been in. His horses ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... in life in which a community of interest fails to give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... seen by me, but so full as to extend over ten pages of the volume. It ends with a reiteration of the wholly false manner in which this story had been obtained. So bold an appropriation of the narrative, with a provenience entirely new and as fictitious as the story itself, and its bodily inclusion by an editor in a work of recognized merit, where it is between two true recitals, cannot ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... I have drawn up this sketch—and I can assure you it is no fictitious one—for your perusal. You here see what has been the result of a single act of disobedience to a parent; what it has already cost this unhappy man to gratify, in an unlawful way, his youthful curiosity ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... superintendence. "It is only a madman," he would say, "who imputes success in life to human prudence;" and as to the necessity of a right education for the young, "It is only the wise who are fit to govern men." We must conclude that the accusations were only ostensible or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some reality which could reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... flattered: sometimes it amused: sometimes it gave a sense of kinship that made him think that, unless she were a liar she would never have so sympathized with him. He was unable to trace the fine distinction in veracity between describing a perfectly fictitious operation performed by oneself, and in recounting the messages given by the screaming gulls, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... matter be introduced.—And now, gentlemen, that we are once more in order, I would wish to have some gentleman speak upon the question, whether, as associated to carry on a joint-stock trade in fictitious narrative, in prose and verse, we ought not to be incorporated by Act of Parliament? What say you, gentlemen, to the proposal? Vis unita fortior, is an ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting circumstances of the ancient Romance and modern Novel, at the same time it assumes a character and manner of its own, that differs from both; it is distinguished by the appellation of a Gothic Story, being a picture of Gothic times and manners. Fictitious stories have been the delight of all times and all countries, by oral tradition in barbarous, by writing in more civilized ones; and although some persons of wit and learning have condemned them indiscriminately, I would venture to affirm, that even those who so much affect ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... the apparent worthlessness of capital. We cannot agree, however, with our correspondent to the full extent, because the very low prices of commodities, with a minimum rate of interest for money, proves that there is no fictitious or inflated excess of paper money. The anomalous state of the Money Market proceeds, we believe, from a redundancy, not of mere paper, but of capital which cannot find investment, superinduced by stagnation of trade, and the want of commercial enterprise, occasioned ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... to acquire what we now call local coloring for the details of his poem. Without the sacrifice of truth in any important point, he contrived to give unity to the conduct of his narrative, while interweaving a number of fictitious characters and marvelous circumstances with the historical personages and actual events of the crusade. The vital interest of the Gerusalemme Liberata flows from this interpolated material, from the loves of Rinaldo and Tancredi, from the adventures of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Traduit par M. Asselan Riche, etc. Paris: Dondey-Dupre. 1829. It has its longueurs and at times is longsome enough; but it is interesting as a comparison between the chivalry of Al-Islam and European knight-errantry. Although all the characters are fictitious the period is evidently in the early crusading days. Caesarea, the second capital of Palestine, taken during the Caliphate of Omar (A.H. 19) and afterwards recovered, was fortified in A.H. 353 963 as a base against the Arabs by the Emperor ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Munchausen were written to ridicule Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, whose adventures were at the time deemed fictitious. Bruce was a most upright, honest man, and recorded nothing but what he had seen; nevertheless, as is always the case, a host of detractors buzzed about him, and he was so much vexed at the impeachment of his veracity, that he let them get their own way. Munchausen, a veritable {118} name—the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... been compared to the final of some grand theatrical spectacle—it had all the grandeur, the red light, and the scenic embellishment—but in two circumstances it widely differed from the fictitious imitation. There was not that variety of forms and colours in the tableaux, and, moreover, the characters were not as upon the stage—in poses and attitudes that betokened rest. On the contrary, all were in motion. Their arms were tossing wildly above their heads, while they themselves were ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... If anybody insults me, I lay my man out; nobody is a surer shot nor handles a rapier better than your servant. And every one knows it. Then, have a friend—if you can find one—and make over your property to him by a fictitious sale. You call that a fidei commissum, don't you?' ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... England, to show that the Canadian Conference and its Editor had acceded to all of his demands, and that he had been completely successful in his mission to Canada! The English Committee adopted resolutions complimentary to Dr. Alder in consequence; but I did not imagine that Dr. Alder's fictitious representation of the results of his mission would afterwards be made the ground of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... scene, so lively was it represented, but even the player himself delivered it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon thinking, if that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba, that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a read motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is completely reversed; the pendulum has swung back; now it is the literature inspired by the old classical models that is real, and handles actual human interests, while Romantic literature has become remote, fictitious, artificial. This does not mean that the men of the later seventeenth century believed in the gods and Achilles, but not in the saints and Arthur. It means that classical literature was found best to imitate for its form. The greater classical writers had described the life ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of the "Old Sailor" says. I had rather hear one of those grand elemental laughs from either of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,) or listen to one of those old playbills of our College days, in which "Tom and Jerry" ("Thomas and Jeremiah," as the old Greek Professor was said to call it) was announced to be brought on the stage with the whole force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... woman. No longer is she gratified with the tear of counterfeited passion, the sigh of dissembled rapture, or the language of premeditated adoration. No longer is the altar of her vanity loaded with the oblations of fictitious fondness, the incense of falsehood, or the sacrifice of flattery.—Her apotheosis is ended!—She feels herself degraded from the dignities and privileges of a goddess, to all the imperfections, vanities, and weaknesses of a slighted ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... in several other cases, I have used a fictitious name, inasmuch as a number of the persons alluded to in this ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... discreet workman had most displayed his skill and judgment. The idea has sometimes occurred to us—Suppose one of these foreign books were suddenly proved to be of genuine home production—suppose the German, or the Dane, or the Frenchman, were discovered to be a fictitious personage, and all the genius, or all the rant, to have really emanated from the English gentleman, or lady, who had merely professed to translate—presto! how the book would instantly change colours! What a reverse of judgment would there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... great fundamental truth that all things spring from, and subsist in, the endless strife between indifference and difference. The whole history of Nature is comprised in the specification of the transitional states from the one to the other. The symbol only is fictitious: the thing signified is not only grounded in truth—it is the law and actuating principle of all other ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she dwelt upon his praise. Even in sleep her dreams were of the deserving shepherd. The delusive pleasures that follow in the train of dark-browed night, all told of Edwin. The unreal mockery of that capricious being, who cheats us with scenes of fictitious wretchedness, was full of the unmerited calamities, the heartbreaking woe, or the untimely death of Edwin. From Edwin therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was not heedless ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... the inviolability of his text more from conscience than self-love. If you mutilate him on your own responsibility, which is tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted to substitute a fictitious member of your own construction for the living one you have lopped off; and be cautious lest, without being aware of it, you replace an arm of flesh by a wooden leg. But break up all your presses rather than make him say, under the seal of his own signature, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Prince's identity with her lover," went on the King, "and no one else knows it. In fact, you will be the very person best qualified to tell her of his departure, and—in due time, of his fictitious death!" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations), as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self- indulgence. ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory. What novelist, what Fielding, what Scott, what George Sand, or Sue, or Duncan, can impart an interest to the last chapter of his fictitious history? Promises of two children and superhuman happiness are of no avail, nor assurance of extreme respectability carried to an age far exceeding that usually allotted to mortals. The sorrows of our heroes and heroines, they are you delight, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... bundle them in her gown, and, last and most wonderful, had given her a large crooked pin.[27] Mrs. Gardiner, so the account goes, took the sticks and threw them into the fire. Presto! Jane Wenham came into the room, pretending an errand. It was afterwards found out that the errand was fictitious. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... first portions of the Odyssey into the Social Romance, which takes the picture of society as its setting. Every human being can now be made a slave; man-stealing, woman-stealing, child-stealing, give the motives for the strangest turns of destiny. Already Ulysses in his fictitious tale of the previous Book has become a maker of the novelette; but Eumaeus tells a true tale of his own life, it has no disguise; he knows his past, he is aware of his origin. Thus he is an example, showing how the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... one and all forgive me,' I returned, 'if for the greater convenience of the story, and for its better introduction, that adventure was fictitious. I had my share, indeed, - no light or trivial one, - in the pages we have read, but it was not the share I feigned to have at first. The younger brother, the single gentleman, the nameless actor in this little drama, stands ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... we do, chin-deep in fictitious literature, the first question that many of the young people are asking me is, "Shall we read novels?" I reply, there are novels that are pure, good, Christian, elevating to the heart, and ennobling to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... exceedingly obliged if you or any of your correspondents will inform me who were the writers in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, bearing the following fictitious signatures:—1. Marmaduke Villars; 2. Davenant Cecil; 3. Tristram Merton; 4. Irvine Montagu; 5. Gerard Montgomery; 6. Henry Baldwin; 7. Joseph Haller; 8. Peter Ellis; 9. Paterson Aymer; 10. Eustace Heron; 11. Edward ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... this is the coin of the world, and passes current with the fools of it. You have substituted the shadow Honour, instead of the substance Virtue; and have banished the reality of friendship for the fictitious semblance which you have termed Politeness: politeness, which consists in a certain ceremonious jargon, more ridiculous to the ear of reason than the voice of a puppet. You have invented sounds, which you worship, though they ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really. And I hate to do it—because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... to the laws of life, not of death, nor to the fiction of the poets, however beautiful it may be. But can the fictitious be beautiful? Is there no beauty in the stern truth of life, in the mighty work of its wise laws, which subjects to itself with great disinterestedness the movements of the heavenly luminaries, as well as the restless linking of the tiny creatures ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... was no doubt fictitious, but this mattered but little. Jack inquired whether their absence in the morning would not be likely to be remarked; but the doctor said that the head of the party had been informed by Demetri that the two strangers would only accompany them ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... however suffered, by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the old Statute of Westminster, which authorised perpetuities, had more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... salt, and so on, as though I were going to dine. I then transferred the viands to a piece of the omnipresent Times newspaper, and hid them away in a cupboard, for it was not yet night, and I dared not throw the food into the street until darkness came. I did not at all relish this process of fictitious dining, but at length the cloth was removed, and I gladly reclined on my divan (I would not lie down) with the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... who, in that spirit which arrogance always asserts over ignorance, would make their king a puppet and themselves mere vassals. And this the wily adventurers did, by professing great friendship for the king and his people, then setting up a fictitious claim to a voice in the affairs of the kingdom, and finally demanding for such service, which any knave or fool might have rendered, not one, but all his islands. In truth, the Kingdom of the Kaloramas, though insignificant in its own political aspect, had furnished a grand theme for a comedy ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... but, besides this, in thinking of anniversaries connected with those I love—periods which used to appeal to my affectionate remembrance,—I have come in a measure to feel that to the very young alone, these marks we draw upon our life can appear other than as the fictitious lines with which science has divided the spheres of heaven ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of patriotism, and that country can hardly expect to prove successful if it engage in war while its citizens are imbued with religious doubt. If lands are conquered, it knows not how to govern them; if defeated, skepticism affords but little comfort in the night of disaster. We do not attach a fictitious importance to Rationalism when we say that it was the prime agent which prevented the Germans from the struggle of self-liberation, and that the victory of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna would never have been needed had those ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the home-driven poniard of Roland Graeme had lighted upon the stuffing of the fictitious paunch, which the Abbot of Unreason wore as a part of his characteristic dress, and it was only the force of the blow which had prostrated that reverend person on the ground ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... rudiments of the grand style: and he admired her transitions—her voice would drop and she seemed to find her way back into homely speech. Her soul seemed to pass back and forwards easily, and Dick did not feel sure which was the real woman and which the fictitious. 'She doesn't know herself,' he said, for at that moment she had left the tripod and was sitting in imagination at the bedside in attendance, looking from the patient to the clock, administering the medicine on ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... man, and Lockwin tries to tell of the money—the deposit of $75,000 to the order of a fictitious person. He cannot ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... had instantly become real, and O'Ryan an injured man at bay, the victim of the act—not of the fictitious characters of the play, but of the three men, Fergus, Holden, and Constantine Jopp, who had planned the discomfiture of O'Ryan; and he felt that the victim's resentment would fall heaviest on Constantine Jopp, the bully, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... JUSTICE. And this necessity is not confined within the strict limits of physical causes, but is more lax, and takes in moral and even presumed and argumentative necessity, a necessity which is in fact nothing more than a great degree of expediency. The law creates a fictitious necessity against the rules of evidence in favor of the convenience of trade: an exception which on a similar principle had before been admitted in the Civil Law, as to mercantile causes, in which the books of the party were received to give full effect to an insufficient degree ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... trust confederates with her more serious fancies, and partly because they were at such times passive in her hands. She glanced timidly round; satisfied that no one could observe her, she softly visited the bedside of each of her companions, and administered from a purely fictitious bottle spoonfuls of invisible medicine. Physical correction in the form of slight taps, which they always required, and in which Polly was strong, was only withheld now from a sense of their weak condition. But in vain, they succumbed to the fell disease—(they always ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... possessions. Mary admired a Spanish fan—a Mexican treasure that had come down from one of the grand ladies of the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. Polly's delight flamed like wild-fire. Mary found herself the immediate owner of the fan, almost labouring under the fictitious impression that she had conferred an obligation by accepting it. Only a foreign woman could do such things, and Polly was guilty of similar gifts to all the young women. It was her way. It might be a lace handkerchief, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... of the few fictitious names used in the story. Judge Lindsey wishes it disguised "for ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious values—on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land company's credit went up in smoke, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist." No, my dear madam, you and your daughters have no right to admire and sympathise with any such persons, fictitious or real: you ought to be made cordially to detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and abominate all people of this kidney. Men of genius like those whose works we have above alluded to, have no business to make these characters interesting or agreeable; ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would devote the money raised by Razetta from the sale of the furniture to the settlement of a small patrimony on my youngest brother. But in this matter Grimani did not act honestly, for the patrimony was only settled thirteen years afterwards, and even then only in a fictitious manner. I shall have an opportunity later on of mentioning this unfortunate brother, who died very poor ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and English romances; Macaulay used fairly to revel in the hundreds of stories that he read till he knew them by heart. With these and a hundred other examples before us, the humblest and most laborious in the community may without scruple read the harmless tales of fictitious joys and sorrows, after they have secured that narrow minute training which alone gives grasp and security ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the curious arts of the theatre, listened wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the reader were hero, she—Damaris—became ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... cannot doubt that another may be performed now; the only question is as to the fact. We believe that miracles ceased with the Apostles, and we pronounce all that are alleged to have happened since to be fictitious. Believing as she does that miracles have continually occurred, it is more reasonable to believe in the reality of one she sees herself than in those which are reported by others. She sees this done; it is, then, a miracle or it is an imposture; but it is declared to be a miracle ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... really rather extraordinary. Do you know many people called Tompkins? It's a good deal rarer than Talbot. It's pretty much the same with the comic clothes of the parvenu. Jenkins dresses like a character in Punch. But that's because he is a character in Punch. I mean he's a fictitious character. He's a fabulous animal. He ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... chamber. The husbandman's wife fed her with sops of bread, and then undressed her, and put her to bed. They also provided the means to carry her and the maid to Florence; and so 'twas done. There the lady, who was very fertile in artifices, invented an entirely fictitious story of what had happened as well in regard of her maid as of herself, whereby she persuaded both her brothers and her sisters and every one else, that 'twas all due to the enchantments of evil spirits. The physicians lost no time, and, albeit ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... poured upon itself by the Supreme Divinity. All these Mysteries, says Clemens of Alexandria, displaying to us murders and tombs alone, all these religious tragedies, had a common basis, variously ornamented: and that basis was the fictitious death and resurrection of the Sun, Soul of the World, principle of life and movement in the Sublunary World, and source of our intelligences, which are but a portion of the Eternal Light blazing in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... maintained Abel's ground, and when Enos endured all miseries for the same: For indeed this makes spectators believe that religion is more than a fictitious notion: The hardships, miseries, and blood of the saints, will make men, otherwise heedless, consider and ponder ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... (516) There is a fictitious speech printed for this in several Magazines of that time, but which does not contain one ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... said the young man severely, "or else fictitious. The little thing, you may be sure, would much rather be playing with its own companions; or else it must be ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... "Werther is a fictitious character, and by no means a felicitous one; I am no admirer either of Werther or his author. But I should say that, if there was a Werther in Germany, he did not smoke. Werther, as you very justly observe, was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... wore them like an honest man; and he was the only specimen of the genus homo (who sported trowsers) that was above the weakness of tugging up his suspenders and stretching his broadcloth for the contemptible purpose of giving a fictitious, Wellingtonian appearance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... beloved. Surely it was not the illuminated figure of the conqueror, for when had the Commander held closer the affection of his troops than in that ill-starred campaign into Maryland, which left the moral victory of a superb fight in McClellan's hands? No, the charm lay deeper still, beyond all the fictitious aids of fortune—somewhere in that serene and noble presence he had met one evening as the gray dusk closed, riding alone on an old road between level fields. After this it was always as a high figure against a low horizon that he ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... clearing his voice for action and knocking the ashes from his cigar against the arm of his chair,—"gentlemen, I am not in the habit of spinning yarns of marvellous or fictitious matters; and therefore it is scarcely necessary to affirm upon the responsibility of my reputation, gentlemen, that what I am about to tell you I most solemnly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... (Politics, III., ix., 14): "the union of septs and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life." The first and most elementary community is the family, [Greek: oikia]. A knot of families associating together, claiming blood-relationship and descent, real or fictitious, from a common ancestor, whose name they bear, constitute a [Greek: genos], called in Ireland a sept, in Scotland a clan, nameless in England. When the sept come to cluster their habitations, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... suited their interests, (322) their passions, or their caprice; and for the most part, without knowing, or being sensible of what he did. Not to enter into minute details relative to the revocation of grants, the reversal of judicial decisions, obtaining his signature to fictitious appointments, or the bare-faced alteration of them after signing; he put to death Appius Silanus, the father of his son-in-law, and the two Julias, the daughters of Drusus and Germanicus, without any positive proof of the crimes with which they were ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides. Most of the purchases were either altogether fictitious, or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices. Many of the deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, "no consideration specified"! A hundred acres were bought for a farthing. Boundaries were ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Montfort and Marie de France, but little use is made of them. The book is not indeed, in any sense, an historical novel like Scott's "Kenilworth," the scene of which is the same, and which was published in 1821, five years before Mrs. Radcliffe's. The story is entirely fictitious. What differences it from her other romances is the conscious attempt to portray feudal manners. There are elaborate descriptions of costumes, upholstery, architecture, heraldic bearings, ancient military array, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... is marred by hysterical indifference to facts.) As a history it would be beneath criticism, were it not that the high character of the author and her excellent literary work in other directions have given it a fictitious value and made it much quoted by the large class of amiable but maudlin fanatics concerning whom it may be said that the excellence of their intentions but indifferently atones for the invariable folly and ill effect ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and plaster facing have been stripped off the walls throughout the old parts of the church, to make the restoration as complete as possible, not only in the purity of the new work, but in the removal of what was fictitious and incongruous ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... been engaged in a secret study of Alice's face, and whenever the object of the study raised her eyes she found a pair of steady blue ones beaming on her. It was a little disconcerting, and Alice gazed out at the landscape with a fictitious curiosity. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... his body. She had it carried to her house, and then discovered that life yet remained, and by great care and good nursing succeeded in restoring him. In order to prevent suspicion that he was still alive a fictitious funeral was performed. On recovering, Wallace had other frays with the English, all of which greatly increased his reputation throughout that part of the country, so that more adherents came to him, and his band began to be formidable. He gradually introduced an organization among ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Thackeray; Jane Austen's heroines and George Eliot's men and women; the narrators in the famous Canterbury Inn, the soldiers of Kipling, the Shylocks, Macbeths, Rosalinds and Falstaffs of the greatest dramatist; the thousand and one fictitious and yet real ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... my story must not be confounded with the "first hermit," Paulus of Thebes, whom Weingarten has with good reason struck out of the category of historical personages. He, with all the figures in this narrative is a purely fictitious person, the vehicle for an idea, neither more nor less. I selected no particular model for my hero, and I claim for him no attribute but that of his having been possible at the period; least of all did I think of Saint Anthony, who is now deprived even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... neither recapitulate the past nor intimate the future. The single now is all which he can present; and hence, unquestionably, many subjects which delight us in poetry, or in narrative, whether real or fictitious, cannot with advantage be transferred to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... however, would, I know, be delighted to lend his aid to such a scheme, if colonel Cathcart would be so good as to include him in the conspiracy. It is his duty as well as mine; for she is one of his flock. And he can tell a tale, real or fictitious, better than any ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... enough to regret it. The story was called "Poor Richard," and it dealt with the conscience of a man very much in love with a woman who loved his rival. He told this rival a lie, which sent him away to his death on the field,—in that day nearly every fictitious personage had something to do with the war,—but Poor Richard's lie did not win him his love. It still seems to me that the situation was strongly and finely felt. One's pity went, as it should, with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the reader that Ellen Juvarna was mother of Nicholas, whom she bore unto Marston, we will now draw aside the veil, that he may know her real origin and be the better prepared to appreciate the fate of her child. This name, then, was a fictitious one, which she had been compelled to take by Romescos, who stole her from her father, Neamathla, a Creek Indian. In 1820, this brave warrior ruled chief of the Mickasookees, a tribe of brave Indians settled on the borders of the lake of that name, in Florida. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up fictitious excellences—belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human-kind—and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child. ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... dream, the sleeping dream or the waking dream? The fact that the one is continuous of itself while the other is not, and that we always fall into a new dream but always wake to the same reality, has given a permanent value to the waking or external life, and an equally fictitious one to the interior or dreaming life. But what if the dream life became more or less permanent to the exclusion of all other memories and sensations? We should then get a case of insanity in which ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... deceived the artless girl, and might be used with terrible effect by the artful mother, if she chose to do it. Nothing but the truth could save him, and he had the honour and honesty to tell it faithfully. A sad scene followed; for Nat was obliged to strip off his fictitious splendour, confess himself only a poor student, and humbly ask pardon for the thoughtless freedom with which he had enjoyed their too confiding hospitality. If he had any doubts of Frau Schomburg's motives and desires, they were speedily set at rest by the frankness ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... in this Subject by the following Letter, which, though subscribed by a fictitious Name, I have reason to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the great successes in creative literature have always been achieved,—the genius that instinctively goes to the organic elements of human nature, whether under a white skin or a black, and which disregards as trivial the conventions and fictitious notions which make so large a part both of our thinking and feeling.... The creative faculty of Mrs. Stowe, like that of Cervantes in Don Quixote and of Fielding in Joseph Andrews, overpowered the narrow specialty of her design, and expanded ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has seen,—the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by which one has been interested and excited,—a man may take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forward along with them the arguments of the advocates for that measure. If I choose puny adversaries, writers of no estimation or authority, then you will justly blame me. I might as well bring in at once a fictitious speaker, and thus fall into all the inconveniences of an imaginary dialogue. This I shall avoid; and I shall take no notice of any author who my friends in town do not tell me is in estimation with those whose opinions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bring happiness to her uncle Descoings; for in the same week (or rather, we should say decade, for the Republic had then been proclaimed) he was imprisoned on a hint from Robespierre given to Fouquier-Tinville. Descoings, who was imprudent enough to think the famine fictitious, had the additional folly, under the impression that opinions were free, to express that opinion to several of his male and female customers as he served them in the grocery. The citoyenne Duplay, wife ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Adventurer, and that one is John Smith. On the other hand evident enough are his courage and initiative, his ingenuity, and his rough, practical sagacity. Let us take him at something less than his own valuation, but yet as valuable enough. As for his adventures, real or fictitious, one may see in them epitomized the adventures of many and many men, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, blazers of the material path ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... theory rests on a fictitious foundation of altogether hollow and vicious arguments, incapable of being stated in definite logical alternatives, and devised by men who are destitute of those particular qualities which cause individuals to be chosen by the Supreme Person revealed in the Upanishads; ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... currency, it may seem strange that people should now have begun to clamour for a renewal of the experiment which had worked so much evil. Yet so it was. As starving men are said to dream of dainty banquets, so now a craze for fictitious wealth in the shape of paper money ran like an epidemic through the country. There was a Barmecide feast of economic vagaries; only now it was the several states that sought to apply the remedy, each in its own way. And when we have threaded the maze of this rash legislation, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop, mother. —Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... there almost three hours, but the time had seemed very short. When we crossed the Ponte St. Angelo the people were leaving the Opera, after three hours of fictitious sorrow, while I had been passing that time in the presence of real affliction—side by side, as it were, in the face of each other, the mockery of woe and its solemn reality. And how often is it so! Unthought of—not, indeed, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various |
