"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carbonic dioxide), surrounding its polar regions, which increase considerably during the winter, and decrease during the summer seasons on that planet; but there are no canals! The fact that our largest and best telescopes failed to show these imaginary canals, was an insurmountable barrier to the advocates of these markings, but the "Canalites" made their contention ridiculous when they actually suggested that the reason for this failure to perceive them was that our telescopes were too large to ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... dark, even forest-line that surrounded us, doubled by reflection in the water, presented a broad, unbroken belt of utter blackness. The effect was quite startling, like some huge conjurer's trick. It seemed as if we had crossed the boundary-line between the real and the imaginary, and this was indeed the land of shadows and of spectres. What magic oar was that the guide wielded that it could transport me to such a realm! Indeed, had I not committed some fatal mistake, and left that trusty servant behind, and had not some wizard ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... persecute an imaginary foe, as such I reckon the creeds and ideas of other men; still, I cannot but ask myself whether it can add to the prosperity of the state when citizens cease to struggle against the pressure and necessity of life and console themselves ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from the gratification of a proud feeling of independence or from a dignified sense of isolation or an imaginary riding down of opposition or the consciousness of being master of what ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... make an imaginary excursion to some pleasant field or grove, where we may study the habits, the plumage, and the songs of ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... project mental photographs of her at the top of a table, beaming sweetly upon him, opposite, with her dim, lovely eyes, and pouring out the tea from a small silver pot. Overtop never could explain it; but this imaginary picture realized all his ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Paradise, were still there. At times, also, he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely. His reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... they who rail so loudly against existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find, if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and remedying the abuses ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... knowledge that it was composed by one of themselves. "Precaution" was not merely a tale of English social life, it purported to be written by an Englishman; and it was so thoroughly conformed to its imaginary model that it not only reechoed the cant of English expression, but likewise the expression of English cant. To talk about dissenters and the establishment was natural and proper enough in a work written ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... thinking that perhaps a workman had not deserved the harsh word that he had spoken to him in the heat of the moment, how he sprang up out of bed to straighten the position of a ruler that he had left lying crooked on the table. At the same time Fritz kept on blowing imaginary fluff from his sleeves. He saw indeed that his efforts were having an opposite effect to what he wished. Irritated by this he went on to stronger measures. He pitied poor Anne whom Apollonius had made fall in love with him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... foolish affair—began to decline. But that decline brought a dark night to thousands of poor, innocent men and women; for then came the era of witchcraft, and persons of every rank, convicted of this imaginary crime, were hurried to the scaffold or ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... over and put his head in it, thinking that his food had come at last. Jack picked himself up and ran to rescue the pail. The calf raised his head suddenly, the pail caught on one of his little horns, and he started off around the yard, unable to see, and jumping wildly over imaginary objects. Jack followed. A cow, which was perhaps the mother of the calf, started after Jack. The family dog, hearing the commotion, came running down from the house and began to pursue the cow. This wild procession went around the yard ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... Soldiers who had learned from experience how difficult it was for their enemy to keep a skirmish line even when his officers were behind with pistol and machine gun persuasion, now grew sick of this imaginary war in Archangel. One company going out to the front on March 27th, was actually singing in very jubilation because they were getting away from battalion mess and "stand-to" ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... sing one of the 'old duets with her mother. She saw her mother's breast lift in a mechanical effort to try imaginary notes, as if doubtful of her capacity, more at home in the dumb deep sigh they fell to. Her mother's heroism made her a sacred woman to the thoughts of the girl, overcoming wonderment ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... robberies. The same false shame is common to fallen women, among whom contempt is incurred, not by excess of depravity but by the failure to command high prices. Grellinier, a petty thief, boasted in court of imaginary offences, with the desire of appearing in the light of a great criminal. The crimes in the haunted castle, attributed by Holmes to himself, were certainly in part inventions. The female poisoner, Buscemi, when writing to her accomplice, signed herself, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... when in the midst of your mental, moral and physical agony, with weakened mind and exhausted body, physicians will tell you that masturbation is practically harmless, that its consequences are exaggerated, and that your sufferings are mostly imaginary. Then will you pity their ignorance and bemoan the fact that to such men must sufferers in your terrible extremity apply without any feeling of being understood, appreciated or sympathized with, and, far less, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... death; others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined that the last eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world were being destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary terrors to the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude that Misenum was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we imagined to be a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the fire fell at a considerable distance from us, and again we were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... robe-maker, who, with many more smirks and imaginary washings of the hands, hoped to be favoured with the gentleman's patronage on future occasions, and begged further to trouble him with a card of his establishment, - our hero proceeded with his father along the High Street, and turned round by St. Mary's, and so up Cat Street to the Schools, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... me awake all night to listen to the mice in the garret. Every time I would doze she would ask, "What's that?" and insist that the mice were men. I had to get up and look for an imaginary host, so I am ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... that country, and shortly after landing was captured and taken to the palace of the king, where he was appointed court dwarf,[35] and remained for a considerable time the attached and faithful adherent of the king. The collector of this story has assumed that it is purely imaginary. But let it be contrasted with the following extract from the Heimskringla. The period is the early part of the eleventh century, and the scene Norway: "There was a man from the Uplands called Fin the Little, and some said of him that he was of Finnish ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... the happiness they had once enjoyed, she would lay her head upon the pillow and sob herself to sleep: often starting up again, before the day-light came, to listen for the bell and respond to the imaginary summons which had roused ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... [Footnote: Preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.] had been to write stories. And a dearer pleasure had been—to use her own characteristic abstract and elongated way of putting it—'the following up trains of thought which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents'. All readers of Shelley's life remember how later on, as a girl of nineteen—and a two years' wife—she was present, 'a devout but nearly silent listener', at the long symposia held by her husband and Byron in Switzerland (June 1816), and how the pondering over 'German ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... so far, a good; but it also imposed most painful restraints. He had a strong persuasion that Bonaparte had not given up the pursuit of his supposed treasures, or the hope of mastering all his designs, real or imaginary; and he suspected that Mars Plaisir would be left long enough with him to receive the overflowings of his confidence (so hard to restrain in such circumstances as theirs!) and would then be tampered with by the agents ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may, through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt—and not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries prosecute in the courts—to spread terror among those who feel the political or economic power ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... on all sentry-duty. I rarely found the night watches long. There was plenty to do in watching the horses, which are marvellously ingenious at untying knots, and in patrolling the camp on the look-out for imaginary rebels. By the way, the only live rebel I ever saw was the owner of a farm, near which we halted during one sultry dusty route-march. He refused to allow us to water our horses and ourselves at his pond, defying ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... journey, and you received an advance of wages to provide for your families during your absence. You have lately filled yourselves with meat, and you have become lazy; you have been frightened by the footprints of the Bas-e; thus you wish to leave the country. To save yourselves from imaginary danger, you would forsake my wife and myself, and leave us to a fate which you yourselves would avoid. This is your gratitude for kindness; this is the return for my confidence, when without hesitation I advanced you money. Go! Return to Katariff to your ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... his thoughts Archie had forgotten his imaginary exploit at the Harbor drug store and realized that he must have his wits about him if he expected to retain the Governor's regard and confidence. The ease with which the supercrook rode around policemen vastly increased his feeling ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... created, but by the Consent of the Fraternity; nor abdicated, but by Tryal before their Colleagues; nor impeach'd before any other Court of Judicature; so these Peers were not bound by any judgment or Sentence, but that of the Parliament, that is, of this imaginary Council; nor could be elected into the Society, or ejected out of it, but by their ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... culture, along with many other things intended for sedentary adults, should never be forced upon little folks who get all of the exercise they need in the many journeys they take building their blocks, sailing their boats, tearing down imaginary houses, making imaginary journeys—from morning until night the little feet are kept busy—never stopping until the sandman comes at sleepy time. Do not yourself attempt to stimulate a child who seems backward. Consult your physician. You had much better put a child out to grow up in the yard ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... that superb form something of its roundness and its stag-like state; the crimson glory of that mantling cheek had faded like the fading eve; and yet it might be thought, it might be suffering, perhaps, the anticipation of approaching death, and as it were the imaginary contact with a serener existence, but certainly there was a more spiritual expression diffused over the whole appearance of Henrietta Temple, and which by many might be preferred even to that more lively and glowing beauty which, in her happier hours, made her ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... supplied the hiatus, dealing out an imaginary pack of cards with the flourishing dexterity ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... imaginary,—none of which however appear to have taken strong hold of the cheerful and courageous temper of the queen,—her attention and that of her council was for some time diverted by the expectation ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... handful. Meantime their tongues were not idle. Ulrich boastfully told her that Pater Benedictus had seen his picture of her father, recognized it instantly, and muttered something over it. His mother's blood was strong in him; his imaginary world was a very different one from that of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a standard authority, both among Catholics and Protestants. Even more inflexible was Remigius, criminal judge in Lorraine. On the title-page of his manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.(256) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... you know about snow!" rejoined the Hon. Bovyne. "Let us get on, there's a good fellow—confound you! don't stare at those imaginary trees any longer, but ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... with the spiritual beauties of Mary: vol. iv. 87). I do not think that the name was "manufactured by the Arab story-tellers after the pattern of their own names (e.g. Nur al-Din or Noureddin, light of the faith, Tajeddin, crown of faith, etc.) for the use of their imaginary Christian female characters." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... he pleased himself with this fanciful soliloquy it did not occur to him that he had already caught the "fairy in the woods," and ever since the capture had been engaged in cutting off its "sunbeam wings" with all a vivisector's scientific satisfaction. And in his imaginary pictures of what might have been if "ideals" were realised, he did not for a moment conceive HIMSELF as "worshipping" the woman who was to worship HIM, or as being at HER "beck and call," or as shielding HER from trouble—oh no! He merely considered himself, and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... punish imaginary crimes, attributed to individuals or townships, or without even taking the trouble to discover any kind of pretext, the Germans often, especially after looting, set everything on fire so as to make all traces disappear. Sometimes, as at Courtacon, ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... shall set these three down as forming one class of portraits. No. 2. has, however, a curious inscription, Edmund Spenser, obiit 1559, which would lead us to reject it altogether, and look on it as an imaginary likeness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... training with which the Brigade was going to occupy itself while out at rest. For the morrow the colonel had arranged a scheme—defence and counter-attack—which meant that skeleton batteries would have to be brought up to upset and demolish the remorseless plans of an imaginary German host; and there was diligent studying of F.A.T. and the latest pamphlets on Battery Staff Training, and other points of knowledge rusted ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with human qualities and governing the universe as an earthly monarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being, indeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king. They acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the open door, while Mr. Farge, in an ungovernable paroxysm of humour—levelled at the departing housemaid—effectually covered his retreat by cake-walking, with very high knee action, the length of the landing, playing appropriate dance-music, the while, upon an imaginary banjo in the shape of Worthington's new crook-handled ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn't know how!" Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia's quick eye followed her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and started back with ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... already happened among the negroes of New Amsterdam; and the whites lived in constant anticipation of trouble and danger from them. Rumors of an intended insurrection real or imaginary, would circulate, as in the negro plot of 1712, and the whole city be thrown into a state of alarm. Whether there was any real danger on these occasions, cannot now be known. But the result was always ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... can there pretend any right. How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honour and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence? And for three years of this fantastic and imaginary life we must go and throw away our true and essential life, and engage ourselves in a perpetual death! The sages propose to themselves a nobler and more just end in so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... reports given by the daily press, my assertion of radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect was scouted as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day of my yet spared life, more and more grateful that my mind is capable of imaginative vision, and liable to the noble dangers of delusion which separate the speculative intellect ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... was becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to be so diminished. Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority and lordly disdain. According as his humor was good or bad, he called him "my dear extortioner," "Mons. Fortunat," or "Master Twenty-per-cent." But though these sneers and insults drove the obsequious smile from M. Fortunat's lips, he ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... experience but four kinds of waiters the world over. First, the thin, nervous waiter, with a set smile, who is always brushing away imaginary crumbs, adjusting the glasses—an inch this way, an inch that way, and then back again to their first position, talking all the time, whether spoken to or not, and losing interest the moment you pay him his fee. Then the stolid, half-asleep ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to this plant and to all the water-lily family are purely imaginary. Its juice being slightly bitter and astringent is used in decoction as an injection in gonorrhoea. It possesses mild narcotic properties, for which some use the juice of the whole plant, rubbing the forehead and temples with ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... party to spread a belief prejudicial to the patriotism of the Reformers were laughed to scorn. So also was the attempt of the Lieutenant-Governor to imbue the inhabitants with a belief in the probability of a foreign invasion. Upon the promulgation of the challenge to the imaginary invader, a number of the Toronto Reformers, with Mr. Hincks at their head, amused themselves by perpetrating a practical joke. Having taken counsel together, they formed themselves into a deputation, and called upon his Excellency in a state of well-assumed perturbation. In a formal address ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... feel better when he knew that Damon Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her perfect course, and the victim of a nation's sin had been hung by the neck until dead. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a series of bird-tactics, each partially advancing and pretending to retreat as if to draw on his antagonist, pecking the while at imaginary kernels of corn on the ground. In the mean time the audience almost held its breath in anticipation of the cunningly deferred onset. Presently the two birds, as if by one impulse, rushed towards each other, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... it, Mr. Fogg, although a little nervous and excited, concluded to try it again. Turning on the imaginary mutton, he began. Only sixty-four sheep had slid over the fence, when Fogg's aunt knocked at the door and asked if he was awake. When she learned that he was, she said she believed he had forgotten to close ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... but the very language in which he meant to offer them. As he formed sentences, almost for the first time, his courage and his fancy alike warmed: his sanguine spirit sympathised with the nobility of the imaginary scene, and inspirited the intonations of ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Sensation, Emotion, Thought, and Volition. By thought is meant all that we are internally conscious of when we think; e.g. the idea of the sun, and not the sun itself, is a thought; and so, not even an imaginary thing like a ghost, but only the idea of it, is a thought. In like manner, a sensation differs both from the object causing it, and the attribute ascribed to the object. Yet language (except in the case of the sensations of hearing) has seldom provided the sensations with separate names; so ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... his old comic entrance, tripping his right toe over his left heel, and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary enemy. The boys, determined to be pleased, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... given a footing as a distinct, separate, and independent nation among all other great nations of the earth. That the South would no longer be looked upon as an "Insurrectionary Faction," "Erring Sisters," or "Rebellious Children." Our ports had been ordered closed by the North, and an imaginary blockade, a nominal fleet, stood out in front of our harbors. Our people thought the world's desire for the South's cotton would so influence the commercial and laboring people of Europe that the powers would ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of love which were current at that time,—the mediaeval and monkish conception, based upon a sensual idea which regarded women as the root of all evil and the source of all sin, and the modern or secular idea, which is spiritual and may become holy. In an imaginary conversation with Saint Augustine which Petrarch wrote to furnish a vehicle for the discussion of these matters, the poet exclaims that it is the soul—the inborn and celestial goodness—that he loves, and that he owes all to her who ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... actual but the ideal—not only the present but the past—placing before our eyes at once the fullest and completest views of the existing ruins, and also restorations of the ancient structures, some of them warm with color and gilding, which, though to a certain extent imaginary, probably give to a modern the best notion that it is now possible to form ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... and, immediately afterward, we would hear him dancing down the corridor singing, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." If he had given heed to one-half we said to him, he would have been safer in our hands than in those of his imaginary protector. He turned out a thief, an unmitigated liar, a dancing dervish, and, through all our experiences of six weeks with him, his chief reading was his Bible and Sunday-school books. The experience, however, was not lost on Theodore—he has never suggested a boy ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... citing Mary Wardour's pronunciations, and ways of doing sums. Indeed, she had more lively conversation with her French master, who was a very good-natured old man, than with anyone else, except Josephine; and she liked writing French letters for him to correct, making them be from the imaginary little girls whom she was so fond of drawing, and sending ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greater velocities the square-root becomes imaginary. From this we conclude that in the theory of relativity the velocity c plays the part of a limiting velocity, which can neither be reached nor exceeded by ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... being carried off to Hell on the Devil's back. Much of the old custom in these two personages is amusingly set forth in Ben Jonson's Staple of News, where, at the end of each Act, we have some imaginary spectators commenting on the performance. At the end of the first Act, one of them expressing a fear that the play has no Fool in it, as the Vice was often called, Gossip Tattle delivers herself thus: "My husband, Timothy Tattle, God rest ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... many descriptions of travel to the Holy Land, whose authors, trusting to the fact that their assertions could not easily be disproved, have indulged their fancy, seeking to impart interest to their works by the relation of imaginary dangers, and by exaggeration of every kind, for the sake of gaining praise and admiration. Many such men might blush with shame on reading this journal of a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... who, in Burton's phrase, "taught boys not to be ashamed of being called good," [48] and he always revered the memory of his tutor, the Rev. Thomas Short. [49] Burton naturally made enemies as well as friends, but the most bitter was that imaginary person, Mrs. Grundy. This lady, whom he always pictured as an exceedingly stout and square-looking body with capacious skirts, and a look of austere piety, had, he tells us, "just begun to reign" when he was at Oxford, although forty years had elapsed since ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... age of yours. There—go and judge for yourself. You are a father. I can't look upon my blasted hopes, and my withered flower. Go and see my blue-eyed, fair-haired darling—clay, hastening to the tomb; and you will trouble me no more with your imaginary griefs." He flung himself down with his head on ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... all that has been said about the native oratory, we are in a very inadequate position to judge of it correctly, and this because we have no accurate reports in the original tongues of their speeches. Translations, more or less loose, more or less imaginary, we have in abundance; but, for critical purposes, ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... the press, and took his place, by almost immediate and universal recognition, in the first rank of contemporary writers. The book is an essay supporting and illustrating the doctrine that moral approbation and disapprobation are in the last analysis expressions of sympathy with the feelings of an imaginary and impartial spectator, and its substance had already been given from year to year in his ordinary lectures to his students, though after the publication he thought it no longer necessary to dwell at the same length ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... busy trying to shield the imaginary painting with one of the pillows, and began in a quavering voice to sing Longfellow's "Rainy Day." Her mother pressed her lips to the hot cheek, but she seemed unconscious of the caress, and weeping bitterly Mrs. Palma left ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... same direction will! To much that went on there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Arles; to Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the Imagination mainly);—ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally!' All this was a tragical deadly combustion, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... wits at home to govern the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy, anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of the mental power is employed in wanting to know what the other people think; an eighth part ought to be dwelling upon the fair distracting object; and only a small eighth ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the practice of the War Department to present to the army every five years a comprehensive military problem involving an imaginary attack upon this country by a powerful foreign foe, and the proper line of defense. The competition was open to both officers and men. A medal was given to the successful contestant, and much distinction came ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... hated sums. All arithmetical difficulties had confused and sickened him. But now he worked with indefatigable industry on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and his brain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has it at heart not only (or chiefly) to adorn the tale, but also (and first of all) to point the moral. The novelist, in other words, should so mould the characters and shape the plot of his imaginary drama as to vindicate the wisdom and integrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if he do the opposite of this, he deserves not the countenance of virtuous ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... began when he had made her comfortable with a small cushion behind her shoulders and another for her pretty feet. "You don't act a bit like Miss Jane." As he spoke he leaned forward and flicked an imaginary something from her bare wrist with that air which always characterized his ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... imaginary line passing round the earth, from east to west and directly under the sun, which always shines nearly perpendicularly down upon all countries situated near ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... walls, entered the monasteries burned their invaluable libraries, and invaded the nunneries. The streets were filled with monks and nuns, running this way and that, shrieking and fluttering, to escape the claws of fiendish Calvinists. The terror was imaginary, for not the least remarkable feature in these transactions was that neither insult nor injury was offered to man or woman, and that not a farthing's value of the immense amount of property was appropriated. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... further explained, moving his glittering glance about the circle, "and if he could not find the right man, he must take such man as he could. The chief is the biggest man, and he comes where Godin has him. 'My father is avenged at last,' he says, and bang!"—Zavier levelled an imaginary engine of destruction at the shadows—"it is done and Godin gets ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... The most essential service, I presume, that authors could render to society, would be to promote inquiry and discussion, instead of making those dogmatical assertions which only appear calculated to gird the human mind round with imaginary circles, like the paper globe which represents the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... so insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... someone to talk with; and when his work was done he would walk out upon the mountain side in the bright winter sunlight of those great heights and hold an imaginary conversation with his wife or little son, and come home ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... groups do not now occupy the positions in which they were observed by the early astronomers, because the revolving earth is rocking like a top, with the result that the pole does not always keep pointing at the same spot in the heavens. Each year the meeting-place of the imaginary lines of the ecliptic and equator is moving westward at the rate of about fifty seconds. In time—ages hence—the pole will circle round to the point it spun at when the constellations were named by the Babylonians. It is by calculating the period occupied by this world-curve ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... beginning, we must go far back into past ages—almost to the time when our Savior was upon earth. At that period the whole northern portion of Europe was inhabited by wild and barbarous tribes who had never heard of Christ, but were Pagans and worshiped imaginary gods, of whom Woden was chief. Among these races were the Saxons, a fair-haired, fair-complexioned people, of great size and strength, who inhabited that portion of country now known as north Germany. They have ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... exist both in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. Of course the mining population must furnish its contingent of legends and fables to this mythological repertory. If the fields are peopled with imaginary beings, either good or bad, with much more reason must the dark mines be haunted to their lowest depths. Who shakes the seam during tempestuous nights? who puts the miners on the track of an as yet unworked vein? who lights ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... and amusing character called "Teddy," who was forever snapping his teeth, shouting "Bully!" or rushing at everybody, flourishing a big stick. This continued for years and was taken for truth by a great many people. To this day, this imaginary person is believed in by thousands. And in the meantime, the genuine man, a brave high-minded American, loving his country ardently, and serving her to the utmost of his great strength and ability, was engaged in his work, known by all who had personal contact ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... life these thoughtless realms display; 255 Thus idly busy rolls their world away;[31] Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear, For honor forms the social temper here. Honor, that praise which real merit gains, Or even imaginary worth obtains, 260 Here passes current: paid from hand to hand, It shifts in splendid traffic round the land; From courts to camps, to cottages, it strays, And all are taught an avarice of praise. They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem; 265 Till, seeming ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... red hair as she wound it round her throat fascinated Heine with its grim suggestion of blood. There had been his cousin Amalie, whose marriage to another is said to have been the secret spring of sorrow by which Heine's laughter was fed. And there had been others, whose names—imaginary, maybe, in that they were doubtless the imaginary names of real women—are familiar to all readers of Heines poetry: Seraphine, Angelique, Diane, Hortense, Clarisse, ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... theft, a suspicion which is actually without foundation. In the latter case it is a young officer who is accused without grounds of having abstracted a silver spoon, which is recovered later on. Thus the base element is reduced in this case to a purely imaginary thing, a mere suspicion, and this suffices nevertheless to do an irreparable injury, in our aesthetical appreciation, to the hero of the piece, in spite of his innocence. This is because a man who is supposed capable of a base action did not apparently enjoy a very solid reputation for morality, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... would be a Traitor; yet, if he had left one single brothel standing—say, in the Sandwich Islands—for the accommodation of any of Her Majesty's well-affected subjects, then the high treason was not high—high enough and up to the mark, that is, my fore-quarter could not be legally stuck up on the imaginary gates of Ballaarat. ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... street from the window, spoons and all. I tried this: the shutters were not even closed, and the sash moving noiselessly, I had no difficulty in raising it. I stepped out into the balcony, and looked over. Nothing was to be seen but a black and yawning gulf beneath, guarded by the imaginary spikes of an invisible railing. Jack would have laughed at this difficulty; but then he had more experience in the craft than I, and was provided with all necessary appliances. As for me, I had stupidly forgotten even my ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... bud, leaving an inch and a half of wood above. Or this last form is modified by making a long sloping cut from the bud to the upper end, thereby exposing the maximum amount of cambium. Advantages are claimed for each form, but these are mostly imaginary, and the cutting may be made to suit the fancy of the propagator if a ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... to knock out his pipe and to reflect that, as he had made up his mind, there was nothing to gain by pitying himself or by growing angry with imaginary disputants. Sir Francis and Sybil came into the library to begin the day's work; his mother rustled to and fro, giving her orders. All that he had to do was to find an unoccupied table and settle down to work. The intimacy was over. In time he might care to think about it, he might ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... my own story, and employed myself in imaginary adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be placed, and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of insult and danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me. In fancy I often passed the awful hour of dissolving ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... On an imaginary cone of conical form and with scales of equal size throughout, there must be more scales about the base than about the apex of the cone. The phyllotactic conditions must differ, and the obvious spirals, in passing from base to apex, must undergo readjustment. If ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... manner either advantageous or prejudicial both to himself and to others. Man, at his birth, brings with him into the world nothing but the necessity of conserving himself, of rendering his existence happy: instruction, example, the customs of the world, present him with the means, either real or imaginary, of achieving it; habit procures for him the facility of employing these means: he attaches himself strongly to those he judges best calculated, most proper to secure to him the possession of those objects which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the picture of the ichthysauria romping in the mesozoic sea, that commonly accompanies a text-book of geology. Any such picture, and all such pictures, with their coloring and their temporal and spacial perspective, are imaginary. No such special and exclusive manifolds can be defined as having been then and there realized. But we have a geological knowledge of this period, that fulfils the formal demands of natural science, in so far as we can ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... my constitution was fortified and fixed; and my disorders, instead of growing with my growth and strengthening with my strength, most wonderfully vanished. I have never possessed or abused the insolence of health: but since that time few persons have been more exempt from real or imaginary ills; and, till I am admonished by the gout, the reader will no more be troubled with the history of my bodily complaints. My unexpected recovery again encouraged the hope of my education; and I was placed at Esher, in Surrey, in the house of the Reverend Mr. Philip Francis, in a ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... to find it, and read an imaginary entry to this effect: "After what she has already done, Helena is capable of marrying in defiance of my wishes and commands. This must be considered and provided against." So far, I had succeeded in flattering him. But when (thinking ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... of the creator, he is thus absorbed with his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it," replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... three scrambled for imaginary life-preservers, and vigorously put them on, when, with a terrific ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 32) that, as the soul, when the body lies senseless, yet not quite dead, sees some things by imaginary vision; so also when by death the soul is quite separate from the body. But the imagination is a power of the sensitive part. Therefore the power of the sensitive part remains in the separate soul; and consequently all the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... it founded on fact, to use the common phrase. It is not the history of any individual mind among the recent converts to the Catholic Church. The principal characters are imaginary; and the writer wishes to disclaim personal allusion in any. It is with this view that he has feigned ecclesiastical bodies and places, to avoid the chance, which might otherwise occur, of unintentionally ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... used a device to tie together many isolated familiar facts. I have never found that six-year-old children did not readily discriminate the actual from the imaginary. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... I am good," said Don Quixote, "but I can safely say I am not 'the Bad;' and to prove it, let me tell you, Senor Don Alvaro Tarfe, I have never in my life been in Saragossa; so far from that, when it was told me that this imaginary Don Quixote had been present at the jousts in that city, I declined to enter it, in order to drag his falsehood before the face of the world; and so I went on straight to Barcelona, the treasure-house ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wakening dreams were more frequent, we should be happier; yes, and better than we are; we should be shamed out of much baseness—for nothing so purifies and exalts the soul as the actual or imaginary companionship of the pure and exalted; no man who purposed to create a noble picture would choose an imperfect model; no one who seeks virtue and cherishes honor and honorable things, will endure the degradation of ignoble ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... forms have probably been modified during the lapse of ages. But I shall try to tell you when they have diverged noticeably from the structure of the primitive ancestor of the corresponding stage. It is much safer for us to study concrete, actual forms than imaginary ones, however real may have been the former existence of the latter. And, after all, their lateral divergence is of small account compared with the great upward and onward march of life, to the right and left of which they have remained stationary or retrograded somewhat, ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... see no one. But the cave stretched straight forward, and downward, and at the far end was a glow of light. Jurgen went on and on, and so came presently to a centaur: and this surprised him not a little, because Jurgen knew that centaurs were imaginary creatures. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... to her irritation. It was that imaginary young lady of Ernest Breslaw's. Had she been a man, ere this she would have plunged into vigorous attempt to dislodge that or any other rival, no matter how assured his position, but being a woman and compelled to await "The idiot Chance ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... been impossible for political economists long to have endured the error spoken of in the text,[18] had they not been confused by an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and refinements, as well as the riches of civilised life, arose from imaginary wants. It is quite true, that the savage who knows no needs but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his venison and patched the rents of his hut, passes the rest of his time in animal repose, is in a lower state than the man ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... of a proud and somewhat exacting temper, he actively felt the mortifying consequences of his poverty. The want of what he felt ought to have been his position and influence in the county in which he resided, fretted and galled him; and he cherished a resentful and bitter sense of every slight, imaginary or real, to which the same fruitful source of annoyance and humiliation had exposed him. He held, therefore, but little intercourse with the surrounding gentry, and that little not of the pleasantest possible ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was a strange form of disease, went to a specialist of skin diseases, who had the man brought to a hospital in order to watch his disease. Rumors of this reaching the newspapers, the reporters thought it a good opportunity to make a story about leprosy, giving the number and street of an imaginary laundry in the heart of the city. Instantly the patronage of the Chinese laundries stopped. My Chinese friend was in the greatest distress about it, and particularly about me, lest I should think he had brought the contagious disease to my house. I could hardly persuade him to enter, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... gentleman than by giving his own envoi to the most considerable of his books:—"Thus, gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... cooing for hours and hours, as if all life to them was an interminable honeymoon. There is also a great white parrot, who, perched in a brass ring, mutters and mutters to himself for hours, and hums snatches of tunes, and calls imaginary dogs and visionary cats; and when he sees a certain manly form coming up the garden-walk is wont to cry out in a miserable mockery of tenderness, "Oh, my darling! I'm so glad to see you!" and then smack his bill as near like a kiss as he can, and chuckle and laugh and turn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... at side, and party bantered party. Here the blue and white of Company "A" flaunted audaciously on the breeze beside the very seats over which the crimson and gray of "B" were flying, and these in their turn nodded defiance over the imaginary barrier between themselves ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... day and night he went through passages and up and down staircases, ringing a noiseless bell and offering phantom muffins to invisible wayfarers. It sounds a poor sort of sport; and yet—to pass along busy streets of your own building, for ever ringing an imaginary bell and offering airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging crowd of your own creation—there were points about the game, it cannot be denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... than slime," said Miller. "I am with the biologists in this campaign. Let us have the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may be. If these phenomena exist, they are in the domain of natural law and can be weighed and measured. If they are imaginary, they should be swept away, like other dreams ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... romantic appeals in their behalf, by concealing the truth, or by warping the truth until it becomes falsehood. In the following pages he has depicted the Gypsies as he has found them, neither aggravating their crimes nor gilding them with imaginary virtues. He has not expatiated on 'their gratitude towards good people, who treat them kindly and take an interest in their welfare'; for he believes that of all beings in the world they are the least susceptible of such a feeling. Nor ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... single year the bishop of Geneva burned 500 witches, the bishop of Bamberg 600, the bishop of Wuerzburg 900. About 800 were condemned to death in a single batch by the Senate of Savoy. In the year 1586 the archbishop of Treves burned 118 women and two men for this imaginary crime. Even these figures give but an imperfect notion of the extent of the midsummer madness. The number of victims must be reckoned by ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Discovering that the child possessed the right to be amused, the imagination of poets and artists addressed itself at last to the most appreciative of all audiences, a world of newcomers, with insatiable appetites for wonders real and imaginary. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... reference to the uses for which the property is suitable, having regard to the existing business and wants of the community, or such as may be reasonably expected in the immediate future,' * * * [but] 'mere possible or imaginary uses, or the speculative schemes of its proprietor, are to be excluded.'"[656] Damages are measured by the loss to the owner, not by the gain to the taker;[657] and attorneys' fees and expenses are not embraced therein.[658] "When the public faith and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... and the close of the Conference. The misgivings of other delegates turned upon a matter which at first sight may appear so far removed from any of the pressing issues of the twentieth century as to seem wholly imaginary. They feared that a religious—some would call it racial—bias lay at the root of Mr. Wilson's policy. It may seem amazing to some readers, but it is none the less a fact that a considerable number of delegates believed that the real influences behind the Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... early volumes it will be seen that this imaginary Prete Jani, Prester John, or the Christian Priest-king, had been sought for in vain among the wandering tribes of eastern Tartary. The Portuguese now absurdly gave that appellation to the Negus of Habesh, or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... little Paraguay tea or boiled maize. Only her mother or grandmother has access to her; nobody else approaches or speaks to her. If she is obliged to leave the hammock for a little, her friends take great care to prevent her from touching the Boyrusu, which is an imaginary serpent that would swallow her up. She must also be very careful not to set foot on the droppings of fowls or animals, else she would suffer from sores on the throat and breast. On the third day they let her down from the hammock, cut her hair, and make her sit ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... a purely imaginary speech of Cromwell's; but it is an accurate expression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men at all times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the most tempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of his life that ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... relative to your brother's death—which served to estrange him from you. Whatever they may be, whether existent or fanciful, you are in no way responsible. He has gone to Naples to obtain proofs of his suspicions, or knowledge. He will come back to terrorise you, perhaps to seek revenge for imaginary wrongs. Therefore, I say, do not meet him half-way by sitting here, blanched and fearful, until it pleases him to return. Compel him to seek you. Let him find you at least outwardly happy and contented, careless of his neglect, and more pleased than otherwise ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... search. When we assault and conquer it there it disappears. It has only retreated to the next row of outworks where for a time it appears not to our sight, and we imagine it killed, while it is laughing at our imaginary conquests and security. Soon again we find it and conquer again, only to have it again retreat. So we must follow it up if we wish to grasp it at last in its final stand just near the "kernel of the heart." There it has become "an iron bar that holds down the heart," ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... power of such characters to operate them. At the same time the rules of probability must even there be observed. Nor is it amiss to be very sparing and reserved in the composition of those dances, grounded on the introduction of purely imaginary beings, such as the allegorical impersonation of the moral Beings, whether the Virtues or the Vices. Unless the invention is very interesting indeed, the characters distinctly marked, and the application very just and obvious; their effect is rarely answerable to expectation, especially ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... head and made grimaces expressive of disgust. He informed me that the slaves employed on the sugar plantations, when beaten by their masters, in order to obtain an indirect revenge, spat in the syrup, and committed other filthy things as an imaginary punishment upon the whites. I frequently saw Sambo in Toronto, and many times he expressed thankfulness to me for his deliverance. I may here mention that shortly after the arrival of Sambo on board the Rose of Milton at Erie, two suspicious-looking men, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... left Peterhouse, owing to some real or imaginary offence, and removed to Pembroke Hall, where he was surrounded by his old and intimate friends. The next year he carried his two Odes to London, as carefully as if they had been two Epics. Walpole says that he "snatched ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... boys to remind themselves that here they were precisely on the equator, so positively chilly was it. And yet they were. It was the third time which they had touched that imaginary girdle of the earth in the past week or so; and it was to be their last crossing. How inspiring the thought that they were now within one hop of their goal; that sometime on the morrow they would probably reach Panama well within their time limit of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... of plantation life, some of them folk-lore stories, which we found to be in general circulation among the colored people; some of them tales of real life as Julius had seen it in the old slave days; but the most striking were, we suspected, purely imaginary, or so colored by old Julius's fancy as to make us speculate at times upon how many original minds, which might have added to the world's wealth of literature and art, had been buried in the ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... recollection; but it is better for me to remember it, lest I should fancy myself better than I am. Every word she said in that gentle and persuasive tone was engraved upon my heart, even as she spoke. She easily and fully convinced me of my sinfulness in thus permitting imaginary evils to make me so miserable: for that they were but imaginary it was easy to discover. Not a single blessing could I say I had lost. All I loved were around me, in health and happiness—every comfort of life ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... life, its example and inspiration, which was the real object of the descent of this high spirit on to our planet. If the human race had earnestly centred upon that instead of losing itself in vain dreams of vicarious sacrifices and imaginary falls, with all the mystical and contentious philosophy which has centred round the subject, how very different the level of human culture and happiness would be to-day! Such theories, with their absolute ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... capering backward with a bounce, and an air, and a grace, she came with a sort of a courtesy, and a smart bump, and a shock against the stately Miss Rebecca; and whisking round with a little scream and a look of terrified innocence, and with her fingers to her heart, to suppress an imaginary palpitation, dropped a low ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and the working of his mouth show that he is infected with the general excitement; but he bridles himself savagely. Redbrook, trained to affect indifference, grins cynically; winks at Brassbound; and finally relieves himself by assuming the character of a circus ringmaster, flourishing an imaginary whip and egging on the rest to wilder exertions. A climax is reached when Drinkwater, let loose without a stain on his character for the second time, is rapt by belief in his star into an ecstasy in which, scorning all partnership, he becomes as it were a whirling dervish, and executes so ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... physician, was another of his chosen impersonations. Roger represented the honest, vain, empty man purchasing an ounce of tea by stratagem to astonish a favoured guest; he portrayed him on the summit of a narrow, winding, and very steep staircase, contemplating in airy security the imaginary approach of duns. This worthy doctor on one occasion, when watching Sarratt, the great chess-player, turned suddenly to Hazlitt, and said, 'I think I could dance. I'm sure I could; aye, I could dance like Vestris.' Such were the odd people ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Celestials, their prototypes, have ensconced themselves. The Chinese speak of outsiders as "barbarians." The French ladies refer to such unfortunates as being "beyond the pale." Almost all that has been written is arrant nonsense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day on as firm a foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as vigilant as when, forty years ago, Napoleon (third of the name) and his Spanish ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... styles, Mr. Colvin puts side by side passages from "The Ancient Mariner" and Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," with passages, treating similar themes, from Landor's "Gebir" and "Imaginary Conversations." The contrast might be even more clearly established by a study of such a piece as Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where the romantic form is applied to classical content; or by a comparison of Tennyson's "Ulysses" ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... fidgety and restless that I felt I worried the old couple. I could settle to nothing. I could not read, although I had always been a greedy reader. I was living my own love-story too keenly to be put off with imaginary ones. Music held me for a little while; but through it I was listening—listening for his coming, or for the telegram that should announce the arrival of his boat at Southampton. I used to look across at the lighted table by the fire where my grandparents ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... painfully supported, I now find inadequate to recompense me for the sacrifice which its preservation requires. I part with it, I own, with regret that the surrender is necessary; yet is it rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep wound to pride, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... three times the thickness of the web. In many modern engines the force acting at the end of the beam is more than 18 lbs. per circular inch of the piston, but the above rules are still applicable by taking an imaginary cylinder with an area larger in the proportion of the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... other. In order to judge of this definition let us consider, that since equality is a relation, it is not, strictly speaking, a property in the figures themselves, but arises merely from the comparison, which the mind makes betwixt them. If it consists, therefore, in this imaginary application and mutual contact of parts, we must at least have a distinct notion of these parts, and must conceive their contact. Now it is plain, that in this conception we would run up these parts to the greatest minuteness, which can possibly be conceived; since the contact of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... to your princess before you had made her suffer! So far you have not made her suffer at all. I had become quite excited over this idea —though perhaps I had no right to. I suppose it is all right, because she is an imaginary person, and you can endow her with all the perfections you please. She is triumphant and thrilling, and worthy of love—whereas I am just little Corydon, whom you have known all your life, and who is stupid and helpless, and impossible to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... figured upon the journey much as a provost-marshal leading his brother to prison.[936] Now the imaginary resemblance was turned into a sad reality. On Thursday, the thirty-first of October, the Bourbons reached Orleans.[937] Their reception soon convinced them that they had placed their heads in the jaws of the lion. None of the courtiers save the cardinal, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... church. As the Doctor poured forth his petitions he made the most extraordinary movements with his right hand. He waved it up and down rapidly. He opened his eyes for an instant as if to find somebody. He seemed to be closing imaginary windows—and so he was. It leaked out the next day at Mr. Gray's that Dr. Peewee was telegraphing the sexton at random—for he did not know where to look for him—to close the windows. Nobody better understood the danger of draughts ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... pauldron. Mallory mounted—not gracefully, it is true, but at least without the aid of the winch he would have needed if his armor had been manufactured in the sixth century—and inserted the red pommel of his spear in the stirrup socket. Then, activating the Yore's lock, he rode across the imaginary drawbridge that spanned the mirage-moat, and set forth into the forest. As the "portcullis" closed behind him, symbolically bringing phase one of Operation Sangraal to a close, he thought ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... she entered, Graciosa presented her with the ball of thread in perfect order, so that she had no fault to find, and could only pretend to discover that it was soiled, for which imaginary fault she gave Graciosa a blow on each cheek, that made her white and pink skin turn green and yellow. And then she sent her back to be locked ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... account, observed that there was no reference whatever to quadrilles of various nationalities—Egyptian or otherwise; and she rather wondered at the omission. But it did not occur to her to suppose that this portion of the entertainment had been entirely imaginary—a lurid figment of Harry's vivid fancy and ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... When two young people are standing very close with clasped hands and love-lit eyes in the dim fragrance of an old garden, even a dog of a chaperon knows that it is time to interfere! With great presence of mind he discovered an imaginary squirrel in the hedge directly beside them, and set up such a furious barking that Miss Lady looked around and laughed. For a second she stood, her head thrown back, a teasing, half-shy, half- ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the attention of posterity is likely to rest, not on his verses, but upon a sprightly hodgepodge of imaginary table-talk, called "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table"—a warm-hearted, kindly book, which still ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... is scarcely a bird of which you can make a pet in your mind, as you may of the chickadee, for instance, or the bluebird, or the hermit thrush. He does not lend himself naturally to such imaginary endearments. But it is pleasant to have him on one's daily beat. I should count it one compensation for having to live in Florida instead of in Massachusetts (but I might require a good many others) that I should see him a hundred times as often. In walking down the river road I seldom saw ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... faith in human nature. Was there ever such ingratitude known before? The most curious thing is that Mr. Lee, who has brought all these facts to light, seems to share Defoe's ingenuous astonishment at this "strange instance of ungrateful violence," and conjectures that it must have proceeded from imaginary wrong of a very grievous nature, such as a suspicion that Defoe had instigated the Government to prosecute him. It is perhaps as well that it should have fallen to so loyal an admirer to exhume Defoe's secret services and public protestations; ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... he called the Scottish Avengers. With them he would retire into valleys far away from the village, where none would mark what they were doing, and there they practised with club and stake instead of broadsword and pike, defended narrow passes against an imaginary enemy, and, divided into two parties, did battle with ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... to recompose herself. But the instant she again saw that expression of mute and dazed despair the tears fought for release. The effort to suppress outward signs of pity made her plain fat face grotesque. She could not speak. With a corner of her apron she wiped imaginary dust from the glass bells that protected the artificial flowers. The poor child! And all for no fault of hers—and because she had been born out of wedlock. But then, the old woman reflected, was it not one of the most ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... permanent progress and in always higher development: that mind vanquishes matter. The first new thing which meets us in the development of the globe, is the organic and life; the second, sensation and consciousness; the third, self-consciousness and free-will. Now let us once suppose imaginary human spectators of every first appearance of these phenomena. Would he who thus far had only known inorganic phenomena and processes, have dared, before the appearance of life, to utter the proposition: matter can also become living and live? And who would ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... became familiar with shapeless forms and fearful powers. The sorrows of death, and the pains of hell, got hold upon him. His internal conflict was truly horrible, as one who thought himself under the power of demons; they whispered in his ears—pulled his clothes; he madly fought, striking at imaginary shades with his hands, and stamping with his feet at the destroyer. Thoughts of the unpardonable sin beset him, his powerful bodily frame became convulsed with agony, as if his breast bone would split, and he burst asunder like Judas. He possessed a most prolific ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... there is no subtilising upon far-fetched conceits, no wire-drawing of exquisite sentimentalism, although he celebrates in this, as in his other sonnets, a lady for whom he appears to have entertained no more than a Platonic or imaginary passion. Surrey was a great experimentalist in metre. Besides the sonnet, he introduced into England blank verse, which he borrowed from the Italian versi sciolti, fixing that decasyllable iambic rhythm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... through it to the North Sea, or to Baffin's or Hudson's Bay. Perhaps, too, it would have been marked, on future maps of the world, with greater precision, and more, certain signs of reality, than the invisible, because imaginary, Straits of de Fuca and de Fonte. In describing the inlet, our commander had left a blank which was not filled up with any particular name; and, therefore, the Earl of Sandwich directed, with the greatest propriety, that it should ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Thomas Pury, jun., Esq., with the help of Mr Sheppard, Captain Hemming, and others, made this library at considerable expense, and, as Sir Robert Atkyns quaintly observed, "encouraged literature to assist reason, in the midst of times deluded with imaginary inspiration." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... comedies could be termed Surprises de l'amour, although some of his best come within that category. There is a whole series of plays, to which Larroumet[112] calls attention, in which Marivaux has left the real for the imaginary world. There are times when we are almost inclined to admit with Lemaitre "that fancy's wing, which bears so high and so far the poet of A Midsummer Night's Dream, has at least grazed the powdered brow of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... imagination, and the world was invited to realise them, of societies in which all were workers on equal terms, and groups of fraternal citizens, separated no longer by the egoisms of the private home, dwelt together in palaces called "phalansteries," which appear to have been imaginary anticipations of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here lapped in luxury, they were to feast at common tables; and between meals the men were to work in the fields singing, while a lady accompanied their voices on a grand piano under ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... they had taken to their burrows like rabbits. Evan's heart was with her, wherever she was. He had not the same anxious solicitude for her that one would have for an ordinary woman hunted in the dark woods, for he was well assured that Corinna was not a prey to imaginary terrors. She would be no less at home in the woods at night than he was. Still no sound came from her. He was not at all sure that she would summon him if hard pressed, but they could not take her without his ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... with the Colonel's firey harangue? Although there is no foundation for such incendiary language the reader will soon see just how much misery it wrought upon a defenseless people. Fanned into fury by the rehearsing of imaginary wrongs by gifted tongues, the mob when once started astonished its leaders, who quailed and looked aghast at the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... made out of the idea of an imaginary museum, containing such articles as Aaron's rod, the petticoat of General Harrison, the pistol with which Benton shot Jackson,—and then a diorama, consisting of political or other scenes, or done in wax-work. The idea to be wrought ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of his adventures, in some Eastern country now, and less connectedly. These adventures, real or imaginary, had quite a savour of the Arabian Nights, and did not by any means make it easier for me to keep my hold on reality. The lightest weight will affect the balance under such circumstances, and in this case the weight ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... intimacy of all with all, without regard to personal tastes or affinities. Quite a number of Kenloe's subjects worked themselves up to a frenzy, protesting against the intolerable effects of such a requirement. Of course, they were fighting imaginary foes. There was nothing under the old social order which compelled men to associate merely because their bank accounts or incomes were the same, and there was nothing under the new order that would any more do so. While the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy |
