"Illusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel that it is bound to predetermined form of any sort. The possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums. Yet some limitation there must be to this freedom, some resistance of the medium. In great art there is the illusion of absolute freedom. The formal restraints imposed by the material—paint, black and white, marble, piano tones, or whatever it may be—are not perceived; it is as though there were a limitless margin of ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Urged by an uncontrollable impulse, a man thrust his hand through the ground glass of an office door. The glass shivered, and crashed to the tile floor. The pieces broke—silently. It was as though the man had been the figure in a cinematograph illusion. He stared at his cut and bleeding hand. The woman who had touched the man suddenly threw back her head and screamed. They could see her eyes roll back, her face change color, could discern the straining of her throat. ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... actually felt the passion; and the image which they have in their own minds of the beau ideal is cast upon the first objects they afterward behold. This, if I may be allowed the expression, is Cupid's Fata Morgana. Deluded mortals are in ecstasy whilst the illusion lasts, and in despair when ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... one of the lodgers, cast upon her the eyes of desire and married her. Why she married Button she could never determine. Perhaps she had a romantic idea—and there is romance even in Budge Street-that Button would support her. He very soon shattered any such illusion by appropriating the remainder of her fortune and kicking her into the factory with hobnailed boots. It would be wrong to say that Mrs. Button did not complain; she did. She tent the air of Budge ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... a dim feeling in the back of his head that, after all, the hillock of gold was an illusion, and his own hand upon the dazzling pile would clutch the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... them. Unlike the French soldier, to whom patriotism is a religion and who has the name of France on his lips at the moment of peril, our men were silent about the reasons for their coming out and the cause for which they risked their lives. It was not for imperial power. Any illusion to "The Empire" left them stone—cold unless they confused it with the Empire Music Hall, when their hearts warmed to the name. It was not because they hated Germans, because after a few turns in the trenches many of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the banks of the Swan, were extremely agreeable. I thought nothing could be more delightful than to live at one of those picturesque and lovely spots. If the romance of that first feeling be now faded from my heart, it is not because I have discovered that all which I then saw was an illusion, but because a more sober state of mind — that state into which the mind settles as the excitement of sudden change and unwonted novelty subsides — teaches that happiness is not local, and that it is no more likely ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... uttered by one near at hand, who overheard the conversation, who conjectured her death, and whose conjecture happened to accord with the truth. That the voice appeared to come from the cieling was to be considered as an illusion of the fancy. The cry for help, heard in the hall on the night of my adventure, was to be ascribed to an human creature, who actually stood in the hall when he uttered it. It was of no moment, he said, that we could not explain by what motives ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... touched by them, I fear. For when one looks back upon the life that was so vivid in its emotional intensity, and filled with such fervent moments of ecstasy or of joy, it all seems to be a dream and an illusion. What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... unpleasant to his gentle listener, whose inclinations, for a few minutes, blinded her to the resolutions already made on principle. So urgent was her suitor, indeed, that she should solemnly plight her faith to him, ere he sailed, that a soft illusion came over the mind of one as affectionate as Mary, and she was half-inclined to believe her previous determination was unjustifiable and obdurate. But the head of one of her high principles, and clear views of duty, could not long be deceived by her heart, and she regained ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with me again as I had never previously had it. It was not like that mental condition, known to most persons, when some sight or sound or, more frequently, the perfume of some flower, associated with our early life, restores the past suddenly and so vividly that it is almost an illusion. That is an intensely emotional condition and vanishes as quickly as it comes. This was different. To return to the simile and metaphor used at the beginning, it was as if the cloud shadows and haze had passed away and the entire wide prospect beneath me made clearly visible. Over it all my ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... there was a sheet of writing-paper firmly stuck to the pincushion by a large black-headed pin, saying, in Margery's careful caligraphy: 'Many happy returns of the day, Master Garthie.' It was very touching, because it was meant to be so comforting and tactful. But it destroyed the illusion! Since then the door has been ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... back on her? She could see neither animal distinctly: they seemed to be shaking in some cosmic disturbance, and were but blurs. This illusion—for to her, it seemed it must be optical—persisted, grew worse, until the quaking forms of the two unfortunate creatures were like so much ectoplasm in swift motion, ghosts whirling about in a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... eyes an illusion? Did the creatures really have eyes, like those of higher forms of animal life? Illusion or not, the eyes seemed to be there, intense, glaring and savage. They seemed to peer into the ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... that's part of illusion—the spiel and the misdirection. I'm going to try this cold first, so I can get it moving up and down smoothly, then go through it ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... spake much of operations Touching the eight and-twenty mansions That longe to the Moon, and such folly As in our dayes is not worth a fly; For holy church's faith, in our believe,* *belief, creed Us suff'reth none illusion to grieve. And when this book was in his remembrance Anon for joy his heart began to dance, And to himself he saide privily; "My brother shall be warish'd* hastily *cured For I am sicker* that there be sciences, *certain By ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and just demerit [desert] of plunder promised them." In the meagreness of their pay they thought themselves entitled to the plunder of Louisbourg, which they imagined to be a seat of wealth and luxury. Nathaniel Sparhawk, Pepperrell's thrifty son-in-law, shared this illusion, and begged the General to get for him (at a low price) a handsome service of silver plate. When the volunteers exchanged their wet and dreary camp for what they expected to be the comfortable quarters of the town, they were disgusted to see the houses still occupied by the owners, and to find ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... him—her enemy, her accuser, the man who had scarcely treated her civilly. He was ashamed to remember now that this thought had occurred to him at the bedside of his wife—at the hour of her escape—even on the fatal slope on which he had been struck down. And now this fond illusion must go with the rest—the girl who had served him so loyally was ashamed of it! A bitter smile ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... him," Harry Collins answered. "Of him, and of all the others. Maybe he does not need me. Maybe none of them need me. Maybe it's all an illusion. But if the time ever comes, I'll be ready. And ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... defined as a perversion of the judgment, a chimerical thought; an illusion, an incorrect impression of the senses, counterfeit appearances; hence we speak of a delusion of the mind, an illusion of the senses. Lawyers lay great stress on the presence of delusions as indicative of insanity. An hallucination is a sensation which is supposed by the patient to be produced by external impressions, although no material object acts upon his senses ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... thou fiend of gloomy sway, That lov'st on withering blast to ride O'er fond Illusion's air-built pride. Sullen Spirit! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of his signal triumphs Yoritomo was invited to Kyoto on several occasions. Various considerations deterred him. He wished, in the first place, to dispel the popular illusion that the Imperial capital was the centre of all dignity and power. People must be taught to recognize that, although Kyoto might be the ultimate source of authority, Kamakura was its place of practical exercise. He wished, in the second place, not ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... only claimed to be more than a man, he threatened his hearers with death if they did not agree with him. All of which might be permissible if he were God, but was an egotistical illusion ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... driven through London streets," resumed Janet, as they were crawling up Fleet Street. "The same shops, the same houses, and even, as it seems to me, the same people crowding the pathways; and, to complete the illusion, the same kind ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... stage presentations there are limits. If Macduff were to stab Macbeth, the spectacle would be intolerable; and even the pretence which we allow on our stage is ridiculously destructive to the illusion of the scene. Yet pugilists and gladiators will actually fight and kill in public without sham, even as a spectacle for money. But no sober couple of lovers of any delicacy could endure to be watched. We in England, accustomed to consider the French stage much more licentious than ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... the skirt here and there, and then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different, distinguished? and if not beautiful—alluring? She had had a momentary apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to that! In this walk with Bigot round the glorious garden, with God's flowers shedding fragrance around them; with God's stars shining overhead above all the glitter and illusion of the thousand lamps, Angelique repeated to herself the terrific words, "Bigot loves that pale, sad face too well ever to marry me while its possessor lives at Beaumanoir—or while she ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the spring of seventy-three I started with my team, Led by false illusion And those foolish, golden dreams; The first night out from Wilcox My best wheel horse was stole, And it makes me curse a little To come ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... adviser, Ventura for a preacher, Gioberti for a prophet, and to conclude that he thus became a trusted representative, until the revolving years found him the champion of a vanished cause, and the Syllabus exposed the illusion and bore away his ideal. Harless once said of him that no good could be expected from a man surrounded by a ring of liberals. When Doellinger made persecution answer both for the decline of Spain and the fall of Poland, he appeared ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... other cities—its ruins. Although of no antiquity, Bushire is rich in these. With this exception, it much more resembles a Moorish or Turkish city. The native population, largely mixed with Arabs, carries out the illusion, and bright-coloured garments, white "bournouses," and green turbans throng the streets, in striking contrast to the sombre, rook-like garments affected by the natives of Iran. A stranger, too, is struck by the difference in the mode of life adopted by Europeans as compared with ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... to say truth, we no longer LIVED on board. The entire ship's crew were undergoing a nervous excitement, of which I can give no idea: they could not eat, they could not sleep—twenty times a day, a misconception or an optical illusion of some sailor seated on the taffrail, would cause dreadful perspirations, and these emotions, twenty times repeated, kept us in a state of excitement so violent that ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... air I recovered myself, sufficiently at any rate to be able to think, and saw at once that the thing was an illusion for which Zikali had prepared my mind very carefully by means of the young witch-doctoress, Nombe. He knew well enough that this remarkable woman, Mameena, had made a deep impression on me nearly a quarter of a century before, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... by God Omnipotent," exclaimed Don Quixote at this, "your highness has hit the point; and that some vile illusion must have come before this sinner of a Sancho, that made him see what it would have been impossible to see by any other means than enchantments; for I know well enough, from the poor fellow's goodness and harmlessness, that he is incapable ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and who wanted to put an end to the pathetic scene, began to shake our poor captain, who sat as motionless as a statue, and as if he had been petrified. He felt ashamed at having treated such a woman as an adventuress, for he knew that what he now saw was not an illusion. He kept looking at her with great confusion, and bowing most respectfully, as if he wanted to atone for his past conduct towards her. As for Henriette, she seemed to say to him, but without the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Had I known that he really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist had achieved, I might not have shunned him. No man who hasn't lost his vanity can be held to have altogether failed. Soames's dignity was an illusion of mine. One day, in the first week of June, 1897, that illusion went. But on the evening of that day Soames ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... the individual is finer than life is. Life would make us all cynics if the noble in some of us did not find truth too plebeian a fellow to keep company with. I have long since suspected that truth is not that beautiful nude young person one sees rising out of wells at Academy Exhibitions. Illusion, at any rate, is every whit as real a factor of the universe, and it is far more agreeable to live with. So, naturally, Morgan, I chose it to live with, hoping, of course, it was not illusion. However, there ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... eagerly, "she was one of the greatest among women. But all that about her 'voices' was illusion. The priests suggested it. She had hallucinations. Remember her age when they began—just thirteen. She was clever and strong; doubtless she was pretty; certainly she was very courageous. She was only a girl. But she had a big, brave idea which—the liberation of her country. Pure? Yes. I ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... the carpet, and one heard, apropos, of the theft of Adam mantelpieces from Russell Square, and of superb masterpieces of paint rotting with damp in neglected Venetian churches, and so on and so on, until one had the melancholy illusion that the whole art world was going or gone to destruction. But this subject did not really hold us, for the reason that, beneath a blase exterior, we were all secretly preoccupied by the beauty of the women of Yucatan and wondering whether we should ever get to Yucatan.... And then, looking by ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the air, and trembles. And by illusion optical, thin-draped in azure haze, drift here and there the brilliant lands: swans, peacock-plumaged, sailing through the sky. Down to earth hath heaven come; hard telling ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... arm-chest, and he fancied that it came from the funeral pile of the young Dumont, whose fate, at that moment, he was almost disposed to envy. Then his look returned to the grim countenance of Trysail. At moments, it seemed as if the dead master spoke; and so strong did the illusion become, that our young sailor more than once bent forward to listen. While under this delusion, the body rose, with the arms stretched upwards. The air was filled with a sheet of streaming fire, while the ocean and the heavens glowed with one glare of intense and fiery red. Notwithstanding ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... farewell. Of course, we had known it for some time, but had not had the heart to admit it to each other, could not find courage to say that one more golden Summer was at an end. But the paper I had torn from the roadside left us no further shred of illusion. There was an authoritative announcement there was no blinking, a notice to ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... entered found a wind to sail, while all the other ships did." And the conscience stricken thief declared, in his dying confession, that he used to see Saint Kieran "stopping with his crozier, every ship into which he entered." It was also an amiable popular illusion that abundant harvests followed the making of peace, the enacting of salutary laws, and the accession of a King who loved justice; and careful entry is made in our chronicles of every evidence of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... been attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama. "Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause, though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of light, or was it rather an illusion produced by that vague uneasiness with which the boldest hearts are filled by the approach of night amid ancient monuments? As he stepped across the threshold Gyges fancied that he heard deep groans issue from the stone lips of the bas-reliefs, and ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... breaks slowly o'er the distant main, To come no more her ingrate hero flies; While thoughts confiding speak Upon her mantling cheek— Illusion chains the sense—in lowest sighs Whispering—we fear to see her wake ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... with Yates had shown him how far apart they had managed to get by following paths that diverged more and more widely the farther they were trodden. The friendship of their youth had turned out to be merely ephemeral. Neither would now choose the other as an intimate associate. Another illusion had gone. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... He's everywhere. How many hundred times has he.... Yet I see someone else in the pattern of the table cloth. No, it's an illusion! Any moment now I'll hear my funeral march—then everything will be ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... of Bull Run was an important event. It dispelled the illusion of the people of the north as to the duration and gravity of the war. It demonstrated the folly of ninety days' enlistments. It brought also, to every intelligent mind, the dangers that would inevitably result from disunion. On the 22nd of July, the day after ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... failings of blindness and perversity come in. They are determined to retain their husbands' complete allegiance, but their devices and contrivances are mostly dull blunders. Considering what a frail tie, based on illusion, binds the sexes, my wonder as a bachelor is that men are, as a rule, as faithful to their wives as they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... extremely picturesque," said Archie. "If only we had a wolf or two after us, the illusion would be complete. The Boy Trappers, or Half-Hours among the ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... were not happy even at that moment of delight and illusion. The gentler spirit of the maiden's sex was uppermost, and the sad story of his crime, which at their last meeting had been told her, lay with heavy influence at her heart. She was a gentle creature, and though dwelling in a wilderness, such is ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the man said, faintly. "I seem to have been hearing noises in the wood, for a long time; and when I heard you coming, I was by no means sure that it was not an illusion, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... been nominated and elected. He rose and stood looking out of the open window. Always I think of him standing there with the morning sunlight falling upon his face and shoulders. He had observed my emotion and I think it had touched him a little. There was a moment of silence. A curious illusion came to me then, for it seemed as if I heard the sound of distant music. Looking thoughtfully out ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... were a conviction, a fore-telling or merely a passing fancy created by the difficulty of the moment. He asked himself if he had heard himself saying, "She'll never be mine" and mistaken his own voice for the voice of Fate. Over the shingle bank the sea faded, a thin illusion, dim and promiseful of peace, and as the darkness and the sea filled Frank's soul he, the lightest and most life-loving of men, was filled for once with a sense of failure of life, and as his sorrowing thoughts ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... massive, Saracenic architecture, the outgrowth of the solid rock. They were vast ranges, apparently of enormous height, their color indescribable, deepest and reddest near the pine-draped bases, then gradually softening into wonderful tenderness, till the highest summits rose all flushed, and with an illusion of transparency, so that one might believe that they were taking on the hue of sunset. Below them lay broken ravines of fantastic rocks, cleft and canyoned by the river, with a tender unearthly light over all, the apparent warmth of a glowing clime, while I on the north side was in the shadow ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... larghetto, in which Jean-Christophe had depicted an ardent and ingenuous little soul, which was, or was meant to be, a portrait of Minna. No one would have recognized it, least of all herself; but the great thing was that it was perfectly recognizable to himself; and he had a thrill of pleasure in the illusion of feeling that he had caught the essence of his beloved. No work had ever been so easily or happily written; it was an outlet for the excess of love which the parting had stored up in him; and at the same time his care for the work of art, the effort necessary to dominate and concentrate ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... true Queen of Queens—had richer and finer taste in colour than the queens of fifty earthly kingdoms, as you will see when we come to the immense effort to gratify her in the glass of her windows. Illusion for illusion,—granting for the moment that Mary was an illusion,—the Virgin Mother in this instance repaid to her worshippers a larger return for their money than the capitalist has ever been able ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... in posturing before her, acting as he alone could act those most wonderful of all plays, watching with hateful, sardonic amusement the light and shadow of emotion upon her dirty face. Oh, he was a magician, no doubt at all of that! Past master in the rare art of a true genius, that of producing illusion. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... "three frustums of cones joined together, so as the lesser base of the former is always greater than the greatest of the succeeding one." Ornamental fillets, astragals, and moldings, borrowed from architecture, increased the illusion of a sectional piece. Tests with 24-pounders of different lengths showed guns from 18 to 21 calibers long gave generally the best performance, but what was true for the 24-pounder was not necessarily true for other pieces. Why was the 32-pounder "brass battering piece" 6 inches longer than ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did. Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with a laugh, that the landlady knew exactly what he wanted. Lifting the dish, he drained it at a gasp, though the milk almost choked him, and, to the apprehension of his hostess, set the bowl spinning on the table like a top. Another illusion of the disease was his: that he succeeded perfectly in deceiving everybody round him with his pathetic make-believe; and, unlike most deceivers, he deceived himself as well. The two actions, inconsistent as they were, were reconciled in him, as in all the race of consumptives, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... looked over the brink of eternity and shuddered with horror as he gazed. He who had seen a miracle might very soon, and probably would, if he did not like the doctrine it was to confirm, persuade himself that it was an illusion of his senses, for they have deceived him; unless, indeed, he saw a new miracle every day, and then he would be certain to get used to it. How much more easily could the Jews do this, who both hated the doctrine of Him who taught, and, not thinking miracles impossible, could ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... he and Iris now saw the majestic outlines of the Grand-pere for the first time. The great rock rose above the water like some immense Gothic cathedral. The illusion was heightened by a giant spire that towered grandly from the center of the islet. It looked a shrine built by nature in honor of its Creator, a true temple of the infinite, and the semblance was no illusion to these three castaways, since ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... frequent statements that they can do nothing except as permitted by their Conqueror. At one moment they know their powerlessness, at another they hope for revenge and victory. These are grave difficulties which deprive large parts of the poem of that illusion of probability or truth without which poetry cannot do its proper work. A further difficulty, from which ancient poets were free, arises from the purely intellectual and spiritual nature of the Christian God. It is as if Homer had had to deal with the divine unity of Plato instead of {157} ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the fond illusion of my heart, Such picture would I at that time have made; And seen the soul of truth in every part, A steadfast peace that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... was here, and the world's confusion, And the dust of the wheels of revolving life, Pain, labour, change, and the fierce illusion Of strife more vain than the sea's old strife. And her heart within her was vexed, and dizzy The sense of her soul as a wheel that whirled: She might not endure for a space that busy Loud coil of ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with his bride, had vanished from human ken; Rose, a shattered illusion, gone too. Better so—of course; though, intermittently, the man she had roused in him still ached for the sight and feel of her. She gave a distinct thrill to life: and, if he could not forgive her, neither could he instantly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... continually changing. Persons can retain a hobby or an illusion for a time or for all time. An illusion may live in our minds, even become a part of our lives. Life is but thought. Pleasant illusions are, as a rule, weapons against meanness and littleness. Illusions, when based upon the sensible and material ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... to have seen the tracks of two horses, to have detected the foot-prints of two men; and have described the particulars of an engagement, which you assert took place. Nothing of the sort occurred; pure illusion on your part." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... those men held the highest situations under the Government. Cambaceres filled the second place in the Empire, although at a great distance from the first; Merlin de Douai was also in power; and it is known how much liberty was stifled and hidden beneath the dazzling illusion of what is termed glory. A commission was named to examine the discourse of Chateaubriand. MM. Suard, de Segur, de Fontanes, and two or three other members of the same class of the Institute whose names I cannot recollect, were of opinion that the discourse should be read; ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... itself. The power that gives can take away; but of that power woman is no part. Mr. Sumner says, "The ballot is the one thing needful to the emancipated slave." Without it, he declares, his liberty is but an illusion, a jack-o'lantern which he will pursue in vain. Without the ballot, he reiterates, the slave becomes only sacrifice. And shall it not also be pre-eminently so with woman? Formed by Almighty power a little lower than the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... man of twenty, I was on the look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The world was to me, at this time, what a toy shop had been fifteen years before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society only served to prepare my mind for the friendship ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... these men, but they pretend that they honor it, for they fast on that day, as they do also on the Lord's Day, which is the day of Christ's resurrection. No doubt they do this because they do not believe that Christ the Lord was truly born in man's nature, but maintain that by a sort of illusion there was an appearance of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... shade,' or to 'hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' Meanwhile, that in which the Greeks most resembled us, 'the human heart by which we live,' for the very reason that it lies so near to us, is too apt to be lost from our conception of them. Another cause of this one-sided view is the illusion produced by the contemplation of statuary, together with the unapproachable perfection of form which every relic of Greek ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... whisky, being careful to hold to the nose during the act of swallowing, a sponge well saturated with pure alcohol. Between the pungency communicated to the taste by the horse-radish and the fumes of the spirit invading the nasal avenues, the illusion of a good "square drink" will ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... autocratically that the Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in order that Governor ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... enthusiasm was connected with a habit of thought that was rather critical than sentimental. Hamlet had a shrewd judgment, a lively and caustic wit, an exacting standard, and a turn for satire. He was fond of question and debate, an enemy to all illusion, impatient of dulness,[typo for dullness?] and not indisposed to alarm and bewilder it; and he had brought with him from Wittenberg a philosophy half stoical and half transcendental, with whose eccentricities he would torment the wisdom ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... who waited upon her so eagerly, with such sidelong glances of strange interest, was the tool of a jailer. And though the turning of the key in her own hand gave her a momentary sense of refuge from them, it was but a false illusion of the moment. There was neither refuge nor safety here. She ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that way, we saw only America! There was not one thing to remind us that we were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that rounded inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside down, and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat with out any hoops. These ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possible, till another turn shews an opening between them, with a glimpse of the lake beyond. The hills on the shores are higher, and the promontories larger, the farther the ship advances; and the islands appear to be merely projections of the continent, till a nearer approach dispels the illusion. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... Mr. Blake!" he soothed in a quavering voice. "Calm yourself! This illusion of yours about ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... another Raffles. Meanwhile a boat was lowered, and the sea scoured to no purpose, as is doubtless on record elsewhere. But either the setting sun, flashing over the waves, must have blinded all eyes, or else mine were victims of a strange illusion. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... believed by any considerable number of people, yet such was the case, and the fact that the Chinese government eventually bribed Yue Man-tze with official rank and a large sum of money to desist from his evil ways by no means tended to diminish the illusion. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... solitary figure could be seen advancing in the direction of the college, seeming from a distance to be that of a child, and reminding one of Little Red Riding-Hood in the fairy tale. The height of the side walls of snow aided the distance in producing this illusion. Upon coming nearer, one would have seen the child gradually assume the stature of a woman, and had he been a citizen of Warwick, he would have ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... you with the penalty inflicted upon you formerly, if anyone makes any illusion to the time you have spent in custody under remand, you have the right to prosecute the offender in the ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... getting into the sledge, she went toward the marine palace; and, while the guards prevented the crowd from following her into her new domain, she crossed the bridge and entered, with the seven ambassadors. At the same instant the bridge disappeared, as if, by an illusion not less visible than the others, the skillful machinist had wished to separate the past from the future, and fireworks expressed the joy of the Greenlanders at seeing their new sovereign. Meanwhile Madame de Maine was introduced by an usher into the most retired part of the palace, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... shrubs forsook us, and dark forest trees pressed grimly around, as we traversed the noble stone bridges that those grand old Cambodians loved to build over comparatively insignificant streams. The moon, touching with fantastic light the crumbling arches and imparting a charm of illusion to the scene, the clear spangled sky, the startling voices of the night, and the influence of the unknown, the mysterious, and the weird, overcame us like a dream. Truly there is naught of the commonplace or vulgar ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... until the mass was sufficient to support his weight. With a double ended paddle rudely shaped from the thin buttress roots of the red mangrove, and comic in the crudeness and disproportion of its parts, he felt himself safe miles out to sea. When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. If it became necessary for his wife to attend him on his marine excursions, she was towed behind, and used her own pedal power. Possibly this primitive raft is the pathetic ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... when we are at our wit's end, we may apostrophize the difficulty, and exclaim, "O thou invisible spirit, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!" We hesitate to spoil this serviceable illusion: for as we have known some good people, of a sort, who would be distressed to find that there was no hell to burn up the opponents of their orthodoxy; we fear lest many would be disappointed if they found out that the infernal spirit was not at the bottom of our abysmal ignorance. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... loose, because her mother liked the appearance of youth imparted by hanging hair, and would often desire her daughter to leave off her outer skirt and walk only in her petticoats to heighten the illusion of girlishness. Her head was shaped very tenderly and softly; it was so small that when her hair was twisted up on it it seemed much too delicate to bear so great a burden. Her eyes were gray, limpidly tender and shy, drooping under weighty ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... their great weakness. For if, while turning their backs on the narrow gate, they are dragged by their desire for the Occult one step in the direction of the broad and more inviting gates of that golden mystery which glitters in the light of illusion, woe to them! It can lead only to Dugpa-ship, and they will be sure to find themselves very soon landed on that Via Fatale of the Inferno, over whose ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... that is being emptied; it seemed to enter the ground from whence it sprang; the shining summits of the icebergs grew above it; others, submerged till then, came out like new islands; by an optical illusion the travellers seemed to be mounting with their icebergs above the fog. Soon the top of the sledge appeared, then the dogs, then about thirty other animals, then enormous moving masses, and Dick jumping about in and out ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... to blush, though there is an everlasting doubt in my mind that it may have been the colour of the candle-shade producing that illusion. It was a strange thing to see, at all events, and, taking it for a physiological fact at the time, I let my willing eyes linger upon it as long as it (or its ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... holden odious to Prophesie by the deuill, yet whome these kinde of Spirites carryed awaie, and informed, they were thought to be sonsiest and of best life. To speake of the many vaine trattles founded vpon that illusion: How there was a King and Queene of Phairie, of such a iolly court & train as they had, how they had a teynd, & dutie, as it were, of all goods: how they naturallie rode and went, eate and drank, and did all other actiones like naturall men and women: I thinke it liker VIRGILS Campi Elysij, ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... in battle and for giving them the first chance of escape in all dangerous emergencies: in short, for treating their lives as more valuable than male lives, is not in the least a chivalrous reason, though men may consent to it under the illusion of chivalry. It is a simple matter of necessity; for if a large proportion of women were killed or disabled, no possible readjustment of our marriage law could avert the depopulation and consequent political ruin of the country, because a woman with several husbands bears fewer ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... delightful was it to hear Mrs. Aubyn waken the echoes of academic drawing-rooms with audacities surpassing those of her printed page. Her intellectual independence gave a touch of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of college friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies. Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to each other the augur's wink behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked together in that light of young omniscience from which fate so ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... business as to search for scientific truth, arrive at religious harmony, or attain to justice. When one must first question words and intentions, and start from the premise that everything said and written is meant to offer us illusion in place of truth, life becomes strangely complicated. This is the case to-day. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy, so much subtle legerdemain, that we all have no end of trouble to inform ourselves on the simplest subject and the one that most concerns ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... reached the conclusion that since my sight was so helplessly deceived, I should have to depend upon the touch. In no other way could I detect the true basis of the illusion; and this way was a hard one. By much argument and self-persuasion I prevailed upon myself to climb the fence, and with a sort of despairing doggedness to let myself ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... familiar and hail fellow. Almost I felt his breath, And the muffled sound of his heart-beats; Almost I grasped his hand, And shook the antediluvian, With a shake of grimmest fellowship Trying to cozen him of his grim secret. But sudden the gusty wind came, Laughing away the illusion, And I was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... seemed to flare toward him as flame is blown, acknowledging the claim he made upon her; but the look passed like an illusion, and she said seriously, "The sagamore should speak to Father Petit. This ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... it once loved "Thou-shalt": now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with the starred 'tiare's' white, And white birds in the dark ravine, And 'flamboyants' ablaze at night, And jewels, and evening's after-green, And dawns of pearl and gold and red, Mamua, your lovelier head! And there'll no more be one who dreams Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff, Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems, All time-entangled human love. And you'll no longer swing and sway Divinely down the scented shade, Where feet to Ambulation fade, And moons are lost in endless Day. How shall ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... construction, selection, and elimination—the main laws of artistry—as ever was the romantic or rhapsodic play: The question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed, much more study than has yet been given to it. The aim of the dramatist employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of actual life passing on the stage as to compel the spectator to pass through an experience of his own, to think, and talk, and move with the people he sees thinking, talking, and moving in front of him. A false ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Renan or any one else realise what is involved, on his supposition, not merely, as he says, of "illusion or madness," but of wilful deceit and falsehood, in the history of Lazarus, even according to his lame and hesitating attempt to soften it down and extenuate it; and then put side by side with it the terms in which M. Renan has summed up the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... established a happy illusion in your son's heart, Mrs. Alving; and assuredly you ought ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... Confucianism, some Christianity and syncretic Chondogyo note: autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent; government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... splendid, indifferent rascal shared the sensations of no living man. Long and long ago he had sounded life and found it hollow. Still, as if he were a woman, I loved him for this accursed indifference. Was it because his emotions were so hopelessly inaccessible, or because he saw through the illusion we were chasing; or because—because—who knows what it was? We have no litmus-paper test ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... listening with every one of his pores. Suddenly a whirlwind of applause greeted the appearance of the prima donna. She came forward coquettishly to the footlights and curtsied to the audience with infinite grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a vast multitude, the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume which was most attractive for the time, all conspired in that woman's favor. Sarrasine cried aloud with pleasure. He saw before him at that moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had hitherto sought here and there in nature, ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... Give up the illusion that absolute seclusion and silence are necessary to study. I do not say that they are not at times desirable. But they do not of themselves generate earnest thought. The vacant mind, that has not yet learned to think, is when thus ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... school because of the infection. My feet tapped on the floor with joy, though I tried to appear unconcerned. Then, as I nursed my sudden hope of freedom, a little fearfully lest it should prove an illusion, a new and enchanting idea came to me. I slipped from the room, ran upstairs to my bedroom and, standing by the side of my bed, tore open my waistcoat and shirt with clumsy, trembling fingers. One, two, three, four, five! I counted the spots in a triumphant voice, and then ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... those who are not actually familiar with them. The amount of nonsense, untruth, sometimes mischievous, often silly, talked by otherwise rational people about the theatre, is inconceivable were it not for one's own personal experience. It is one of the penalties of the glamour, the illusion of the actor's art, that the public who see men and women in fictitious but highly exciting and moving situations on the stage, cannot believe that when they quit the theatre, they leave behind them the emotions, the actions they have portrayed there. And as there is no class of public ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... fair preparations? a rich Banquet, Musick, and every place stuck with adornment, Fit for a Princes welcome; what new game Has Fortune now prepar'd to shew me happy? And then again to sink me? 'tis no illusion, Mine eyes are not deceiv'd, all these are ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... at that early age—he couldn't have been more than twenty—he had seen all there was to see in the world that was worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion, is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she said a little later, as she took her seat in a deck chair, "to complete the illusion that we are sailing along somewhere on the Devonshire coast. The hills are higher and more wooded, but the general idea is the same. I suppose I ought to feel it very shocking, cruising about with you, without anyone but Anna with ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... has two names, and everything is twofold. The name of male Thought as it faces the world is Philosophy, but the name it bears in Tirna-nog is Delusion. Female Thought is called Socialism on earth, but in Eternity it is known as Illusion; and this is so because there has been no matrimony of minds, but only an hermaphroditic propagation of automatic ideas, which in their due rotation assume dominance and reign severely. To the world ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... he intended to leave it for the winter; and this probably being known to his enemies, they made an effort to destroy him before he got beyond their reach. He, at all events, seems to have been under the spell of no pleasing illusion as to the supposed tranquillity and the reign of order. On the contrary, he is alleged to have stated that more outrages than ever are committed, and that but for the deterrent force employed by the Government, there would be no living in the country, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... handsomest form, by tallness and well-proportioned limbs, by patience, by sincerity, by affluence, by compassion, by excellence of form, and by might. He shines, endued with all celestial weapons of wonderful form and make. He has Yoga for his illusion. He is possessed of a thousand eyes. He is free from every stain or fault. He is high-minded. He is endued with heroism. He is an object of pride with all his friends. He is dear to all his kinsmen and relatives and they are dear to him. He is endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... speechlesse, the third day after when he had laine for a time in a slumber or soft sleepe, at the time of his waking, he fetched a deepe sigh, and thus said; "Oh Lord God almightie, if this be not a vaine fantasticall illusion, but a true vision which I haue seene, grant me space to vtter the same vnto these that stand heere present, or else not." And herewith hauing his speech perfect, he declared how he had seene two moonks stand by him as he thought, whome in his youth ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) - The Eight Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies, had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of the surfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him, for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belief firmly that Mars represented ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... hot water springs to which he attributed the origin of the vapour he had noticed, Phina Island being in no way volcanic did not appear to contain any, and he had to content himself with thinking that he had twice been the victim of an illusion. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... summoned the Vision. Once again he conjured up the Illusion. Once again, tortured with doubt, racked with a deathless grief, he craved an Answer of the night. Once again, mystic that he was, he sent his mind out from him across the enchanted sea of the Supernatural. Hope, of what he did not know, roused ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... thought nothing could have turned me, neither general despair nor personal fear. For I believed that the deep secrets of nature were being revealed to me; I felt that everything was immortal and that death was only a pleasant illusion. But I really did not think very much about it, since I was not particularly in a mood for mental synthesis and analysis. But I gladly lost myself in all those blendings and intertwinings of joy and pain from which spring the spice of life and the flower of feeling—spiritual ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it, then, to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." To this Huxley says: "Permit me to enforce this wise advice, Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... length, heaving out those peculiar lazy, deep, and long-drawn breathings which give such an impression of supineness and strength. Some of the watch were asleep, and the others were perfectly still, so that there was nothing to break the illusion, and I stood leaning over the bulwarks, listening to the slow breathing of the mighty creatures—now one breaking the water just alongside, whose black body I almost fancied that I could see through the fog; and again another, which I could just hear in the distance—until the low and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... yourself," she continued, "to shatter one illusion after another. You have made me feel quite old and worldly to-night, and the worst of it is that you are invariably right. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... relate, that no sooner had he mastered the Event, than men on the instant perceived what illusion had beguiled them, and, in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out, and the illusion vanished. For she was only a half-caste, beautiful as a dream, or he who had not seen a woman for many a long day—he never counted the black gins women—thought so, but only a despised half-caste, outcast both from father's ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... a country which the fin de siecle scarcely touched with its graceful, graceless maladies. He began his career, after a penetrating study of Balzac, with The Philosophy of Disenchantment and The Anatomy of Negation, erudite, witty challenges to illusion, deriving primarily from Hartmann and Schopenhauer but enriching their arguments with much inquisitive learning in current French philosophers and poets. Erudition, however, was not Saltus's sole equipment: his pessimism came, in part, from his literary masters but ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... in feature and manner, and were unlike the turbaned braves of China, who, armed no better than these men, still regard, as did their forefathers, fierceness of aspect as an important factor in warfare (rostro feroz ao enemigo!)—an illusion also shared in the English army, where monstrous bearskin shakos were introduced to increase the apparent height of the soldiers. The officer in command was late in overtaking me. As soon as he came within horse-length he let down his queue and bowed reverently, and I could ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... see me more." Her mother, pallid as death, seemed to stand before her, freezing confession on her heart and lips, looking at her threateningly, as she had so often seen her, as if the very thought were guilt. The rapidly advancing twilight, the large and lonely room, all added to that fearful illusion; and if Ellen did succeed in praying it was with desperate fervor for strength not to betray her brother. If ever there were a martyr spirit, it was enshrined in that young, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had happened, and who could swear that the days of fairies had passed? To meet a dream-Irene on his way to Kieff was unlikely, to rescue her from an infuriated mob (for though they insisted that she was in no danger he was no less insistent that he rescued her, since this illusion was the keystone to all others), to be sitting at lunch with such a vision of youthful loveliness—all these things were sufficiently outside the range of probabilities to encourage the development of his ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... and went by himself alone, sad and sorrowful. That night, as he lay by the roadside, he looked upward to the clear, calm, honest stars. They seemed to say to him, "See all things as they really are. This was his way. 'In spirit and in truth' means in the light of no illusion. Not all the visions of mist or of sunshine can make the journey ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint—leave the whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow—and the retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and inconveniently fertile—enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... BY A NAVAL OFFICER.] It is a scene that ought to be visited by a few congenial spirits, quietly and leisurely. On the present occasion the effect and the illusion were dissipated by the glare of the torch lights, the hallooing and screaming of those present, and the thumping of hammers and blocks of stone to get fragments of the crystal. This part of the grotto is certainly the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... nightmare into which I had wandered. The slight unreality which had hung like a cloud over the whole of the evening, the strangeness of my being there with such a companion, the curious atmosphere of the place, which so far had completely puzzled me,—these things may all have served to heighten the illusion. Yet it seemed to me then that, dreaming or waking, this thing with which I was confronted was the last impossibility. I suppose that I must have stared at him like some wild creature, for the conversation around us ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... injurious degree of air-pressure. The distended portion of the stomach assumes a funnel-like form ending at the apex in a depression with radiating folds, that leads the observer to think he is looking at the pylorus. The foreshortening produced by the lens system also contributes to this illusion. The best lens-system gastroscope is that of Henry Janeway, which combines the open-tube ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... midnight and the presence of a prowler on the premises caused his heart to gallop wildly. He seized the pistol, crept to the window and peered cautiously out. Between the crash of the breakers he listened intently and had decided that the steps had been the illusion of a dream when a sound in the room below renewed his alarm. He gained the door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about, apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The swish ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... regarding him. He hardly heard her for the first part of the play: and he thought with such rage of the humiliation to which she had subjected him, that he began to fancy he was jealous and in love with her still. But that illusion did not last very long. He ran round to the stage-door of the theatre to see her if possible, but he did not succeed. She passed indeed under his nose with a female companion, but he did not know her,—nor did she recognise him. The ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... charming illusion was rudely dispelled! She saw herself even contemptuously abandoned by her subjects, who transferred their allegiance to a couple of "bread-and-butter school-girls," as she sneeringly designated Emma ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "You are my Three Wise Men of the West. You are all magicians. You took me out of the desert, you have made life beautiful for me. Don't dispel the illusion, Soda-Water Sam. I'd rather hear you play El Capitan than listen ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... turned into tenements, the solution of the most urgent part of the housing-question will still be an affair of decades. For the sake of the last remnant of our self-respect we must finally tear asunder that web of economic falsehood, woven out of ignorance, mental lethargy, concealment and illusion, which has taken the place of the political. Let us see any one attempt to prove that Germany can carry on, I do not say a well-off, but even a petty tradesman's kind of existence, unless our means of production can by some stroke of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... far too lynx-eyed ever to be taken in by any such apparent camouflage. On the contrary, it adds yet another ten years to the real age, and classes the dyed one among the "poor old things" for evermore. No, the truth of the matter is that, to keep and preserve the illusion of youthfulness long after youth has slipped away into the dead years behind us, is a far more difficult and complicated matter than merely painting the face, turning brown hair red, and being divorced. Perhaps one of the most rejuvenating effects is to show the world, while ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the moonlight shone upon it, the reflection glanced back to the eye-ball, and a radiant form apparently glided through the chamber. But the spectre vanished as the eyelid passed over, and swept away the illusion. She leaned her glowing cheek upon a hand white and exquisitely formed as the purest statuary: an image of more perfect loveliness never glanced through a lady's lattice. She carelessly took up her cithern. A few wild chords flew ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... dear one, but they do not know, and it is not worth while destroying an innocent illusion, we have so few of them ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... to them. We thought, at first sight, that these luminous points, which floated in the air, indicated some new eruption of the great volcano of Lancerota; for we recollected that Bouguer and La Condamine, in scaling the volcano of Pichincha, were witnesses of the eruption of Cotopaxi. But the illusion soon ceased, and we found that the luminous points were the images of several stars magnified by the vapours. These images remained motionless at intervals, they then seemed to rise perpendicularly, descended sideways, and returned to the point whence they had departed. This motion lasted one ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... How many youthful persons, deterred for a time by a religious education and sedate habits, have paused—and paused—and paused on the brink of danger; like Cæsar ere he crossed the Rubicon; their passions and their conscience have held a warm debate—till induced in some fatal hour of illusion to comply, they have progressively advanced to a state of confirmation in guilt, and have made a covenant ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... His guests shivered again. A strange dullness—whether of the body or spirit they could not tell—was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people sitting with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Jaquerius remarked reasonably enough that even if the affair was an illusion, it was none the less heretical, as the followers of Diana and Herodias were necessarily heretics in their ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... while her sufferings were so very cruel to her? She had encountered the evils of this elopement to escape what had appeared to her the greater evils of a detested marriage. Steinmarc was very much to be hated. But might it not be that even that would have been better than this? Poor girl! the illusion even of her love was being frozen cold within her during the agony of that morning. All the while the train went thundering on through the night, now rushing into a tunnel, now crossing a river, and at every ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... Solomon, who had gone to sit in a house of glass to receive her. The queen was deceived by an illusion. She thought the king was sitting in water, and as she stepped across to him she raised her garment to keep it dry. On her bared feet the king noticed hair, and he said to her: "Thy beauty is the beauty of a woman, but thy hair is masculine; hair is an ornament to a man, but ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... mantel-piece when he refuses to "have in more champagne-wine," and lock him in the sideboard when he "won't give up his property." And I see—yes, I declare I see, as I saw when Dickens was reading, such was the illusion of voice and gesture—that dying flame of Scrooge's fire, which leaped up when Marley's ghost came in, and then fell again. Nor can I forbear to mention, among these reminiscences, that there is also a passage in one of Thackeray's lectures ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... "things hoped for," "things not seen." And at a time like that of the first readers of the Epistle every such necessity was enhanced indefinitely, both by the perils and threatenings which they had to face and by the majestic illusion to which they were continually exposed—the illusion under which the order of the Law, because it was Divine in origin and magnificent in its visible embodiment, looked as if it must be the permanent, the final, phase of sacred truth and ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... subjects was but natural, since for many years the Egyptians bad not witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous era of Thutmosis III. was about to return, and that the wealth of Naharaim would once more flow into Thebes as of old. Their illusion was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other. Maurusaru, King of the Khati, and subsequently his son Mautallu, withstood the Pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to the child she seemed to him now to be. They had been playing together, pretending they were two pilgrims bound for the Heavenly City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice game. He nursed the exquisite illusion that this time he had pleased her by ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... bewildered before, he was now almost terrified; for there was a light in the room; the window was an orange oblong as of yore; and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the night when he stood and shouted to the stars in his perplexity. The illusion only endured an instant; but it left him somewhat unmanned, rubbing his eyes and staring at the outline of the house and the black night behind it. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if he must have stood there quite a long time, there came a renewal of the noises on the road: and he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hairless, his face sickly white, his night gear fluttering, was as starkly bodeful as if he were newly risen from the grave, garbed in death's cerements. Vaniman's presence on the scene added to the terrifying illusion produced ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... he understood how eye-strain and difference of refractive power of the layers of heated air, or reflected light from the ground and such physical considerations could cause these illusions. But what he could not understand was how it came about that several men would experience exactly the same illusion. Why should a post simultaneously appear as an Arab on horseback or an Arab crawling stealthily on the ground to half a dozen men? Mirage, like Rumour, is a curious thing. It may have some inner connection with the set of a man's feelings. It has its ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... really are affected by altitude, but weariness, lack of muscular as well as mental control, often creates altitudinous illusion. Of this condition I had an example while guiding a party of three women and one man to the top of Long's Peak. We climbed above timberline, headed through Storm Pass, and finally reached Keyhole without a single incident to mar ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... usage prescribes that we must, in the case of Smollett, accredit more particularly to the spleen. Whether dyspeptic or "splenetic," this was not the sort of man to see things through a veil of pleasant self-generated illusion. He felt under no obligation whatever to regard the Grand Tour as a privilege of social distinction, or its discomforts as things to be discreetly ignored in relating his experience to the stay-at-home public. He was not the sort of man that the Tourist Agencies of to-day would ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... were not strange, if even men of the most enlarged thought should question, whether human nature could ever, in any monarch, reach that height of depravity, as to warrant, in revolted subjects, this last act of extraordinary jurisdiction. That illusion, if it be an illusion, which teaches us to pay a sacred regard to the persona of princes, is so salutary, that to dissipate it by the formal trial and punishment of a sovereign, will have more pernicious effects ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... poems to her before her death, which seems to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who says that "Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse." She was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this octave to strike a note of ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the limbs become more defined, and the torso grows, and becomes more and more human—this is one of the remarkable circumstances connected with the statue. There is life in the wide hips, chest, and shoulders; so marvellous is the illusion that not only the parts that remain appear animated, but the imagination restores the missing and mutilated pieces, and the statue seems entire. I did not see that the hand was missing and the arms gone; the idea of form suggested by the existing portions was carried ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... began to see that this must be the very hallucination of which he had read, a sweet illusion of green fields and crystal water, which often precedes actual death by thirst and starvation. He trembled, he prayed secretly to God to spare her, and not to kill his new-found child, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade |
