"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gloom through which he had struggled, could not find words enough in which to praise God for this promise of brighter days. He prayed that it might not be fleeting, and that morning might not show this gleam of brightness to be only imaginary. But the morrow came, and proved yesterday's events to be real and true, and Uncle Richard still without his stern and gloomy face, and ready to perfect the plans which they had discussed the ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... Rock, She plunged beside it, into gulphs profound. —She slept not, ate not, heeded no kind word, Caress of fondness, or benignant prayer: She only shriek'd, "My boy! my beautiful! They bind his hands!" And then with frantic cries She struggled 'gainst imaginary foes, Till strength was gone. Through the long syncope Her never-resting lips essay'd to form The gasping sounds, "My boy! my beautiful! Hence! Caitiffs! hence! my boy! my beautiful!" And in that unquell'd madness life went out, Like lamp before ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... seigneur had indeed fallen soundly asleep. Returning from his gallant adventure, he no longer felt the same ardor and courage to defend himself against distant or imaginary dangers with which he had rushed into the perils of the night. He had even postponed till the morrow the cleaning of his soiled garments; a great blunder, in which all else conspired. It was true that, lacking the moonlight, he had ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... is the last of the historical plays we shall have to speak of; and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to indulge our imaginations, we had rather do it upon an imaginary theme; if we are to find subjects for the exercise of our pity and terror, we prefer seeking them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a SORENESS to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know that ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... there, on the horse," added the driver, sweeping an imaginary horse's head, with a fine ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... monstruosa opinionum portenta mentioned by the XIXth General Council, alias the First Council of the Vatican. But he only accepts it with a limitation. He cleaves to the ethical, not to the intellectual, worship of "Nature," which moderns define to be an "unscientific and imaginary synonym for the sum total of observed phenomena." Consequently he holds to the "dark and degrading doctrines of the Materialist," the "Hylotheist"; in opposition to the spiritualist, a distinction far more marked in the West than in the East. Europe draws a hard, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... informed him of every circumstance of the quarrel; at which the vizier, burst out into a fit of laughter, and said, "This is one of the strangest occurrences I ever heard. Is it possible, my son, that your quarrel should rise so high about an imaginary marriage? I am sorry you fell out with your elder brother upon such a frivolous matter; but he was also wrong in being angry at what you only spoke in jest, and I ought to thank heaven for that difference which has procured me such a son-in-law. But," continued ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... sounds they hear, so the men and women of an early time personified everything that lived or moved or gave any sign of life. They filled the earth, air, and sea with imaginary beings who had power over the elements and affected the lives of men. There were nymphs in the sea, dryads in the trees, kindly or destructive spirits in the air, household gods who watched over the home, and greater gods who managed the affairs of the world. When ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... was at last on the table, he felt more at ease; his host's genial manner gave him confidence; and he was led on to talk of his work and prospects at Cloon, of the long drives over the "mountainy roads," and the often imaginary ailments of the patients who demanded his attendance, and their proneness when really ill to take the advice of priest or passer-by on sanitary matters rather than his own. "But I'll get out of it, I hope, some day," he said, looking at Louise; "when I get a few more paying patients and the infirmary, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... will have no objection to take service with us." "What!" cried the prisoner; "I go with the French to fight against the English! Your honour must excuse me; I could not do it to save my life." [722] This poor fisherman, whether he was a real or an imaginary person, spoke the sense of the nation. The beacon on the ridge overlooking Teignmouth was kindled; the High Tor and Causland made answer; and soon all the hill tops of the West were on re, Messengers were riding hard all night from Deputy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... passes and defiles; he fought glorious battles, gained magnificent victories, and possessed himself of all the treasures of Asiatic wealth and power. It ought to be stated, however, in justice to the poet, that, in narrating these imaginary exploits, he had sufficient delicacy to represent Philip and the Persian monarch ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a volume of poetry was useful, because it gave one something to learn by heart and repeat during the blank hours of the daily march, when the idle mind is all too apt to think of food in times of hunger, or possibly of purely imaginary grievances, which may become distorted into real foundations of discord under the abnormal strain of living for months in the unrelieved company of three other men. If your companions have much the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... went to a big switch and threw it. The dynamo hummed, raised its pitch to a high, almost intolerable keening note. The ring of pseudo-searchlights seemed in an ominous sort of way to spring into life. The impression must have been entirely imaginary; actually the projectors didn't move in the slightest, didn't even vibrate. Yet the conviction persisted in the minds of both Jim and Dennis that some black, invisible force was pouring down those conduits, to ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... came near home, and stirred up the minds that would have cared for little else. Just as four hundred years before, Jack Straw was an imaginary champion whose name inflamed the people to rise, so now Jack Swing, or whoever it was who acted in that name, sent messages round that such and such a place should be attacked at such ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... young people who had two or three separate imaginary lives, which they took up on such occasions. One was a supposed life in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Robert used to plan the whole house and grounds; just what horses he would keep, what hounds, what cows, and other stock. He planned all the neighbors' houses, and who should ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... religion was more or less a mystery and there was no divorce from it of philosophy. The popular theology, taking the multitude of allegories and symbols for realities, degenerated into a worship of the celestial luminaries, of imaginary Deities with human feelings, passions, appetites, and lusts, of idols, stones, animals, reptiles. The Onion was sacred to the Egyptians, because its different layers were a symbol of the concentric heavenly spheres. Of course the popular religion could not satisfy the deeper ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... much imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear Grasped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... far and wide the vast expanse of down, cutting sharply against the sky, and dwarfing to mere shrubs the clumps of old fir trees that relieved its magnificent monotony. I was deep in a daydream and an imaginary conversation with Frank Lovell—in which I was running over with much mental eloquence what I should say, and what he would say, and what I should reply to that—when a shrill whistle caused me to start and turn suddenly round; whilst at the same instant a ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... same position as she was before her marriage. Nor does he give the wife any corresponding rights to get rid of her husband. These, and a hundred other difficulties all too visible to duller eyes, he utterly ignores as he proceeds on his violent way of deliverance from what he calls "imaginary and scarecrow sins." Nothing is allowed to stand in his path. For instance, the awkward texts in the Bible, whose authority he accepts, are given new interpretations with which it is to be feared his temper had more to do than his knowledge of the meaning of Greek words. But ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... not have been said of the provinces. There the landed proprietors were in a very different frame of mind. They had to struggle with a multitude of urgent practical affairs which left them little time for idyllic dreaming about an imaginary millennium. Their serfs had been emancipated, and what remained to them of their estates had to be reorganised on the basis of free labour. Into the semi-chaotic state of things created by such far-reaching changes, legal and economic, they did not wish to see any ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... direct: 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 for English versification ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Physical 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. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... deliberate. He relates in his book, "Lourdes," the story of an imaginary case of a girl, suffering from tuberculosis, who goes to Lourdes as a pilgrim, and is, apparently, cured of her disease. It breaks out, however, again during her return home; and the case would appear therefore to be one of those in which, owing ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... know about him, Thomas! What are his faults?" he snapped, and settled back to squint at his imaginary stage again. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Academy, and performed many other duties cast upon him, besides appointing all the committees of the House. The Speaker is naturally the person to whom members, employees, and others having business with the House flock for advice, assistance, and with their real or imaginary grievances. An extensive correspondence and social duties demand much of the Speaker's time. All this, independent of his real duties as presiding officer of the House, in performing what is expected, without time for deliberation, to decide correctly all parliamentary questions and inquiries. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... say, Austria might have recovered not only Parma and Piacenza, but the kingdom of Naples itself,—no France at present able to hinder it, no Spain ever able. But Austria, contrary to expectation, would not: a Country tenacious enough of its rights, real and imaginary; greedy enough of Italy, but of Silesia much more! The matter was deliberated in Council at Vienna; but the result was magnanimously, No. "Finish this Friedrich first; finish this Silesia. Nothing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... imaginary line which divided the two salons unless she was called upon to do so. She was still summoned like a child to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and who were kind enough to wish to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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
... them. An oft-quoted instance of their cruelty is recorded of a bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being only a vile peasant. To this insult Henry's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... maid wearied of her organ and her picture-making, she seated herself at the card-table, and played l'hombre, or tarok, with two imaginary adversaries, enjoying the manner in which the copper coins won the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.[44] Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. I remember some who declared that one part of Misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them. It now grew rather lighter, which we imagined to be rather ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... written since the world began has been written by some one person, by an "I," though that "I" might have been omitted from the composition or replaced by the journalistic "we." To some extent the journalist does sink his personality in that imaginary personality of his paper, a personality built up, like the human personality, by its past; and the result is a pompous, colourless, lifeless simulacrum. But in every other department of letters the trail of the "I" is over every page and every sentence. The most impersonal essays ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... crowning the audience.> Both Leaders: Crowned by the throngs again, <On this line they walk backward, playing great imaginary harps.> You shall make songs again, Singing along For ten ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... He would 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 ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his brother without cause, let him put his finger to his lips, and forgive others as he would be forgiven. One's first [5] lesson is to learn one's self; having done this, one will naturally, through grace from God, forgive his brother and love his enemies. To avenge an imaginary or an actual wrong, is suicidal. The law of our God and the rule of our church is to tell thy brother his fault and thereby help [10] him. If this rule fails in effect, then take the next Scrip- tural step: drop this member's name from the church, and thereafter "let the dead ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Like a bat.] The description of an imaginary being, who is called Typhurgo, in the Zodiacus Vitae, has some touches very ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... was now at hand. Do not laugh at me, ye self-assured ones, with your comfortable sense of your own powers,—ye who care as little for an audience as for a field of cabbages,—do not jeer at one who has felt the pangs of shyness and quailed under the imaginary terrors of a first public appearance. For you it may be a small matter to face an audience,—that nearest approximation to the many-headed monster which we can palpably encounter; but for one whose diffidence had become the standard of that quality to his acquaintances the venture was perilous and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... this performance Eustacia was half in doubt about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. A series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... adornments lent their inviting charm. The general plan of these houses seems to have been of Greek origin, as well as the system of decoration used on the walls. These, when not wainscoted with marble, were covered with fantastic, but often artistic, painted decorations, in which an imaginary architecture as of metal, afantastic and arbitrary perspective, illusory pictures, and highly finished figures were the chief elements. These were executed in brilliant colors with excellent effect. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Mattern," continued, "if I may say so without offense, the age (real or imaginary) of the speakers may make a difference in Albuquerque, but with ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... attorney-general of the province, and later on a judge of the supreme court. Mr. Wetmore, when haranguing St. John audiences, used to depict the dreadful effects of confederation in a manner peculiarly his own. His great plea was an imaginary dialogue between himself and his little son, that precocious infant asking him in lisping tones, "Father, what country do we live in?" to which he would reply, "My dear son, you have no country, for Mr. Tilley has sold us to the Canadians ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... the gentleman has avoided the capital mistake of commenting on things that actually exist. Comments on its facts are generally esteemed by the people of a country, impertinent and unjust; and your true way to succeed, is to treat as freely as possible its imaginary peculiarities." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... race. A young noble is at a ball; must he quit its bright enchantments, and the society of the fair whom he admires, because a bearded coachman is freezing without? A beauteous lady, wrapped in ermine and velvet, is weeping in the theatre over the woes of some imaginary heroine; would you have her dry her tearful eyes, and leave the scene of touching interest and elegant excitement, because icicles are hanging from the locks of her little postilion, and his head is gradually sinking on his breast, as the fatal sleep steals over him? Selfish!— ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... intelligence, but matter, through its own arrangement, produces intelligence. Let us fix intelligence where it is, in the organized body; we must not detach it from its support to perch it in the sky on an imaginary throne. This disproportionate conception, once introduced into our minds, ends in perverting the natural play of our sentiments, and, like a monstrous parasite, abstracts for itself all our substance.[3315] The first interest of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... their ferocity, and were proportionately gratifying. These he called his "war arrows," and would send one into a tree and watch it shiver, then grunt "Ugh, heap good," and rejoice in the squirming of the imaginary ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my imaginary assailant was only Hans, who emerged from some place where he had been hiding; a ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... his first aim to make his people look as if they belonged to their station. The "mute inglorious Milton" and Maud Muller with her "nameless longings" had no place on his canvases. His was the genuine peasant of field and farm, no imaginary denizen of the poets' Arcady. "The beautiful is the fitting," was his final summary of aesthetic theory, and the theory was put into practice on ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... the instrument of Warwick's vengeance, and had thrown himself entirely in the power of his most inveterate enemies; that the mortal injuries which the one royal family had suffered from the other, were now past all forgiveness, and no imaginary union of interests could ever suffice to obliterate them; that even if the leaders were willing to forget past offences, the animosity of their adherents would prevent a sincere coalition of parties, and would, in spite of all temporary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... party leaders. Especially in international diplomacy is truthfulness far to seek. Secretary Hay, indeed, stated in the following words: "The principles which have guided us have been of limpid simplicity. We have set no traps; we have wasted no time in evading the imaginary traps of others. There might be worse reputations for a country to acquire than that of always speaking the truth, and always expecting it from others. In bargaining we have tried not to get the worst ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... on a rug surrounded by foreign consuls. Anton, dressed in his high-school uniform, with his grandfather's old sabre coming to his shoulder, used to act the part of the Governor with extraordinary subtlety and carry out a review of imaginary Cossacks. Often the children would gather round their mother or their old nurse to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Direck would have found it difficult to recall afterwards what it was they chattered about, except that somehow he acquired the valuable knowledge that Miss Corner was called Cecily, and her sister Letty, and then—so far old Essex custom held—the masculine section was left for a few minutes for some imaginary drinking, and a lighting of cigars and cigarettes, after which everybody went through interwoven moonlight and afterglow to the barn. Mr. Britling sat down to a pianola in the corner and began the familiar cadences of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... jailer to let me out o' this here abominably real-lookin' imaginary lockup. Hang ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... mentions at the same time with them, he does not inform us. Nor can I learn that any other person, whether Greek or Barbarian, except himself, has ever yet been so fortunate as to meet with these imaginary countries. ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... a shudder, not a real shudder though. The sort one makes over a purely imaginary prospect. Some expression of her feeling must have betrayed itself in Mary's face, for Paula, happening to look at her just ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the State finances were suffering a violent reaction from the extravagant legislation of 1836 and 1837. One of the popular ways of attacking an obnoxious political doctrine in that day was writing letters from some imaginary backwoods settlement, setting forth in homely vernacular the writer's views of the question, and showing how its application affected his part of the world. These letters were really a rude form of the "Bigelow Papers" or "Nasby Letters." Soon after ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... then he had spent days and nights such as sap the foundations of a man's moral being and shake convictions which appeared impregnable. The catastrophe which had come upon him was proportionate in its effects to the immeasurable happiness which preceded it. Remember that it was not only the imaginary wrong from which his mind suffered; the fact that Thyrza loved Egremont was in itself an agony almost enough to threaten his reason. His love was not demonstrative; perhaps he did not himself know all its force until jealousy taught him. How, think you, did he spend that night on the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Genii, one holding a pulley, one upholding the column upon his hands, alternate with two Disciples, for whom their extended wings create a background. One of these is complemented by hammer and anvil, the other by furnace and tongs. Both share the column's weight on powerful arms. The imaginary figures show potential strength in repose, the human figures potent strength in action. The frieze in low ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... could not admit of impulsion; for to do this I must have known that a celestial matter was the agent. But so far from knowing that there is any such matter, I have proved it to be merely imaginary. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Porters,—they are not beautiful either, to a taciturn Majesty of some sense, if he cared about their doings or them. Voracious, plunderous, all of them; like hounds, long hungry, got into a rich house which has no master, or a mere imaginary one. "MENTERIS IMPUDENTISSIME," said Walpole in his dog-latin once, in our Royal presence, to one of these official plunderous gentlemen, "You tell an impudent lie!"—at which we only laughed. [Horace Walpole, Reminiscences of George I. and George ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... times a merchant carrying goodly pearls, at other times a bandit engaged in feats of plunder. All possible scenes in history or imagination that she understood did the child try to enact in the wilderness. But she went there now with no intention of posing in any imaginary part. She went there because her heart ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... dog dashed from a gateway ahead of them and threatened the car furiously. They both applied imaginary brakes to the car with feet and hands and taut nerves. The puppy escaping death by an inch, trotted back to his saved home with an air that comes from duty well performed. They looked from the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... what to do with his people,—yet it is all to no purpose, for there is a counsel above, an older counsel which must stand and take place in all generations. If men's conclusions be not according to the counsel of his will, they are but imaginary dreams, like the fancies of a distracted person, who imagining himself a king, sits down on the throne, and gives out decrees and ordinances. May not he who sits in heaven laugh at the foolishness and madness of men who act in all things as if they had no dependence ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... national debt—the persons whose affairs are under the care of the Court of Chancery, and whose money is laid out by the Accountant General, all these may be injured by a temporary rise of the public funds, growing out of a conspiracy of this kind; and, Gentlemen, this is no imaginary statement of mine, for it will appear to you to-day, that all these persons were in fact injured by the temporary rise produced by this conspiracy. Undoubtedly the public funds will be affected by rumours, which ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... 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
... totally unqualified for this undertaking, they yet were highly pleased with it. They fancied that they were exercising their judgment, while they opposed to the prejudices of ancient authority more powerful prejudices of another kind. The novelty itself of the doctrines; the pleasure of an imaginary triumph in dispute; the fervent zeal of the reformed preachers; their patience, and even alacrity, in suffering persecution, death, and torments; a disgust at the restraints of the old religion; an indignation against the tyranny and interested ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... less indispensable. The great dramatic poet must add to this rare assemblage, a thorough acquaintance with the characters and ideas of former times: with the lore of the historian, he must embody in his imaginary characters the incidents of actual event; with the fervour of the poet, portray the transactions and thoughts of past times; with the eye of the painter, arrange his scenery, dresses, and localities, so as to produce the strongest possible impression of reality on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... notice than the once celebrated latin poet and philosopher, Hobbes: his connexion with the Devonshire family began early in life, and Chatsworth, in consequence, became his occasional residence; he was a man originally of a weak constitution, and he is said to have been subject through life to imaginary and unnecessary personal fears, which continually preyed upon and agitated his spirits; yet by a strict and uniform attention to diet and exercise, he lived to the age of 92. He was a very early riser, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... especially as I am using a commercial pollen with the hope of getting a hardy white walnut with possibly a coarse bark like the black to ward off sun-scald in this climate. They are on their way. I don't know when we'll be eating these imaginary nuts. However, it is not so long ago that fruit growing on the cattle range was a dream. I grew the first pears in Alberta, so far as we know. Now we are insulted if there is not a crop of fruit every year. I have many ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... drawn battle, in which both sides gained and lost. The slave system obtained in esse an additional slave State and two others in posse, out of the Louisiana territory, while free industrialism secured the erection of an imaginary fence through this land, to the north of which its slave rival was never to settle. Maine was also admitted to preserve the status quo and balance of political forces between the sections. Alas! however, for the foresight of statesmen who build ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Willoughby feel this. She feared that she had neglected the artless and simple-minded child; she feared that she had not been sufficiently thoughtful about her; and now longed to do something to make amends for this imaginary neglect. So she sought to make the journey as pleasant as possible by cheerful remarks and lively observations. None of these things, however, produced any effect upon the attitude of Minnie. She sat there, with unalterable sweetness ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Belford; since, otherwise, some misunderstanding might have happened between them: for although I hope this Mr. Belford is an altered man, and in time will be a reformed one, yet is he one of those high spirits that has been accustomed to resent imaginary indignities to himself, when, I believe, he has not been studious to avoid giving real offences to others; men of this cast acting as if they thought all the world was made to bar with them, and they with nobody ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... child, who at first had been afraid of him, became before the summer was through! What talks they held! How merrily they laughed together! and how serenely Argus listened while Sunshine told him long histories of imaginary wanderings among the clouds, in enchanted forests, or "away beyond the blue up in the sky"! Confidences these; ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk; and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg,— new, bright, magnificent, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not let your printer embellish them with cuts of roosters, chickens, pigs, or the like. Not that we are ashamed of them; far be it from such. You do not, however, need to have a sheet of paper littered up with pictures of imaginary animals in order to convince your customer that you are selling the meats of that animal. I like a plainly printed letterhead that carries my name, my address and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... or with fortune were not always suffered to marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... consequences, that is the proper object of censure. Many of the diseases to which we are subject might be traced to this source; yet we are generally so little aware of it, that we impute them to the state of the weather, to infection, or any other imaginary cause, rather than the true one. The weather has very little serious effect upon a person in health, unless exposed to it in some unusual manner that suddenly checks perspiration, or some of the ordinary evacuations. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the water, and were thus still more dangerous to other ships, when they could strike an antagonist on the side. The bow of a ship was generally ornamented by the head of some animal, such as a wild boar or a wolf, or some imaginary creature placed above the rostra. On both sides of the prow were painted eyes, such as are seen on the bows of boats and vessels in the Mediterranean at the present day. The upper part of the prow was frequently ornamented with a helmet covered ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... in close proximity. Then was repeated the alarm and consternation of two years before, fears for the safety of the capital being magnified by the confusion and discord existing among the different generals in Washington and Baltimore; and the imaginary dangers vanished only with the appearance of General Wright, who, with the Sixth Corps and one division of the Nineteenth Corps, pushed out to attack Early as soon as he could get his arriving troops in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... lonely star, I have taught them to forget Theology; with Architecture, I have hidden the ramparts of their cloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce planets' daughter whose hair is always on fire, and with Grammar that is the moon's daughter, I have shut their ears to the imaginary harpings and speech of the angels; and I have made formations of battle with Arithmetic that have put the hosts of heaven to the rout. But, Rhetoric and Dialectic, that have been born out of the ...
— The Hour Glass • W.B.Yeats
... a period of at least two or three months for a newspaper or magazine in that language, if it is a modern one. Translate as before, but give most of your time to rapid oral translation for a real or imaginary ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... road; and as they fluttered and strutted, scolded and cooed, the little watcher at her desk unconsciously imitated their movements, thrusting out her chest, cocking her head pertly on one side and nodding and pecking at imaginary birds, just as her pretty feathered friends were doing as they basked in the warm sunshine. Involuntarily the woman smiled. Then, as the girl continued to mimic the doves, she tapped her foot impatiently on the floor and repeated ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... on which the Proportional Representation Society mainly relies is an imaginary election, held in November 1906 by means of ballot papers distributed through members and friends of the society and through eight newspapers. 'The constituency,' we are told, 'was supposed to return five members; the candidates, twelve in number, were politicians whose names might ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... and ideal forms more lovely than ever trod this earth, hovered around us:—and then those thoughts which would intrude—remembrances of the far-off absent, who are or have been loved, mingled with the whole, and shed an imaginary splendour or a tender interest, over scenes which required no extraneous powers to enhance their native loveliness.—no charm borrowed from imagination to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distills is wasted. Let us consider how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in: we often weave little stories in our minds expending love and pity upon the imaginary beings we have created. But I have been led to think that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are thinking, loving, suffering just in that way, and we merely reform ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... would be upsetting Blenkiron's plans, for he had given me no instructions about housebreaking. All this unsettled me worse than ever. I began to lie awake planning some means of entrance ... I would be a peasant from the next valley who had twisted his ankle ... I would go seeking an imaginary cousin among the servants ... I would start a fire in the place and have the doors ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... occupy my leisure in constructing imaginary cases, mostly criminal, for the purpose of study and for the acquirement of experience. For instance, I would devise an ingenious fraud and would plan it in detail, taking every precaution that I could think of against failure or detection, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... meantime Lady Rosamond is enjoying the constant whirl and gaiety of London life. Her husband is immersed in the broil of parliamentary affairs. As a representative of his native borough, he is responsible for every grievance, real or imaginary, under which his constituents are daily groaning. The party with whom he was associated was daily becoming unpopular—a crisis was at hand—a dissolution was expected. Another appeal to the country would probably take place. Her ladyship was ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... made me so long hesitate, always feeling that the case of Man and his Races, and of other animals, and that of plants, is one and the same, and that if a vera causa be admitted for one instant, [instead] of a purely unknown and imaginary one, such as the word 'creation,' all ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the clue 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
... had quieted 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 the back shutters, and she thought she ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... when they are ugly, and he chooses to take pains with them, he knows nothing else: the more pains he takes with even familiar animals, the worse they are (witness the horse in that plate of the Good Samaritan), and any attempts to finish the first scribbled energy of his imaginary lions and tigers, end always only in the loss of the fiendish power and rage which were all he could conceive in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he said, 'and was apparently holding a conversation with you, as she used to keep silence at intervals as if listening to your replies.' I asked him if he could possibly remember the hour at which the imaginary conversation took place. He replied that, curiously enough, he could tell it accurately, as he had looked at his watch, and found the time between half-past ten and eleven o'clock—the exact time of the mysterious manifestations heard ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... anyone can define a "local" bird from a "British" bird, or a "British" bird from a "foreign" bird? Lastly, every one should know that every bird found in Leicestershire is a "British" bird, and that every "British" bird is a "foreign" one; and that each of these imaginary divisions is being constantly recruited from the division immediately above it. [Footnote: There are but two birds belonging to the Paridae (Titmice), which are claimed as being peculiar to Britain; and these merely on the ground ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... and Richard and I, Margaret, played on Sophronia years ago. If the thunder-storm had not brought you all up-stairs, there would have been some very pretty ghost-gliding, and the poor soul would very likely have been frightened into a real fit instead of an imaginary one. Children don't realise that sort of thing; I certainly did not, nor my brothers; but I think these two realise it now, and they are not likely to try anything of the kind again. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... slave-traders have used it as a pretext for stirring up the rebellion among the natives. England for many years has been doing her best to suppress slave-trading, and the slave-traders make use of any grievance, imaginary or otherwise, in their attempts to overthrow the power of the white men, in order that their barbarous man-hunting may not be interfered with. Several men-of-war have been sent by England to Sierra Leone, and are to be reinforced by others; troops have also ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Rio Guayavero, he found only treeless savannahs, extending as far as the eye could reach. The chain of mountains placed by several modern geographers, between the Meta and the Vichada, and which appears to link the Andes of New Grenada with the Sierra Parime, is altogether imaginary. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... changelings I mean a belief that fairies and other imaginary beings are on the watch for young children, or (as we shall see hereafter) sometimes even for adults, that they may, if they can find them unguarded, seize and carry them off, leaving in their place one of themselves, or a block of wood animated by their enchantments ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the disguise of satyrs, doubtless originated in the desire to approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity. The desire of escaping from self into something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, broke forth in a thousand instances in those festivals. It was seen in the coloring of the body, the wearing of skins and masks of wood or bark, and in the complete costume ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Friday Street, William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, and originator of the unfortunate Darien scheme, held his real or imaginary Wednesday club meetings, in which were discussed proposals for the union of England and Scotland, and the redemption of the National Debt. This remarkable financier was born at Lochnabar, in Dumfriesshire, in 1648, and died in 1719. The ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... tall, spare, handsome man, with gray mustache and a fierce look. He was an educated soldier, of unquestioned courage, but the responsibilities of outpost duty bore rather heavily on him, and he kept all hands in a state of constant worry in anticipation of imaginary attacks. His ideas of discipline were not very rigid either, and as by this time there had been introduced into my brigade some better methods than those obtaining when it first fell to my command, I feared the effect should he, have any control over it, or meddle with ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... imagined, in his sleep, that his palace and gardens were overwhelmed by an inundation, and waked with all the terrours of a man struggling in the water. He composed himself again to rest, but was affrighted by an imaginary irruption into his kingdom; and striving, as is usual in dreams, without ability to move, fancied himself betrayed to his enemies, and again started up with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... of the song except the general laws of good taste. The only plan is to try and try again until the result contains something of the singing quality. Very often it is helpful to fit the words to some air imaginary or otherwise which runs in the head. The song may be long or short, tell little or a great deal. In practice, as a rule, it is less than twenty-four lines in length and expresses a single thought or emotion. Its only two essentials are that it be ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... authorities of the Admiralty as a trustworthy document, and duly preserved among the official records. But at the time the court refused to receive it in evidence, and adopted instead two falsified charts, in which, by the introduction of imaginary shoals and the narrowing of the channel to Aix Roads from two miles to one, the success of the scheme appeared impossible. Although this gross deception was more than suspected, both then and afterwards, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... he wanted an Anti-Abbot. Friar John was the handiest person, and he took him. But it is worth noting that the Abbot of Thelema never afterwards appears as such, or in the slightest relation to this miniature but most curious and interesting example of the Renaissance fancy for imaginary countries, cities, institutions, with its splendours of architecture and decoration, its luxurious but not loose living, its gallantry and its learning, its gorgeous dress, its polished manners (the Abbot must have had some trouble to learn them), and its "inscriptions and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... twilight was deepening when the old man signaled to his boy in the distance to bring up the mare. Wheat was slowly walking the brown horse over the course, when the boy came up, cantering the mare, blanketed with an old government blanket, over the imaginary track also. These preliminaries thrilled us like the tuning of a fiddle for a dance. Stallings and the old homesteader went out to the starting point to give the riders the terms of the race, while the remainder of us congregated at the finish. It ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... to struggle. He sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus's place, his head crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and his side rent by spears. What a coward he must be to complain of an imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption! And however unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by falling into ecstasy, and ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... or Benshie, sometimes called the Shrieking Woman, is an imaginary being, supposed by the Irish to predict, by her shrieks and wails, the death of some member in the family over which she exercises a kind of supervision. To this fable Moore alludes in ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... artist can be born. But they come in such a rainbow of glory that all subsequent achievement appears dull and earthly in comparison. We are all artists; almost all in the age of illusion, cultivating an imaginary genius, and walking to the strains of some deceiving Ariel; small wonder, indeed, if we were happy! But art, of whatever nature, is a kind of mistress; and though these dreams of youth fall by their own baselessness, others succeed, grave and more substantial; ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would give his all to be able to rise, yet whose limbs were immovable, held by some subtle and cruel power. I had read in novels about men agonized by remorse and indecision. I now experienced those sensations myself. I discovered they were not imaginary states. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the spiritual with the practical, the imaginary with the real. The maxims that have been followed in the earlier and the later period produced their inevitable result. In the former that maxim was, "Ignorance is the mother of Devotion in the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... curious property of this instrument is, that, by drawing out the keys, the hammers are transferred to different strings. By which means a composition may be transposed half a note, a whole note, or a flat third lower at pleasure, without the embarrassment of different notes or clefs, real or imaginary." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... like a tiger; its form itself is unascertainable. Besides this, some imagine Yama to be Death. This, however, is due to the weakness of the mind. The pursuit of Brahman or self-knowledge is immortality. That (imaginary) god (Yama) holdeth his sway in the region of the Pitris, being the source of bliss to the virtuous and of woe to the sinful. It is at his command that death in the form of wrath, ignorance, and covetousness, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reader, this colloquial chapter, as the author's apology for a preface, an imaginary short conference, or letter of introduction, which brings you acquainted with the eccentric writer of this volume; and as in all well regulated society a person is expected to give some account of himself before he is placed upon terms of intimacy with the family, you shall in the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... thousands, and the perpetrators eulogized by the community as "honorable men," reveals such a prostration of law, as gives impunity to crime—a state of society, an omnipresent public sentiment reckless of human life, taking bloody vengeance on the spot for every imaginary affront, glorying in such assassinations as the only true honor and chivalry, successfully defying the civil arm, and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Romancing freely, he was hardly conscious when he was lying either on a small scale or on a large, being equally delighted with his own conceits and with the pleasure he was giving to his auditors. While thus recounting real and imaginary incidents, he could almost delude himself into the belief that he was still the bold, radiant Casanova, the favorite of fortune and of beautiful women, the honored guest of secular and spiritual princes, the man whose spendings and gamblings and gifts must be reckoned in thousands. It was possible ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... philanthropic. His labors, which are principally intended to show the evils of our taxes upon food, will not be in vain; though he will find many in England, as I found in America, who have no ear for truth when it opposes their prejudices or imaginary self-interest. He gave me a most cheering account of the march of abolition in Ohio, and said he had lately attended a meeting held at the invitation of the abolitionists, on the 5th of July, at which there were three thousand persons, who had come to the place of meeting in nine hundred ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... it to the old man. 'Hair off his dog, you know,' he said. And two or three times Con made an effort to induce his father to take a whiff of smoke, but old Peetree shook his head disgustedly, and returned to his mutterings and the picking of imaginary ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... appearance a confused result of belladonna, bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Saturdays, when Lawrence came down, and ended on the Mondays, when he went away. If, in the meantime, she sat down to work, she went off into a trance; if she was sent out for fresh air, she walked quarter-deck on the esplanade, neither seeing nor hearing anything, we averred, but some imaginary ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waggish comrade, throwing his head back and performing an imaginary air by briskly drawing one arm across the other, "who knows that I may not fiddle myself into her majesty's good graces so as to became a sort of ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... institution show the following: On admission he was yelling, cursing, and very much excited; completely disoriented; repeated the same sentence over and over again in a singing fashion. He talked to the Lord, and answered imaginary questions; had auditory and visual hallucinations, and various delusional ideas; thought someone was talking to him constantly; that he was being shot at every few minutes, and yelled with anguish at every supposed shot. He cried and ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... year he composed the allegory of "Real and Imaginary Time," first published in the Sibylline Leaves, having been accidentally omitted in ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Simiti, in far-off Colombia. His life had been wrecked by holding to the belief of evil as a power, real and intelligent. He began to see the light; but he did not overcome fear sufficiently to make his demonstration and break the imaginary bonds which held him. He saw, but he did not prove. He will, some day. And, Doctor, you and everybody else will have to do the same. For, unless Jesus uttered the most malicious falsehoods ever voiced, every human being will have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... which lighted the fire of his genius, and of the difficulties which surrounded him. Moreover, a knowledge of the real facts serves to clear away all the misleading fables about student life at Pavia, about service with imaginary uncles who were corsairs or admirals, and about galleys commanded for King Rene. Some of these fables are due to the mistaken piety of the great discoverer's son Hernando, and to others, who seem to have thought that they were doing honor ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... he is not an imaginary case—who is married, and has young people growing up in the home. He is wealthy, with a reputable position in society. But there is a sinister something in the background of his life, and he sets himself to do what he knows full well is an irreparable wrong to an inexperienced and ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... that she should have promised Hicks to practice a song with him, and no process of reasoning could have made it otherwise. The imaginary opponent with whom he scornfully argued the matter had not a word for himself. Neither could the young girl answer anything to the cutting speeches which he mentally made her as he sat alone chewing the end of ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... take an imaginary journey through the provinces and begin at Hong Kong, where, in 1850, I began my actual ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... and glancing back over her shoulder for goblins and burglars to-night as she put the key into the door! No scared chattering of teeth in the dark hall! No skipping three steps at a time up the stairs pursued by imaginary hands that would grip at her ankles! She faced the darkness with wide-open eyes, instead of feeling her way with lids squeezed down as had been her custom; and when eyes seemed to look back at her from the darkness, her boyhood laughed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... upon his subject as a purely imaginary one? Surely he must have had some definite form before his mental vision; for although sculpture cannot, like painting, tell an elaborate story, still each figure must have a moral and a meaning, must show cause for its existence, and indicate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... curve an imaginary ball in his right hand, then glanced over the principal's desk. A small, but thick, heavy ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... tower' and 'the strong city'; the man lifted up above danger on the battlements of the one, and the man fancying himself to be high above it (and only fancying himself) in the imaginary ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Moli'ere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme; in which the nouveau riche is persuaded that the Grand Seigneur has made him a mamamouchi, a knight of an imaginary order, and goes through the ceremony of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon the judge, and produce in him the bad passions he punishes. It is true the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such things, he must be dehumanised or he would cry out against them with horror and detestation. But the poem draws them as truths; the writer's creed threatened them; he himself contributed to maintain the belief; and however we may suppose such a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... incontinently, in company with the rest. Had my captives invited this one? Assuredly not. Heedless of others' efforts, he hastened up, attracted by the odour of the Mole. So it was with those whose obliging assistance is extolled. I repeat, in respect of their imaginary prowess, what I have said elsewhere of the Sacred Beetle's: it is a child's story, worthy to rank with any fairytale for the amusement ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... a patch of forest, and from that came suddenly upon a clearing where a spacious bamboo house stood half hidden by a clump of umbrageous trees, beneath one of which was drawn up a group which at the first glance made the boy wonder whether he was gazing at a scene in real life, or some imaginary picture from ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... right. But many do not stop there. They suppose that divine inspiration has given the Book certain grammatical, rhetorical, logical, historical, scientific and metaphysical qualities which it has not given it, and they even attribute its superior worth and saving power to those imaginary qualities. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... can show you in my flower-bed one little white flower, of no great beauty and conical in shape, from which I have produced in two years another, saucer-shaped, pink, and of thrice the size, almost exactly realising an imaginary flower, drawn by my sister-in-law to represent one of which she had dreamed. We can often produce the very shape, size, and colour we wish from something that at first seems to have no likeness to it whatever; ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... was strongly affected by the spectacle of his dead body borne past her father's door. In about a fortnight afterwards she assured her family that he appeared to her. She saw the apparition, in the beginning, only at night; but ere long it ventured, as she imagined, to appear in day-light. Many imaginary conversations took place between them; and the fact of the peasantry flocking to the herd's house to satisfy themselves as to the truth of the rumor, is yet well remembered in the parish. It, was also affirmed, that as the funeral of M'Kenna passed to the churchyard, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may perhaps bring the Church into danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the Church is in danger at present, or as things now ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... children at the breast to swallow a quantity of cold water from a calabash. An infant was nearly choked on this morning by the injection of more than a pint of water down its throat. Whether the mothers follow this custom for the purpose of curing the children of any imaginary complaints, or, as is more probable, in the hope of rendering them less eager for their natural food, was not ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... friendly Assistance that she could expect from her, during Bellamora's stay in Town: which she did with so much Earnestness, and visible Integrity, that the pretty innocent Creature was going to make her a full and real Discovery of her imaginary insupportable Misfortunes; and (doubtless) had done it, had she not been prevented by the Return of the Lady, whom she hop'd to have found her Cousin Brightly. The Gentleman, her Husband just saw her within Doors, and order'd the Coach to drive to some of his Bottle-Companions; which gave the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... over the new game, Mike tore about, panting, and dashing from side to side through the underbrush on real, or imaginary, scents, now stopping to dig madly for a moment, then racing on to catch up with his master, who frequently had to haul him over the precipitous crags by the shaggy hair on ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson |
