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More "Delusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all—but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too emphatically insisted that without a personal God religion simply ceases to be. It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part, and that of a good many people, that "the religious emotions" will survive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men will remain "deeply religious" even when it is recognised that the "Great Enigma," the "eternal and inscrutable energy," the "ultimate ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... early green pea, the pea of my taste, Must be gently assisted, not forced in hot haste, Lest the flavour it yield prove delusive and flat, In no way suggesting the young Marrowfat! But if it do this, oh what more could I wish, Than to see a young duckling form part of the dish! So with such a banquet spread out before me, Can you ask why I worship ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the country of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... American minister of their intended sacrifice of their "identical interest with the United States," they allowed this treachery to be sprung upon us. The sixty-mile limit was established by the tribunal, and it has proved utterly delusive. The result of this decision of the tribunal was that this great industry of ours was undermined, if not utterly destroyed; and that the United States were also mulcted to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... her, and had straightway fallen desperately in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and delusive. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to spirits, as it gave them strength without intoxication. During this trying occasion, the men behaved with the utmost intrepidity and obedience, not a man flinching from his post. We continually cheered them at the pumps with the delusive hopes of its ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... doubts (arising partly from my own neglect of the means of grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed, cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction that prayers were unavailing and delusive) prevented my embracing the opportunity, as a religious one. Life, in itself, had almost become burdensome to me. All my outward relations were against me; I must stay here and starve (I was already hungry) or go home to Covey's, and have my flesh ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... had no share in the property left by his father, and the reason be made known. He hoped that she might also learn that death had prevented his father's plan for benefiting him. He hoped it; for in that case she might feel compassion. Yet in the same moment he felt that this was a delusive solace. Pity for a man because he had lost money does not incline to warmer emotion. The hope was sheer feebleness of spirit. He spurned it; he desired no ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... is a convenient, though delusive, because highly figurative, expression for the psychic unity of a social group. The unity is due entirely to the more or less complete possession by the individual members of the group, of common ideas, ideals, methods of thought, emotions, volitions, customs, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and sandwich lunches, had no attraction for me. I had always had a turn for mechanics, but was never allowed to adopt engineering as a profession, my father's one idea being that I should follow in his footsteps—a delusive hope entertained by many ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!—and sometimes wonder if the memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when sated with pleasures ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period of about four years together—when the loudest and most accepted voices in England exulted over the now ludicrously delusive proposition that the United States were a burst bubble, and slavery the irremovable corner-stone of an empire. It may be a lesson to nations against the indulgence in rancor, the abnegation of the national conscience, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... reason, O son of Kunti, the universe passeth through its rounds (of birth and destruction).[222] Not knowing my supreme nature of the great lord of all entities, ignorant people of vain hopes, vain acts, vain knowledge, confounded minds, wedded to the delusive nature of Asuras and Rakshasas, disregard me (as one) that hath assumed a human body. But high-souled ones, O son of Pritha, possessed of divine nature, and with minds directed to nothing else, worship me, knowing (me) to be the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fallacious, apocryphal, unreal, ungrounded, groundless; unsubstantial &c. 4; heretical &c. (heterodox) 984; unsound; illogical &c. 477. inexact, unexact inaccurate[obs3], incorrect; indefinite &c. (uncertain) 475. illusive, illusory; delusive; mock, ideal &c (imaginary) 515; spurious &c. 545; deceitful &c. 544; perverted. controvertible, unsustainable; unauthenticated, untrustworthy. exploded, refuted; discarded. in error, under an error &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... When insidious and delusive hope would draw us on and beguile us in any sinful way, whispering that God will some day send special gifts and messengers of grace to inspire us with new life, this is his plain answer: "If they hear not Moses and the ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... a perfect method,—it blacked too many other things besides shoes, and provided an undesirable plaything for baby,—but it was a step forward. There was a refinement, a je ne sais quoi, an 'easier way,' about this sponge in a bottle; and, perhaps more than all, a delusive promise that the stuff would dry shiny without friction, which ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... the tradesman against those men so well as his being thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will; to make ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the moment of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... kindled, that he himself tells us no one can guess the extremes of ecstasy and despair through which he alternately passed. These spiritual experiences were perhaps fed by the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, whose works came into his possession, and furnished a most delusive and dangerous guide for the young enthusiast's fancy. But, dream and suffer as he might, nothing was allowed to quench the ardor ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... all the same to me; por —— equally. igualar equal, consider equal. iluminar illumine, enlighten, illuminate, light. ilusin f. illusion, fancy, self-deception, mockery. ilusorio, -a illusory, delusive, deceptive. ilustre adj. illustrious, noble, celebrated, distinguished. imagen f. image, statue, likeness, picture, conception, fancy, appearance. imaginacin f. imagination, fancy, mind. imaginar imagine, fancy, believe, conceive. impaciente ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... fight against the Americans, who were successively met by ambuscade, surprise, or otherwise, as at Chicago, at Michilimackinack, Brownstown, River Raisin, Maumee, Fort Harrison, and other places. They had been assembled in large bodies, by the delusive prophesyings of Elksatawa, and by the not less delusive promises of the agents of the British Indian Department, on the lines, that the Americans were to be driven back to the line of the Illinois, if not of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... myself like God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... deep as was at present her despondency, the removal of all possibility of hope, by her knowledge of Delvile's marriage, must awaken her before long from the delusive visions of her romantic fancy; Mr Arnott himself was in a situation exactly similar, and the knowledge of the same event would probably be productive of the same effect. When Mrs Harrel, therefore, began to repine at the solitude to which she was returning, Cecilia proposed to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... me, ah me! I wander telling o'er Past years, and yet in all I cannot view One day that might be rightly reckoned mine. Delusive hopes and vain desires entwine My soul that loves, weeps, burns, and sighs full sore. Too well I know and prove that this is true, Since of man's passions none to me are new. Far from the truth my steps have gone astray, In ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest feeling ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock sun—a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals by four globes—seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... capital and limited education; with an inherited mental inertia that is being dispelled and can only be eradicated by contact with superior environment, that there awaits him peace, plenty, and equality, is an ignis fatuus the most delusive. Peace is the exhaustion of strife, and is only secure in her triumphs in being in instant readiness for war; equality a myth, and plenty the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... me with abhorrence; and yet life is totally devoid of happiness. Happiness! O delusive phantom of humanity, how art thou attainable? Through Fame? Fame is mine, and I am wretched. Over the realms of civilisation my name is noised abroad; in the populous cities the glory of my art resounds; when my barge glided among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... honourable entreatment by Chremes and his kin as of the wholehearted friendship that is between thee and Gisippus, it behoves thee to have his betrothed in even such pious regard as if she were thy sister? Whither art thou suffering beguiling love, delusive hope, to hurry thee? Open the eyes of thine understanding, and see thyself, wretched man, as thou art; obey the dictates of thy reason, refrain thy carnal appetite, control thine inordinate desires, and give thy thoughts ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that after reaching Natchez my difficulties would have been over; but I very soon discovered that this was a delusive hope. I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours. Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi, more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed whether I should be ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... he infers that those which do not come from his own God must be radically vicious. Already, as we have seen, in virtue of his leading principle, he has denied to all natural affections the right to be truly virtuous. Unless they involve a conscious reference to God, they are but delusive resemblances of the reality. He admits that the natural man can in various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is possible that benevolence may become pleasing ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... expecting to see some of those wolfish dogs which they had brought to the place prowling about the court-yard. Sometimes I prayed, and felt tranquillised, and fancied that I was perhaps to have a short interval of sleep. But the serenity was delusive, and all the time my nerves were strung hysterically. Sometimes I felt quite wild, and on the point of screaming. At length that dreadful night passed away. Morning came, and a less morbid, though hardly a less terrible state of mind. Madame paid me an early visit. A thought struck me. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixt, and comprized in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and cooperating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni;[23] if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the matter prompt attention. Do not delay to adopt curative measures under the delusive idea that the difficulty will disappear of itself. Thousands have procrastinated in this way until their constitutions have been so hopelessly undermined as to make treatment of little value. The intrinsic tendency of this disease is to continue to increase. It progresses only in one direction. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... them "to maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive gypsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors," prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 640 To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. So glister'd the dire Snake and into fraud Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree Of prohibition, root of all our woe; Which when ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the readmission of the Pennsylvania Synod, Sprecher declared: "I fear there will be divisions, no matter what course is taken. As to the hope of gaining over the Symbolic Lutherans, I consider it altogether delusive. If they ever join the General Synod, it will be with the hope of controlling it eventually into their own views and for their own purposes." (353.) Thus, realizing the giant strides which Western confessionalism had already made, and the steady growth of the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... affairs his influence was small and almost entirely indirect. He himself confessed his unfitness for dealing with questions of finance. The commercial prosperity that was produced by his war policy was in a great part delusive, as prosperity so produced must always be, though it had permanent effects of the highest moment in the rise of such centres of industry as Glasgow. This, however, was a remote result which he could have neither intended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... affairs into the hands of his Secretary of State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some sentimental demonstration against European interference; a policy which, at that critical ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... The ship was a home to me. I had my allowance with the other palantines; slept in the hold with them at night; and enjoyed, along with many of them, the pleasure of building castles in the air—anticipations of the wealth and comforts we were to enjoy in the land of promise. It was, indeed, by delusive accounts of America, that most of them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... silent avenues with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, after half ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... quiet. It was with some difficulty I stood by and witnessed the assault, but I well know my life would be in jeopardy if I attempted to interfere. I, however, screwed up my courage to stay, in the hope that some sense of shame might induce the fellow to hold his hand. This was, however, a delusive hope, for he continued to lay on the whip until ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... be admitted that the belief, delusive or warranted, is efficacious in itself. Whether generated in the brain by the nerve centres, or whatever may be its origin, a force coincident with it is diffused throughout the nervous system, which converts the subject of it, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... no small jealousies in either of them—"willow widows"— though Mysie's name stuck. There was nothing but comfort to Magdalen in the certainty of the ultimate "coming home" of one who had finished a delusive dream of her younger days, and been yearned after with a heartache now quenched; and Angela, who had never been the least in love with Henry Merrifield, could quite afford her interest in the scanty records of his younger days, and fill up all ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... people into believing that the present campaign, which is but a single episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an independent event which began in August 1914 and may end this year or the next. These same leaders are busily inculcating the delusive notion that the diplomatic instrument which will one day close hostilities will be a treaty of peace. And they are seemingly prepared to negotiate ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is we, ourselves, who are the victims of delusive hope in reference to the destiny of our noble Union. Possibly our disinterested friends across the water, calmly looking on from a distance, may be better able to understand the tendency of events, and to foresee the issue of the mighty civil contest which rages around us. They are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... comfortable bedroom, with its delicately-toned wall-paper and flowery cretonnes, had become altogether hateful in his eyes now. Instead of feeling grateful (as he surely ought to have been) for the one night of perfect security and comfort he had passed there, he only loathed it for the delusive peace it had ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... engaged in political and practical affairs were taking bribes and being corrupted by the hope of money; while the mass of private citizens either showed no foresight, or else were caught by the bait of ease and leisure from day to day; and all alike had fallen victims to some such delusive fancy, as that the danger would come upon every one but themselves, and that through the perils of others they would be able to secure their own position as they pleased. {46} And so, I suppose, it has come to pass that the masses have atoned for their great and ill-timed indifference ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Then invite the loveliest damsels Rome can boast of, to come hither To the feasts and to the dances. Bring musicians, and in fine Let it be proclaimed that any Woman of illustrious blood Who from his delusive passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who cures ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stealing, Drew me from harrowing thought's bewild'ring maze, Touching the ling'ring chords of childlike feeling, With sweet harmonies of happier days: So curse I all, around the soul that windeth Its magic and alluring spell, And with delusive flattery bindeth Its victim to this dreary cell! Curs'd before all things be the high opinion, Wherewith the spirit girds itself around! Of shows delusive curs'd be the dominion, Within whose mocking sphere our sense is bound! Accurs'd ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... months ago Ellenora would have resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps when Nora reached the street that terrible night, she thought of her children—perhaps Helmer was watching her ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... eternal, spiritual verities of human nature, and record, not only the history of the human race, its mutations and transmutations, but of the individual man and the suffering and delusive joys of his material life. Aye, more! It is the record of all his past existence and a type of his ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others. An annual ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the only thing, indeed, it has to offer ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... stronger than armaments. It came from the furnace of the Revolution, tempered to the necessities of the times. The thoughts of the men of that day were as practical as their sentiments were patriotic. They wasted no portion of their energies upon idle and delusive speculations, but with a firm and fearless step advanced beyond the governmental landmarks which had hitherto circumscribed the limits of human freedom and planted their standard, where it has stood against dangers which have threatened from abroad, and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... excitement, energy, achievement, and fortune to Key; and yet this place and this man were as stupidly unchanged as when he had left them. A momentary fancy that this was the reality, that he himself was only awakening from some delusive dream, came over him. But Collinson's next ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... thoroughly fatigued, and worn out with the horrors which the approaching fate of the poor wretch, who lay under a sentence which he had iniquitously brought upon him, had suggested, sleep promised him relief; but this promise was, alas! delusive. This certain friend to the tired body is often the severest enemy to the oppressed mind. So at least it proved to Wild, adding visionary to real horrors, and tormenting his imagination with phantoms too dreadful to be described. At length, starting from these visions, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of lenient counsel in the cabinets of princes, and has taught kings to tremble at what will hereafter be called the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones. This alone is an irreparable calamity to you and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and in distinctness of form as it descended from aloft, until it became an enormous cigar-shaped structure of such gigantic dimensions that it seemed doubtful whether there would be space enough in the glade to accommodate it. This appearance, however, was to a certain extent delusive, due no doubt to the semi-obscurity of the starlit night, for when at length it came to earth, lightly as a snowflake, it was seen that there was abundance ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fill again after what the archbishop had said. I set my teeth to endure; I was full of bewilderment, surprise, and anger. The archbishop had played me terribly false; the Arabian Nights were no less delusive. Krak was as unmoved and business-like as usual. I was determined not to cry—not to-night. I was not very hard tried; almost directly my mother said, "That will do." There was a pause; no doubt Krak's face expressed a surprised protest. "Yes, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... but his tears did not bring him comfort, for they were tears of anguish and despair. Ten times a day he would proceed to her chamber, or follow her to the garden where she loved to walk, always in the delusive hope that he might catch some spark of returning reason from those calm-looking but meaningless eyes, after which he would weep like a child. With respect to his daughter, every thing was done for her that wealth and human means could accomplish, but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... relation to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even their calamities—fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence— interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... dire delusive wind, Which promis'd fair to bring thee to her breast, Thy youthful honours to the wave consign'd, And bore thy spirit to the realms ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... deadly cold! And yet I bear to drag this cumbrous chain, That weighs my soul to earth—to bliss or pain Alike insensible:—her anchor lost, The frail dismantled bark, all tempest-toss'd, Surveys no port of comfort—closed the scene Of life's delusive ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Cheered by this delusive fancy, when my turn came I made a thrilling tale of the night's adventures, and, having worked my audience up to a flattering state of excitement, paused ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... came later to this country from Africa, through the agency of an Englishman named Wray, to whom is charged the effects of the delusive experiments of trying to make crystallized sugar from its juice, which have been going on in this country for twenty years. But two varieties of sorghum now remain, known as the Chinese and African types. Of all the other sugar plants, none except the maple tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Tigress is a New Birth; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look, oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly delusive, supposititious: we call them, in the language of metaphor, regulated modelled shapes; some of which have bodies and life still in them; most of which, according to a German Writer, have only emptiness, 'glass-eyes glaring on you with a ghastly affectation of life, and in their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... applied to this heaving volcanic system of forces by codifications, like those of Justinian or Napoleon, had not lasted for a year before all had broke loose from its moorings, and was again going ahead with redoubling impetus. Equally delusive are the prospects held out that the new system of cheap provincial justice will be a change unconditionally for the better. Already the complaints against it are such in bitterness and extent as to show that in very many cases it must be regarded as a failure; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... two poems in extenso, to obviate any suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot afford space—we wish we could—for an equally minute examination of the rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show—what we solemnly affirm—that every page teems with ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... said, however, in favour of the opening which does not present an aspect of delusive calm, but shows the atmosphere already charged with electricity. Compare, for instance, the opening of The Case of Rebellious Susan, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, with that of a French play of very similar theme—Dumas's Francillon. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... opinion, but they had done all that. Lincoln's administration might have done apparently little, and after it the pendulum would probably have swung back. But the much-talked-of swing of the pendulum is the most delusive of political phenomena; America was never going to return to where it was before this first explicit national assertion of the wrongfulness of slavery had been made. It would have been hard to forecast how ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to make the rupture ostensibly Flora's, but he had none the less remorselessly and basely backed out. He had cared for her lovely face, cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been her poor little delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damn it, with the monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in. He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be expected of him; he had made—Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter—a "handsome" ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Rut. Delusive dream of fancied happiness! And has my fatal fondness then destroy'd thee? Oh, have I lured thee to the deadly snare Thy cruel foes have laid? I dreaded Cecil's malice, and my heart, Longing to see thee, with impatience listen'd To its own alarms; and prudence ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... be so easily made to forget—that this very agitator himself has declared, that slavery is "a wrong so transcendent" that no truce is to be allowed to it so long as it occupies a single foot of ground in the United States. Is it not, then, a delusive prospect of peace which is offered to us in exchange ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... eternal day, Where now thou shin'st amongst thy fellow saints, Array'd in purer light, look down on me! In pleasing visions and delusive dreams, O! sooth my soul, and teach ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... firmament, nor from the fiends of the abyss. I have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that mighty leading angel," who "drew after him the third part of heaven's sons," scratching in my cupboard. I have never been enticed to sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horse man, I have been careful not to venture myself on ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of political, of religious ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... thrill'd her—and, at last, Her lip a smile of bitter sarcasm cast, As if she scorned herself, that she could be A moment lulled by that sweet sophistry; For in that little minute memory's sting Gave word and look, sigh, gesture—every thing, To bid these dear delusive phantoms fly, And fix her ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no chance of stirring. The world is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... place melted away and left him shelterless, and he found himself standing in the open and out in the midst of the fields, without a vestige of shade. Most of all he marvelled at the swift flight of the maidens, the shifting of the place, and the delusive semblance of the building. For he knew not that all that had passed around him had been a mere mockery and an unreal trick of the arts ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... with Brandenburg alone, and wedded to his first love, not a king's daughter, might have done tolerably well there; better than Wenzel, with the empire and Bohemia, did. But delusive Fortune threw her golden apple at Sigismund too; and he, in the wide high world, had to play strange pranks. His father-in-law died in Hungary, Sigismund's first wife his only child. Father-in-law bequeathed Hungary to Sigismund, who plunged into a strange ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... usual, been flowered, cushioned and lamp-shaded into a delusive semblance of stability; and she had really felt, for the last few weeks, that the life she was leading there must be going to last—it seemed so perfect an answer ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that it was impossible to endure the horrors of total abstinence, and, now that he was no longer under the observation of his family, he again tried to satisfy his conscience by promising himself that he would gradually reduce the amount used until he could discontinue it utterly—delusive hope, that has mocked thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... whether 'democracy once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and such-like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real,' and had answered, 'Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... who found himself turned out of office by the Commissioners, lost no opportunity of insinuating that American promises were insincere, and any expectations built upon them likely to prove delusive. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... land, and cheap negroes gave the several families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... miles from the town, and were connected by a system of patrolling, which rendered communication from within or without almost impossible. A few messengers (natives) occasionally came into the town, but these were mostly charged with the delivery of delusive messages invented for special purposes by the Boers. There was an ever-present difficulty—that of keeping the natives in check. Many examples of Boer cruelty to these poor blacks are recorded, and they naturally shuddered at the prospect of once more being delivered ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... in which a man might almost read the histories of their owners. Methought I could perceive the lurking, unsubdued spirit of the battered rake, in the leer of his roving eye, while he performed, in the teeth of his flesh, blood, and principles, the delusive vow to which the shrinking spirit, at the approach of death, on the bed of sickness, clung, as to its salvation; for it was evident that superstition had only exacted from libertinism what fear and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... writer thus expresses himself in conclusion. "His declaration was not the prompting of a sickly conscience striving to procure delusive comfort from 'the late and feeble' resolves of a death-bed, as Hume unworthily asserts; it was the composed and deliberate communication of a dying captain and sovereign, disclosing to those around him, under a strong sentiment of devotion, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... numbers of unhappy reconcentrados, despite the reiterated professions made in that regard and the amount appropriated by Spain to that end. The proffered expedient of zones of cultivation proved illusory. Indeed no less practical nor more delusive promises of succor could well have been tendered to the exhausted and destitute people, stripped of all that made life and home dear and herded in a strange region among unsympathetic strangers hardly less ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... mode of life of the Mound-Builders as Village Indians; and it should be expressed in the works themselves. If a sensible use for these embankments can be found, its acceptance will relieve us from the delusive inferences which are certain to be drawn from them so long as they are allowed to remain in the ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... consciousness of Himself as it is attested to us in the Gospels. But when we have taken this reality for all that it is worth, the idealism just described is shaken to the foundation. What seemed to us so profound a truth—the essential unity of the human and the divine—may come to seem a formal and delusive platitude; in what we once regarded as the formula of the perfect religion—the divinity of man and the humanity of God—we may find quite as truly the formula of the first, not to say the final, sin. To see Christ not in the light of this speculative theorem, but in the ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... and every tempest that shake its branches will aid it in gradually assuming its original position, till hardly a trace of that power which attempted to guide its growth can be perceived. There may be some who would neglect that moral influence on the young which is necessary, trusting in the delusive expectation, that the law will keep them in the right path; that the example of punishment, the terror of the gallows, the prison, or the penitentiary, will prevent the commission of crime. But let us not wait for the saving influence of these things; for they are but checks ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... period, replete with curious illustrations of the genius and manners of the Middle Ages. Such works, from the truthfulness of their spirit, furnish a more lively picture of the tunes than even the graphic, though delusive, pencil of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is! Nothing lasts. Then we came here—I never saw him again; he never came. He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never saw him again—and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he remembered you. I shall love him to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... incapable of producing any specific effects on the human constitution. However, it is of the greatest consequence to point it out here, lest the want of discrimination should occasion an idea of security from the infection of the smallpox, which might prove delusive.] ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... too, were even less reputable fellows, who sought to entrap rural youths into "betting on cards," and making "rare bargains" in delusive watches. Altogether it was an animated scene, for young eyes. Addison, Halse and Theodora were occupied with their "booth." Ellen and Wealthy were with Gram in the Fair building, where the fruit and dairy products had to be watched ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... splendid ribbon bound. A serving-maid was she, and fell in love With one who left her, went to sea and died. Her fancy followed him through foaming waves To distant shores, and she would sit and weep At what a sailor suffers; fancy too, Delusive most where warmest wishes are, Would oft anticipate his glad return, And dream of transports she was not to know. She heard the doleful tidings of his death, And never smiled again. And now she roams The dreary waste; there spends the livelong ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... first seem obvious, are really delusive unless further data be supplied. Thus A co-exists with B, B with C; .'. A with C—is not sound unless B is an instantaneous event; for where B is perdurable, A may co-exist with it at one ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... poesy, and Bunyan's prose: The learned war both wage with equal force, And the fifth morn concluded the divorce. Phoebe, though she possesses nothing less, Is proud of being rich in happiness: Laboriously pursues delusive toys, Content with pains, since they're reputed joys. With what well-acted transport will she say, "Well, sure, we were so happy yesterday! And then that charming party for to-morrow!" Though, well she knows, 'twill languish into sorrow: But she dares never boast the present ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... put in circulation almost at will, and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in the shades darkening apace. We could see nothing of the channel but a steel-grey streak, like a Damascus blade, in a sable sheathing of tall mangrove avenue; in places, however, tree-clumps suggested delusive hopes that we were approaching a region where man can live. On our return we found many signs of population which had escaped our sight during the fast-growing obscurity. The first two reaches were long and bulging; the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Figure 31, where the blue clay Number 1 is in the centre; and where the other strata 2, 3, 4, 5 are coiled round it; the entire mass being 20 feet in perpendicular height. This appearance of concentric arrangement around a nucleus is, nevertheless, delusive, being produced by the intersection of beds bent into a convex shape; and that which seems the nucleus being, in fact, the innermost bed of the series, which has become partially visible by the removal of the protuberant portions of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... on time's swift stream Dost gayly see the moments flee, In this poor child's delusive dream An emblem may be found of thee. Each moment is a perfumed rose, Into thy hand by mercy given, That thou its fragrance might dispose And let its incense rise to heaven; Else when death's shadow o'er thee lowers, Thy heart will wail, "Bring ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... yourself of having seen the worst, and the positive improvements, if trifles separately, must soon gather into a sensible magnitude.' This may be true in a case of short standing, but as a general rule it is perilously delusive. On the contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometrical construction, would describe an ascending path upon the whole, but with frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, compared with the point of ascent that had been previously gained and so vexatiously interrupted, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... the meadows, And the sunset's golden ladders Sink from twilight's walls of gray,— From the window of my dreaming, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming Down the locust-shaded way; But away, swift away, Fades the fond, delusive seeming, And I kneel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the time of the Prince of Wales's arrival at Madrid," might have been true enough. The seven years which had passed in apparent negotiation resembled the scene of a fata morgana,—an earth painted in the air, raised by the delusive arts of Gondomar and Olivarez. As they never designed to realise it, it would of course never have been brought into the councils of his Spanish majesty. Buckingham discovered, as he told Gerbier, that the Infanta, by the will of her father, Philip ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in vain. For the principles of reason, if employed as objective, are without exception dialectical and possess no validity or truth, except as regulative principles of the systematic employment of reason in experience. But when such delusive proof are presented to us, it is our duty to meet them with the non liquet of a matured judgement; and, although we are unable to expose the particular sophism upon which the proof is based, we have a right to demand ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of Pennsylvania has been increased by the proceedings of certain self-created societies relative to the laws and administration of the Government; proceedings, in our apprehension, founded in political error, calculated, if not intended, to disorganize our Government, and which, by inspiring delusive hopes of support, have been influential in misleading our fellow-citizens in the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... find means to dissipate this delusive cloud that interposes itself betwixt us. Meanwhile, accept my hand, in token that, however changed thyself, I remain ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of the man who drains the poisonous draught, as having been previously 'a little weak in constitution, but still sound and of peaceful habits,' is entirely delusive. The whole evidence shows that France was not sound, but the very reverse of sound, and no inconsiderable portion of that evidence is to be found in the facts which M. Taine has so industriously collected in his ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... Profuse of life, through blood does wade, To lend her sister kingdom aid: Our conquering thunders vainly roar Terrific round the Gallic shore; Profoundest statesmen vainly scheme— 'Tis all a vain, delusive dream, If treacherously within our breast We ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... call for help! Canst thou believe He like a child would shriek for aid Or pray for respite or reprieve— Not of such metal is he made! Delusive was that piercing cry,— Some trick of magic by the foe; He has a work,—he cannot die, Beseech me ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... of those wolfish dogs which they had brought to the place prowling about the court-yard. Sometimes I prayed, and felt tranquillised, and fancied that I was perhaps to have a short interval of sleep. But the serenity was delusive, and all the time my nerves were strung hysterically. Sometimes I felt quite wild, and on the point of screaming. At length that dreadful night passed away. Morning came, and a less morbid, though hardly a less terrible state of mind. Madame paid me an early visit. A thought struck ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... enlightened and civilized. Teach and show her rulers and her people, that they can obtain, and that white men will give them, more for the productions of their soil than for the hands which can produce these—and the work is done. All other steps are futile, can only be mischievous and delusive, and terminate in disappointment and defeat. To eradicate the slave trade will not eradicate the passions which gave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... energy to jump For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns, Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud Capping a sullen crater: and mankind We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark, Because of thy straight leadership declined; At heels of this or that delusive spark: Now when the multitudinous races press Elbow to elbow hourly more, A thickened host; when now we hear aloud Life for the very life implore A signal of a visioned mark; Light of the mind, the mind's discourse, The rational in graciousness, Thee by acknowledgement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. Tenant-right is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is invariably used to the landlord's advantage. Here we have an election in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think or act for himself. What right any one ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... was born with a genius for it. Some people are born with a genius for one thing, and some with a genius for another. I, for example, am an artistic genius, forced to be an amateur by the delusive possession of early wealth, and now burning with a creative instinct in the direction of the sheep or cattle business; you have the gift of universal optimism; Lurella Blood has the genius of good society. Give that girl a winter among nice people in Boston, and you would never know that ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of Andros, we found ourselves face to face with a variety of difficulties: glimmering sandbars, reaches of moon-white shoals, patches of half-made land with pines struggling knee-deep in the tide; here and there a mile of mangroves, and delusive channels of blue water; beauty everywhere spreading out her sweeping laces of foam—a welter of a world still in its making, with no clear passages for any craft drawing more than a canoe. Loveliness everywhere—again ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... whatsoever, and could only be saved by faith in God's promises. This gave him much comfort, but it took him years to clarify his ideas and to reach the conclusion that the existing Church was opposed to the idea of justification by faith, because it fostered what seemed to him a delusive confidence in "good works." He was thirty-seven years old before he finally became convinced that it was his duty to become the leader in the destruction of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... my face, and it came disagreeably into my head that he was playing some part; that his talk was delusive, his anger feigned; that, perhaps, he still suspected me of being a Separationist. He went on talking about the failure of the boat attack. All Jamaica had been talking of it, speculating about it, congratulating itself on it. British valour was going to tell; four boats' crews would ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of London?' said my father; and for some time he succeeded in making us sit for the delusive picture of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chivalric and adventurous "the danger's self were lure alone." The quiet and stillness which reigned around, even when the enemy were lurking nearest and in greater numbers, inspired many too, with the delusive hope of exemption from risk, not unfrequently the harbinger of fatal consequences. It seemed indeed, impracticable at first to realize the existence of a danger, which could not be perceived. And not until taught by reiterated suffering did they properly ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... by clasping God? I mean making daily efforts to rivet our love on Him, and not to let the world, with all its delusive and cloying sweets, draw us away from Him. I mean continual and strenuous efforts to fix our thoughts upon Him, and not to allow the trivialities of life, or the claims of culture, or the necessities of our daily position ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have fondly dreamed of Utopia and the Millennium, when we have begun almost to believe that man is not, after all, a tiger half tamed, and that the smell of blood will not wake the savage within him, we are of a sudden startled from the delusive dream, to find the thin mask of civilization rent in twain and thrown contemptuously away. We lie down to sleep, like the peasant on the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The mountain has been so long inert, that we believe its fires extinguished. Round us hang the clustering ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of Lazenby, the Company's clerk at Fort Luke, who said, when the matter was talked of before him, that it was all hanky-panky,—which was evidence that he had lived in London town, before his anxious relatives, sending him forth under the delusive flag of adventure and wild life, imprisoned him in the Arctic regions with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... signalement is strangely delusive, lived to know the worst ogres in the world (their chief was named Simon), who were of his own people, and to die the most unhappy prince or king in that world. And he of the Leopard who said God ham, would have saved that Dauphin ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... environment were so changed as enormously to diminish the strength of the competitive instinct. If an economic reorganization can effect this it may pro- vide a real safeguard against war, but if not, it is to be feared that the hopes of universal peace will prove delusive. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... own way, giving the business, by some sharp shuffle, such a turn as to make the rupture ostensibly Flora's, but he had none the less remorselessly and basely backed out. He had cared for her lovely face, cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been her poor little delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damn it, with the monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in. He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be expected of him; he had made—Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter—a "handsome" offer of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... attempt to make the best of a commercial contract of property and slavery by subjecting it to some religious restraint and elevating it by some touch of poetry. But the actual result is that when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. And though of course nobody expects them to do anything ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... had crowned with laurels green, By priestly staff whose verdure had decayed, Robbed me of Hope's sweet solaces, and e'en The last delusive comfort caused to fade; Yet thus was nourished in my soul serene An inward trust, by which my faith was stayed; And if to this trust I prove ever true The withered staff ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... self-righteousness from his heart! Humility and penitence are the seals of Christianity; and, without feeling them deeply seated in the soul, all hope is delusive, and leads to vain expectations. Praise himself when his whole soul and body should unite to praise his Maker! John! you have enjoyed the blessings of a gospel ministry, and have been called from out a multitude of sinners and pagans, and, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... apocryphal, unreal, ungrounded, groundless; unsubstantial &c. 4; heretical &c. (heterodox) 984; unsound; illogical &c. 477. inexact, unexact inaccurate[obs3], incorrect; indefinite &c. (uncertain) 475. illusive, illusory; delusive; mock, ideal &c (imaginary) 515; spurious &c. 545; deceitful &c. 544; perverted. controvertible, unsustainable; unauthenticated, untrustworthy. exploded, refuted; discarded. in error, under an error &c. n.; mistaken &c. v.; tripping &c. v.; out, out in one's reckoning; aberrant; beside ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... passed. But the deeper reason for all this clamour from the rural districts was the stagnation of ideas, and incapacity of improvement, engendered by an artificial monopoly of the national food supply. This was not the special lesson impressed upon landlords or tenants by Cobbett, whose violent and delusive writings had a large circulation in the country. But his teaching was so far beneficial that it quickened the demand for parliamentary reform, though the fruits of that reform were destined to be very different from the expectations which ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... steps forward for the better protection of the rest of us. It was the burning of the St. George Flats, and more recently of the Manhattan Bank, in which a dozen men were disabled, that stamped the average fire-proof construction as faulty and largely delusive. One might even go further, and say that the fireman's risk increases in the ratio of our progress or convenience. The water-tanks came with the very high buildings, which in themselves offer problems to the fire-fighters that ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt, which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... mystic glass. Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye, Like him, led on, to triumph and to die; Like him, by mighty magic compass'd round, And seeking sceptres on enchanted ground. Such spells invest, such blear illusion waits The trav'ller bound for Fame's receding gates, Delusive splendours gild the proud abode, But lurking demons haunt th' alluring road; There gaunt-eyed Want asserts her iron reign, There, as in vengeance of the world's disdain, This half-flesh'd hag midst Wit's ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... St. Peter, after that vision of the great sheet coming down from heaven had fully opened to him the universality of the Church of God. Then his "delusive dream of temporal deliverance became a real assurance of eternal redemption." Then his "narrow estimate of the Divine Covenant with his own nation expanded, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, into the sublime conception of the 'Israel of God.'" [Footnote: Lee ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... and forever; for ten years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is! Nothing lasts. Then we came here—I never saw him again; he never came. He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never saw him again—and now he is dead! But he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... event on the British cabinet and nation was great and immediate. It seemed to remove the delusive hopes of conquest with which they had been flattered, and suddenly to display the mass of resistance which must yet be encountered. Previous to the reception of this disastrous intelligence, the employment of savages in the war ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... palantines; slept in the hold with them at night; and enjoyed, along with many of them, the pleasure of building castles in the air—anticipations of the wealth and comforts we were to enjoy in the land of promise. It was, indeed, by delusive accounts of America, that most of them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... not the least taxing of which must have been the necessity of keeping up "Fiona Macleod's" correspondence as well as his own. Better, so to say, to have thrown William Sharp overboard, and to have reserved the energies of a temperament almost abnormally active, but physically delusive and precarious, for the finer productiveness of "Fiona Macleod." But William Sharp deemed otherwise. He was wont to say, "Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies," and in a letter to Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier—she and her husband being among the earliest ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... corroborates the yearnings of the heart and represents life as a growing good which is to attain to ever higher reaches and fuller realisations in the world to {132} come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the future must crown the present. No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blast or slow decline Our social ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... treating her well, placing her in handsome apartments in a boarding house on the west side, and for nearly a year the ardor of his attachment knew no abatement. Gradually, however, the affection on his side began to wane. She awoke from her delusive dream to the consciousness that she was alone in a great city without friends, money, or virtue. Whither could she flee? She could not return to her country home to look into the sorrowful depths of her mother's tender eye, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... better will it be both for the pupil and for the community at large, while the benefits expected from an exercise where there is any material deviation from them, will most probably turn out to be delusive, and the exercise itself detected as the mere bequest of an antiquated prejudice, or the temporary idol of fashion. These principles being admitted to be sound in the abstract, will greatly assist us in deciding upon the relative value and appropriateness of some of the propositions ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... to repeat. Juno had this ordain'd: for oft the dame The frailer nymphs upon the hills had caught, In trespass with her Jove; but Echo sly With lengthen'd speech the goddess kept amus'd, Till all by flight were sav'd. Soon Juno saw The trick:—"The power of that delusive tongue,"— She cry'd, "I'll lessen, and make brief thy words;" Nor stay'd, but straight her threaten'd vengeance took. Now she redoubles (all she can) the words Which end another's speech; reporting back, But ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... tempt the dangerous deep, too venturous youth, Why does thy breast with fondest wishes glow? No tender parent there thy cares shall sooth, No much-lov'd Friend shall share thy every woe. Why does thy mind with hopes delusive burn? 5 Vain are thy Schemes by heated Fancy plann'd: Thy promis'd joy thou'lt see to Sorrow turn Exil'd from Bliss, and from thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sustaining her equanimity in this pressing emergency. "Love, dear, delusive love!" as she expressed herself to a friend some time afterwards, "rigorous reason had forced her to resign; and now her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to be contented with rational enjoyments". Thus situated, life became an intolerable burthen. While she was absent from ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... to supply drugs or nefarious preparations to the unprincipled brewer of porter or ale; others perform the same office to the wine and spirit merchant; and others again to the grocer and the oilman. The operators carry on their processes chiefly in secresy, and under some delusive firm, with the ostensible denotements of ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... intelligible expression to a pang none but I could ever understand!— No one has entered Rome. None will ever come. I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished, and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as delusive, as false, but to which I now cling ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... mischievous encouragements of idleness, the lavish professions of sentimental sympathy, and the dogged refusals of substantial help since the present Government took office. Above all, our Commissioner has provided conclusive evidence that Irish Nationalism is a mere delusive sham—a paltry euphemism for the predatory passion which a succession of professional agitators have aroused in the hearts of the people. If the Land Question could be settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of safety seemed a delusive one; the skiff swooped away from the rock, spun more giddily about, and threw both men upon their knees. Another instant that seemed endless,—an instant which decided the fate of both, as far as this world was concerned,—these men trembled on the brink of eternity. If the skiff obeyed ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... by their great care and attention, got us by degrees to recover our composure, and chased from our thoughts the cruel recollections which afflicted us. We recovered our tranquillity, and dared at last to cherish the hope of seeing more fortunate days. That hope was not delusive. Our benefactor, M. Dard, since then having become my husband, gathered together the wrecks of our wretched family, and has proved himself worthy of being a father to us. My sister Caroline afterwards married M. Richard, agricultural botanist, attached to ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the elixir of life, but it had proved as delusive as a will-o'-the-wisp to him, and ever, just as he felt assured of success, the prize had slipped away from his grasp, leaving him further away from success than he had been before. But now it was not the elixir that he was seeking to find. From ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... O'er Rama's brow, shone bright with gold, Though Nandigrama's town they neared, Of Rama yet no sign appeared. Then Bharat called the Vanar chief And questioned thus in doubt and grief: "Hast thou uncertain, like thy kind, A sweet delusive guile designed? Where, where is royal Rama? show The hero, victor of the foe. I gaze, but see no Vanars still Who wear ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862] the carved work of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... everywhere represents this as the age of the outgathering of the church from the world, and not the ingathering of the world into the church. To set such an end before themselves as the world's conversion would therefore not only be unwarranted by Scripture, but delusive and disappointing, disheartening God's servants by the failure to realize the result, and dishonoring to God Himself by making ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... especially among the young, who seek present pleasure in foolish and sinful deeds, vainly believing the wicked may flourish and receive the blessing of the good. Believe me, young friend, such hopes are delusive, and such expectations will suddenly perish. Let fools laugh and mock at sin, and live as if God were not; but consider well the path of your feet! When your weak arm can hold back the globes which ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... be glad to make a favourable peace with France even if he felt obliged to restore not only Amiens but every other city or stronghold that he had ever conquered in that kingdom. Time would soon show whether this prediction were correct or delusive; but while the secret negotiations between Henry and the Pope were vigorously proceeding for that peace with Spain which the world in general and the commonwealth of the Netherlands in particular thought to be farthest from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tears did not bring him comfort, for they were tears of anguish and despair. Ten times a day he would proceed to her chamber, or follow her to the garden where she loved to walk, always in the delusive hope that he might catch some spark of returning reason from those calm-looking but meaningless eyes, after which he would weep like a child. With respect to his daughter, every thing was done for her that wealth and human means could accomplish, but to no purpose; the malady was too deeply ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... which they had seen from the opposite shore was but a delusive mirage raised by the Spirit of Evil to tempt ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... Periodical, we pointed out to Sir Robert Peel's government the necessity of adopting coercive measures towards Ireland, in mercy to the peasantry themselves, and the folly of permitting sedition to run its course, in the delusive hope that the fallacy on which the arguments of the demagogues were founded would at length be discovered by their dupes, and that the repeated disappointment of their expectations would ultimately induce the deluded people to withdraw the confidence which they reposed in their political leaders. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... a delusive offer of marriage with the daughter of Artabanus, Caracalla decoys the Parthians into his camp, where he treacherously attacks and slays a great number ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... him, in having preferred the dreams of his own excited imagination, to the love and faith of the simple but tender heart which God had confided to him in the holy bonds of marriage. The love and deification of self in the delusive show of military or political glory, is the lowest and last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for individual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, and men are willing to die, if only laurel crowned, with joy and pride ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sympathy. Mr. Coleridge had journeyed to this port, where he rather hoped, than expected to find some conveyance, through the medium of a neutral, that should waft him to the land, "more prised than ever." The hope proved delusive. The war was now raging between England and France, and Buonaparte being lord of the ascendant in Italy, Mr. Coleridge's situation became insecure, and even perilous. To obtain a passport was impossible; and as Mr. C. had formerly rendered himself ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of the two most vigorous attempts which have been made to turn the elements we have been considering to a profitable end. I have in my thoughts the invention of ether-inhalation and the induction of trance in mesmerism. The witch narcotised her pupils in order to produce in them delusive visions; the surgeon stupifies his patient to prevent the pain of an operation being felt. The fanatic preacher excites convulsions and trance in his auditory to persuade them that they are visited by the Holy Spirit; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... perhaps, was there a time when rash monetary speculation seized with a firmer grip upon people and governments than during the early part of the eighteenth century. Concurrently with the delusive "Mississippi Scheme" of John Law (1717), which resulted in financial panic in France, a similarly disastrous enterprise was carried on in England. This was the attempt to turn the South Sea Company into a concern for enriching quickly both its private and its governmental ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... for an instant abated; their vigils were tireless and ceaseless; woe to the soldier who ventured without the Fort or even lifted his head above the palisade. Pontiac's patience was strengthened with the delusive idea that the French were only temporarily defeated and would rally to his assistance. He even despatched messengers across the interior to the French commandant, Neyon, at Fort Chartres on the Mississippi, requesting that French troops be sent without delay to his aid. Meanwhile ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... steady fever seized her, and at length her brain became so seriously affected that all hope of recovery appeared futile and delusive. In the early stages of her illness, Dr. Grey requested Salome to assist him in nursing her, but the girl dared not trust herself to witness the manifestations of an affection that nearly maddened her, and had almost rudely ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... physiologist has rendered it probable that the animal heat depends more upon the functions of the nerves than upon any result of respiration. The argument derived from change of colour is perfectly delusive; it would not follow if carbon were liberated from the blood that it must necessarily become brighter; sulphur combining with charcoal becomes a clear fluid, and a black oxide of copper becomes red in uniting with a substance which abounds in carbon. No change in ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... had burst. The shares, each one of which had seemed a fortune, found no more purchasers, and in its fall the Company dragged down with it its ally and chief creditor, the bank. All was dismay and despair, except in those who had sold out in time, and turned delusive paper into solid values. John Law, lately the idol and reputed savior of France, fled for his life, amid a ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... woody, hilly, and irregular, though not unpleasing, appearance; but in running along the shore it manifestly grew worse, having more tendency to sand. The small projections of land which appeared as they sailed along often presented the delusive appearance of openings behind them; and they were the more inclined to entertain these hopes, as Captain Cook passed along this part of the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... take men of business and opulence on their own ground. If this principle will fill one's own treasuries, it will fill the treasuries of the Lord. Let it then be regarded. I would sound it in the ears of the million who are delving the earth for gold, and startle them from their delusive dreams. I would that it might echo and re-echo till its solemn utterances should make every votary of Mammon tremble. Hear, ye rich men; give ear, ye who are pursuing the bubbles of wealth! is it christian, is it right, to adopt principles of prudence and self-denial in filling your own ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... rational, and not a bit less presumptuous, than that of making them free of the Divine cognizance and authority, to which these elements are subjected. Such attempts, it seems pretty evident, have been the source of delusive self-congratulation in all ages of the world, and may be ascribed, with no very mighty stretch of fancy, to the same busy agent, by whom, in the earliest stage of our nature, man was tempted with the alluring hope of becoming "as God." A wiser and more benevolent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... not America wrap herself up in delusive hope and suppose the business done. The least remissness in preparation, the least relaxation in execution, will only serve to prolong the war, and increase expenses. If our enemies can draw consolation from misfortune, and exert themselves upon despair, how much more ought we, who ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... themselves habitants of wilds and of caverns, that they might perform in secret those Christian rites which they dared not assist in openly; that this should be so, in truth and in reality, seemed too incredible—it must be a dream—a delusive trance of the imagination. While these thoughts passed through the mind of Kenneth, the same passage, by which the procession had entered the chapel, received them on their return. The young sacristans, the sable nuns, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... on their thrones above, All but the ever-watchful eye of Jove. To honour Thetis' son he bends his care, And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war. Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight, And thus commands the vision of the night: directs Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air, To Agamemnon's royal tent repair; Bid him in arms draw forth th' embattled train, March all his legions to the dusty plain. Now tell the king 'tis given him to destroy Declare ev'n now The lofty walls ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A Cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste, thy dear, delusive shape." ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... sought mainly an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of political, of religious revolution ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... digested, tested; nothing new is left to learn When the soul, serene, reliant, Hope's delusive dreams can spurn." ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... From this delusive scene of domestic condescension and kindliness he passed to his Hall of Audience to consider official matters. Twice a week at sunset he appeared at one of the gates of the palace to hear the complaints and petitions of the poorest of his subjects, who at no other ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of extension, in particular, is a conception resulting from the association of my visual Presentment with my power of active exertion, and the delusive tendency to regard this quality as in some sense primarily and fundamentally real is due to the unconscious recognition of the fact that it is in virtue of my power, or association as an agent with the energetic system, that I derive a suggestion of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... frenzy without a name, to a despair without bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue; but I grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delusive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer to my cries, as the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the despairing sob of impotent agony. For ten thousand years I have cried in infinite space: ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... choose something different from that which we should naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a motive. Again, consciousness of the possession of any power may easily be delusive; we can properly judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished; we know what we have done, and we may infer from having done it, that our power was equal to what it achieved; but it is easy for us to overrate ourselves if we try to measure our abilities in themselves. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... attractive, that the senator, as he bent over the couch, though the warm, soft breath of the young girl played on his cheeks and waved the tips of his perfumed locks, could hardly imagine that the scene before him was more than a bright, delusive dream. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... delicate, and an imagination so quickly kindled, that he himself tells us no one can guess the extremes of ecstasy and despair through which he alternately passed. These spiritual experiences were perhaps fed by the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, whose works came into his possession, and furnished a most delusive and dangerous guide for the young enthusiast's fancy. But, dream and suffer as he might, nothing was allowed to quench the ardor of ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... for him get ready; Then invite the loveliest damsels Rome can boast of, to come hither To the feasts and to the dances. Bring musicians, and in fine Let it be proclaimed that any Woman of illustrious blood Who from his delusive passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who cures him By some ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... it seems," he muttered, "who forever appears in my path to snatch from me every prize I set my heart on, is secretly an officer in the British service, commissioned, probably, to head a regiment of tories, whom he is now by his false statements and delusive promises, attempting to gather from the weak and wavering of our overawed people. This must be instantly made known. Heavens! what effrontery!—to be playing the spy under the garb of pretended neutrality, and seducing ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... were neither so blind to their own interests, nor so careless of their reputations as to omit the prescribing of such modes of diet and medical remedies as were calculated to appease their patients' sufferings. Besides which, however delusive and empirical their outward ceremonials and bold pretensions might have been, we should remember, that priests, having some acquaintance with the science of medicine, were generally selected to officiate on those spots where the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Nicolete in vain, had allowed her to build in a wild woodland corner of her ancestral park, half a mile away from the great house, where, for all its corridors and galleries, she could never feel, at all events, spiritually alone. All that was most sugared and musical and generally delusive in the old library of her fathers had been brought out to this little woodland library, and to that nucleus of old leather-bound poets and romancers, long since dead, yet as alive and singing on their shelves as any bird on the sunny boughs outside, my young ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... hope of such an exception being made in their favour during the general ruin which they see impending over others. I am, however, not the less convinced of the truth of my own opinion, which is unhappily already confirmed by too many instances of the effects which this delusive security, as I think it, has produced, and is daily producing. I can see no grounds, in the state of this country, to hope for such an exception in our favour, and I do verily believe that we must ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... habits. He felt that it was impossible to endure the horrors of total abstinence, and, now that he was no longer under the observation of his family, he again tried to satisfy his conscience by promising himself that he would gradually reduce the amount used until he could discontinue it utterly—delusive hope, that has mocked thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Brush, Esq., writes (Sept. 17th): "Our unhappy mortality prevails." On the 23d, he says: "Mr. Whitney has been lying at the point of death for the last ten or twelve days. We hope he begins to improve." These hopes were delusive. He died. Mr. Whitney had been abroad; he was an assiduous and talented advocate—a native of Hudson, N.Y.—was on the high road to political distinction—a moral man ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... fires are not confined to these regions, knave," rejoined Wolsey. "Mankind are often lured, by delusive gleams of glory and power, into quagmires deep and pitfalls. Holy Virgin; ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a second civil war. But 'death cut the inextricable knot.' His deadly disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom. His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the sight. It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of his office. He asked to be ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... of heathen, are as destitute of preaching as though a missionary had never sailed, as destitute of the Scriptures as though a Bible were never printed, and as far from salvation, I was about to say, as though Jesus Christ had never died. Men speak of operating upon the world. Such language is delusive. The present style of effort, or anything like it, can only operate on some small portions of the earth. To influence materially the wide world, Christians must awake to a style of praying, giving, and going too, of which they have ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... them. This told upon me and made my physical burdens harder for me than for other children of my years around me. That third was the strongest part of me. In it I lived a dream-life with writers, artists, and musicians. Hope, sweet, cruel, delusive Hope, whispered in my ear that life was long with much by and by, and in that by and by my dream-life would be real. So on I went with that gleaming lake in the distance beckoning me to come and sail on its silver waters, and Inexperience, conceited, blind Inexperience, failing ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a New Birth; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look, oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly delusive, supposititious: we call them, in the language of metaphor, regulated modelled shapes; some of which have bodies and life still in them; most of which, according to a German Writer, have only emptiness, 'glass-eyes glaring on you with a ghastly affectation of life, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... can there be for this situation, but in a change of the system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... her presence, and, like one striving to recover the particulars of a forgotten dream, he would have given the world at that moment to have recollected the grounds on which he had founded expectations which now seemed so delusive. He accompanied Fergus with downcast eyes, tingling ears, and the feelings of the criminal, who, while the melancholy cart moves slowly through the crowds that have assembled to behold his execution, receives no clear sensation either from ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... MY DEAR BELL—How delusive are the flatteries of fortune! The wealth that has been showered upon us, beyond all our hopes, has brought no pleasure to my heart, and I pour my unavailing sighs for your absence, when I would communicate the cause of my unhappiness. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills. The fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists. The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts. The lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... men are firmly convinced, that conscience, honour, and credit, are all in one interest; and that without the concurrence of the former, the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others. The force these delusive words have, is not seen in the transactions of the busy world only, but also have their tyranny over the fair sex. Were you to ask the unhappy Lais, what pangs of reflection, preferring the consideration of her honour to her conscience, has given her? She could tell you, that it has forced her ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... man, who, when lingering within its ancient walls, forgot everything around him, save the bright and beautiful being who was to him its charm. When, however, that fair form had departed from his sight, he was awakened to the delusive nature of his hopes, and with the knowledge, exquisite even in its despair, that he loved Emmeline Hamilton, his profession became more and more distasteful. Had he followed the paths of ambition, as his inclination prompted, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... taken their delusive refuge in the shrouds, and I was preparing to follow them when a hand was laid upon my shoulder.. Turning round I beheld M. Letourneur, with tears in his eyes, pointing toward his son. "Yes, my friend," I said, pressing his hand, "we will save ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... weakness had been her portion at the time our story commences. So accustomed had she become to her sad situation, that it seemed like a delusive dream when she remembered the sportive hours of her earlier childhood. Like other sick children, she was far more thoughtful than was quite natural at her age, and very seldom in her easiest moments laughed aloud. But she was not an ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... Nevertheless, as it will appear hereafter, the Bourbons themselves did not as yet altogether despair; and it must be admitted, that various measures of the provisional government were not unlikely to keep up their delusive hopse. We may notice in particular a change in the national oath of allegiance, by which one most important clause was entirely erased: namely, that expressive of hatred to royalty: and an edict, by which the celebration ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... exclaimed Francisco; "and are we indeed thus blest, or is it a delusive dream? But tell me, sweet maiden, tell me whether thou hast ceased to think of one, from whose memory thine image has never been absent since the date of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... that his system of moral tests might be as delusive as what ignorant people take to be tests of intellect and learning. If the scholar or savant cannot answer their haphazard questions on the shortest notice, their belief in his capacity is shaken. But the better-informed ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... often write of art as if it had only to do with what actually exists; whereas it is given to it as to poetry "to make," to create—all that is required is a certain connexion with the real, sometimes exceedingly slight, which shall be sufficiently delusive for present purpose. The agile mind can pass over a deep and formidable chasm upon a slender thread; and when over, is too much occupied in the new region to turn back and measure the means of passage. We suspect our author's view ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Paphlagonians, to the enlisting of votaries, even among the Grecian philosophers, and men of the most eminent rank and distinction in Rome: nay, could engage the attention of that sage emperor Marcus Aurelius; so far as to make him trust the success of a military expedition to his delusive prophecies. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... claimed again that females should have the ballot as a protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband is brutal, arbitrary or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to conform ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... rapture In sight of gold he held in capture; And then, with sudden qualm possessed, He wrung his hands and beat his breast: "O, had the earth concealed this gold, I had perhaps in peace grown old! But there is neither gold nor price To recompense the pang of vice. Bane of all good—delusive cheat, To lure a soul on to defeat And banish honour from the mind: Gold raised the sword midst kith and kind, Gold fosters each, pernicious art In which the devils bear a part,— Gold, bane accursed!" In angry mood Plutus, his god, before him stood. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... excitement: Mr. Gladstone retorted in the most eloquent speech he ever delivered in parliament. Attempts were made by the government party to stifle his voice in uproar, but the house sustained him by repeated and long-continued rounds of applause. Mr. Gladstone's denunciation of the budget as a delusive and dishonest scheme was followed by a vote which rejected it. The protectionist members voted to a man with the government, but a majority was against them, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the country of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer Spaniards ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Having thus exploded the delusive notion of liberty which Locke had borrowed from Hobbes, Leibnitz proceeds to take what seems to be higher ground. He expressly declares, that in order to constitute man an accountable agent, he must be free, not only from constraint, but ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... love to God, devotedness to his service, and reliance on his grace through a Mediator, and these are evidenced by fruits of holiness, we need no other evidence that our names are written in heaven: But if there are wanting, hope is vain and confidence delusive—Gifts, the most extraordinary, even those of prophecy and miracles are totally unavailing. They leave us but as "sounding brass and ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... cheap negroes gave the several families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, and among the oldest, richest, and most influential. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and joy Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 640 To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. So glister'd the dire Snake and into fraud Led Eve ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... grand-dauphin had for some days past been ill of small-pox. The king had gone to be with him at Meudon, forbidding the court to come near the castle. The small court of Monseigneur were huddled together in the lofts. The king was amused with delusive hopes; his chief physician, Fagon, would answer for the invalid. The king continued to hold his councils as usual, and the deputation of market-women (dames de la Halle), come from Paris to have news of Monseigneur, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of the German Empire are in some aspects typical of a condition of things elsewhere found in countries whose productions and trade are similar to our own. The close rivalries of competing industries; the influence of the delusive doctrine that the internal development of a nation is promoted and its wealth increased by a policy which, in undertaking to reserve its home markets for the exclusive use of its own producers, necessarily obstructs ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all has been dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says, "Well, the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... weather, she had spent an hour or more with Mary Backhouse, and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had more share than she knew in determining her own mood that day. The world seemed such dross, the pretences of personal happiness so hollow and delusive, after such a sight! The girl lay dying fast, with a look of extraordinary attentiveness in her face, hearing every noise, every footfall, and, as it seemed to Catherine, in a mood of inward joy. She took, moreover, some notice of her visitor. As a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... matter of dress, they have walked the thorny paths of experience. They know the cruel cost of everything they wear,—a cost which in this country is artificially maintained by a high protective tariff,—and they are not to be cajoled by that delusive word "simplicity," being too well aware that it is, when synonymous with good taste, the consummate success of artists, and the crowning achievement of wealth. Some years ago there appeared in one of the English magazines an article entitled, "How to Dress on Thirty Pounds a Year. As a Lady. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... agreeable, and shut off from all knowledge of those evils which can make it painful. The aim of the story is to show the vanity of expecting perfect happiness, and the folly of sacrificing present advantages for the delusive promises of the future. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Advent Herald of Jan. 8th, 1848, to read the remarkable dream, which you had in November last. I am glad that the Lord comforted you by giving you this dream. Since I have read it, I do feel a hope that the Lord will yet save you from the delusive snare into which your pretended friends seemed to have drawn you. Joel's prophecy, quoted by Peter, at the Pentecost, respecting dreams and visions of the last days, are not, in my view, fulfilled; ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... of those delusive sounds which the anxious mind sometimes conjures up, or did an answer really come to ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... boasting, sinful America indulge in the flattering, delusive hope, that the heavy judgments which fell upon those ancient cities will be averted from her, whose guilt is equal, if not even greater than theirs? Does she think that Cain-like, she can escape the vigilant, sleepless ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... mind Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend: And such was mine! who basely plunged her sword Through the fond bosom where she reign'd adored! Alas! I hoped the toils of war o'ercome, To meet soft quiet and repose at home; Delusive hope! O wife, thy deeds disgrace The perjured sex, and blacken all the race; And should posterity one virtuous find, Name Clytemnestra, they will ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... gods, 'tis a delusive word embodying a vain idea! Where is there any freedom in life? All of us are bound in chains and restricted in one way or the other,—the man who deems himself politically free is a slave to the multitude and his own ambition ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even their calamities—fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence— interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of the ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... persons owed their conversion to Louisa's books; it was written some years ago. His mother spent Saturday here. She is very bright and cheerful and full of sly humor; he did everything to amuse her and she enjoyed her visit amazingly. I long to see you. Letters are more and more unsatisfactory, delusive things. M. is going to have a "party" this afternoon, and is going to one this forenoon. The others are bright and busy ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... advancing mercenaries. Masuccio's voice was heard, calling to them to stand firm; bidding them kneel and ward the charge with their pikes; assuring them with curses that they had but to deal with half-dozen men. But the mountain echoes were delusive, and that thunder of descending hooves seemed to them not of a half-dozen but of a regiment. Despite Masuccio's imprecations the foremost turned, and in that moment the riders were upon them, through them and over them, like the mighty torrent ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... keep his work vital and human. The danger which every peculiarly able individual specialist runs is that of overestimating the value of his own purpose and achievements, and so of establishing a false and delusive relation between his own world and the larger world of human affairs and interests. Such a danger cannot be properly checked by the conscious moral and intellectual education of the individual, because when he is ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... The sudden shower down-pouring on my head, Though in the distance all is loveliness. Thither, in vain, with rapid step I've sped. I liken this to Hope: although with sorrow The heart is overcast, and dim the eye; Delusive Hope—not present, ever nigh, Presages gladness on a coming morrow, And lures us onward, till our ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... warned those who might be in danger of being inveigled into this scheme of its unlawful character and of the penalties which they would incur. For some time there was reason to hope that these measures had sufficed to prevent any such attempt. This hope, however, proved to be delusive. Very early in the morning of the 3d of August a steamer called the Pampero departed from New Orleans for Cuba, having on board upward of 400 armed men with evident intentions to make war upon the authorities of the island. This expedition was set on foot in palpable violation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... enough to overcome all the various demoralizing forces that counteract it; hence, it must often fail to show triumphant results. If we take the cases just cited, and examine them separately, we see that they are delusive. Is it not asking a good deal of the Leipsic citizens to support the poor relatives and descendants of all the great men that city has produced? If Bach himself had lived to claim their charity, I am convinced ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the only thing, indeed, it has ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... ourselves passed through much the same phases. Vandal and others have told us of the Utopia which was created in the minds of the French when the old regime crashed to the ground. Sydney Smith caricatured the delusive hopes excited by the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, when he said that all the unmarried young women thought that they would at once get husbands, and that all the schoolboys expected a heavy fall in the price of jam tarts. A process of disillusionment may confidently ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... been any discontinuity in natural processes. There is no trace of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or sudden destructions of a whole fauna or flora. The appearances which were formerly interpreted in that way have all been shown to be delusive, as our knowledge has increased and as the blanks which formerly appeared to exist between the different formations have been filled up. That there is no absolute break between formation and formation, that there has been no sudden disappearance of all the forms of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... they were discussing the pros and cons of the advantages for a bachelor of club life over home life. She knew that Louis was making some brilliantly cynical remarks,—asserting that the apparent privacy of the latter was delusive, and that the reputed publicity of the former was deceptive, as it was even more isolated than the latter. All of which the doctor laughed down as ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... of the young, the gay, and the generous. Like 14most of her society, Clara has no idea of prudence, and hence to escape some pressing importunities, she levanted for a short time to Scotland, but has since, by the liberal advances of her present delusive, been enabled to quit the interested apprehensions of the Dun family. The swaggering belle in the green pelisse yonder, on the pave, is the celebrated courtezan, Mrs. St*pf**d, of Curzon-street, May-fair. How she acquired her present cognomen I know not, unless it was for her stopping accomplishment ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and as the myriad sparks flew up the chimney, he wished he had just so many dollars; he would give them all if she would but love him. Growing weary of this delusive sport, he looked at his watch, compared it with Miss Sidebottom's yankee clock, and finding his own time-piece was just five minutes the faster, concluded that both were wrong just two minutes and a half, and he would split the difference. He might be mistaken, but if he was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... of life, to mar our happiness in our family- like institution (February 23d) was the listless waywardness of some of our dear students, in a determined purpose to attend a dancing party under the guise of an oyster supper. How many delusive snares are laid to entrap and turn aside the youth into divergent paths. We found it necessary to suspend eight of our students for the remainder of the term. It is a painful duty of the surgeon to amputate a limb, yet it may be an imperative duty, in order to save the life of the patient, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... But at Moscow the delusive impression was of short continuance. The rumor of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately propagated in that city, from the singular commotion produced by extraordinary events, which ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... worst," she said, "is that perhaps we shall never be certain, when we see each other again, whether it is not a delusive image, a product of our own imagination, instead of the other's actual being. For then we no longer, as now, have our senses and thus nothing to convince us that what we perceive is the same as what ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and St Alban's? Never did any people display, within the limits prescribed by law, so generous a fervour, or so steadfast a determination, as that very people whose apparent languor had just before inspired the enemies of Reform with a delusive hope. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty and in such a ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... minstrel, with another half-sigh. "It was not indeed wholly, but in great part the hope of the poet's fame that made me a truant in the way to that which destiny, and such few gifts as Nature conceded to me, marked out for my proper and only goal. But what a strange, delusive Will-o'-the-Wisp the love of verse-making is! How rarely a man of good sense deceives himself as to other things for which he is fitted, in which he can succeed; but let him once drink into his being the charm of verse-making, how the glamour of the charm bewitches his understanding! ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gushes pleasure with the tide of woe; And when its waves retire, like those of Nile, They leave behind them such a golden soil That there the virtues without culture grow, There the sweet blossoms of affection blow. These were his words; void of delusive art I felt them; for he spoke them from his heart. Nor will I now attempt with witty folly ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... How delusive the first chance proved we shall see later. The second was impractical, for the current carried the ice through the strait so fast, that any party trying to cross the floe, would have been carried south to where the strait widened out into Baffin's Bay before they could possibly pass the twenty-five ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of LINCOLN, to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the moment of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin of Egyptian ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... subjects. Hence, according to the Roman mythology, Amor, the God of love, is represented as blind-folded. His arrows inflict wounds, it is said, of which the sight can take no cognizance. The language of the poet records the bitter experience of woman, often consequent on this delusive impression: ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... told you also that my object was to dupe and intoxicate him gradually by delusive friendship and promises, by festivities and false homage, until it is indifferent to him whether, as a compensation for the acquisition of Spain by my brother, I give him Constantinople and the Balkan, or something else, provided it is palatable. He has an awful appetite ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... success, of a finer harmony in things; nothing but what had turned out as yet according to his plan. It most of all came home to him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that Sarah had really gone, that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused in these ideas might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the time. It fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat over his eyes—he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of Waymarsh's—and lost himself ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... is a mixed state, and comprehends body and mind. Much stress is laid on the moderate and tranquil pleasures; the intense pleasures, coveted by mankind, belong to a distempered rather than a healthy state; they are false and delusive. Pleasure is, by its nature, a change or transition, and cannot be a supreme end. The mixture of Pleasure and Intelligence is to be adjusted by the all-important principle of Measure or Proportion, which connects the Good with ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... spectacle; those sufferings I did not now regret, for their simple recollection acted as a most wholesome antidote to temptation. They had inscribed on my reason the conviction that unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... had the polities of the gods only coincided more exactly with those of the party. There was a distinct moment when, without saying anything more definite to me, Gravener entertained the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such a project was delusive, for the discovery of analogies between his body of doctrine and that pressed from headquarters upon Clockborough—the bottling, in a word, of the air of those lungs for convenient public uncorking ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
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