"Chimerical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Leon was so delighted with the beauty and fertility of the island that he imagined he could find there the fountain of perpetual youth for which he so long sought in vain. In this chimerical idea, however, as in Florida, he was doomed ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... they did, what matters, they found their match; yes, yes," said I, "but I am in their power, perhaps"—but I instantly dismissed the apprehension which came into my mind, with a pooh, nonsense! In a little time, however, a far more foolish and chimerical idea began to disturb me—the idea of being flung from my horse; was I not disgraced for ever as a horseman by being flung from my horse? Assuredly, I thought; and the idea of being disgraced as a horseman, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Siennese. See Hell, Canto XXIX. 117. "Their acquisition of Telamone, a seaport on the confines of the Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of becoming a naval power: but this scheme will prove as chimerical as their former plan for the discovery of a subterraneous stream under their city." Why they gave the appellation of Diana to the imagined stream, Venturi says he leaves it to the antiquaries of Sienna ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... sacred from, the grasp of every other. God's being is sacred from ours. To co-operate with his creation by the best and rightest response seems all he wants of us. In such co-operation with his purposes, not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not in any theoretic drinking of him up, must lie the real ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... imprisoned in the rugged walls of an island castle!" answered Roland Graeme: "I would the blast were to sound even now, for I fear that nothing less loud will dispel the chimerical visions by which ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Ariadne, Phaedra, formed and re-formed continually in his dazzled memory! When we of to-day read such verses at Augustin's age, some bitterness is mixed with our delight. These heroes and heroines are too far from us. These almost chimerical beings withdraw from us into outlying lands, to a vanished world which will never come again. But for Augustin, this was the world he was born into—it was his pagan Africa where pleasure was the whole of life, and one lived only for the lusts of the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... passing in that region in which I once moved, though what I then did seems for the present to be overlooked and forgotten. I am confident, however, as much as I can be of anything, that notwithstanding the almost universal reception of the new theory, which is the cause of it, it is purely chimerical, and cannot keep its ground after a sufficient scrutiny, which may be deferred, but which must take place in time. I am glad to find that Mr. Cruikshank in England, as well as chemists in France, ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... loss of his dominions, the envenomed rhetoric of the Jesuits and the active zeal of the Bavarian minister, represented this dreaded alliance between the Huguenots and the Swedes as an undoubted fact, and filled the timid mind of Louis with the most alarming fears. Not merely chimerical politicians, but many of the best informed Roman Catholics, fully believed that the king was on the point of breaking into the heart of France, to make common cause with the Huguenots, and to overturn the Catholic religion within the kingdom. Fanatical zealots already saw him, with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Oceans. It is remarkable that this magnificent undertaking, pregnant with consequences so important to mankind, and about which so little is known in this country, is so far from being a romantic or chimerical project, that, it is not only practicable but easy. The River Chagres, which falls into the Atlantic at the town of the same name, about 18 leagues to the westward of Porto Bello is navigable as far as Cruces, within five leagues ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... Mr. B. chooses only to look at one. Hard pressed as he was, we cannot grant him this indulgence. He has, indeed, denounced, on other occasions, the combined doctrines of Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage as chimerical and absurd; though how near he came to the point of recommending both, at the London Tavern, he is any thing but explicit; (in fact both, as Lord C. shewed, were virtually recommended by him.) But what does he think ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... he belongs; and then he yields to the most pathetic of his many illusions—he sets about to purge this church, so as not to be compelled to abandon it; to purge it of its first principles, of its whole history, and of its sublime if chimerical ideal. ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... with a map of the world, he laid before his countrymen, shewing them what grandeur and advantage would accrue to their state, should he prove successful. But the leading men of the republic considered his project as wild and chimerical, and shamefully treated him with neglect. Though mortified at this ill usage, he nevertheless remained inflexible as to his purpose, and therefore determined to visit the different courts of Europe, and offer his service to that sovereign ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... it, can only serve to favour the indolence of man, while professing to furnish him with a compendious method of becoming wise and good, it supersedes the necessity of his own personal labours. Quitting therefore all these slothful and chimerical speculations, it is true wisdom to attach ourselves to what is more solid and practical; to the work which you will not yourself deny to be sufficiently difficult to find us of itself full employment: the work of rectifying the disorders of the passions, and of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Besides: Lilian! Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Yet I need not give you my further reasons when I declare that I should wish to send Siegfried into the world in different fashion from that which would be possible to the good people there. With regard to this, I am busy with wishes and plans which, at first look, seem chimerical, yet these alone give me the heart to finish Siegfried. To realize the best, the most decisive, the most important work which, under the present circumstances, I can produce—in short, the accomplishment of the conscious mission of my life—needs a matter of perhaps 10,000 thalers. If I could ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a woman of genuine simplicity. She affects no graces which are not inspired by sincerity. Her opinions result not from passion and fancy, but from reason and experience. Candor and humility give expansion to her heart. She struggles for no kind of chimerical credit, disclaims the appearance of every affectation, and is in all things just what she seems, and others would be thought. Nature, not art, is the great standard of her manners; and her exterior wears no varnish, or embellishment, which is not the genuine signature ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... with slave property; it discourages the improvement of the colored population, except they are removed to the shores of Africa; it is lulling the country into a fatal sleep, pretending to be something when it is nothing; it is utterly chimerical, as well as intolerant, in its design; it serves to increase the value of the slaves, and to make brisk the foreign and domestic slave trade; it nourishes and justifies the most cruel prejudices against color; it sneers at those who advocate the bestowal of equal rights upon our colored countrymen; ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... ceremony. On what principle is a part of the undivided apocalyptic portrayal rendered as emblem, the rest accepted as absolute verity? If the blood red warrior on his white horse followed by the shining cavalry of heaven, the horrible vials of wrath, the chimerical angels and beasts, the sky and globe converted into terror struck fugitives, the bridal city descending from God with its incredible walls and its impossible gates and its magic tree of life yielding twelve kinds of fruit, are imagery; then the lake of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this country can surely never be brought to it but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the arts of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... not a Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, may appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh, especially with much Addition of ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... preparation of plan did she ever think of—a mode of procedure which naturally resulted in a negligent style and caused the composition to drag. Her inspiration seemed to go so far, then she resorted to her imagination, to the chimerical, forcing events and characters. "There are many defects in the style—such as the sentimental part, the romanesque in the violent expression of sentiments or invention of situations, the exaggerated improbabilities of events, the excessive declamation; but how many compensating ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... thought them friends of twenty years:—so,—before the last speculator had invested his last weekly sixpence in a goose-club, and drawn the last adamantine old gander; or the last Christmas-pudding-sweep swept away the chimerical puddings, that ought to have been very rich, and everybody thought everybody else had won; before the last trader, who had sold out, dared to mount a notice, intimating that he had joined an "Association to suppress Christmas-boxes,"—the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady of great estate. His stars are perpetually ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... character is not wanting. It was, however, of an intellectual kind. His imagination, as well as his reasoning faculties, always worked together. He was incessantly prompted by the most extraordinary speculations. The great majority of them were in a high degree wild and chimerical, but every now and then one of his fancies struck right to the heart of nature, and an immortal truth was ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... alone, and at liberty to think over quietly the odd situation in which he found himself, he looked at his magnificent surroundings with surprise as well as admiration—for he had never in his life seen, or even imagined, such splendour and luxury. The rich glowing colours of the chimerical flowers and foliage embossed on a golden ground of the Spanish leather on the walls, the corresponding tints in the frescoed ceiling and the heavy, silken hangings at the windows and doors and round the bed, the elaborately carved and gilded furniture, the luxurious easy-chairs ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... led to the unhappy disputes between the Upper and Lower Houses were obviously only temporary; it is surely not chimerical to assume that time and a change of circumstances would have brought about a better understanding between the bishops and the inferior clergy, and that Convocation would have seen better days, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... had fallen; and rising, he walked speedily back by the dark wood-paths. But before he reached the meadows, from which he could see lights blinking in the scattered villas, his steps had lagged again. His discouragement had nothing chimerical in it at this moment; it was part and parcel of himself.—The night was both chilly and misty, and it was late. But a painful impression of the previous evening lingered in his mind. Louise would be annoyed with him for keeping her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... employment, and, of course, without the means of comfortable subsistence, which will reduce their numbers, and finally extirpate them. This is the argument as I understand it," says Mr. Sergeant; and, certainly, one more chimerical or more inhuman could not ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... group placed on the bank of a spring which shows the stones of its bed through its limpid waters. Through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... an intelligent woman," he would add. "I should never have thought her capable of inducing her husband to join a party whose hopes are simply chimerical. They are taking the right course to end their lives in poverty. But then ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Elements of Criticism'[1159], which he had taken up,) is a pretty essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... a strange company and a wondrous voyage. Here were all kinds of men, of all times and countries, pursuing the wildest hopes, the most chimerical desires. One took me aside to request that I would not let it be known, but that he inferred from certain signs we were nearing Utopia. Another whispered gaily in my ear that he thought the water was gradually becoming of a ruby color—the ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... For example, in the year 1834, the famous Ibrahim Pasha witnessed the frantic scene from one of the galleries, and, being moved with compassion at the sight, descended with a few guards into the arena in the chimerical hope of restoring peace and order among the contending Christians. He contrived to force his way into the midst of the dense crowd, but there the heat and pressure were so great that he fainted away; a body of soldiers, seeing his danger, charged straight into the throng ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... question of the possibility of such a cut, by any means now at the control of man; and both the sanguine expectations of benefits, and the dreary suggestions of danger from the realization of this great dream, may now be dismissed as equally chimerical."—Vide The Earth as Modified by Human Action, by George P. Marsh, New York, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... and enlightenment that the woman of to-day possesses demand that the man shall bring to the marriage altar a heart and body as free from the debasing and hereditary iniquities that now no longer exist except in the chimerical imagination of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... servitude and by subjection to the cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d'Angouleme, surnamed by the liberal sheets the hero of Andujar, compressing in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals; the sansculottes resuscitated, to the great terror of dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchy opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of '89 roughly interrupted in the sap; a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... at having missed this letter till it was too late to act upon its contents; but he had chastened himself considerably of late, and at last his chimerical expedition to Kennetbridge really did seem to have been another special intervention of Providence to keep him away from temptation. But a growing impatience of faith, which he had noticed in himself more ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... as these principles harmonized with those proclaimed by the French revolutionists, they met very little opposition from the Italian liberals; but national unity, however desirable, was pronounced chimerical. How could Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sardinia, and the numerous other States, be joined together under one government? And then, under what form of government should this union be effected? To the patriots of 1831 this seemed an insoluble problem. Mazzini, from first ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... which triumphed in that nation and deluged it with the blood of its revolutionary champions might cross the Atlantic, and desolate the hitherto safe and peaceful dwellings of the American people, was an apprehension not so entirely unsupported by appearances as to be pronounced chimerical. With a blind infatuation, which treated reason as a criminal, immense numbers applauded a furious despotism, trampling on every right, and sporting with life as the essence of liberty; and the few who conceived freedom to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... "There is no limit to what can be done. The idea of our present trip would have seemed more chimerical to people a hundred years ago than this new ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Well, the former class, who naturally figure prominently in the public press, because the press is the more or less flattering mirror of the prevailing doctrines of the day, think that Mr. Mill's views of a better social future are chimerical, utopian, and sentimental. The latter class compensate themselves for the pinchedness of the real world about them by certain rapturous ideals, centring in God, a future life, and the long companionship of the blessed. The consequence of this absorption either in the immediate interests and aims ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... extreme West had no definite outline, but were measured from the crest of the Rocky Mountains,—the audacity of the proposition might justly have inspired suspicions of the sanity of its author. But if Dr. Carver was chimerical, he was at least courageous in his persistence. Ten years later, this lineal descendant of old John Carver transferred the question from the arena of newspaper discussion, and boldly memorialized Congress. Here he found a rival advocate in Asa Whitney, whose brain throbbed with the glowing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were, the shock ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... in Nature as a Basilisk; that Health is to be secur'd by Temperance and Exercise; and that the Art of making Health consistent with Luxury, is altogether as impracticable, and an Art, in all Respects, as idle and chimerical, as those of the Philosopher's Stone, judicial Astrology, or any other Reveries of the like airy ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggle of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful when he told Mr. Northcote he had decided on the character and disposition of a man from his letters and ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... Elizabeth, and in conclusion advised him to push his fortune: the Duke of Nemours imagined at first that the King was not in earnest, but when he found to the contrary, "If, by your advice, Sir," said he, "I engage in this chimerical undertaking for your Majesty's service, I must entreat your Majesty to keep the affair secret, till the success of it shall justify me to the public; I would not be thought guilty of the intolerable vanity, to think that ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... Ireland, which was then in a very disturbed state. His metaphysics led him to conceive the most dangerous social theories. Conquered by a very real love of humanity, which he hoped to serve by the realization of his chimerical views, he even believed it to be his duty to make proselytes. While recommending the observance of peace, and of a spirit of moderation on the one hand, he, on the other, published pamphlets and spoke at meetings with a degree of talent which earned for him a certain amount ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... which they now only made use of as a row of pegs to hang on their fine-spun metaphysical cobwebs. They at length collected all these quodlibetical questions into enormous volumes, under the terrifying form, for those who have seen them, of Summaries of Divinity! They contrived, by their chimerical speculations, to question the plainest truths; to wrest the simple meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and give some appearance of truth to the most ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... optimistic doctrines of Lord Shaftesbury, that human nature is good and all is for the best in this harmonious world. "The ideas he had formed," wrote Mandeville, "of the goodness and excellency of our nature were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never be reconciled together, innocence of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... counteract a policy so unfriendly to our prosperity in a variety of ways. By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people—increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so—to ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... decidedly thin. In excessive lowness of spirit, Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. Yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed. Public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling- off being only an accident of the season. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... with freedom, and so particularly applied to Spenser's Fairy Queen, that it may pass for a second invention. But the peculiarly ingenious novelty of the piece consists in the combination of the irony of a chimerical abuse of poetry with another irony exactly the contrary, of the incapacity to comprehend any fable, and the dramatic form more particularly. A grocer and his wife come as spectators to the theatre: they are discontented with the piece which has just been announced; they ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the test of perfect love. It is the sign of it, for, when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... subjects, but causing him to feel the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the dominant religion. But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory law to the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is justified, by abstaining on principle from all participation in the historical movement, by waiting on a future which has ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... wore English-made shoes and clothing. English ships carried naval stores out of Russian harbors, and colonial wares found their way from the wharves of Riga to the markets of Mainz. But the chief offenders in defying Napoleon's chimerical policy were the Dutch and Hanseatic cities. The resistance elsewhere in the Continent was passive compared with the energetic smuggling and the clandestine evasion of decrees which went on under the eyes of the officials in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... examples—proofs of the practicability in a certain degree of that which the conception of virtue demands—but certainly not as archetypes. That the actions of man will never be in perfect accordance with all the requirements of the pure ideas of reason, does not prove the thought to be chimerical. For only through this idea are all judgements as to moral merit or demerit possible; it consequently lies at the foundation of every approach to moral perfection, however far removed from it the obstacles in human nature- indeterminable ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... for indications of prostitutes having taken up residence in the city at large, and am absolutely convinced that your experience has proven this bugaboo to be wholly chimerical. This conclusion has been amply verified by interviews I have had with representative business and professional men, whose homes are in the residential districts of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Athenians, in their theatrical performances, laid before the eyes of the people the greatest afflictions which could befall human life, and insensibly polished their tempers by such representations. Among the moderns, indeed, there has arisen a chimerical method of disposing the fortune of the persons represented, according to what they call poetical justice; and letting none be unhappy but those who deserve it. In such cases, an intelligent spectator, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... problems of his precarious situation, he felt that he could not bring himself to renounce the pleasures of this extravagant life, and decided that he must continue it at all costs. His dreams of obtaining a fortune appeared more and more chimerical, and the real obstacles grew more formidable. His initiation into the secrets of the Nucingen household had revealed to him that if he were to attempt to use this love affair as a means of mending his fortunes, he must swallow down all sense of decency, and renounce all the generous ideas which ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to accept of it. O selfishness! he owns, in his sober moments, that from his own volatility of inclination, the circumstances in which he is situated, and his knowledge of his father's disposition;—the whole affair is chimerical—yet he will gratify an idle penchant at the enormous, cruel expense, of perhaps ruining the peace of the very woman for whom he professes the generous passion of love! He is a gentleman in his mind and manners—tant ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it a recommendation to any theory of the mind that it exalted our conceptions of human nature. Shaftesbury's views were entitled to this advantage; but, observes Mandeville, 'the ideas he had formed of the goodness and excellency of our nature, were as romantic and chimerical, as they are beautiful and amiable.' Mandeville examined not what human nature ought to be, but what it really is. In contrast, therefore, to the moralists that distinguish between a higher and a lower in our nature, attributing to the higher everything good ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... I am in some doubt, whether the political spreaders of those chimerical invasions, made a judicious choice in fixing the northern parts of Ireland for that romantic enterprize. Nor, can I well understand the wisdom of the Presbyterians in countenancing and confirming those reports. Because it seems to cast a most infamous ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... so full of these chimerical visions, that he acted with his foot as if she had been really before him, and unfortunately gave such a push to his basket and glasses, that they were thrown down, and broken into a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... as this involves the presence of an atmosphere, the idea hardly finds favour at the present time, though perhaps the possibility of plant growth in the low-lying districts, where a gaseous medium may prevail, is not altogether so chimerical a notion as to be unworthy of consideration. Nasmyth and others suggest that these tints may be due to broad expanses of coloured volcanic material, an hypothesis which, if we believe the Maria to be overspread with such matter, and knowing how it varies in colour in terrestrial ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... confining itself to the explanation of transitory phenomena, invests them with all the dignity of principles. We shall endeavor to avoid the peril pointed out by Mallebranche. "Learned men study rather to acquire a chimerical greatness in the imagination of other men, than to acquire greater breadth and strength of mind themselves. They make their heads a kind of store-room, into which they gather, without order or discrimination, everything which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... "terrestrial ball" is round, (Is it an idea chimerical?) Man, by hidden instincts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... looked after him, scarcely able to believe his ears. If Theo had arrived at damning the Regiment, Frank's fear might not prove to be chimerical after all; and yet the flash of temper, the renewed energy of speech and movement were ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the noes, in both Assembly and Senate, came from Clinton's opponents, including the Tammany delegation and their friends. From the outset Tammany, by solemn resolutions, had denounced the canal project as impractical and chimerical, declaring it fit only for a ditch in which to bury Clinton. At Albany its representatives greeted the measure for its construction with a burst of mockery; and, by placing one obstacle after another in its way, nearly defeated it in the Senate. It was during this contest that the friends of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Wall, "this chimerical captain doesn't even mention coming on board, so I conclude that ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... undisciplined mind, strongly independent, impetuous, fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... ill-considered, ludicrous, ridiculous, chimerical, ill-judged, mistaken, senseless, erroneous, inconclusive, monstrous, stupid, false, incorrect, nonsensical, unreasonable, foolish, infatuated, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... principles, and we shall find that it has every character of truth, without a single circumstance to discredit it. He was so far from entertaining any hope of pardon, that he did not seem even to wish it; and indeed if he had had any such chimerical object in view, he must have known that to have supplied the government with a proof of the Rye House assassination plot, would be a more likely road at least, than a steady denial, to obtain it. He left none behind him for ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... Mr. Brooks," the older man answered, without hesitation. "If you take my advice, you will not trouble yourself any more with fancies which seem to me—pardon me—quite chimerical. Accept Lord Arranmore's kindness as the offshoot of some sentimental feeling which he might well have entertained towards a fellow-countryman by whose death-bed he had stood in that far-away, lonely country. You may even yourself be mistaken in Lord Arranmore's character, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth; if this be beyond me, 'tis not possible.—What consequence then follows? or can there be any other than this—if I seek an interest of my own, detached from that of others; I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence."—HARRIS: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the comptroller. You will be well received, and with a little wit you ought to be able to make good use of the letter. He himself will give you the cue, and you will see that he who listens obtains. Try to invent some useful plan for the royal exchequer; don't let it be complicated or chimerical, and if you don't write it out at too great length I will give you my opinion ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... years being substituted for mere naturalisation, and of an increase in the number of seats. Such a proposition on the part of the Government of Pretoria shows plainly that it wished to evade enquiry into a law so fettered with formalities that its working was chimerical. And when Sir Alfred Milner referred to his proposal at Bloemfontein, the State Attorney decreased to five years the term of retrospective registration, gave eight seats to the Rand, and two to other ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... different way, was zealous for the theory that Church and State are really identical, the Church being merely the State in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. If Thomas Arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was to be expected ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... for advancement, the poor man's Paradise. Brought by force, he will not relinquish his rightful hold here except by force. And we may be sure that our National Government will never undertake the chimerical experiment of deporting him to some other land, and pay the enormous expense of it out of the National Treasury. Having been brought by the providence of God to expiate its former wrongs to the black man at such immense cost of treasure ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... connection with the central arch; but all this has only an ornamental purpose. The spectator who is at all interested in ecclesiastical architecture will examine with much delight the elaborate mouldings and the strangely-suggestive forms of men, beasts, birds, shapes fantastic and chimerical, which ornament these ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... be tempted to believe that this legislator of morality is a man without a heart, and, if we were not touched by the original sincerity of the language, one would only see in this lapidary style the conventional precepts of a chimerical system or the aspirations of an impossible perfection." The Discourses are more illustrative, more argumentative, more diffuse, more human. In reading them one feels oneself face to face with a human being, not with the marble statue of the ideal wise man. The style, indeed, is simple, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... have made no difference between patrician and plebeian in using the term citizen, while it is no longer disputed that the plebeian was not a burgess and consequently had no civic rights save those granted to him by the ruling class. His idea of goods must have, at least, become chimerical at a very early date, as this equality was so little suspected by the ancients that Plutarch,[21] after having spoken of the efforts of Lycurgus to overturn the inequality of wealth among the Spartans, accuses Numa of having neglected a necessity so important. It is moreover difficult ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... purposes. But this turned out to be hardly practicable. I dared not, at that stage of the proceedings, bring into the board of trustees a proposal to buy machinery and establish a machine-shop; the whole would have a chimerical look, and was sure to repel them. Therefore it was that, at my own expense, I bought a power-lathe and other pieces of machinery; and, through the active efforts of Professor John L. Morris, my steadfast supporter in the whole matter, these were set up in our temporary ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of the scientific discoveries of the past ten years, which, after bringing about results that would have seemed chimerical if predicted, leading on to the extraction of a substance which seems to set the laws and limits of nature at defiance by radiating a flood of heat, even when cooled to the lowest point that science can reach—a substance, a few ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... are open at last! We are no longer dazzled by the chimerical hopes we nourished for a moment, of obtaining, through you communal liberties. You did but adopt those opinions for the sake of misleading us, as a thief assumes the livery of a house to enter his master's room and lay hands on his money. We see you now as you are. We had ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... said, that the man who originated this road has since become insane. More likely he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild and chimerical, so evidently impossible of fulfilment. Projected it was, however, not only in fancy, but in fact, to our great content; and so, tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's base, and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... remaining outside the centuries, scorning to designate the origin, nation and epoch, by placing his Salome in this extraordinary palace with its confused and imposing style, in clothing her with sumptuous and chimerical robes, in crowning her with a fantastic mitre shaped like a Phoenician tower, such as Salammbo bore, and placing in her hand the sceptre of Isis, the tall lotus, sacred ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was on the 30th of November, 1744, that this minister thus expressed himself with regard to the chimerical systems of credit, which have never been more in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... encreased by fresh supplies from Africa and the West India Islands, but also are very prolific among themselves; and they that are born here talk good English and affect our Language, Habits and Customs.... Their work or Chimerical (hard Slavery) is not very laborious; their greatest Hardship consisting in that they and their Posterity are not at their own Liberty or Disposal, but are the Property of their Owners; and when they are free they know not how to provide so well for themselves generally; ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... that, but the Panama Canal, now opened to the world, was for years deemed a chimerical dream and an impossibility, by the world as well as ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... leave theology further and further behind, till the rupture between Catholicism and civilisation became absolute. The idea that the Church would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations of revealed fact, but in the living and energising ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... phenomena with whose laws he is acquainted; if, even when they are unknown to him, he is able, in accordance with the experience of the past, to foresee with a large degree of probability the events of the future, why should we treat it as a chimerical enterprise, to trace with some verisimilitude the picture of the future destinies of the human race in accordance with the results of its history? The only foundation of belief in the natural sciences is this idea, that the general ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... examined with the most minute attention the shafts of the pillars to make certain that they did not conceal some artifice, that they did not mask some trap which might be discovered by displacing them; for in his despair he mingled the realism of Egyptian architecture with the chimerical constructions of the Arab tales. The pillars, cut out of the mountain itself, in the centre of the hollowed mass, formed part of it, and it would have been necessary to employ gunpowder to break them down. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... gallantry that afforded my companions, the few young people my mother forced me to mix with, so much pleasure, I despised; I wished more to be loved than admired, for I could love. I adored virtue; and my imagination, chasing a chimerical object, overlooked the common pleasures of life; they were not sufficient for my happiness. A latent fire made me burn to rise superior to my contemporaries in wisdom and virtue; and tears of joy and emulation filled my eyes when I read ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the only time in which strange and unconnected objects involve our ideas in confusion. Besides the reveries of the day, already spoken of, we have, in a moral view, our waking-dreams, which are not less chimerical, and impossible to be realized, than ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... back into the consulting-room, to compose himself upon the couch for his evening sleep, which he took according to custom, and from which he awoke refreshed and ready to work for hours, late into the night, at his wearisome chimerical task, with which he grew more infatuated the more his reason suggested ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Palatine, and perhaps to give his daughter the appearance of a higher rank by getting himself declared independent prince of some West Indian conquest—Jamaica had attracted his ambition[484]:—a hope not altogether chimerical; for he was still all-powerful with Charles. Foreigners were astonished that he undertook the most extensive negotiations before he had given his sovereign notice of them. Not unlike James I he cherished the hope that the threatening attitude which he took up, even if he did not ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... playing. Further yet, columns upheld a ceiling so lofty that it was lost. On the adjacent wall was a frieze of curious and chimerical beasts. Belshazzar was looking at them. In their dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion amused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach his lips, it fell with a clatter on the lapis lazuli of the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... truths established by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread—another vote that sixteen shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public credit—proceedings in no degree more reasonable than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... author's theory of the origination of life from inorganic matter as utterly untenable, we come to the next point in his system,—the most chimerical of all,—the gradual development of the higher orders of being out of those next beneath them in the scale. It is not pretended, that there is any known instance of the transmutation of species, or of the evolution, in the ordinary way, of any being specifically different from its parents. The ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... impressions from its authority. And this effect, being exerted upon the sensitive part of our frame, is altogether independent of argument, proof, or reason; is as formidable to a true religion as to a false one; to a well-grounded faith as to a chimerical mythology, or fabulous tradition. Neither, let it be observed, is the crime or danger less, because impure ideas are exhibited under a veil, in covert and ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... thing more than his sword. Full of that buoyant hope, however, which belongs to the sanguine temperament, he repaired to New-York, the great focus of American enterprise, where there are always funds ready for any scheme, however chimerical or romantic. Here he had the good fortune to meet with a gentleman of high respectability and influence, who had been his associate in boyhood, and who cherished a schoolfellow friendship for him. He took a general interest in the scheme of the captain; ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... to a successful issue. Belief in Karma, in prayer, in sacraments, in salvation is a remnant of a natural belief in the possibility of living successfully. The remnant may be small and "expressed in fancy." Transmigration or an atonement may be chimerical ideas. Yet the mere fact of reliance upon something, the assumption that the world is steady and capable of rational exploitation, even if in a supernatural interest and by semi-magical means, amounts to an essential ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... for me. Raleigh wanted me to learn to smoke when he was in Virginia, but I didn't care for it. You remember him, of course? Oh no; I forgot how young you are. Pleasant man, but a little too chimerical. I liked Columbus better. Nero was a man who'd've suited you newspaper people. 'Most always a murder every day. And then that fire in Rome when he fiddled; made a splendid report for the papers, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... upon the impulse. All men, without distinction, are allured by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by distant good. So long as wisdom in its projects calculates upon wisdom, or relies upon its own strength, it forms none but chimerical schemes, and runs a risk of making itself the laughter of the world; but it is certain of success, and may reckon upon aid and admiration when it finds a place in its intellectual plans for barbarism, rapacity, and superstition, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... institutions. The only probable result of such an attempt would be the collapse of the new social order, because it would have insufficient foundations in individual character upon which to rest. The idea of ushering in the social millennium through some vast social revolution is therefore chimerical. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... consider him chimerical," Pecuchet ended by declaring. "He believes in the occult sciences, in monarchy, in rank; is dazzled by rascals; turns up millions for you like centimes; and middle-class people are not with him middle-class people at all, but giants. Why inflate ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... seemingly hazardous prediction, and Von Zach was actually at the pains, in 1785, to calculate what he termed "analogical" elements[200] for this unseen and (by any effect or influence) unfelt body. The search for it, through confessedly scarcely less chimerical than that of alchemists for the philosopher's stone, he kept steadily in view for fifteen years, and at length (September 21, 1800) succeeded in organising, in combination with five other German astronomers assembled at Lilienthal, a force of what he jocularly termed celestial police, for the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... never-to-be-forgotten descriptions. I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as does a chimerical realm, ardently desired, but as inaccessible as ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... his native country, foretells that you will pursue a chimerical fancy which will return you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... fitness—none of the judgment about them which society has. He will go through a mighty host of discoveries every hour. The very eccentricity of his imaginations will only appeal to him for the greater admiration. He will bring his most chimerical schemes out and air them with the same assurance with which the real inventor exhibits his. But such a man is not pronounced a genius. If his ravings about this and that are harmless, we smile and let him talk; but if his lack ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... times. But unless there had been laws of succession in our premises, there could have been no truths of succession in our conclusions. A similar remark might be extended to every other class of phenomena really peculiar; and, had it been attended to, would have prevented many chimerical attempts at demonstrations of the indemonstrable, and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... a bit chimerical to laymen, but Nixon is no layman. His ideas are worthy of every consideration. Certain it is that something radical must be done, and that the maritime nations must get together, not only in the way of providing more life-saving facilities, but in agreeing upon navigation ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... laying down the law to them as if they were his own subjects; and taking them prisoners on their coming to see the captains of their real king and sovereign, as in the case of one who was captured as he came to the pinnace of Antonio Ronbo da Costa, and prevented from speaking with me. As for the chimerical charges which his grace makes against me concerning the letter of Antonio Lopez de Segueira, and the words of the soldiers of Antonio Rumbo, in what manner could he have formed an opinion from a letter written ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... stay, remain; —— en algo to abide by something. quehacer m. business, duty. queja lament. quejar vr. to complain. quemar to burn. querellante plaintiff. querer to wish, love. quien, quien who, whom, which. quijotesco Quixotic. quimerico chimerical, extravagant. quince fifteen. quinientos, -as five hundred. quinta conscription. quinto conscript. quitar to take away, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... first to Shay's attorney, but he dismissed the idea as chimerical, so they dropped him from their plans. Together they set to work, with little hope indeed, but it was at least better to be up and doing. Judge Squeaks's office was small, easily entered and productive of nothing. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... for man to live alone," perhaps it is not well for him to manage his City Hall alone. After all, is it "chimerical?" ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... arrogance, the king had a right to make use of such language. In their short-sighted resentment the allies had overstepped reason. The young King of Spain felt this when he wrote to his grandfather, "I am transfixed at the chimerical and insolent pretensions of the English and Dutch regarding the preliminaries of peace; never were seen the like. I am beside myself at the idea that anybody could have so much as supposed that I should be forced to leave Spain as long as I have a drop of blood in my veins. I ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... circumstance. In 1846 Wise drew up and laid before the American War Office an elaborate scheme for the reduction of Vera Cruz. This will be discussed in its due place, though it will be doubtless considered as chimerical. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... have replaced the worn-out vision of this chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look and smile, full ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... gradually acquired them in her initiation into the sentimental character. To maintain that character with dignity and propriety, it is necessary she should entertain the most elevated ideas of disproportionate alliances, and disinterested love; and consider fortune, rank, and reputation, as mere chimerical distinctions and ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... action and business, without frequent prayer and pious meditation, alienates a soul from God and virtue, and weds her totally to the world, so a life spent wholly in contemplation, without any mixture of action, is chimerical, and the attempt dangerous. The art of true devotion consists very much in a familiar and easy habit of accompanying exterior actions and business with a pious attention to the Divine Presence, frequent secret ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... replied the priest; "now, by my faith, he shall soon make his appearance in the yard, notwithstanding his strange birth and chimerical adventures; for the harshness and dryness of his style will admit of no excuse. To the yard with him, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... reforms which Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their success has been ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... authors whom I am now endeavouring to recommend have been too long hackneyed in the ways of men to indulge the chimerical ambition of immortality; they have seldom any claim to the trade of writing, but that they have tried some other without success; they perceive no particular summons to composition, except the sound of the clock; they have no other rule than the law ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... no intellectual effort can we of to-day realise the chimerical stamp which the proposition of Columbus bore, and which served to mark him as an adventurer and a visionary or, to use a forceful Americanism, as a "crank" in the estimation of sensible, practical people. He has himself recorded that he believed he was acting under inspiration and was merely fulfilling ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of words," might enter the voluminous history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the Antinomians, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine, expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... circumstances of the country, be educated apart from each other. The more you think over the state of politics, the position of parties, the feelings of classes, and the experience of the past, the more chimerical does it seem to you to aim at a University, of which Catholicity is the fundamental principle. Nay, even if the attempt could accidentally succeed, would not the mischief exceed the benefit of it? How great the sacrifices, in how many ways, by which it would be preceded and followed! how many ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... The chimerical or supernatural notions of theology have so succeeded in destroying, in the minds of men, the most simple, dear, and natural ideas, that the devout, unable to accuse God of malice, accustom themselves to regard the several strokes ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... to follow my example. I dare say a dozen of others agreed to do so, and I thought we should have been quite a party. Yet, when I brought up my rug about seven bells, there was no one to be seen but the watch. That chimerical terror of good night-air, which makes men close their windows, list their doors, and seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhalations, had sent all these healthy workmen down below. One would think we had been brought up in a fever country; yet in England ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Algeria to France. Important efforts were made to attract French colonists to the country, the colonization of Algeria appearing as a means towards the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. This point of view suggested numerous projects, as chimerical as they were generous; two millions sterling (50 million francs) were expended with a view to installing Parisian unemployed workmen as colonists, but this attempt failed miserably. The most remarkable military events of this period ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But, alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred thousand ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... utterly destitute of any foundation in truth."(59) Here the distinction between God's permitting and doing in relation to the sins of men, is declared by Calvin to be utterly without foundation in truth, and purely chimerical. So, in various other places, he treats this distinction as "too weak to be supported." "The will of God," says he, "is the supreme and first cause of things;" and he quotes Augustine with approbation to the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... fanatic, enthusiastic, unrealistic, Utopian, Quixotic. ideal, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus[Lat]; unsubsantial[obs3] &c. 4; illusory &c. (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical[obs3]; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic[obs3]. Phr. "a change came o'er the spirit of my dream" [Byron]; aegri somnia vana[Lat][obs3]; dolphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum [obs3][Latin][Horace]; "fancy light ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... common-sense led her easily to scan, without her own vulgar and commonplace mind being capable of comprehending the Duchess's great qualities. It was impossible less to resemble each other. The one adored grandeur even to the romantic and the chimerical, the other was entirely positive and matter-of-fact, and absorbed with her own interest, especially in those relating to her property. Alienated from the Fronde through the jealous hatred she bore towards her stepmother, who in turn liked ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... can understand, these ideas, as applied to the present state of the country, are absolutely chimerical. The Pretender is no more remembered in the Highlands than if the poor gentleman were gathered to his hundred and eight fathers, whose portraits adorn the ancient walls of Holyrood; the broadswords have passed into other hands; the targets are used to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... correct, and if experience confirms the picture I have traced of the present time, it would be necessary to qualify as unseasonable every attempt to effect a similar change in the state, and all hope as chimerical that would be based on such an attempt, until the division of the inner man ceases, and nature has been sufficiently developed to become herself the instrument of this great change and secure the reality of the political creation ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... she said, for all these things seemed so far away in the unknown of that vast world of which she was as yet totally ignorant. Since those who loved her had prepared for her so tenderly this happiness, she desired to partake thereof, and to enter therein like a princess coming from some chimerical country, who approaches the real kingdom where she is to reign for ever. In the same way she preferred to know nothing, except by hearsay, of the corbeille, which also was waiting for her—a superb gift from her betrothed, the wedding outfit of ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... relation of means to ends, but in an incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to honour it. It seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations through the worship which they render to it. After all, it is difficult for Mr. Hobbes to have a different opinion of God and of wisdom, since ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... of salvation. They were too earnest for the Paris wits. Voltaire always sneered at them till he came to know Turgot. Grimm calls them "the pietists of philosophy," and Hume, bantering Morellet, wonders how a man like Turgot could herd with such cattle, "the most chimerical and the most arrogant that now exist since the annihilation of the Sorbonne." But they were grappling with living problems, and seeing into the real situation so much further than their contemporaries, that an historian like de Tocqueville thinks the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... authorship; the greatness of his character loses itself in his voluminous works; and whatever Prynne may have been in his own age, and remains to posterity, he was fated to endure all the calamities of an author who has strained learning into absurdity, and abused zealous industry by chimerical speculation. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... constitutional engagements? It is impossible. The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Chimerical!" pronounced the graybeard as he rose to go, with an air of finality. "Better sell the smelter while ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the dreaded and chimerical quadruped, she proceeded none the less to careful research, especially of cupboards. The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a crack, and blew out the candle. "There now," ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... brought triumphantly to Toulon. General Menou, now alone, and shut up in Alexandria, obstinately and heroically resisted in vain. When at last he surrendered, he had been long forgotten in his isolation. Thus though Bonaparte's thoughts often went back to that famous and chimerical conquest of his youth, Egypt ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... rapidly increasing demand for newspapers. The time was therefore evidently ripe for the adoption of such a machine as that of Koenig. Attempts had been made by many inventors, but every one of them had failed. Printers generally regarded the steam-press as altogether chimerical. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... mankind knew this. This must be uncommonly unpleasant, we should suppose. The middle position of the husband who only now and then suspects in a dreamy way that he is being prompted and urged on and directed by an ambitious wife, and has sense enough not to inflame himself with chimerical notions about the superiority and grandeur of the male sex—this perhaps is not so bad. If the tide of ambition runs rather sluggish in yourself, it is a plain advantage to have somebody at your side with enthusiasm enough ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of 1740 has dissipated in some measure the otherwise total darkness which had gathered around the youth of our philosopher. Mirabeau (who was to be the father of the famous orator) was a man of talent, but violent, chimerical and lawless, "farouche," as he himself put it. Later he was the author of the redoubtable "Ami des Hommes." This prodigal uncle of the Revolution, this dangerous and violent "physiocrate" as he called himself, would seem divided, as pole ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Jews the responsibility for what was about to take place. It was not Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic law. Intolerance is a Jewish characteristic. The Pentateuch has been the first code of religious terrorism in the world. It was, however, the chimerical "King of the Jews," not the heteradox dogmatist, who was punished, and the execution took the Roman form of crucifixion, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... many contemporaries; chimerical it has seemed to historians, and to us who have passed through the World War. Yet in the World War it was the possession of food stuffs and raw materials by the United States which gave her a dominating position in the councils of the Allies. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... operation; consequently that the boldest and most original experimenters are those, who, giving free scope to their imaginations, admit the combination of the most distant ideas; and that though many of these associations of ideas, will be wild and chimerical, yet that others will have the chance of giving rise to the greatest and most capital discoveries; such as very cautious, timid, sober, and slow-thinking people would never ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... the Methodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with the barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement of the kind has ever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant—from chimerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an angelic life on earth—from delusions about special providences and miracles—from a tendency to over-value doctrine and undervalue duty—from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by leaders and preachers—from the self-righteousness ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... that thread had broken. Often, when considering the possibility of such a catastrophe, he had asked himself how he should avert it? He had formed and rejected many plans: he had deluded himself, like all men of imagination, with innumerable chimerical projects, and now he ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... endeavour to excuse,—to themselves as well as to the world,—their inactivity and supineness, by representing the undertaking in question as being so very difficult as to make all hope of success quite chimerical and ridiculous. ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... I suspect, be welcomed by every one except the gagged writers; but as the idea of its being operative is too chimerical for us to entertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is to expound the principles of success and failure, not to make Quixotic onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young interrogator: "Take warning and do not write. Unless you believe in yourself, only noodles ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... The fact that the several states of our Union, though each a distinct sovereignty, yet agree in this arrangement, is held up as an instance of its practicability. These ideas are not to be considered entirely chimerical, if we reflect that commerce and trade are as essentially opposed to war as is Christianity. War is the death of commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the fine arts. Its evil results are always certain and definite, its good ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of silk and velvet, or the rich silk laces hanging from the ceiling. The Hindu bazaars overflowed into the street with their exotic, polychrome rarities: clothes embroidered with terror-inspiring divinities and chimerical animals; carpets in which the lotus-flower was adapted to the strangest designs; kimonos of delicate, indefinable tints; porcelain jars with monsters that belched fire; amber-colored shawls, as delicate as woven sighs; and in the small windows ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impetuous rival, whom he thus amused, while he took measures to crush him by the weight of his arms. But if misfortune had made the King of France too cautious, prosperity had inspired Charles with a haughty presumption, which gave the semblance of stability to every chimerical vision of pride. In 1536 he attempted the conquest of France by invading Provence; but his designs were frustrated by a conduct so opposite to the national genius of the French that it induced them to murmur against ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... than once in the history of civilization; they embody one of those surprises to which humanity owes much of its progress. The final object of all this patient research was never reached, because the relations upon which a belief in its feasibility was based were absolutely chimerical, but as a compensation, the accessory and preliminary knowledge, the mere means to a futile end, have been of incalculable value. Thus, in order to give an imposing and apparently solid basis to their astrological ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... to govern the nations. What enlightenment can teachers of this stamp give? Filled themselves with prejudices, they will hold up to their pupil superstition as the most important and the most sacred thing, its chimerical duties as the most holy obligations, intolerance, and the spirit of persecution, as the true foundations of his future authority; they will try to make him a chief of party, a turbulent fanatic, and a tyrant; they will suppress at an early period his reason; they will premonish him against it; they ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... avoid the necessity of going to prison. The state in which he passed his time, and the treatment which he received, are very justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: "The whole day," says he, "has been employed in various people's filling my head with their foolish chimerical systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every different person's way of thinking; hurried from one wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the murmuring of streams through the long reeds and stems of the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous viper" may be heard; she had followed the wild leaps of the Will-with-a-wisp as it bounds over the surface of the meadows and marshes; she had pictured to herself the chimerical dwelling-places toward which it perfidiously attracts the benighted traveller; she had listened to the concerts given by the Cicada and their friends in the stubble of the fields; she had learned the names of the inhabitants of the winged republics ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... I still stick to Paris, so does my wife, so does my eldest daughter. You did no more than to throw out the general idea, but I feel quite confident this occurred in Paris. I confess I thought the notion evidently chimerical, and as such spoke of it in my family. I always set you down as a sober-minded, common-sense sort of a fellow, and thought it a high flight for a painter to make to go off on the wings of the lightning. We may be mistaken, but you will remember that the priority of the invention was a question ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... preserving and perpetuating the power of the Junkers. We have no quarrel with the duped and oppressed, but we war against the agents of oppression. To the conservative mind such an aspiration appears chimerical. But America, youngest of the nations, was born when modern science was gathering the momentum which since has enabled it to overcome, with a bewildering rapidity, many evils previously held by superstition to be ineradicable. As a corollary to our democratic creed, we accepted the dictum ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
