"Illusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all that had happened he read into the picture—the restless spiritual eyes, and the large voluptuous mouth, and the small high temples which Leonardo would like to draw. The painting of this picture was as illusive as Evelyn herself, the treatment of the reddish ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... illusive vision that would vanish into air Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper ...
— An Old Sweetheart of Mine • James Whitcomb Riley
... a long look around the country, illusive, it seemed, according to its past treatment of men, in its restful beauty and secure feeling of peace. He was silent so long that the bone man looked at him again keenly, measuring him up and down as he would some monstrosity ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... standing there—she saw him there waiting for Reddy. Dry-eyed this sorrowful woman had heard the sentence pronounced, dry eyed she had followed the little coffin to its grave; tears had not come even when waking from illusive dreams she put out her hand in bed to a child who was not there; but when she saw Tommy waiting at the door for Reddy, who had been dead for a month, her bosom moved ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... deem thee a deceiving, Illusive mockery of human feeling, A body organized, by fond caress Warmed into seeming tenderness; A mere automaton, on which our love Plays, as on puppets, when their wires we move. No! when that feeling quits thy glazing ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... what is illusive in the illusion of the puppets, let us sit not too far from the stage. Choosing our place carefully, we shall have the satisfaction of always seeing the wires at their work, while I think we shall lose nothing of what is most savoury in the feast of the illusion. There is not indeed ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... difficult than sketching from nature. She could not follow the drawing, it seemed to escape her. It did not exist in lines which she could measure, which she could follow. It seemed to have grown out of the canvas rather than to have been placed there. The faces were leaned over—illusive foreshortenings which she could not hope to catch. The girl in front of her was making, it seemed to Mildred, a perfect copy. There seemed to be no difference, or very little, between her work and Reynolds's. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... formed a not unimportant wing of the philosophic phalanx, now in harmony with the Encyclopaedic party, now in hostility. The sense of the misery of France was present to many minds in the opening of the century, and with the death of Louis XIV. came illusive hopes of amelioration. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), filled with ardent zeal for human happiness, condemned the government of the departed Grand Monarch, and dreamed of a perpetual peace; among his dreams ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... creation—a form of making earth from sea. The clothing of the fringe of ocean's bed with herbage, the reaping of a harvest where rolled the tide, the barring out of the dominant sea, the vision, not altogether illusive, of planting industrious and deserving men on the ground so won, all these are alluring ideas. The undertaker, to use the word in vogue in the Stuart days when such enterprises were in high favour, always leaves a name among posterity, generally an honoured name, and in nearly every case ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy which pictured to him all high aims as possible of realization through talk. Often he was so happy that he could have danced like a child; and he laughed merrily like one; and the quick, upward lift ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... old, drawing near the confines of illusive dreams. Elf-land behind her, the shores of Reality in front. To herself she said that night, after Robert had walked home with her to the rectory gate: "I love Robert, and I feel sure that he loves me. I have thought so many a time before; to-day ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Nature"—such efforts have proved deplorable failures. The young people of to-day make light of ghosts. The spectres in the incantation scene of "Der Freyschutz" are received with roars of laughter, and even the statue in Don Giovanni seems "jolly," notwithstanding the illusive music of Mozart. We were about to remark that the age had outgrown superstition, but we remembered the Rochester knockings, and concluded to be ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... series of contests and truces, during which treacherous wars alternated with still more treacherous and illusive periods of peace, neither party, on the whole, gaining any decided victory. The Danes, at one time, after agreeing upon a cessation of hostilities, suddenly fell upon a large squadron of Alfred's horse, who, relying on the truce, were moving across the country too much off their ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since; and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament, —youth or age. I have met no Englishman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... air is languid with pleasure and love, Lulling the sense to dreams Elysian, Making life seem a glorious trance, Full of bright visions of heaven, Safe from the touch of reality, Toil none—woe none—pain, Wild and illusive as sleep-revelations. Time to be poured like wine from a chalice Sparkling and joyous for aye, Drained amid mirth and music, The brows circled with ivy, And the goblet at last like a gift Thrust ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... yet, of the ideal of international fraternity, of humanity. And to all these ideals, to all ideals, came finally the terrific, the overwhelming test of the War,—a searching, annihilating, purifying flame, in which some shrivelled away, some were stripped of the illusive glitter that concealed their mass of alloy, and some, purged of their baser constituents, shone out ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... evolutions that constitute the soul of the science, rather than the apparently fixed and passive aspects of the earth's formations and configurations which are but the products of the processes that have gone before. Even the apparent passiveness of the geologic products is illusive, for they are in reality expressions of continued internal activities of an intense, though occult, order. These escape notice largely because they are balanced against one another in a system of equilibrium ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the man at her feet was pouring out a stream of rapid, fervent words. "And still you did not come! Ah, love! the long, long shadows—purple shadows—mysterious, unfathomable. No sun, no warmth, excepting when I saw you in my dreams—distant, illusive. No brightness, only darkness, until you came. But I knew you would come. Dearest, love makes no mistake, does it? Such love as mine that calling—calling—must draw you to me at the last. My beautiful Phil! my dreams ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... The hammer action was what all previous instruments lacked, and it seems strange that it took nearly two thousand years for this principle to be discovered and applied. Many times the inventors appeared to be almost upon it. They worked all around it, but the idea seemed illusive and they ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... an old person of Woking, Whose mind was perverse and provoking; He sate on a rail, With his head in a pail, That illusive ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... to the old, illusive device of compromise, Clay being the leader as usual. He brought forward his "Omnibus Bill," so called because it threw a sop to everybody. It failed to pass as a single measure, but was broken up and enacted piecemeal. Stubborn was the fight. Radicals ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... if not he? In a little shabby, chilly corridor adjoining is a fresco of Leonardo, a Virgin and Child with the donatorio. It is very small, simple and faded, but it has all the artist's magic, that mocking, illusive refinement and hint of a vague arriere- pensee which mark every stroke of Leonardo's brush. Is it the perfection of irony or the perfection of tenderness? What does he mean, what does he affirm, what does he deny? Magic wouldn't ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the minuteness of a photograph, scenes in which my Father and I were the sole actors within the four walls of a room, but of the glorious life among wild boys on the margin of the sea I have nothing but vague and broken impressions, delicious and illusive. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... would buy wealth and worldly position, and so she cast him off. Yet partly to gratify her own lingering feeling, and partly because she could not wholly renounce what had once been hers, she kept up for years with him just that illusive simulacrum which such women call friendship; which, while constantly denying, constantly takes pains to attract, and drains the heart of all possibility of ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the changing of the light—dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications as of scoriae,—ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like thin golden hairs against the glow,—blond down upon the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the spring-time seems to me, Since that sad season when in separate ways Our paths diverged. There are no more such days As dawned for us in that lost time when we Dwelt in the realm of dreams, illusive dreams; Spring may be just as fair now, but it seems Not ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... you never chiselled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bust-maker as you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... WINDUS) generously label it "an enthralling story of domestic and stage life." To which my comment must be, that the domesticity supplied by the hero's family and their quite uninteresting hesitations between town and suburban residence are entirely nebulous and illusive, that the stage as background has no significance one way or other, but that the impropriety upon which (I must say frankly) the appeal of the book seems to depend is given without stint, in a measure that certainly may, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... Would make us slaves; and we, Who in our blindness struggle for the prize Of this illusive state Called Life, do but frustrate The higher law—refusing to ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... of his genius, the manner of his death, solemnly confirmed. By no sudden fever, such as insidiously steals from the Roman marshes and poisons the blood of its victims,—by no violent epidemic, like those which have again and again devastated the cities of Europe,—by no illusive decline, whereby vital power is sapped unconsciously and with mild gradations, and which, in that soft clime, has peopled with the dust of strangers the cemetery which the pyramid of Cestius overshadows and the heart of Shelley consecrates,—by none of these familiar gates of death ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... world. Their small stature, as I said, does not prove them infants, but only new-born into that other life, and contrasts their helplessness with the powers, the great presences, now around them. A cow, far enough from Myron's famous illusive animal, suckles her calf. She is [275] one of almost any number of artistic symbols of new-birth, of the renewal of life, drawn from a world which is, after all, so full of it. On one side sits enthroned, as some have thought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of Life, with her ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... previous personal experience, at least the reflected inchoate thoughts of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring out of darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find myself in the land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive nothings. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... spirit most craves reality, they shrank back from Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what they sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret with which we should draw back the hand after extending it, in an illusive twilight, to grasp the hand of ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one penny, largest circulation of any Jewish organ, continued to flutter, defying the battle, the breeze and its communal contemporaries. At Passover there had been an illusive augmentation of advertisements proclaiming the virtues of unleavened everything. With the end of the Festival, most of these fell out, staying as short a time as the daffodils. Raphael was in despair at the meagre attenuated appearance of the erst prosperous-looking pages. The weekly loss ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history—a real apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... southerly course, to enter a channel between low-lying islands, we were in Zeeland. Still, though we were skirting the shore of the island of Schouwen, it was as if it ducked its head rather than submit to the ignominy of being seen by strangers. It was just as Alb said, "Zeeland was witch-like, illusive, with the power of making herself invisible." The endless, straight lines of the dykes protecting Schouwen and Tholen from the terrible power of the sea, stretched like close-drawn ranks of devoted soldiers—each stone a knight in armor—defending their liege ladies from an invading ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... most prized of the abstruse occult arts. Monarchs, princes, the great of all countries, eagerly vied among themselves in encouraging with promises and sometimes with more substantial incentives the zeal of their illusive search; and Henry IV. of France could see no reason why, if the bread and wine were transubstantiated so miraculously, a metal could not be transformed ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Thlinget myth and legend, croaked spasmodically from the white branch of a dead spruce behind them. The damp air had in it the freshness of new-cut hemlock boughs, a wild, vigorous fragrance that stirs the imagination with strange, illusive promises of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... reception to the tardy messenger of delight, that, when the bright guest outdares his churlishness and perforce tarries with him, there ensues a passionate revulsion unknown to hearts which open readily to every fluttering illusive bliss. Illusion it of course remains; is ever recognised as that; but illusion so sweet and powerful that he thanks the god that blinds him, and counts off with sighs of joy ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... twenty-six the vocation of the religieuse had lost its fascination; the pious fervor of her childhood had vanished before the skepticism of her intellect, its ardent friendships had grown dim, its fleeting loves had proved illusive, and her romantic dreams ended in ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... southern extremity of the strait. Summoning a couple of thousand field labourers, he sets them to work; here a small canal is dug—there rollers come into play; and in a few hours his small fleet is safely transported to the open water on the south side of the island. Calling off his men from the illusive battery, the Corsair is off for the Archipelago: by good luck he picks up a fine galley on the way, which was conveying news of the reinforcements coming to Doria. The old Genoese admiral never gets the message: he is rubbing ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... they were usually so thin and sallow that one had to look at them twice to see them clearly. At best, they looked vague and illusive. ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... which is illusive, may be thus defined: Marriage is a mere compact, and means diversity. Each family, therefore, must have a separate individual representation, out of which arises diversity or division, and discord is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... demon king Is bounteous to each living thing. Though suppliants flock from every side The suit of none is e'er denied. Whate'er, where'er, howe'er the call, He hears the suit and gives to all. Now with thine own illusive art Perform, O Lord, the helper's part: Assume a dwarfish form, and thus From fear and danger rescue us.' Thus in their dread the Immortals sued The God, a dwarfish shape indued:— Before Virochan's son ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... out, to perambulate the streets in rather bitter humour. Was he to return to the poor, scantily supplied home, and continue a drag on its resources, lingering out his days in illusive hopes? Oh that his strong hands and strong heart had some scope for their energies! He paused in one mighty torrent of busy faces and eager footsteps, and despised himself for his inaction. All these had business of one kind or other; all were earnestly intent upon their calling; but he was ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... been extemporizing upon the musical instrument of his invention") is an utterance on music which perhaps goes further than any attempt which has ever been made in verse to set forth the secret of the most sacred and illusive of the arts. Only the wonderful lines in the Merchant of Venice come anywhere near it. The wonder and beauty of it grow on one, as the wonder and beauty of a sky, of a sea, of a landscape, beautiful ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of this great number of unexplained facts is often interpreted by the admirers of Da Vinci, as showing an almost occult insight into science many centuries in advance of his time. Such interpretations, however, are illusive. The observation, for example, that a tube placed against the ground enables one to hear movements on the earth at a distance, is not in itself evidence of anything more than acute scientific observation, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the tumult of Chicago," runs the entry, "to-day, I am hoeing in my sun-lit garden, hearing the mourning-dove coo and the cat-birds cry. Last night as the sun went down the hill-tops to the west became vividly purple with a subtle illusive deep-crimson glow beneath, while the sky above their tops, a saffron dome rose almost to the zenith. These mystical things are here joined: The trill of black-birds near at hand, the cackle of barn-yard fowls, the sound of hammers, a plowman talking to his team, the pungent smoke of burning ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. No dollar slept in his possession; rather, he kept all simultaneously flying, like a conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have a share, he would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood, only to be entombed in the missionary-box. And he would come down radiant from a weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a pious frugal household, of a gallant frontiersman endowed with a long catalogue of noble qualities, and of a mother like a Madonna in the wilderness.[17] Yet all the evidence that there is goes to show that this romantic coloring is purely illusive. Rough, coarse, low, ignorant, and poverty-stricken surroundings were about the child; and though we may gladly avail ourselves of the possibility of believing his mother to have been superior to all the rest of it, yet she could by no means leaven the mass. The father[18] ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... peculiar behaviour; the whole case against Perry; the illusive personage with the chestnut beard and gold tooth; Morley's suspicious story and actions; and, lastly, Maria Fulton's highly puzzling narrative of what she had seen and not seen in ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... the part of the younger generation. Mere age, he saw, reduces the complexity of desire, but renders it single and intense. Whether his father was right or not in his gloomy analysis, he was deeply convinced and foiled. His last method of success had turned out illusive, yet he had not reproached, nor domineered, nor dictated, nor appealed. He had expressed a little of his keen sorrow, but insidiously this attitude had ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... who love the melting mood, Suck from your work their melancholy food; Now this one, and now that, you deeply stir, Each sees the working of his heart laid bare. Their tears, their laughter, you command with ease, The lofty still they honour, the illusive love. Your finish'd gentlemen you ne'er can please; A growing ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... up into the timber. It was a spruce forest, very still and fragrant. We climbed out up on a bench, and across a flat, up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of snow. Here snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw a fox, a badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One more climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven thousand feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim along the horizon. The Flattops ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... it can be but a fancy? Clancy could not be there, either in the trees, or on the earth. She knows it is but a deception of her senses—an illusive vision—such as occur to clairvoyantes, at times ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... latter-day political conceptions, and inspires the fateful action of Germany's acknowledged leaders, breeds in the allied peoples not so much a stern resolve to tame that revolutionary nation at all costs, as a sentimental longing for the return of the idyllic past, and an illusive hope that by dint of mild Christian charity it may yet ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... lovely creature when she came out of her room an hour or two later to show herself to her mother before she stepped into the hated jampan. Her dress was a delicate creation of white lace and chiffon, with illusive shimmerings of silver in its folds that came and went with every one of her graceful movements. She was a tall and slender girl, with a beautiful long white throat, smooth and round, that took on entrancing curves of pride and gentleness, of humility and nobleness. She had splendid rippling ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Yet it is quite certain that it is widely disseminated among those of our neighbours who are most prompt and effective in action, and whose vigour is in no degree paralysed by the clairvoyance with which they seek for exact truth even in the most romantic and illusive spiritual circumstances. To throw light on this aspect of French character, I propose to call attention to a little book, which is probably well-known to my readers already, but which may be regarded from a point of view, as ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... them there, from the sunrise to its setting, the spectral illusive shapes of the mirage floated like restless spirit betwixt heaven and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the time, and, though he tried hard, he had been unable to stay far from Nell's vicinity. He believed she cared for him; but he could not catch her alone long enough to verify his tormenting hope. When alone she was as illusive as a shadow, as quick as a flash, as mysterious as a Yaqui. When he tried to catch her in the garden or fields, or corner her in the patio, she eluded him, and left behind a memory of dark-blue, haunting eyes. It was that look ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... old man bears it in his trembling hands to the carefully prepared furnace where fire must add to its beauty of form the illusive, decisive beauty ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... will task the finest painter's hand. Then the spaces of water between the floes, if not too large, appeared uniformly in deep wine-color,—an effect for which one must have more science than I to account. It is attributed to contrast; but if thus illusive, it is at least an illusion not to be looked out of countenance. No local color could assert itself more firmly. One marvellous morning, too, a dense, but translucent, mist hovered closely, beneath strong sunshine, over the ice, lending ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... who have this mental alembic for turning grief into a poetic melancholy can seldom be reduced to a state of absolute despondency. Poetry, or rather the poetic sentiment, exalts all our pleasures and soothes all our afflictions by some illusive charm, whether it be turned into the channel of religion or romance. Without this reflection of light from the imagination, what is the passion of love? and what is our love of beauty and of sweet sounds, but a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... 15 per cent, on the additional capital sunk. The extra capital sunk does not in any way increase the maintenance charges; and if, by having a large holder, additional security and trustworthiness are obtained, or if the holder leads to a definite, albeit illusive, sense of extra security and trustworthiness, the additional expenditure may well ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Constitution is a paradox not to be fathomed by human intellect, why, that is a quality which it shares with Space and Time and all deep and elemental things. Your deep thinker is invariably a paradox-monger, because everything when probed to its bottom proves illusive, and is found to contain its own contradiction. Truth is not a dead butterfly, to be transfixed with a pin and labelled, but a living, airy, evasive butterfly. Perhaps that is the inner meaning of the Whistlerian motto. The Hegelian ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... father's consent to fitting himself for the bar, or for any other professional pursuit. No,—there was only one pursuit left open to him, the pursuit of pleasure, and he had not sufficiently recovered from his late shock to start off in chase of that illusive phantom. Bertha's letter roused him out of this miserable, mind-paralyzing apathy. In the very next train which left for Rennes he was on his way back ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... spiritualistic type and is radically opposed to the materialism of the Sankya school. In one school the Divine Being is nothing and materialism has full sway; while in the other Brahm is everything, and all that appears to men—the phenomenal—is false and illusive. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... To Baals illusive and specious, Till chance had there voiced me That one I loved vainly in nonage Had ceased her ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... intensity but the tints of the chemical impressions produced by radiations, with the colors of the object from which these radiations emanated." It is true that three years have passed away, and we have not yet produced colored images; yet I am not inclined to consider the hope as entirely illusive. ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... recognized by the Convention. Neal Dow, as President and as a man of gallantry, decided on receiving Miss Antoinette's credentials, and for a time victory appeared to smile on the Amazons. The triumph, however, was only ephemeral and illusive. The motion was put and carried that none but the officers and invited guests of the Convention should be permitted to occupy places on the platform, and so, by this indirect movement, Miss Brown saw herself, in the moment of her brightest hopes, expelled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... trifling carelessness of one giving himself up to the plaything of the hour. Not having, from the very first, been chary of the sidelong glance and the winning smile, and whatever grace of style or manner could tempt him to pursuit, as an illusive appearance of success seemed to beckon her onward, her heart at times grew desperate with the apprehension that all had been in vain. For Sergius, content that the wife whom he neglected did not disturb his repose with idle complaints, had no thought of inflicting any deeper injury upon her, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... retrospect.—The caption of this chapter implies the behavior of human beings, as a matter of course, and the study of this subject is, at once, both alluring and illusive. No sooner has the student arrived at deductions that seem conclusive than exceptions begin to loom up on his speculative horizon that disintegrate his theories and cause him to retrace the steps of his reasoning. Such a study affords large scope for introspection, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... intervals, and of being immensely witty and extravagantly gay. At the end of the half-year these effusions of wit and gayety were printed by the society at the mutual expense of its members, and given to the world under the title of Recueil de ces Messieurs.[Q] Deprived of the illusive accompaniments of the lights, the sparkling eyes, the tinkling glasses, and the indulgent good-nature engendered by an excellent dinner, good wines, and an ample dessert, these table libertinages, when read ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... that common run that do not habitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended and grammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose impulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive consistencies of set speech,—as touches the common run, particularly, it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that the material means of life are, after all, means only; and that when the question of what things are worth ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... the frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure,—neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of distant thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems heavy with an approaching storm. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... by memory, seem "Like yon' illusive meteor's glancing light; "That o'er the darkness threw its instant gleam, "Then sunk, and vanish'd ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... illusive light and these ever-changing vistas— what lies? I am weary of their vanishing glories. I would not wish to mount up through dreams to behold the true and fall away powerlessly, but would rather return to earth, though in pain, still eager to take up and renew ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... reverence of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was a mysterious kind of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or grimace, upon his visage; but of all the throng that beheld him, not an individual appears to have possessed insight enough to detect the illusive character of the stranger, except a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... heaps of scoria that have accumulated in the vicinity of the iron works give the place an illusive air of antiquity; bit it is neither ancient nor picturesque. The oldest and most pictorial thing in Stillwater is probably the marble yard, around three sides of which the village may be said to have sprouted up rankly, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... formality of an after all impossible description; to be, in fact, rather than to express; that is what Mallarme has consistently, and from the first, sought in verse and prose. And he has sought this wandering, illusive, beckoning butterfly, the soul of dreams, over more and more entangled ground; and it has led him into the depths of many forests, far from the sunlight. He would be the last to permit me to say that he has found what he sought; but (is it possible to avoid saying?) how heroic a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Friedrich being found ready. He signs the Oath, as well as audibly swears it: whereupon his sword is restored to him, and his prison-door opened. He steps forth to the Town Church with his Commissioners; takes the sacrament; listens, with all Custrin, to an illusive Sermon on the subject; "text happily chosen, preacher handling it well." Text was Psalm Seventy-seventh, verse eleventh (tenth of our English version), And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Host High; or, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with its like touch of mysterious suggestion. As the twilight indefinite, it pervaded everything, yet was never anywhere. Deafening at a distance, it hushed at our approach only to begin again behind us. Will-o'-the-wisp of the ear, infatuating because forever illusive! And the distance and the numbers blended what had perhaps been harsh into a mellow whole that filled the gloaming with a sort of voice. I began to understand why the Japanese are so fond of it that they deem it not ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... is admittedly difficult to define. It connotes a vast group of special experiences and speculations which deal with material supposed to be beyond the reach of sense and reason. It carries us back to the strangely illusive "mysteries" of the Greeks, but is more definitely used in connection with the most characteristic subtleties of the wizard East, and with certain developments of the Platonic philosophy. Extended exposition ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... other words used in early poetry or in sacred writings to express the works of mind have a materialistic sound; for old mythology was allied to sense, and the distinction of matter and mind had not as yet arisen. Thus materialism receives an illusive aid from language; and both in philosophy and religion the imaginary figure or association easily takes the place of ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the gull-breast covering ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... repair; and, better than all, the kitchen had as yet given no signs of unrest in those volcanic agencies which are constantly at work there, and which, with sudden explosion, make Herculaneums and Pompeiis of so many smiling households. Breakfast, dinner, and tea came up with illusive regularity, and were all the most perfect of their kind; and we laughed and feasted in our vain security. We had out from the city to banquet with us the friends we loved, and we were inexpressibly proud ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Colorado of tradition to the west, still rolling in wave after wave of stupendous altitudes, each range cutting into the sky with a purple saw-tooth edge. The landscape seems to contain nothing but rocks and towering crags, a treasure-house for those who mine. But this is illusive. Between these purple heights charming valleys wind and meadows lie in which rich grasses ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... will undergo at almost every page they read an intense and singular experience. The curtain drawn between ourselves and reality, enveloping everything including ourselves in its illusive folds, seems of a sudden to fall, dissipated by enchantment, and display to the mind depths of light till then undreamt, in which reality itself, contemplated face to face for the first time, stands fully revealed. The revelation is overpowering, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... seems to be afraid of losing his dignity, and to be conscious of the fact that his reputation—like that of some English officials—depends on the overpowering wig which he now wears, though his Macedonian forerunner had no such growth to give an illusive appearance of size and capacity to his head. However opinions may differ about these things, we will agree that the elephant (or "Oliphant," as he was called in France 400 years ago) is the most imposing, fascinating, and astonishing of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... or all of his achievements was the fact that Booker Washington was a gentleman. It would be difficult to find a man who better conformed to the exacting yet illusive requirements of that term. He had not only the naturalness and the goodness of heart which are the fundamentals, but he had also the breeding and the polish which distinguish the finished gentleman from the "rough diamond." ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... wondrous things, the Asuras were filled with despair, and got themselves prepared for entering into hostilities with the gods for the possession of Lakshmi and Amrita. Thereupon Narayana called his bewitching Maya (illusive power) to his aid, and assuming the form of an enticing female, coquetted with the Danavas. The Danavas and the Daityas charmed with her exquisite beauty and grace lost their reason and unanimously placed the Amrita in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... valley, and you might often observe various groups clustered on the green heights above the mansion, the effect of which was most inspiriting and graceful. Sometimes in the twilight, a solitary form, magnified by the illusive hour, might be seen standing on the brink of the steep, large and black against ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... idea of introducing into the region of refined feeling the cold light of scientific investigation. Lastly, there are special difficulties inherent in the subject. One serious obstacle to a scientific theory of aesthetic experience is the illusive character of many of its finer elements—-for example, the subtle differences of feeling-tone produced by the several colours as well as by their several tones and shades, by the several musical intervals, and so forth. Finally, there is the circumstance just touched on that much of this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... surprised to see it seemed verily true. His little physiognomy had no more expression than a withered nut. But there was something about it more disturbing than its vanishing intelligence, something unexpected, and out of harmony with the rest of him, yet so illusive that, flit over him as her eye would, she ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... 'Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforward from your thoughts for ever. Resolve, and keep your resolution; choose, and pursue your choice. If you spend this day in study, you will find yourself still more ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed and overworked Vicar's daughter. Imperial Shirley, no need to wave your majestic wand, we have bowed to it long ago unblinded; and all its illusive splendours are not so potent as that worn-down goose-quill which you used to wield in the busy kitchen ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... absolutely cut off from these sources of wealth, would have found it impracticable either to gratify her subsidiaries, or to maintain such formidable armies to annoy her neighbours. These are truths, which will appear to the conviction of the public, when the illusive spells of unsubstantial victory are dissolved, and time shall have dispersed the thick mists of prejudice which now seem to darken and perplex the understanding of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the public journals. England is full of such people, and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception,—rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings,—yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Ah, Barbara! Appearances were illusive. There was no heart under the soft exterior of the one woman, and there was a very tender one, covered by a crust of rule and propriety, latent in ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... affecting sight, it was one at least strongly indicative of the intractable and indurated attachment which put itself forth with such vague and illusive energy on behalf of his son. At length he recovered, and on opening his eyes he fixed them with a long look of pain and distraction upon the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... feeling of littleness and impotence, twilight gloom, burnished night, bitter cold, unreality, phantasmagoria, [Footnote: Phantasmagoria: illusive images.] ghosts like those which surged about Aeneas, [Footnote: Ghosts about Aeneas: referring to the descent of Aeneas into Hades as told in Virgil's "Aeneid."] and finally clogging, white silence,—these were the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... God does. His promises are true, though illusive; far truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low, sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual blessedness—unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by faith, and not ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... battery in the army engaged in the conquest of New Mexico. His command encamped near the base of the mountain which now bears his name. Deceived by the illusive effect of the atmosphere, he started out for a morning stroll to the supposed near-by elevation, announcing that he would return in time for breakfast. The day passed with no sign of Captain Fisher, and ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... of my own to relate on this subject. But I could fill a book with the experiences of my friends. How many poor widows, in the hope of sustaining their families and educating their children, have tried the illusive, and, at best, doubtful experiment of taking boarders, to find themselves in a year or two, or three, hopelessly involved in debt, a life time of labor would fail to cancel. Many, from pride, resort to this means of getting a living, because—why I never could comprehend—taking boarders is thought ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... tree, The rushing Aeolus on viewless wing, The flower-crowned Queen of every cultured lea, And he who walked, with monarch-tread, the sea, The awful Thunderer, threatening them aloud, God! were their vain imaginings of Thee, Who saw Thee only through the illusive cloud That sin had flung around their spirits, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... into the illusive shade of the fig and magnolia trees, and lunch was soon spread. As we ate, conversation turned upon the annoying persistency of Eastern guides, and reference was made to the exciting circumstances attending the engagement of Amshar, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pity. I do not know whether she had ever heard that "pity was akin to love." She would probably have resented that utterly untenable and atrocious commonplace. There was no suggestion, real or illusive, of any previous masterful quality in the man which might have made his present dependent condition picturesque by contrast. He had come to her handicapped by an unromantic accident and a practical want of energy and intellect. He would have ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... true. I woke when all the crimson colour faded And wanton Autumn's lips and cheeks were pale; And when the sorrowing year had slowly waded, With failing footsteps, through the snow-filled vale. I woke and knew the glamour of a season Had lent illusive lustre to a dream, And looking in the clear calm eyes of Reason, I smiled and said, "Farewell to things that seem." 'Twas but a red leaf from a lush September The wind of dreams across my pathway blew, But oh! my love! the whole round year remember, With all its seasons I bestow ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
