"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, which I felt bound to communicate to Moore. "My dear fellow," I said in a whisper, "is this quite sportsmanlike? You know you are after some treasure, real or imaginary, and, I put it to you as a candid friend, is not this just a little bit like poaching? Your brother's ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... James Graham, the representative of the Graemes of Netherby, on the English side of the border, was one of the most venerable and respected of British statesmen. The border men, who used to make such furious raids and forays, have now come to regard each other, across the imaginary line which divides them, as friends and neighbours; and they meet as competitors for victory only at agricultural meetings, where they strive to win prizes for the biggest turnips or the most effective reaping-machines; while the men who followed their Johnstone or Armstrong ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... powerful nation—a standing menace to their interest and power. But they began to look with alarm on the spectacle of these two brothers—brothers in blood, in aims, ambition, and future expectations, only an imaginary line separating them—with glaring eyes, their hands at each others throat, neither willing to submit or yield as long as there was a vestige of vitality in either. Even the most considerate and thoughtful of the North began to contemplate the wreck and ruin of their common country, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Athenian populace was wont to pass whole days in the theatre, attending with unfaltering intellectual keenness and aesthetic delight to three or four long dramas, either of which would exhaust a modern audience,—the wild and vast systems of imaginary abstractions, which the Neo-Platonists, as also the German transcendentalists, so strangely devised and became enamored of,—the grotesque views of men and things, the funny universe altogether, which made up both the popular and the learned thought of the Middle Ages,—the Buddhistic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of Toledo also make glistening glazed tiles. Some of these show scenes from the lives of favorite Spanish heroes, real and imaginary. There are some Toledo tiles that will tell you about Don Quixote of La Mancha, a hero invented 350 ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... tremendous. A column of seething mud and water, twenty feet in diameter, shot full thirty feet into the air, overwhelming the launch in such a shower that many of the unprofessional spectators imagined she was lost. Thus an imaginary ironclad was sent, with a tremendous hole in her, to the bottom ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Atticus is charming, isn't she?—pretty and nice and neat. Why shouldn't Atticus be the happiest man in the world? You say that everybody thinks he is. Ah, yes! that's because everybody behind the blinds or beside the curtains doesn't see the real things that go wrong,—only the imaginary ones." Atticus, when all alone in his library, with no holes in the curtains, might tell a different story. He might tell of a desolate heart, a solitary intellect,—hopes, dreams, buried. He might ask himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... century; they are the history of a unique life, a unique personality, one of the greatest of autobiographies; as a record of adventures, they are more entertaining than Gil Blas, or Monte Cristo, or any of the imaginary travels, and escapes, and masquerades in life, which have been written in imitation of them. They tell the story of a man who loved life passionately for its own sake: one to whom woman was, indeed, the most important thing in the world, but to whom nothing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... unfortunately I cannot die unless I kill myself,—which it is possible I may do ere long. But in the meantime,"—he hesitated a moment, then went on, "in the meantime, I have a strong wish to be deluded—I use the word advisedly, and repeat it—DELUDED into an imaginary happiness, though I am aware that as an agnostic and searcher after truth—truth absolute, truth positive—such a desire on my part seems even to myself inconsistent and unreasonable. Still I confess to having it; and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and whispered, 'Mamma's own good boy.' Willie tripped lightly down the stairs and into the garden, where three little boys, of the respective ages of eight, six, and five, were playing at the well-known game which Charles Dickens terms 'an invasion of the imaginary domains of ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... going to stay. I never was needed before, but I guess I am now. And maybe you'll think it's funny, but I'm wanted! An imaginary daughter can't wait on a poor little cripple—it takes the flesh-and-blood kind. I found out she wanted me, and so I'm going to stay. It would have been lonesome, anyway, all alone in the Hive! I bequeath ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... to think of all the several contingencies which might defraud him of that good-fortune which seemed but just now within his grasp. He glared in the darkness at imaginary faces: sometimes at that of the handsome, treacherous schoolmaster; sometimes at that of the meek-looking, but no doubt, scheming, lady-teacher; sometimes at that of the dark girl whom he was ready ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... under the stress of present circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means. Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of leaves in December, he developed a sudden sense of obligation to an imaginary cousin whom he added, without legal authority, to the population of Peru, Indiana. By means of Miss Bartlett's white hand he frequently informed her that she was not to worry about him, because he was "doing splendid," and that a hospital "wasn't so worse when ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... labor in all departments of legitimate employment that it is difficult to find material to fill it. We hear much of the warfare between capital and labor, and strikes frequently paralyze the channels of legitimate trade, but the cause of the difficulty lies not in any real or imaginary conflict between capital and labor. The solution lies in the fact that every branch of legitimate labor is burdened with incompetent workmen, men who are in wrong occupations, who were never intended by nature for such work as the branches of trade they infest, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... doubt that he was a Christian. I longed to ask him about Jerry, but I found that he did not understand a word of English. It was so dark, also, that he could scarcely see my gestures. I tried every expedient to make him comprehend my meaning. I ran on, and then seized an imaginary person, and conducted him back to the fort. I raised my hands in a supplicating attitude. I shook his hands warmly, to show how grateful I should be if he granted my request. At last I began to hope that he understood me. He shook my hands ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which then were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I recollect,—so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... recall afterwards what it was they chattered about, except that somehow he acquired the valuable knowledge that Miss Corner was called Cecily, and her sister Letty, and then—so far old Essex custom held—the masculine section was left for a few minutes for some imaginary drinking, and a lighting of cigars and cigarettes, after which everybody went through interwoven moonlight and afterglow to the barn. Mr. Britling sat down to a pianola in the corner and began the familiar ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the imaginary beings of the novel were introduced, or, it should rather be said, were severally produced before us as actual embodiments. Occasionally, during one of the earlier scenes, it is true that the gentle voice of Rose Maylie was audible, while a few impressive words were spoken there also at ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... such a Being? He might in the same stile conclude that no objection deserved a reply. The whole of this is absurd; but when the Doctor begins to feel enthusiasm he is like the rest of the ecclesiastical arguers. They reason themselves into imaginary Beings with more imaginary properties and then fall down and worship them. God is said to have made man in the image of himself. If he has done so, man is up with him, for he in return makes God in his own image. Much as the imagination ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... of blood. There had been his cousin Amalie, whose marriage to another is said to have been the secret spring of sorrow by which Heine's laughter was fed. And there had been others, whose names—imaginary, maybe, in that they were doubtless the imaginary names of real women—are familiar to all readers of Heines poetry: Seraphine, Angelique, Diane, Hortense, ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... looseness and license a thing to be condoned, to be mixed with the blood of one's own posterity? Eben, I've never seen you make excuses for ungodliness before." The fierce old face suddenly cleared. "But there—there! This is all an imaginary danger. I'll watch them, but I'm sure that these two have no such ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... want to see him. I know him very well, and he was once a great friend of mine, but he is not now, and I don't think it would be advisable for us to meet. He nurses an imaginary grievance against me." ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... ambitious, and swells don't have as interesting diseases as poor people. One gets tired of giving them bread pills for imaginary ailments. But Dr. Wyant is not strong himself and I fancy a country practice is better for him than ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... you sure you understand me?" And in the darkness George's bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind the column, could have heard the whispered word "sure," the emphasis put upon it in the vision was so poignant. "You say you understand me, but ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... connected with his Department. The menacing attitude of some of the warlike bands of Indians inhabiting the district of country between the Arkansas and Platte rivers and portions of Dakota Territory required the presence of a large military force in that region. Instigated by real or imaginary grievances, the Indians occasionally committed acts of barbarous violence upon emigrants and our frontier settlements; but a general Indian war has been providentially averted. The commissioners under the act of 20th July, 1867, were invested with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... with his wife, I have employed in some six or eight other stories, and whom I made as much the hero and heroine of 'Their Wedding Journey' as the slight fable would bear. In venturing out of my adoptive New England, where I had found myself at home with many imaginary friends, I found it natural to ask the company of these familiar acquaintances, but their company was not to be had at once for the asking. When I began speaking of them as Basil and Isabel, in the fashion of 'Their Wedding Journey,' they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... darkness; the evening was warm and still. Impatient with what he thought the slow progress of the vehicle, Hugh sat with his body bent forward, straining as did the horse, on which his eyes were fixed, and perspiring in the imaginary effort. The address he had given was Mrs. Fenimore's; but when he drew near he signalled to the driver: 'Stop at the gate. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... neighbors, and not for the world would she add another feather's weight to the burdens under which her family faltered by involving them in a prosecution of the vile impostor who had sickened her with the exposure of a horrible trade. [Footnote: This character is not an imaginary one, and, on ample authority, I was told of an instance where the large sum of fifty dollars was obtained from some kindly family by this detestable method ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... religion. On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a warrant from the high priest to arrest the Christians, he was converted (about A.D. 35) by a direct interposition of the risen Lord. Every effort has been made by modern rationalists to explain this revelation as either an imaginary vision or an inward light in his conscience. The fact remains that St. Paul never speaks of it as a merely inward reality, that he does not number his conversion among the ecstatic states to which he was subject ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... you up, a sense of faintness comes over you, your eyes roll heavenward, your head falls helpless on your breast, your left side becomes numb, your liver quits working, your breath comes hot and heavy, your lips turn livid and tremble, your teeth chew on imaginary taffy, and you look around imploringly for somebody to take her away. If all this occurs to a person from looking at her, it would be sudden death or six months illness, to shake hands with her. If she comes to Milwaukee, there is one bald headed man going to the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... began to think now that he himself would like to see the wonderful cloth while it was still on the looms. Accompanied by a number of his friends, among whom were the two faithful officers who had already beheld the imaginary stuff, he went to visit the two men who were weaving, might and main, without any ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lived in small communities, embracing from ten to thirty cabins, for protection, but had no large towns, because of the impossibility of feeding great numbers at one point. They held it a part of their religion to seek vengeance for all injuries, real and imaginary, and their general traits of character were as savage as their habits. In war they had no pity on captives, no reverence for helpless age, and were strangers to the sentiments of honor and justice. They were brave, yet much given to cunning and ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... mean of you to pump Blossom! I wanted to go on thinking of you as Zuleika and have you call me something imaginary and romantic." ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... himself assailed by all the passionate expectancy that transforms the soul of youth into the incoherent canvas of an unfinished romance of love. Long ago he had known such evenings, those evenings of errant fancy, when he had allowed his caprice to roam through imaginary adventures, and he was astonished to feel a return of sensations that did not now ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... sophister, overturn the sovereignty of Dionysius; inveigling him to cashier his guard of ten thousand lances, dismiss a navy of four hundred galleys, disband an army of ten thousand horse and many times over that number of foot, and go seek in the schools an unknown and imaginary bliss, and learn by the mathematics how to be happy; while, in the meantime, the substantial enjoyments of absolute power, riches, and pleasure would be handed over to Dion ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the plain ends; the hillsides rise and the river-bottoms dwindle away in the distance: such is the feeling that one experiences as he climbs these vine-clad slopes from either the Rhone, the Loire, or the Seine valleys, and here it is that the imaginary line is drawn between the vins ordinaires and the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the mantelpiece, with a yellow clock—which did not go—and glass ornaments in front. There was a small round table before the window, supporting wax fruit under a glass case. There was a hearthrug with a dazzling pattern of imaginary flowers. On the blue cloth of the middle table were four showily-bound volumes, arranged symmetrically. On the head of the sofa lay a covering worked of blue and yellow Berlin wools. Two arm-chairs were draped with long white antimacassars, ready to slip off at a touch. As in ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... during this performance Eustacia was half in doubt about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. A series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... rather in a diagonal. This is another characteristic of De Quincey; he is sometimes tediously exact in his details; perhaps the minuteness is justifiable in this instance, as the statement increases the realistic effect of an imaginary scene. ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... itself while out at rest. For the morrow the colonel had arranged a scheme—defence and counter-attack—which meant that skeleton batteries would have to be brought up to upset and demolish the remorseless plans of an imaginary German host; and there was diligent studying of F.A.T. and the latest pamphlets on Battery Staff Training, and other points of knowledge rusted by too much ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... wages to provide for your families during your absence. You have lately filled yourselves with meat, and you have become lazy; you have been frightened by the footprints of the Base; thus you wish to leave the country. To save yourselves from imaginary danger, you would forsake my wife and myself and leave us to a fate which you yourselves would avoid. This is your gratitude for kindness; this is the return for my confidence, when without hesitation I advanced you money. Go! Return to Katariff to your families! I know that all the excuses ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... of these places in turn, and when we were homeward bound I was landed at an imaginary port in "Spain." The boat had pushed off, when I called out to the skipper that I would walk home to Stromness if he would ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... "These are not imaginary stories, nor are they of a remote past. And I see other young men for whom I am anxious. Wear the coat a little longer, but pay for it out of your own money. Be considered 'tight' if necessary, but live within your means. It is good sense; more than that, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... thermometer of peace and war in their criminal hands. But it is not commerce—it deserves not the name of commerce—it does not contribute to public welfare—it does not augment the elements of public prosperity—it is but immoral GAMBLING, which transfers an unproductive imaginary wealth from one hand into another, without augmenting the stock of national property:—that is not commerce: and it is a degradation of the character of a nation, when the interests of that speculation have the slightest influence, or are made of the ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... ammunition, mirrors, knives, scissors, &c. Park's proposed route was to proceed up the Gambia, cross the country to the Niger, when they were to sail down the river till they came to its termination. If, as Park supposed, in place of being lost, according to Major Rennel's theory, in some imaginary lake called Margara, it took a southerly direction, and might prove to be the river Congo; it was his intention to embark on board some slave-ship, and return, either by the way of St. Helena or the West Indies. Major Rennel earnestly advised Park against the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... inside the walls since I was a child, when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell into such an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... comfortless and unhallowed place. Noman commanded that silence should be kept, that not even a whisper should breathe from other lips than his own. He drew a line with his crutch upon the floor, and forbade that any should attempt to pass this imaginary demarcation. The auditors were all agape, and but that the door was fastened, some would doubtless have gone back, repenting of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... about any particular doctor," went on the shipping clerk, unabashed. "I'm agin all doctors. They're a bunch of crooks, I tell you. It's you women with your imaginary ailments who keep 'em going. If doctors had to depend on men for a living, they'd have to take to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... objects which appear from indistinct environments are as a rule considerably distant. I know, further, that considerably distant objects seem much smaller, and hence I must assume that the horse, which in spite of its imaginary distance appears to retain its natural size, is really larger than it is. The train of thought is as follows: "I see the horse indistinctly. It seems to be far away. It is, in spite of its distance, of great size. How enormous ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of conversation; but owing to some circumstance which I cannot now recollect, I have no record of any part of it, except that there were several people there by no means of the Johnsonian school; so that less attention was paid to him than usual, which put him out of humour; and upon some imaginary offence from me, he attacked me with such rudeness, that I was vexed and angry, because it gave those persons an opportunity of enlarging upon his supposed ferocity, and ill treatment of his best friends. I was so much hurt, and had my pride ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... at this place [this is a letter of an imaginary correspondent to 'Mr. Spectator'] a company of strollers, who are very far from offending in the impertinent splendor of the drama. They are so far from falling into these false gallantries, that the stage is here ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... money; neither is it, properly speaking, credit. It, in effect, creates upon paper the sum which it appears to borrow, and lays on a tax to keep the imaginary capital alive by the payment of interest and sends the annuity to market, to be sold for paper already in circulation. If any credit is given, it is to the disposition of the people to pay the tax, and not to the government, which ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... out the light, lest the moment I lay down some "monstrum horrendum, informfe, ingens" should blast my sight with his hellish aspect! I had a double sense of sight and sound; one real, the other visionary; both equally strong and apparently real; so that while I distinctly heard imaginary footsteps ascending the stairs, the door opening and my curtains drawn, I at the same time as plainly heard any actual sound in or outside the house, and could not remark the slightest difference between them; and while I saw an imaginary assassin standing by my bed, bending ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... work is dedicated to Dr. Babington, "in remembrance of some delightful days passed in his society, and in gratitude for an uninterrupted friendship of a quarter of a century;" and in the preface the author, after saying that the characters are imaginary, intimates that "in the portrait of HALIEUS, given in the last dialogue, a likeness, he thinks, will not fail to be recognised to that of a most estimable physician, ardently beloved by his friends, and esteemed and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... ebb. After four years of struggle the patriots had met with a crushing defeat in 1814, and had been scattered to the four winds. Since then the viceroy of Spain had ruled the land with an iron hand, many of the leading citizens being banished to the desolate island of Juan Fernandez, the imaginary scene of Robinson Crusoe's career, while many others were severely punished and all the people ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... slave-traders have used it as a pretext for stirring up the rebellion among the natives. England for many years has been doing her best to suppress slave-trading, and the slave-traders make use of any grievance, imaginary or otherwise, in their attempts to overthrow the power of the white men, in order that their barbarous man-hunting may not be interfered with. Several men-of-war have been sent by England to Sierra Leone, and are to be reinforced by others; troops ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... native surgeon, long jealous of my reputation, was nominated by the governor to make inquiry and check my declaration. He naturally inserted in his report that I was deceived; that the malady of which I spoke was imaginary; and he succeeded in all this so well that the governor, enraged, condemned me in a penalty of six piasters. The following month I again brought forward the same soldier, as being incapable of performing his duties; a commission of eight ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... quoted as authorities in the History of the Early Christian Church, are neither genuine nor authentic;" that he has pretty well resolved St. Cyprian into a purely mythic personage; and shown that all the letters in his works passed between imagined or imaginary correspondents,—we think we are justified in pronouncing his History of the Church of Rome a work calculated to excite the deepest interest in all who peruse it (and by the omission of all long quotations in the learned languages, it is adapted for the perusal of all), to exercise great influence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... twice she forgot herself, and limped over to some heap to relieve an imaginary struggling babe or moaning sleeper. Morning came. She had dozed. She looked to see the rag-heaps stir; they lay as still as corpses. The alarm-bells had ceased. She looked to see a new gang enter the far door. She listened for the gathering buzzing of voices in the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... as soon as the Hakim had seen that his wound was healing well, and the arrival of the newly injured was expected; but none appeared, for the simple reason that the fresh tale of wounded was only imaginary, the Baggara chief, as was afterwards learned, having been successful in obtaining a large amount of plunder and many camels in his first raid after leaving the prisoners at the wells. These he had despatched under a small escort while he made for another village which had been ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the right to consider my imaginary feelings in such a matter between yourself and ...? And besides, you did not quite keep silent, you remember. You said something that led me to think that you had discharged Mr. Surface ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... difference be inconsiderable, this is not an imaginary distinction. Anatomical observations prove that the capacity of the stomach is not the same—experiments have ascertained that one of the species cannot fulfil all the functions shared among the workers of a hive. We painted those ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... upon his subject as a purely imaginary one? Surely he must have had some definite form before his mental vision; for although sculpture cannot, like painting, tell an elaborate story, still each figure must have a moral and a meaning, must show cause for its existence, and indicate a possible function, or the mind of the spectator ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... against the Scottish banks, which were so honourably acquitted in 1826, we shall confine our further observations to the effects which must necessarily follow upon a change in the established currency. In doing so, we shall conjure up no phantoms of imaginary distress, but merely state the consequences as they have already been explained to Parliament by men who are far better able to judge than ourselves, and even—with deference be it said—than our legislators, of the substitution ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... artistic contemplation of her open actions, choice of phrase, and by-play. Without communication or pre-arrangement, each knew that the other would not let slip the opportunity, and, after the first five minutes of languid general converse; they were mentally at work comparing notes with one another's imaginary conversations, while they said "Yes," and "Indeed," and "I think so," and appeared to belong to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... peopled its buildings with the imaginary forms of doleful creatures, and shunned the fatal precincts where once family love and social affections had flourished; where hearts, long mouldered to dust, had beaten with tender affection, where all the little circumstances which make up life—the trivial round, the common task—had gone on ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... oftener a dime. Even that seemed large enough to fill one pocket and buy a world of things. To think over all the single articles that it would purchase was to possess them for that moment, and I never had a truer ownership in my life than that which was enjoyed in these imaginary possessions. Strangely enough, I could so feel my own what I knew the dime or the quarter would purchase, that I was content not to spend it at all. Yet a day would come when some sudden impulse or appetite ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... into my ideas, I begin by this half-million spent for an interest which you must agree is very nebulous,—that of fitting me to succeed my father in the ministry of some imaginary country, the name of which is ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... sit brooding over this map for hours. He would draw his boundaries with a pair of compasses, construct imaginary roads from town to town, and reconstruct a fortress from the imposing ruins in the bed of the River Waag. Nay, he even ventured upon the audacious experiment of cutting through the mountain chain separating the River Hernad from the River Poprad, and uniting these two rivers (in a state of nature ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... entered the yard-gate and stopped in the moonlight and, from his window, Crittenden looked down and watched him. The boy was going through the manual of arms with his buggy-whip, at the command of an imaginary officer, whom, erect and martial, he was apparently looking straight in the eye. Plainly he was a private now. Suddenly he sprang forward and saluted; he was volunteering for some dangerous duty; and then he ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... yourself in the annoyance you complain of,—in how far it may be the due and inevitable chastisement of some former sin; how, finally, it may turn to your present profit, by giving you a keener insight into the evils of your own heart, and a more indulgent view of the often imaginary wrongs ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... still considered to be ruling in some mystical fashion over an imaginary country, might have welcomed this species of circular communication. It was certainly wasted on the inhabitants of Hispaniola, who were considerably more concerned with their own health and prosperity than with that of Ferdinand and Isabella, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... while waiting for news from Helm's expedition. Every day had its nimble, yet wholly imaginary account of what had happened, skipping from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The French folk ran hither and thither in the persistent rain, industriously improving the dramatic interest of each groundless report. Alice's disturbed imagination reveled in the kaleidoscopic ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a lady, who had treated me with hospitable kindness, I three times mistook her; once for an eminent novelist, once for a distinguished philanthropist, and once for an admired female performer on the Banjo. I carried on conversations with her in each of these three imaginary characters,—and I ask you, is this the way to shine in Society? You may say, "Wear spectacles"—but they are unbecoming. As to an eye-glass, somehow it irritates people even more than mere blindness does. Besides, it is always dropping ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... solicitude during their journey was a fear lest the good old gentleman, in his wild abandonment of joy, should forget himself, and eat so many oranges as to endanger his precious existence. But, happily, their fears proved imaginary. No such catastrophe occurred to mar their felicity, and the little party safely reached the hospitable mansion of Parson Grey, and were received with every demonstration of joy and welcome by the expectant inmates. Aunt Rachel was in her highest cap, and soon commenced preparations for the bridal ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... not injured. She is as innocent and as pure as before Lord Alphingham addressed her. Percy, you are increasing this just displeasure by imaginary causes. I do not believe it to be love for him that occasions her present suffering; I think, from the conversations we have had, it is much more like remorse for the past, and bitter grief that the confidence of our parents must, spite of their excessive kindness, be for a time entirely ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... My imaginary peer would have been especially edified by the speech of Lord MILNER, whom a small but noisy section of the Press persists in describing as more Prussian than the Prussians. Not under-estimating the difficulties in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... themselves, impelled by a fatal concurrence of circumstances, but with so much candour and innocence, that we cannot do otherwise than pardon their fall and even fail to comprehend that they have fallen, we are completely amazed when we descend from this imaginary world to enter ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... grimaces expressive of disgust. He informed me that the slaves employed on the sugar plantations, when beaten by their masters, in order to obtain an indirect revenge, spat in the syrup, and committed other filthy things as an imaginary punishment upon the whites. I frequently saw Sambo in Toronto, and many times he expressed thankfulness to me for his deliverance. I may here mention that shortly after the arrival of Sambo on board the Rose of Milton at Erie, two suspicious-looking ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... these and other words. She pondered over them as she lay in her stifling little dark bedroom at night, or attended to her work by day, and she waged many an imaginary battle for the beautiful, idle woman who represented the grace of life ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... coordinated, received or rejected. As over-intensification of feeling and emotion goes on, the normal action of the idea centers is interfered with and the individual has superinduced emotional and intuitional states which are no longer guarded by reason and thought. The emotion senses a purely imaginary condition and the idea centers have no power to reduce it to truth. As time goes on, all power of association is lost and the individual passes along, the plaything of his subjective states of mind. As he becomes more and more intensified subjectively, he opens the deep psychic ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... much at the hands of both Burns and Clarke. The young lady had reason to complain, when the poet volunteered to sing the imaginary love of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the roots by the handful. Meantime their tongues were not idle. Ulrich boastfully told her that Pater Benedictus had seen his picture of her father, recognized it instantly, and muttered something over it. His mother's blood was strong in him; his imaginary world was a very different one from that of the narrow-minded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... began to probe the darkness in every direction; with every glance he allowed his head to dart out a little. The movement was like a chicken pecking at imaginary grains of corn. But eventually he satisfied himself that his quarry lay in the forward end of the car; that he was prone; that he, Lefty, had accomplished nine-tenths of his purpose by entering the place of his ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... put the animal into a trot. In vain the man remonstrated, and explained that such a pace would injure the elephant on a journey; threats prevailed, and the beast was soon swinging along at full trot, forced on by the sharp driving-hook, with the delighted Perkes striding across its neck, riding, an imaginary race. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... pillaged. Everywhere the army of suffering (armee de souffrance), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made, appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were circulated from hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds (Barefoot), an imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. Some of these verses ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... nature he was a queer mixture of rashness and timidity, but through his mother's anxiety on his behalf the latter quality was constantly being nursed at the expense of all tendency to action. And so, in order to keep the balance, he revelled in the imaginary or real deeds of men whose very life-breath was danger. The more the books gave him of what he craved, the less he thought of looking for it ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... roared, and the audience roared with him; the scene ending with his being carried off to Hell on the Devil's back. Much of the old custom in these two personages is amusingly set forth in Ben Jonson's Staple of News, where, at the end of each Act, we have some imaginary spectators commenting on the performance. At the end of the first Act, one of them expressing a fear that the play has no Fool in it, as the Vice was often called, Gossip Tattle delivers herself thus: "My husband, Timothy Tattle, God rest his poor soul! was wont to say ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... he'd produced, laid in space on an imaginary voyage. The script-writer had had one of the characters say that no constellation would be visible at a hundred light-years from the solar system. It would be rather like a canary trying to locate the window he'd escaped from, from a block away, with no memories of the ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... had long yearned for the advent of the ideal poet. Macpherson had presented him,—but as of an era far remote; latterly Beattie, in The Minstrel, had set forth his growth under the inspiration of Nature,—but in a purely imaginary tale. Suddenly Burns appeared: and the ideal seemed incarnated in the living present. The Scottish bard was introduced to the world by his first admirers as "a heaven-taught ploughman, of humble unlettered station," whose "simple strains, artless and unadorned, seem to flow ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... to his wife's "your," he laid a faint emphasis on the word "now," to imply that those women were always inventing some fresh imaginary ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Salem, but he did not make any warm friends among them. His sister Louisa, who was a more vivacious person than Elizabeth, was his chief companion and comfort. Seated at the window with her on summer evenings, he elaborated the plan of an imaginary society, a club of two, called the "Pin Society," to which all fees, assessments and fines were paid in pins,—then made by hand and much more expensive than now. He constituted himself its secretary, and wrote imaginary reports ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... saw the Cross of Fire, etc. Scott says here: "Inspection of the provincial map of Perthshire, or any large map of Scotland, will trace the progress of the signal through the small district of lakes and mountains, which, in exercise of my imaginary chieftain, and which, at the period of my romance, was really occupied by a clan who claimed a descent from Alpine,—a clan the most unfortunate and most persecuted, but neither the least distinguished, least powerful, nor least brave of the tribes ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... as all the ignorant flock hither, and conclude that my lord must be minister again. Yesterday, three bishops came to do him homage; and who should be one of them but Dr. Thomas.(988) the only man mitred by Lord Granville! As I was not at all mortified with our fall, I am only diverted with this imaginary restoration. They little think how incapable my lord is of business again. He has this whole summer been troubled with bloody water upon the least motion; and to-day Ranby assured me, that he has a stone in his bladder, which he himself believed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... wants his mind at that time may feel. A man who comes here shivering in one of those days which mark the severity of an English summer, may imagine that he is basking in an African sun and he may feel an imaginary warmth from the representation of a tropical climate. If, on the other hand, he is suffering under those exceptional miseries which one of the few hot days of an English summer is apt to create, he may imagine himself inhaling the fresh breezes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Great. These are too long for general reading, but a single volume condensation of the Frederick gives a good idea of Carlyle's method of combining biography and history. Carlyle outlived all his contemporaries—a lonely old man, full of bitter remorse over imaginary neglect of his wife, and full also of despair over the democratic tendencies of the age, which he regarded as the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... however, had no charms for the travellers of these light and giddy-paced times, and Meg's inn became less and less frequented. What carried the evil to the uttermost was, that a fanciful lady of rank in the neighbourhood chanced to recover of some imaginary complaint by the use of a mineral well about a mile and a half from the village; a fashionable doctor was found to write an analysis of the healing waters, with a list of sundry cures; a speculative builder took land in feu, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... my resentment against a gentleman who personated me in a paper called 'Mr. Bickerstaff's Vindication.' I'm grieved to find the times should be so very wicked, that one impostor should set up to reform another, and that a false Bickerstaff should write against an imaginary Partridge. And I am heartily concerned that one who shows so much wit, such extreme civility, and writes such a gentlemanlike style, should prefix my name to writings in which there appears so little solidity and no knowledge of the Arabian philosophy. If ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... wizards and witches. Many a poor iniquitous old woman, from some mysterious hints of her power to tell fortunes, or to gratify the revengeful feelings of her neighbours, was put to a cruel death. More enlightened times have dissipated this illusion, and driven these imaginary imps of darkness ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to themselves and their own requests to God; betwixt his speaking to men, and their speaking to him; between their professing of him before men, and praying and confessing to him. All this is but forged, imaginary worship,—worship falsely so called, which the Father seeks not, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... author of "Zeluco," used to say that at least two-thirds of a physician's fees were for imaginary complaints. Among several instances of this nature, he mentions one of a clothier, who, after drinking the Bath waters, took it into his head to try Bristol hot wells. Previous, however, to his setting off, he requested his physician to favour him with a letter, stating his ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... hat trimmed with a gray feather. All Katy's dreams about the "saintly invalid" seemed to take wings and fly away. But the more she watched Cousin Helen the more she seemed to like her, and to feel as if she were nicer than the imaginary person which she and ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... that the name was "manufactured by the Arab story-tellers after the pattern of their own names (e.g. Nur al-Din or Noureddin, light of the faith, Tajeddin, crown of faith, etc.) for the use of their imaginary Christian female characters." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... seven miles distant from said station, where he built a cabin, cleared some land, which he put in corn next season, not apprehending any danger from the Indians, although he was considered a frontier settler. But this imaginary state of security did not last long; for one morning in August, 1782, having stepped a few paces from his door, he was suddenly surprised by an Indian appearing between him and the door, with tomahawk uplifted, almost within striking distance. ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... 1695. But the most famous, though also least important, of Milton's early critics was the greatest of English scholars, Richard Bentley, who in 1732 issued an edition of Paradise Lost in which whole passages were relegated to the margin as the spurious interpolations of an imaginary editor. Such a book is, of course, merely a curiosity connecting two {251} great names. The real beginning in the work of editing Milton as a classic should be edited was made by Thomas Newton, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, who in 1749 brought out an edition of Paradise ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... show that he was still living. Never in his life had Providence given him a chance of playing so much mischief, and he was not going to be disobedient. They opened his shirt at the breast to give him air, they anxiously searched the side of his head for the wound, and washed away imaginary blood with very dirty pocket-handkerchiefs. They bathed his forehead with such profuseness that the water ran down his chest, whereat Speug expressed himself in low but stern tones, so Nestie advised them to stick to his head; and some of the smaller boys were ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... and fresh-water fishes, in greater detail than I suppose you have given to these lower animals. The point which has interested me most, but I do not say the most valuable point, is your protest against sinking imaginary continents in a quite reckless manner, as was stated by Forbes, followed, alas, by Hooker, and caricatured by Wollaston and [Andrew] Murray! By the way, the main impression that the latter author has left on my mind is ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... official act over, imaginary troubles cease and real ones begin. Oswald, grieved beyond expression to learn that Lisbeth is the daughter of Muenchhausen and Emerentia, is on the point of leaving the Farm immediately and Lisbeth forever; Lisbeth, having ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... into his imaginary paradise, and Nan into that domestic purgatory on a summer day,—the kitchen. There were vines about the windows, sunshine on the floor, and order everywhere; but it was haunted by a cooking-stove, that family altar whence such varied incense rises to appease the appetite of household ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a course of action, I am not one to turn back. Warner drove me; he was plainly disgusted, and he steered the livery horse as he would the Dragon Fly, feeling uneasily with his left foot for the clutch, and working his right elbow at an imaginary horn every time a dog got in ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... armour and movements, so that in course of time what appeared formidable to their imagination would become familiar by being often seen. For it was the opinion of Marius that mere strangeness adds many imaginary dangers to real danger; but that through familiarity even real dangers lose their terrors. Now the daily sight of the enemy not only took away somewhat of the first alarm, but the threats of the barbarians and their intolerable arrogance ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... did they question? None. What deliberation did they enter upon? None. What public did they call in? None. Thus, no public, no deliberation, no counsellors, no witnesses, judges who are not magistrates, a jury where none are sworn in, a tribunal which is not a tribunal, imaginary offences, invented penalties, the accused absent, the law absent; from all these things which resembled a dream there came forth a reality: ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... imaginary dust off the table with the corner of her apron, and went down stairs to finish ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... inevitable moment when Herbert will turn to me with, "I say, old fellow, you can't let me have that ten bob you touched me for the other day, can you? Hate to ask you, but I haven't got a sou ..." But I won't—no, I won't. I will let my imaginary debt mount up, I will let it increase even at the rate at which Herbert's has decreased, but I will not pay it. Herbert, of course, will always be kind to me about it, for he is a generous creature; and every time we go into action he will probably wring my hand and beg me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... day, marveling at its wonderful pomp; then, after having reveled in the sight of a hurricane over the plain where the whirling sands made red, dry mists and death-bearing clouds, he would welcome the night with joy, for then fell the healthful freshness of the stars, and he listened to imaginary music in the skies. Then solitude taught him to unroll the treasures of dreams. He passed whole hours in remembering mere nothings, and comparing his ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quoedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... hasty steps towards the bed; but, ere he reached it, he conquered the impulse that drew him thither, and, shrouding his face more deeply in his cloak, returned to his former position. The dying woman, in the mean time, had thrown herself back upon the bed; and her sobbing and wailing, imaginary as was ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not found woman ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... thoughtfully, looking from the picture to his companion. "Well," he raised an imaginary glass high, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... as have been experienced. No thought is ever entirely original. Even imagination cannot create anything absolutely unlike anything which ever existed. All the fabled beings who, according to the ancient mythology, filled the spaces and waters, were but human creatures adapted to imaginary environments. Faith in the existence of the soul after death could not have originated in the soul itself; to believe that would be to contradict the laws of thought. It seems to have been born with the soul, and yet not to be a part ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... almost as certainly and rapidly as the most absolutely governed nation. The numerous nobility, formerly so powerful, cheerfully accompanied their sovereign in his wars, or, on the civil changes of the state, courted the approving smile of royality. The crafty policy of the crown had created a new and imaginary good, of which it was the exclusive dispenser. New passions and new ideas of happiness supplanted at last the rude simplicity of republican virtue. Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy independence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said. "There seem to be only a few men stationed at each of those points. Ostensibly, they're there as a safe-guard—in case the imaginary raiders attempt to break out ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... visit, among others at the old cabinet, which does not, at first view, strike him very strongly. But, on musing about his visit afterwards, he finds the recollection of the cabinet strangely identifying itself with his previous imaginary picture of the palatial mansion; so that at last he begins to conceive the mistake he has made. At this first [visit], he does not have a personal interview with the possessor of the estate; but, as the Hospitaller and himself go from room ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... called idiosyncrasies appear to be, and doubtless are, due to disordered intellect. But they should not be confounded with those which are inherent in the individual and real in character. Thus, they are frequently merely imaginary, there being no foundation for them except in the perverted mind of the subject; at other times they are induced by a morbid attention being directed continually to some one or more organs or functions. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various |
