"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... works of Gower have, however, come down to us; they are ballads and madrigals, for imaginary Iris,[613] Court poems, imitations of Petrarch,[614] the light verses of a well-taught man. He promises eternal service to his "douce dame"; his "douce dame" being no one in particular. He writes for others, and they are welcome to draw from his works: "The love-songs ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 'Stonor's too content just to criticize, just to make his delicate pungent fun of the men who are grappling—very inadequately of course—still grappling with the big questions. There's a carrying power'—he jumped to his feet again and faced an imaginary audience—'some of Stonor's friends ought to point it out—there's a driving power in the poorest constructive policy that makes the most brilliant criticism ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... identity of Thyrza and the question whether the person addressed under this name really existed, or was an imaginary being, have given rise to much speculation and discussion of a more or ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Benshie, sometimes called the Shrieking Woman, is an imaginary being, supposed by the Irish to predict, by her shrieks and wails, the death of some member in the family over which she exercises a kind of supervision. To this fable Moore alludes ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... material, leather, straps, and dozens of items are administered with the same spirit of jealous guardianship by Day, Lashly, Oates and Meares, while our main storekeeper Bowers even affects to bemoan imaginary shortages. Such parsimony is the best guarantee that we are prepared to face ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... could give way to her feelings, talk with Matilda. But Mr. Pyecroft stretched out his legs, settled back, clasped his hands behind his head, and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. He had an intellectual interest in some imaginary escapade of the far-distant Mrs. De Peyster; but no more; and he was ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... to a question put by Lord Lytton to one of the forty, Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., is of value, as showing that the grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:— ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... spring, there is very little muscle in the thick legs which look like pillars, and the back is far too broad. But Donatello is saved by his tact; he was ostensibly making the portrait of a lion; though he gives none of its features, he gives us all the chief leonine characteristics. He excelled in imaginary animals, like the Chinese artists who make admirable dragons, but ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... case as that of the imaginary physician who says: "You have heart trouble? Then take a quart of rhubarb decoction and stay twelve days in the hospital." Another patient says: "I have broken my leg." And the doctor: "All right, take a pint of rhubarb decoction and 17 days in the hospital." A third has inflammation of ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... attempt to interpret them. To consider these difficulties in detail would be to write a commentary on the first eleven chapters. Only some general remarks can here be offered. Some difficulties are imaginary, the inventions of special pleading. In these the commentaries of modern rationalists abound. They are to be set aside by fair interpretation. But other difficulties are real, and should not be denied or ignored by the honest expositor. If ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... crude talk in which the unwise deliver their judgments upon the conditions of success in the relations between men and women, has flowed with unprofitable copiousness as to this not very inviting case. People construct an imaginary Rousseau out of his writings, and then fetter their elevated, susceptible, sensitive, and humane creation, to the unfortunate woman who could never be taught that April is the month after March, or that twice four and a half are nine. Now we have already ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... method, and which pleased me best, was the way of bringing over the whole equations to one side, making it equal to nothing, and thereby forming his compound equations by the multiplication of simples, from thence also determining the number of roots, real or imaginary, in each. This artifice, on which all the rest of his doctrine is grounded, was that which most made me to set a value on him, presuming it had been properly his own; but afterwards I perceived that he had it from Hariot, whose Algebra ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... there that Mr Benjamin Gompertz (the author of the "Principles and Application of Imaginary Quantities") resided and the mother of Sir Moses breathed ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... little of real life, and less of love and marriage, up to the time she had met Rex! Her heroes had been imaginary ones, her ideas of love only girlish, romantic fancies. It was all very exciting and charming. She was very fond of handsome Rex, but she had yet to learn the depths of love which, sooner or later, brightens the ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... couldn't! You are too intensely absorbent, you are too rigidly individual. The flame in you would never consent even for an instant to be the flame in anybody else—any of those people who, for the purpose of the state, are called imaginary. Never!" ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... If he had been content with a small fee, he needed only to have told the truth; but his story was required to put a fair face on the amount of his request. And in what an amiable light it sets Elisha! He would not take for himself, but he has nothing to give to the two imaginary scholars, who have come from some of the schools of the prophets in the hill-country of Ephraim, thirsting for instruction. How sweet the picture, and what a hard heart that could refuse the request! Truly said Paul, 'The love of money is a root ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was moving with deliberate steps, the imaginary winding-sheet dragging slowly after him. There was an automatic precision in ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... have puzzled herself to explain. It was not to worship, not to repent of her heinous sin: she neither repented nor desired to repent. But it seemed pleasant to play at repentance and put on imaginary sackcloth. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... able to leave the port. I had been told that a sum had been placed to the credit of the Fram for our stay in Buenos Aires, but I neither saw nor heard anything of it while we were there, and it was no doubt somewhat imaginary. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... killed, if they ventured out, by the fierce coast tribes. The boys nodded, to show that they understood what he wished to say but, pointing to the water a few yards from shore, went through the action of fishing; then, burdening themselves with imaginary fish, they pointed to the village, and showed that they ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... shape of Festus. She became conscious of his approach, and moved more quickly. He moved more quickly still, and overtook her. She turned as if in answer to a call from him, and he walked on beside her, till they were out of sight. The old man then played upon an imaginary fiddle for about half a minute; and, suddenly discontinuing these signs of pleasure, went ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... you velly nice apple tart. Miss Betty." The Chinese cook flourished his rolling pin with one hand and swung his apron viciously with the other as he held open the screen door and swept out some imaginary flies. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... upon that," said Mr Rugg, preparing to put on the rim and the head. The band was ready, too; and he turned the wheel and pulled out an imaginary thread with such gravity that all laughed. "Well, what do you think of it, girls?" he asked after a little time. "Will you ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the first three voyages is, he angrily declares, tinctured by his poisonous malice and envy, the result of twelve years of exile. He is positive of the identity of the vicious person behind the mask of the imaginary memoirist: ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... the digestive juices or checks them altogether. In a similar way, perhaps, we shall some day have explained to us the unquestioned fact that mothers who maintain a happy disposition nurse their babies efficiently, while those who are inclined to worry often experience real or imaginary ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... do use the center of the earth as the place from which to observe these celestial bodies and, in imagination, transfer our eye there. Then we will find projected on the celestial sphere not only the heavenly bodies but the imaginary points and circles of the earth's surface. Parallels of latitude, meridians of longitude, the equator, etc., will have the same imaginary position on the celestial sphere that they have on the earth. Your actual position ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... the circus band stopped short. Then came a fanfare of trumpets, and far down the line from behind the crimson curtains near to the bandstand, a dignified figure all in white, emerged and tripped along the grassy way, halting now and then to gaze fixedly at some imaginary object just above the heads of those on the upper row of seats, the very drollery of which ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Madame de la Mesangere.—This lady was the daughter of Madame de la Sabliere.—Translator. She was the lady termed La Marquise with whom Fontenelle sustained his imaginary "conversation" in the "Plurality of Worlds," a book which became very popular both in France and England. [44] Dido's faithless guest.—Aeneas, with whom Dido, according to Virgil and Ovid, was in love, but who loved not, and ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... rider. This is the establishment of a University." Alluding to certain published letters which revived old controversies, he begged his old friend not to allow his peace of mind to be shaken. "It would be strange indeed, if, at our years, we were to go back an age to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts, to disturb the repose of affections so sweetening to the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... those few who knew and survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that when he was in the pulpit, and saw a buirdly man come along the passage, he would instinctively draw himself up, measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists, and tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if he boxed as he preached—what "The Fancy" would ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... audience experiences at the same time the same emotions, and if these emotions are not at once transformed into acts, it is because the most unconscious spectator cannot ignore that he is the victim of illusions, and that he has laughed or wept over imaginary adventures. Sometimes, however, the sentiments suggested by the images are so strong that they tend, like habitual suggestions, to transform themselves into acts. The story has often been told of the manager of a popular ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... future with Joe always around a corner, watching her, obsessed her. She felt aggrieved, insulted. She even shed a tear or two, very surreptitiously; and then, being human and much upset, and the cat startling her by its sudden return and selfish advances, she shooed it off the veranda and set an imaginary dog after it. Whereupon, feeling somewhat better, she went in and locked the balcony ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with my finger, in the sand, of a mule in the water; while I imitated by pantomime the struggles of the drowning. I then pointed to myself; and, using my arms as in swimming, shook my head and my finger to signify that I could not swim. I worked an imaginary paddle, and made him understand that I wanted him to paddle me across the river. Still he remained unmoved; till finally I used one argument which interested him more than all the rest of my story. I untied a part of the shirt round one foot and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... her, Nature triumphantly asserted itself, and she who wept passionately from the bitter realisation of her own accumulated wrongs, was wildly applauded as the queen of actresses, who so successfully simulated imaginary woes. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Wycherley gently remonstrates with his young admirer for excessive adulation; he omitted from his own letters the phrase which had provoked the remonstrance; and, with more daring falsification, he manufactured an imaginary letter to Wycherley out of a letter really addressed to his friend Caryll. In this letter Pope had himself addressed to Caryll a remonstrance similar to that which he had received from Wycherley. When published as a letter to Wycherley, it gives the impression that Pope, at the age of seventeen, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Incidents, they are generally suited to our Notions of the Things and Persons described, and tempered with a due Measure of Probability. I must only make an Exception to the Limbo of Vanity, with his Episode of Sin and Death, and some of the imaginary Persons in his Chaos. These Passages are astonishing, but not credible; the Reader cannot so far impose upon himself as to see a Possibility in them; they are the Description of Dreams and Shadows, not of Things or Persons. I know that many Criticks look upon the Stories of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... some excitement in Russian society. A more appropriate, or at any rate explanatory title, would have been the Tempter. It is descriptive of the first manifestation of doubt and cynicism in his youthful mind, allegorically as the visits of a "demon." Russian society was moved to embody this imaginary demon in the person of a certain friend of Pushkin's. This must not be confounded with Lermontoff's poem bearing the same title upon which Rubinstein's new opera, "Il ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... He whom ambition, or hope of personal advantage, has led to disturb the peace of a well-ordered government, let him fall a victim to the laws; but surely youth, misled by the wild visions of chivalry and imaginary loyalty, may plead ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... feelings, showing that a change was coming over me, and exhibiting towards the imaginary persons before me the decided look of the inflexible commander, who was determined and ready to order them away to execution. Looking and acting as if the tender and forgiving feelings of the father had again got the ascendency, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... painting of these scenes from real life, he passed gradually to the painting of things purely imaginary—to those visible only to ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... wait upon the Governor. Afterwards people recalled, with a disposition to connect Seymour with this master-stroke in politics, that he had never declined by letter, and that the reasons given, like the illness that kept him from facing the convention, were largely imaginary. "That crowd saw how beautifully they were done," said Depew, then secretary of state at Albany, "while Dean Richmond's language was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... unwarily, to his own ruin, become the instrument of Warwick's vengeance, and had thrown himself entirely in the power of his most inveterate enemies; that the mortal injuries which the one royal family had suffered from the other were now past all forgiveness, and no imaginary union of interests could ever suffice to obliterate them; that, even if the leaders were willing to forget past offences, the animosity of their adherents would prevent a sincere coalition of parties, and would, in spite of all temporary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... follows:—Taking an imaginary line drawn from the Areonal to Mars as the base line of an isosceles triangle, we were moving along the left side of the triangle, and Mars was moving in a slightly curved line along the right side. Our paths were therefore converging, and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... herself in his place. Her imagination is more likely to be over-active than too sluggish. One of the most popular classes of the "Society for the Encouragement of Study at Home" is that devoted to imaginary travels in Europe. She is wonderfully adaptable, and makes herself at ease in an entirely strange milieu almost before the transition is complete. Both M. Blouet and M. Bourget notice this, and claim ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear of you is, that you sally out in visits among the neighbors, and sometimes make a migration from the blue ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... letter, you tell me, is confidential. I always keep the secrets of my friends when I can do it honestly, though I confess I do not like to be encumbered with them. In this instance I will be your confidant. But let me ask you, can a difference between Mr. ———— and me, either real or imaginary, be of any consequence to the world? I think not. Tories, you say, triumph. They may make sport of it; but indeed, my friend, it is too unimportant a matter for a sensible Whig to weep and break his heart ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... many of the absurd, perverse, unkind, unpleasant things which people do are not knavish at all—they are silly, selfish little diplomacies, guileless obedience to conventions, unreasonable deference to imaginary authority. People don't mean any harm by such tricks—they are the subterfuges of weakness: but when you come upon real cynical deliberate knavishness—that is different. There's nothing amusing ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... languish, and being dead there was an end of them; but the caged canaries continuing with us, cannot be dismissed from the mind with the same convenient ease. After all, I begin to think that my imaginary reforms, if carried out, would not quite content me. The "compunctious visitings" would continue still. I look out of the window and see a sparrow on a neighbouring tree, loudly chirruping. And as I listen, trying to find comfort by thinking ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... resolute cure. The magistrates interdicted the poets and players not only from using real names but from representing real subjects. This admirable refinement produced correspondent effects: comedy assumed a new character, and acquired a new name. The poets being obliged to bring imaginary subjects and fictitious names upon the stage, the safety of individuals from those butcher slanderers was secured, and that safety begat tranquillity—thus the theatre was gradually purified and enriched; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... 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 walked on toward the house. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... same materials, it must be expected they will supply from invention the want of intelligence; and that under the title of "The Life of Savage," they will publish only a novel, filled with romantick adventures, and imaginary amours. You may therefore, perhaps, gratify the lovers of truth and wit, by giving me leave to inform them in your Magazine, that my account will be published in 8vo. by Mr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... pictures of the novelist. Fair, young girls, how could you linger over the unreal when passing through such scenes of God's own work? How could you shut out that gorgeous sunset, turn from all the pure and heavenly feelings such scenes must awaken, to sympathize with imaginary beings ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... young college men are deterred from becoming Dry Agents by thinking of the comparative scantiness of the monetary rewards. This difficulty is only an imaginary one—for, luckily, as soon as a man's code of honor has been elevated to the extent that it permits him to take up a career of pussy-footing there is generally eliminated at the same time any objection ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... why she shouldn't be," says the professor calmly—is there a faint suspicion of hauteur in his tone? "As we are on the subject of myself, I may as well tell you that my brother is Sir Hastings Curzon, of whom"—he turns back as if to take up some imaginary article from the floor—"you ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... the 30th past, you and your Correspondent are very severe on a sort of Men, whom you call Male Coquets; but without any other Reason, in my Apprehension, than that of paying a shallow Compliment to the fair Sex, by accusing some Men of imaginary Faults, that the Women may not seem to be the more faulty Sex; though at the same time you suppose there are some so weak as to be imposed upon by fine Things and false Addresses. I cant persuade my self that your Design is to debar the Sexes the Benefit of each others Conversation ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... disturbed till the Confederates came in close proximity. Then was repeated the alarm and consternation of two years before, fears for the safety of the capital being magnified by the confusion and discord existing among the different generals in Washington and Baltimore; and the imaginary dangers vanished only with the appearance of General Wright, who, with the Sixth Corps and one division of the Nineteenth Corps, pushed out to attack Early as soon as he could get his arriving troops in hand, but under circumstances that precluded celerity ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 vins ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... accompanied by the powerful magnetism of his voice and presence, Darrell seemed to see the Oriental festival which he had depicted and to feel a soothing influence from the very simplicity and beauty of the imaginary scene. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... the most valuable document which we possess on the society of the eighteenth 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 ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... situation it is most probable beforehand that he would possess. If my premises are right and my deductions legitimate, it follows that there can be no poetic medium between the swains of Theocritus and those of an imaginary golden age. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... very true," consented the Chamberlain, laughing softly. "I take it not amiss myself if it's proffered in the right way—which is to say, for the qualities I know I have, and not for the imaginary ones. As I was saying, give me the simple heart and honesty; they're not very rife in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... some of the conditions that the progressive minds of the world are trying to solve and remedy. It is only a question of how much longer the majority of people will pay homage to an imaginary God for imaginary benefits in an imaginary life ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... structure is then hollowed out, forms a simple tube, detaches from its place of origin, and henceforth lies freely in the cardiac cavity. Presently the tube bends into the shape of an S, and turns spirally on an imaginary axis in such a way that the hind part comes to lie on the dorsal surface of the fore part. The united vitelline veins open into the posterior end. From the anterior end spring ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... excuse for their careful lubricities, the team could always conjure up an enticing special feature from an imaginary foreign correspondent, aimed direct at the family circle and warning against the "Moral Pitfalls of Paris," or the "Vampires of High Life in Vienna." The invariable rule was that all sex-stuff must have a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... being so, can't you see the rest? My life ended in a way when the dream of my life ended. I attach no importance to living for itself, and if anything final happened to me it wouldn't leave a blank anywhere. You're different. In sober honesty you oughtn't to run into any needless danger—real or imaginary. I'm thinking of Mary only ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... better known, perhaps, than any other in the world, and one with which almost every human being who can write is perfectly familiar. Of course it will be understood that the quantities given above are altogether imaginary. It is impossible to remember the exact figures after so many years, but they are inserted to show the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... not be allowed to "muffle up his throat," and keep his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis. He must give us more of his own "clear fluting." Let him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the entrance with laborious exaggeration of effect, dragging one foot after another, clutching at the palings of an imaginary fence, while pitching his voice at a feeble ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn't know how!" Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia's quick eye followed her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and started back ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... sensations become associated with verbal images in the mind, and finally the excitation of the verbal images results also in the revival of the original sensation. There is perhaps no one of us who has not seen wholly imaginary moving shadows or flashing lights in the dark. Such cases are not good illustrations of the point, possibly, but most of us can at will hear a connected succession of notes with which we have familiarized ourselves. ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... the world by the friends and the opponents of the respective parties. It is only necessary to state here, that Colonel Burr, on that occasion, was ranked among the supporters of Lee, and had himself real or imaginary cause of complaint against ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to a sense of its rights and dignity, to emancipate it from superstition, from its subjection to the clergy, and its fear of unseen powers, to withdraw it from the contemplation of the stars or an imaginary heaven after death, and fix it on the great and glorious work ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... 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 Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exclaimed Dot, clapping his hands. The snug picture had fascinated his childish fancy; Allan's fireside had obscured the lights of paradise. From this time this imaginary home of Allan's became his favorite castle in the air. When we were together he would often talk of it as though it were reality. We had planted the garden and furnished the parlor a dozen times over before the year was out; and so strong is a settled imagination ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 177, 552.] From that moment McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the Confederacy paralyzed everything, and the ponderous task of moving the Army of the Potomac and its enormous material by water to Washington went on. The lifeless and deliberate way in which it went on made it the 1st of September when ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... he was repaid for the inconvenience by the feeling of virtue derived from the delay. He was relieved that he did not have to cough any more, or to invent any more tales of his interviews with the imaginary lung-specialist. Sometimes he had guilty feelings because of all the lying he had had to do; but he told himself that it was for Henriette's sake. She loved him as much as he loved her. She would have suffered needless agonies had she known the truth; she would never have got over it—so it would ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... egg from a nest," he told the boys. Curving one hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hovered over it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to the boys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg would change to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after a while would fly away among the trees and fill the woods with sweet sounds. "If you destroy ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... classes which claimed an exclusive right to direct men's minds. As for the double nature of the book, we have the words of two of the men most concerned in its preparation. First there is an anecdote by Voltaire, certainly inaccurate, probably quite imaginary, but setting forth most clearly one cause of the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the huge lamp, rubbed an imaginary spot off the glistening glass, turned up the wick and touched it with the ready match. Then he came forth and eyed the westering sun. That monarch, riding through the longest day of the year, was reluctant to give up his power; but David was patient. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... authority, both among Catholics and Protestants. Even more inflexible was Remigius, criminal judge in Lorraine. On the title-page of his manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.(256) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and change of occupation is conducive to his happiness. Nothing is quite so restful to him as to do something with his hands; therefore, with his blocks he builds a house, fences it around with his splints, and strews the ground with imaginary trees and animals. He lives in this nursery play, and in it he ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... be a sudden draught," said Professor Biggleswade. "But as both window and door are shut, it could only be imaginary." ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... bottomless chasm. Every indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... peasants are rough, untutored, wild and constantly angry, hating everybody and everything without understanding why. They are suspicious and materialistic, having no sacred ideals. Russian intelligents live among imaginary ideals without realities. They have a strong capacity for criticising everything but they lack creative power. Also they have no will power, only the capacity for talking and talking. With the peasants, they cannot like anything or anybody. Their love and feelings are imaginary. Their thoughts and ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Bristol to be reposted to ——.' That was the end of it. I had paid ten francs for learning the agreeable fact that I had been duped,—for the satisfaction of knowing that for two years and a half I had been wasting my sympathy and even tears on a set of purely imaginary characters and the little intrigante ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the door he not only drew back a foot to let her pass. He drew his whole body back, bowed for all the world like any shop-walker letting out a customer, even thrust out a hand, as by remembered instinct and as if to pull open an imaginary swing-door for a departing customer of rank. In short, for a moment the man reverted to his past—to Farrell of the Tottenham Court Road. . . . Nor was this all. As she went by him he slewed about ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nights employs! Thus tunes her soul to tender nuptial joys! And when the cruel morning calls to bed, And on her pillow lays her aching head, With the dear images her dreams are crown'd, The die spins lovely, or the cards go round; Imaginary ruin charms her still; Her happy lord is cuckol'd by spadille: And if she's brought to bed, 'tis ten to one, He marks the forehead of her darling son. O scene of horror, and of wild despair, Why is the rich Atrides' splended heir Constrain'd to quit his ancient lordly seat, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... what should the tale be about? After cogitating at my lodging, with bread and water before me, I concluded that I would write an entirely fictitious narrative called "The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller." This Joseph Sell was an imaginary personage who had come ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an imaginary wrinkle ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... still pointed out where the future engineers made their first essays in modelling. The boys found the clay for their engines in the adjoining bog, and the hemlocks which grew about supplied them with imaginary steam-pipes. They even proceeded to make a miniature winding-machine in connexion with their engine, and the apparatus was erected upon a bench in front of the Thirlwalls' cottage. The corves were made out of hollowed corks; the ropes were supplied by twine; and a few bits ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... an imaginary character. There are a great many like him in the world, boys, and men, too, who endeavor to make amends for the absence of real merit by recounting just such impossible exploits. The result, however, ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... the positions in which they were observed by the early astronomers, because the revolving earth is rocking like a top, with the result that the pole does not always keep pointing at the same spot in the heavens. Each year the meeting-place of the imaginary lines of the ecliptic and equator is moving westward at the rate of about fifty seconds. In time—ages hence—the pole will circle round to the point it spun at when the constellations were named by the Babylonians. It is by calculating ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... condemnation. The recent Congressional elections have furnished a direct and trustworthy test of the advance thus far made in the practical establishment of the right of suffrage secured by the Constitution to the liberated race in the Southern States. All disturbing influences, real or imaginary, had been removed from all ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... than in our estimations of ourselves. We are all of us sharp-sighted enough to the faults of others but we are all blind by nature to our own faults. Our blindness to our own shortcomings is oftentimes little short of ludicrous. We have a strange power of exaggerating our imaginary virtues and losing sight utterly of our defects. The longer and more thoroughly one studies human nature, the more clearly will he see how hopeless is the task of convincing other men of sin. We cannot ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of accoutrements ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... external objects. The sole aim of our remarks has, however, been to prove that internal experience in general is possible only through external experience in general. Whether this or that supposed experience be purely imaginary must be discovered from its particular determinations and by comparing these with the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... find him—" He went through another pantomime with the fingers of his right hand, spreading them out and clenching them together like the closing of a fan, clutching out with them somewhat in the manner of the wings of a wind-mill sweeping imaginary objects toward itself with practised skill. Ben-Zayb responded with another pantomime, opening his eyes wide, arching his eyebrows and sucking in his breath eagerly as though nutritious ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... wife's "your," he laid a faint emphasis on the word "now," to imply that those women were always inventing some fresh imaginary woe for ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Let us take an imaginary trip through this region, starting on our wanderings from the Rhine, where it breaks through the vine-clad slate mountains of the Westerwald and the Eifel. A short distance above the mouth of the Ahr we leave its banks, turning to the west, and entering the mountains at the village of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... the Duncan Campbell, of whom memoirs were written by Defoe, a real or an imaginary person? If the former, where can one find any authentic account ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... a superior is it ours to question, in imaginary wisdom, as is the manner of the world, the propriety of the order. As an archangel, commissioned by the Supreme Intelligence to execute his decrees, and pour pestilence or famine upon a land devoted to destruction for its sins, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... as to the nationality. It reads as {...}, or 'Ashenel, and no doubt designates the owner. No. 5 is beautifully engraved on a chalcedony. It represents a stag attacked by a griffin, which has jumped suddenly on its back. The drawing is excellent, both of the real and of the imaginary animal, and leaves nothing to be desired. The inscription, which occupies the upper part of the field to the right, is in Cyprian characters, and shows that the gem was the signet of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... dismounted and watered at the stream, Mrs. Folsom's heart was gladdened by his confident and joyous bearing. Twice, thrice he had seen Red Cloud and all his braves, and there was nothing, said he, to worry about. "Ugly, of course they are; got some imaginary grievances and talk big about the warpath. Why, what show would those fellows have with their old squirrel rifles and gas-pipe Springfields against our new breech-loaders? They know it as well as we do. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... characteristic of my profession. It is not ours, my lord, to live in air-built castles, and to deal in imaginary hypotheses. On the contrary, we are continually talking of the weakness and the frailty of humanity. Does any man impeach one of our body of bribery and corruption? We confess that these practices may seem to run counter with the fine-spun systems of morality; ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... The imaginary progress of the circuit-rider was brought to a stop by the arrival of the last course of the luncheon. From a pretty glass dish uprose a wondrous structure. Within an encircling wall of delicate, candied tracery was heaped a little ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Collins and Walsingham, two characters in The Onyx Ring, are partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In his Life of Sterling, Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's Essays and Tales, edited by ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... followed by a further elaboration of Canada's vast resources, etc., etc.). Canada's future was unclouded by the political complications and entanglements of the older countries in Europe. For one hundred years they had been at peace with the Republic south of that imaginary line which delimited the boundaries, but which did not divide the hearts of these two peoples (great applause). For his part, while he rejoiced in the greatness of the British Empire he believed that Canada's first duty was to herself, to the developing ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... of quartz-stone, and the pain they occasion is always felt. Another sorcerer, however, can draw them out, and the pieces of stone pretended to be thus obtained are kept as great curiosities. Perhaps the clearest ideas of the imaginary powers of these sorcerers, and of the dread in which they are held, will be found from the following account, obtained from a native with the utmost difficulty, (for the subject is never willingly mentioned,) and reported ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... remarks on historical writing, from which it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so much of his time and powers in gathering up and putting into imaginary shape the scattered fragments of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... caterpillar tread is curved up in the arc of a huge circle at the front which gives the vehicle its wonderful tractive powers. This large curvature acts as a huge wheel with a tremendously long leverage equal to the radius of the circlet or the spokes of the imaginary wheel of the same diameter. Only that portion of the assumed wheel which would come in contact with the ground acts as the lever, and it is just this portion that is reproduced in the front end ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... for this lady's principal delight was, to assist the needy, and her only earthly or worldly caprice, that of restoring the Tower and its environs, and furnishing, to what she conceived had been its state, in the, perhaps, imaginary days of the exaltation ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the imaginary line where the days of the week are supposed to begin and end. It has long been a custom among sailors to hold the "Revels of Neptune" on the night after a vessel crosses either the International Date Line or the Equator, and the ship is then turned over to the ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... April 18, 1862, my brigade, then stationed at Roanoke Island, embarked upon the steamer Ocean Wave for an expedition up the Elizabeth River, the object of which was to destroy the locks of the Dismal Swamp canal in order to prevent several imaginary iron-clads from ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... I remember of imaginative metaphor, is Shakespeare's moonlight 'sleeping' on a bank; but half his poetry may be said to be made up of it, metaphor indeed being the common coin of discourse. Of imaginary creatures, none out of the pale of mythology and the East are equal, perhaps, in point of invention, to Shakespeare's Ariel and Caliban; though poetry may grudge to prose the discovery of a Winged Woman, especially ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... mixed with a dozen others; to all appearance they are similar cards. The subject, being awakened, is requested to look over the packet, and does so without knowing the reason of the request, but when he perceives the card on which the portrait was suggested, he at once recognizes the imaginary portrait. It is probable that some insignificant mark has, owing to his visual hyperacuity, fixed the image in ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... half-serious. The speaker, in her imaginary conversation, gives her own history and that of the man she thinks she might have loved. The story is on the "Maud Muller" motive, but with less of sentimentality. The setting suggests the life of art students in Paris, or in some Italian city. The poem is a plea for the freedom of the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... that the blamed raft was not long enough; that is, the upper part of my body being heavier, it took more door to support it, so that my feet were projecting beyond the lower edge, and every second or so the nibbling of some imaginary shark sent them flying up into the air in undignified gymnastics. The consoling part of it was that Miller was paying no notice. He still sat up, rigid, in his canoe, clutching the sides stiffly and looking neither to right nor left. From where ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... second Lord Lyttelton, who died in 1779, was the real substance of the shadow of Junius, hitherto sought in vain. That this Lord Lyttelton was fully competent to the task, I do not doubt; and that there are many points in his character which may well be reconciled with the knowledge we possess of the imaginary Junius, I also admit—but this is all. The author of the review has wholly failed, in my opinion, to prove his case and the remark he makes on Mr. Britton's theory (as to Col. Barre) may equally well apply to his own, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... his ends, whatever they may be at the moment. John Dunn, on the other hand, is plotting to succeed Cetywayo, and so on ad infinitum. Such is the state of affairs with which our unfortunate Resident has to contend. Invested with large imaginary powers, he has in reality nothing but his personal influence and his own wits to help him. He has no white man to assist him, but living alone in a broken-down tent and some mud huts built by his son's hands (for the Government have never kept their promise to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... You have heard the story of the lives of the great artists. They have been shown to you in their weakness and in their strength. The times and manners amid which they lived have been painted for you in more or less imaginary colors. I propose something ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various |
