"Chimera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a human exhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivers had clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on the pass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion of real life by a character out of a comic opera. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... a great sorrow overtook me before I had completed this agreeable task. It is true, I met on all sides with indications of sympathetic interest in the completion of my great lyric work, although most of my acquaintances regarded the whole thing as a chimera, or possibly a bold caprice. The only one who entered into it with any heartiness or real enthusiasm was Herwegh, with whom I frequently discussed it, and to whom I generally read aloud such portions as were completed. Sulzer was much annoyed at the remodelling of Siegfrieds ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... sham demurrer, and, after one or two continuances, settled by the parties."[396] The truth of history demands that the facts be given to the world. It will not be pleasant for the people of Massachusetts to have this delusion torn from their affectionate embrace. It was but a mere historical chimera, that ought not to have survived a single day; and, strangely enough, it has existed until the present time among many intelligent people. This case has been cited for the last hundred years as having ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... for man, not man for morality," said Sidney. "That chimera of meaningless virtue which the Hebrew has brought into the world is the last monster left to slay. The Hebrew view of life is too one-sided. The Bible is a literature without a laugh in it. Even Raphael thinks the great Radical of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... are, they cannot but know that, protected by almost impenetrable woods, and formidable in numbers, they might set at defiance a handful of whites. Does the apprehension of being combated by the Indians damp their enterprize? Such a chimera could never affright them, since the Indians roving in detached parties, would be the first to flee; nay, they would probably court their union, there having been instances of negroes finding an asylum among them, but after a lapse of time, unworthy to enjoy freedom, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Sing in my name; but the Sphinx is winged, and I am not. Secondo, the Sphinx is a woman as well as a winged lion, but the Rajput Sinhas never had anything effeminate in their characters. Besides, the Sphinx is the daughter of Chimera, or Echidna, who were neither beautiful nor good; and so you might have chosen a more flattering and a less ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator breaks out in a perfect ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... shows, it was mainly a search after fossil spoils at Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were their special prey, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... endeavoring, Miss Stevenson, to wean your thoughts away from so unhappy a subject. Why permit yourself to be worried? The thing will happen, or it will not happen. If it does happen, you will be powerless to prevent. If it does not, you will have been anxious over a chimera of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... like that which she beholds has before been presented to her in a dream or a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seem to you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination.' In this frame of mind you sit down to read the memoir of a mystical enthusiast. Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? A dream! And a dream no less because your eyes were open and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was assured by Canning in reply ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... philosopher's stone had been more than once discovered; but that the ancient and wise men who had hit upon it would never, by word or writing, communicate it to men, because of their unworthiness and incredulity.[29] But the life of Geber, though spent in the pursuit of this vain chimera, was not altogether useless. He stumbled upon discoveries which he did not seek; and science is indebted to him for the first mention of corrosive sublimate, the red oxide of mercury, nitric acid, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... of the Mass Law Canonical Hours Canonisation Carthusians Castigation Casuistry Catherine, St. Celia, St. Ceremonies one instituted by Christ Charity Charles V. Chastity vows of Children, training of Chimera Christ, our example our greatest blessing our Priest righteousness of Christ, the Rock Christenheit Christian, the name Church membership does not make lord of all Christopher, St. Church authority of corruption ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Flamel paved the way for Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prs, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... determined to attempt carrying his design into execution; but knowing that such an undertaking was fit only for some sovereign prince or state, he made the proposal, in the first place, to the republic of Genoa, where it was looked upon as a chimera. He then communicated his design to John II. of Portugal, who gave him a favourable hearing, but was so much occupied with the discoveries along the western coast of Africa, that he was unwilling to engage in another enterprize of so much importance. King John, however, referred the matter to three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... respective offices, cannot attend thereto. Misia, my woman, and Filomena's Licisca shall still abide in the kitchen and there diligently prepare such viands as shall be appointed them of Parmeno. Lauretta's Chimera and Fiammetta's Stratilia it is our pleasure shall occupy themselves with the ordinance of the ladies' chambers and the cleanliness of the places where we shall abide; and we will and command all ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... searching the caverns of the piratical Saracens that honeycombed the clifts, or yet, again, taking a hand at the nets! Sometimes he grew very lonely; for without a woman, either of one's blood or of one's choice, life holds little. Ah, that woman in the mask, that chimera of a night, that fancy ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... justified in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;—but I have no idea of being pleased with the chimera." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the chimera of social equality, from the belief that it should logically follow political equality; resulting in extravagance, misapplication of natural capacities, a notion that physical labor is dishonorable, or that the state should compel all to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it upon a vagarya chimera; and that is as much as to say he is throwing it into a quicksand. He will ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... she went up to Richmond and he slowly forced himself to renounce her. He began to see his old dream as it was—an emotional chimera; a mental madness. As the year grew on he watched his long hope wither root and branch, until, with the resurrection of the spring, it lay still because there was no life left that might put forth. And when his hope was dead he told himself that his unhappiness died with ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... many harmless enjoyments, which I am afraid you are putting away from you in your prime, for the sake of a mere chimera. But—after all, what does it matter! One must have a hobby! Some men like horse-racing, others book-collecting,—others pictures,—and so forth—you like the religious question! Well, no doubt it affords you a great many opportunities of studying character. I ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... beforehand, young man, that you could not believe me; this seems a dream, a chimera to you!... and to me, too!... and yet the grades and the honors I obtained were no illusions; those soldiers I led to the cannon's mouth, those redoubts stormed, those flags won, those victories with which all France has rung ... all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... functions out of diabolic inspiration. Van Dale, on the other hand, with all his Vandalish followers, treats this hypothesis, both as regards the power itself of looking into the future and as regards the supposed source of that power, in the light of a contemptible chimera. They discuss it scarcely with gravity: indeed, the very frontispiece to Van Dale's book already announces the repulsive spirit of scoffing and mockery in which he means to dismiss it; men are there represented in the act of juggling and coarsely exulting over their juggleries ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to the signification of the name whether there are many objects, or only one, to which it happens to be applicable, or whether there be any at all. God is as much a general term to the Christian or Jew as to the Polytheist; and dragon, hippogriff, chimera, mermaid, ghost, are as much so as if real objects existed, corresponding to those names. Every name the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is potentially a name of an indefinite number of objects; but ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... now has the world-bedlam roared: call it the world-chimera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... readily in the middle of the night, and proceeded at once to the wharf or station of our sky-sailer. Ah, how shall I describe my sensations on first beholding this most wonderful achievement of the age, and thus satisfying myself that it was an actual existence, and not the mere chimera of a diseased brain? There she sat like a majestic swan, floating, as it were, in the pure empyrean, and crowned with a diadem of stars. The Moon, Arcturus, and the Pleiades might well all make obeisance to her, and the Milky Way invite her to extend her flight and plough its snowy fields. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the badge of political serfdom, and deliverance from even the suggestion of thraldom—all of which his enfranchisement contemplates; or that these would assure, in greater degree, his national weal, would be to indulge a wild chimera, which could but superinduce the purest visionary picture of his condition under the operation of the gift. Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... that variety of drunkenness which is not only an unnatural thirst, but also a mania to forget. There on the Santa Lucia tract, Billy Gray, sure of a living, might tilt at happiness and success with that independent writing which is the chimera of all newspaper men until the end of their days; and Eleanor might help him ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... written. A supervisor, by marking the exercises in the desk copy, can ensure the use of the key he desires. If it is objected that the tones then sung will not represent the real pitch of the written notes, why that is at once admitted. What then? The idea of teaching absolute pitch is a chimera. Pianos are not alike in pitch, neither are tuning-forks. Classes will often for one cause or another end a half tone or a tone lower than they began even if the pitch as written is given. It may not be desirable to sing in one key music that is read in another, ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... lantern slide the Idalia had crossed the illuminated circle of the consul's little world, and was gone. Save for the tiny cloud of smoke that was left hanging over the brim of the sea, she might have been an immaterial thing, a chimera of his idle brain. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... emerged to the surface. In a word, Dostoievsky is a profounder psychologist than Tolstoy; his faith was firmer; his attacks of epilepsy gave him glimpses of the underworld of the soul, terrifying visions of his subconscious self, of his subliminal personality. And he had the courage of his chimera. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... take part in the contests, and others to watch them. The first of the games was a race between galleys, and four ships had been entered to take part in it. The first was the Pristis, or Shark, of which Mnestheus was the captain. The Chimera, a vessel of immense size, was commanded by Gyas. The other vessels were the Centaur and the Scylla,—the first commanded by Sergestus, and the second by Cloanthus. Some way out in the sea, opposite ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... be reared to preserve for posterity the memory of their achievements if those who come after them are to be only their successors in annihilation and extinction. If in this world only we have hope and consciousness duty must be a chimera; our pleasures and our passions should be the guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... said Capraja, with a smile, and tapping lightly on the tenor's head. "Ride off on the divine Ariosto's hippogriff; hunt down your radiant chimera, musical ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Gugerat followed by the surrender of the Sikhs to the British under Lord Gough and the disbandment of the Sikh army. And, lo, the Khalsa was as a tale that is told, its clang and clash of warlike achievements a thing that could be no more, its Holy War transformed by failure into a foolish chimera, and the only thing that lived was a memory lingering in quiet souls of the truths that ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... in which he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less can it contain ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... is composed of young fellows who have been deceived, or have deceived themselves. They mistake a fancy for a vocation, and impelled by a homicidal fatality, they die, some the victims of a perpetual fit of pride, others worshippers of a chimera. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... citizens, did the kind hand of overruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues, and dangers, to independence and peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes us on this day, in consideration of the great things which have been done for us, to render the tribute of unfeigned thanks to that God who ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... abyss, expecting her Destroyer. Then, even at that last and awful hour, the Divine Deliverer appears, the Son of Hermes, Genius of Interpretation, Champion of the Spiritual Life. As Hercules slew the Hydra, the Lion, and many another noxious thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity. This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... bright intellect that matches your own, you lay yourself open to be the mournful sharer of her griefs, doubts, and regrets, and her depression reacts upon you; her sorrow makes your melancholy return. Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot: and why might I not come that way from the boat, as well as I was going ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... heart. Carmen saw it, too. And she knew—and the world must some day know—that but one tie has ever been designed adequate to bridge this yawning canon of human hatred. That tie is love. Aye, well she knew that the world laughed, and called it chimera; called it idealism, and emotional weakness. And well she knew that the most pitiable weakness the world has ever seen was the class privilege which nailed the bearer of the creed of love upon the cross, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... right and wrong? I believe if Eurystheus was to set me to work again he would find me a worse task than any he imposed; he would make me read through a great library; and I would serve it as I did the hydra, I would burn as I went on, that one chimera might not rise from another to plague mankind. I should have valued myself more on clearing the library than on ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Railway. They swiftly course over almost the identical pathway once followed by the overland stage-coach, the pony express, and the slowly plodding ox caravans in the days when the possibility of a transcontinental trail of steel was regarded as a chimera. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... means of warding off the results which they draw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword, religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident that if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; for there would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, to supply an object for it. We must postulate the ultimate unity of all beings with each other and with the mind that knows ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... what now seems such an amazing fascination over the least revolutionary of European nations. Unfitted for scientific work and full of ardour, Mr. Carlyle found his mission in rushing with all his might to the annihilation of this terrible poet, who, like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had fully as much daring as Byron; his writing at its best, if without the many-eyed minuteness and sustained pulsing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... some would fain postpone this era, Reluctant as all placemen to resign Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera, For they have passed Life's equinoctial line: But then they have their claret and Madeira, To irrigate the dryness of decline; And County meetings, and the Parliament, And debt—and what not, for their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the Alps. That also is a mode, we need not say of intoxication, but of insobriety. Thus also a man walks in a strong sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial meditations. And whether he be really so clever or so strong as he supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common and incident to all persons, yet they are the more remarkable, frequent, furious and violent in melancholy men. To speak in a word, there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous, extravagant, impossible, incredible, so monstrous a chimera, so prodigious and strange, [2536]such as painters and poets durst not attempt, which they will not really fear, feign, suspect and imagine unto themselves: and that which [2537]Lod. Vives said in a jest of a silly country fellow, that killed ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... long time, but at last I let it slip, and committed myself fortunately, to but one person, and that my daughter; and, even so, I hardly think she understood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque and infernal chimera that ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... into a dark and narrow street, where no one dared to venture after them; so thoroughly did the mere chimera of Quasimodo gnashing ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... great many People think that Masters reserve for dangerous Occasions, or to sell it at a dear Rate. This wonderful Thing, is called the secret Thrust. I don't know whether this Error proceeded from those who have not learned, or from the Chimera of some self-conceited Masters, who have sold to ignorant Scholars, some Thrusts as infallible, of their own Contrivance, as ridiculous and dangerous as the Simplicity of the Scholar and the Knavery ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... my peace, I should recover my health—I should no longer be haunted, driven as I am now. But, Uniacke, do you know what it is that I fear most of all, what it is that dogs me, night and day; though I strive to put it from me, to tell myself that it is a chimera?" ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... bank of national credit, supported by public funds and secured by Parliament, be a chimera or impossible thing? And if not, what would follow from the supposal of such ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... Tindaro, have charge of the chambers of all three. My maid, Misia, and Filomena's maid, Licisca, will keep in the kitchen, and with all due diligence prepare such dishes as Parmeno shall bid them. Lauretta's maid, Chimera, and Fiammetta's maid, Stratilia we make answerable for the ladies' chambers, and wherever we may take up our quarters, let them see that all is spotless. And now we enjoin you, one and all alike, as ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... from the shrewd man of business. And though he himself was increasingly confident that the treasure had been hidden out of spite, and not really made away with, and that some day it would be found, he knew that this opinion would be regarded by the world at large as a chimera of ardent youth, and that Martin Holt for one would bid him lay aside all such vain and idle dreams, and strive by steady perseverance in business to win for himself a modest independence. Only to the young, the ardent, the lovers of imaginative romance, had the notion of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might, be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... your fancy must have presented to you an unreal appearance. Nothing more likely, when the mind is on the stretch after something supernatural, than that the imagination should supply the place with a chimera, while the over-excited feelings render it difficult to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... only to make them the laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... fantastick Charmer, A thing just like a Woman Friend; It walkt and lookt with wondrous Majesty, Had Eyes that kill'd, and Graces deck'd her Face; But when she talk'd, mad as the Winds she grew, Chimera in the form of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... let me die of hunger and despair for the chimera of nobility, which has no reality to-day unless it has the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... hopes of fortune on the entire demoralisation of the prince committed to his care. Inspired by the genius of vice, he divined and encouraged the vices of others, and above all of his master. He taught him to believe that virtue is but a mask worn by hypocrisy, a chimera on which no one can rely in the business of life; that religion is a political invention, of use only to the lower people; that all men are cheats and deceivers, and pretended rectitude a mere cover for intended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Choice of Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... its nostrils, and striking its wings with its dragon's tail, the Chimera with its green eyes, winds round, and barks. The curls of its head, thrown back on one side, intermingle with the hair on its haunches; and on the other side they hang over the sand, and move to and fro with the swaying of its ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... melancholy rapture. "And I am to leave this angel," thought he, "to lose the brightest and noblest jewel of my life, and drive myself out of paradise. And wherefore all this? Perhaps to chase a phantom that will never become a reality, to follow a chimera which may be only a meteor that dances before me and dissolves into mist when I think to reach it? No, no, the world is not worth so much that one should sell himself and his soul's happiness for its splendor and its greatness. Natalie herself shall decide. Loves ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... queer question. . . ." Mari d'elle is offended. "Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a woman, and I am a man anyway, a business-like person. And what a scheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound thing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand, one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you would understand if I were to tell you about it. Only you . . . don't chatter about it . . . not a word . . ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... only the boundless dome of heaven, around him only endless mountain ranges! Dazed by the strangeness, the isolation of the scene, he began for an instant to doubt his sanity; was this a reality or a chimera of his own imagination? But only for an instant, for with his first movement a large collie had bounded to his side and now began licking his hands and face with the most joyful demonstrations. There was something soothing and reassuring in the companionship even of the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... what I tried to do might be so easily frustrated in that cauldron—why should I risk personal happiness—the most precious and the rarest thing in life, for what may be a chimera—wasted years and a wasted life. Why are we made as we are, if to coax that hidden spark into a steady flame is not our highest destiny? It certainly is our manifest right. . . . Dreams of doing great things in this world are nine-tenths personal vanity. I believe that when we ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... desired, although blindly aiming at her object by other means. The French wars, however traditionally popular, were fertile only in glory. The rivalry of the two countries was a splendid folly, wasting the best blood of both countries for an impracticable chimera; and though there was impatience of ecclesiastical misrule, though there was jealousy of foreign interference, and general irritation with the state of the church, yet the mass of the people hated protestantism even worse than they hated the pope, the clergy, and the consistory courts. They believed—and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... more complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it. It will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in Cromwell's life. It is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny misses fire. All of Cromwell is at stake in the comedy being ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... all the skill he could command in order to state his case convincingly. Hilda could not have put the idea that possessed him to a more cruel test than this. It began to dawn even upon himself that he was in pursuit of a chimera, and the necessity for the enormous self-sacrifice, upon which he insisted, was breaking down in the face of such a determined opposition on the part of those who were more interested than himself. Doggedly and persistently he continued, nevertheless, fighting his love ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... capital to give their suffrages, or compel others to give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those divisions always existed, and ever must exist ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Pericles, with figures traced red and black, representing Orestes and Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon. In these cases also are some Athenian glass vases, and opaque glass vessels from Melos; terra-cotta bas-reliefs, representing Bellerophon destroying the Chimera; Perseus destroying the gorgon Medusa, and other classical subjects; and upon the third shelf, amid unguent boxes, terra-cotta lamps, and a terra-cotta doll, is a curious vase containing bones, with a silver Athenian coin, attached to the jar by careful relatives, to pay for the deceased's ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... savings bank on her own account, and thirty thousand on Fanny's, and thus the pair of them would be amply provided for for life. And what was to be given in exchange for this nice sum of money? Why, nothing at all, so to speak—a mere chimera, which is no good to anybody while they have it, and only becomes profitable when it is parted with—a ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... kills her. Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is made of sterner stuff than her mother. And, with her brother, she toils to pay her father's debts and to keep the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies, still absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an endeavour to formulate the marvellous revelation which his disordered brain persuades him he has ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... having the same influence as the impressions of the memory, or the conclusions of the judgment, is received on the same footing, and operates with equal force on the passions. A present impression and a customary transition are now no longer necessary to enliven our ideas. Every chimera of the brain is as vivid and intense as any of those inferences, which we formerly dignifyed with the name of conclusions concerning matters of fact, and sometimes as the present impressions ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the different Cabinets understand M. de Chateaubriand, or sufficiently appreciate his concurrence or hostility. He was, I admit, a troublesome ally; for he aspired to all things, and complained of all. On a level with the rarest spirits and most exalted imaginations, it was his chimera to fancy himself equal to the greatest masters in the art of government, and to feel bitterly hurt if he were not looked upon as the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton. Prudent men did not lend themselves to this complaisant idolatry; but ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have fixed a long pole deep in the sand, And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the black devil away. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... classifications, however, renders apparent the relative simplicity of the task of classifying natural objects differentiated by fixed natural laws as compared with the task of classifying the products of the creative and imaginative faculties as applied to the useful arts. The chimera and other animal monsters occur only as figments of the mind. Zoological classification does not have to classify combinations of birds, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, nor does it deal in the way of classification with the parts ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... will be starved. If they fight, they will be bayoneted and shot. If they surrender, every living man of them shall be hung. There is no help for them. Lincoln's army, that has been coming so long, is a chimera; it will never come. The power is all in our hands; and not even God can help them. That sounds blasphemous, I know; but it is true. They are doomed. But I can save them—and ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of his Ministers, he took the final step of his official career. Lucien and Carnot begged him for some time to abdicate only in favour of his son;[529] and he did so, but with the bitter remark: "My son! What a chimera! No, it is for the Bourbons that I abdicate! They at least are not ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... written with infinite pains and taken to the Greek professor in Beloit College that there might be no mistakes, even after the Rockford College teacher and the most scholarly clergyman in town had both passed upon it. The oration upon Bellerophon and his successful fight with the Chimera contended that social evils could only be overcome by him who soared above them into idealism, as Bellerophon mounted upon the winged horse Pegasus, had ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... sogno scorge Drago, o cinta di fiamme alta Chimera, Sebben sospetta, o in parte anco s'accorge Che simulacro sia non forma vera, Pur desia di fuggir, tanto gli porge Spavento la sembianza orrida e fera: Tale il timido amante appien non crede Ai falsi inganni: e ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... his soul; impure resting-places offered to the bastard characters of a century by the unworthy complacency of philosophers; on the other side, a pretended system of perfectibility, not less suspicious, which, to realize the chimera of a general perfection common to the whole universe, would not be embarrassed for a choice of means. This is what would meet his attention. So he carried there, where the most pressing danger lay and reform was the most ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... congress at Tours was held in September of the same year. The anarchists were out in their full strength, prepared to make reprisals on the socialists. It was after declaring: "The conquest of political power is a chimera,"[4] that Guerard launched forth in his fiery argument for the revolutionary general strike: "The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the employers, protected by the government. The general ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... it was of but little consequence whether I succeeded or not. I have some recollection that I both whistled and sang as I worked. The idea that I was in any danger of losing my life quite forsook me, and all the hardships through which I had been passing appeared to have been only imaginary—a chimera of my brain, or, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... which lead to the conclusion, much fewer than in the sciences which treat of quantity and number. In reality, there is scarcely a proposition in Euclid so simple, as not to consist of more parts, than are to be found in any moral reasoning which runs not into chimera and conceit. Where we trace the principles of the human mind through a few steps, we may be very well satisfied with our progress; considering how soon nature throws a bar to all our enquiries concerning causes, and reduces ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Wherefore deprive me of an object which I represent to myself as a compassionate, tender father; who reproves me in this world, but into whose arms I throw myself with confidence, when the whole of nature appears to have abandoned me? Supposing it no more than a chimera, the unhappy have occasion for it, to guarantee them against frightful despair: is it not cruel, is it not inhuman, to be desirous of plunging them into a vacuum, by seeking to undeceive them? Is it not an useful ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... sentence should be carried into execution. Now that she, that my Agnes, being the frail wreck that she had become, could have stood one week of this sentence practically and literally enforced—was a mere chimera. A few hours probably of the experiment would have settled that question by dismissing her to the death she longed for; but because the suffering would be short, was I to stand by and to witness the degradation—the pollution—attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... it anything but a sentiment that claims the right, on a woman's part, to dispose of her own body as she chooses, as one may well believe, when we consider that half the women in the world go almost naked? Is it anything but a social chimera, as Diderot supposed, reminding us that this sentiment always gives way before sickness ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... view, Henry's well-known project of expelling the House of Austria from all its possessions, and dividing the spoil among the European powers, deserves the title of a chimera, which men have so liberally bestowed upon it; but did it merit that appellation in the second? It had never entered into the head of that excellent monarch, in the choice of those who must be the instruments of his designs, to reckon on the sufficiency of such motives as animated himself ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... split on the same rock on which we have seen them shipwrecked? Are we willing to give our enemies such a triumph as to fulfil their prophecy and convince the world that self-government is impracticable—a mere chimera—and that man is fit only to be a slave to his fellow man? Are we willing to teach the nations of the earth to despair, and resign themselves at once to the power that crushes them? Shall we forfeit all the bright honors that ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... secrets and mechanical inventions till then discovered, illumination flashing after darkness successively before their smitten eyes, the floors seeming to heave and the walls to crack, thunders bellowing through the mighty dome; now yawning revealed beneath them the ghostly chimera of Tartarus, with all the shrieking and horrid scenery ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the glow of ambition in his fine, mobile face she stifled the altruistic yearnings, which she had come to feel made her husband uncomfortable, and joined him as he gazed into the crystal ball of the future and saw its glistening chimera. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 415. "There is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against common sense, and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle was right in opposing it. But such a theory is only a chimera which Aristotle created for the purpose of combating it."—"The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 'mixed.' Louis XIV. could not cut off the head of any one whom he happened to dislike. An oriental despot is strictly bound by the religious prejudices of his subjects. If 'sovereignty' means such power it is a chimera in practice, or only realised approximately when, as in the case of negro slavery, a class is actually ruled by force in the hands of a really external power. And yet the attack upon 'mixed governments,' which Bentham had expounded in the Fragment, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... covered the house, the apparition disappeared, and it seemed to the Radiant Apollo that with it disappeared the stars, that the moon became black, and the whole world was covered with the darkness of Chimera. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... tempted. Let all such allay their fears. Jesus was tempted even on the pinnacle of the temple, and we will never be above our Lord, and may well expect temptation until we pass from this world-stage to the other land. No responsible Christian student teaches any such chimera as a life without ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... said to the effect that all this is sheer poetry, a beautiful chimera without any resemblance to reality. Indeed, it has just been remarked here, that the three centuries under consideration, the middle ages, were, in point of fact, one of the most brutal, most ruffianly epochs in history, one of those wherein we encounter most crimes and violence; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tomb what horrible Chimera came With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... ruling the world, was longing for a sacred King, for a Prince of Peace, who should come from the East and bring to the people some higher and truer happiness than that deceiving chimera of political bigness. Well, Christ should be this universal, sacred King, this Prince of Peace, and Messenger of a durable happiness. It is not true that Christ had His prophets among the people of Israel only. His prophets existed ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... here, preening, testing itself like an athlete—a chimera, amorphous yet weirdly symmetric—under the darkening sky, in the green of the hollow, the armored hosts frozen ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... rooted to the spot. What I saw staggered belief. Was it only a chimera of my unbalanced ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... des Italiens—" said M. Joyeuse dreamily, and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone: "closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible Imaginaire had installed his friend in a splendid apartment ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... attitude, with one paw on the haunch of the sphinx, and the other on the tail, and its face turned towards the spectator. The face of the sphinx is painted red. The figure bears some resemblance to the Egyptian type of that chimera in its straight black hair depending behind, and its oblique eyes; but in other respects it diverges widely. On Egyptian monuments the sphinx never appears standing as in this fresco, but crouching in the attitude of reposeful observation. Its form also ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... come off with applause. Here therefore they fall a telling some sad lamentable story out of their legend, or some other fabulous history, and this they descant upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically; and so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse, which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever Horace could describe in his De ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... enough to do without any such expedient, even for the amusement of those persons who look more to the laugh to be got out of a book than to what is admirable in it. Rabelais especially is incomprehensible. His book is an enigma,—one may say inexplicable. It is a Chimera; it is like the face of a lovely woman with the feet and the tail of a reptile, or of some creature still more loathsome. It is a monstrous confusion of fine and rare morality with filthy corruption. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... marks the race of the Dennises. With a half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider themselves as original ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... is explained why men imagined for many centuries that the sky was a solid superficies, and that the earth was a superficial plane, bounded by the horizon; that the sun moved round the earth; that the existence of the antipodes was a chimera; that the dew fell in the same way as the rain from the upper regions of the atmosphere; and other popular errors which science has corrected, but which were in a certain way justified by the undeniable testimony of the senses. How difficult then ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... be a representation of your Missionaries, not at all of the Chinese Church. Therefore, we assert that such a union would not be real, not even apparent, only nominal. In striving after it, we are pursuing a chimera, destroying a substance for the sake ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... criticised and scourged the religions of chimera, of ignorance, and hypocrisy, in "Lo Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante" and in "L'Asino Cillenico," the author, in "Gli Eroici Furori," lays down the basis for the religion of thought and of science. In place of the so-called Christian perfections ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... mystery, With head of woman, soaring, bird-like wings And serpent's tail on lion's trunk, were things Puzzling in history; And men invented For it an origin which represented Chimera and a monster ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... 1831.—Yesterday an idea, a chimera, entered my head, of gathering during the progress of my life, notes and materials for a work embracing three divisions, Morals, Politics, Education, and I commit this notice to paper now, that many years hence, if it please God, I may find it either a pleasant or at least an instructive ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... more profound transformation than those dreamed of by the people who in the eighteenth century had invented social Utopias. In our own times Mazzini pursued what the wiseacres of his time called a mad chimera; but it can no longer be denied that, without Mazzini, Italy would never have become a great power, and that he did more for Italian unity than Cavour and all the politicians of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks along their margin,—the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,—the Lepidotus, with its large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,—the Microdon, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... all of his works unveil a murder, suicide, or madness. Moreover, the author, who shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... spent three years together." Men who, without boasting, have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly: the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things, then no chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... several principles in the same government, so as at the same time to maintain freedom, and really to oppose them to one another. The form of government which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me to be a mere chimera. Accurately speaking there is no such thing as a mixed government (with the meaning usually given to that word), because in all communities some one principle of action may be discovered which preponderates over the others. England in the last century, which has been more especially cited as ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... he mused, communing with the thought which had come to him. "It would be something real, and not a chimera." ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... abandoned sinner, we see in the result, in the reformation of morals which appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which seemed to be irretrievably lost, something more than could be produced by a mere chimera of the slumbering fancy, something more than could arise from the capricious images of a terrified imagination; but once presented, we behold in all these things, and in their tremendous and mysterious results, the operation of the hand of God. And while Reason rejects ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Home, forces of immense power. Encourage them all. Insist upon them in your public men. Permanency of home is necessary to patriotism. A migratory race will have little love of country. State pride is a mere theory and chimera, where men remove from State to State with indifference, like the Arabs, who camp here to-day ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... should have chosen the little town where he now stood for even a temporary residence. It was not a perversity, but rather a fascination. His whole life had been a flight and a pursuit—a vain endeavour to escape from the evil spirit that pursued him—and a chase of a chimera. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... all this, and then say if any thing could be more untoward for the hopes of the banished man, or furnish his adversaries with stronger arguments against the restoration of his fortune? But pshaw! this must be a chimera! If true, I should ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... always hitherto thought you a prince of great wisdom, and prudence; but what you say convinces me I was mistaken. Tell me, I beseech you, where was your wit or discretion, when you formed to yourself such a chimera as you have proposed to me? Could you conceive a thought of aspiring in marriage to a princess, the daughter of so powerful a monarch as myself? You ought to have considered the great distance between us, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... view in which we regard the dogma of the soul's immortality, we are compelled to consider it as a chimera invented by men who have realized their wishes, or who have not been able to justify Providence from the transitory injustices of this world. This dogma was received with avidity, because it flattered the desires, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... chimera of a moon-struck skull! We shall never solve or comprehend it. I shall not return to my former residence. What does it matter to me? I am afraid of encountering that man again, and I shall ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "Annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably have been ready to join ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... recognizing me, telling her footman to brush me aside should I attempt to speak to her. Yet I would suffer this humiliation to see that glorious face once more, to hear again that voice, though it were keyed to scorn. I am a fool, Jack. What! have I gone all these years free-heart to love a chimera in the end? Verily I am an ass. She is a Princess; she has riches; she has a principality; she is the ward of a King. What has she to do with such as I? Three months in the year she dwells in her petty palace; the other months find her here and there; ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... "Virtue, a mere chimera amongst the fair, Is now quite vanquished into air; Formerly it was thought a thing of worth, But now who thinks of such poor stuff. It's only put on to deceive, That us poor mortals on them may crave; Fall down and swear ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... weary world, beings almost happy. Provided that they were accessible to pity, charitable—and these happy people probably were that—who could distress them? what could injure them? Ah, beautiful and consoling chimera to believe that for such as these life is pleasant; that they retain always—or almost always—that gay, happy light in the eye, that half-blossomed smile upon the lips; that they have blotted out, as ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... granite. Then a scream rang back to the man and girl before the cabin. Followed instantly a crash, an extinguishment of the light, darkness, silence, and finally a thin quivering flame at the base of the ledge, delicate and blue, like a dancing chimera. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... impossible. Those which have failed seem to us only fanciful; those which have been more fortunate appear sublime. When in search of that which really existed, he has sometimes found it; when he devoted himself to the pursuit of a chimera, he could not but fail, but even then he unfolded the same qualities, and that obstinate perseverance that must triumph over all difficulties but those which are insurmountable." Berry, in his "Short History of Astronomy," says "as one ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... such was my agility, not to get me any prayse, but rather for feare: at that time I remembered with my selfe, that the valiant Horse Pegasus did fly in the ayre more to avoyd the danger of dreadful Chimera, then for any thing else. The shepheards which drave us before them were well armed like warriours: one had a speare, another had a sheepehooke, some had darts, some clubbes, some gathered up great stones, some held up their sharp Javelings, and some ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... I use the word prosperity in its mere worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet—of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... closely, nor too long. The secret of the universe is now pursued through observation, as formerly it was through fasting and prayer. Nothing is sacred nowadays because everything receives respect. If absolute beauty is now smiled at as a chimera, it is because beauty is perceived everywhere. Whatever is may not be right—the maxim has too much of an ex cathedra sound—but whatever is is interesting. Our attitude is at once humbler and more curious. The sense of the immensity, the immeasurableness of things, is more intimate and profound. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... it would have been possible to indulge the chimera of the beau ideal of civilization. In this state of things there would have been some chance of establishing in every country a unity of codes, of principles, of opinions, of sentiments, views and interests. Then perhaps, by the help of the universal diffusion ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the Chian's vessel. I recognize the vine tree and the image of the Bromian god; and surely that other one is the Chimera under Uliades, the Samian. They come hither, the Ionian with them, to harangue against obedience ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
