"Delusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sad tribulation at finding his expectations delusive, endeavoured for some time, it is said, to dispose of his necklace among the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... bowels of the earth, and every shovelful he took out had to be passed up from step to step, so that four or five other men had been employed before it reached the top. Damp patches were sometimes found quite early but the hopes they raised were usually delusive and water was only struck at a considerable depth, and then not in any abundance. Fortunately wells sunk in other parts of the wadi proved more successful, but it was a little trying to read in Mr. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... that our heads had crowned with laurels green, By priestly staff whose verdure had decayed, Robbed me of Hope's sweet solaces, and e'en The last delusive comfort caused to fade; Yet thus was nourished in my soul serene An inward trust, by which my faith was stayed; And if to this trust I prove ever true The withered staff shall ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... and, indeed, these remarks are pushed purposely too far in order to draw attention to the fact that the actors are prone to consider their own "reading" of a part without reference to the audience, and even, in some cases, to the author. In other words, they are misled by the delusive term "create," so often applied to acting as well as to millinery. The word is inappropriate to the rapidly evanescent. "Original interpreters" is the highest phrase ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... yet this strange and sudden flight, From gloomy cares to gay delight, This fickleness so light and vain, In life's delusive transient dream, Where men nor things are what they seem, Is all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... all—but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too emphatically insisted that without a personal God religion simply ceases to be. It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part, and that of a good many people, that "the religious emotions" will survive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men will remain "deeply religious" even when it is recognised that the "Great Enigma," the "eternal and inscrutable energy," the "ultimate ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... early green pea, the pea of my taste, Must be gently assisted, not forced in hot haste, Lest the flavour it yield prove delusive and flat, In no way suggesting the young Marrowfat! But if it do this, oh what more could I wish, Than to see a young duckling form part of the dish! So with such a banquet spread out before me, Can you ask why I worship ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the country of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... American minister of their intended sacrifice of their "identical interest with the United States," they allowed this treachery to be sprung upon us. The sixty-mile limit was established by the tribunal, and it has proved utterly delusive. The result of this decision of the tribunal was that this great industry of ours was undermined, if not utterly destroyed; and that the United States were also mulcted to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... her, and had straightway fallen desperately in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and delusive. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to spirits, as it gave them strength without intoxication. During this trying occasion, the men behaved with the utmost intrepidity and obedience, not a man flinching from his post. We continually cheered them at the pumps with the delusive hopes of its ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... doubts (arising partly from my own neglect of the means of grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed, cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction that prayers were unavailing and delusive) prevented my embracing the opportunity, as a religious one. Life, in itself, had almost become burdensome to me. All my outward relations were against me; I must stay here and starve (I was already hungry) or go home to Covey's, and have my flesh ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... had no share in the property left by his father, and the reason be made known. He hoped that she might also learn that death had prevented his father's plan for benefiting him. He hoped it; for in that case she might feel compassion. Yet in the same moment he felt that this was a delusive solace. Pity for a man because he had lost money does not incline to warmer emotion. The hope was sheer feebleness of spirit. He spurned it; he desired no ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... is a convenient, though delusive, because highly figurative, expression for the psychic unity of a social group. The unity is due entirely to the more or less complete possession by the individual members of the group, of common ideas, ideals, methods of thought, emotions, volitions, customs, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and sandwich lunches, had no attraction for me. I had always had a turn for mechanics, but was never allowed to adopt engineering as a profession, my father's one idea being that I should follow in his footsteps—a delusive hope entertained by many ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!—and sometimes wonder if the memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when sated with pleasures ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period of about four years together—when the loudest and most accepted voices in England exulted over the now ludicrously delusive proposition that the United States were a burst bubble, and slavery the irremovable corner-stone of an empire. It may be a lesson to nations against the indulgence in rancor, the abnegation of the national conscience, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... reason, O son of Kunti, the universe passeth through its rounds (of birth and destruction).[222] Not knowing my supreme nature of the great lord of all entities, ignorant people of vain hopes, vain acts, vain knowledge, confounded minds, wedded to the delusive nature of Asuras and Rakshasas, disregard me (as one) that hath assumed a human body. But high-souled ones, O son of Pritha, possessed of divine nature, and with minds directed to nothing else, worship me, knowing (me) to be the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fallacious, apocryphal, unreal, ungrounded, groundless; unsubstantial &c. 4; heretical &c. (heterodox) 984; unsound; illogical &c. 477. inexact, unexact inaccurate[obs3], incorrect; indefinite &c. (uncertain) 475. illusive, illusory; delusive; mock, ideal &c (imaginary) 515; spurious &c. 545; deceitful &c. 544; perverted. controvertible, unsustainable; unauthenticated, untrustworthy. exploded, refuted; discarded. in error, under an error &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... When insidious and delusive hope would draw us on and beguile us in any sinful way, whispering that God will some day send special gifts and messengers of grace to inspire us with new life, this is his plain answer: "If they hear not Moses and the ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... a perfect method,—it blacked too many other things besides shoes, and provided an undesirable plaything for baby,—but it was a step forward. There was a refinement, a je ne sais quoi, an 'easier way,' about this sponge in a bottle; and, perhaps more than all, a delusive promise that the stuff would dry shiny without friction, which ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... the tradesman against those men so well as his being thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will; to make ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the moment of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... kindled, that he himself tells us no one can guess the extremes of ecstasy and despair through which he alternately passed. These spiritual experiences were perhaps fed by the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, whose works came into his possession, and furnished a most delusive and dangerous guide for the young enthusiast's fancy. But, dream and suffer as he might, nothing was allowed to quench the ardor ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... all the same to me; por —— equally. igualar equal, consider equal. iluminar illumine, enlighten, illuminate, light. ilusin f. illusion, fancy, self-deception, mockery. ilusorio, -a illusory, delusive, deceptive. ilustre adj. illustrious, noble, celebrated, distinguished. imagen f. image, statue, likeness, picture, conception, fancy, appearance. imaginacin f. imagination, fancy, mind. imaginar imagine, fancy, believe, conceive. impaciente ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... fight against the Americans, who were successively met by ambuscade, surprise, or otherwise, as at Chicago, at Michilimackinack, Brownstown, River Raisin, Maumee, Fort Harrison, and other places. They had been assembled in large bodies, by the delusive prophesyings of Elksatawa, and by the not less delusive promises of the agents of the British Indian Department, on the lines, that the Americans were to be driven back to the line of the Illinois, if not of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... myself like God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... deep as was at present her despondency, the removal of all possibility of hope, by her knowledge of Delvile's marriage, must awaken her before long from the delusive visions of her romantic fancy; Mr Arnott himself was in a situation exactly similar, and the knowledge of the same event would probably be productive of the same effect. When Mrs Harrel, therefore, began to repine at the solitude to which she was returning, Cecilia proposed to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... me, ah me! I wander telling o'er Past years, and yet in all I cannot view One day that might be rightly reckoned mine. Delusive hopes and vain desires entwine My soul that loves, weeps, burns, and sighs full sore. Too well I know and prove that this is true, Since of man's passions none to me are new. Far from the truth my steps have gone astray, In ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest feeling ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock sun—a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals by four globes—seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... capital and limited education; with an inherited mental inertia that is being dispelled and can only be eradicated by contact with superior environment, that there awaits him peace, plenty, and equality, is an ignis fatuus the most delusive. Peace is the exhaustion of strife, and is only secure in her triumphs in being in instant readiness for war; equality a myth, and plenty the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... me with abhorrence; and yet life is totally devoid of happiness. Happiness! O delusive phantom of humanity, how art thou attainable? Through Fame? Fame is mine, and I am wretched. Over the realms of civilisation my name is noised abroad; in the populous cities the glory of my art resounds; when my barge glided among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... honourable entreatment by Chremes and his kin as of the wholehearted friendship that is between thee and Gisippus, it behoves thee to have his betrothed in even such pious regard as if she were thy sister? Whither art thou suffering beguiling love, delusive hope, to hurry thee? Open the eyes of thine understanding, and see thyself, wretched man, as thou art; obey the dictates of thy reason, refrain thy carnal appetite, control thine inordinate desires, and give thy thoughts ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that after reaching Natchez my difficulties would have been over; but I very soon discovered that this was a delusive hope. I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours. Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi, more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed whether I should be ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... he infers that those which do not come from his own God must be radically vicious. Already, as we have seen, in virtue of his leading principle, he has denied to all natural affections the right to be truly virtuous. Unless they involve a conscious reference to God, they are but delusive resemblances of the reality. He admits that the natural man can in various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is possible that benevolence may become pleasing ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... expecting to see some of those wolfish dogs which they had brought to the place prowling about the court-yard. Sometimes I prayed, and felt tranquillised, and fancied that I was perhaps to have a short interval of sleep. But the serenity was delusive, and all the time my nerves were strung hysterically. Sometimes I felt quite wild, and on the point of screaming. At length that dreadful night passed away. Morning came, and a less morbid, though hardly a less terrible state of mind. Madame paid me an early visit. A thought struck me. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixt, and comprized in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and cooperating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni;[23] if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the matter prompt attention. Do not delay to adopt curative measures under the delusive idea that the difficulty will disappear of itself. Thousands have procrastinated in this way until their constitutions have been so hopelessly undermined as to make treatment of little value. The intrinsic tendency of this disease is to continue to increase. It progresses only in one direction. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... them "to maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive gypsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors," prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 640 To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. So glister'd the dire Snake and into fraud Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree Of prohibition, root of all our woe; Which when ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the readmission of the Pennsylvania Synod, Sprecher declared: "I fear there will be divisions, no matter what course is taken. As to the hope of gaining over the Symbolic Lutherans, I consider it altogether delusive. If they ever join the General Synod, it will be with the hope of controlling it eventually into their own views and for their own purposes." (353.) Thus, realizing the giant strides which Western confessionalism had already made, and the steady growth of the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... affairs his influence was small and almost entirely indirect. He himself confessed his unfitness for dealing with questions of finance. The commercial prosperity that was produced by his war policy was in a great part delusive, as prosperity so produced must always be, though it had permanent effects of the highest moment in the rise of such centres of industry as Glasgow. This, however, was a remote result which he could have neither intended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... affairs into the hands of his Secretary of State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some sentimental demonstration against European interference; a policy which, at that critical ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... The ship was a home to me. I had my allowance with the other palantines; slept in the hold with them at night; and enjoyed, along with many of them, the pleasure of building castles in the air—anticipations of the wealth and comforts we were to enjoy in the land of promise. It was, indeed, by delusive accounts of America, that most of them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... silent avenues with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, after half ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... quiet. It was with some difficulty I stood by and witnessed the assault, but I well know my life would be in jeopardy if I attempted to interfere. I, however, screwed up my courage to stay, in the hope that some sense of shame might induce the fellow to hold his hand. This was, however, a delusive hope, for he continued to lay on the whip until ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... be admitted that the belief, delusive or warranted, is efficacious in itself. Whether generated in the brain by the nerve centres, or whatever may be its origin, a force coincident with it is diffused throughout the nervous system, which converts the subject of it, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... no small jealousies in either of them—"willow widows"— though Mysie's name stuck. There was nothing but comfort to Magdalen in the certainty of the ultimate "coming home" of one who had finished a delusive dream of her younger days, and been yearned after with a heartache now quenched; and Angela, who had never been the least in love with Henry Merrifield, could quite afford her interest in the scanty records of his younger days, and fill up all ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... people into believing that the present campaign, which is but a single episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an independent event which began in August 1914 and may end this year or the next. These same leaders are busily inculcating the delusive notion that the diplomatic instrument which will one day close hostilities will be a treaty of peace. And they are seemingly prepared to negotiate ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is we, ourselves, who are the victims of delusive hope in reference to the destiny of our noble Union. Possibly our disinterested friends across the water, calmly looking on from a distance, may be better able to understand the tendency of events, and to foresee the issue of the mighty civil contest which rages around us. They are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... comfortable bedroom, with its delicately-toned wall-paper and flowery cretonnes, had become altogether hateful in his eyes now. Instead of feeling grateful (as he surely ought to have been) for the one night of perfect security and comfort he had passed there, he only loathed it for the delusive peace it had ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... engaged in political and practical affairs were taking bribes and being corrupted by the hope of money; while the mass of private citizens either showed no foresight, or else were caught by the bait of ease and leisure from day to day; and all alike had fallen victims to some such delusive fancy, as that the danger would come upon every one but themselves, and that through the perils of others they would be able to secure their own position as they pleased. {46} And so, I suppose, it has come to pass that the masses have atoned for their great and ill-timed indifference ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Then invite the loveliest damsels Rome can boast of, to come hither To the feasts and to the dances. Bring musicians, and in fine Let it be proclaimed that any Woman of illustrious blood Who from his delusive passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who cures ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stealing, Drew me from harrowing thought's bewild'ring maze, Touching the ling'ring chords of childlike feeling, With sweet harmonies of happier days: So curse I all, around the soul that windeth Its magic and alluring spell, And with delusive flattery bindeth Its victim to this dreary cell! Curs'd before all things be the high opinion, Wherewith the spirit girds itself around! Of shows delusive curs'd be the dominion, Within whose mocking sphere our sense is bound! Accurs'd ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... months ago Ellenora would have resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps when Nora reached the street that terrible night, she thought of her children—perhaps Helmer was watching her ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... eternal, spiritual verities of human nature, and record, not only the history of the human race, its mutations and transmutations, but of the individual man and the suffering and delusive joys of his material life. Aye, more! It is the record of all his past existence and a type of his ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others. An annual ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the only thing, indeed, it has to offer ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... stronger than armaments. It came from the furnace of the Revolution, tempered to the necessities of the times. The thoughts of the men of that day were as practical as their sentiments were patriotic. They wasted no portion of their energies upon idle and delusive speculations, but with a firm and fearless step advanced beyond the governmental landmarks which had hitherto circumscribed the limits of human freedom and planted their standard, where it has stood against dangers which have threatened from abroad, and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... excitement, energy, achievement, and fortune to Key; and yet this place and this man were as stupidly unchanged as when he had left them. A momentary fancy that this was the reality, that he himself was only awakening from some delusive dream, came over him. But Collinson's next ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... thoroughly fatigued, and worn out with the horrors which the approaching fate of the poor wretch, who lay under a sentence which he had iniquitously brought upon him, had suggested, sleep promised him relief; but this promise was, alas! delusive. This certain friend to the tired body is often the severest enemy to the oppressed mind. So at least it proved to Wild, adding visionary to real horrors, and tormenting his imagination with phantoms too dreadful to be described. At length, starting from these visions, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of lenient counsel in the cabinets of princes, and has taught kings to tremble at what will hereafter be called the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones. This alone is an irreparable calamity to you and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and in distinctness of form as it descended from aloft, until it became an enormous cigar-shaped structure of such gigantic dimensions that it seemed doubtful whether there would be space enough in the glade to accommodate it. This appearance, however, was to a certain extent delusive, due no doubt to the semi-obscurity of the starlit night, for when at length it came to earth, lightly as a snowflake, it was seen that there was abundance ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fill again after what the archbishop had said. I set my teeth to endure; I was full of bewilderment, surprise, and anger. The archbishop had played me terribly false; the Arabian Nights were no less delusive. Krak was as unmoved and business-like as usual. I was determined not to cry—not to-night. I was not very hard tried; almost directly my mother said, "That will do." There was a pause; no doubt Krak's face expressed a surprised protest. "Yes, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... but his tears did not bring him comfort, for they were tears of anguish and despair. Ten times a day he would proceed to her chamber, or follow her to the garden where she loved to walk, always in the delusive hope that he might catch some spark of returning reason from those calm-looking but meaningless eyes, after which he would weep like a child. With respect to his daughter, every thing was done for her that wealth and human means could accomplish, but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... relation to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even their calamities—fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence— interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... dire delusive wind, Which promis'd fair to bring thee to her breast, Thy youthful honours to the wave consign'd, And bore thy spirit to the realms ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... deadly cold! And yet I bear to drag this cumbrous chain, That weighs my soul to earth—to bliss or pain Alike insensible:—her anchor lost, The frail dismantled bark, all tempest-toss'd, Surveys no port of comfort—closed the scene Of life's delusive ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Cheered by this delusive fancy, when my turn came I made a thrilling tale of the night's adventures, and, having worked my audience up to a flattering state of excitement, paused ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... came later to this country from Africa, through the agency of an Englishman named Wray, to whom is charged the effects of the delusive experiments of trying to make crystallized sugar from its juice, which have been going on in this country for twenty years. But two varieties of sorghum now remain, known as the Chinese and African types. Of all the other sugar plants, none except the maple tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Tigress is a New Birth; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look, oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly delusive, supposititious: we call them, in the language of metaphor, regulated modelled shapes; some of which have bodies and life still in them; most of which, according to a German Writer, have only emptiness, 'glass-eyes glaring on you with a ghastly affectation of life, and in their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... applied to this heaving volcanic system of forces by codifications, like those of Justinian or Napoleon, had not lasted for a year before all had broke loose from its moorings, and was again going ahead with redoubling impetus. Equally delusive are the prospects held out that the new system of cheap provincial justice will be a change unconditionally for the better. Already the complaints against it are such in bitterness and extent as to show that in very many cases it must be regarded as a failure; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... two poems in extenso, to obviate any suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot afford space—we wish we could—for an equally minute examination of the rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show—what we solemnly affirm—that every page teems with ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... said, however, in favour of the opening which does not present an aspect of delusive calm, but shows the atmosphere already charged with electricity. Compare, for instance, the opening of The Case of Rebellious Susan, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, with that of a French play of very similar theme—Dumas's Francillon. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... opinion, but they had done all that. Lincoln's administration might have done apparently little, and after it the pendulum would probably have swung back. But the much-talked-of swing of the pendulum is the most delusive of political phenomena; America was never going to return to where it was before this first explicit national assertion of the wrongfulness of slavery had been made. It would have been hard to forecast how ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to make the rupture ostensibly Flora's, but he had none the less remorselessly and basely backed out. He had cared for her lovely face, cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been her poor little delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damn it, with the monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in. He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be expected of him; he had made—Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter—a "handsome" ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Rut. Delusive dream of fancied happiness! And has my fatal fondness then destroy'd thee? Oh, have I lured thee to the deadly snare Thy cruel foes have laid? I dreaded Cecil's malice, and my heart, Longing to see thee, with impatience listen'd To its own alarms; and prudence ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... be so easily made to forget—that this very agitator himself has declared, that slavery is "a wrong so transcendent" that no truce is to be allowed to it so long as it occupies a single foot of ground in the United States. Is it not, then, a delusive prospect of peace which is offered to us in exchange ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... eternal day, Where now thou shin'st amongst thy fellow saints, Array'd in purer light, look down on me! In pleasing visions and delusive dreams, O! sooth my soul, and teach ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... firmament, nor from the fiends of the abyss. I have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that mighty leading angel," who "drew after him the third part of heaven's sons," scratching in my cupboard. I have never been enticed to sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horse man, I have been careful not to venture myself on ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of political, of religious ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... thrill'd her—and, at last, Her lip a smile of bitter sarcasm cast, As if she scorned herself, that she could be A moment lulled by that sweet sophistry; For in that little minute memory's sting Gave word and look, sigh, gesture—every thing, To bid these dear delusive phantoms fly, And fix her ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no chance of stirring. The world is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... place melted away and left him shelterless, and he found himself standing in the open and out in the midst of the fields, without a vestige of shade. Most of all he marvelled at the swift flight of the maidens, the shifting of the place, and the delusive semblance of the building. For he knew not that all that had passed around him had been a mere mockery and an unreal trick of the arts ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... with Brandenburg alone, and wedded to his first love, not a king's daughter, might have done tolerably well there; better than Wenzel, with the empire and Bohemia, did. But delusive Fortune threw her golden apple at Sigismund too; and he, in the wide high world, had to play strange pranks. His father-in-law died in Hungary, Sigismund's first wife his only child. Father-in-law bequeathed Hungary to Sigismund, who plunged into a strange ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... usual, been flowered, cushioned and lamp-shaded into a delusive semblance of stability; and she had really felt, for the last few weeks, that the life she was leading there must be going to last—it seemed so perfect an answer ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that it was impossible to endure the horrors of total abstinence, and, now that he was no longer under the observation of his family, he again tried to satisfy his conscience by promising himself that he would gradually reduce the amount used until he could discontinue it utterly—delusive hope, that has mocked thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... whether 'democracy once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and such-like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real,' and had answered, 'Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... who found himself turned out of office by the Commissioners, lost no opportunity of insinuating that American promises were insincere, and any expectations built upon them likely to prove delusive. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... land, and cheap negroes gave the several families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... miles from the town, and were connected by a system of patrolling, which rendered communication from within or without almost impossible. A few messengers (natives) occasionally came into the town, but these were mostly charged with the delivery of delusive messages invented for special purposes by the Boers. There was an ever-present difficulty—that of keeping the natives in check. Many examples of Boer cruelty to these poor blacks are recorded, and they naturally shuddered at the prospect of once more being delivered ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... in which a man might almost read the histories of their owners. Methought I could perceive the lurking, unsubdued spirit of the battered rake, in the leer of his roving eye, while he performed, in the teeth of his flesh, blood, and principles, the delusive vow to which the shrinking spirit, at the approach of death, on the bed of sickness, clung, as to its salvation; for it was evident that superstition had only exacted from libertinism what fear and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... writer thus expresses himself in conclusion. "His declaration was not the prompting of a sickly conscience striving to procure delusive comfort from 'the late and feeble' resolves of a death-bed, as Hume unworthily asserts; it was the composed and deliberate communication of a dying captain and sovereign, disclosing to those around him, under a strong sentiment of devotion, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... numbers of unhappy reconcentrados, despite the reiterated professions made in that regard and the amount appropriated by Spain to that end. The proffered expedient of zones of cultivation proved illusory. Indeed no less practical nor more delusive promises of succor could well have been tendered to the exhausted and destitute people, stripped of all that made life and home dear and herded in a strange region among unsympathetic strangers hardly less ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... mode of life of the Mound-Builders as Village Indians; and it should be expressed in the works themselves. If a sensible use for these embankments can be found, its acceptance will relieve us from the delusive inferences which are certain to be drawn from them so long as they are allowed to remain in the ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... consciousness of Himself as it is attested to us in the Gospels. But when we have taken this reality for all that it is worth, the idealism just described is shaken to the foundation. What seemed to us so profound a truth—the essential unity of the human and the divine—may come to seem a formal and delusive platitude; in what we once regarded as the formula of the perfect religion—the divinity of man and the humanity of God—we may find quite as truly the formula of the first, not to say the final, sin. To see Christ not in the light of this speculative theorem, but in the ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... and every tempest that shake its branches will aid it in gradually assuming its original position, till hardly a trace of that power which attempted to guide its growth can be perceived. There may be some who would neglect that moral influence on the young which is necessary, trusting in the delusive expectation, that the law will keep them in the right path; that the example of punishment, the terror of the gallows, the prison, or the penitentiary, will prevent the commission of crime. But let us not wait for the saving influence of these things; for they are but checks ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... period, replete with curious illustrations of the genius and manners of the Middle Ages. Such works, from the truthfulness of their spirit, furnish a more lively picture of the tunes than even the graphic, though delusive, pencil of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is! Nothing lasts. Then we came here—I never saw him again; he never came. He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never saw him again—and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he remembered you. I shall love him to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... incapable of producing any specific effects on the human constitution. However, it is of the greatest consequence to point it out here, lest the want of discrimination should occasion an idea of security from the infection of the smallpox, which might prove delusive.] ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... too, were even less reputable fellows, who sought to entrap rural youths into "betting on cards," and making "rare bargains" in delusive watches. Altogether it was an animated scene, for young eyes. Addison, Halse and Theodora were occupied with their "booth." Ellen and Wealthy were with Gram in the Fair building, where the fruit and dairy products had to be watched ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... splendid ribbon bound. A serving-maid was she, and fell in love With one who left her, went to sea and died. Her fancy followed him through foaming waves To distant shores, and she would sit and weep At what a sailor suffers; fancy too, Delusive most where warmest wishes are, Would oft anticipate his glad return, And dream of transports she was not to know. She heard the doleful tidings of his death, And never smiled again. And now she roams The dreary waste; there spends the livelong ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... first seem obvious, are really delusive unless further data be supplied. Thus A co-exists with B, B with C; .'. A with C—is not sound unless B is an instantaneous event; for where B is perdurable, A may co-exist with it at one ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... poesy, and Bunyan's prose: The learned war both wage with equal force, And the fifth morn concluded the divorce. Phoebe, though she possesses nothing less, Is proud of being rich in happiness: Laboriously pursues delusive toys, Content with pains, since they're reputed joys. With what well-acted transport will she say, "Well, sure, we were so happy yesterday! And then that charming party for to-morrow!" Though, well she knows, 'twill languish into sorrow: But she dares never boast the present ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young |
