"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back upon my aspiring thoughts," he said, "and think myself more happy than if I had attained what I so ambitiously thirsted for. I can now behold the court with an impartial eye, and see plainly that it is made up of fraud and titles and flattery, and many other such empty, imaginary, painted pleasures." And having turned his back on all gayety, he began the life which earned for him the name of "saintly George Herbert." He taught his people, preached to them, and prayed with them so lovingly that they loved him in return. "Some of the meaner sort ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... said, instantly. Straightening the corners of her mouth and squaring her shoulders, she fixed her eyes into a stare of severity, and stroked horizontally an imaginary mustache, keeping the play up till her ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... said he, with the tone of one who concludes an argument in which he has had only imaginary opponents, and in which, therefore, he has come off triumphant—"in fact, it is a good thing altogether ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... showed the method of measuring heights by triangles and imaginary lines, using canes of different lengths and cords instead of mathematical instruments. My result was thirty feet to the lowest branches. This experiment filled the boys with wonder and desire to become acquainted with this useful, exact science, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... something up his sleeve for a rainy day, and an excellent policy Scott thought it. 'Tools, metal material, leather, straps, and dozens of items are administered with the same spirit of jealous guardianship by Day, Lashly, Oates and Meares, while our main storekeeper Bowers even affects to bemoan imaginary shortages. Such parsimony is the best guarantee that we are prepared to face any ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... directly under the bud, leaving an inch and a half of wood above. Or this last form is modified by making a long sloping cut from the bud to the upper end, thereby exposing the maximum amount of cambium. Advantages are claimed for each form, but these are mostly imaginary, and the cutting may be made to suit the fancy of the propagator if a few essentials ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... seen that her whole body was constrained by the working of her mind. At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... how to play such tricks upon his less experienced companions, deceives them by his intonations, while he is well aware that no enemy is approaching the house; but he does it scientifically, by the inflections of his voice, as a man speaking to other men would do in announcing the arrival of an imaginary enemy. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... appearance a confused result of belladonna, bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... am, and always shall be, proud of having been connected with Punch. I wrote both prose and verse—more of the former than the latter—and my contributions ranged in extent from a column down to a single line. My subjects were generally 'topical,' sometimes 'imaginary,' and the verse included a good many parodies." Mr. Sketchley, it should be observed, is one of the few members of the inside Staff—at least, within the last forty years—who have ever resigned their appointments, Richard Doyle, Mr. Henry Silver, and Mr. Harry ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... at work on a drawing. Edgar's teaching had improved her so much that, under a sore longing to obtain some good studies, she had ventured to place in the shop one of her best imaginary groups, and to her surprise and delight, it had brought her in fifteen shillings, and an ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... immediacy or between the present immediacy and anticipation. The present is a wavering breadth of boundary between the two extremes. Thus our own sense-awareness with its extended present has some of the character of the sense-awareness of the imaginary being whose mind was free from passage and who contemplated all nature as an immediate fact. Our own present has its antecedents and its consequents, and for the imaginary being all nature has its antecedent and its consequent ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... himself was, as it were, obliged to bow; the glee-singers murmured among themselves (their eyes rolling over their glasses towards one another as they sucked brandy-and water), and that mischievous little wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore (who had just come in), began to mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after the manner of the stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the most ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this ribaldry by sternly looking towards Nadab, and at the same time called upon the gents to give their orders, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on deck, when he struck the keynote to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharge of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as—much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead—Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings! not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the square-root becomes imaginary. From this we conclude that in the theory of relativity the velocity c plays the part of a limiting velocity, which can neither be reached nor exceeded by any ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... This classification dates from the time of Posidonius. It is the successio and inclinatio of Seneca; but the ancients had already judiciously remarked, that the nature of these shocks is too variable to permit any subjection to these imaginary laws.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Bligh describes the mutiny as "a close-planned act of villainy," and attributes the conspiracy not to his own harshness, or to disloyalty provoked by "real or imaginary grievances," but to the contrast of life on board ship, "in ever climbing up the climbing wave," with the unearned luxuries of Tahiti, "the allurements of dissipation ... the female connections," which the sailors had left behind. Besides his own apology, there are the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... hardly an exaggeration to say that honest work is never thrown away. If we do not find the imaginary treasure, at any ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... a grievous state of things, that in the nineteenth century there are but few shoemakers who know how to make a shoe! The shoe is made not to fit a real foot, but a fashionable imaginary one! The poor unfortunate toes are in consequence screwed up as in ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... a sheet of foolscap, and began to type-write with alarming speed—click, click, click; while Elsie, rising to the occasion, set to work to transcribe imaginary shorthand as if her ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... system there. Never had Carol bent his head before King or Communes, the Church or Finance. Intrusted in the days of yore with the keeping of a French March, the title of marquis in their family meant no shadow of imaginary office; it had been a post of honor with duties to discharge. Their fief had always been their domain. Provincial nobles were they in every sense of the word; they might boast of an unbroken line of great descent; they had ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... definition of the function located behind Self-esteem. Equally imaginary is the doctrine of the Edinburgh phrenologists, who call it Concentrativeness. The observations of Gall led him to regard it as a portion of the organ of Pride, and as giving to animals a love of lofty locations. Gall was nearer right than Spurzheim or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Lizzie carrying on an imaginary conversation with Elviry Marshall, after she'd cried over me for half an hour. And, Daddy, nobody was surprised but me! ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... numberless heroes of the French romances. She had been in love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Djalma while she was yet at school, and had settled the divorce question, and the rights of woman, with Indiana, before she had left off pinafores. The impetuous little lady played at love with these imaginary worthies as a little while before she had played at maternity with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits! It is curious to watch them with those playthings. To-day the blue-eyed one is the favourite, and the black-eyed one is pushed behind the drawers. To-morrow blue-eyes may take ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there would have puzzled herself to explain. It was not to worship, not to repent of her heinous sin: she neither repented nor desired to repent. But it seemed pleasant to play at repentance and put on imaginary sackcloth. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the Christmas parties, where all the young fellows will propose to me, but I will toss my head and refuse them every one." At this moment she tossed her head in unison with her thoughts, when down fell the milk pail to the ground, and all her imaginary ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... "protected" the Turk from the imaginary danger of Fowler, for about a week, at twenty-five dollars a day. Then one evening he happened to go out and met Fowler, "and," said he, "the moment I saw him I knowed he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at my feet," which certainly did seem to offer presumptive ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... it was, that my prose began to run upon stilts, or that I mistook a momentary enthusiasm for a poetical inspiration. In fact, every thought and conception is so far raised above the common train of ideas, that the error is excusable, especially too when the imaginary poet ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... calibre, rounded gracefully into the channel, from a wood-yard. This boat—the Flatfoot, No. 3—seemed, by her straining and puffing, to throw the gauntlet to the Chalmetta; a challenge, real or imaginary, which the latter made haste to accept,—or, rather, her sleepy firemen did, for, without leave or license, they crammed her furnaces to their utmost capacity. The effects of this movement were soon perceptible in every part of the boat, for she creaked and groaned like a ship in a gale. But ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... ice-polished rocks that the glaciers once dropped along Maine valleys, when his quiet voice summoned me back to India and the convalescent camp beyond whose outer gate I stood. Two flags on lances formed the gate and the boundary line was mostly imaginary; but one did not trespass, because at about the point where vision no longer pierced the mist there stood a sentry, and the grounding of a butt on gravel and now and then a cough announced ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... at other times a bandit engaged in feats of plunder. All possible scenes in history or imagination that she understood did the child try to enact in the wilderness. But she went there now with no intention of posing in any imaginary part. She went there ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Draw the floor plan of an imaginary house or apartment to be built in your locality for a family of four, and list the furnishings ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... artist must twist into realistic semblance, clear to the eye, the imaginary product of the author. He must not add to it nor take away from it—even for the sake of beauty in his picture—one iota of the facts given him. His imagination, grasping all the ideas of the author, must assemble them and find a place for each one, good, ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... his dining at the White House, of which so many imaginary versions have been given, was this: having received so many expressions of approval from all sections of the country on his appointment of ex-Governor Jones to a Federal judgeship in Alabama, which appointment was made, as described in a previous chapter, on the recommendation of Booker ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... Notwithstanding the praise which had been lavished upon him during his travels, he remained unspoilt, and, apart from his music, as child-like as ever. When not engaged in actual composition, his mind, in the course of his long journeys, had been occupied with the creation of an imaginary kingdom, peopled entirely by children, to which he had given the title of 'Ruecken.' Of this kingdom he supposed himself to be king, and he was never tired of planning and arranging its buildings, drawing maps of the towns, framing ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... native Chaldeans ought to fill, will now learn a lesson of modesty to which they have hitherto been strangers. Far better for our beloved Chaldea if the superstitious brood had been left in their own country. May the gods grant that every Hebrew office-holder may so cling to his imaginary god as to walk straight from office into sure destruction. My motto is 'Chaldeans for Chaldea!' Personally, I have no hostility toward these young men. Nay! But, O my country! my country! it is for thee my heart bleeds! Sons! ye shall do well to be on your ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... satraps ordered rock-reliefs of battles instead of burghers ordering brazen images of boxers and runners, Praxiteles and Lysippus might have remained in mente Dei, if, indeed, even there. Similarly, once given your Pisan sculptors, Giotto, nay, your imaginary Cimabue, you inevitably get your Donatello, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and eventually your Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian; for the problems of form and of sentiment, the questions of perspective, anatomy, dramatic expression, lyric suggestion, architectural decoration, were established, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... stories. And it is almost impossible to select half a dozen stanzas of classic verse from Tennyson or Rossetti or Browning or Shelley or Byron, which do not contain anything about kissing, embracing, or longing for some imaginary or real beloved. Wordsworth, indeed, is something of an exception; and Coleridge is most famous for a poem which contains nothing at all about love. But exceptions do not affect the general rule that love is the theme of English ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... egg from a nest," he told the boys. Curving one hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hovered over it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to the boys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg would change to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Wallace (1876), Darwin warmly approves the former's "protest against sinking imaginary continents in a quite reckless manner, as was stated by Forbes, followed, alas, by Hooker, and caricatured by Wollaston and (Andrew) Murray." ("Life and Letters", III. page 230.) The transport question thus became of enormously enhanced importance. We need not be surprised then ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... is!" remarked Tom, still amused. "Here is a man forever after rocks, rocks, and there goes a miner set upon becoming rich and discovering some imaginary mine." ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... than I do in passing from Dover to Calais of the one-inch plank that is between me and Eternity. I have assured myself that as long as the time will appear in passing now, I shall think some time hence its progress not so slow, and I will not add imaginary to real evils, by supposing it possible that I shall not ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he would transfer his dory's name to the imaginary Burgess-modelled haddocker. Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester; saw a lock of her hair—which Dan, finding fair words of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... no longer, but to make one short remark. Though the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth. The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle. The author seems frequently, without design, to describe particular parts. ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... to you both. Remember then that you are a father, and that she is a mother,—titles that were conferred upon you both by the birth of that little angel who now sheds a radiance over our household by his endearing presence. Then think of him, think of what I say, and you will outlive your imaginary ills and all the jealous flickerings of your heart; therefore, I again ask you, Fred, to ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... high eulogiums on himself—"the most valorous adventurer!"—but it is not himself that he has before him, but the idol of his imagination, the imaginary being whom he is acting. And this, that it is entirely a third person, excuses his heart from the otherwise inevitable charge of selfish vanity; and so by madness itself he preserves our esteem, and renders those ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... their gratuitous behalf, and she might possibly set a notable example of domestic felicity. No married woman can convert herself into a feminine Knight of the Rueful Visage and ride about the country attempting to redress imaginary wrongs without leaving her own household in a neglected condition that must be an eloquent witness against her. As for the spinsters, we have always said that every woman has a natural and inalienable right to a good husband and a pretty baby. When, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... exercise. It does not check the true joyousness of Girlhood's nature, nor cast any darkening line into the future character. April suns are all the brighter for April showers. The real sorrows ordinarily incident to Girlhood are not many; the real causes for gloom are few; the most are imaginary. This is true of all ages. Our borrowed trouble is much more than that which comes as our own in the legitimate course of our life. Trouble is the worst article we can borrow. We have the least need ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... million more little angels are saying that same thing, at that same hour, to the same imaginary God, I say to myself, if that is a vain, empty infatuation, blessed ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... they smoked in silence and contentment. At length they began to converse softly in their own language. That they were talking about the sleeping girl was evident, for several times they glanced in her direction. Once Sam ceased in the midst of his talk, leaped to his feet, and clutched an imaginary object with both hands. He then squatted down again, and continued his tale of the tragedy that night by the shore of the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... the Dutch vessels mentioned in the preceding notes. The name appears, from the earliest accounts, to have been well known, both to the Japanese and the Kamtschadales; and used by them, indiscriminately, for all the islands lying between Kamtschatka and Japan. It has since been applied to a large imaginary island, or continent, supposed to have been discovered by the Castricom and Breskes; and it may not, therefore, be improper to consider the grounds of this mistake, as far as can be collected from the journals of that expedition. The object of the voyage, in which those ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... midnight ramble. He recalled the dirty and foul condition of the patient when discovered in his room, and he examined all the vile and filthy places in the neighborhood, for the marks of some terrible struggle that might have taken place between the sleep-walker, and any real or imaginary demon. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... fireman, fiercely shovelling imaginary coal; still another at the side of the box grasped the handle of the brake as one ready to die at his post if need be. The last Sullivan paced the length of the wagon-box, being thrown from side to side with fine artistry by the train's ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... and degrade them. An oft-quoted instance of their cruelty is recorded of a bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being only a vile peasant. To this insult ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under the lash for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... alternative theories of nature, both exhaustive and adequate, may seem somewhat imaginary. The human mind is, indeed, not rich and indeterminate enough to drive, as the saying is, many horses abreast; it wishes to have one general scheme of conception only, under which it strives to bring everything. Yet the philosophers, who are the scouts of common sense, have come in sight ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... characters of fairy tales are converted into historical personages. We can also watch the process by which feigned genealogies were constructed, which connected the princely houses of France with the imaginary heroes of the epics. The conclusion is that the poetical history of Charlemagne has only the faintest relations to the true history. And we are justified in supposing that, quite as little of the real history of events can ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... himself from formal and sacred engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... that call and understood it, and I went swift as a hurricane and mounted the stairs four steps at a time. I mounted the more rapidly because the stairway had already begun to fill with dread shadows; and in the turnings and corners I saw the imaginary forms of ghosts and monsters that at nightfall always pursued me as I ran up ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the griefs of the rich are mostly imaginary and selfish. In this beautiful world, if we have our freedom, and health, and plenty of money, we are simply foolish to be down-hearted; only when death takes away our dear ones; and after a time the pain he gives ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... leaving the ends solid and shaping them. A different and very buoyant timber, according to him, was used for the out-rigger. This boy had travelled. He had seen the canoes further north as well as those of New Guinea, and it was found on investigation that his description of the local craft was quite imaginary. Captain Philip P. King, who came hither from Sydney in 1818, anchoring at Goold Island, thus describes the canoe of the period—"Their canoes were not more than five feet long, and generally too small for two people; two ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... a very public place, I take my change for my money. I digg him in the ribbs, or clap his padded old shoulders. I call him 'Bareacres, my old brick,' and I see him wince. It does my 'art good." It does Thackeray's heart good to pour himself out in indignation against some imaginary Bareacres. He blows off his steam with such an eagerness that he forgets for a time, or nearly forgets, his cacography. Then there are "Jeames on Time Bargings," "Jeames on the Gauge Question," "Mr. Jeames again." Of all our author's heroes Jeames is perhaps the most amusing. ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... evidently enjoyed the work. But it is better worth looking at, for all that, than the monument on the other side of the church, where the recumbent form of Sir Arthur Onslow is apparently giving vague directions to an imaginary audience. Wrapped in a Roman toga, he waves a sleeveless right arm; his left is propped by a set of Journals of the House of Commons. It is a relief to pass beyond such tawdry pomposities into the solemn little chapel, sacred to one of the great regiments of the Army, the Queen's, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of imaginative metaphor, is Shakespeare's moonlight 'sleeping' on a bank; but half his poetry may be said to be made up of it, metaphor indeed being the common coin of discourse. Of imaginary creatures, none out of the pale of mythology and the East are equal, perhaps, in point of invention, to Shakespeare's Ariel and Caliban; though poetry may grudge to prose the discovery of a Winged Woman, especially such as she has been described by her inventor in the story ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it into his head that business in this country has all gone to pieces,—thinks it must be reorganized. He writes letters about it all day and sends them to the papers with imaginary names. You may have seen some of them. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... highly dramatic use of images is in connection with that mental process known as Imagination. As we study the writings of Jack London, Poe, Defoe, Bunyan, we move in a realm almost wholly imaginary. And as we take a cross-section of our minds when thus engaged, we find them filled with images. Furthermore, they are of great variety—images of colors, sounds, tastes, smells, touches, even of sensations from our own internal organs, such as the palpitations of the ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may perhaps bring the Church into danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the Church is in danger at present, or as things now stand; but we know ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses. You will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on a priori grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of faith ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... come at last. Jack picked himself up and ran to rescue the pail. The calf raised his head suddenly, the pail caught on one of his little horns, and he started off around the yard, unable to see, and jumping wildly over imaginary objects. Jack followed. A cow, which was perhaps the mother of the calf, started after Jack. The family dog, hearing the commotion, came running down from the house and began to pursue the cow. This wild procession went around the yard ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... silence, for nothing that fell on the ear seemed in accordance with what so charmed the eye; and thus a positive evil found entrance in the midst of much enjoyment. I acquired that habit of dreamy excursiveness into imaginary scenes, and among unreal personages, which is alike inimical to rational pursuits and opposed to spiritual- mindedness. To a period so early as the middle of my fourth year I can revert with the most perfect, most vivid recollection of my habitual thoughts and feelings; ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... while in name a renunciation of self, has all its foundations in the purest individualism. Rousseau, notwithstanding the method of Emile, treats man as a part of a collective whole, contracting manifold relations and owing manifold duties; and he always appeals to the love and sympathy which an imaginary God of nature has implanted in the heart. His aim is unity. Mr. Carlyle, following the same method of obedience to his own personal emotions, unfortified by patient reasoning, lands at the other extremity, and lays all his stress on the separatist instincts. The individual stands alone ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... murders Memnon in his Poem, and bemires himself in his description of the Rhine, I divert my self in these Satires. 'Tis plain from hence, that Alpinus liv'd in the time when Horace writ these Satires: and suppose Alpinus was an imaginary Name, cou'd the Author of the Poem of Memnon be taken for another? Horace, they may say, liv'd under the reign of the most Polite of all the Emperors; but do we live under a Reign less polite? and would they have a Prince who has so many ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... an imaginary foe, as such I reckon the creeds and ideas of other men; still, I cannot but ask myself whether it can add to the prosperity of the state when citizens cease to struggle against the pressure and necessity of life and console themselves for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... things in general. Marian was engaged in a friendly scuffle for an apple, and Allan was tossing Rosie up to the ceiling, while Norman, perched on the bannisters high above them all, waved his left hand, bidding farewell, with many words, to an imaginary Scotland, while with his right he beckoned to the "brave new world" which was to be the scene of ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... an imaginary definition of the function located behind Self-esteem. Equally imaginary is the doctrine of the Edinburgh phrenologists, who call it Concentrativeness. The observations of Gall led him to regard it as a portion of the organ of Pride, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... was an evasion. By forcing the tie they had merely marked the want of ease and confidence between them. As "Packer John" Paul could have enjoyed, nay, loved this man; as his father, the sum and finality of his filial dreams, the supplanter of that imaginary husband of his mother's youth, the thing was impossible. And the father knew it and did not resent it in the least, only pitied the boy for his needless struggle. He was curious about him, too. He wanted to understand ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... nothing but cards, green tables, piles of banknotes, and heaps of ducats. He played one card after the other, winning uninterruptedly, and then he gathered up the gold and filled his pockets with the notes. When he woke up late the next morning, he sighed over the loss of his imaginary wealth, and then sallying out into the town, he found himself once more in front of the Countess's residence. Some unknown power seemed to have attracted him thither. He stopped and looked up at the windows. At one of these he saw a head with luxuriant black hair, which was bent down, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... now black, were mirrored and doubled in the still water at their feet, reflecting therein their sharply reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over which we seemed to hang. The stars also were reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a sprinkling of tiny ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was taken down in a search for imaginary treasure. It was set up again in 1822 on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the Duchess of York, who died 1820. The dial was not replaced, and was used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... fellow!" said Tourville: "then I am sure you will have no objection to take service with us." "What!" cried the prisoner; "I go with the French to fight against the English! Your honour must excuse me; I could not do it to save my life." [722] This poor fisherman, whether he was a real or an imaginary person, spoke the sense of the nation. The beacon on the ridge overlooking Teignmouth was kindled; the High Tor and Causland made answer; and soon all the hill tops of the West were on re, Messengers were riding hard ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tuition of woman, some idea of its fallibility did cross his imagination or his memory; but then he blamed, most unjustly, his imagination for the suggestion. The danger would prove, as he would have it, to be imaginary. What danger could there be, when he knew, as he began and ended by saying to himself, that he was to consider Dora as a ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... living and intense stars, and felt palpably at their hearts that spell—wild, but mute—which nothing on or of earth can inspire; that pining of the imprisoned soul, that longing after the immortality on high, which is perhaps no imaginary type of the immortality ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... early life was that of an adventurer, his later was passed chiefly within the "rules" of the King's Bench prison. He is chiefly remembered as the author of The Three Tours of Dr. Syntax, a comic poem (?). His cleverest piece of work was a series of imaginary letters, supposed to have been written by the second, or "wicked" Lord Lyttelton. Of a similar kind were his letters between Swift and Stella. He also wrote the letterpress for various illustrated books, and was a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... and after Colonel Morgan permitted him to reveal himself, Ellsworth told some first-class romances. He made Morgan's force out about four thousand, and did it with a skill that carried conviction. He would speak, in dispatches to various well-known Federals, of certain imaginary commands, under men whom they well knew. He telegraphed Prentice that Wash. Morgan was at Gallatin, with four hundred Indians, raised especially to seek for his ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Within, the children were playing "keeping store." The little girl, as an opulent and extravagant customer, was purchasing of the boy, who sat behind a counter improvised from a nail-keg and the front seat, most of the available contents of the wagon, either under their own names or an imaginary one as the moment suggested, and paying for them in the easy and liberal currency of dried beans and bits of paper. Change was given by the expeditious method of tearing the paper into smaller fragments. The diminution of stock was remedied by buying the same article over again ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean spring of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile Ride. The day held mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for imaginary stones in Rufus's foot. One cannot say even simple things in broad light, and this that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he spoke seldom, and Miriam was divided between relief and scorn. It annoyed her that the great hulking thing should know ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Olympian god was not there to start with, how did he originate? We can understand—at least after a course of anthropology—this desire of primitive man to acquire for himself the superhuman forces of the bull; but how does he make the transition from the real animal to the imaginary human god? First let us remember the innate tendency of primitive man everywhere, and not especially in Greece, to imagine a personal cause, like himself in all points not otherwise specified, for every striking phenomenon. If the wind blows it is because some being more or less ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... symmetrical as a circle, and as it was apparent that the heavenly bodies pursued tracks which were not straight lines, the conclusion obviously followed that their movements ought to be circular. There was no argument in favour of this notion, other than the merely imaginary reflection that circular movement, and circular movement alone, was "perfect," whatever "perfect" may have meant. It was further believed to be impossible that the heavenly bodies could have any other movements save those which were perfect. Assuming this, it followed, in Ptolemy's opinion, and ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... himself he had become intensely excited and exhausted by the eagerness with which he had spent a whole morning, with a wealth of imaginative force, in drawing a map of the garden of his house and converting it into the likeness of a war map, filled with imaginary Army Corps. Such excessive expenditure of nervous force is unusual even in older children, and as in this case is found usually only when there is a pronounced nervous inheritance. In little children ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... passing calmly through the wide doors and saving themselves, the maddened people, with the cruelty of frenzied beasts, cry and roar, crush one another and perish—not from the fire (for it is only imaginary), but from their own madness. It is enough sometimes when one sensible, firm word is uttered to this crowd—the crowd calms down and imminent death is thus averted. Let, then, a hundred calm, rational voices be raised to mankind, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... circumstance is sufficient in itself to raise the book above many descriptions of travel to the Holy Land, whose authors, trusting to the fact that their assertions could not easily be disproved, have indulged their fancy, seeking to impart interest to their works by the relation of imaginary dangers, and by exaggeration of every kind, for the sake of gaining praise and admiration. Many such men might blush with shame on reading this journal of a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... moments, he succeeded in covering almost two weeks in the labor of putting his house into order. His bedroom was next to the barricade that separated the long stone excavation from the bottomless abyss. Divided from the bedroom by an imaginary line, was the store-room of provisions. The cans and boxes were arranged along the floor with methodical exactitude. Different varieties of fruit and preserves were interspersed in such fashion that none was repeated until every variety ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... hand, and Squire in the other," as the patter-song had it. At the moment of assisted entry his paternal dignity was always at its stateliest, and it was not till he had gravely hung his cocked hat upon an imaginary door-peg in the middle of the hall and seen it flop floorward that he lost his calm. "Blood and 'ouns, ye've the door taken ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic papa and mamma. It is striking to observe, not only how early, but how powerfully, imagination [13] is developed in our childhood. For some time after, I regarded those imaginary parents as sustaining a peculiar relation, not only to me, but to one another; I thought they were in love, if not to be married. But they never were married, nor ever thought of it, I suppose. All that drama was wrought out in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... have been asked insultingly, Is it Octavius, is it Anthony, or is it Lepidus that has caused this bitterness of affliction? and when the answer could not be returned with certainty, to have been reproached that their sufferings were imaginary? The fact is that the King and Lords and Commons, by what is termed the omnipotence of Parliament, have constitutionally the right of enacting whatever laws they please, in defiance of the petitions or ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... is the worst of evils; and I believe that it is wholesome to put as far as we can our cramped minds in easier postures, and to let our spirits have a wider range. We know how a dog who is perpetually chained becomes fierce and furious, and thinks of nothing but imaginary foes, so that the most peaceful passer-by becomes an enemy. I have felt, since the war began, a certain poison in the air, a tendency towards suspicion and contentiousness and vague hostility. We must exorcise that evil spirit if we can; and I believe it is ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... therefore, passes through the carriage with a speed different from its speed outside. Since, however, it is the speed from hole to hole which determines the angle of aberration, no conclusion can be drawn from the latter as to the original velocity of the projectile. Let us assume the imaginary case that the projectile was shot forth from the gun with infinite velocity, and that the slowing-down effect of the wall was great enough to produce a finite speed of the usual magnitude, then the effect on the position of the exit hole would be precisely the same as if the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Australian children assemble to play "Bushrangers and Bobbies," everybody wants to be a bushranger, and the guardian of the law is looked upon as quite an inferior character. Lots decide, however, the cast. The bushrangers sally forth and stick up an imaginary coach, or rob an imaginary country bank. The "bobbies" go in pursuit, and there is a desperate mock battle, which allows of much yelling and running about, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... amidst the thousand uncertainties of life, there can be no enjoyment of tranquillity. The man of feeble and timorous spirit lives under perpetual alarms. He sees every distant danger and tremble; he explores the regions of possibility to discover the dangers that may arise: often he creates imaginary ones; always magnifies those that are real. Hence, like a person haunted by spectres, he loses the free enjoyment even of a safe and prosperous state, and on the first shock of adversity he desponds. Instead of exerting himself to lay hold on the resources that remain, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the short period of my unfortunate life. But I will not go into any further details, lest the world should laugh at me, though it would be hypocrisy in me to affect to conceal that, for several days after, I felt melancholy at this imaginary parting. ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... employee problems to the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on. ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... all the aches and pains, coughs and colds, inflammations and consumptions, fevers and chills, at the hour of birth and at the time of death, and all intermediate points of life, to induce sleep and to promote wakefulness, and for all real or imaginary ills." ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... requisite, and has generally been observed by enlightened and civilized nations. It is a civil contract in civil society, but the sanction of religion should be superadded. The ancients considered it as a religious ceremony. They consulted their imaginary gods, before the marriage was solemnized, and implored their assistance by prayers, and sacrifices; the gall was taken out of the victim, as the seat of anger and malice, and thrown behind the altar, as hateful to the deities ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... clime the breezes blow over, every magic isle the waves murmur round, every subterranean retreat fancy has devised, every cerulean region the moon visits, every planet that hangs afar on the neck of night, be disenchanted of their imaginary charms, and brought, by the advance of discovery, within the relentless light of familiarity, for the common gaze of fleshly eyes and tread of vulgar feet, still the prophetic MIND would not be robbed of its belief in immortality; still the unquenchable instincts of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... called by him St. Mary's. He believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making New England, with adjacent districts, an island. His proposed fort on the Chesapeake, giving access, by this imaginary passage, to the seas of Newfoundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries, on which both the French and the English had long encroached, to the great prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various |
