"Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the security of their trench, Ned, Bob, and Jerry, their comrades, and the officers on duty, could scarcely believe their eyes as they saw what had happened. Yet there was no delusion about it. Professor Snodgrass, rashly venturing across No Man's Land toward the German trenches, was coming back and with three prisoners. As Bob said afterward, it was like the advertisements of the circus which boasted of three rings and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... and many experiments were bestowed on this subject, because, first, it was well known that the hard and uneven strain of bone, muscle, and energy in a voyage of this sort needs to be maintained by generous diet, that cold feeding is a delusion after a few days of it, and that the whole affairs would fail, or at any rate, enjoyment of the trip would cease, unless the Rob Roy had a caboose, easy to work, speedy in result, and capable of being used in rain, wind, and rough weather, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... weakness and his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a delusion. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... imagined, knows the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood to be a trick of the Neapolitan clergy; but he keeps up the falsehood for the sake of gain and power. In like manner, he has an extensive Roman laboratory ever at work for the manufacture of all the instruments of delusion which his emissaries propagate throughout Christendom. There he makes false relics, from portions of the true cross downwards; there he sells pardons and indulgences; and there he has a corps of writers employed in the invention of fictitious miraculous tales, saints' ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... to be a wonderful contrast in black-and-white. When flying, the flamingo seems to keep his head moving steadily forward at an even pace, although the ropelike neck undulates with the slow beating of the wings. I could not be sure that it was not an optical delusion. Nevertheless, I thought the heavy body was propelled irregularly, while the head moved forward at uniform speed, the difference being caught up in the undulations of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... heard you meant to write heroics next; For, tragedy, he knew, would lose you quite, And told you so at Will's[3] but t'other night. Thus are the lives of fools a sort of dreams, Rendering shades things, and substances of names; Such high companions may delusion keep, Lords are a footboy's cronies in his sleep. As a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... would have been no difficult matter at that time to have persuaded the poor woman to have believed that an express messenger came from heaven on purpose to bring that individual book. But it was too serious a matter to suffer any delusion to take place, so I turned to the young woman, and told her we did not desire to impose upon the new convert in her first and more ignorant understanding of things, and begged her to explain to her that God may be very properly said to answer our ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the disease, and that his wife was a firm believer in it, but that in his opinion it was a humbug, which deserved no other treatment than severe corporal punishment. The Russian peasantry, he said, were very superstitious and would believe almost anything, and the "Anadyrski bol" was partly a delusion and partly an imposition practised by the women upon their male relatives to further some selfish purpose. A woman who wanted a new bonnet, and who could not obtain it by the ordinary method of teasing, found it very convenient ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the Guobah disputed the Nepal rajah's authority to pass me through his dominions; and besides the natural jealousy of these people when intruded upon, they have very good reasons for concealing the amount of revenue they raise from their position, and for keeping up the delusion that they alone can endure the excessive climate of these regions, or undergo the hardships and toil of the salt trade. My passport said nothing about the passes; my people, and especially the Ghorkas, detested ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... or one more hard to learn. The more conscientious men are, the more difficult it is for them to understand that in their most cherished convictions, when they pass beyond the limits where the wise and good of all sorts agree, they may be the victims of mere delusion. Yet, after all, and happily, such cases were but few, and affected but lightly the general condition of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... have thought about them at all, it has been my opinion that spiritists are either fools or frauds. But I am endeavouring to give a faithful account of my feelings and sensations at the time of which I am writing, and the incident of the voice cannot be ignored. Perhaps it was all a delusion—an hallucination, if you will, due to the gradual breaking down of my body and mind. As to that, the reader can form his own conclusions. Certain it is, that from this time on, when I needed help and encouragement the most, I felt a vague assurance that my wife was by my side; and I verily ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... of watching, he at last saw the nun speaking to a poor woman with her veil up. It revealed to him nothing but what he knew already. It was the woman he loved, and she hated him; the woman who had married him under a delusion, and stabbed him on his bridal day. He loved her all the more ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, or a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards'; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... point-blank that he was extremely dissatisfied with our manner of working. We were too slow: we nursed our tasks. Did we think we were being kept at Sennelager for the benefit of our health or to make holiday? If so that was a fond delusion. Henceforth he was going to estimate a certain time for each task which would have to be completed within the period allowed, even if we had to work every hour God gave us and, if need ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Church. For he was so conscious of his reasons, that I could even swear he would have protested from the very bottom of his heart that he had no other motive than the apprehension of the dangers to which a contrary profession might expose my soul. So true it is that nothing is so subject to delusion as piety: all sorts of errors creep in and hide themselves under that veil; it gives a sanction to all the turns of imagination, and the honesty of the intention is not sufficient to guard against it. In a word, after ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... of voluntary delusion does every man endeavour to conceal his own unimportance from himself. It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the King the justice to say that it was I, and not he, who closed the dialogue. At this juncture, I became the subject of a remarkable optical delusion; the legs of my stool appeared to me to double up; the car to spin round and round with great violence; and a mist to arise between myself and His Majesty. In addition to these sensations, I felt extremely unwell. I refer these unpleasant effects, either to the paste with which ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... like it—breathed again from a Canadian mouth. Anderson meanwhile was standing outside with the Chief Justice. She threw a glance at him now and then, wondering about his love affair. Had he really got over it?—or was that M. Mariette's delusion? She liked, on the contrary, to think of him as ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doings, and yet unnoticed by it. You all my world, and I yours—what a sweet and perfect dream!" Thus Pilar as she went out in fine weather, thickly veiled, on Wilhelm's arm into the crowded streets, and she did her utmost to prolong the charming delusion as far as possible. She paid no visits, invited no one to the house, avoided every familiar face in the street. Through the consul and Don Antonio, however, her more immediate circle got wind by degrees of her return to Paris, and visitors began to call ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... felt that what they had decided upon was not exactly right,—that it would be better to observe strictly their mother's instructions. But, like many people who argue themselves into the delusion that what they want to do is the best thing to be done, Abby tried to compromise with the "still small voice" which warned her not to meddle, by the retort: "Oh, it will spare mother the trouble! And she'll be glad to have ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... in his favour, but this he had: that he passionately loved mysticism and the liturgy, plain-song and cathedrals. Without falsehood or self-delusion, he could in all truth exclaim, "Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honour dwelleth." This was all he had to offer to the Father in expiation of his contumely and refractoriness, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... incredible, here, in this twentieth century—but yet delusion, that feeble word, did not occur once in the comments my mind suggested though did not utter. I remembered that forbidding Shadow too; my sister's watercolors; the vanished personality of our hostess; the inexplicable, thundering Noise, and the figure of Mrs. Marsh in her midnight ritual ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... defect was in his mind or his morals, it is enough to greatly impair the value of his other "facts." Again, when James (p. 165) states that Decatur ran away from the Macedonian until, by some marvellous optical delusion, he mistook her for a 32, he merely detracts a good deal from the worth of his own account. When the Americans adopt boarding helmets, he considers it as proving conclusively that they are suffering from an acute attack of cowardice. On p. 122 he says that "had the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Carroway was capable of wondering. Her power of judgment was not so far lost as it is in a dream—where we wonder at nothing, but cast off skeptic misery—and for the moment she seemed to be brought home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her children kissing a man who was hunting in his ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... if he had called her grandfather a fraud, and her father a delusion and a snare. She had grown up in the belief that the mill-dams were part of Nature's original plan, in laying the foundations of the hills;—but it was no time to be resentful, and the facts were ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation with whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hope speedily turns out a delusion. One lady is vigilantly guarded by a jealous betrothed; a second is a poor relation, or humble friend, who knows that she would never get another invitation to the house if she once interfered with her patron's plans; a third ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... not deceived; such an opinion is a mere delusion of Satan; wherever faith is it bringeth Christ into the soul; mark that, "Whosoever believeth, Christ dwelleth in his heart by faith. And if Christ be in you," saith the apostle, "the body is dead, because of sin, but the spirit is life, because of righteousness." ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... many delusions that this war has usefully dispelled is the delusion that there can be a sort of legality about war, that you can make war a little, but not make war altogether, that the civilized world can look forward to a sort of tame war in the future, a war crossed with peace, a lap-dog war that will bark but not bite. War is war; it ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fault, right enough. This was the dumping ground for all the idlers, drunkards and scallywags in England. They had the delusion over there that if a man was too big a rotter to do anything at all at home, he'd only got to be sent out here and he'd make ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Shakespeare and Milton are popular—that is, liked and studied—amongst the wide circle whom it is now the fashion to talk of as enlightened, we are obliged to express our doubts whether a grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare's can be ventured on the London stage without mutilation—and without the most revolting balderdash foisted into the rents made by managers in his divine dramas; nay, it is only some three or four ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as the tides, river currents, and warm land breezes, may very well explain this. The learned have insisted, and do yet insist, that the earth's rotation can produce no motions in the Arctic sea, and, under this delusion, Franklin has passed into the comparatively open waters inside the pack, perhaps has lost his ships; yet it is very possible that the party may have escaped, and derived a subsistence from the more genial waters of the central portion of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the primrose path feels that he is as good as ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... not bring back Aguara's love, lost to Nacena; and as the bulk of the reward promised will depend upon this, she has yet another proposal to make that may ensure its payment. She acts as one who would hedge a bet, and drawing closer to the victim of her delusion, she says— ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... and they offered to his ambition a resistance so strong, that it is impossible to regard him as falling through the blindness or delusion of passion. On the contrary, he himself feels with such intensity the enormity of his purpose that, it seems clear, neither his ambition nor yet the prophecy of the Witches would ever without the aid of Lady Macbeth have overcome ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Mary's delusion was short-lived: scarcely was she in Bothwell's power than she saw what a master she had given herself. Gross, unfeeling, and violent, he seemed chosen by Providence to avenge the faults of which he had been the instigator or the accomplice. Soon his fits of passion reached such a point, that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... off. Of course, any well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Mr. Ransome's death there came again on Ranny and his mother, and on all of them, the innocence and the immense delusion in which they had lived, in which they had kept it up, in the days before Ranny's wife had run away from him and before Ranny's enlightenment and his awful outburst. Only the innocence was ten times more persistent, the delusion ten times more solemn ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Well, blood that wouldn't rush to the head after being churned that way wouldn't be worth having. It has to go somewhere. It can't go to the legs, because they are paralyzed, being curled up like a tailor, mending trousers. Horseback exercise for ladies, on a side saddle, is a delusion and a snare, and does not amount to a row of pins, and it never will be worth a cent until women can ride like men. Then the lower limbs—now it is limbs—will be developed and health will be the result, and there will be no danger of a saddle ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... All this is now attested by high authorities on International and Constitutional law, and while it takes nothing from the honor so universally accorded to Mr. Lincoln as the great Emancipator, it shows how wisely he employed a grand popular delusion in the salvation of his country. His proclamation had no present legal effect within territory not under the control of our arms; but as an expression of the spirit of the people and the policy of the Administration, it had become both a moral and ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... had the reputation among these simple folks, who knew how to be frugal themselves, of having a superfluity of wealth; his air and manner showed he had been always used to be lavish (as indeed he had), and nourished this delusion, which extended, though upon other grounds, to the tenants of the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... $10,350,000 a year, he kept his ordinary expenses down to $200,000 a year. Whatever an air of indifference he would assume in his grandee role of "art collector," yet in most other matters he was inveterately closefisted. He had a delusion that "everybody in the world was ready to take advantage of him," and he regarded "men and women, as a rule, as a pretty bad lot." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts": 127.] This incident—one of many similar incidents narrated ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... this better feeling enjoy it. Enjoy it, did I say? No. Reclaim him, if possible. Convince him that he labors under a delusion. Restore him to truth, and to reason; banish the cup from his mouth, and change ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... too dark for him to comprehend now—from that first understanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was his revolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusion that it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way, free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like a creature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis, love's ultimate ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... was an unlimited sanction for innovation. It is easy enough then to understand why such a philosophy should have been anathema to Burke. Rousseau's eager sympathy for humble men, his optimistic faith in the immediate prospect of popular power were to Burke the symptoms of insane delusion and their author "the great professor and founder of the philosophy of vanity in England." But Burke forgot that the real secret of Rousseau's influence was the success of the American Revolution; and no one had done more than Burke himself to promote its cause and justify its principles. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the only person whom they have placed beyond their care? Believest thou they would have wrought into the mind of man a persuasion of their being able to make him happy or miserable, if so be they had no such power? or would not even man himself, long ere this, have seen through the gross delusion? How is it, Aristodemus, thou rememberest, or remarkest not, that the kingdoms and commonwealths most renowned as well for their wisdom as antiquity, are those whose piety and devotion hath been the most observable? And why thinkest thou that the providence of God may not easily extend itself ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this multitude which knoweth not the law, are accursed." They would have it that only the ignorant masses had been led away by this delusion; none of the great men, the wise men, had accepted this Nazarene as the Messiah. They did not suspect that at least one of their own number, possibly two, had been going by night to hear ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the philosophical sense, the aspiration of the dead artist for perfect work and the honour it brings is a delusion, a sweet mockery of the fancy. But then so is every other aspiration which soars above the warm circle of the human affections, and if this delusion of the dead artist was held worthy of respect ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... heaven, when you imagined that you had no tie upon earth. You were deceived; there was one whom you still loved, and who still adored you. Vows made in delusion are not registered. Leave this convent with me, become my wife, and you will do your duty better towards heaven than by pining between these walls, which contain nothing but ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... young man of sensibility, ear-witness against his will of the chaste and sanctioned familiarities of a man and wife, must always be mingled of sweet and bitter; but when to the natural force of these is added horror of a crime and the shame arising from discovery of utter delusion, the reader may imagine the stormy sea of torment in which I laboured. In a word, I was to discover a new Aurelia—Aurelia the affectionate wife, the careful minister; not the adored mistress of a feverish boy, the heroine of a Vita Nuova, the Beatrice of a, I fear me, profane comedy, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... place was weakened of half its force for the equipment. When Pacheco approached the harbour he was surrounded by a great number of boats, and some of the people began to suspect treachery, but so strongly did the spirit of delusion prevail in this business that they could not persuade the captain to put himself on his guard. He soon had reason to repent his credulity. Perceiving an arrow pass close by him, he hastened to put on his coat of mail, when a second pierced his neck, and he soon ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... generally supposed. The late Dr. Austin Flint used to say of these foods, that "the valuation by most persons outside of the medical profession, and by many within it, of beef tea or its analogues, the various solutions, most of the extracts, and the expressed juice of meat, is a delusion and a snare which has led to the loss of many lives ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... breathe and move freely, and know not (in our present state) for which to pity you most, the empty name of liberty, which you endeavour to content yourselves with, in a country that is not yours; or the delusion which makes you hope for ampler privileges in that country hereafter. Tell us; which is the white man, who, with a prudent regard to his own character, can associate one of you on terms of equality? Ask us which is the white man who would decline such ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of the reasons why she had turned again to Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness; and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation from which she woke each morning with an ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... clearly the victim of a common delusion. If a system will work, the minutest details can be exhibited. Therefore, it is inferred, an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work. Unfortunately, the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... scene that the type was always the same even when the individual was not—he hailed with renewed appreciation this costly expression of a social ideal. The dining-room at the Nouveau Luxe represented, on such a spring evening, what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its leisure: a phantom "society," with all the rules, smirks, gestures of its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other had been the product of continuity and choice. And the instinct which had driven a new class of world-compellers to bind themselves ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... then the martyrdoms afford no evidence of the truth of Christianity. Martyrdom proves the sincerity, but not the truth, of the sufferer's belief; every creed has had its martyrs, and as the truth of one creed excludes the truth of every other, it follows that the vast majority have died for a delusion, and that, therefore, the number of martyrs it can reckon is no criterion of the truth of a creed, but only of the devotion it inspires. While we allow that the Christians underwent much persecution, there can ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... people has gone forth proclaiming me the Chief Magistrate of this glorious Union, nothing upon their part remaining to be done, it may be thought that a motive may exist to keep up the delusion under which they may be supposed to have acted in relation to my principles and opinions; and perhaps there may be some in this assembly who have come here either prepared to condemn those I shall now deliver, or, approving them, to doubt the sincerity with which ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the new dog to the Place failed somehow to destroy the illusion of size and fierceness. But the moment the crate door was opened the delusion ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... events after the conference proposal had been dropped, Oncken writes: "Meanwhile the Russian Government endeavoured to persuade England's leading statesman that the opinion prevailed in Germany and Austria, that England would remain neutral in every case, in consequence of this delusion the Central Powers were obdurate. England could only dispel the danger of war by destroying this false conception, i.e., openly ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... somewhat late in the married lives of their parents, and had been welcomed as angel visitants, under which fond delusion they were christened respectively Angelica and Theodore. Before they were well out of their nurse's arms, however, society, with discernment, had changed Theodore's name to Diavolo, but "Angelica" was ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was somewhat worried at this evidence of a strength she had heretofore been ignorant that she possessed. In order to satisfy herself that it was no delusion, she tested her new-found power in many ways, finding that nothing was too big nor too heavy for her to lift. And, naturally enough, the girl gained courage from these experiments and became confident that she could protect herself in any emergency. When, ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... woman cannot so disguise herself; art goes not so far as to falsify the entire nature, the innermost being and life of a person.' Oh, there have been hours, awful, horrible hours, when it seemed to me as though all this were a delusion, a mystification—as though in some way an evil demon assumed the queen's form by night to mock me, poor frenzied visionary, with a happiness that has no existence, but lives only in my imagination. When such thoughts come to me, I feel a frenzied fury, a crushing despair, and I could, regardless ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... remaining clothes, I saw something at which I thanked Heaven that I had not allowed the landlord to carry off my rapier. My eyes were on the door, and, as I gazed, I beheld the slow raising of the latch. It was no delusion; my wits were keen and my eyes sharp; there was no fear to make me see things that were not. Softly I stepped to the bed-rail where I had hung my sword by the baldrick, and as softly I unsheathed it. The door was pushed ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... those soft resources of regret which were the right of the meanest women in her realm. For, whatever she might say to her Parliament and people, she knew that all was too late—that she would never marry and that she must go childless and uncomforted to her grave. Years upon years of delusion of her people, of sacrifice to policy, had at last become a self-delusion, to which her eyes were not full opened yet—she sought to shut them tight. But these refugees, coming at the moment of her own struggle, had changed her heart from an ever-growing bitterness to human sympathy. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... know Miserrimus Dexter?" he repeated, with the air of a man who doubted the evidence of his own senses. "Mr. Benjamin, have I taken too much of your excellent wine? Am I the victim of a delusion—or did our fair friend really ask me to give her ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... rushed upon him that the doctor was right. She was in the grip of some dreadful delusion. At the same moment he was poignantly aware of her slenderness and fragility, the trembling of her hands. He reached her side, put out his hand to her to find her still staring at him, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... friends, was a cultured man, You knew him-so did I: He had studied the "Sciences" through and through, Had forgotten far more than the ancients knew, Yet still retained enough To demonstrate clearly that all the old, Good, practical Bible-truths we hold Are delusion, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... looked round—yet scarce believed The witness that his sight received; Such apparition well might seem Delusion of a dreadful dream. Sir Roderick in suspense he eyed, 260 And to his look the Chief replied, "Fear naught—nay, that I need not say— But—doubt not aught from mine array. Thou art my guest—I pledged my word As far as Coilantogle ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... could violate its charter and set the laws at defiance with impunity; and when, too, it had become most apparent that to believe that such an accumulation of powers can ever be granted without the certainty of being abused was to indulge in a fatal delusion? ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... spotlessly before the world? Who so wisely aided me in my rejection of a dry morality? Who so clearly set aside the Pharisaism which, as years passed, threatened to creep in among us? Who so deeply discerned as to the spirits of delusion which sought to bewilder us? Who would have governed my whole economy so wisely, richly and hospitably, when circumstances commanded? Who have taken indifferently the part of servant or mistress, without, on the one side, affecting an especial spirituality; on the other, being sullied ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "'Tis a strange delusion this, if it be one; for it is plain they have been ably counselled. Whilst they retain the castle their position may be reckoned as impregnable. It is a powerful support, on which they have placed the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... me to conclude her letter. My father has returned home, and fetched her to Coalworth, to be with my mother, and the poor young lady (already, I fear, Countess of St. Erme), who, he tells us, continues buoyed up by the delusion that her brother may yet be found alive, and is calling on all around to use the utmost exertions for his recovery. I regret that I cannot go in Annette's stead; but I cannot leave home in mamma's absence, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seizes its victims when they are off guard, under pretense of amusing an idle hour, and ends by robbing them of sleep and health; some it drives into lunatic asylums and some into newspaper correspondence. That thought-reading is not necessarily delusion or collusion is now generally recognised; a protegee of Mr. F. W. Myers convinced me of the possibility of simple feats, though not of her explanation of them. She credited them to spirits, and wicked spirits to boot. In vain, I pointed ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... hardworking mother of a family buys out of her scanty allowance a scent-bottle that looks as if it had been laboriously cut for a King's mistress, whereas really it has been moulded by machinery to keep up the delusion, unconsciously cherished by her, that she lives in a world of irresistible and unscrupulous feminine charm. And her husband endures indulgently all this superfluous ugliness because he, too, believes that it is the function of art to make the drawing-room ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... sad sense of vanished self-delusion, he rose and went out. As he passed through the kitchen, his wife followed him to the door. "Ye'll see and sen' a message to the vricht ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... priests, those masters of the people and depositaries of all true doctrine, kneel down as would a son before his father, a subject before his sovereign, and a culprit before his judge? Who would forbid this delusion to that simple and ignorant mind, whose relations with the exterior world form the only source of all his knowledge and all ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... observant race, and as a rule peculiarly well-informed. This is contrary to the popular belief, which represents the farmer as rude and ignorant, a pot-bellied beer-drinker, and nothing more. But the popular belief is a delusion. I do not say that they are literary or scientific in their tastes and private pursuits. There are no great names among them in geology, or astronomy, or anthropology, or any other science. They are not artists in any sense. But they are singularly ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... we may regard it as a fluid, non-elastic, and without weight, and universally diffused through the universe. To judge by recently published statements, a large section of the reading public are taught that this fluid is a source of power, and that it may be made to do the work of coal. This is a delusion. So long as electricity remains in what we may call a normal state of repose, it is inert. Before we can get any work out of electricity a somewhat greater amount of work must be done upon it. If this fundamental and most important truth be kept in view it will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a good night's rest; but not sleep—we were too happy to sleep; would keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion—dreaded that we might wake up and find ourselves in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is given as to the form in which Io was represented on the stage. In v. 848, the promise [Greek: entautha de se Zeus tithesin emphrona] does not imply any bodily change, but that Io labored under a mental delusion. Still the mythologists are against us, who agree in making her transformation complete. Perhaps she was represented with horns, like the Egyptian figures of Isis, but in other respects as a virgin, which is somewhat confirmed ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... frail mortality, In the first dawn and bloom of young creation, 270 And earliest embraces of earth's parents, Can make its offspring; still it is delusion. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... direct contrary of that of our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular attainments; and it is more woful still, that many young people should be scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretched delusion, that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing Christianity, are fairly representing it. I have beheld more deliberate malice, more lying and cheating, more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and greater self-sufficiency, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... talk a corrupt Zulu, as do all the tribes in those parts. At first they wanted to kill me, but let me go because they thought that I was mad. Everyone thinks that I am mad, Allan; it is a kind of public delusion, whereas I think that I am sane and that most other ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... always sad, she seemed to darken his mind with the wings that beat ominously. He had a right to liberty, to break the chain, because he was the stronger. He had spent his life in the struggle for glory, and glory was a delusion, if it brought only cold respect from his fellows, if it could not be exchanged for something more positive. Many years of intense existence were left; he could still exult in a host of pleasures, he could still live, like some artists whom he admired, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... satisfactory, so I got up early next morning, and after shivering in my dressing-gown during the milking, carried off the pail in triumph, fully convinced that I should now be able to enjoy the pure article. Vain delusion! On testing it there was still a large percentage of water, and the dairyman, beaming with justified satisfaction, ambled ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... contention was started that Shakespeare was merely an obscure actor who never wrote a line, and that the Shakespearean plays were actually written by his great contemporary, Francis Bacon, who was pleased to let these products of his own genius appear under the name of another man. This delusion is usually considered as beginning with an article by Miss Delia Bacon in Putnam's Monthly (January, 1856), although the idea had been twice suggested during the eight ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... to marry, were partly known to him and partly surmised. And now it seemed in mockery of everything that was decent, becoming, and fair that the one who had forsaken her should represent himself as having waked, after a short delusion, and discovered that he loved her still, letting his brother know this, and perhaps all the world. Such would be a painful and humiliating position also for the bride. It might even affect the happiness of the newly-married pair; but John did ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... stinking. Wherefore (and who can think it strange, if it be so?) the Lord seemeth to be about to contend with us, by covering our horizon with Egyptian darkness; many who would not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved, being already given up to strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, and many more in hazard to be drawn aside to crooked paths, by men of corrupt minds, who have been, and are still busy to vent and spread abroad, with no little petulancy and confidence, damnable doctrines, to the perverting ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... "What delusion is this, Eurytion," cried Theseus, "to vex Pirithous while I still live, and by so doing arouse the anger of two heroes?" With these words he forced his way through the crowd and tore the stolen bride from ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Delusion, Ignorance! Long ere Man drew upon Earth his earliest breath The world was one continuous scene of anguish, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... that my regret always has been not that I feel so much, but that I do not feel more. Would to Heaven that neither you nor I could eat or sleep for pity, pity for our poor down-trodden brothers and sisters. But the thing to which I implore your attention now, is, not what we know and feel, but the delusion which we are under, in confounding knowing with doing, in fancying that we are working to abolish Slavery because we know that it is wrong. This is what I would have you now to consider, the deception that we practise on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we pass off the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... thyself, and better know Thy new-found sister, nor misconstrue thus Her pure and heav'nly joy. Ye Gods, remove From his fix'd eye delusion, lest this hour Of highest bliss should make us trebly wretched! Oh she is here, thine own, thy long-lost sister, Whom great Diana from the altar snatch'd, And safely plac'd here in her sacred fane. ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... heart, to ask through the voice of his minister humble forgiveness of God and man for his sad share as a judge in the unjust and awful condemnation and cruel sentencing to death of the poor murdered victims of that terrible delusion the Salem Witchcraft. Years of calm and unshrinking reflection, of pleading and constant communion with God had brought to him an overwhelming sense of his mistaken and over-influenced judgment, and a horror and remorse for the fatal results of his error. Then, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of the slaves. A ridiculous incident occurs to me. I once saw a child frightened into a dislike for white loaf sugar, by holding up a piece to the candle, and pretending it dropped blood. But there is no delusion or metaphor here, for the sugars of slave-plantations are really obtained by the blood-whippings and scourgings ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... not possible," if "synthetic" means "not deducible from logic alone." Our knowledge of geometry, like the rest of our knowledge, is derived partly from logic, partly from sense, and the peculiar position which in Kant's day geometry appeared to occupy is seen now to be a delusion. There are still some philosophers, it is true, who maintain that our knowledge that the axiom of parallels, for example, is true of actual space, is not to be accounted for empirically, but is as Kant maintained derived from an a priori intuition. This position is not logically refutable, but ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... be omitted here. The sphere in which it is my dearest privilege to labor, is the cause of Protestantism; and sometimes when God has blessed my poor efforts to the deliverance of some captive out of the chains of Popish delusion, I have recalled the fact of being born just opposite the dark old gateway of that strong building where the noble martyrs of Mary's day were imprisoned. I have recollected that the house wherein I drew my first breath was visible through the grated window of their ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... unhappy delusion, which have held the countries asunder, in place of being one and the same in all things. But he has lived upon that hope, until now, when it has vanished from him for ever. And with his hope, the food that kept life barely in him has gone too. He is bereft of all that holds ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... discussion for a minute comes a name—for a time I was really quite unable to decide whether it is the name of the villain in the piece or of the maligned heroine, or a secret society or a gold mine, or a pestilence or a delusion—the name ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... found it difficult to divest himself of an habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But the neutralisation of international ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... in his essay On Londoners and Country People we find Hazlitt writing: 'London is the only place in which the child grows completely up into the man. I have known characters of this kind, which, in the way of childish ignorance and self-pleasing delusion, exceeded anything to be met with in Shakespeare or Ben Jonson, or ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Asuras, it is not as ye imagine. This is Garuda of great strength and equal to me in splendour, endued with great energy, and born to promote the joy of Vinata. Even the sight of this heap of effulgence hath caused this delusion in you. He is the mighty son of Kasyapa, the destroyer of the Nagas, engaged in the well-being of the gods, and the foe of the Daityas and the Rakshasas. Be not afraid of it in the least. Come with me and see.' Thus addressed, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... understand what they believe, to find a point upon which they can fix with reliance—a standard round which they may rally without fear of danger—a common measure that way serve them for a beacon to avoid the quicksands of delusion—the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... religion of their ancestors, the religion in which they had been brought up, the religion of the state, and of the magistrate, the rites which they frequented, the pomp which they admired, was throughout a system of folly and delusion. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion, Here taverns wooing to a pint of 'purl,' There mails fast flying off, like a delusion. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... George—or was it all delusion, and was he less to her than mere superfluities, the ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... great foe of delusion, Who came to the honest conclusion That Socialist Labour Plays beggar-my-neighbour And sought to defeat it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... with their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the cervical vertebrae; and he is able, with a continually growing neglect of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion, to look back to any past and to look ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with prophecies of the happiness which she was afterwards to enjoy or to diffuse. It was only by such a turn that the hazardous freedom of thought in the rest of the composition could have passed with impunity: Shakspeare was not certainly himself deceived respecting this theatrical delusion. The true conclusion is the death of Catharine, which under a feeling of this kind, he has placed earlier than was conformable to history. I have now gone through all the unquestionably genuine works of Shakspeare. I have carefully abstained from all indefinite ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the propagation of slavery; it will have renounced its rule. Compromises, (there will be such, perhaps, let us swear to nothing; before or after the war, with the entire South, or with a part of it,) compromises will be signed henceforth without any delusion. The South knows, marvellously well, that these compromises will bear little resemblance to those signed in former times. Those marked, by their constantly increasing pretension, the upward march of the South; these will mark the phases of its decline. How many changes which can never be retraced! ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... has passed away, and with it all my vain delusions. To think myself superior to all others was a delusion; to think that Pride would make me happy was a delusion: to think that a well-furnished head could make up for a haughty and selfish heart, that was the worst delusion ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... "The fond delusion common to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... wed her, and she has acknowledged that she laboured under the like perplexity. On the other hand, our good opinion of ourselves had grown prodigiously. The other's dislike appeared to each an insane delusion, and we seriously questioned whether it could be right to mate longer with a being so destitute of true aesthetic feeling. We confided these scruples to each other, with the result of a most ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... then took a straight course for the Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara road, about four miles distant. Nearer and nearer the whimpering pack pressed; their delusion begins to dispel. All at once the truth flashes upon the minds of the fugitives like a glare of light,—'tis Tabor ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... of the Catholic Church produced any trouble in the island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to a serious delusion and panic. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... also submitted to the hideous delusion? Was he also on his way to the shrine of the faith? The answer to the former question was of slight importance, so long as that to the latter might be conceived in the affirmative. If Holt was bound to the Salt Lake, then was the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... formed an attachment for this land in some other state of existence; and hence conclude the settlers were at one period black men, and their own relations. Likenesses either real or imagined complete the delusion; and from the manner of the old woman I have just alluded to, from her many tears, and from her warm caresses, I feel firmly convinced that she really believed I was her son, whose first thought upon his return to earth had been to re-visit his old mother, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... business. Jews, Normans, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, those four different races of men all have the same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way; they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumulate at compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and that charter is no delusion. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... afraid, sire, you labor under a delusion as to one point: that it is still possible for you to delay the progress of the allies by any means whatever," sighed Caulaincourt. "I have examined every thing on my trip to your majesty's headquarters; I have conversed with every prisoner fallen into the hands of our troops, and I do ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the middle of the gateway. This strange stillness, and the thoughts, always present to our knight's mind, of the incidents described at every turn in the books that were the cause of his misfortune, conjured up to his imagination as extraordinary a delusion as can well be conceived, which was that he fancied himself to have reached a famous castle (for, as has been said, all the inns he lodged in were castles to his eyes), and that the daughter of the innkeeper was daughter of the lord of the castle, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
