"Fictitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help Europe when the time comes for its destinies to depend largely on the judgment of a man whose be-muddled intellect cannot distinguish between morality of the real world and of an entirely fantastic and fictitious one." ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... Todd was one of the culprits. The young ladies originated the scheme more to poke fun at the personal weaknesses of Shields than for the sake of party effect, and they embellished their simulated plaint about taxes with an embroidery of fictitious social happenings and personal allusions to the auditor that put the town on a grin and Shields into fury. The fair and mischievous writers found it necessary to consult Lincoln about how they should frame the political features of their attack, and he set them ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... n. 754. It may be well to mention that Niebuhr considered that this account regarding the death of Appius was all fictitious. The Greek writers, scil. Dion. ix. 54, Zonar. vii. 17, state that he laid violent hands ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... of a Monarchy (the most dangerous time in the world to laugh) who is there whom he has not satiriz'd by name? Fabius the great Talker, Tigellius the Fantastick, Nasidienus the Impertinent, Nomentanus the Debauchee, and whoever came at his Quill's end. They may answer that these are fictitious Names: an excellent Answer indeed! As if those whom he attack'd were no better known; as if we were ignorant that Fabius was a Roman Knight who compos'd a Treatise of Law, that Tigellius was a Musician favour'd by Augustus, that Nasidienus Rufus was a famous ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... descendant of king somebody, died somewhere, having managed to keep a comfortable little portion of his ancestors' royalties to console him for the loss of their sceptre. He having two sons, and disdaining to make anything but estated gentlemen of them, made over in some fictitious manner (for in those righteous days a Roman Catholic could make no legal will) to his eldest, the estate on which he lived, and to the youngest, that of Ballycloran—about six hundred as bad acres as a gentleman might wish to call his own. But ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... plagiarism is actually a fact of identification on record in the California Law Reports. It is therefore unnecessary for me to add that the attendant circumstances and characters are purely fictitious.—B. H. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... The bundle of real treasure is produced and inspected, and again tied up by the Gitana, who then requests the other to open the chest, which done, she formally places A BUNDLE in it; but, in the meanwhile, she has contrived to substitute the fictitious for the real one. The chest is then locked, the lady retaining the key. The Gitana promises to return at the end of three weeks, to open the chest, assuring the lady that if it be not unlocked until ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... a vedette in the heart of the capital, seemed to afford him mild, cynical amusement. He drew his hand across his face, twisted his mustache, and took the cigar from his mouth and examined the end of it with fictitious interest. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... are taken back upwards of two centuries in the history of the Violin; from times wherein it is held in the highest esteem and admiration, to days when it was regarded with contempt and ridicule. Crowdero (so called from crowd, a Fiddle) was the fictitious name for one Jackson, a milliner, who lived in the New Exchange, in the Strand. He had served with the Roundheads, and lost a leg, which brought him into reduced circumstances, until he was obliged to Fiddle from one alehouse to ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... the gloom. Then came the perilous journey homeward. What delight we would take in getting up wanton panics in some dusky part of the wood; scampering like frightened deer; pausing to take breath; renewing the panic, and scampering off again, wild with fictitious terror! ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... accompanying woodcut, Fig, 6, is a reduced copy, The figures are entitled (from left to right) 1. 'Troglodyta Bontii'; 2. 'Lucifer Aldrovandi'; 3. 'Satyrus Tulpii'; 4. 'Pygmaeus Edwardi'. The first is a bad copy of Bontius' fictitious 'Ourang-outang,' in whose existence, however, Linnaeus appears to have fully believed; for in the standard edition of the 'Systema Naturae', it is enumerated as a second species of Homo; "H. nocturnus." 'Lucifer Aldrovandi' is a copy of a figure in Aldrovandus, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... time to perfect his arrangements, so that, when the day arrived, the "Haute Noblesse" presented a most brilliant appearance. Vividly colored transparencies, representing the most sanguinary battle scenes in more or less fictitious surroundings were suspended among the trees; Danish officers were seen in all sorts of humble attitudes, surrendering their swords or begging for mercy, while the Prussian and Austrian heroes, maddened with warlike fury, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... As it frequently happens that our senses can teach us nothing respecting this cause which so deeply interests us—which we seek with so much ardour, we have recourse to our imagination; this, disturbed with alarm, enervated by fear, becomes a suspicious, a fallacious guide: we create chimeras, fictitious causes, to whom we give the credit, to whom we ascribe the honour of those phenomena by which we have been so much alarmed. It is to this disposition of the human mind that must be attributed, as will be seen in the sequel, the religious errors of man, who, despairing of the capacity to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... This was during the first two days. After that he was told that she had gone away. She had gone away to meet his father, and that when she came back she would bring his "pop" with her. A few added details of a fictitious nature completely satisfied, and the child accepted without question that which ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... means the view of the cheery and resourceful grocer. He had a solution ready, well thought out and bearing to his mind the stamp of probability. He would make a fictitious payment of the purchase-money to Mme. de Lamotte. She would then disappear, taking her son with her. Her indiscretion in having been the mistress of de Lamotte before she became his wife, would lend colour ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... asserted without scruple that if Mr Pecksniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he must have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of computation. The other would have contended that it was a mere fictitious form; a perfectly blank book; or one in which entries were only made with a peculiar kind of invisible ink to become legible at some indefinite time; and that he never ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sea-board the outline of the chain is on either side sharply defined, and forms a prominent and shapely feature in the landscape. From the low-lying central flats of the county the Mendips have a quite fictitious impressiveness. Nowhere does their altitude reach 1100 ft., and their ridge-like summit is nothing but an extended plateau, in places from 2 to 3 m. wide. They have, however, even on the top a certain picturesqueness, for the undulating tableland is relieved ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... advantages of the disguise: 'It is much more difficult to converse with the world in a real than in a personated character,' he says, both because the moral theory of a man whose identity is known is exposed to the commentary of his life, and because 'the fictitious person ... might assume a mock authority without being looked upon as vain and conceited'. [Footnote: Spectator 555.] It is to the influence of this mask that much of the self- complacent superiority which has been attributed to Addison may be referred; one 'having ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... though I were going to dine. I then transferred the viands to a piece of the omnipresent Times newspaper, and hid them away in a cupboard, for it was not yet night, and I dared not throw the food into the street until darkness came. I did not at all relish this process of fictitious dining, but at length the cloth was removed, and I gladly reclined on my divan (I would not lie down) with the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the same time in a steady and fearless voice. The effect on her hearers was overpowering. Not a scornful eye, not a sneering lip remained when she had finished, but sobs and tears burst from those who had for long years known little other than fictitious weeping. Each took the offered tract, each returned with warmth the kind pressure of her hand as she parted from them; and as she remounted her horse, one voice was heard to say, "Poor thing! God bless her!" Then all shrank back into the theatre, and the happy ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... happenings to particular individuals, their adventures and their loves, but in the fascination of the actual facts of history themselves. These facts might be coloured with the glamour which the writer of fiction can give, and fictitious characters and conversations might illustrate them; but none the less the actual drama of history and not the drama of invention should claim the attention of the reader. I have been tempted sometimes to try the effect upon a larger scale; but meanwhile these short sketches, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they saw the real scene, so lively was it represented, but even the player himself delivered it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon thinking, if that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba, that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved, that his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... no public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the press the liberty it now possesses—all being as it were clouded in mysterious awe—these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... arrangement, which grew out of the great importance which, as we have already seen, was attached to the ties of relationship and family connection among these pastoral nations. Two families could bind themselves together and make themselves legally one, in respect to their connection, by a fictitious marriage arranged between children no longer living. In such a case the contracts were regularly made, just as if the children were still alive, and the ceremonies were all duly performed. After this the two families were held to ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... marquises—De Almenara, Carpia, Chaves, Laguardia, Leganes, Priego, Santacruz, Toral, Velez, Villa-real y Zenete. Eight condes—De Azumar, Galiano, Lemos, Montanos, Niebla, Olivares, Pedrosa y Polan. Of these four only are fictitious. It is remarkable also, that one title cited in Gil Blas, that of Admirante de Castilia, did not exist when Le Sage published his romance—Felipe V. having abolished it, to punish the holder of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It is because it ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... them, without taking so much trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as an act of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting thus much, I have assumed that the fancies are just and beautiful, though fictitious. Now, what right have any of us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly be either the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear lovely to us, is no real proof of its not being wasted ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... Chancellor. Although this latter example of the result of science is not the actual hair of the wearer, it adds an imposing glow of wisdom to the general appearance, and may have originated as a necessity where a deficiency of sagacity had existed, and where the absence of years required the fictitious crown of grey old age. A barrister in his wig, and the same amount of learning without the wig, is a very different affair; he is an imperfect shadow of himself. Nevertheless, among civilized nations, the men do ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the mouth of Miss Bowyer, though they sound like burlesque, are taken almost verbatim from the writings of those who claim to be expounders of Christian science. While Miss Bowyer was drawn more closely from an original than is usual in fictitious writing, I am well aware that there are professors of Christian science much superior to her. There are, indeed, souls who are the victims of their own generous enthusiasm; and it grieves me that, in treating the subject with fidelity and artistic truthfulness, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... remembers in a welcome flash of inspiration that this deserted courtyard has been made the scene of one of Boccaccio's most famous tales. It is a story that many writers of succeeding ages have endeavoured to imitate in prose or verse, but this fictitious love-tragedy between a princess and a page at Salerno has a simple charm and dignity in its original setting that only the master-hand of the Tuscan author could impart. The scene of the novel of Guiscard and Ghismonda is laid, as we have said, at this very spot, and as the hero, the heroine ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... habit consciously encouraged to defy and face down the reality of age. If, at twenty, one feels that he has reached man's estate he, nevertheless, tests his strength and abilities, his early successes or failures, by the temporary and fictitious standards of youth. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of Mr Broune's offer, and of her own refusal. It was odd that since that refusal she had seen more of him, and had certainly known much more of him than she had ever seen or known before. Previous to that little episode their intimacy had been very fictitious, as are many intimacies. They had played at being friends, knowing but very little of each other. But now, during the last five or six weeks,—since she had refused his offer,— they had really learned to know each other. In the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... upon its appearance, and may be said to have procured for its author the freedom of the Rules, since he has ever since been permitted to exercise his powers of fictitious composition in England, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... glittering under our electric beams, I told Conseil the story of the Atlanteans, who had inspired the old French scientist Jean Bailly to write so many entertaining— albeit utterly fictitious—pages.* I told the lad about the wars of these heroic people. I discussed the question of Atlantis with the fervor of a man who no longer had any doubts. But Conseil was so distracted he barely heard me, and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... gentlemen who courted her so persistently did endeavour, on all occasions, to make their estate and natural parts appear greater than they were, this Dario did not, proving that he had no such need of fictitious advancement, and could well afford to let the world judge of his worth by his works, etc. This point we did not contest, only we were very well content to observe that he introduced no one into the house, had no friends in the village (to our ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... discussion should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which the controversy was systematized duly ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... there is always a chance to find some begging of the question which may consist either of getting back to an assumption of the original proposition and so arguing in a circle, or of simply assuming that what has been asserted has been proved. The fallacy of the invented example, in which a fictitious case is described as an illustration, and presently assumed as a real case, is a not uncommon form ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... politicians who would repeal the reform act, impose new taxes, restore and multiply pensions, establish military law, and finally produce civil war. Still the country remained quiescent: it was known that the picture was fictitious, and men refused to be dismayed. One thing, however, was effected: although the Radicals did not raise any clamorous outcries at the downfall of their former associates, they struck a bargain with the Whigs, and came to terms for the purpose of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hectic flush which, on his cheek, was almost beautiful. One would have turned twice to see. The quantities of spirits that he drank (he ate little) would have killed a half-dozen healthy men. To him it was food, taken up, absorbed by the fever of his disease, giving him a real, not a fictitious strength; and so it would continue to do till some artery burst and choked him, or else, by some miracle of air and climate, the hole in his lung healed up again; which he, in his elation, believed would be "to-morrow." Perhaps the air, the food, and life of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... minister had supplied information about the ships, Napoleon tried at first muzzling the press. But as late as February, 1864, he was still carrying water on both shoulders. His Minister of Marine notified the builders that they must get the ships out of France, unarmed, under fictitious sale to some neutral country. The next month, reports which the Confederate commissioners sent home became distinctly alarming. Mann wrote from Brussels: "Napoleon has enjoined upon Maximilian to hold no official relations with our commissioners in Mexico." ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... admitted that the soul essentially is pure, non-differenced intelligence; and because on that alternative the assumption of avidya to account for the distinction of souls would be purposeless. On the latter alternative two subordinate alternatives arise—Does this avidya which gives rise to the fictitious distinction of souls belong to Brahman? or to the individual souls?—If you say 'to Brahman', your view coincides with mine.—Well then, 'to the souls'!— But have you then quite forgotten that Nescience is assumed for the purpose ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... traps of this kind for him; here is another. I asked only one question, but wrote outside the packet in the usual form, So- and-so's eight Queries, giving a fictitious name and sending the eight shillings. Satisfied with the payment of the money and the inscription on the packet, he gave me eight answers to my one question. This was, When will Alexander's imposture be detected? The answers concerned nothing in heaven or earth, but ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... bank-bills, and with unerring certainty, he would throw out those suspiciously superscribed. "In each of these nine," he would say, "there is no letter, but money only. This parcel is from the W—Street office. These are directed to men that are not called by these names: they are fictitious, and assumed for iniquitous purposes. Those are from thieves to thieves, and hint at opportunities," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... be the first object of writers to correct the vices and follies of the age. I will allow as much compliance with the mode of the times as will make truth and good morals agreeable. Your love of fictitious characters might be turned to good purpose if those presented to the public were to be formed on the rules of religion and morality. It must be confessed that history, being employed only about illustrious persons, public events, and celebrated actions, does not supply ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... whom, in your kind and careful revision of it, this unfinished work has suggested many questions which, alas, I cannot answer, as to the probable conduct and fate of its fictitious characters, will readily understand my reluctance to surrender an impression seemingly so well justified. I did not indeed cease to cherish it, until reiterated and exhaustive search had failed to recover from the "wallet" wherein Time "puts alms for oblivion," more than those few imperfect ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Indeed, from the very nature of an ad valorem duty this must be the result. Under it the inevitable consequence is that foreign goods will be entered at less than their true value. The Treasury will therefore lose the duty on the difference between their real and fictitious value, and to this extent ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... and they alone, rose above the strong tendencies to the extravagances which had been so conspicuous during the past, and were soon to be as conspicuous in the future.—These and a thousand other paradoxes (arising out of the supposition that Christianity is the fraudulent or fictitious product of such an age, country, and, above all, such men as the problem limits us to), must the infidel receive, and receive all at once; and of him who can receive them we can but once more declare ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, "the garment of make-believe woven by ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not aware that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... deeding the corporation's sections to these fictitious purchasers was solemnly gone through with at Ruggles's office, the Railroad guaranteeing them possession. The League refused to allow the supposed buyers to come upon the land, and the Railroad, faithful to its pledge in the matter of guaranteeing its dummies possession, at once ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... is that no trace of the fictitious world in which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... without entirely believing them, is one which is most curious. It concerns a gigantic bird the Epyornis, of which the bones and the enormous eggs were discovered in Madagascar about the year 1850. It is an instance proving the caution needed before rejecting as fictitious many apparently fabulous legends, but which on examination may prove to possess a substratum of truth. "To the north of Greater Java," says Pigafetta, "in the gulf of China, there is a very large tree called campanganghi inhabited by certain birds ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... this that, although the so-called "local" birds are often, nay nearly always, represented, they have no fictitious value given to them, but simply take their place in the great scheme of Nature in a proper manner, being often close to so-called "foreign" forms, with which they are easily compared. The whole arrangement ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... admiration and envy. A soldier of fortune, a planter of colonies, an admiral, a courtier, a statesman, a wit, a scholar, a chemist, an agriculturist, he was eminent as each of these, and his exploits in Guiana read like some fantastic tale of fictitious adventure. His History of the World, although but a fragment of what he intended it to be, is nevertheless a monument of prodigious ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... ghosts, the striking one of the teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents, consider then, that every childhood's Rupert—the name given in Germany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into obedience—even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it finds him on a sick-bed. The first fright is more dangerous the sooner it happens: as the man grows older, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... given—all these are the well-tried methods. The fact that rumours spread almost automatically and quite invariably from camp to hostile camp, so that what is believed on one side largely affects belief on the other, is one of the fixed data on which much depends. The issue openly of fictitious orders, cancelled by cypher messages, is another available means of throwing a cloud over what is being done. The art lies in applying these well-known principles to the particular case to be dealt with. It will be found ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... came to what he would have considered a lucid interval, had it not appeared that Helen Sherwood was whispering to Tom Meredith at the foot of his bed. This he knew to be a fictitious presentation of his fever, for was she not by this time away and away for foreign lands? And, also, Tom Meredith was a slim young thing, and not the middle-aged youth with an undeniable stomach and a baldish head, who, by the grotesque necromancy of his hallucinations, assumed a preposterous ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... honor the flag,' is their cry, and they are foolish enough to believe that if they raise their voices loud enough, we, the workers, will become infected by their fictitious enthusiasm, and shout ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Mrs Trivett the old story of her fictitious marriage; she had, also, stated that for the present she wished this fact, together with the parentage of her child, to be kept a strict secret. Mavis little recked the risk she ran of discovery. She was obsessed by the desire to breathe the Melkbridge air. She believed that ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... to the constitutional monarchy. But Rome would be ruined. She is no longer the geographical capital of Italy—she is not even the largest city; but in the course of a few years, violent efforts would be made to give her a fictitious modern grandeur, in the place of the moral importance she now enjoys as the headquarters of the Catholic world. Those efforts at a spurious growth would ruin her financially, and the hatred of Romans for Italians of the north would cause ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... will help to neutralize the ill effects of any poison which children may have swallowed in the way of sham-adventurous stories and wildly fictitious tales. 'The Jolly Rover' runs away from home, and meets life as it is, till he is glad enough to seek again his father's house. Mr. Trowbridge has the power of making an instructive story absorbing in its interest, and of covering ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... shelves of circulating libraries are filled,—and to occupy the greater portion of the leisure hours in studying the preposterous pictures of human life which so many of them present, is worse than waste of time: it is positively pernicious. The habitual novel- reader indulges in fictitious feelings so much, that there is great risk of sound and healthy feeling becoming perverted or benumbed. "I never go to hear a tragedy," said a gay man once to the Archbishop of York, "it wears my heart out." The literary pity evoked by fiction leads to no corresponding action; the susceptibilities ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... yet flatter ourselves that this may be accomplished, as advances toward it the establishment of the principle that the friendly flag shall cover the cargo, the curtailment of contraband of war, and the proscription of fictitious paper blockades— engagements which we may reasonably hope will not prove impracticable— will, if successfully inculcated, redound proportionally to our honor and drain the fountain of many a ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... simple enough to believe that the manners, the sentiments of a man like you, who usually dress and undress before your wife, can counterbalance the influence of these books and outshine the glory of their fictitious lovers, in whose garments the fair reader sees neither hole nor stain?—Poor fool! too late, alas! for her happiness and for yours, your wife will find out that the heroes of poetry are as rare in real life as the Apollos ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... box of old letters and newspapers this morning I came across a little sketch descriptive of our quartette, written last winter for a New York journal. This sketch, or "Pen Portraits," as it was styled, veils our identity under fictitious names, the initials only being preserved, and although it passes over our imperfections and very much exaggerates our accomplishments, still it contains, I think, so much that is characteristic that ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... song was "Lilly Dale," and the men, who, we need scarcely say, were fictitious negroes, sang it so well that the audience listened with breathless attention and evident delight, and encored it vociferously. The next song was "Oh! Massa, how he wopped me," a ditty of quite a different stamp, but equally popular. It also was encored, as indeed was every song sting that evening; ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... must not be confounded with the "first hermit," Paulus of Thebes, whom Weingarten has with good reason struck out of the category of historical personages. He, with all the figures in this narrative is a purely fictitious person, the vehicle for an idea, neither more nor less. I selected no particular model for my hero, and I claim for him no attribute but that of his having been possible at the period; least of all did I think of Saint Anthony, who is now deprived ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... non-combatants, and to strive to win their allegiance to the good cause by liberal privileges. But when it was lately discovered that two strangers, although bearing a pass from him, have been frequenters of this house under fictitious names—" ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... origin of frogs, as told by Menecrates and Nicander.(1) The frogs were herdsmen metamorphosed by Leto, the mother of Apollo. But, by way of showing how closely akin are the fancies of Greeks and Australian black fellows, we shall tell the legend without the proper names, which gave it a fictitious dignity. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... attained great distinction. Sir David Lyndesay of the Mount, in his official character as Lyon-King at Arms, visited Denmark in 1550; and his acquaintance with Macchabeus might have led to the first publication of his Dialog, or Four Books of the Monarchie, under a fictitious designation, although actually printed by John Scot, either at St. Andrews or Edinburgh in 1554: it bears on the title, "Imprintit at the command and expensis of DOCTOR MACHABEVS in Capmanhovin." There is a later edition, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... delight with which the development of every package was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour, and, by one stair ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... some poem—a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which another—some fiction of his own brain—was the hero. And now, by some strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment. On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure—Silence and Slumber—two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed by Primaticcio ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... divided into two by a partition, so that each champion had a kind of room to make his preparations in, just as in the theatre every actor has his dressing-room; but in this instance the tragedy that was about to be played was not a fictitious one. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... felt was nothing to boast of; and regimental gossips had drawn upon their invention for various strange tales about the Milord Anglais. When I became domesticated in the corps, and my country was almost forgotten, these fictitious histories ceased to be repeated, and fell into oblivion; but some of them were revived for the benefit of the colonel, when, after the action near Oran, he instituted inquiries concerning me amongst his officers. It was not till some weeks later that he asked and received ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... another, his horns to be wreathed with new-made garlands. The virgin of royal birth even ventured to sit down upon the back of the bull, not knowing upon whom she was pressing. Then the God, by degrees {moving} from the land, and from the dry shore, places the fictitious hoofs of his feet in the waves near the brink. Then he goes still further, and carries his prize over the expanse of the midst of the ocean. She is affrighted, and, borne off, looks back on the shore she has left; and with her right hand ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... were located under fictitious boundaries, and not only the Continental soldiers, but also the States and the United States were thus swindled by these officers, who had been long honored and trusted ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... Philosophy is that man passes through three mental periods—the Theological or fictitious; the Metaphysical or abstract; the Positive ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... was the key to the success of Miss Edgeworth's writings. If to us her fictitious children seem like puppets whose strings are too obviously jerked, the monotonous moral cloaked in the variety of incident was liked by ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... subject of inquiry for minds of almost the highest order. With us, the stage is considered as a harmless pastime, wholesome because it occupies the man by occupying his mental, not his sensual faculties; one of the many departments of fictitious representation; perhaps the most exciting, but also the most transitory; sometimes hurtful, generally beneficial, just as the rest are; entitled to no peculiar regard, and far inferior in its effect to many others which have no special apparatus for their application. The ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... to doubt if he really were the man we had met; but the events of this morning have changed my mind utterly on that point. He was the one we had met, and I am now convinced that his story to me of his double was purely fictitious, and that from beginning to end there ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... she dwelt upon his praise. Even in sleep her dreams were of the deserving shepherd. The delusive pleasures that follow in the train of dark-browed night, all told of Edwin. The unreal mockery of that capricious being, who cheats us with scenes of fictitious wretchedness, was full of the unmerited calamities, the heartbreaking woe, or the untimely death of Edwin. From Edwin therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was not heedless and indiscreet; she would not have sacrificed the dignity ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... is a historical person, and this anecdote is true. The surname given to him only is fictitious, as history does not record any ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the telephone); which has not corrupted legislatures or courts; which has steadily decreased the prices of its products as business and profits have increased; which has never issued watered stock or declared fictitious dividends; and which has always manifested a high sense of responsibility in its dealings ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... unite the most attractive and interesting circumstances of the ancient Romance and modern Novel, at the same time it assumes a character and manner of its own, that differs from both; it is distinguished by the appellation of a Gothic Story, being a picture of Gothic times and manners. Fictitious stories have been the delight of all times and all countries, by oral tradition in barbarous, by writing in more civilized ones; and although some persons of wit and learning have condemned them indiscriminately, I would venture to affirm, that even those who so much affect to ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, &c. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract and general terms, such as we are accustomed to put together from particular things. Thus the intellect and the will stand in the same relation to this or that idea, or this or that volition, as "lapidity" to this or that stone, or as "man" to Peter and Paul. The cause ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... of a young advocate who saw two crows thus engaged on alighting from the train at some station. In order to avert the consequences he ran to the telegraph office and sent messages to all his relatives and friends announcing his own death, the idea being that this fictitious death would fulfil the omen, and the real death would thus become unnecessary. In this case the belief would be that the man's own spirit would pass ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... that poetical description borrows its chief powers and graces. Without the aid of this, moral and intellectual painting would be flat and unanimated, and even the scenery of material objects would be dull, without the introduction of fictitious life. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... chroniclers of the times. The earl made the most expensive and extraordinary preparations for the reception and entertainment of the queen and her retinue on this occasion. The moat—which is a broad canal filled with water surrounding the castle—had a floating island upon it, with a fictitious personage whom they called the lady of the lake upon the island, who sung a song in praise of Elizabeth as she passed the bridge. There was also an artificial dolphin swimming upon the water, with a band of musicians ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... treatment has been given under protest, and that its primary intention has been to deal with those well-meaning critics who believe that Chesterton can write fiction, in the ordinary sense of the word. His own excellent definition of fictitious narrative (in The Victorian Age in Literature) is that essentially "the story is told . . . for the sake of some study of the difference between human beings." This alone is enough to exculpate him of the charge of writing ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight? Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man's dreams, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing." We are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... meritorious services would never have received the widespread attention that has been accorded them had it not been for a fictitious publication issued in 1809 by Matthew Carey, a well known publisher, of Philadelphia, entitled: The / Life / of / Gen. Francis Marion, / a Celebrated / Partizan Officer, / in / The Revolutionary War, / ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... a thoroughly legitimate kind, for the picture and the character are brought before us with sufficient vividness, yet mainly through the words and thoughts of the fictitious heroine, and through her close sympathy ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... some punishment for such a crime as this. The other editions are more reputable, but very incorrect. One of them bears the imprint of 'London, for James Bunyan, 1760.' Another has 'London, sold by Baxter, Doolittle, & Burkit,' evidently fictitious names, adopted from those three great authors. The Pilgrim's Progress was twice published by D. Bunyan, in Fleet Street, 1763 and 1768; and the Heavenly Footman, 'London, sold by J. Bunyan, above the Monument.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and I decided upon your setting out when he finished his conversation by announcing his departure for Perpignan. I feared Narbonne; I now see that he is going there to deliver himself up a prisoner to the Cardinal. Go at once. I add to the letters I have given you the treaty here; it is in fictitious names, but here is the counterpart, signed by Monsieur, by the Duc de Bouillon, and by me. The Count-Duke of Olivares desires nothing further. There are blanks for the Duc d'Orleans, which you will fill up as you please. Go; in a month I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to this poem, with regard to that part which deals with the battle of Enthandune, Chesterton says: 'I fancy that in fact Alfred's Wessex was of very mixed bloods; I have given a fictitious Roman, Celt, and Saxon a part ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... at the same time, as I think, to verify my hypothesis, let me give you an example—fictitious, it is true, but probable fact nevertheless; because it is patched up of many fragments of actual fact: and let us see how, in following it out, we shall pass through almost every possible ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... an enemy of the Trusts now, because I know their methods; I know the results that follow the practice of fictitious speculation. Before you all I acknowledge that my past has been of the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... his guardian angel. And while musing upon him some few days back, I fell to wondering if I might not imitate him. I mean, why could not I take the life of some such man (and I know one at least who could sit for the portrait), and write a fictitious autobiography in that truculent, bombastic, interesting style? I have the material, and I believe I could do it. What do you think, old friend? It is already one of my plans for the future, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! and to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Cain narrated his fictitious disasters, but said nothing about his wound, the neglect of which would certainly have occasioned his death a very few days after he appeared at the trial, had he not fallen by the malignity ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... the piano, till Laura thought the Golden Age had come again. How long would it last? Philosophers like Laura never ask that question. At all events it lasted till half past nine, when the sick man was honestly tired and the lines of no fictitious pain were drawn deep about ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... why should we add "fictitious"? The reason why is obvious. The reason why not, if something more recondite, does not want for weight. The art of narrative, in fact, is the same, whether it is applied to the selection and illustration of a real series of events or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... towards civilization; this is indicated by the regularity of their conduct, as pointed to some particular object of general interest; by their being influenced to emulate one another in the operations of either real or fictitious warfare, which of course implies free and extensive social intercourse; and by the cultivation of land, and the useful though not numerous domestic arts of cookery, and the making of nets and cloth, &c.—not to mention their music and dancing. In consequence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... so greatly that he could not restrain his passion; but vented it in the choicest billingsgate with which his vocabulary had been furnished in the forecastle of the "Gil Blas." His criticism of the real Jim was by no means agreeable to the patrons of the fictitious one. In a moment there was a row; and the result was, that Lunes after a thorough dilapidation of his finery departed in custody of the police, more, however, for the negro's protection than ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... carried to the front a big and rough sapling. The fires glowed again, the orchestra clicked and thumped, and a single boy in an ancient red handkerchief and chalks danced into the light, and, keeping time with the music, began in pantomime to fashion the sapling into a sword, using a fictitious shell, with which he scraped off imaginary bark. While absorbed in his work, his companions came from the screen in haste, skipping round him and mimicking all his actions and grunting in unison with him, while making the sand-ridge to quiver with intensity of tread. Presently all flopped down on ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Truly, it was the most dismal spectacle we ever witnessed, and we turned from it sick at heart, and with eyes moist with tears not shed for the dead, for she had escaped from this vexatious vanity, but from the heartless mockery of all this fictitious woe. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... assure What everybody long has known; Ever to hear the same replies And overcome antipathies Which never have existed, e'en In little maidens of thirteen? And what like menaces fatigues, Entreaties, oaths, fictitious fear, Epistles of six sheets or near, Rings, tears, deceptions and intrigues, Aunts, mothers and their scrutiny, And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the matter of names, dates, and localities, Dr. Rollinson holds that they had better be given at full length; and here I am not disposed to differ from him. The system of blanks and initial letters was always distasteful to me; and to use fictitious names in a true story seems like taking away with one hand what you give with another. Besides, every one of the actors in the drama is now dead: Dr. Rollinson [1] himself being the only living person who is cognizant, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... the lock, drew their swords and screamed, making bare the right arm, as if prepared for awful deeds. The others took up position behind low rocks, unslung their fire-arms, and screamed not. Presently a real or fictitious recognition took place, the guns on both sides were fired up in the air, and swords were brandished for very joy. Both parties rushed into each other's embraces, smiling and ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... is by many? Should a sharp line be put between the two, as though the one class, with the period it belonged to, were characterized by the errors and anachronisms of its history; the other by simplicity and accuracy; the one, by books written under fictitious names; the other, by the power to distinguish truth from falsehood or by honesty of purpose? Should the one be a sign of the want of truthfulness and discernment; the other, of religious simplicity? Can this aggregation ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... tables; he was nominated President of the National Assembly but refused the post; he attempted to corrupt the French guards, and so serious were the charges brought against him that La Fayette demanded of the King that he should be sent from the country. He went accordingly to England on a fictitious mission in October of 1789. He returned in eight months to be received with acclamation by the Jacobins, who were, however, themselves irritated at the coolness by which he voted for the death of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... "It is only a madman," he would say, "who imputes success in life to human prudence;" and as to the necessity of a right education for the young, "It is only the wise who are fit to govern men." We must conclude that the accusations were only ostensible or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some reality which could reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... so full as to extend over ten pages of the volume. It ends with a reiteration of the wholly false manner in which this story had been obtained. So bold an appropriation of the narrative, with a provenience entirely new and as fictitious as the story itself, and its bodily inclusion by an editor in a work of recognized merit, where it is between two true recitals, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... scholarship was not equal to his talents; he was already a devotee to romance, and experienced greater gratification in retiring with a friend to some quiet spot in the country, to relate or to listen to a fictitious tale, than in giving his principal attention to the prescribed tasks of the schoolroom. As he became older, the love of miscellaneous literature, especially the works of the great masters of fiction, amounted to a passion; and as ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... impossible to describe the scenery of the Alps to one who had never yet ascended mountains above the region of the clouds, without so bewildering his imagination that his fancy will call forth and accept more fictitious notions than true ones. The best description that I had ever heard of the Alps, was the occasion of my most incorrect conceptions about them. I think the speaker did not misstate or exaggerate anything in a single word, but as he could in an hour's talk ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... not that material substance is thus projected by the all-embracing Divine Mind; but so also are our own minds projected by it, and therefore the relation between them and matter is a real relation and not a merely fictitious one. ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... illusion in spite of critical reflection, involves the further introspective illusion of taking a state of doubt for one of assurance. Thus, the weak, flattered man or woman manages to keep up a sort of fictitious belief in the truth of the words which are so ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... gone now, and it has gone unwept and unsung. I never catch myself saying that I would give my two hands, and give them cheerfully, if I could believe in those things all over again. That puerile faith was a false faith; and because I now know it to have been fictitious I smile at it to-day, and never dream of wishing that I still believed in the Man in the Moon. And, when, on the contrary, I catch a man saying with wet eyes that he would give both his hands, and give them cheerfully, if he could believe as his grandfather did, I see before me indubitable evidence ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... him for it after his return from India, but without effecting a change. Kindly listeners hardly knew how to take him, while the malicious made mischief. One day, in England, when, in the presence of his sister and a lady friend, he had thought fit to enlarge on a number of purely fictitious misdeeds, he was put to some shame. His sister having in vain tried by signs to stop him, the friend at last cut him short with: "Am I to admire you, Mr. Burton?" And he accepted the reproof. Still, he never broke himself ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... have Reason to blush, when I consider the small Advantage I have reap'd from that Change. But lest it should be imputed to my Want of Merit, I have wrote these Memoirs, and leave the World to judge of my Deserts. They are not set forth by any fictitious Stories, nor imbelished with rhetorical Flourishes; plain Truth is certainly most becoming the Character of an old Soldier. Yet let them be never so meritorious, if not protected by some noble Patron, some Persons may think them to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... that I am a direct descendant from my fictitious grandmother, Eve! I am always being tempted by apples of information, and I have often known the mortifying sensation of wishing to hide my guilty countenance in my more modern petticoat ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... minute accident of beauty or expressiveness that had struck him in man, woman, child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood and variety. A hundred fictitious characters would be invented and launched on their imaginary careers; a hundred ingenious problems of conduct and cases of honour would be set and solved; romantic voyages would be planned and followed out in vision, with a thousand incidents; the possibilities of life and art would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I would ship the box at once to some fictitious personage, and then take the next ship ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... adventures of the real Jonathan, so far as we know them, are not much like those of the fictitious. True, the real Jonathan's married life was unhappy, though his quarrel with his wife did not follow so hard upon his wedding as the quarrel of Fielding's hero and the chaste Laetitia. Not until a year from his marriage did the real Jonathan separate from his spouse, after ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... before Charles, Manning confessed that he received an ample maintenance from the protector, but defended himself on the ground that he was careful to communicate nothing but what was false. That this plea was true, appeared from his despatch, which was filled with a detailed account of a fictitious debate in the council: but the falsehoods which he had sent to England had occasioned the arrest and imprisonment of several royalists, and Manning was shot as a traitor at Duynwald, in the territory of the duke of Neuburg.—Clar. iii. 563-569. Whitelock, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... warn Germany that any attack on a vessel flying the American flag before it is ascertained whether the flag is or is not fictitious will be "viewed as ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... English, and he would not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the latter fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was not mentioned; the latter, which was to be shown to him, contained ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ctesias. The whole account of the fleet of ships built in Bactria, and carried upon camels to the Indus, is a childish forgery. How can we suppose, that there were no woods to construct such vessels, but in the most inland regions of Asia? The story of the fictitious elephants, made out of the hides of black oxen, which put to flight the real elephants, is another silly fable. Megasthenes, who wrote of India, would not allow that Semiramis was ever in those [922]parts. Arrian seems to speak of it as a groundless [923]surmise. Her building of Babylon was ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... hand, everything that is inconsistent with the suggestion gets inhibited and leaves the subject's consciousness. As has been said, alterations of personality imply phenomena of amnesia. In order that the subject may assume the fictitious personality he must begin by forgetting his true personality. The infinite number of memories that represent his past experience and constitute the basis of his normal ego are for the time being effaced, because these memories are inconsistent ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a German scholar, published his "Prolegomena," which set forth his theory that Homer was a fictitious character, and that the Iliad was made up of originally unconnected poems, collected and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... fields there are no such things as rigid bodies with Euclidean properties; thus the fictitious rigid body of reference is of no avail in the general theory of relativity. The motion of clocks is also influenced by gravitational fields, and in such a way that a physical definition of time which is made directly with the aid of clocks ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... authorized to say that there is not a fictitious name nor place in the whole volume; but that names and places are literally given, and that every transaction therein ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... his bicycle off the scene of the one real melodrama of a life spent in inventing fictitious ones; and if you ask what he had to show for his part in it, you may get your answer one day from his work. Not from the masterpiece which he used to talk over with Mrs. Steel, for it will never be written; not from any particular novel or story, much less in the reproduction of any of these ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... but we cannot elevate their capacity to our own. We may produce an external appearance, sufficiently satisfactory to ourselves; but, in the meantime, it is probable that the child may be growing in hypocrisy, and settling down into the habitual practice of a fictitious character. ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the Eternal Justice thus led away by trivial happenings, and their attention distracted from the main issue. For what, in God's name, did he and his sentimental love-carrollings amount to, this pretty fellow of a player, this fictitious hero of the modern, Neapolitan, operatic stage? Weighed in the balances, he and his whole occupation and calling were lighter, surely, than vanity itself? Rightly considered, he and his singing were but as a spangle, as ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... testimony of these great poets and men of the world,—consistent, as you see it is, on this head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and idle view of the relations between man and woman;— nay, worse than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible: but this, their ideal of woman, is, according to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... paroxysms was going to be added. At such an hour, with such sounds of terror filling the night, with such a glare dancing on the ceiling the first attack had come on, years before. Then the alarm had been fictitious; to-night the calamity which the poor woman had imagined, was happening with every circumstance of peril ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... explicit, providing that "the Bosporus and Dardanelles shall remain open in time of war as in time of peace to the merchant vessels of neutral States arriving from or bound to Russian ports." The rest of the article contains a promise by the Porte never henceforth to establish a "fictitious blockade, at variance with the spirit of the Declaration of Paris"; meaning thereby such a blockade of ports on the Black Sea as had been enforced by Turkish ships of war stationed at the entrance ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... "riding" and "driving circuit," and even later, the Circuit mess was a very popular institution with circuiteers, and was made the occasion of much merriment. After the table had been cleared a fictitious charge would be made against one of the barristers present, and a mock tribunal was immediately constituted before which he was arraigned and his case duly set forth with all solemnity. The victim was invariably fined—generally in wine, which had to be paid at once, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... reasons, I have been obliged to give fictitious names to factories and shops in which I worked; and I have, in most cases, substituted for the names of the streets where the factories were located the names of streets ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... from the cold in modern man. Thus scholars and philosophers of the age do not have recourse to Indian and Greek wisdom in order to become wise and peaceful: the only purpose of their work seems to be to earn them a fictitious reputation for learning in their own time. The naturalists endeavour to classify the animal outbreaks of violence, ruse and revenge, in the present relations between nations and individual men, as immutable laws of nature. Historians are anxiously engaged in proving that ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... shifted to another end of the factory. In despair he turned to Ada, the eldest of the little Buttons, who now had reached years of comparative discretion, and strove to interest her in his dreams, veiling his identity under a fictitious name; but Ada, an unimaginative and practical child with a growing family to look after, either listened stupidly or consigned him, in the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... he was a little out of sorts, the suggestions of this story began to take the form in his mind of an imaginary case of circumstantial evidence of which he was the victim. His fancy worked up the details of a fictitious case against himself, which he, although perfectly innocent, could meet with nothing more than his ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... heads fantastically ornamented with the horns of goats or antelopes. The sorcerers were an important element. These rascals, who are the curse of the country, were, as usual, in a curious masquerade with fictitious beards manufactured with a number ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... "Host"—the actual Master Harry Bailly, vintner and landlord of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, was likewise a member of Parliament, and very probably felt as sure of himself in real life as the mimic personage bearing his name does in its fictitious reproduction. And he and his fellows, the "poor and simple Commons"—for so humble was the style they were wont to assume in their addresses to the sovereign,—began to look upon themselves, and to be looked ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... ever wrote father you sent your love to any of his children that should happen to be of the right size. I chanced to be just the right size, so I accepted it, gratefully; I've got it here with me to-night; no, I left it in my other coat," he said merrily, making a fictitious search ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the irreconcilable differences which separate the negro from the European in America. But we may derive some faint notion of them from analogy. France was formerly a country in which numerous distinctions of rank existed, that had been created by the legislation. Nothing can be more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority; nothing more contrary to the instinct of mankind than these permanent divisions which had been established between beings evidently similar. Nevertheless these divisions subsisted for ages; they still subsist in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... The world! base world! to censure gen'rous deeds; You mean, perhaps, my lord, those slaves of fashion, Who barter real for fictitious happiness; Alas! Their judgment is not worth a thought: If I'm approv'd of by the wife and honest, I shall be happy, and despise that world, Where virtue is discourag'd,—vice exalted,— Corruption an adopted cherish'd system, ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... And, finally, affectation cannot last very long, and one day the mask will fall off. Nemo potest personam diu ferre fictam, says Seneca;[1] ficta cito in naturam suam recidunt—no one can persevere long in a fictitious character; for ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... minute and nerve-destroying precision of their housekeeping; their unnecessary overloading of themselves with tasks futile and fictitious; the determination to "appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have their children (their one or two children) particularly spick and span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern civilization has led our women, and through no fault of theirs—"all ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... personage were to meet me now? To imagine Him—as has been too often done—as doing deeds, speaking words, and even worse, entertaining motives, which are not written in the four Gospels, is as unfair morally, as it is illogical critically. It creates a phantom, a fictitious character, and calls that Christ. It makes each writer, each thinker—or rather dreamer—however shallow his heart and stupid his brain—and all our hearts are but too shallow, and all our brains too stupid—the measure of a personage so vast and so unique, that all Christendom for eighteen ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... authority mutually supported each other. But when by the various divisions and mixtures of property, a man's superior came to live at a distance from him, and could no longer give him shelter or countenance, the tie gradually became more fictitious than real: new connections from vicinity or other causes were formed: protection was sought by voluntary services and attachment: the appearance of valor spirit, abilities in any great man, extended his interest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... our own; the real being, the ravager of the oak, has two, inferior, even when put together, to the former, which so plainly perceived the scent of a rose and distinguished it so clearly from any other. The real case will bear comparison with the fictitious. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... was a wary youth. Under ordinary circumstances he would have given a fictitious address to this strange sybil with the prophecy of war; for he had accosted her only in the spirit of fun. But here was the key which he had been seeking, the key to all that had brought him to Bleiberg. Intrigue, adventure, or whatever it ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to that whale, as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail —these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville |
