"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lady,' said Mr Boffin; 'and yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn't abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg'lar brown one. Couldn't abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... happens with these make-believe dudes," he shouted. "That's the kid old Skin Flint Crawford took out of an orphan asylum. He's a kid that old Crawford took up with because he was too mean t' have t' Lord bless him with one o' his own. That's straight, fellers. I was Crawford's ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... compare true humour with the make-believe, a comparison might be drawn between Thady and the servant in Lady Morgan's novel O'Donnell. Rory is the stage Irishman in all his commonest attitudes. But it is better to go straight on, and concern ourselves solely with the work of real literary quality, and Carleton ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... your father. He has fought and beaten men like Neuman. Look at the wheat farmers in my country. Look at the I.W.W. They all fight. Look at the children. They fight even at their games. Their play is a make-believe battle or escaping or funeral or capture. It must be then that some kind of strife was implanted in the first humans and that it ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... would have seemed natural in it. It reminded you after a vague fashion of the scenery suggested to the imagination by some of its details or those of the "Pilgrim's Progress." Sindbad the Sailor carrying the Old Man of the Sea; Giant Despair scowling from a make-believe window in a fictitious castle of eroded sandstone; a roc with wings eighty feet long, poising on a giddy pinnacle to pounce upon an elephant; pilgrim Christian advancing with sword and buckler against a demon ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... year's swallow nest, or proclaiming with much flourish and flutter that they have taken the wren's house, or the tenement of the purple martin; till finally nature becomes too urgent, when all this pretty make-believe ceases, and most of them settle back upon the old family stumps and knotholes in remote fields, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... before they knew it themselves, and certainly before the people discovered that somebody was really being married at last. This, however, was not at all surprising, for the real wedding was very much the same as all the make-believe ones, except that it took a little longer because the King and Queen were not so used to being married as the people ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... threw lumps of soil or apples or potatoes at me now; but he would often make-believe to be about to hurl something, and if he could not get away because of his work he always ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,—a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... features, hands, feet, betray the social grade of the candidates for portraiture. The picture tells no lie about them. There is no use in their putting on airs; the make-believe gentleman and lady cannot look like the genuine article. Mediocrity shows itself for what it is worth, no matter what temporary name it may have acquired. Ill-temper cannot hide itself under the simper of assumed amiability. The querulousness of incompetent complaining natures confesses itself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... maidens on dry land were shrill and out of tune. But for the life of me I couldn't become interested in the sorrow and ecstasy, chiefly metaphysical, of this pair. The scheme is too remote from our days and ways. These young persons were make-believe, after all, and while they sonorously declaimed their passion—hers for a speedy death, his for the new life—under a canopy with mother-of-pearl lining (Reinhardt, too, can be very Teutonic), I didn't believe in them, and, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that has set me writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others it is a painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows it as willingly or unwillingly as you or I follow our ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and suffering in all the land. More longed to make people see that things were wrong; he longed to set the wrong right. So to teach men how to do this he invented a land of Nowhere in which there was no evil or injustice, in which every one was happy and good. He wrote so well about that make-believe land that from then till now every one who read Utopia sees the beauty of More's idea. But every one, too, thinks that this land where everything is right is an impossible land. Thus More gave a new word to our language, and when we think some idea beautiful ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Riders could scarcely gain saddles, and before feet were well in the stirrups, the bronchos had reared and bolted away, only to be reined sharply in and brought back to the ranks. The dogs, too, were mad, tearing after make-believe enemies and worrying one another till there were several curs less for the hunt. Inside the cart circle, men were shouting last orders to women, squaws scolding half-naked urchins, that scampered in the way, and the whole encampment setting up a din that ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... make no concessions to the fact that he is to have two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending, make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Helena Belmont," replied that young woman, serenely. "Besides, I've got the will to be beautiful as well as the outside. Tiny hasn't. I have real audacity, and Ila only a make-believe. Caro shows her cards every time she rolls her eyes, and Mrs. Washington never had a particle of dash. I'm going to be the belle. I'm going to turn the head of ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... anger against his wife for more than a week after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order that he might make progress with her father, but could hardly bring himself to ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... passed the plate full of acorns, which were make-believe sour ginger snaps, you know, and the little animal girls were having a very fine time, indeed. Oh, my, yes, and a bottle of ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... industries they are connected with. Some of them are directors, for example, but they are always paid for their services before there is any distribution of profits. Even when their "work" is quite perfunctory and useless, mere make-believe, like the games of little children, they get paid far more than the actual workers. But there are many people who own stock in the company you work for, Jonathan, who never saw the foundries, who were ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... unnatural, unconvincing. Either he saw Miss Berwynd taking the honors of stardom away from him and generously submerged his own talent in order to enhance her triumph, or it is but another proof of the statement that husband and wife do not make convincing lovers in the realm of the make-believe. It was surely due to no lack of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... it directly, pretending that the reptile was crushing him, fighting his way free of the folds, picking up his club and attacking it in turn, beating the make-believe head with his club, and finally indulging in a war-dance as he jumped round, dragging the imaginary serpent after him, pretending all the while that it was very heavy, before stooping down to smell it, making a grimace, and then throwing ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... while the liking was exceedingly strong on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... a little gal once—long years ago," he said softly, "an' she used to be great on make-believe games. Is this takin' of them ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... of sunlight. He thought that his overwrought nerves were deceiving him, and picked up another handful. It behaved exactly in the same way. It glinted and flashed yellow in a way that no sand could ever do. All at once it dawned upon him. This was no trick of sunlight on wet sand. This was no make-believe of tired nerves. ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... knock-down blow, surely. He was a just man, so far as he knew, and as he studied the situation over he could not blame the girl. In the light of her convincing wrath he comprehended that the sharp things she had said to him in the past were not make-believe-not love taps, but real blows. She had not been coquetting. with him; she had tried to keep him away. She considered herself too good for a hired man. Well, maybe she' was. Anyhow, she had gone out of ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... need not be dwelt upon; but imagine the summer-evening come, and Daniel and the French officer stealing down to the rocky beach. The young sailor showed a deal of doubtful feeling as he saw the tearful energy with which little Bertha parted with her make-believe husband; and when little Doome, who had been let into all the secrets, except the one that Daniel kept to himself—namely, that he was Daniel,—when little Doome crept up to condole with him on the hard case of the newly-married pair, it must be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... monkey was showing a magic lantern without a light, and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her, however, to be there on such good authority, we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother, when we were unexpectedly relieved, by finding it was only a bit of make-believe; for it was now divulged, che questa madre che piangea il suo figlio, was not in fact his personal mother, but "Italy" dressed up like his mother, and gone to Paris on purpose to weep and put garlands on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... conversation, and made obsolete by the human mind outgrowing the childishness that delights in the tales told by grownup children such as novelists and their like! An end to the silly confusion, under the one name of Art, of the tomfoolery and make-believe of our play-hours with the higher methods of teaching men to know themselves! Every artist an amateur, and a consequent return to the healthy old disposition to look on every man who makes art a means of money-getting as a vagabond not to be entertained ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... excessively proud when I first walked the deck of the prize as officer of the watch, though that fellow Snookes would declare that the old quartermaster who kept it with me was my dry-nurse, and that I was a mere make-believe. I know that I kept pacing up and down on the weather side of the quarter-deck with great dignity, looking up at the sails, and every now and then giving a glance at the compass, to assure myself that the man at the helm was steering a proper course. I should like to know ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... balance, uncertain whether to rise or fall; already, close behind you and around you, thick winrows of corpses on battlefields, countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative departments, schemers, thieves everywhere,—cant, credulity, make-believe everywhere. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,—must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... arguments were quite unheeded. Morva's sympathy alone seemed to have any consoling effect upon him. She would kneel beside him with her elbows on his knees, looking up into his face, and with make-believe cheerfulness would reason with a woman's inconsequence, fearlessly deducing results from ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... "You ought to have seen that monkey's face when he bit on those make-believe cherries on Flossie's hat!" and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... allowances for art-in-error. His hand fell heavy only upon those heretics who not merely denied the faith but pretended that artifice was better than nature, that decoration was more than structure, that make-believe was something you could live by as you live by truth. He was not strongest, however, in damnatory criticism. His spirit was too large, too generous to dwell in that, and it rose rather to its full height in his appreciations of the great authors whom ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Phaedr.)), and that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its believing and make-believe nature—a vessel (An untranslatable pun,—dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... she said at last. "When a person is born with absolutely nothing—nothing of the human things a human baby is entitled to—she has to evolve something to live in; a sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all over it to keep prodding away life as it really is. If she didn't the things she had missed would flatten her out into a ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... her face at once. Her eyes were bright, her brows became knitted, her foot tapped the floor. Of course it was all make-believe, this possibility, but it seemed too wonderful to think of —slavery abolished, and through her; and Kingsley Bey, the renegade Englishman, the disgrace ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... cluckin' in the Home Coop." His big hand patted her almost paternally. "Leave cluckin' to hens with families. Do you suppose I'm such a pachydermatous ass that I can't understand that home is a make-believe to a real woman, when—when there isn't even one chicken to tuck under her wing! Worse luck ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... thought she remembered, having been sick once, and she had to lie quietly for some days on the lounge; then was the time she had become so familiar with everything in the room, and she had been allowed to have the shell to play with all the time. She had had her toast brought to her in there, with make-believe tea. It was one of her pleasant memories of her childhood; it was the first time she had been of any importance ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... thought he had broken his ankle. Now of course that would have been a catastrophe indeed, but so was that slip into the German tongue. A kindly Providence saw to it that an alert Tommy had heard, and in a trice those six make-believe English soldiers had been rounded up and were on their way to headquarters. Next morning there was a sunrise party, for those Germans must be taught it isn't ever healthy for ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... great game of make-believe. All sorts of liberties are taken, the clock is put forward or back at the command of the general, a great enemy army is created in the twinkling of an eye, day is turned into night and a regular game of topsy-turvydom indulged in. On ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... live the part of the hero or the heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street. Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the wronged heroine always falls into the ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... further lightened that afternoon when she was made the special messenger to carry to Miss Almira Belt the very lavender and white wrapper which she and Patty had picked out that day when they were doing the make-believe shopping. Marian, of course, told Mrs. Hunt all about it, and as one of the Guild which looked after such things, it had been voted to give Miss Almira some such present, and Mrs. Hunt had gone with Mrs. Perkins to select it. They had all agreed that Marian's choice was such a good ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... his heart with all this testimony. For it was often difficult for him to feel any more certain about the cowboy than he did about his four millionaires, or Sir Galahad, say, or Uncas, or Goliath, or Crusoe. He could revel gloriously in make-believe, yes; but perhaps for this very reason he found himself terribly prone to doubt facts! And as each day went by, he came to wonder more and more about the reality of One-Eye, though the passing time as steadily added romantic touches to the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... like a fairy tale," Rod exclaimed. "But, no, it isn't, either," he mused. "A fairy tale is only a make-believe, while this is really true. It's better than a fairy tale. Isn't it great!" and his eyes sparkled. "But, say, do grandad and ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... Doll over in this chair where she can see us," said Dorothy. "My Doll can eat make-believe things when I have a play party, but we won't pretend that now. We'll ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... Juliet like a make-believe sister of her own, and talked of her at last as a living child. What long moral conversations took place between Juliet and her mother, what admirable remarks did that excellent mother make, referring to sundry small sins of omission and commission ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deny that these words spoken from under the brim of her hat (oh yes, certainly, her head was down—she had put it down) gave me a thrill; for indeed I had never doubted her sincerity. It could never have been, a make-believe despair. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... get really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time—because you know it's all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It's always safe, always ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... cheerful, natural, and entirely sane disposition in body and mind, much resembling, even at its strongest, the temper of well-brought-up children:—too happy to think deeply, yet with powers of imagination by which they can live other lives than their actual ones: make-believe lives, while yet they remain conscious all the while that they are making believe—therefore entirely sane. They are also absolutely contented; they ask for no more light than is immediately around them, and cannot see anything like darkness, but only green and blue, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... twelve years of age have passed the "make-believe" stage of play; they want the "real," but of their own kind and age. After little children have made and played with toys and foreshadowed the needs of the actual home, the time has come for the youth to have his demands, which are not yet the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... mask? I suppose it is lest the world give a wrong meaning to them; but if I had kissed him, the way I used to, I'm sure that Donald would have understood. He knows that I love him as dearly as though I were truly his sister, instead of a make-believe one." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... girl at a theatre—a splendid spectacle, calculated to dazzle and delight imaginative childhood—say to another: "It is nothing but make-believe! That house and garden are only painted. See how they shake! And the women are dressed in paste jewelry, like that our cook-maid wears to parties, and no jeweler would give a cent for them; and the fairies are poor girls, dressed up for the occasion; and the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... they were a flagrant mistranslation of a corrupt and probably interpolated passage. And yet the glory of Handel's music, the glamour of association overcame one. But now that it is cut ruthlessly away from those moments in life when man can least afford any make-believe with himself or his fellows—now that music alone declaims and fathers it—there is the strangest relief! One feels, as I have said, the joy that comes from something difficult and righteous done—in ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and it is hard to make-believe to Him. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hint for another year," murmured Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "We can have a make-believe county fair and charge ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... ceremony of my salutation was over I handed her to a seat, still holding her finger-tips, bowing low just as her own cavaliers used to do in the days when she had half the County at her feet. I love these make-believe ceremonies when I am with her—and then again I truly think she would not be so happy without them. This over I took my place opposite so I could watch her face and the smiles playing across it—that face which the Colonel always said reminded ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that the editor professed to be in love with some lady in the next street, she would have been quite ready to enlist the lady in the next street among her friends that she might thus strengthen her own influence with Mr Broune. For herself such make-believe of an improper passion would be inconvenient, and therefore to be avoided. But that any man, placed as Mr Broune was in the world,—blessed with power, with a large income, with influence throughout all the world around him, courted, feted, feared and almost worshipped,—that he ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... to keep brave and to make the most of her opportunities. Lucille and the young men were so interested in the pretty faces all about them, that they had little time for an English luncheon, and most of their eating was a make-believe. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... good that was! He might go and come as he would, unquestioned, unblamed. He thought with a pitying horror of what his life had previously been—the tangle of small engagements, the silly routine work, in which no one believed; they had all been bound on a kind of make-believe pilgrimage, carrying burdens round and round, and putting them down where they had taken ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cried Joel Jackman, showing signs of growing excitement. "Nothing make-believe about that alarm, let me tell you. There's a genuine fire broken out ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... care of me besides!' said Barnaby. 'Such care, mother! He watches all the time I sleep, and when I shut my eyes and make-believe to slumber, he practises new learning softly; but he keeps his eye on me the while, and if he sees me laugh, though never so little, stops directly. He won't surprise ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... regardless of expense. Under his direction they had often rushed forward to the footlights, pouring into the helpless mass before them repeated volleys of explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe, and, in the opinion of Signor G——, at least, very much inferior to it. Instead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feathered and looped, these irregulars wore huge sombreros, much the worse for time and weather, flapped over their faces. For the velvet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... now going into business, sport, social events, frivolities, make-believe and the deliberate destruction of waste and war could be directed to planning, utilizing, beautifying on the circumferences and at the centers of population concentrations, immense forward strides could be taken in ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... down, and waved both ears backward and forward, and made a low bow to a make-believe crowd of people, only, of course, ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... interior, with a book for company. She liked Cowperwood's pictures, his jades, his missals, his ancient radiant glass. From talking with Aileen she realized that the latter had no real love for these things, that her expressions of interest and pleasure were pure make-believe, based on their value as possessions. For Stephanie herself certain of the illuminated books and bits of glass had a heavy, sensuous appeal, which only the truly artistic can understand. They unlocked dark dream moods and pageants for her. She responded to them, lingered over them, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... had already begun to know him no more, and because of the sham affliction with which they were all supplementing the true. It was she who shed the truest tears, but it was she also who rebelled most at the make-believe which convention forced upon her; and the usual sense of hopeless exasperation was strong in her mind. After a while she threw off the shawl from her feet and the cushions that supported her shoulders, and got up and walked about the room, looking out upon the afternoon sunshine ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... way to talk to 'em!" cried Dr. Rollinson, who had overheard the whole of this conversation, and who now appeared with his broad figure, his gouty legs, and his gruff chuckle. "Books are very well for make-believe, but when it comes to downright earnest, use a tongue of your own—eh?" and he clapped the boy kindly on the shoulder. "Yes, yes, she'll marry you fast enough when she sees you making eyes at some other pretty girl! Don't tell me! ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... delusions, so they give them full measure by borrowing their own phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication more than food, and so they try to pass themselves off as an intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman has no need for any make-believe." ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... pretended or make-believe. There was something of the roar of the lioness in her last words. Did you ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... going faithfully once a month to call on Margery Marshall. And these visits were rather pleasant than otherwise. Margery was going through the paper doll fever. Lydia always brought Florence Dombey with her and the two girls carried on an elaborate game of make-believe, the intricacies of which were entirely too much for Elviry Marshall, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... make-believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him. I hope you like my ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... passed with wonderful quickness. It was very exciting; but none of them, except Robert, could feel all the time that this was real deadly dangerous work. To the others, who had only seen the camp and the besiegers from a distance, the whole thing seemed half a game of make-believe, and half a splendidly distinct and perfectly safe dream. But it was only now and then that Robert ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to the make-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear for you! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotel room, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for just throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's because I'm too tired, Marcy. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... compliment to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... creek," said the Little Giant, "a creek mebbe a leetle bigger than them make-believe creeks we've crossed. I like the plains. They kinder git hold o' you with thar sweep an' thar freedom, but I ain't braggin' any 'bout thar water courses. I've seen some o' the maps in which the rivers cut big an' black an' bold ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... came to the downs, the lamp-post, and the brushwood-pile, which was safety. Very often dreams would break up about them in this fashion, and they would be separated, to endure awful adventures alone. But the most amusing times were when he and she had a clear understanding that it was all make-believe, and walked through mile-wide roaring rivers without even taking off their shoes, or set light to populous cities to see how they would burn, and were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their rambles. Later in the night they were sure to suffer for this, either ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... in its sudden revelation of a gulf of strange emotion deep within him. Whatever had happened to Riggs had not been too much for Roy Beeman. Helen remembered hearing her uncle say that a real Westerner hated nothing so hard as the swaggering desperado, the make-believe gunman who pretended to sail under the true, wild, and reckoning colors of ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Tom that he was about to fling a volley of abuse to the enemy, but Harry checked him. Harry was always the first to look at a thing from more points than one, and now he said in an undertone, "I expect it is only some nonsensical make-believe. Yaspard is a baby in some ways, I am told; and he never exchanges a word with gentlemen's sons—lives horribly alone, you know. Let's humour him a bit, and see ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... things in Roman villas. The Italians have always had, at all periods, a great fondness for statues and mosaics. Not very particular about the quality, they made up for it by the quantity. And when they could not treat themselves to the real thing, it was good enough to give themselves the make-believe in painting. I can imagine easily enough Verecundus' house, painted in fresco from top to bottom, inside and out, like those houses at Pompeii, or the modern ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... partings, great things were happening—terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment's respite was allowed, a moment's make-believe, and then again the profound and reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to its liking, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... place in satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy to be other than satiric. We know what happened when the dramatists gave way: there followed, Hazlitt says, 'those do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath.' These in place of 'the court, the gala day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry, and Charles the Second!' And all because people would not keep their ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... 'low no beatin' on his Niggers 'cept what he done his own self, and dat was pow'ful little. In hot weather chillun played on de crick and de best game of all was to play lak it was big meetin' time. White chillun loved to play dar too wid de little slave chillun. Us would have make-believe preachin' and baptizin' and de way us would sing was a sight. One of dem songs us chillun loved de best went ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... that, by tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his hair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head. But gradually overcoming this physical ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... young chimps, orangs or monkeys seize each other and wrestle, fall, and roll over and over, indefinitely. They make great pretenses of biting each other, but it is all make-believe. My favorite orang-utan pet in Borneo loved to play at biting me, but whenever the pressure became too strong I would say chidingly, "Ah! Ah!" and his jaws would instantly relax. He loved to butt me in the chest with his head, make wry faces, and make funny noises with ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... backwards. And when they do, she catches them by the heels and turns everything topsy-turvy all day long; but when you get out of bed toes first, I'll be there to start you on a pleasant day and Witchy Crosspatch will have to return to Make-Believe Land and hide her head!" "Sure enough, I did crawl out of bed backwards this ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... we used to go into raptures of pious indignation over the make-believe sentiment of the summer man and the summer girl? I recollect your saying once that it was wicked; a desecration of things which ought to be held sacred. It isn't so very long ago, but I think we were both very ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... loved their dolls, and one of the greatest joys connected with the adored experience was the make-believe bath and the dressing of the make-believe baby; so now, when we are the happy possessors of real live dolls, we should go about the task with the same lightheartedness of a score of years ago when we hugged, kissed, bathed, and dressed our dolls. There ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... lumber-room, hanging upon some pegs high upon the wall, a row of old bonnets, and a black one among them. Other black things could be had for the hunting. I was a fanciful child, too used to conjuring up weird situations and make-believe happenings to be easily scared by what other children might dread. Nor was I then, or ever, a physical coward. As soon as the idea of visiting that upper room came to me I acted upon it. Tripping up the narrow stairs, I pushed hard against ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... tragedy so often for the poor mother compelled by the custom to rise in her weakness and even neglect her new-born baby, in order to do double work and to tempt the appetite of her lord after his make-believe pangs of childbirth, was one sign that primitive consciousness found the new knowledge of double parentage ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a laugh, slap him on the back, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... of make-believe in his composition. He shrank from praise, and was obviously anxious not to appear more reverential or wise or devoted than he knew himself to be. He even used, because it was natural to him, a rugged style of expression when speaking of things or persons or institutions which for the most ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... required of him in the presence of a man of Knight's proclivities—were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it—took in the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the face of things ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... stars looked at him in her direct serious fashion. "I fink I tan't sell you all 'at, but I'll make you a moon to go wiv the stars—not a weally twuly one, jus' a make-believe moon," she added in ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... he were a well-known connoisseur," I faltered, "with the pride of one who has handled the best gems? He would know that the deception would be soon discovered and that it would not do for him to fail to recognize it for what it was, when the make-believe was ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... majority from the administration of their own affairs can be justified by anything; though I hold that the worst form of graft in office is hardly less justifiable: that is, at least, one of the people picking their pockets. But it is the universal make-believe behind all the practical virtue of the state that constitutes the English monarchy a realm of faery. The whole population, both the great and the small, by a common effort of the will, agree that there ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... dear country, but I want to keep her here a little while until she can readjust herself. You must not think, Mr. Singleton, that she has no feeling; you have no idea of the depths of that child's nature; they are unfathomable! It is my task to encourage her in frivolity and the make-believe she loves—hence our absurdities at the table. She's the drollest child, but with wonderful understanding. And at times it's not easy to keep the divine spark of play alive ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm—don't be offended—I'm your creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified. Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of the old stock moving away, and their places being filled at the bottom of the social ladder by foreigners, and by immigration of residents and "summer boarders" of the "world's people." Above all, the powerful ideal of Quakerism was shattered. The community had lost the "make-believe" at which it had played for a century in perfect unity. With it went the moral and social authority of the Meeting. Two Meetings mutually contradicting could never express the ideal of Quakerism, that asserted the inspiration of all and every man ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... added Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe, "we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in the breaks of ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... the plates, and looked to their being clean. The Indian woman then asked him to go and draw some water from a spring about a hundred yards from the hut; and off he went, led by the children of our hostess. His young guides, completely naked, and their heads shaved, rode on bamboo-canes as make-believe horses, and pranced along in front ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... that this was necessary, I was met with the oracular reply that though it wasn't talked about, such an arrangement would be found "in every office in London." Of a piece with this half-reality, half make-believe, with which, as I say, Townsend transformed his quiet life into one long and thrilling adventure, was a remark which I remember his making in the course of a most innocent country walk: "If the country people knew the secret of the foxglove root it would be impossible to live ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... was all make-believe, so I half closed my eyes and did not move. The chattering stopped. The little fellow looked about curiously, drew his mouth up into a pucker, whistled once or twice to make sure I was not awake, and reached out his bony arm for a few crumbs of cake ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... case is just as bad and just as tragic," said the niece, dispassionately; "nearly everything about me is conventional make-believe. I'm not a good dancer, and no one could honestly call me good-looking, but when I go to one of our dull little local dances I'm conventionally supposed to 'have a heavenly time,' to attract the ardent homage of the local cavaliers, and to go home with my head awhirl with ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... is not better. I occupied a seat in his 'eligible pew' last Sunday. The lath and plaster walls pretended to be Caen stone. The cheap deal was all 'make-believe' oak. The brick pillars were 'blocked off,' and unblushingly claimed to be granite. As I entered, I observed that the pulpit stood under the arch of a recess, roofed with carved stone, with clustered ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... couldn't be," said Bunny. "Mr. Friday was only make-believe, and we were only pretending, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... Manx blood in her—but my father accepted U.T.'s assurance with the utmost confidence. His chivalrous nature, more deeply tinged than hers with Celtic tenderness, or the very finest kind of Celtic make-believe (Anglice—humbug; oh those English!), had no difficulty in accepting U.T.'s "passionately." Passion in U.T.! Well, to us it was a splendid joke. I sometimes wonder whether the vicar, too, at times, had lucid intervals ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... lurking—"was in Babylon and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anything of the sort after this Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes from Altiora Bailey! Remington!—it's foolery. It's prigs at play. It's make-believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of things, aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything of life at all, shirk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean rooms and talk big over your bumpers of lemonade while the Night ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... minute to her on some pretext or other, and then kept him at her side with long whispering conversations in which her cheek came in close proximity with his. It was not so easy as it seemed to make a conquest of Moro, although it was only a make-believe. He was not at all churlish; on the contrary, he had a just reputation of being gentlemanly and courteous with ladies; but when ladies stand in the way of billiards or tresillo there is nobody six miles round so cross and uncivil. Amalia was a great ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... if the expected "guest" were one in fact, as well as name. It was fun to be playing a game of make-believe, in ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... that fact that makes me believe that he cares. Flirtation is an English art, not a French art, my dear Sylvia. A Frenchman either loves—and when he loves he adores on his knees—or else he has no use, no use at all, for what English people mean by flirtation—the make-believe of love! I should feel much more at ease if the Count ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the brain, we would be of opinion that Mr. Gough's cranium contained a greater quantity than that of any other living man. When speaking before an audience, he can weep when he pleases; and the tears shed on these occasions are none of your make-believe kind—none of your small drops trickling down the cheeks one at a time;—but they come in great showers, so as even to sprinkle upon the paper which he holds in his hand. Of course, he is not alone in ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... undoubtedly was, this view left certain doubts still lingering in my mind. The child's instinct soon discovered that her mother and I were playfellows who felt no genuine enjoyment of the game. She dismissed her make-believe guests without ceremony, and went back with her doll to the favorite play-ground on which I had met her—the landing outside the door. No persuasion on her mother's part or on mine succeeded in luring her back to us. We were ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... poor make-believe, hung milky pale behind cloud strata above the cramped city. Wet and draughty were the gable-fringed streets, and now and then there fell a sort of soft hail, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... fixed directly on the preacher, but surely the boy must be listening, or he would never be so quiet. Grace, however, was in the secret, and knew better. Walter had confided to her that he had got such "a jolly make-believe" to think about in church. The great chandelier which hung from the centre of the church ceiling, with its poles, and chains, and brackets, was transformed in his imagination to a ship's mast and rigging, where he climbed and swung, and performed marvellous feats, ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... will the insurance be worth, ag'in Halifax, or Bermuda? I'll put my life on the channel, and would care more for your ship, Miles, than my own. If you love me, stand on, and let us see if that lubberly make-believe two-decker dare follow." ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... if it was meltin'," and Mikie drew back a dirty hand he had reached over toward a big empty clam shell. That shell was the make-believe dish of ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite must inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the truth versus make-believe. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... she said briskly. "What a splendid idea! Of course the President will know where he is and will send it to him. Let me think—we learned all that in school and had to address make-believe letters to him—" Taking a sheet of paper she wrote in ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... They had a steamboat, you know, to carry over the telegraph from England to France; but we haven't got a steamer—not even a plank to make-believe one. Cousin Sam says that a good workman can do his work with almost any tools that come to hand. As we have no tools at all, we will improve on that and go to work without them. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... perception of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken |
