"Chimera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be faithful to a supreme good too symbolically presented breeds a superstitious repugnance toward everything naturally prized. So also an artificial scepticism can regard all experience as deceptive, by contrasting it with the chimera of an absolute reality. As an absolute reality would be indescribable and without a function in the elucidation of phenomena, so a supreme good which was good for nobody would be without conceivable value. Respect for such an idol is a dialectical superstition; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... thing in which it can discover that necessary existence is contained; for, from this circumstance alone, it will discern that the idea of an all-perfect Being has not been framed by itself, and that it does not represent a chimera, but a true and immutable nature, which must exist since it can only be ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... existed, and that Mme. de Combray occupied Donnay at that date, M. de la Sicotiere naturally mistook one Tournebut for the other, did not understand a single word of Moisson's story, which he treated as a chimera, and in his book acknowledges my ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... begins to operate upon this chimera,' I thought. I frowned at her and sat down, worn out with the walking ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the end. Some over-zealous Irishmen assured the Boers that, in the event of a South African war, their fellow-countrymen in the United States would invade Canada and involve Great Britain in an imbroglio over the Atlantic in order to save British America. For a few weeks the chimera buoyed up the Boers, but when nothing more than an occasional newspaper rumour was heard concerning it the rising in Ashanti was then looked upon as being the hoped-for boon. The departure of the three delegates to Europe and America was an encouraging sign ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... are derived from the imagination. God is a chimera; and the qualities, attributed to him, reciprocally destroy ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... appreciate his concurrence or hostility. He was, I admit, a troublesome ally; for he aspired to all things, and complained of all. On a level with the rarest spirits and most exalted imaginations, it was his chimera to fancy himself equal to the greatest masters in the art of government, and to feel bitterly hurt if he were not looked upon as the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton. Prudent men did not lend themselves to this complaisant idolatry; ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dat specimen of botanical horrorforbilicalness? I done hoped I could tell ma friends w'en I returned dat we done was successful, an' cure some ob dem ob craziness in de haid by applyin' some ob de bypunktater. If we don't find it, den dey all say we been follerin' a chimera-infantum—in odder words, dat we needs some ob ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Almost all of his works unveil a murder, suicide, or madness. Moreover, the author, who shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions in speaking ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... kills her. Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is made of sterner stuff than her mother. And, with her brother, she toils to pay her father's debts and to keep the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies, still absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an endeavour to formulate the marvellous revelation which his disordered brain persuades him he ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... great trouble in modifying or arranging the association of ideas which arise spontaneously in the soul, he will suffer himself to be ruled by them, in place of exercising rational domination over them; he will pursue every chimera; he will trust every impulse; he will but dream, even when he tries to think; and will be of a weak and fickle, but obstinate and self-opinionated, intellect. His whole exhaustive logic will consist in clothing in exact and reiterated assertions the heterogeneous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not one of those dreamers who confide their destiny to the wings of a chimera. Before undertaking any thing, I resolved to inform myself. Alas! at the first words that I heard, all my fine dreams took wings. I heard that she was rich, very rich. I was told that her father was one of those men whose rigid probity surrounds itself with austere and ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... movements. He saw something gruesome among them—a misshapen figure, decked with tapes and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which "Lessing" was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the worst: it was the Homeric Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it was Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The tout-ensemble was Lessing. This discovery caused him to shriek with terror: he waked, and read no more. In sooth, Great Master, why have you ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Mr. Dixon no less deserves honor for withstanding the prejudice that Bacon's moral character was unquestionably settled as base, and for daring to investigate anew the testimony on which the judgment was founded. And there can be no doubt that he has dispelled the horrible chimera, that the same man can be thoroughly malignant or mean in his moral nature and thoroughly beneficent or exalted in his intellectual nature. While we do not doubt that depravity and intelligence can ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... with happiness. The person of whom I speak, seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the wild doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet—of exemplifying, by individual instance, what has been deemed the mere chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison, I fancy, that I have seen refuted the dogma—that in man's physical and spiritual nature, lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of Bliss. An intimate and anxious examination ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and quite herself again, "Wally, let's be friends. Just that and nothing more. Dear, good, companionable friends, as we used to be, long years ago, before this madness seized us—this chimera of—of love!" ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said ...
— The Republic • Plato
... do. It is woman's work all over the world, far more so than a hundred other occupations they now eagerly seek. Their repugnance to the position itself is the sticking point. This repugnance is based upon a chimera. They are, in any position in which they labor for wages, 'servants' in as complete a sense as if they labored for wages in household employments. Far be it from me to say a word to lower that just and honorable pride which is the birthright of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... France,[21] and its effects are felt most in the very land of the exile;—suppose all this, and then say if any thing could be more untoward for the hopes of the banished man, or furnish his adversaries with stronger arguments against the restoration of his fortune? But pshaw! this must be a chimera! If true, I should have known ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... assertion, it will be sufficient to give a slight sketch of the different views and opinions of the gold-makers, Rosicrucians, manufacturers of astralian salts, drops of life, and tinctures of gold, hunters after the philosopher's stone, and other equally absurd chimera. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... confident that the treasure had been hidden out of spite, and not really made away with, and that some day it would be found, he knew that this opinion would be regarded by the world at large as a chimera of ardent youth, and that Martin Holt for one would bid him lay aside all such vain and idle dreams, and strive by steady perseverance in business to win for himself a modest independence. Only to the young, the ardent, the lovers of imaginative romance, had the notion ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hours, not ever to be lived again. They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once—when, like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and peer at the chimera that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of the gradual decline of his practice, as he had devoted himself more and more to the dream of his life—this discovery of a vital fluid which should repair the waste of all disease, and with the indulgence in his chimera ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... "What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... long hours now has the world-bedlam roared: call it the world-chimera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... men. Let us not impose our petty and commonplace ideas on these extraordinary movements so far above our every-day life. Let us continue to admire the "morality of the gospel"—let us suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was its soul; but do not let us believe that with the simple ideas of happiness, or of individual morality, we stir the world. The idea of Jesus was much more profound; it was the most revolutionary idea ever formed in a ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... her two diplomatists was not, however, a sufficient warning to Madame des Ursins. Ever in pursuit of a position, which had become nothing more than a chimera after having served as a lure on the part of the English, she relied for success upon the persistent and obstinate will of Philip V., who made it a question of amour propre for himself as much as a just recompense ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... but though this country be reserved, it is no longer either unknown or neglected by the Dutch, which is a point of very great consequence. To the other nations of Europe, the southern continent is a chimera, a thing in the clouds, or at least a country about which there are a thousand doubts and suspicions, so that to talk of discovering or settling it must be regarded as an idle and empty project: ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... make them the laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... founded his hopes of fortune on the entire demoralisation of the prince committed to his care. Inspired by the genius of vice, he divined and encouraged the vices of others, and above all of his master. He taught him to believe that virtue is but a mask worn by hypocrisy, a chimera on which no one can rely in the business of life; that religion is a political invention, of use only to the lower people; that all men are cheats and deceivers, and pretended rectitude a mere cover for intended villany. Madame, the mother of the Regent, early ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... advantage would result to our age, if we three spent three years together." Men who, without boasting, have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly: the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things, then no chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only to well how in our untrammelled times, through ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... time; the explosion resounded, the earth gaped, the smoke which rushed through the large fissures obscured the sky; the sea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from the grotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried the bark out twenty toises; the rocks cracked to their base, and separated like blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault was carried up toward heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-colored and green ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... by wandering bodies of mutinous sepoys. The order-book each evening, reminding us of the danger, inculcated strict vigilance on picket and on guard. So long did this last without any attack being made that the shadowy expectation of what never occurred became our bugbear, a chimera which haunted ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... of The Human Comedy was at first as a dream to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman's face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... chimera, and imagine now that which is not? Nay, I will really exemplify that which I say, in that Proteus and Versipelles, the Archbishop of Spalato, for, in the narration of the passages which were betwixt his Majesty and him, collected by the Bishop ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... ill-being and repeated experiments to determine the remedies (des experiences reiterees de la societe). In any case we cannot look forward to the attainment of an unchangeable or unqualified felicity. That is a mere chimera "incompatible with the nature of a being whose feeble machine is subject to derangement and whose ardent imagination will not always submit to the guidance of reason. Sometimes to enjoy, sometimes to suffer, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Nell's father. But Pan Tarkowski, though he was an exceptionally self-controlled person, in the first moments after the receipt of the despatch, knelt in prayer and began to beseech God that the intelligence should not prove to be a delusion, a morbid chimera, bred from sorrow, longing, and pain. Why, they had both toiled so hard to learn that the children were even alive! Mr. Rawlinson had despatched to the Sudan whole caravans, while Pan Tarkowski, disguised as an Arab, had penetrated with the greatest ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... bewilderment; above him only the boundless dome of heaven, around him only endless mountain ranges! Dazed by the strangeness, the isolation of the scene, he began for an instant to doubt his sanity; was this a reality or a chimera of his own imagination? But only for an instant, for with his first movement a large collie had bounded to his side and now began licking his hands and face with the most joyful demonstrations. There was something soothing and reassuring in the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... due the dead if they are but dust; no cenotaph should be reared to preserve for posterity the memory of their achievements if those who come after them are to be only their successors in annihilation and extinction. If in this world only we have hope and consciousness duty must be a chimera; our pleasures and our passions should be the guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the Alps. That also is a mode, we need not say of intoxication, but of insobriety. Thus also a man walks in a strong sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial meditations. And whether he be really so clever or so strong as he supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera while it lasts. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comes again. I kept my pleasant secret for a long time, but at last I let it slip, and committed myself fortunately, to but one person, and that my daughter; and, even so, I hardly think she understood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque and infernal chimera that ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... overwhelmed him with agony and a dread of the future, mingling with his slavish terrors of a material Gehenna, and stirring up his turbid thoughts until they drove him to the verge of madness. But the inward chimera of riotous passions was too fierce for the weak human reason, and while he hated himself he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... that some would fain postpone this era, Reluctant as all placemen to resign Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera, For they have passed Life's equinoctial line: But then they have their claret and Madeira, To irrigate the dryness of decline; And County meetings, and the Parliament, And debt—and what not, for their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... greatly encouraged in this belief when Monsieur, who affected to regard his return to France as a mere chimera, subsequently consented to sign a treaty with Spain, by which he pledged himself not to enter into any agreement with Louis XIII, be the conditions what they might; and, in the event of a war between the two nations, to attach himself to the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... night Ivan, left alone, dazed and tremulous at the fortune now hovering within his grasp, laid upon the altar of his gods his first fruits of success.—Long, long after, when the chimera had become a form radiantly real, Ivan looked back upon this night as perhaps the happiest of his life. That it should be spent in solitude, seemed to him most natural. It would have been abnormal to him ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... perhaps so much the better, considering the Subject; tho' he forgets not Poetical Ornaments, where there's occasion, if he does not lean a little to Sannazarius's Error; for he talks of the Gorgons and Sphinxes, the Centaurs and Hydra's and Chimera's, though much more sparingly and modestly than the other. He has the happiest beginning that perhaps is to be found in any Poem, and by mingling his Proposition and Invocation, has the advantage of placing one of the noblest Thoughts in the World in the first ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... repine at, death. But doctrines on this occasion, any other than that of living well, are the most insignificant and most empty of all the labours of men. None but a tragedian can die by rule, and wait till he discovers a plot, or says a fine thing upon his exit. In real life, this is a chimera; and by noble spirits, it will be done decently, without the ostentation of it. We see men of all conditions and characters go through it with equal resolution: and if we consider the speeches of the mighty philosophers, heroes, law-givers, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... readily in the middle of the night, and proceeded at once to the wharf or station of our sky-sailer. Ah, how shall I describe my sensations on first beholding this most wonderful achievement of the age, and thus satisfying myself that it was an actual existence, and not the mere chimera of a diseased brain? There she sat like a majestic swan, floating, as it were, in the pure empyrean, and crowned with a diadem of stars. The Moon, Arcturus, and the Pleiades might well all make obeisance to her, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... is the Chian's vessel. I recognize the vine tree and the image of the Bromian god; and surely that other one is the Chimera under Uliades, the Samian. They come hither, the Ionian with them, to harangue against ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... and the disbandment of the Sikh army. And, lo, the Khalsa was as a tale that is told, its clang and clash of warlike achievements a thing that could be no more, its Holy War transformed by failure into a foolish chimera, and the only thing that lived was a memory lingering in quiet souls of ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... of the ebbing sea, They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand, And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the black devil ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Pope's-Concordat, pretending to be a reestablishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, 'la vaccine de la religion;' his ceremonial coronations, consecrations by the old Italian chimera in Notre Dame there; 'wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it but the half million who had died to put an end to all that!' Cromwell's inauguration was by the sword and Bible; what we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and Bible were borne before him, without any chimera. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the experiments may become more intelligent; that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "Annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably have been ready to join in the prayer, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... an inherent necessity and an irresistible tendency to progress is a chimera. The progress of mankind is a task. It is something to which the worthy human spirit is called upon to make contribution. The unworthy never hear the call. Progress is not a natural necessity. It is an ethical obligation. It is a task which has been fulfilled by ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot: and why might I not come that way from the boat, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... composed of young fellows who have been deceived, or have deceived themselves. They mistake a fancy for a vocation, and impelled by a homicidal fatality, they die, some the victims of a perpetual fit of pride, others worshippers of a chimera. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... without their being wholly imaginary? The facts, as they exist in the historian's mind, are necessarily subjective; that is one of the reasons given for refusing to recognise history as a science. But subjective is not a synonym of unreal. A recollection is only an image; but it is not therefore a chimera, it is the representation of a vanished reality. It is true that the historian who works with documents has no personal recollections of which he can make direct use; but he forms mental images on the model of his own recollections. He assumes that ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... ideas which had directed them in their profound studies, or ignorant of the facts on which they were founded, distorted all the conclusions that flowed from them by the introduction of a strange and novel chimera. They pretended that this universe, these heavens, these stars, this sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and applying to this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from the works of art, they raised an edifice of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... view, Henry's well-known project of expelling the House of Austria from all its possessions, and dividing the spoil among the European powers, deserves the title of a chimera, which men have so liberally bestowed upon it; but did it merit that appellation in the second? It had never entered into the head of that excellent monarch, in the choice of those who must be the instruments of his designs, to reckon ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... saw dancing in the vineyard, as he took his evening rest on the hillside. They have all fled back into the impenetrable shade whence they came; our minds are free; and if social equity is not a chimera, Marie Antoinette was the protagonist of the most barbarous and execrable ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... not that the paralogism is in such or such places of the Ethique, it is everywhere.' "(16) In this impatient judgment, Father Malebranche uttered more truth than he could very well perceive; the paralogism is truly everywhere, because this whole edifice of words, "this frightful chimera," is really assumed in the arbitrary definition of the term substance. We might say with equal truth, that the fallacy of Malebranche's scheme is also everywhere; for although it stops short of the consequences so sternly deduced by Spinoza, it sets out from the same distorted ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... gifted with arts, and adorned with graces; that she should choose me, me for the partner of her fortune; her affections; and her life! It cannot be. Yet, if it were; if your guesses should—prove—Oaf! madman! To indulge so fatal a chimera! ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... laws of nature, whether we can trace them in the alternate ebb and flow of the ocean, in the measured path of comets, or in the mutual attractions of multiple stars, alike increases our sense of the calm of nature, while the chimera so long cherished by the human mind in its early and intuitive contemplations, the belief in a "discord of the elements," seems gradually to vanish in proportion as science extends her empire. General views lead us habitually to consider each organism as a part of the entire creation, and to ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... reserve for dangerous Occasions, or to sell it at a dear Rate. This wonderful Thing, is called the secret Thrust. I don't know whether this Error proceeded from those who have not learned, or from the Chimera of some self-conceited Masters, who have sold to ignorant Scholars, some Thrusts as infallible, of their own Contrivance, as ridiculous and dangerous as the Simplicity of the Scholar and the Knavery of ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... breath, standing rooted to the spot. What I saw staggered belief. Was it only a chimera of my unbalanced ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... bank of national credit, supported by public funds and secured by Parliament, be a chimera or impossible thing? And if not, what would follow from the supposal of such ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... midst of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, as I was working at my shop down-town with my men, that all this might be a chimera of my own, and that the foot might be the print of my own boot as I had left it in the soil some days before when I was looking at my melons. This cheered me up a little, too. I considered that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod and where I ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... generals upon considering again whether they should march to the relief of Casale, but the chimera of the Germans put them by, and so they took up quarters in Piedmont. They took several small places from the Duke of Savoy, making advantage of the consternation the duke's subjects were in on the death of their prince, and spread themselves from the seaside to the banks ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... justified in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;—but I have no idea of being pleased with the chimera."] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator breaks out in a perfect tempest of undying efforts. It seeks its centre ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... do believe, Murray, that God will work a modern miracle in favor of America! My dear friend, I wish you would abandon this vain chimera of your imagination, and let common sense and reason convince you of the ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... disputation. I have learned from bitter experience that merely logical forms of argumentation do not satisfy the hungry soul. The rigid processes of Idealism annihilated the external world; and Hume proved that Mind was a like chimera; yet who was ever seriously converted by their incontrovertible reasoning? I have ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... time Balzac's relations were becoming more and more discontented with his doings, as well as with the general aspect of his affairs. Honore was evidently pursuing a chimera, and because of his illusions, many burdens were imposed on them. Madame de Balzac the principal sufferer, was tired of acting as custodian at the Rue Fortunee, where she was expected to teach Francois how ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... property and other material interests of the country, and they will adopt them readily. You will hear no more said about slavery or platforms. They will never permit this Government, which has contributed so much to their wealth and prosperity, to be sacrificed to a technicality, a chimera. The people of New England know how to take care of themselves. Give them a chance, and they will settle all these points of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... footman, being out of his mind, invented this mad story of Trevanion's illness, frightened Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his own chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the other. I, having heard from Trevanion, and knowing he could not have been ill when the servant left him, set off, as was natural in so old a friend of the family, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Idalia had crossed the illuminated circle of the consul's little world, and was gone. Save for the tiny cloud of smoke that was left hanging over the brim of the sea, she might have been an immaterial thing, a chimera of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... infermo talor, ch'in sogno scorge Drago, o cinta di fiamme alta Chimera, Sebben sospetta, o in parte anco s'accorge Che simulacro sia non forma vera, Pur desia di fuggir, tanto gli porge Spavento la sembianza orrida e fera: Tale il timido amante appien non crede Ai falsi inganni: e pur ne teme, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland, and others, to whom he evidently went for political purposes, and with offers of his aid, through the foreknowledge and spiritual intercourse by which he thought himself favoured, yet he still cherished the hope of promotion by such visionary follies. That chimera of the imagination, the invention of the philosopher's stone, still haunted him, and he did not yet despair of one day becoming a ruler among princes, the supreme arbiter and depositary ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... an abrupt way, with his eye wandering over the ceiling as if he were following the flight of a chimera, he would say: ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... having the same influence as the impressions of the memory, or the conclusions of the judgment, is received on the same footing, and operates with equal force on the passions. A present impression and a customary transition are now no longer necessary to enliven our ideas. Every chimera of the brain is as vivid and intense as any of those inferences, which we formerly dignifyed with the name of conclusions concerning matters of fact, and sometimes as the present impressions of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... impossible love; the griffons bore to him women with magical eyes; the Albanians danced with elastic feet; he heard the shrill call of the Psyllians, luring the serpents to death; the column of Panchaia unveiled its mysteries; the Hyperboreans the reason of their fear of life, and on the wings of the chimera he set out again in search of that continent which haunted antiquity and which lay ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... man, Tindaro, have charge of the chambers of all three. My maid, Misia, and Filomena's maid, Licisca, will keep in the kitchen, and with all due diligence prepare such dishes as Parmeno shall bid them. Lauretta's maid, Chimera, and Fiammetta's maid, Stratilia we make answerable for the ladies' chambers, and wherever we may take up our quarters, let them see that all is spotless. And now we enjoin you, one and all alike, as you value our favour, that ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... individual, as an alien being distinguished from the real individual, which is the chimera, the dream, and the postulate of Christianity, is under democracy sensual reality, the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... were deities who performed special services to the greater gods, like the Horae; and monsters, offspring of gods, like the gorgons, chimera, the dragon of the Hesperides, the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the centaurs, the sphinx, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... presentiment was then realized." His love was unfortunate. Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person with whom he would have esteemed it the highest felicity of his life to have entered into closer ties; but it was vain to think of it, being almost an impossibility! a chimera! and yet his feelings remained the same as the very first day he had seen her! He added, "that never before had he found such harmony! but no declaration had ever been made, not being able to prevail on himself to do so." This conversation took place in Sept. 1816, at Helenenthal, in Baden, and ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... not injury is his province. Strange and terrible chimera! Yet it would not be suddenly dismissed. It was surely no vulgar agency that gave this form to my fears. He to whom all parts of time are equally present, whom no contingency approaches, was the author of that spell which now seized upon me. Life was dear to me. No ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... republics, are we willing to split on the same rock on which we have seen them shipwrecked? Are we willing to give our enemies such a triumph as to fulfil their prophecy and convince the world that self-government is impracticable—a mere chimera—and that man is fit only to be a slave to his fellow man? Are we willing to teach the nations of the earth to despair, and resign themselves at once to the power that crushes them? Shall we forfeit all the bright honors that we have hitherto won by our example, and now admit by our ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... you beforehand, young man, that you could not believe me; this seems a dream, a chimera to you!... and to me, too!... and yet the grades and the honors I obtained were no illusions; those soldiers I led to the cannon's mouth, those redoubts stormed, those flags won, those victories with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... piratical Saracens that honeycombed the clifts, or yet, again, taking a hand at the nets! Sometimes he grew very lonely; for without a woman, either of one's blood or of one's choice, life holds little. Ah, that woman in the mask, that chimera of a night, that fancy of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of the task of classifying natural objects differentiated by fixed natural laws as compared with the task of classifying the products of the creative and imaginative faculties as applied to the useful arts. The chimera and other animal monsters occur only as figments of the mind. Zoological classification does not have to classify combinations of birds, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, nor does it deal in the way of classification with the parts of animals, nor ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... of Poseidon, who sprung from the body of Medusa when Perseus swooped off her head, and who with a stroke of his hoof broke open the spring of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, and mounted on whom Bellerophon slew the Chimera, and by means of which he hoped, if he had not been thrown, to ascend to heaven, as Pegasus did alone, becoming thereafter a constellation in the sky; this is the winged horse upon whose back poets, to the like disappointment, hope ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... region, in fact, from Zalathna to Verespatak abounded in that precious metal which some fool or other has called "a mere chimera," and the gold mining was farmed out to private individuals, the yearly output from the shafts being twelve hundredweights. These private diggers are bound to deliver the gold they obtain to the minting towns at Abradbanya or ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... A thing just like a Woman Friend; It walkt and lookt with wondrous Majesty, Had Eyes that kill'd, and Graces deck'd her Face; But when she talk'd, mad as the Winds she grew, Chimera in the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... bright and happy by her bare presence, this beautiful and unselfish young creature was shocked at the misery she was sowing around her, and all for something her judgment told her would prove a chimera. And again she asked herself was she brave enough, and selfish enough, to defy her father and her godfather, whose mind was written so clearly in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... granite. Then a scream rang back to the man and girl before the cabin. Followed instantly a crash, an extinguishment of the light, darkness, silence, and finally a thin quivering flame at the base of the ledge, delicate and blue, like a dancing chimera. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... and the French trade-union congress at Tours was held in September of the same year. The anarchists were out in their full strength, prepared to make reprisals on the socialists. It was after declaring: "The conquest of political power is a chimera,"[4] that Guerard launched forth in his fiery argument for the revolutionary general strike: "The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the employers, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... papers that I shall bring with me (papers important to the respectability of your whole family as well as my own), I shall at once resign to you your father's house and the guardianship of Mabel. The chimera that alarmed you to frenzy can have no further existence, either in fact or fancy. I am about to contract an advantageous marriage with a foreign lady of rank, wealth, and beauty, to whom I hope soon to introduce you. I need not mention her name, if you are wise. Be patient and cheerful; cultivate ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... unknown, which accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from our little ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... divestiture of the badge of political serfdom, and deliverance from even the suggestion of thraldom—all of which his enfranchisement contemplates; or that these would assure, in greater degree, his national weal, would be to indulge a wild chimera, which could but superinduce the purest visionary picture of his condition under the operation of the gift. Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... awoke. She opened her eyes. Oh, horror! horror! Surely she was labouring under the impression of a fearful delusion. Yes, it must be the wild chimera of her feverish fancy. She saw herself surrounded by a band of appalling figures, each seeming to vie with his fellow who should display in his ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... according to Tasman, extended from Tierra del Fuego to New Zealand, began to be doubted; but it still required the long and careful researches of Cook to banish definitely into the domain of fable a chimera so long cherished. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... were Boulevard des Italiens—" said M. Joyeuse dreamily, and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone: "closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible Imaginaire had installed his friend in ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... again; such rare blossoms fade too soon! And in exchange for the toil, the fatigue, and the distressing reaction, what had she won? She could not have said what she had won, but she knew that it was worth the ruinous cost—this bright fallacy, this fleeting chimera, this delusive ecstasy, this shadow and counterfeit of bliss which the goddess vouchsafed to ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Flamel paved the way for Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prs, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and the being I had delineated was certainly not to be found, as he surpassed by far all human perfections, but a woman's heart travels so quickly and so far! Mdlle. X. C. V. took the thing literally, and fell in love with a chimera of goodness, and then was fain to turn this into a real lover, not thinking of the vast difference between the ideal and the real. For all that, when she thought that she had found the original of my fancy portrait, she had no difficulty in endowing him with all the good qualities ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... receiving the tribute of the Goyim. One may reason and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their own Scriptures, that their Talmud is filled with palpable falsehoods, and that their hope is a chimera; but they turn a deaf ear to argument and entreaty, and turn upon you with fierce resentment at your efforts to show them the truth. Although they know that their habits of grasping and hoarding wealth, driving hard and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the individual a certain illusion by which something which is in reality advantageous to the species alone seems to be advantageous to himself; consequently he serves the latter while he imagines he is serving himself. In this process he is carried away by a mere chimera, which floats before him and vanishes again immediately, and as a motive takes the place of reality. This illusion is instinct. In most instances instinct may be regarded as the sense of the species which presents to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Carmen saw it, too. And she knew—and the world must some day know—that but one tie has ever been designed adequate to bridge this yawning canon of human hatred. That tie is love. Aye, well she knew that the world laughed, and called it chimera; called it idealism, and emotional weakness. And well she knew that the most pitiable weakness the world has ever seen was the class privilege which nailed the bearer of the creed of love upon the cross, and to-day manifests in the frantic grasping of a nation's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to the capital to give their suffrages, or compel others to give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Theobald, and substituting Cibber; but as he would not lose what he had already written, this change disturbed the whole decorum of the satiric fiction. Things of opposite natures, joined into one, became the poetical chimera of Horace. The hero of the Dunciad is neither Theobald nor Cibber; Pope forced a dunce to appear as Cibber; but this was not making Cibber a dunce. This error in Pope emboldened Cibber in the contest, for he still insisted that ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... is the more complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it. It will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in Cromwell's life. It is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny misses fire. All of Cromwell is at stake in the comedy being played between England ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... (only in this case it is stronger) on which you doubt all religious systems,—that is, on account of the supposed paradoxes they involve? It may be but a little argument with you, who seem to demand demonstration of religious truth; but for myself, I feel that, whatever be the truth, such a chimera as scepticism, bristling all over ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... functions out of diabolic inspiration. Van Dale, on the other hand, with all his Vandalish followers, treats this hypothesis, both as regards the power itself of looking into the future and as regards the supposed source of that power, in the light of a contemptible chimera. They discuss it scarcely with gravity: indeed, the very frontispiece to Van Dale's book already announces the repulsive spirit of scoffing and mockery in which he means to dismiss it; men are there represented in the act of juggling and coarsely ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... conquest of Turkey by the Russians would be useful to England, because then more (?) English products would probably be sold there. Russia would become no stronger thereby, as conquests always injure the conqueror more than they benefit him. The idea of European equilibrium is therefore a chimera, because no state can be prevented from having an internal growth, as great as may be. Thus, in the summer of 1853, we heard the London Times sometimes preach that every cannon-shot fired by the English at the Russians might kill an English debtor or an English customer. The Venetians entertained ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... is, those interior parts of the earth which were originally a solid mass.—I have hardly patience to answer such reasoning;—a reasoning which is not founded upon any principle, which holds up nothing but chimera to our view, and which ends in nothing that is intelligible;—but, others, perhaps, may see this dissertation of our author's in a different light; therefore, it is my duty to analyse the argument, however insignificant it may seem ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... time I have reasoned in the supposition that the South would remain an independent power. But unless the West joins the confederates, and the Union reestablishes itself against New England, this independence is a chimera: it might last for some time; but in ten or twenty years, when the free population of the West would have doubled or trebled itself, how would the South, necessarily much enfeebled by slave culture, compare with a people, thirty millions in number, enclosing it on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Palatine. Whilst statesmen estimated her capacity, the multitude admired her courage and constancy. She was, in short, in possession of that political role with which La Rochefoucauld had dazzled her gaze in order to conceal his own designs:—a glittering chimera which, mingling itself with that of love, had seduced that ardent and haughty soul of hers. She was then the idol of Spain, the terror of the Court, one of the grandeurs of her family. We shall soon see whether she ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... citizens, did the kind hand of overruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues, and dangers, to independence and peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes us on this day, in consideration of the great things which have been done for us, to render the tribute of unfeigned thanks to that God who superintends the universe, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... with some declamation I do not remember. I know that it was sincere, and that my wish and aim were to absolve her to herself. In fact, in her case self-accusation was a chimera. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the important results obtained by Cook were incomplete. He had not perfectly proved the impossibility of an antarctic continent. This chimera was still dear to the hearts of scientific men. Although obliged to admit that neither New Zealand nor Australia made part of such a continent, and that the Endeavour had navigated in latitudes in which it might have ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... retract your error; abandon your chimera, reserve delicacy of sentiment for friendship; accept love for what it is. The more dignity you give it, the more dangerous you make it; the more sublime the idea you form of it, the less correct it is. Believe ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... this chimera of a moon-struck skull! We shall never solve or comprehend it. I shall not return to my former residence. What does it matter to me? I am afraid of encountering that man again, and I shall ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... true ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion—as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people.' Ib p. 431. In 1770 he wrote:—'Our government has become a chimera, and is too perfect, in point of liberty, for so rude a beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... following, under the title of "General Observations": "In choosing among the men who were members of the Constituent Assembly it is necessary to be on guard against the Orleans' party, which is not altogether a chimera, and may one day or other ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... force is on its way to occupy this end of the cave. If your friends hold out, they will be starved. If they fight, they will be bayoneted and shot. If they surrender, every living man of them shall be hung. There is no help for them. Lincoln's army, that has been coming so long, is a chimera; it will never come. The power is all in our hands; and not even God can help them. That sounds blasphemous, I know; but it is true. They are doomed. But I can save ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... and that—Unhappy Generals of Dauphiness, what a phenomenon for them! A terrible Friedrich, not fled to Merseburg at all; but mounted there on the Janus Hill, as on his saddle-horse, with face quite the other way;—and for holster-pistol, has plucked out twenty-two cannon. Clad verily in fire; Chimera-like, RIDING the Janus Hill, in that manner; left leg (or wing) of him spurning us into the abysses, right one ready to help ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... connected plot complete in all its numbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end with the beginning and middle; on the contrary, they construct them with such a multitude of members that it seems as though they meant to produce a chimera or monster rather than a well-proportioned figure. And besides all this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the geographer smiling. "But for a month that has been our usual bill of fare, and when we dined we stretched ourselves full length on the ground, unless we sat astride on the trees. Consequently, the meal you have just announced seemed to me like a dream, or fiction, or chimera." ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... few days have elapsed since the Proclamation was uttered, the evils predicted by its opponents are already banished to the limbo of chimera. Those officers who threatened to resign in case an emancipation policy were adopted make no haste to justify their menaces. As yet, not one of them has done so; in time, a few may screw their courage to the sticking-point. There are enough who can be spared; and they are generally those who ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... myths of Greece and Ionia. Ah! who would not have smiled with him to see, against the earthen red background, the brown-faced maiden dancing with gleeful reverence before the god Priapus, wrought in the fine clay of an Etruscan vase? The Latin queen caressed her chimera. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of their legend, or some other fabulous history, and this they descant upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically; and so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse, which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever Horace could describe in his De Arte ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... sacrifice to me this chimera of virtue," exclaimed Napoleon, "although she has already disregarded it by loving me. She is not courageous enough to give up the semblance after having already parted with the substance. Like all women she is timid, and incapable ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... his faith was firmer; his attacks of epilepsy gave him glimpses of the underworld of the soul, terrifying visions of his subconscious self, of his subliminal personality. And he had the courage of his chimera. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... his soul failed him, his grief, ungovernable and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the "taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his brain. But when the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt "the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a device of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings of one's own heart;" his prayer of, "Lord! I believe, help thou my unbelief," ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... Schrotter as if to himself, "I know this direction of thought better than you think. It has been brought before me a hundred times by the word and action of Indian fakirs. It seems to me that false freedom of the soul is a chimera. Our most unfettered resolves are called forth by unknown, often by outward conditions, by our own peculiar qualities, by the state of our bodily health, by unknown nervous sources of energy through what we see, hear, read, learn. You make your judgment the sole guide of your ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... incendiaries, or other feras naturse, he had precedent and regulation: but for arresting a mad Englishman, none. He held fully the opinion of his superiors, that there was no saying what an Englishman might not, could not, and would not do. He was a sphinx, a chimera, a lunatic broke loose, who took unintelligible delight in getting wet, and dirty, and tired, and starved, and all but lolled; and called the same "taking exercise:" who would see everything that nobody ever cared to see, and who knew mysteriously everything about everywhere; ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... went up to Richmond and he slowly forced himself to renounce her. He began to see his old dream as it was—an emotional chimera; a mental madness. As the year grew on he watched his long hope wither root and branch, until, with the resurrection of the spring, it lay still because there was no life left that might put forth. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... edification: and if I have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that the planets were suns, one ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... transaction patent to the world. They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... think of it before," Mr. Worthington continued. "A very simple remedy, and only requiring a little courage and—and—" (Mr. Worthington was going to say money, but thought better of it) "and the chimera disappears. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the message, standing there close to the open window, when the words upon my lips were arrested, and my heart beat fast, as now, unmistakably no chimera of the brain, I could see six or seven figures glide out of the darkness towards the house, straight to where I ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and summoning all the skill he could command in order to state his case convincingly. Hilda could not have put the idea that possessed him to a more cruel test than this. It began to dawn even upon himself that he was in pursuit of a chimera, and the necessity for the enormous self-sacrifice, upon which he insisted, was breaking down in the face of such a determined opposition on the part of those who were more interested than himself. Doggedly ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... too long. The secret of the universe is now pursued through observation, as formerly it was through fasting and prayer. Nothing is sacred nowadays because everything receives respect. If absolute beauty is now smiled at as a chimera, it is because beauty is perceived everywhere. Whatever is may not be right—the maxim has too much of an ex cathedra sound—but whatever is is interesting. Our attitude is at once humbler and more curious. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... they fade like ghosts, seen only between light and darkness. They are founded upon nothing; they are bred without father or mother; they are hysterical; they are wicked. Think a little of me. You are not going to be conquered by a chimera, to allow a phantom created by your imagination to ruin the happiness that has been so beautiful. You will not ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... the house, the apparition disappeared, and it seemed to the Radiant Apollo that with it disappeared the stars, that the moon became black, and the whole world was covered with the darkness of Chimera. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... blow up so much romance. In particular, I am sorry for the suffragettes who specialize in the double standard, for when they get into pantaloons at last, and have the new freedom, they will discover to their sorrow that they have been pursuing a chimera—that there is really no such animal as the male anarchist they have been denouncing and envying—that the wholesale fornication of man, at least under Christian democracy, has little more actual existence than honest advertising ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... dazzling to the eye, which youth can see, and never sees again when Reality, the hideous hag, appears with witnesses accompanied by the mayor. To live the very poetry of love and not to see the lover—ah, what sweet intoxication! what visionary rapture! a chimera with flowing man and ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the religions of chimera, of ignorance, and hypocrisy, in "Lo Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante" and in "L'Asino Cillenico," the author, in "Gli Eroici Furori," lays down the basis for the religion of thought and of science. In place ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... action. Shortly after midday, on the advice of his Ministers, he took the final step of his official career. Lucien and Carnot begged him for some time to abdicate only in favour of his son;[529] and he did so, but with the bitter remark: "My son! What a chimera! No, it is for the Bourbons that I abdicate! They at least are not prisoners ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to glory; he had, in a way, had an abstract enjoyment of fame; and having opened it, as the ancient priests of sacrifice sought to read the future in the hearts of men, he had found nothing in the entrails of his chimera. Scorning a sentiment so wholly personal: "Glory," said he, "is but ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... have some recollection that I both whistled and sang as I worked. The idea that I was in any danger of losing my life quite forsook me, and all the hardships through which I had been passing appeared to have been only imaginary—a chimera of my brain, or, at most, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... or a superabundance of strength. AEsthetic is inextricably bound up with these biological principles: there is decadent aesthetic, and classical aesthetic,—"beauty in itself" is just as much a chimera as any other kind of idealism.—Within the narrow sphere of the so-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that of master-morality and the morality of Christian valuations: the latter having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (—The gospels present us ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... to a sofa, and with her chin in her hands, and in the posture of a chimera on the look out for the pleasures she wishes, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... this extreme tension of forces was an absolute which could easily be ascertained, still we must admit that the human mind would hardly submit itself to this kind of logical chimera. There would be in many cases an unnecessary waste of power, which would be in opposition to other principles of statecraft; an effort of Will would be required disproportioned to the proposed object, which therefore it would be impossible to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the maestro's; slender, light-haired English misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was assured by Canning in reply that the support of this country should never be given to any scheme for disposing of the Greeks ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might, be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... purpose of exposing the person of one or both of them to injury, tramples upon every principle of reason and equity. Duelling is the vilest of all egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an unintelligible chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my exclusive attention. I am unable to cope with you: what then? Can that circumstance dishonour me? No; I can only be dishonoured by perpetrating an unjust ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with figures traced red and black, representing Orestes and Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon. In these cases also are some Athenian glass vases, and opaque glass vessels from Melos; terra-cotta bas-reliefs, representing Bellerophon destroying the Chimera; Perseus destroying the gorgon Medusa, and other classical subjects; and upon the third shelf, amid unguent boxes, terra-cotta lamps, and a terra-cotta doll, is a curious vase containing bones, with a silver Athenian coin, attached to the jar by careful relatives, to pay for the deceased's ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... and let his head sink forward on his breast, wearied by the oft-repeated endeavor to solve that which was fast becoming a riddle, a chimera to him, and he probably would have fallen asleep had he not been startled suddenly into a consciousness of his surroundings by a low whinny; soft and plaintive as a child's voice. Looking up, he saw Starlight standing before him with ears erect ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... in undertaking the translation was, as he informs us, to expose the false pretences of the many ignorant pretenders to the science who abounded in his day.] But the life of Geber, though spent in the pursuit of this vain chimera, was not altogether useless. He stumbled upon discoveries which he did not seek, and science is indebted to him for the first mention of corrosive sublimate, the red oxide of mercury, nitric acid, and the nitrate of silver. [Article, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... excluded. What followed? Was the reader sensible, in the practical effect upon his ear, of any beauty attained? By no means; all the difference, sensibly perceived, lay in the occasional constraints and affectations to which the writer had been driven by his self-imposed necessities. The same chimera exists in Germany; and so much further is it carried, that one great puritan in this heresy (Wolf) has published a vast dictionary, the rival of Adelung's, for the purpose of expelling every word of foreign origin and composition out of the language, by assigning some ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... on the sight, Nature's volcanic amphitheatre, Chimera's Alps, extend from left to right; Beneath, a living valley seems to stir. Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain fir Nodding above; behold Black Acheron! Once consecrated to the sepulchre. Pluto! if this be hell I look ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt |
