"Chimerical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhat soberly at first, but the air was cool and fresh and a glorious moon was riding in the sky. He whistled cheerfully, and his spirits rose as various chimerical plans of making money occurred to him. By the time he reached the High Street, the shops of which were all closed for the night, he was earning five hundred a year and spending a thousand. He turned the handle of the door and, walking in, discovered Miss Kybird entertaining ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of position and means, who knew the locality only by reputation, determined, with a courage peculiar to their sex, to break up this den, and make it a stronghold of religion and virtue. Their plan was regarded by the public as chimerical, but they persevered in its execution, trusting in the help of Him in whose cause they were laboring. A school was opened in Park street, immediately facing the "Old Brewery," and was placed in charge of the Rev. L. M. Pease, of the Methodist Church. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... required to attain the end in view, namely, the sudden and universal emigration of the whole so-called surplus population. That is to say, the whole merchant navy of Great Britain would have to be drawn off from the commerce of the world, and chartered for the execution of this very chimerical plan. Where was the sum required for the most necessary expenses and urgent wants of two million passengers to be got? And what country in the world would have submitted to a monster invasion like those of barbarous times? Unless, indeed, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... themselves to low instincts, they also set the example at times of acts of lofty morality. If disinterestedness, resignation, and absolute devotion to a real or chimerical ideal are moral virtues, it may be said that crowds often possess these virtues to a degree rarely attained by the wisest philosophers. Doubtless they practice them unconsciously, but that is of small import. We should not complain too ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... the boldest and most original experimenters are those, who, giving free scope to their imaginations, admit the combination of the most distant ideas; and that though many of these associations of ideas, will be wild and chimerical, yet that others will have the chance of giving rise to the greatest and most capital discoveries; such as very cautious, timid, sober, and slow-thinking people would ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... half so effective as the elevation of the Holy Cross before the fanatical majority, who became an easy prey to fantastic promises of eternal bliss, or the threats of everlasting perdition. Nor is this assertion by any means chimerical, for it has been proved on several occasions, notably in the raising of troops to attempt the expulsion of the British in 1763, and in the campaign against the Sultan of Sulu in 1876. But through the Cavite Conspiracy ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... notwithstanding the different properties they respectively possess, to act in certain respects according to the universal laws to which every thing is submitted. Finally, let us enquire if the ideas he has formed of himself in meditating on his own peculiar mode of existence, be chimerical, or founded in reason. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Howe, are they who, some of them at least, have called me a romantic girl!—This is my chimerical brother, and wise sister; both joining their heads together, I dare say. And yet, my aunt told me, that the last part was what took in my mother: who had, till that last expedient was found out, insisted, that her child ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... progress of human knowledge would leave theology further and further behind, till the rupture between Catholicism and civilisation became absolute. The idea that the Church would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations of revealed fact, but in the living and energising spirit of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... popularity of that most laudable institution for the relief of suffering seamen and marines, and their distressed families, so happily commenced and continued by the Committee at Lloyd's. Nor is, perhaps, the idea very chimerical, when we reflect on the magnitude of the contributions, which looks forward to a possible permanent establishment, at no distant day, on this very basis; in which the voluntary subscriptions of benevolent and opulent individuals ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan, which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect." Not only was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes,—he was the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... de la Noue, one of the ablest generals of whom the Huguenots could ever boast, regarded the idea of capturing Paris at the beginning of the struggle, with the comparatively insignificant forces which the prince could bring to the undertaking, as the most chimerical that could be entertained. Was it less absurd now, when, if the Protestant army had received large accessions, the walls of Paris could certainly be held by the citizens for a few days, until an army ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the thought is borrowed from Don Quixote, but the imitation is handled with freedom, and so particularly applied to Spenser's Fairy Queen, that it may pass for a second invention. But the peculiarly ingenious novelty of the piece consists in the combination of the irony of a chimerical abuse of poetry with another irony exactly the contrary, of the incapacity to comprehend any fable, and the dramatic form more particularly. A grocer and his wife come as spectators to the theatre: they are discontented with the piece which has just been ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... questioned whether such a plan would ever have succeeded: but it must not too hastily be called chimerical. As a practical result it secured the emancipation of several thousand slaves, many of whom were supplied by former owners with money for transportation and establishment in Africa. What further success it might have had was prevented by the rise of the Abolition Movement. The intense pro-slavery ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... I am in some doubt, whether the political spreaders of those chimerical invasions, made a judicious choice in fixing the northern parts of Ireland for that romantic enterprize. Nor, can I well understand the wisdom of the Presbyterians in countenancing and confirming those reports. Because it seems to cast a most infamous ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to this remark. He was already deep in thought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize a suggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turn it into an accomplished Fact. "I believe you've hit it, Hugh," he said. "We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll put into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the clerk to compel the witness to come before ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... only the triads or perfect chords; this prevented absolutely all expression, although some traces of it appear in the "Stabat Mater" of that composer. This music, ecclesiastical in character, in which it would have been chimerical to try to introduce modern expression, flourished in France, in Flanders, in Spain at the same time as in Italy, and enjoyed the favor of Pope Marcellus, who recognized the merit of Palestrina in breaking loose from the grievous practice of adapting ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... Miss More thus replies:—"Your project for relieving our poor slaves by machine work is so far from being wild or chimerical, that of three persons deep and able in the concern (Mr. Wilberforce among others), not one but has thought it rational and practicable, and that a plough may be so constructed as to save much misery." ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and stems of the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous viper" may be heard; she had followed the wild leaps of the Will-with-a-wisp as it bounds over the surface of the meadows and marshes; she had pictured to herself the chimerical dwelling-places toward which it perfidiously attracts the benighted traveller; she had listened to the concerts given by the Cicada and their friends in the stubble of the fields; she had learned the names of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... known that California has within her borders five million acres of land suitable for vine-culture. Suppose it to average no larger yield than that of Italy, yet, at 25 cents a gallon, it would give an income of $551,875,000. That this may not seem an entirely chimerical estimate, it may be remarked that trustworthy statistics show that in France five millions of acres are planted in vines, producing seven hundred and fifty millions of gallons, while Hungary has three millions of acres, yielding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... as respected relations between McCulloch and the Missouri leaders. McCulloch had little or no tolerance for the rough-and-ready methods of men like Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price. He regarded their plans as impractical, chimerical, and their warfare as after the guerrilla order, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the course of the general sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days sufficed, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable We could no longer apply to the strange orb any ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... only by experience and the testimony of their senses, and to perceive nothing in nature except matter, essentially active and mobile and capable of producing all the beings that we see; to forego all search for a chimerical cause, and not to mistake for better knowledge of the moving force of the universe, merely a separate attribution of it to a Being placed outside of the great whole; to confess in good faith that their mind can neither conceive nor reconcile ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... benefit ourselves, without injuring them, as their population must always so far exceed any black population which can ever exist in that country, as to render the idea of danger from that source chimerical." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... are not chimerical; I know something of the situation and state of things in America; and from some little occurrences or instances that have already really happened, I can very easily figure to myself what may, and, in short, what will certainly happen, ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... seemed to many contemporaries; chimerical it has seemed to historians, and to us who have passed through the World War. Yet in the World War it was the possession of food stuffs and raw materials by the United States which gave her a dominating position in the councils of the Allies. Had her commerce in 1807 ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... on the 30th of November, 1744, that this minister thus expressed himself with regard to the chimerical systems of credit, which have never been more in vogue than in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... seas contiguous to the Spanish continent, they being, it was stated, the rights of the Spanish crown. The claims of Spain, in reference to her right of dominion and sovereignty in America, were wholly chimerical; and the notification and request of the Spanish ambassador, therefore, were met by a demand of satisfaction for the insults offered to the British nation, and reparation to the individuals who had suffered in property and person. This satisfaction had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gallantry that afforded my companions, the few young people my mother forced me to mix with, so much pleasure, I despised; I wished more to be loved than admired, for I could love. I adored virtue; and my imagination, chasing a chimerical object, overlooked the common pleasures of life; they were not sufficient for my happiness. A latent fire made me burn to rise superior to my contemporaries in wisdom and virtue; and tears of joy and emulation filled ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and perseverence the Cleveland & Columbus Railroad Company would not have been organized probably for years after it was and then it was done almost in spite of many of the large property holders of that day, who looked upon the enterprise as chimerical. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... reforms which Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual custom, they ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... in which he passed his time, and the treatment which he received, are very justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: "The whole day," says he, "has been employed in various people's filling my head with their foolish chimerical systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every different person's way of thinking; hurried from one wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, and nothing done—promised—disappointed—ordered to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... authority is universally recognised, and in taking for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its definitions or consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I perform what you may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy audacity. My subject is chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures which you may well believe yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to propound. Nevertheless, and in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite you to join with me in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... may be defined as a perversion of the judgment, a chimerical thought; an illusion, an incorrect impression of the senses, counterfeit appearances; hence we speak of a delusion of the mind, an illusion of the senses. Lawyers lay great stress on the presence of delusions as indicative of insanity. An hallucination is a sensation which is supposed ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... think of Burgundy, and earlier plunders from the Reich,—here would have been "cut and come again" for her Hungarian Majesty and everybody!—But Diana, in the shape of his Grace of Newcastle, intervenes; and all this has become chimerical ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was, merely, rapidity of loading if the plug was fairly placed: no superiority of range appears to have been produced over the rifles used by the 60th Regiment. Mr. Greener solicited another trial, but after the report of Major Walcott, the Select Committee considering the ball "useless and chimerical," no further trial was accorded. The conical ball question was thus ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... occasionally wore English-made shoes and clothing. English ships carried naval stores out of Russian harbors, and colonial wares found their way from the wharves of Riga to the markets of Mainz. But the chief offenders in defying Napoleon's chimerical policy were the Dutch and Hanseatic cities. The resistance elsewhere in the Continent was passive compared with the energetic smuggling and the clandestine evasion of decrees which went on under the eyes of the officials in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... revolutionary champions might cross the Atlantic, and desolate the hitherto safe and peaceful dwellings of the American people, was an apprehension not so entirely unsupported by appearances as to be pronounced chimerical. With a blind infatuation, which treated reason as a criminal, immense numbers applauded a furious despotism, trampling on every right, and sporting with life as the essence of liberty; and the few who conceived freedom to be a plant which did ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... so far removed from its realisation that his dream dazzles him, and urges him on to defend chimerical schemes. He wishes the wealth of the clergy to be taken from them and bestowed upon poor, honest, brave, trustworthy gentlemen, who will defend the country; and he does not perceive that these riches would have fallen principally into the hands of turbulent ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... orchestra was playing. Further yet, columns upheld a ceiling so lofty that it was lost. On the adjacent wall was a frieze of curious and chimerical beasts. Belshazzar was looking at them. In their dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion amused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach his lips, it fell with a clatter on the lapis lazuli of the floor beneath. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... which it met with was far beyond my wildest expectations. The public were delighted with it, but what were my feelings? Anything, alas! but those of delight. No sooner did the public express its satisfaction at the result of my endeavours, than my perverse imagination began to conceive a thousand chimerical doubts; forthwith I sat down to analyse it; and my worst enemy, and all people have their enemies, especially authors—my worst enemy could not have discovered or sought to discover a tenth part of the faults ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... he make this theory appear that it was accepted very largely by medical men, who in turn taught it to the general public. Within recent times it has been fortunately shown that Haig's theory was wholly chimerical, and that quantities of uric acid greatly in excess of the normal amount could collect in the body, or might be injected into the blood-vessels, without the least harm resulting; thus, at one blow, this widely accepted theory was annihilated, and there now remains no sort of reason for ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... hope of improvement quite chimerical, and tempts one to believe that the musical feeling of the Italians is a mere necessary result of their organization,—the opinion both of Gall and Spurzheim,—is their love for all that is dancing, brilliant, glittering, and gay, to the utter neglect of the various passions ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... circumstances under which the planet had been detected. His influence had been felt for many years before astronomers thought of looking for him, and even when the idea had occurred to one or two, it was considered, and that, too, by an astronomer as deservedly eminent as Sir G. Airy, too chimerical to be reasonably entertained. All the world now knows how Leverrier, the greatest living master of physical astronomy, and Adams, then scarce known outside Cambridge, both conceived the idea of finding the planet, not by the simple method of looking for it with a telescope, but by the mathematical ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... formerly impetuous rival, whom he thus amused, while he took measures to crush him by the weight of his arms. But if misfortune had made the King of France too cautious, prosperity had inspired Charles with a haughty presumption, which gave the semblance of stability to every chimerical vision of pride. In 1536 he attempted the conquest of France by invading Provence; but his designs were frustrated by a conduct so opposite to the national genius of the French that it induced them to murmur against their general. Charles, however, felt by experience ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... PERMIT NO OCCULT STUDY OR TALENT TO INTERRUPT OR BEFOG YOUR PRACTICAL LIFE. All things are his who steadfastly remembers that "life is real, life is earnest." Magnetism is sanity at work. It is unalterably opposed to runaway fads, chimerical visions, unstrung nerves, mental aberration, psychic gourmandism. Magnetism is practical cooperation with level-headed people who are bent on making the best of self and the world through ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... though in a somewhat different way, was zealous for the theory that Church and State are really identical, the Church being merely the State in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. If Thomas Arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to our prosperity in a variety of ways. By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people—increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so—to any manufacturing nation; and ...
— The Federalist Papers
... only by the conviction which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and I confidently hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest of enterprises. Of this I speak with confidence, of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... great blows. I wish then to be in a position to crush my enemies, though it is possible that, when Austria sees me about to do so, she may make use of her pathetic and sentimental style, in order to recognize the chimerical and ridiculous nature of her pretensions. I have wished to write you this letter so that you may thoroughly know my ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... people. He still, however, insisted, or appeared to insist, on the Austrian war. It may have been necessary for the new minister, in order to maintain his influence over the masses, to announce a war policy. Such policy, nevertheless, was chimerical. It was decidedly opposed by the legitimately-constituted powers of the State—the Sovereign on the one hand, who, by his name, his character, his virtues, his office, was still powerful; and on the other, the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... to them even once. But they could hardly have escaped his notice. Still his strong historic sense and solid erudition would be more likely to be repelled than attracted by their vague and inaccurate scholarship, and chimerical theories of the light of Nature. Still we know that he practically adopted, in the end, at least the negative portion of these views, and the question is, When did he do so? His visit to Paris, and the company ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... south of where we stand. But that there stretches beyond us a country rich in possibilities we know, and one day this land, unknown and dubbed "barren" because unknown, will support its teeming millions. Chimerical? Why so? ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... which lie at the foundation of all Mr. Darwin's reasoning; that he should confound an irrefragable deduction from the observed relations of organisms to the conditions which lie around them, with a metaphysical "forme substantielle," or a chimerical personification of the powers of Nature, would be incredible, were it not that other passages of his work leave no room for doubt upon ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... way of unifying the profession. As an argument this is nothing short of picturesque, and can be traced to those unique and professedly scientific mentalities that solve all vocal problems by a mathematical formula. As an example of the chimerical, impossible and altogether undesirable, it commands admiration. If it is impossible to establish a standard tone for pianos where the problem is mechanical, what may we expect to do with voice where the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... passed between the young men from the summer of 1737 to that of 1740 has dissipated in some measure the otherwise total darkness which had gathered around the youth of our philosopher. Mirabeau (who was to be the father of the famous orator) was a man of talent, but violent, chimerical and lawless, "farouche," as he himself put it. Later he was the author of the redoubtable "Ami des Hommes." This prodigal uncle of the Revolution, this dangerous and violent "physiocrate" as he called himself, would seem divided, as pole from pole, from the gently-reasoning, the benevolently-meditative ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... conclusion advised him to push his fortune: the Duke of Nemours imagined at first that the King was not in earnest, but when he found to the contrary, "If, by your advice, Sir," said he, "I engage in this chimerical undertaking for your Majesty's service, I must entreat your Majesty to keep the affair secret, till the success of it shall justify me to the public; I would not be thought guilty of the intolerable vanity, to think that a Queen, ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... ornament of the relief repeating the two dates. Mantle clasps of solid silver ornamented with precious stones, and known in the Middle Ages as fermillets, are pretty presents, and these ornaments can be also enriched with gold and enamel without losing their silver character. Chimerical animals and floral ornaments are often used ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... which they now only made use of as a row of pegs to hang on their fine-spun metaphysical cobwebs. They at length collected all these quodlibetical questions into enormous volumes, under the terrifying form, for those who have seen them, of Summaries of Divinity! They contrived, by their chimerical speculations, to question the plainest truths; to wrest the simple meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and give some appearance of truth to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had fallen; and rising, he walked speedily back by the dark wood-paths. But before he reached the meadows, from which he could see lights blinking in the scattered villas, his steps had lagged again. His discouragement had nothing chimerical in it at this moment; it was part and parcel of himself.—The night was both chilly and misty, and it was late. But a painful impression of the previous evening lingered in his mind. Louise would be annoyed with him for keeping her waiting; and he shrank, in advance, from the thought ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... certain degree of that which the conception of virtue demands—but certainly not as archetypes. That the actions of man will never be in perfect accordance with all the requirements of the pure ideas of reason, does not prove the thought to be chimerical. For only through this idea are all judgements as to moral merit or demerit possible; it consequently lies at the foundation of every approach to moral perfection, however far removed from it the obstacles in human nature- indeterminable as ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... remain; —— en algo to abide by something. quehacer m. business, duty. queja lament. quejar vr. to complain. quemar to burn. querellante plaintiff. querer to wish, love. quien, quien who, whom, which. quijotesco Quixotic. quimerico chimerical, extravagant. quince fifteen. quinientos, -as five hundred. quinta conscription. quinto conscript. quitar to take ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... means of intercommunication are still far behind the wants of the people. When it was proposed a year ago to place a steamer upon the line from Halifax to Boston, to carry freight and passengers, the idea was scouted as chimerical, and certain to fail. The Eastern State, a Philadelphia-built propeller of 330 tons, was purchased and commenced to ply fortnightly; she has accommodations for fifty passengers, and two hundred tons of freight. She has seldom had less than fifty passengers ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... degrees" of virtue. It injoyns the encouragement of all Seminaries of Literature, which are the nurseries of Virtue depending upon these for the support of Government, rather than Titles, Splendor, or Force. Mr Hume may call this a "Chimerical Project." I am far from thinking the People can be deceived by urging upon them a dependance on the more general prevalence of Knowledge, and Virtue: It is one of the most essential means of further, and still further improvements in Society, and of correcting, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... than his sword. Full of that buoyant hope, however, which belongs to the sanguine temperament, he repaired to New-York, the great focus of American enterprise, where there are always funds ready for any scheme, however chimerical or romantic. Here he had the good fortune to meet with a gentleman of high respectability and influence, who had been his associate in boyhood, and who cherished a schoolfellow friendship for him. He took a general interest ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... less fortunate of his friends and acquaintances in various parts of the world, made his expenditure about equal to his income. The idea originally entertained of turning part of the Vailima estate into a profitable plantation turned out chimerical. The thought began to haunt him, What if his power of earning were soon to cease? And occasional signs of inward depression and life-weariness began to appear in his correspondence. But it was only in writing, and then but rarely, that he let such signs appear: to those about him he retained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are worthy of contempt. Witchcraft, its instruments and miracles, the compact ratified by a bloody signature, the apparatus of sulpherous smells and thundering explosions, are monstrous and chimerical. These have no part in the scene over which the genius of Carwin presides. That conscious beings, dissimilar from human, but moral and voluntary agents as we are, some where exist, can scarcely be denied. That their aid may be employed to benign or malignant ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... to see or hear more. I had already descried what a peaceful family life—upright, pure, and devoted—my friend Meurtrier hid under his chimerical gasconades. But the spectacle with which chance had favored me was at once so droll and so touching that I could not resist the temptation to watch for some moments longer. That indiscretion sufficed to ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the Grand Trunk as a gradually improving property would, I repeat, be easy; but to work it so as to produce a great success in a few years can only, in my opinion, be done in one way. That way, to many, would be chimerical; to some, incomprehensible; and possibly I may be looked upon myself as somewhat visionary for even suggesting it. That way, however, to my mind, lies through the extension of railway communication ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... was that the thought occurred to them whether they might not yet strike a blow for the recovery of their valleys! The idea seemed chimerical in the extreme. A few hundred destitute men, however valiant, to think of recovering a country defended by the combined armies of France and Savoy! Javanel, the old Vaudois hero, disabled by age and wounds, was still alive—an exile at Geneva—and he was consulted on the subject. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... expected. The bachelor had counted without his dormant paternity. He was terror-stricken—abject—fell into a chair, and wrung his hands, and wept piteously. To keep it from his daughter till she should be stronger, seemed to him chimerical, impossible. However, Philip insisted it must be done; and he must make some excuse for keeping out of her way, or his manner would rouse her suspicions. He consented readily to that, and indeed left ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... what I had attempted in Anjou foolish and chimerical—he could look at the matter with the eyes of an English lord of the manor, accustomed not to view the peasant as a sponge to be squeezed for the benefit of the master, but to regard the landlord as ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... front and defy those seven Eastern slaves—I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Besides: Lilian! Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them. Anarchy is not the absence of order, it is absence of force; it is the free outflowing of the spirit into the forms in which it delights; and in such forms alone, as they grow and change, can it find an expression which is not also a bondage. You will say this is chimerical. But look at history! Consider the great achievements of the Middle Age! Were they not the result of just such a movement as I describe? It was men voluntarily associating in communes and grouping themselves in guilds that built the towers and churches and adorned them with the glories ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... chief of intelligence I found that an underground wire had been laid to the castle from the Eighth Division headquarters, which will be our general staff headquarters in time of war," he said. "The purpose was the same as now, but abandoned as chimerical. All that was necessary was to install the instrument, which Feller did. I, too, saw the plan as chimerical, yet it was a chance—the one out of a thousand. If it should happen to succeed we should play with our cards concealed and ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... possibilities of more fundamental changes in the industrial order than these improvements implied. Our thoughts now touch upon the whole theory of the industrial life. We see that by a cooerdinated effort and common understanding which it is no longer chimerical to hope for, the conditions of the industrial life might be very different. In the first place we are convinced that the world could produce vastly more and could use its products with far greater economy than now. We see that much greater return for less labor could be gained. Even the desires ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... his hopes seem, the prospect of realising them was, humanly speaking, neither chimerical nor even improbable. He had but made the common mistake of men of the world, who are the representatives of an old order of things, when that order is doomed and dying. He could not read the signs of the times; and confounding the barrenness of death with ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... purpose. The spectator who is at all interested in ecclesiastical architecture will examine with much delight the elaborate mouldings and the strangely-suggestive forms of men, beasts, birds, shapes fantastic and chimerical, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... same ill-treatment to philosophers and Christians, to reason and faith. Amongst the great men of his class, Napoleon was by far the most necessary for the times. None but himself could have so quickly and effectually substituted order in place of anarchy; but no one was so chimerical as to the future, for after having been master of France and Europe, he suffered Europe to drive him even from France. His name is greater and more enduring than his actions, the most brilliant of which, his conquests, disappeared suddenly and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... complete health by the unusual effort of coming down to breakfast. She was in high feather, and her cheery conversation lifted, to some extent, the gloom which had settled on her young friends. While exhorting to patience she was full of hope, and dismissed as chimerical all the darker explanations which the disconsolate lovers invented to account for the silence their communications had met with. Under her influence the breakfast-table became positively cheerful, and at last all the three burst into a hearty ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... hundred thousand could be transported each year. The yearly increase in population would more than overbalance the number transplanted. Even if it did not, the time required to get rid of the Negro by this method would perhaps be fifty or seventy-five years. The idea is chimerical. ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... instead of having increased in wealth, they had only been enriching more industrious nations, and ruining themselves. The gold that arrives from the West passes through the hands of its masters with almost the same rapidity as if they were only agents for the English and the Dutch; so chimerical an idea is that ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... use of vague images linked according to the least rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their nature.—Its characteristic of inwardness.—Its principal manifestations: revery, the romantic spirit, the chimerical spirit; myths and religious conceptions, literature and the fine arts (the symbolists), the class of the marvelous and fantastic.—Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first, numerical imagination; its ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, may appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh, especially with much Addition of Onions, shall be able ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... more prosaic and literal narrative will see how little he has been seduced from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject. The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... to think over quietly the odd situation in which he found himself, he looked at his magnificent surroundings with surprise as well as admiration—for he had never in his life seen, or even imagined, such splendour and luxury. The rich glowing colours of the chimerical flowers and foliage embossed on a golden ground of the Spanish leather on the walls, the corresponding tints in the frescoed ceiling and the heavy, silken hangings at the windows and doors and round the bed, the elaborately carved and gilded furniture, the luxurious easy-chairs ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... with the severe professional authority common to the quite young. Already, however, he was trying to grow regulation engineer's whiskers; also he immediately planned to get married upon the proceeds of this big job, which, after years of chimerical dreaming, had become too real, almost, to be believed. "Perhaps you could get the owner to stand his proportionate share ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... and chimerical quadruped, she proceeded none the less to careful research, especially of cupboards. The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a crack, and blew out the candle. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in derision of what he seemed to think his partner's chimerical hopes, but made no answer. Together they entered the administration building. Five minutes later, Herzog, their servile experimenter, stood ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... resignation and put General Vinoy in his place. On that same day Maurice, chancing to enter a hall in Belleville where a public meeting was going on, again heard the levee en masse demanded with clamorous shouts. He knew the thing to be chimerical, and yet it set his heart a-beating more rapidly to see such a determined will to conquer. When all is ended, is it not left us to attempt the impossible? All that night ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Sleep does "not weigh our eyelids down." We stare upon the vacancy. We conjure up a thousand restless, disheartening images. We abandon projects we have formed, and which, viewed through this medium, appear fantastical, chimerical, absurd. We want rest, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the Antinomians, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine, expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John Agricola, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... representing a liquorice-plant, with Dulce meum terra tegit (The earth covers my sweet), was pronounced faulty, because the liquorice-plant could not be readily distinguished from other shrubs, the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix; consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto, Amor addidit (Love has added ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... to us altogether chimerical. Family affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes. The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than those of consanguinity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anxious to release. We had no precise information as to the steps that were taken at home for our rescue; and, until certain that troops had landed, we felt very anxious lest some contretemps should, at the last instant, occur, and the expedition be abandoned, or some more or less chimerical plan adopted in its stead. We had received a little money of late, but as everything was scarce and dear, we had to be very careful, and refuse many a "friend's" request—rather a ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... those who aim at perfection will come infinitely nearer it than those desponding or indolent spirits, who foolishly say to themselves: Nobody is perfect; perfection is unattainable; to attempt it is chimerical; I shall do as well as others; why then should I give myself trouble to be what I never can, and what, according to the common course of things, I need not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to me why they put mattresses under certain falls and thorns under others? Ah! the world is funny, and it seems chimerical to me to want to regulate ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... descriptions. I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as does a chimerical realm, ardently desired, but as inaccessible as if situated upon ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... second with the death of Nero. Tacitus in this work shows his personal sympathies more strongly than in any of the others. He appears as a Roman of the old school, but still more, as an oligarchical partisan. Not that he indulged in chimerical plans for restoring the Republic. That he saw was impossible; nor had he much sympathy with those who strove for it. But his resignation to the Empire as an unavoidable evil does not inspire him with contentment. His blood boils with indignation at the steady repression of the liberty ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... would fain ask them (if it be consistent with their profound respect for practice to pay some attention to experience) to cast their eyes upon the proceedings and manners of the French court (wild and chimerical as such an appeal will no doubt appear to them) during the dominion of Catharine of Medicis and her offspring, those execrable deceivers, corrupters, and executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible abominations, familiar as household words to the French court ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... man, or the rider or the horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... which can be conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst, and that stopping or opening the natural channels ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... surprised to hear one say that breaking of windows was not humour; and I question not but several English readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving, incoherent pieces, which are often spread among us, under odd chimerical titles, are rather the offsprings of a distempered brain ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... and of God the Creator, and a rejection of every metaphysical idea, as useless and dangerous; while human thought is set down as produced by heat! In the other we read the following propositions: "Matter is eternal." "The action of a First Cause is useless and irrational—it is chimerical!" Again: "It is absolutely impossible to explain the existence of a creative power"; and "an immaterial being is not necessary for the production of life." And, "to attribute the phenomena of life ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Lanark were making money, but the shareholders in London were not satisfied with their dividends. They considered Owen's plans for educating the workingman chimerical. In one respect they knew that Owen was sane: he could take the raw stock and produce the quality of goods that had a market value. He had trained up a valuable and skilled force of foremen and workers. Things were prosperous and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the Generality of the Soldiers, in order to prolong his Reign in that honourable Post he enjoy'd, yet I read it plainly in my old Captain's Forehead, that France was not accustom'd to open their Treasures in countenancing Chimerical Adventures, and that the most we could expect from thence, would be a small Dunkirk Privateer, with a Hogshead or two of Brandy to keep the Cause alive, while he was pushing on his Conquests in other Parts of the Globe, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... proclamation of virtue, in the choice of merit without intrigue,—in short, in all that the narrow limits of one arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,—his only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of his life,—last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate of Blangy, the then all-powerful ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... prescribed by old times, nor by conquering kings, but by the voice of nature, by the clamor of justice and by the genius of wisdom." ... "Humankind cries against the thoughtless and blind legislators who have thought that they might with impunity try chimerical institutions. All the peoples of the world have attempted to gain freedom, some by deeds of arms, others by laws passing alternately from anarchy to despotism, from despotism to anarchy. Very few have contented themselves with moderate ambitions constituting themselves in conformity with their ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... noes, in both Assembly and Senate, came from Clinton's opponents, including the Tammany delegation and their friends. From the outset Tammany, by solemn resolutions, had denounced the canal project as impractical and chimerical, declaring it fit only for a ditch in which to bury Clinton. At Albany its representatives greeted the measure for its construction with a burst of mockery; and, by placing one obstacle after another in its way, nearly ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... suppress his name. He was of a class now annually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks be to God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human nature, that, amongst the many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at least, never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows more intellectual, the power of managing him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... affair like this of the Nabob allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But, alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred thousand ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... him to pursue or expect his own good when, though not destined to come in the form he looks for, this good is really destined to come in some shape or other. Such, for instance, are the illusions of romantic love, which may really terminate in a family life practically better than the absolute and chimerical unions which that love had dreamed of. Such, again, are those illusions of conscience which attach unspeakable vague penalties and repugnances to acts which commonly have bad results, though these are impossible to forecast with precision. When disillusion comes, while it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... That nonsense will pass at twenty-five; at forty a man has some brains. The 'constancy' of women—that gets me! Why, sir, I once loved three women at the same time, and not one of the three was true to me—yet Bainbridge talks of a woman's constancy, single-heartedness, and such chimerical stuff—the kind of stuff, that, with youth, takes the place of the recently discarded nursery fiction. I think of the hundreds of women that I have loved, beginning in my early boyhood, passing through my adolescence to the acme of my powers, and even now as I stand on ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... fruitful imaginations with the idle and visionary dreams of fanaticism; with a kind of chimerical heaven of which they know nothing, as to its certainty: this man is in heaven already: dwelling in love, he 'dwelleth in God, and God ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... diminishing the weight of taxes; every barrier to improvement cast down; and in all this his interest runs parallel with an enlightened public interest. He may push his secret desires to an absurd and chimerical height, but never can they cease to be humanizing in their tendency. He may desire that food and clothing, house and hearth, instruction and morality, security and peace, strength and health, should come to us without limit and without labor or effort on our ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... there is no fancy so vain and so chimerical that may not be a more real and true medicine for an enthusiastic heart than any herb, mineral, oil, or other sort of thing that ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... attainment of it cannot be the end of morality, or of any rational conduct. Though, even in that case, something might still be said for the utilitarian theory; since utility includes not solely the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if the former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope and more imperative need for the latter, so long at least as mankind think fit to live, and do not take refuge in the simultaneous act of suicide recommended under certain conditions by Novalis. When, however, it ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... laid down by the noble lord, the true proportional payment for four or five and twenty governments according to the absolute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the British proportion of wealth and burthen, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation must therefore come in by the back door of the Constitution. Each quota must be brought to this House ready formed; you can neither add nor alter. You must register it. You can do nothing further, for on what grounds can you deliberate either before or after the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... his Prolusions (Lib. II. prol. 6), gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the other, though at never so great a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her, that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other, liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honourable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... from hope. That active principle in man which with such boldness pushes us on through every labour and difficulty, to attain the most distant and most improbable event in this world, will not surely deny us a little flattering prospect of those beautiful mansions which, if they could be thought chimerical, must be allowed the loveliest which can entertain the eye of man; and to which the road, if we understand it rightly, appears to have so few thorns and briars in it, and to require so little labour and fatigue from those who shall ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... claim for herself anything that she was not willing to accord to China. But the Tokyo statesmen were sensible that to ask their conservative neighbour to promote in the Peninsular Kingdom a progressive programme which she had always steadily rejected and despised in her own case, must prove a chimerical attempt, if ordinary diplomatic methods alone were used. Accordingly, on receipt of Peking's notice as to the sending of troops to the peninsula, Japan gave corresponding notice on her own part, and thus July, 1894, saw a Chinese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Around me, with Cresson as a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely chimerical person. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... liberal sheets the hero of Andujar, compressing in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals; the sansculottes resuscitated, to the great terror of dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchy opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his improvement, leaving behind him the expectation of his returning in a few years. Meanwhile, my father was anxious that we should regard each other and maintain a correspondence as persons betrothed. In persons at our age, this scheme was chimerical. As soon as I acquired the power of reflection, I perceived the folly of such premature bonds, and, though I did not openly oppose my father's wishes, held myself entirely free to obey any new impulse which circumstances might produce. My mother (so let me still call Mrs. Fielder) fully ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was so delighted with the beauty and fertility of the island that he imagined he could find there the fountain of perpetual youth for which he so long sought in vain. In this chimerical idea, however, as in Florida, he was doomed ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of playing on the fears of his opponents by means of the weak detachment under Jackson ever suggested itself to Johnston, he may be forgiven if he dismissed it as chimerical. For 7600 men* (* Jackson, 4600; Hill, 3000.) to threaten with any useful result a capital which was defended by 250,000 seemed hardly within the bounds of practical strategy. Johnston had nevertheless determined to turn the situation ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... them who say that Fiontan was drowned in the Flood, and afterwards came to life, and lived to publish the antediluvian history of the island—what can they propose by such chimerical relations, but to amuse the ignorant with strange and romantic tales, to corrupt and perplex the original annals, and to raise a jealousy that no manner of credit is to be given to the true and authentic chronicles of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... these principles harmonized with those proclaimed by the French revolutionists, they met very little opposition from the Italian liberals; but national unity, however desirable, was pronounced chimerical. How could Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sardinia, and the numerous other States, be joined together under one government? And then, under what form of government should this union be effected? To the patriots of 1831 this seemed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth; if this be beyond me, 'tis not possible.—What consequence then follows? or can there be any other than this—if I seek an interest of my own, detached from that of others; I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... more integrity. Mirabeau and Pitt became, and have ever continued to be, my favorite statesmen of modern days. Compared to them, I saw in Montesquieu only erudite, ingenious, and systematical dissertations; Fenelon seemed to me divine, but chimerical; Rousseau, more impassioned than inspired, greater by instinct than by truth; while Bossuet, with his golden eloquence and fawning soul, united, in his conduct and his language before Louis XIV., doctoral despotism with the complaisance of a courtier. From these studies of ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Panama Canal, now opened to the world, was for years deemed a chimerical dream and an impossibility, by the world as well as ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... worlds has always some darling object of chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east Passage ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... affirmation, that whatever has been is true, absolutely, and which, instead of confining itself to the explanation of transitory phenomena, invests them with all the dignity of principles. We shall endeavor to avoid the peril pointed out by Mallebranche. "Learned men study rather to acquire a chimerical greatness in the imagination of other men, than to acquire greater breadth and strength of mind themselves. They make their heads a kind of store-room, into which they gather, without order or discrimination, everything which has a look of erudition,—I mean to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... would he have replaced the worn-out vision of this chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look and smile, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... smell of unfolding blooms, the call of exultant "high-holders" and the chirp of cheerful robins brought back with a rush, all the sweet, associated memories of other springs and other gardens, making my gold-seeking expedition seem not only chimerical, but ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... struck with the coincidence, but denied that the wishes or expectations of the letter-writer were to be regarded as proofs of a charge otherwise chimerical. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical are really extremely practical—so practical that I depend upon them for my bread ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... first blush, the boy being so eager in giving vent to his own impressions and experiences of what he had seen at Tristan d'Acunha with regard to the advantage of starting a new sealing station of their own; but, when Fritz came to ponder over the plan, it seemed so chimerical that he felt inclined to be angry with himself for having entertained it for a moment. These second thoughts, however, did not long stand their ground after old Captain Brown had been consulted; for, that experienced mariner, who had, as he thought, such better means of judging ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... polity is indispensable, unless liberty is to be wholly sacrificed. All experience has shown that a king, who is a king in fact as well as name, is too strong for law, and the idea of restraining such a power by principles, is purely chimerical. He may be curtailed in his authority, by the force of opinion, and by extreme constructions of these principles; but if this be desirable, it would be better to avoid the struggle, and begin, at once, by laying the foundation of the system in such ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... civilization; they embody one of those surprises to which humanity owes much of its progress. The final object of all this patient research was never reached, because the relations upon which a belief in its feasibility was based were absolutely chimerical, but as a compensation, the accessory and preliminary knowledge, the mere means to a futile end, have been of incalculable value. Thus, in order to give an imposing and apparently solid basis to their astrological ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... feature of Philadelphia. In a very few years it could buy up all its certificates of stock and own its collections free. The handsome surplus, before alluded to, accruing annually to the London society shows that this is not chimerical. The city railways are interested in this movement, and should subscribe liberally. It is proposed in the Legislature to charter a railroad running north and south in West Philadelphia, and if this be done it will render ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... higher than man's; but an ideal nevertheless. If its construction is less complete than that of "Gil Blas," it is because its aim is infinitely higher; because the form has to be subordinated, here and there, to the matter. If its political economy be imperfect, often chimerical, it is because the mind of one man must needs have been too weak to bring into shape and order the chaos, social and economic, which he saw around him. M. de Lamartine, in his brilliant little life of Fenelon, does not hesitate ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... obliging her? and, but from views, what has he ever done, or will he ever do? But is Richcourt (575) so shallow, and so ambitious, as to put any trust in there projects? My dear child, believe me, if I was to mention them here, they would sound so chimerical, so womanish, that I should be laughed at for repeating them. For yourself, be quite at rest, and laugh, as I do, at feeble, visionary malice, and assure yourself, whoever mentions such politics to you, that my Lady Walpole must have very frippery intelligence from hence, if she can ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the different parties which divide Christendom. He saw well the necessity of having the Catholics on his side; and he flattered himself that having gained them, he would easily bring over the rest. M. Huet did not think such a project absolutely chimerical[640]: "The religious differences, says he, which have long disturbed the peace of Christians, are not impossible to be accommodated. If the parties would set about it sincerely, without obstinacy ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny |
