"Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand—a lady's delicate white hand—so placed between the light and the deed as to obscure the spot on which he was engaged. The unaccountable hand, however, was gone almost as soon as noticed." The clerk concluding that this was some optical delusion, proceeded with his work, and had come to the clause wherein the Master of Draycot disinherited his son, when again the same ghostly hand was thrust between ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... darkness, by the silence, by the rush of his waking fancies, numbed his heart. He felt the contraction of his hair, which rose on end as his eyes, dilating to their full strength, beheld through the darkness two faint amber lights. At first he thought them an optical delusion; but by degrees the clearness of the night enabled him to distinguish objects in the grotto, and he saw, within two feet of him, an enormous animal lying ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... course, any well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... thoughtlessness often betrayed in attendance on public religious services; in the impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of clearness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes retained in the near approach to death.—Rare instances of the admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties, even in the old age of an ignorant man.—Excuses for the intellectual inaptitude and perversion of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... a war with England by surprise naval attack was no doubt an element in German plans; but in 1914 this was negatived by the forewarning of events on the Continent, by Germany's persistent delusion that England would stay neutral, and by the timely mobilization of the British fleet. This had been announced the winter before as a practical exercise, was carried out according to schedule from July 16 to July 23 (the date of Austria's ultimatum to Serbia), and was then extended ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... part was a tissue of hugged lies; The second was its ruin fraught with pain: 10 Why raise the fair delusion to the skies But to be ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Through yourself I have hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that rank you high in the manifold orders of man,—thoughtful, laborious, and brave; with a heart that makes intellect vibrate to every fine touch of humanity; in error itself, conscientious; in delusion, still eager for truth; in anger, forgiving; in wrong, seeking how to repair; and, best of all, strong in a love which the mean would have shrunk to defend from the fangs of the slanderer,—a love, raising passion itself out of the realm of the senses, made sublime by the sorrows that tried ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how you are deceived, and how feather-headed people have deceived you! Don't you know that this show of prosperity is all delusion; that people of level heads are calling in their bills, and that this is a hard time for creditors? The age of finery has gone, and the age of rags has come. Rags, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... undeserved and unexpected mercy, for he alone fully understood the polluted stock from which they had all sprung, and the terrible pit of heathenish wickedness from which they had been rescued, not by him (the humbled mutineer had long since escaped from that delusion), but ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... but most vaguely. It was as much as they could boast, if they kept steadily to the rule of their order, and attended to the concerns each of his own soul. A terrible selfishness, if rightly considered; but one which accorded with the delusion that this world is a cave of care, the other world a place of torture or undying bliss, death the prime object of our meditation, and lifelong abandonment of our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why, then, should ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... increased, and we felt almost certain, by the shouts and cries we heard, that the patriots had forced an entrance into the town. We thought, indeed it was no delusion, that we heard a voice proclaiming liberty to the Netherlands, and the cry of "Long live the Prince of Orange! long live our noble Stadtholder!" Again loud noises reached our ears, and thundering blows echoed through the building. There could be little doubt that the jail ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... or their poverty consented, to contracts which involved irreparable harm to themselves, the community, and future generations. The women of this country have done nothing more important than to educate the judiciary of the United States out of and beyond this terrible delusion. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... tell everything, my father: this murderer whom I saw in my dream—was Derues himself! I know as well as you that it must be a delusion, I saw as well as you did that he remained quite calm, but, in spite of myself, this terrible dream haunts me.... There, do not listen to me, do not let me talk about it; it only makes me ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... uniform harmonious pattern, smooth, glossy, and respectable. His individuality gone, he would in a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a weak timid woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, this thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people would call it, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in keeping her boy out ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... policy of war. To talk of fighting to cowed rebels who have just been taught the too pleasant lesson of the folly of further resistance would have been useless. So he begins by telling them that the ease promised to them is a delusion: they may submit, but submission {173} will never win them peace, or deliver them from their victorious enemy. Peace, then, they cannot have; and must have war: but it need not be open or dangerous: craft has its weapons ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... expressly declares that no gods exist. Similar statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is sometimes substituted for the gods, but it comes to the same thing. And at the end of the play, where the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... myself of my remaining clothes, I saw something at which I thanked Heaven that I had not allowed the landlord to carry off my rapier. My eyes were on the door, and, as I gazed, I beheld the slow raising of the latch. It was no delusion; my wits were keen and my eyes sharp; there was no fear to make me see things that were not. Softly I stepped to the bed-rail where I had hung my sword by the baldrick, and as softly I unsheathed it. The door was pushed open, and I caught the advance of a stealthy step. A naked foot shot ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the world often know little enough of the world of men. It is a delusion to think that the business man is necessarily business-like. Your business man is often the most un-business-like creature imaginable. For practical ability, give me the man of letters. Life among books often leads to insight into the book of life. At Cambridge we speak of the reading men ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... occasioned. In April last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew little of the world, and had read books only: I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me affluence, and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... form a subject for wonder with everybody, and no one will believe that they are constructed of other than solid material. Even the credulous, who are permitted to tap one of Parmentier's boots as a convincing test, cannot help sharing the popular delusion. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... eminent in his name, was the sole ambition permitted to her—an ambition tender and devoted, which seduces a woman whilst it suffices to her disinterested genius. She could only be the mind and inspiration of some political man; she sought such a one, and in her delusion believed she ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... for the men of small property by advocating taxes on slaves and similar measures. He proposed as the conclusion of the whole matter the opening of negotiations for peace. We shall see later how deep-seated was this singular delusion that peace could be had for the asking. In 1863, however, many men in North Carolina took up the suggestion with delight. Jonathan Worth wrote in his diary, on hearing that the influential North Carolina Standard had come out for peace: "I still abhor, as I always did, this accursed war and the wicked ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... observes, "Monarchs have incurred more hazards from follies of their own that have grown up under the adulation of parasites, than from the machinations of their enemies; and in a democracy, the delusion that still would elsewhere be poured into the ears of the prince, is poured ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rough unsightly Sketch of Nature should we be entertained with, did all her Colouring disappear, and the several Distinctions of Light and Shade vanish? In short, our Souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing Delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted Hero of a Romance, who sees beautiful Castles, Woods and Meadows; and at the same time hears the warbling of Birds, and the purling of Streams; but upon the finishing ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the deposed primate was very different. He seems to have been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The immense popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers and tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore his blessing, the enthusiasm with which the sentinels of the Tower had drunk his health under the windows of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... propaganda of yours, Senor Conway," Don Mike interrupted. "Our friends here haven't listened to anything else since I got home last night. Mr. Parker, being quite ignorant of the real issue, has, of course, fallen under the popular delusion; and I've been trying my best to lead him to the mourner's bench, to convince him that when he acquires the Rancho Palomar—which, by the way, will not be for at least a year, now that I've turned up to nullify his judgment of foreclosure—that it will be a far more patriotic ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Elizabeth her "Little Lord Keeper." At twelve he went to Cambridge, but left the university after two years, declaring the whole plan of education to be radically wrong, and the system of Aristotle, which was the basis of all philosophy in those days, to be a childish delusion, since in the course of centuries it had "produced no fruit, but only a jungle of dry and useless branches." Strange, even for a sophomore of fourteen, thus to condemn the whole system of the universities; but such was the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the Imperial Court; and did get what human industry could of compensation, a part but not the whole. Contradictory noises had to abate. In the end, sound purpose, built on fact and the Laws of Nature, carried it; lies, vituperations, rumors and delusion sank to zero; and the true result remained. In 1738, the Salzburg Emigrant Community in Preussen held, in all their Churches, a Day of Thanksgiving; and admitted piously that Heaven's blessing, of a truth, had been upon ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The delusion incident to an enormously excessive paper circulation, which gave a fictitious value to everything and stimulated adventure and speculation to an extravagant extent, has been happily succeeded by the substitution of the precious metals and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... Carlo, there is a constant stream of—well, I might almost say adventurers, passing through the town, hoping to return with their expenses liberally recouped from the "tables"—of course, in most cases a delusion and a snare. It is said that Nice itself is a little Monte Carlo, and unquestionably there is a great deal of card-playing going on openly in the cafes, while the stationers' shop-windows literally teem with books professing to teach the secrets of roulette, how to win at Monte Carlo, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed was that of a more formidable persecutor even than ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... upon phantoms and suspected frauds. Hence it followed that Mr. Verity, in the plenitude of his courtesy, had continued to take off his hat—secretly and subjectively at all events—to this venerable theological delusion, so dear through unnumbered centuries to the aching heart ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, any thing better than a specious delusion, if I had not got above the least wish to have Mr. Lovelace ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... somehow, sometime doing this is to sin against the light of Christmas Day, to confess its ideal a delusion, its practice a failure. If on no other day of all the three hundred and sixty-five, we must on this day renew our faith in justice, which is ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... difficulties—indicate an accomplished impostor, not a crazy enthusiast. It is very possible and probable, that, at the outset of his career, he was a real believer in the truth and lawfulness of his art, and that he afterwards felt no inclination to part with so pleasant and so profitable a delusion: like his patron, Cromwell, whose early fanaticism subsided into hypocrisy, he carefully retained his folly as a cloak for his knavery. Of his success in deception, the present narrative exhibits abundant proofs. The number of his ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... these hopes and these limitations. He was, indeed, more popular in the colonies than any other British statesman, because he had recognized more fully than any other their strength and the value of their support. Yet he, too, laboured under the delusion that Australia and Canada were simply England beyond the seas. He not only looked at imperial questions from the point of view of one who was an Englishman first and last, but expected to find Australians ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... SILENCE.—there is no greater delusion than to suppose that vast number of boys know nothing about practices of sin. Some parents are afraid that unclean thoughts may be suggested by these very defences. The danger is slight. Such cases are barely possible, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... rather than saw the difference. They had crossed the sand belt, and the contour of the prairie was rising. Then the Cimarron was near! Even as the conviction took shape, the ghostly outline of a small elevation loomed through the murk. He stared at it scarce believing, imagining a delusion, and then sent his cracked voice back in a ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... founts of its wisdom present us Each morning with gems of this kind, Such matters must strike as momentous The news-editorial mind; 'Tis time this delusion was done with, High time that some voice made it clear We don't want those fountains to run with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... it's based upon delusion, because there is no definiteness, no homogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere between them and indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no chemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Nevil and Lilamani, her clear call could never seem either a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from self-interest: the visible proof that love, not power, is the last word of Creation. Happily for him, its outward form and inward essence had been his daily bread ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Bible mentions anywhere that God made evil. It speaks of the Lord God cursing the ground, but it does not accuse Him of making evil; and yet God should have made all. Can evil only be a lie, a dream, a delusion, a mistake or misapprehension, as Walter called it? What a state for a minister to be in; why, I believe I am questioning ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... those poets are popular. Their names are so; but if it be said that the works of Shakespeare and Milton are popular—that is, liked and studied—amongst the wide circle whom it is now the fashion to talk of as enlightened, we are obliged to express our doubts whether a grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare's can be ventured on the London stage without mutilation—and without the most revolting balderdash foisted into the rents made by managers in his divine dramas; nay, it is only some three ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... introduce to your acquaintance a set of personages resembling Madame Tussaud's wax-work, done in air—filmy gentlemen, in spectral blue coats, gray trousers, Wellingtons; and semi-transparent ladies clad from the looms of the other world. No, Nicolai's case, has extinguished that delusion. The visitant and his dress are figments of the imagination always. They are as unreal and subjective as the figures we see in our dreams. They are fancy's progeny, having under pressing circumstances acting rank, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Cecil had not shared her delusion on that subject, and anxiously inquired if she had ever acknowledged to her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... quite stupefied, and looked at it with soul and senses benumbed. Then she trembled, and put her hand to her eyes; for she thought it a phantom or a delusion of the mind. No: there it glared still. Then she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the fingers working convulsively, to ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... misunderstood it. Unless you can understand it, dear, it would do no good to come back, it would only mean other humiliating memories. This is not an easy letter to write and it's not well done. If your attitude of this afternoon is anything more than the delusion of anger—in other words, if your love is not one of complete trust, it's better that we shouldn't see each other again. If you can come in the spirit that I can receive you, to-day can be erased as if it had never happened—but ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... of Toryism than of truth in this opinion," observes the Eastern Star, as quoted in the Asiatic Journal for December; "and we believe the man who entertains it, the last who should ever be entrusted with power in this empire. It is as dangerous a delusion as it would be to imagine we could do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... but sweet bread, took a long drink of the good water from the earthen jar, and then, stretching myself out, drew my cloak up to my chin, and settled myself for sleep again. And that I might keep up a kind delusion that I was not quite alone in the bowels of the earth, I reached out my hand and affectionately drew the blades ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... amphitheatre, bounded only by the distant horizon, far remote from the noisy bustle of the Metropolis, he gave full scope to his imagination; and after an hour of pleasing reverie, left the fascinating delusion ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Freethinker is entitled to ridicule the miracles at Lourdes; and when 'taste' is dragged into the question, I simply reply that there is as much ill taste in the one case as in the other. All that this 'taste' can mean is that no devout delusion should be ridiculed, which is itself one of the greatest pieces of absurdity ever perpetrated. It would shield every form of 'spiritual' lunacy in ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... age and death as a consequence of disregarding the warnings that have just been given! How frequently do we observe young men rejoicing in the emancipation from home and school and spurred on by the fatal delusion that while others might suffer they will not, becoming in the end the victim of that arch enemy of early manhood, consumption! Every practicing doctor has seen this, not once, but hundreds of times, and in the vast majority of instances he can say with ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... lady, this is a delusion; you really must not give way to this kind of thing," murmured the doctor, rather complacently. He had a son-in-law who kept a private madhouse at Wimbledon, and began to think Mrs. Granger was drifting that way. It was sad, of course, a sweet young woman like that; but patients ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... their roundness of outline, and, where they do not grow fat, dry up, and resemble those of the other sex. The abdomen enlarges, even to the extent occasionally of leading the wife to believe that she is to be a mother,—a delusion sometimes strengthened by the absence of the monthly sickness. Finally, a perceptible tendency to a beard at times manifests itself, the voice grows harder, and the characteristics of the female sex become less ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... one of these occasions that a circumstance took place, which Nicholas, at the time, thoroughly believed to be the mere delusion of an imagination affected by disease; but which he had, afterwards, too good reason to know was of real and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... be Christians, to whom the subject is even positively distasteful. It is an offence to them. They do not want to hear it preached. They regard those who claim it as cranks. They look upon holiness meetings as being hotbeds of delusion and spiritual pride. They turn away from the whole subject not only ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... its charter and set the laws at defiance with impunity; and when, too, it had become most apparent that to believe that such an accumulation of powers can ever be granted without the certainty of being abused was to indulge in a fatal delusion? ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... their thoughts he would have smiled and been pleased. He wanted them to do their best and he was willing, should it prove to be safe, to allow them to keep up the delusion that their gait could bear any comparison with the speed of which he ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... opinions else? if we search for truth before we fix our principles, what do we find but doubt? And which of us begins the search a tabula rasa? Nay, where can we hunt but in volumes of error or purposed delusion? Have not we, too, a bias in our Minds—our passions? They will turn the scale in favour of the doctrines most agreeable to them. Yet let us be a little vain: you and I differ radically in our principles, and yet in forty years they have never cast a gloom over our friendship. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... perquisites of office; and year after year they come into the House of Commons, feeling deeply, and describing powerfully, the injuries of five millions of their countrymen—and CONTINUE members of a government that inflicts those evils, under the pitiful delusion that it is not a Cabinet Question, as if the scratchings and quarrellings of Kings and Queens could alone cement politicians together in indissoluble unity, while the fate and torture of one-third of the empire might be complimented away ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... my lords, have only furnished a new instance of the credulity of mankind, of the delusion of outward appearances, and of the folly of hoping with too great ardour for any event, and of trusting any man with too great confidence. No sooner were they possessed of the power to which their ambition had so long aspired, and of the salaries which had with so much eagerness been coveted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... always agreeable to be reminded that however large a part of our history is composed of the record of passion, greed, delusion, and stupidity, yet common-sense, the love of order and of justice (in matters of business), have usually been the predominant factors in our national life, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... thrown away, she was not slow to discover the reason of his indifference. It became plain to her at once that there was some other attraction, to use her own expression. In short, it was evident that the hope she had so fondly cherished was a baseless delusion, and that she would "never make anything out of that man yonder," in the Countess' forcible phrase. The Countess seemed to have been a judge of character. Mme. Vauquer's aversion was naturally more energetic than her friendship, for her hatred was not in proportion to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... imparted without contradiction. Such book-revelation, in this case, must be of inestimable value to man, because, without it, he must have persisted in that ancient and all but inveterate and universal delusion of which we have so often spoken. There is only one little inconvenience, I apprehend, from it in relation to the argument of such a book; and that is, that I am afraid that men, so far from being convinced thereby that a divine revelation ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... distinction between good and evil is absolutely denied. The Hindoo Pantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and God can not offend against himself; there is no sin—it is all maya—delusion. So the American and English school tells us it lives only in the obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in another way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... ceaseless strife! But now, Thou builder of this tabernacle—Thou! I know Thee. Never shalt Thou build again These walls of pain, Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay Fresh rafters on the clay; Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split! Delusion fashioned it! Safe ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... often appears to be under a strange delusion that British Columbia is situated in a part of the world which he vaguely alludes to as South America, and it is somewhat curious that the country is not better known, for it is a glorious land of great mountains, forests, streams, and rolling hill, ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... mind was at the Front; now that I'm back in the trenches half my mind is in London. I re-live our gay times together; I go to cosy little dinners; I sit with you in the stalls, listening to the music; then I tumble off to sleep, and dream, and wake up to find the dream a delusion. It's a fine and manly contrast, however, between the game one plays out here and the fretful trivialities of ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... fully took in to the betwixt 'n' between. It'll mebbe be a lesson to you some day if anythin' sh'd come up 's led you to look to be extra happy all of a sudden, 'n' you'll remember this hour 'n' jus' firmly go back into the house 'n' shut the door 'n' say, 'Life's a delusion 'n' a snare, like Susan Clegg's Cousin Marion.' It's better for you to learn the lesson 's all is vanity now, than to wait 'n' have it fall on your head like a unexpected pickle-jar, the way 's this day 's ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... testimony of his eyes to substantiate it, and the logic of his brain to prove it. If the wound upon his head was real, if this girl in search of whom he was now bent was real, if that within his pocket was real—if, in brief, he were not a lunatic in complete subjection to a delusion—then, however extravagant it might appear, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... fraudulent, surely the whole thing must have collapsed long before this; and the Seybert Commission, which finds it necessary to extend its investigations over an indefinite period, which will certainly not be less than a year, would have been able to sweep the delusion away in ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life, beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses that hung from the lowest green bough ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quick work. The Rebellion is an unborn tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion of mistaking a local commotion for a revolution. A strong active pull together will do our work in thirty days. We have only to send a column of twenty-five thousand men across the Potomac to Richmond to burn out the rats there; another column of twenty-five thousand ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... neither heard, nor desired to hear, more. Even Josephine's pretty face is fast fading from my memory. It is ever thus with the transient passions of our premiere jeunesse. We believe in them for the moment, and waste laughter and tears, chaplets and sackcloth, upon them. Presently the delusion passes; the earnest heart within us is awakened; and we know that till now we have been mere actors in "a masquerade of dreams." The chaplets were woven of artificial flowers. The funeral was a mock funeral—the banquet a stage feast of painted fruits and empty goblets! Alas! we cannot ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... libel which time, the only dispassionate judge, has long since condemned in respect of the generality of manhood. It is surprising, too, that Byron, though he revelled in the sea, was also under a delusion as to the more vitalising element, for he fancied the scorching rays to be "impregnate with disease," whereas the sun, the sea, and, in lesser degree, the torrid sand do actually represent "the spice and salt which season a man," and are the elements ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... need of spectacles, Sir, and I see clearly enough what is going on. It is some time since I have seen things as they are, and I am no fool. It is very wrong of you, a great lord, to encourage my husband in his delusion. And for you, Madam, a great lady, it is neither handsome nor honest to sow dissension in a family, and to allow my husband to ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... still, the delusion that had been strongest lately came back to the dying man. He again fancied himself a child—the favourite pupil of the Jesuit fathers. He began to repeat softly, lessons they had taught him—prayers ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... No more fatal delusion was ever cherished than the belief that "it takes two to make a quarrel." In world history it has seldom needed two to make a quarrel. Did Belgium ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... an imitation of themselves. At the best of times they take their New Testament ethics, distil from these every virtue and excellent quality, and posit the result as the characteristics of their Deity:—the result, plus a selfhood; and therefore the great delusion and heresy, Separateness, is the link that binds the whole together. It is after all but a swollen personality; and whether you swell your personalitv with virtues or vices, the result is an offense. There is a bridge, razor-edged, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... we went to hir Chappell that stands besydes the Church of St. Croix, to sy the impression that Christ left wt his foot (so sottish is their delusion) on a hard great stone when he appeared to Ste. Radegonde as she was praying at that stone. The impression is as deip in the stone as a mans foot will make in the snow; and its wonderfull to sy whow thir zealots hath worn the print much deiper ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body. In this atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... their service and sacrifice redeeming mankind from the forces that make for everlasting destruction? We seek no territory and no rewards. We give but do not take. We seek for a victory of our ideas. Our arms are but the means. America follows no such delusion as a place in the sun for the strong by the destruction of the weak. America seeks rather, by giving of her strength for the service of the ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, could be discovered beyond ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... suffering such as I never imagined I was capable of enduring; and some recompense I will have. You hope to plunge into the vortex of a great city, where you can elude observation and obliterate all traces. Do not cherish the ghost of such a delusion. Go where you may, but I give you fair warning, you cannot escape me; and the day you meet that guilty vagabond, you betray him to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... specimen of the delusion under which we live, daily. Here was my sister dying of blighted affections, under my own roof; and the upright, conscientious father of the wretch who had produced this withering evil, utterly unconscious ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... possible. This was not difficult, for the artist was too much wrapped up in himself to meddle with any domestic affairs. He seemed to be under some mystification that the lively French girl was a guest of Miss Rothesay's, and his sister ventured not to break this delusion. Christal's surname created no suspicions; the very name of his former model, Celia Manners, had long since passed ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Gwen, Darrow, and his four invited guests! The doors were closed; the windows had not been touched. No one could possibly have entered or left the room, and yet the assassin was not there. But one solution remained; Darrow was labouring under a delusion, and Gwen's voice would restore him. As she was about to speak I stepped back to note the effect of her words upon him. "Do not fear, father," she said in a low voice as she laid her face against his cheek, "there is nothing here to hurt ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... return home, Hughie would go to school for a couple of hours each morning. Alma could have wished it any other school than Mary Abbott's, but the thought was no longer so insupportable as when she suffered under her delusion concerning the two children. Now that she had frequently seen Minnie Wager, she wondered at the self-deception which allowed her to detect in the child's face a distinct resemblance to Harvey. Of course, there was nothing ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... spiritists are either fools or frauds. But I am endeavouring to give a faithful account of my feelings and sensations at the time of which I am writing, and the incident of the voice cannot be ignored. Perhaps it was all a delusion—an hallucination, if you will, due to the gradual breaking down of my body and mind. As to that, the reader can form his own conclusions. Certain it is, that from this time on, when I needed help and encouragement the most, I felt a vague assurance that my wife was by my side; and I verily believe, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... my eyes, thinking that I was the victim of some hallucination, or that the refraction from the intense light produced an optical delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... disagreeable as it was animating to the people of Canada. So entirely indeed were the Americans unprepared for a blow of such extraordinary severity, that no one could be brought to believe in it. It seemed an impossible circumstance. It was felt to be a delusion. It seemed as if some one had practised a terrible hoax upon the nation. Until officially made known to the sovereign people, the disaster was looked upon as a lying rumour of the enemy. Another Henry had been at work, tampering with the New England States, or the federalist minority ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... other words, by transcendental phenomena of a very extraordinary kind, connecting in a direct manner with what is generically termed Black Magic. Now, Black Magic in the past may have been imposture reinforced by delusion, and to state that it is recurring at the present day does not commit anyone to an opinion upon its veridical origin. To say, also, that the existence of modern diabolism has passed from the region of rumour into that of exhaustive and detailed statement, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... herself was yet unborn. I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote. The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came; and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation I there held with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Romance tongues are the bridge between ourselves and antiquity. Since the decline in the study of Greek and Latin, this is a factor to be seriously considered. It is the fashion today to berate the past, to speak of the dead hand of tradition, and to flatter ourselves with the delusion of self-sufficiency. To be sure, the aim of education is never to pile up information but to "fit your mind for any sort of exertion, to make it keen and flexible." But the best way to encompass this is to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... step—an easy one; and it constitutes, not so much a disorder of your being, as a readjustment, but a readjustment difficult of sane control." He paused again. "You pass out while fully awake—a waking delusion. It is usually labeled—though in my ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and which yet is impossible to be won by one who has nothing to give. He had the reputation among these simple folks, who knew how to be frugal themselves, of having a superfluity of wealth; his air and manner showed he had been always used to be lavish (as indeed he had), and nourished this delusion, which extended, though upon other grounds, to the tenants ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether among the whites or among the colored people, for blindness, in this matter, is not confined to the former. I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. I could entertain no such nonsense as this; and I almost lost my patience when I found any colored man weak ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... north, up the bay and across San Pablo, reached the month of Sonoma Creek about dark, and during the night worked up the creek some twelve miles by means of the tide, to a landing called the Embarcadero. To maintain the secrecy which the commodore had enjoined on us, McLane and I agreed to keep up the delusion by pretending to be on a marketing expedition to pick up chickens, pigs, etc., for the mess of the Columbus, soon ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... made as comfortable as possible. Even so, however, I must have been slightly delirious, for I remember thinking that everybody in the train was wearing a pink shirt without either coat or waistcoat. This must surely have been a delusion. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... little attempt at amity, the Rector resumed after a moment, "Wentworth's brother has sent in his resignation to his bishop. There is no doubt about it any longer. I thought that delusion had been over, at all events; and I suppose now Wentworth will be provided for," said Mr Morgan, not without ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... piercing, untold anguish, The proud boasting of their youth. And they feel how Nature was fair. And the mists of delusion, And the scales of habit, Fall away from their eyes; And they see, for a moment, Stretching out, like the desert In its weary, unprofitable length, Their faded, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... manager, defensively, "it is his lordship who suffers from the delusion that the first actress of England ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... honest and honourable at heart, risk their own and their neighbours' property, and ruin their character and good name, by the very actions most foreign to to their nature, ere it had fallen under the strong delusion. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that we are in a land of barbarians, whereas you call yourselves a civilised people: You say you are such; your actions deny the fact, and we judge by actions, not by words or self-commendations. When, therefore, you pride yourselves on your superiority and civilisation the whole is a delusion; and when we hear you set forth these absurd pretensions, we are compelled to commiserate our common race, and to exclaim, Alas, poor human nature!" This is the 241 verbatim reply that a very intelligent but irritated Muselman made to my animadversions on the absurdity of burying treasure. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Football Blue. Big and breezy. Spelling entirely phonetic. Spent most of his time smoking in the drawing-room, and laboured under the delusion that, as my amanuensis, he was at liberty to forge my signature to all documents, including cheques. He used my official note-paper to back horses on, and was finally requested to leave, after an unseemly brawl with a book-maker's tout ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... common man has found it difficult to divest himself of an habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But the neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... out. Put in cardboards. Put 'em all in again." Tessie and I almost could have wept. By that time it is about 4. We are all feet, feet, FEET. First I try standing on one foot to let the other think I might really, after all, be sitting down. Then I stand on it and give the other a delusion. Then try standing on the sides, the toes, the heels. FEET! "Ach! Mein Gott!" moans Tessie. "To-morrow I go look for a job in ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... for taking a step that put you into the way of delusion, without any intention to go off with him, what must those giddy creatures think of themselves, who, without half your provocations and inducements, and without any regard to decorum, leap walls, drop from windows, and steal away from their parents' house, to the seducer's ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warm one: and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be certain that your place was good in the whole sympathetic chain of human nature. The world was no longer a delusion. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as non compos mentis, recovered his reason at the same time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done under the influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a morbid mind, but the fever in it grew. He had thought that the Secretary loved Helen Harley: but once he had fancied himself in love with Helen, too, and why might not the Secretary suffering from the same delusion be changed in the same way? He took out the newspaper and read the story again. There was much about her beauty, a description of her dress, and the distinction of her manner and appearance. The President himself, it said, was charmed with her, and departing from his usual cold reserve ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... piteously wondered why Sydney remained downstairs in the schoolroom. "Oh, don't keep her away from me! I want Syd! I want Syd!" That was her one cry. When exhaustion silenced her, they hoped that the sad delusion was at an end. No! As the slow fire of the fever flamed up again, the same words were on the child's lips, the same fond hope was in ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... idea that bag-limit laws can save the game is to-day the curse of all our game birds, mammals and fishes! It is a fraud, a delusion and a snare. That miserable fetish has been worshipped much too long. Our game is being exterminated, everywhere, by blind insistence upon "open seasons," and solemn reliance upon "legal bag-limits." If a majority of the people of America ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... educated in Europe. His sole aim is to free his nation from its bondage, and lead it back to Lebanon. But in order to strengthen the people's trust in him, and to lead them back in greater glory, he pretends that he is "Hakeem," their divine, predestined deliverer. The delusion grows upon himself; he succeeds triumphantly, but in the very moment of triumph he loses faith in himself, the imposture is all but discovered, and he dies, a victim of what was wrong in him, while the salt ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of their trench, Ned, Bob, and Jerry, their comrades, and the officers on duty, could scarcely believe their eyes as they saw what had happened. Yet there was no delusion about it. Professor Snodgrass, rashly venturing across No Man's Land toward the German trenches, was coming back and with three prisoners. As Bob said afterward, it was like the advertisements of the circus which boasted of three ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... at length arrived when our heroine was to be confirmed in her expectations, or wakened from her state of self-delusion. The marquis returned from abroad, and Lady Pierrepoint wrote a note more mysteriously worded than usual, signifying that she "wished to have a conference with Miss Turnbull on a subject of some importance; and begged to know at what hour in the morning ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... he feels that he has been spattered by a shower of blood. He goes into a rage. He conceives the delusion that beneath the bark lives a wood nymph, and he would feel with his hands the palpitant flesh of the goddess, he would trucidate the Dryad, violate her in a place unknown to the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice, and by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed for its solemnization drew nearer and I heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation (being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the single wall which protected ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the complement of rank and file admit of no question, but the practical utility of their labors is quite another matter, and a matter which does not appear to produce among the army officials any great mental disturbance in their delusion that they are progressing. Yuen-nan is in need of military reform, reform which will embrace a start from the very beginning, and one of the first steps that should be taken is that those who are to be in the position of administering training should find out something ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... faith in angelic vision, no spell of psychic warfare, relieved the situation for her. The external evidences of some crisis which he had undergone only produced in her repulsion. Now, as ever since the temporary delusion that accompanied her baptism, Susannah endeavoured to possess her soul free from that sense of touch with mysterious powers which had worked such havoc with the sanity of the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Yet the awakening, for all that, was very bitter. Naturally enough, her first thought was that all men were of this stamp, and that there was no truth in any of them. Aunt Rachel was right:—they were a miserable, false, deceiving race, created for the delusion and suffering of woman: she would never believe another of them as long as she lived. There might be here and there an exception to the rule, such as her father or Mr Tremayne; she could not believe such evil of them: ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Hebrew had relaxed his hold for a second, a vile heretic points out to the visitor (Exodus XXII, 18): "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" and explains the witchcraft delusion to him. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... only child; but Jo's swift imagination painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, Josephine undertook his education,—undertook to teach him faith and hope and charity, to set right his wayward soul, to renovate his bitter opinions, to make him a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... innumerable quarterings and heraldic devices. Having then refreshed his memory by looking through a bundle of bills, and selected the most threatening of the lawyers' letters to answer the next day, he proceeded to keep up the delusion of sickness, by retiring to sleep in his dressing-room. Our readers will now have the kindness to accompany us to Lord Scamperdale's: time, the morning after the foregoing. 'Love me, love my dog,' being a favourite saying of his lordship's, he fed himself, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... barbarism, Ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole it's a popular delusion, and it is like to be, till you can get men to embrace wider and ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Does not that "bundle of ideas" become broken into as many wholly independent fragments as there are intervals between our sleepings? Or rather is not each fragment a whole in itself, and is not the idea of self-continuity from day to day and from week to week a self-delusion? How can it be otherwise if consciousness constitutes existence? For after the consciousness has ceased and "the bundle of ideas," which constitutes the individuality of that day, has therefore gone absolutely out of existence, it is impossible that the old bundle shall be resurrected by a new consciousness. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... with a horrible uncertainty on the subject of what-'s-o'clock,—ignorant whether we are running on New-York time, Dayton time, Cincinnati time, or St. Louis time,—whether, indeed, all time be not a pure subjective notion, and any o'clock at all a mere popular delusion. For the introduction of a uniform standard we have originally to thank the Atlantic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... death? The fact remains that, whether or not Evangelists and Apostles misconceived His teaching when they gave such prominence to His personality and His lofty claims, His enemies were under the same delusion, if it were a delusion; and the reason why the whole orthodox religionism of Judaism rejoiced when He was nailed to the Cross was summed up in the taunt which they flung at Him as He hung there, 'If He be the Son of God, let Him come down, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... under the plea of keeping it warm, the nurse covers it in her lap with a shawl, and, under this blind, surreptitiously inserts a finger between the parched lips, which possibly moan for drink; and, under this inhuman cheat and delusion, the infant is pacified, till Nature, balked of its desires, drops into a troubled sleep. These are two of our reasons for impressing upon mothers the early, the immediate necessity of putting themselves sympathetically in communication with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... every one of them," and will accept others if desired; for he knows that they must prove ineffective. "If," said Lord Derby in 1887, "Ireland and England are not to be one, Ireland must be treated like Canada or Australia. All between is delusion or fraud." ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... his seat in his large study chair, and he rose with such calm dignity to receive his unwelcome visitor, that his late agitation appeared a delusion ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... supply details for the future. But, as I said, a lot of this stuff is based on unpredictable and arbitrary factors that can't be inferred from anything in the present. That left me with the alternatives of delusion or precognition, and if I ever came near going crazy, it was before the Kilroy landed and the news was released. After that, I ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... please. Here, too, sire, are my weapons. I am your prisoner, the Provost-Marshal is outside, and you can at a word deliver me to him. Only one thing I beg, sire,' I continued earnestly, 'that your Majesty will treat; as a delusion the idea that I meditated for a moment disrespect or violence to ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... friend that a woman can have. Bear with me, dearest! I ask for so much; I have so little to offer in return. I dream of a life with you which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be enjoyed on earth. And yet, I cannot resign my delusion. Must my poor heart always long for happiness which is beyond my reach? If an overruling Providence guides our course through this world, may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our mortal ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... deceived; such an opinion is a mere delusion of Satan; wherever faith is it bringeth Christ into the soul; mark that, "Whosoever believeth, Christ dwelleth in his heart by faith. And if Christ be in you," saith the apostle, "the body is dead, because of sin, but the spirit is life, because of righteousness." If Christ be in you, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... us smile a little, therefore, to observe that universal delusion among the summer visitors, that we spend all winter in active preparations for next season. Not so; we all devote it solely to meditations on the season past. I observe that nobody in Oldport ever believes in ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... oil-paintings, in tasteful gold frames, ornament the plafond; but the magnificent chandelier is the greatest curiosity. It looks so massively worked in bronze, that it is painful to see the heavy mass hang so loosely over the heads of the spectators. But it is only a delusion; for it is made of paste-board, and bronzed over. Innumerable lamps light the place; but one thing which I miss in such elegant modern theatres is a clock, which has a place in nearly every ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... a good man—that is, a man whose face would have made it clear to any true observer that he habitually did the right in contradistinction to the wrong. He was, moreover, religious, and would not have been likely to fall into any delusion of mere sentiment in the region of religious emotion. But that which deludes a man commonly comes through a safe channel. As a matter of fact, the excitement which the delight of the eye had produced in him was a perfectly wholesome feeling, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... their tongue in their cheek or through a generous impulsiveness, tell them their natural taste for the bathos is a relish for the sublime, there is the more need for culture to tell them the contrary. It is delusion on this point which is fatal, and against delusion on this point culture works. It is not fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for free trade, extension of the suffrage, and abolition of church-rates, instead of graver social ends; but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... track where the pilot lay in his blood; and still the mocking spirits of the desert, the afreets of the mirage, led them on, and the hike glistening in the sunshine tempted them to bathe in its cool waters, close to their eyes, but never at their lips. At length the delusion vanished—the fatal lake had turned to burning sand! Raging thirst and horrible despair! the pathless desert and the murdered guide! lost! lost! all lost! Not a man ever left the desert, but they were subsequently ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... because we did not go to Mobile on this occasion, I had failed; but in the following letter to General Banks, of January 31st, written from Vicksburg before starting for Meridian, it will be seen clearly that I indicated my intention to keep up the delusion of an attack on Mobile by land, whereas I promised him to be back to Vicksburg by the 1st of March, so as to cooperate with him in his contemplated ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... line between the conscious and the subconscious. What bothers me is, am I conscious of having a subconscious, or not? Sometimes I think I am, and then again I'm doubtful. But if I'm aware of my subconscious, then it isn't a genuine subconscious, and the whole thing's just another delusion—" ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... best way to explain the little delusion under which the worthy gardener labored was to refer him to what takes place in his own domain. I asked him wherein lies the advantage of putting his tender plants into his greenhouse in November. How does ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... multitude who do evil, but the nearest and dearest relatives may become snares to our feet; and even those, in whose piety and wisdom we should naturally confide, may, under the influence of temporary delusion, incite us to do wrong. Our affections must not be implicitly trusted. There is a point where submission to man becomes treason against heaven. It were better to incur the displeasure even of the dearest friend ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... The powers controlling this railway are flooding the public service with Hollanders to the exclusion of our own people, and I may here say that in the most important departments of the State we are being controlled by the gentlemen from the Low Country. While the innocent Boer hugs to himself the delusion that he is preserving his independence, they control us politically through Dr. Leyds, financially through the Netherlands Railway, educationally through Dr. Mansvelt, and in the Department of Justice through ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... red as when she lived. The king sat always beside her, and thought she would come to life again. And so it went on for three years that he was sorrowing over her death, and the people over his delusion. At last Thorleif the Wise succeeded, by his prudence, in curing him of his delusion by accosting him thus:—"It is nowise wonderful, king, that thou grievest over so beautiful and noble a wife, and bestowest costly coverlets and beds ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... about it but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... sense of vanished self-delusion, he rose and went out. As he passed through the kitchen, his wife followed him to the door. "Ye'll see and sen' a message to the vricht ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed, is a delusion. It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness, cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to deaden the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... such an English village, either in its depopulated and decayed state (as Macaulay has remarked), or in its rosy prosperity and unsullied virtue; his economic history and theory were misleading. Like Macpherson, but through self-delusion rather than intent, he was engaged in an effort to deceive by giving sentimental doctrines a basis of apparent actuality. But the world has forgotten or forgiven his pious fraud in its gratitude for the loveliness of ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... place is this church, and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... subject, I had, perhaps, agreed with him. It is easy for a physician to agree to anything which emphasizes the visible, and erases the invisible fact. If there were any one form of the universal delusion more than all others "gone out" in the days of which I speak, it was the dear, old-fashioned delirium called loving at first sight. I was never exactly a scoffer; but I had mocked at this fable as other men of my sort mock,—a subject for ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... early centuries. Several of the best Fathers show a surprising want of a strict sense of veracity. They introduce a sort of cheat even into their strange theory of redemption, by supposing that the Devil caused the crucifixion under the delusion [intentionally produced by God] that Christ was a mere man, and thus lost his claim upon ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull |
