"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had so effectively steered the ship of State through the troubled waters of the interregnum, was, quite unintentionally and unwillingly, the greatest obstacle in the way of the young captain! Everybody who had a grievance—real or imaginary—against the government of Lorenzo, sought Messer Tommaso's advice and sympathy, so that the situation became charged with difficulties and embarrassments. The very merest change in the whim of a fickle people might upset the Medici, and then the Soderini would ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... snow, and hence we had it not as light as it had been for Tom's duel; although the moon made our outlines and features perfectly distinct as we assembled in the hollow, and it would make our pistol-barrels shine brightly enough when the time came, as I ascertained by taking aim at an imaginary mark. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... own lives interesting. But there are also great numbers of people who find their own lives dull, and wish, like Hedda Gabler, to live a more thrilling life. For them there are published a few whole newspapers, and sections of others, devoted to the personal lives of a set of imaginary people, with whose gorgeous vices the reader can in his fancy safely identify himself. Mr. Hearst's unflagging interest in high society caters to people who never hope to be in high society, and yet manage to derive some enhancement out of the vague feeling that they are part of the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... sense was made for man, and who would open picture galleries and museums to the public, and make the day somewhat of a day of enjoyment for the masses instead of pressing upon them the duty of mourning over sins largely imaginary, are not more advanced than were my parents forty years ago. They were beyond the orthodox of the period when it was scarcely permissible, at least among the Scotch, to take a walk for pleasure or read any but religious books on ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... bury-me-wick, but here's the blood; don't you see a big black cloud all spread over the floor hereabout, don't ye see?' Milly was stooping over the spot, and tracing the outline of this, perhaps, imaginary mapping, in the air ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... whips and heavier manacles?—Nothing is more distrustful than such a sentiment in such breasts—quickly alarmed, ready to strike, ready for any act of violence, blindly credulous, headlong and easily impelled, not merely against real enemies on the outside, but at first against imaginary enemies on the inside,[2381] but also against the King, the ministers, the gentry, priests, parliamentarians, orthodox Catholics; against all administrators and magistrates imprudent enough to have appealed to the law; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that night the clanging bell summoned me to go forth an' chase imaginary Chinamen, an' then my patience begun to get baggy at the knees. I wanted to be up in time to gather the milk before the heat of the day, an' I was a couple o' nights shy on my sleep already. The last time I took Fido along an' dropped him into the feed-bin, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... that the game of dice was at first called the game of God, because the regulation of lottery was one of God's prerogatives; but this derivation is purely imaginary. What appears more likely is, that dice were first forbidden by the Church, and then by the civil authorities, on account of the fearful oaths which were so apt to be uttered by those players who had a run of ill luck. Nothing was commoner than for people to ruin themselves at this ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of Congress, and force an acquiescence in the treaty. "It was the fear of being involved in a war," he said, "that the negotiations with Great Britain had originated; under the impression of fear the treaty had been negotiated and signed; fear had promoted its ratification; and now, every imaginary mischief was conjured up to frighten the house, to deprive it of that discretion which it had the right to exercise, to force it to carry this treaty into effect." He also charged the merchants of Philadelphia ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the Lutheran Church has failed to harmonize the doctrines of sola gratia and gratia universalis. However, the first of these strictures is based on gross ignorance of the facts, resulting from a superficial investigation of the articles involved, for the alleged disagreement is purely imaginary. As a matter of fact, no one can read the two articles attentively without being everywhere impressed with their complete harmony. In every possible way Article XI excludes synergism, and corroborates ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the fellow is his constancy. He was after your imaginary fortune once. I am sure of that. And he was so dazzled by the illumination of that ignis fatuus that he didn't see you, perhaps, and didn't recognize how much he really cared for you. At all events, in his letter to me—and, by the way, it is very strange that he ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... be added to the game by each player pretending that he has a destination or stopping-place, where he would wish to alight. It now becomes the aim of the two players who are "it" to carry him past his point. A player who is thus carried beyond his imaginary stopping-place must feign a violent passion, and imitate angry gesticulations. He may, in addition, feign a great age or a painful infirmity, which will be found to occasion the most convulsive fun for the other players in ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... voluntarily it will not take food. It is a very domestic bird, and fond of notice, its voice on such occasions is pleasing, on some others very harsh and hawk or eagle-like. Its manners are curious, depressing its tail, and arching its neck, and pecking at imaginary objects in a curious way. From the expressive manner in which it looks up at sunset on surrounding objects, especially trees, it is obviously accustomed ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... (M. sulphurea) has amused me exceedingly. They were in the habit of looking at their own images in the windows and attacking them, uttering their peculiar cry, and pecking and fluttering against the glass as earnestly as if the object they saw was a real rival instead of an imaginary one (a friend who observed it, insisted that, Narcissus-like, it was in an ecstasy of self-admiration). What is more remarkable, two of these instances occurred in the autumn, when one would not suppose the same motives for animosity to exist that would probably ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... would it had not been needful for me to call you hither to expostulate these things with you, and in such a manner as this! But necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary necessities, are the greatest cozenage which man can put upon the providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules by. But it is as legal, as carnal, and as stupid to think that there are no necessities which are manifest and real, because necessities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Majesty's Attorney-General of vindictiveness and foul partiality in the discharge of his duty as prosecuting officer for the Crown. He has sent his nephews and apprentices as spies into my office in order to hunt up imaginary offences. He has preferred bills of indictment against me on supposition of libel, and I have been dragged from my business by a common constable, and obliged to give bail in this Court, while he, the Attorney-General, has allowed the most infamous crimes to pass in review before him, without ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... foot and ankle. But these advances, so far from encouraging Mr. Scuddamore, plunged him into the depths of depression and bashfulness. She had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for the imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is not an imaginary place, except in name. It exists within a hundred miles of New York. The house is a palace, the grounds are a park. There is not only a long wing of magnificent guest rooms in the house, occupied by young girls or important older people, but there is also a guest annex, a separate ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... be careful never to over-exert myself, madam—those are the doctor's orders," said Nickie, in his sad, calm way. "The smallest excitement, the slightest strain, and my life goes out like that." Nickie puffed an imaginary candle ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... piece, the mere suspicion of a theft, a suspicion which is actually without foundation. In the latter case it is a young officer who is accused without grounds of having abstracted a silver spoon, which is recovered later on. Thus the base element is reduced in this case to a purely imaginary thing, a mere suspicion, and this suffices nevertheless to do an irreparable injury, in our aesthetical appreciation, to the hero of the piece, in spite of his innocence. This is because a man who is supposed capable of a base ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... black eyes, then she dressed it up with feathers, and scarlet flannel, and one of Ned's leaden hatchets; and in the character of an Indian chief, the late Poppydilla tomahawked all the other dolls, and caused the nursery to run red with imaginary gore. She gave away her new shoes to a beggar child, hoping to be allowed to go barefoot, but found it impossible to combine charity and comfort, and was ordered to ask leave before disposing of her clothes. She delighted the boys ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... when they asked for Joe, he had disappeared; but the next day he was found in a barn, delirious, swinging an empty lantern in front of an imaginary train, and crying, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... than ever, "and the next, that 'the peaches are doing remarkably well,'—now mark my words, Mr. Bellew." As she spoke, the Sergeant wheeled suddenly right about face, and came striding down towards them, jingling imaginary spurs, and with his stick tucked up under his remaining arm, very much as if it had been ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... He pretended to be holding a baby, cuddling an imaginary child in his arms. Then he tossed the non-existent little one up in the air, and pretended to ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the greatest effort on the part of Maxence and M. de Tregars not to play, but only to pretend to play, and to continue to count imaginary points,—"One, two, three, four." ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... can confirm himself against divine providence because the impious are advanced to honors and become leaders in the state and in the church. Moreover, what is greater or less standing, or greater or less wealth? Is this not in itself imaginary? Is one person more blessed and happier than another for it? Is a great man's standing, or even a king's or an emperor's, not regarded in a year's time as a commonplace, no longer exalting his heart with joy but quite possibly becoming worthless to him? Have those with standing ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the freight and so much for each saddle animal. But when we reached Cruces there was not a mule, either for pack or saddle, in the place. The contractor promised that the animals should be on hand in the morning. In the morning he said that they were on the way from some imaginary place, and would arrive in the course of the day. This went on until I saw that he could not procure the animals at all at the price he had promised to furnish them for. The unusual number of passengers that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... tea-time and put everybody on edge. He had, unfortunately for his friends, a reputation other than that of a soldier: he posed as a peacemaker. He saw trouble where none existed, and the way he patched up imaginary quarrels would have strained the patience of Job. Still, every one loved him, though they lived in mortal fear of him. So Abbott came about quickly and sailed ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... means limited to such matters. Every time their troops made a stand they were promptly defeated and driven back, but their faltering courage was bolstered up by glorious tidings of wonderful, but wholly imaginary, victories won elsewhere. It was often reported that many times more Americans had fallen in some insignificant skirmish than were actually killed in the whole war, while generals perished by the dozen and colonels by the thousand. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Park's proposed route was to proceed up the Gambia, cross the country to the Niger, when they were to sail down the river till they came to its termination. If, as Park supposed, in place of being lost, according to Major Rennel's theory, in some imaginary lake called Margara, it took a southerly direction, and might prove to be the river Congo; it was his intention to embark on board some slave-ship, and return, either by the way of St. Helena or the West Indies. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on. ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... walked an hour or two, or laid myself down on the grass on the summit of the hill, there to satiate myself with the pleasure of admiring the lake and its environs, to examine and dissect all the herbs within my reach, and, like another Robinson Crusoe, built myself an imaginary place of residence in the island. I became very much attached to this eminence. When I brought Theresa, with the wife of the receiver and her sisters, to walk there, how proud was I to be their pilot and guide! We took there rabbits to stock it. This was another source of pleasure ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... understand me?" And in the darkness George's bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind the column, could have heard the whispered word "sure," the emphasis put upon it in the vision was so poignant. "You say you understand ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... premises, comes here sometimes just between daylight and dark, and talks to me till I am ready to put forth my hand to find yours. Oh! Anna, you must be everything that is pure and good, through to the very depths of your heart, that mine may not ache in finding it has loved only an imaginary being. Not that I expect you to be perfect—for I shouldn't love you if you were immaculate—but pure in aim and intention and desire, which I believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... here," said McKnight pompously. "And another thing, when you feel this way just remember there are two less desirable places where you might be. One is jail, and the other is—" He strummed on an imaginary harp, with ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... often called idiosyncrasies appear to be, and doubtless are, due to disordered intellect. But they should not be confounded with those which are inherent in the individual and real in character. Thus, they are frequently merely imaginary, there being no foundation for them except in the perverted mind of the subject; at other times they are induced by a morbid attention being directed continually to some one or more organs or functions. The protean forms under which hypochondria appears, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... if they who rail so loudly against existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find, if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and remedying the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... lonely traveler, at other times a merchant carrying goodly pearls, at other times a bandit engaged in feats of plunder. All possible scenes in history or imagination that she understood did the child try to enact in the wilderness. But she went there now with no intention of posing in any imaginary part. She went there ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... His wife was dead. She was not very good, or very intelligent, and she was not at all beautiful. But he preserved a tender memory of her. It was twenty-five years since he had lost her, and he had never once failed a night to have a little imaginary conversation, sad and tender, with her before he went to sleep. He shared all his doings with her.—He had had no children. That was the great sorrow of his life. He had transferred his need of affection to his pupils, to whom he was attached ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... nothing is prettier than the contrast between their dusky ruggedness and the tender, the yellow and pink and violet fringe of that mantle. All this you may observe from the viaduct at the Ariccia; but you must wander below to feel the full force of the eloquence of our imaginary papalino. The pillars and arches of pale grey peperino arise in huge tiers with a magnificent spring and solidity. The older Romans built no better; and the work has a deceptive air of being one of their sturdy bequests which help one to drop another sigh over the antecedents ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... observations on this subject will be the more proper, as it is perceived that the adversaries of the new Constitution are availing themselves of the prevailing prejudice with regard to the practicable sphere of republican administration, in order to supply, by imaginary difficulties, the want of those solid objections which they endeavor ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... something is always happening everywhere, he was never able to fly in a straight line for more than the littlest distance. He was a cowardly bird too, and continually fancied that some person was going to throw a stone at him from behind a bush, or a wall, or a tree, and these imaginary dangers tended to make his journeyings still more wayward and erratic. He never flew where he wanted to go himself, but only where God directed him, and so he did ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... unflagging zeal, generous confidence, pure spirits, and the most unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant of the world which she had not seen, and of those movements of human passion which she had really never felt, she naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives of that imaginary empire which her genius continually brought before her eyes. She saw in him the embodiment of that faith in her intellect which it was the first and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing thus, it will be easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... "And so far as I can see, that is the principal reason why your friends, Aurora W. Chime and the Reverend Wilbur Short, and the rest of them, condemn it. They object to the evident pleasure of the fisherman more than to the imaginary suffering ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... little voice was very comforting to the two mothers hovering about her, and Jack said, with a look of mingled pity and admiration, as he brandished his crutch over the imaginary foes,— ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... past, the present, and the future. He bounded over the wilderness that lay between him and the beautiful plains of the Saskatchewan. He seized Charley round the neck, and hugged and wrestled with him as in days of yore. He mounted an imaginary charger, and swept across the plains along with him; listened to anecdotes innumerable from Jacques, attacked thousands of buffaloes, singled out scores of wild bulls, pitched over horses' heads and alighted precisely on the ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... motherhood, a potion more exciting, so her much experienced physician said, than any wine ever fermented. She hung over her sleeping baby, poring upon the exquisite fineness of the skin, upon the rosy little mouth, still sucking comically at an imaginary meal, upon the dimpled, fragile hands, upon the peaceful relaxation of the body, till the very trusting, appealing essence of babyhood flooded her senses like a strong drug; and when the child was awake, and she could bathe the much creased little body, and ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of sponging upon this Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... you know about snow!" rejoined the Hon. Bovyne. "Let us get on, there's a good fellow—confound you! don't stare at those imaginary trees any longer, but ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... he was a Christian. I longed to ask him about Jerry, but I found that he did not understand a word of English. It was so dark, also, that he could scarcely see my gestures. I tried every expedient to make him comprehend my meaning. I ran on, and then seized an imaginary person, and conducted him back to the fort. I raised my hands in a supplicating attitude. I shook his hands warmly, to show how grateful I should be if he granted my request. At last I began to hope ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... there, if there was room for the play that gives title to the volume. "Shakespeare's End," however, was doubtless included because it gives its author's ideas as to the mission of Ireland in the world. "An Imaginary Conversation," the second play of the volume, was performed at the Abbey Theatre May 13, 1909, following shortly after "Time"; a discussion of art and patriotism and love among Tom Moore, and his sister Kate and Robert Emmet, with a little, a very little, of the intensity ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... common to the Manchus, the Mongols, and the Northern and Southern Chinese. Among these may be instanced the great respect for, if not worship of, fetishes and rudely made images of animals, both imaginary and real, which are supposed to be embodied there with all their good and evil qualities. The Coreans have an especial veneration for the tiger, the emblem of supernatural strength, courage and dignity. Now ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... monotony and their turgidity. The Jacobin is full of respect for the phantoms of his reasoning brain; in his eyes they are more real than living men, and their suffrage is the only suffrage he recognises—he will march onward in all sincerity at the head of a procession of imaginary followers. The millions of metaphysical wills which he has created in the image of his own will sustain him by their unanimous assent, and he will project outwards, like a chorus of triumph and acclamation, the inward echo of his ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... beginning of hostilities, thousands of "war pictures"—mostly cheap lithographs—were published. The drawing and coloring were better than those of the prints issued at the time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent imaginary,—altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single military engagement had taken place;—the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... of this day were employed in taking once more a view of the superb scenery exhibited by the mountains Olympus and Ossa. They appeared upon this occasion in more than usual splendour; like one of those imaginary Alpine regions suggested by viewing a boundary of clouds when they terminate the horizon in a still evening, and are gathered into heaps, with many a towering top shining in fleecy whiteness. The great Olympian chain forms a line which is exactly opposite to Salonica; and even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... like the cold and pure breast of a virgin repelling those treacherous sentiments which prove the ruin of a shining and glorious innocence. Across the summit of this brilliant and cloud-like peak, which formed the most distant object in the view, ran the imaginary line that divided Italy from the regions of the north. Drawing nearer, and holding its course on the opposite shore, the eye embraced the range of rampart-like rocks that beetle over Villeneuve and Chillon, the latter a snow-white pile that seemed to rest partly ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... once or twice with extreme energy for a few minutes after imaginary whistles or shouts. Once I heard them passing our bows. But it was useless; we stopped, and the moon, from within the mistiness of an immense halo, looked dreamily upon ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sitting before my looking-glass—never to me a pleasant article of furniture—having my hair dressed. I am hardly awake yet, and have not quite finished disentangling the real live disagreeables which I have to face, from the imaginary ones from which my waking has freed me. At least, in real life, I am not perpetually pursued, through dull abysses, by a man in a crape mask, from whom I am madly struggling to escape, and who is perpetually on the point of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Italian snapshots, and Miss Ashwell's face was sufficient confirmation. How thrilling, how wonderful! He was home again, Miss Ashwell would be happy, everybody would be happy! Probably they would be married right away—she had forgotten the imaginary German bride—and maybe Miss Ashwell would let her help her in her shopping. She could go down on Saturday mornings. Aunt Nell knew an awfully good shop for linens, ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... worst you know about him, Thomas! What are his faults?" he snapped, and settled back to squint at his imaginary stage again. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... blue vault of the sky; and I was struck by the absurdity of the idea when I recalled to mind that once upon a time there were some exceedingly wise people who thought that the stars of heaven participated in our insignificant squabbles for a slice of ground, or some other imaginary rights. And what then? These lamps, lighted, so they fancied, only to illuminate their battles and triumphs, are burning with all their former brilliance, whilst the wiseacres themselves, together with their hopes and passions, have long ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... encounters no dense populations upon its route, through which it cannot work its way, it will assuredly continue to spread. The lines marked out by treaties will not stop it; but it will everywhere transgress these imaginary barriers. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Termagant;] The Crusaders, and those who celebrated them, confounded Mahometans with Pagans, and supposed Mahomet, or Mahound, to be one of their deities, and Tervagant or Termagant, another. This imaginary personage was introduced into our old plays and moralities, and represented as of a most violent character, so that a ranting actor might always appear to advantage in it. The word is now used for ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... drawing an imaginary line between the spot where the bullet struck the mattress and where it went into the floor—extend this line and we find the quarter from where the shot was fired." A ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... not indicate the true north in all parts of the earth, the needle varying in the North Atlantic Ocean from thirty degrees east to nearly thirty degrees west. There is an imaginary line, extending in a north-westerly direction, through a point in the vicinity of Cape Lookout, called the magnetic meridian, on which there is no variation. East of this line the needle varies to the westward; ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... my face with my hand. My memory was still ringing with echoes of the forlorn cry of wrecked love, mingled with the imaginary sobs I had just heard; therefore I hardly listened to the majestic opening of full, harmonious chords, which lead grandly into a sort of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... this was a personal complaint or a mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In In Memoriam Tennyson speaks out concerning the loss of a friend. In Maud, as in Locksley Hall, he makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any such mischance, but many readers ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... inoffensive, but I repeat melancholy. Why does this sadness continue? Alas, it is the law of God. Do not look at me, I beg you, as on one of those women whom I have seen and of whom I have read, who create imaginary misfortunes for themselves, and deck themselves with ideal suffering and melancholy. I have neither sorrow nor passionate regrets and I do not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... afterwards, very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic papa and mamma. It is striking to observe, not only how early, but how powerfully, imagination [13] is developed in our childhood. For some time after, I regarded those imaginary parents as sustaining a peculiar relation, not only to me, but to one another; I thought they were in love, if not to be married. But they never were married, nor ever thought of it, I suppose. All that drama was ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... not allowed to tell you," said Bryce, who had no intention of informing her that one person was himself and the other imaginary. "But I can assure you that I am certain—absolutely certain!—that their story is true. The fact is—I ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... Purgatorio de San Patricio". In the latter, the name of the Irish prince to whom Patrick was sold is not given; in Jocelin he is called "Milcho." Calderon was either ignorant of this, and gave the king a name that was purely imaginary, or, considering it less musical than he would wish, gave him the more harmonious one of Egerio. The following is Jocelin's version: "And Milcho beheld a vision in the night: and behold Patrick entered his palace as all on fire, and the flames, issuing from his ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... ideal of nature required of us something beyond good. The conception of moral good did not satisfy one while contemplating it. The highest form known to us at present is pure unselfishness, the doing of good, not for any reward, now or hereafter, nor for the completion of an imaginary scheme. This is the best we know. But how unsatisfactory! Filled with the aspirations called forth by the ideal before me, it appeared as if even the saving of life is a little work compared to what the heart would like to do. An outlet is needed more fully satisfying to ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... large half is occupied with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy, anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of the mental power is employed in wanting to know what the other people think; an eighth part ought to be dwelling upon the fair distracting ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... you!" cried Hanaud in a voice which shook—surely with emotion. He wrung Ricardo's hand. He wiped an imaginary tear from ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... wait upon the Governor. Afterwards people recalled, with a disposition to connect Seymour with this master-stroke in politics, that he had never declined by letter, and that the reasons given, like the illness that kept him from facing the convention, were largely imaginary. "That crowd saw how beautifully they were done," said Depew, then secretary of state at Albany, "while Dean Richmond's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... fore-foot clattering against the planks—his customary trick when hungry—and so, down goes Israel's hook, and with a tuft of white clover, impulsively snatched, he hurries away a few paces in obedience to the imaginary summons. But soon stopping midway, and forlornly gazing round at the enclosure, he bethought him that a far different oval, the great oval of the ocean, must be crossed ere his crazy errand could be done; and even then, Old Huckleberry would be found long surfeited with ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... with an aspect as benign as the summer sky overhead; Prue ran to and fro pouring forth a stream of counsels, warnings, and predictions; men and maids gathered on the lawn or hung out of upper windows; and even old Hecate, the cat, was seen chasing imaginary rats and mice in the grass till her yellow eyes glared with excitement. "All in," was announced at last, and as the carriage rolled away its occupants looked at one another with faces of blithe satisfaction that their ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... with a yellow clock—which did not go—and glass ornaments in front. There was a small round table before the window, supporting wax fruit under a glass case. There was a hearthrug with a dazzling pattern of imaginary flowers. On the blue cloth of the middle table were four showily-bound volumes, arranged symmetrically. On the head of the sofa lay a covering worked of blue and yellow Berlin wools. Two arm-chairs were draped with long white antimacassars, ready ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the hero of L'Oeuvre, is unlike Manet in so many respects, there is a close analogy between the artistic theories and practices of the real painter and the imaginary one. Several of Claude's pictures are Manet's, slightly modified. For instance, the former's painting, 'In the Open Air,' is almost a replica of the latter's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe ('A Lunch on the Grass'), shown at the Salon of the Rejected ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the words saint and hermit with a special purpose. It was by the influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after the destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes of savages, destroying each ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... announced; they demand a play in honour of the corporation, and Ralph, their apprentice, is to act a principal part in it. Their humour is complied with; but still they are not satisfied, make their remarks on every thing, and incessantly address themselves to the players. Ben Jonson had already exhibited imaginary spectators, but they were either benevolent expounders or awkward censurers of the poet's views: consequently, they always conducted his, the poet's, own cause. But the grocer and his wife represent a whole genus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... very few months to educate Aleck's imagination and Sally's. Each day's training added something to the spread and effectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck made imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, and Sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the strain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... to hear. Listen to it in the past and present speech of providence. The time was when you had the very public sentiment you are now trying to form. From Maine to Louisiana, the American mind was softly yielding to the impress of emancipation, in some hope, however vague and imaginary. Southern as well as Northern men, in the church and out of it, not having sufficiently studied the word of God, and, under our own and French revolutionary excitement, looking only at the evils of slavery, wished it away from the land. It was a mistaken public sentiment. Yet, such as it was, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... children. But no children were ever in it—or anybody else apparently. And so, in spite of its beauty, it had a lonely look that hurt Jims. He wanted his Garden of Spices to be full of laughter. He pictured himself running in it with imaginary playmates—and there was a mother in it—or a big sister—or, at the least, a whole aunt who would let you hug her and would never dream of shutting you up in chilly, shadowy, horrible ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... simply to himself that he could not give her up to any one else so soon. There would be a long life of joy and satisfaction to her, and he knew she would not grudge him these few years. Then, too, he was quite certain she had not even had an imaginary fancy for these two men—Ben was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that could have caused that fracture. Let it be considered how easily the fracture on the skull produced is accounted for. At the dissolution of religious houses, the ravages of the times affected both the living and the dead. In search after imaginary treasures, coffins were broken, graves and vaults dug open, monuments ransacked, shrines demolished, Parliament itself was called in to restrain these violations. And now are the depredations, the iniquities of those times, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arrived at Washington nine days before his inauguration. The outgoing President, at the opening of the session of Congress, had still kept as the majority of his advisers men engaged in treason; had declared that in case of even an "imaginary" apprehension of danger from notions of freedom among the slaves, "disunion would become inevitable." LINCOLN and others had questioned the opinion of Taney; such impugning he ascribed to the "factious temper of the times." The favorite doctrine of the ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... fine imaginary notion, That draws in raw and unexperienced men To real mischiefs, while they hunt a shadow. 925 ADDISON: Cato, Act ii., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... a shrug of the shoulders, the foreign substitute for a Burleigh shake of the head; leaving us to infer that we must not make too sure of coming off with a whole skin. Knowing well enough that all apprehensions of that kind were imaginary, we had been only amusing ourselves with him. If there had been any danger, he seemed just the fellow to be in league ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... effigy imaginary, imaginative impending, approaching imperious, imperial imply, infer in, into inability, disability ingenious, ingenuous intelligent, intellectual insinuation, innuendo instinct, intuition involve, implicate irony, sarcasm ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that though her circle of society was small, yet she found in her neighbourhood persons of good taste and cultivated minds. Her acquaintance, in fact, constituted the very class from which she took her imaginary characters, ranging from the member of parliament, or large landed proprietor, to the young curate or younger midshipman of equally good family; and I think that the influence of these early associations may be traced in her writings, especially ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... hear the big dispatcher growl at him in his bluff way: "Use your head—use your head—Hoogan!" It was always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"—Donkin was everlastingly drumming that into him; for the dispatcher used to confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be a great dispatcher—like Donkin. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Peterhouse, owing to some real or imaginary offence, and removed to Pembroke Hall, where he was surrounded by his old and intimate friends. The next year he carried his two Odes to London, as carefully as if they had been two Epics. Walpole says that he "snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and made them 'the first-fruits ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... classics by Spanish priests, wrote in excellent prose his famous works, Florida del Inca, Comentarios reales and Historia general del Peru. The second work, partly historical and largely imaginary, purports to be a history of the ancient Incas, and pictures the old Peru as an earthly paradise. This work has had great influence over Peruvian and Colombian poets. Menendez y Pelayo (Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer., III, Introd.) considers Garcilasso, or Garcilaso, and Alarcon the two truly ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... flat and the calves of his legs too small, but he is certainly the most picturesque traveler to be seen on the road. He bends his knees more than the white man, and oscillates more to and fro, or from side to side. The imaginary line which his head describes is full of deep and long undulations. Even the boys and young men sway ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... previously to that of gods, that therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... on the grass. "News is around that Dirty Dan the cattle rustler is gonna try to steal some of my cattle." He patted an imaginary holster at his side. "And I ...
— Texas Week • Albert Hernhuter
... unlike as well as the like. She loved his quick, Cockney accent, his Cockney oaths when he forgot himself—the way he always said "Yeyss" instead of "Yes"—his little assumptions of vanity in socks and tie. She loved a queer blend of Albert and Martin, the real and the imaginary, substance ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... reality of the penchant he believed himself to have inspired, you may be sure the lively scoundrel was not a little flattered at his imaginary conquest. He debated, therefore, in his self-complacent reveries, whether he should take prompt advantage of the weakness of his victim, or pique her by the malice of suspense. He chose the latter tactique, and, with a happy self-esteem, reserved ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... and nervously pulling the gathers of her white morning gown, she listened while the loquacious Kitty told her what she knew of the imaginary wife of Richard Harrington. The hands ceased their working at the gathers, and assuming an air of indifference, Grace rang her silver bell, which was immediately answered by a singular looking girl, whom she addressed ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... leaders. Especially in international diplomacy is truthfulness far to seek. Secretary Hay, indeed, stated in the following words: "The principles which have guided us have been of limpid simplicity. We have set no traps; we have wasted no time in evading the imaginary traps of others. There might be worse reputations for a country to acquire than that of always speaking the truth, and always expecting it from others. In bargaining we have tried not to get the worst of the deal, alway remembering, however, that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... did not dare write her. I refused utterly to tell her just what was in the letter, but I did succeed in quieting her and making her think that Harry had not broken faith with her, but was blaming himself for some unknown and imaginary wrong he had done her. Peggy rushed immediately up to her room to write reassuring pages to Harry, and her old-maid aunt had the horse put in the runabout and was driven over to Whitman, where nobody knows her—at ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... angle, the only way to produce a good tone. I find it helps my pupils to tell them not to think of the position of the bow-arm while drawing the bow across the strings, but merely to follow with the tips of the fingers of the right hand an imaginary line running at a right angle across the strings. The whole bow then moves as it should, and the arm motions ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... you, have figured chiefly in religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills, and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it. You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... long she slept she did not know, but it seemed to her that she had just fallen into slumber when something caused her to open her eyes. For a few moments she lay in that strange debatable region between sleeping and waking when the mind cannot distinguish between the real and the imaginary. All at once she sat up, fully awake, every sense strained and alert. Something was wrong. What was it? She listened intently, but such an intense stillness reigned throughout the house that Sally's soft ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... of his temper had not been overborne by the violence of party, and his and the national interest sacrificed to the passions of a few. Others there were among the Tories who had flattered themselves with much greater expectations than these, and who had depended, not on such imaginary favour and dangerous advancement as was offered them afterwards, but on real credit and substantial power under the new government. Such impressions on the minds of men had rendered the two Houses of Parliament, which were then sitting, as good courtiers ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... away from the pinnacle of his imaginary triumph as if dead, Zell following, wringing her hands, and with streaming eyes; but Edith reminded one of some wild, timid creature of the woods, which, though in an extremity of danger and fear, is alert and watchful, as if looking for some avenue of escape. Her searching eyes turned almost ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... striking remarks on the kind of madness which, whenever some terrible notoriety is given to a particular offence, leads persons of distempered fancy to accuse themselves of it. He observes that when the cruelties of the Inquisition against the imaginary crime of sorcery were the most barbarous, this singular frenzy led numbers to accuse themselves of sorcery. The publication and celebrity of the crime begat the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a concave mirror, is an imaginary point placed in the centre of a circle formed by continuing the boundary of the concavity of the mirror from any one point of the edge to another ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... called the Scottish Avengers. With them he would retire into valleys far away from the village, where none would mark what they were doing, and there they practised with club and stake instead of broadsword and pike, defended narrow passes against an imaginary enemy, and, divided into two parties, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... said to have been accompanied, or to the sacred books in which they are recorded; nay, he does not even name the Founder of the Christian faith, otherwise than by describing him as "the founder, real or imaginary, of this ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... And a mere chance tour on a Sunday through our churches would quickly show the lamentably frequent misapprehension of genius by itself; for many a fine genius for the actor's art is spoiled by an imaginary call to the pulpit. The presumption therefore is indeed against the great Tolstoy in his dispute with the great public. Still, I venture to side with Tolstoy. I too venture to think that Tolstoy's greatest work is found not so much in his works of pure art as in his works of pure religion; and ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... have preserved the calm possession of his own mind. But his ecclesiastical ministers soon contrived to seduce the impartiality of the magistrate, and to awaken the zeal of the proselyte. He was provoked by the insults which had been offered to his statues; he was alarmed by the real, as well as the imaginary magnitude of the spreading mischief; and he extinguished the hope of peace and toleration, from the moment that he assembled three hundred bishops within the walls of the same palace. The presence of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... direction. When I first discovered this disagreeable fact, I was in a filthy and obscure lane rather than street, which I did not remember having ever honoured with my presence before. While I was pausing in the vain hope and anxious endeavour to shape out some imaginary chart—some "map of the mind," by which to direct my bewildered course—I heard a confused noise proceed from another lane at right angles with the one in which I then was. I listened: the sound became more distinct; I recognized ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he had alighted on after his leap in the dark, and the sawyers were equally anxious to induce settlers to come there, and so bring a market for their labour close to their hand nothing could make our purchase appear anything except a dead loss. As for the plans, they were purely imaginary. The blue lake was about the only part true to nature; and even that should have had a foot-note to state that it was generally lashed into high, unnavigable waves, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of him, determined to tell the whole foolish story, to explain the imaginary obstacles that divided them. But he was not to be found, so the impulse died, and she determined to play the farce out to its end, and now, that she knew the core of the whole situation, she could make it count for ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Mr. Tubbs went off in search of the housekeeper. "An at-home!" She mimicked his precise tones. "Of all the tiresome things. He'll invite a lot of doddering old women who'll come and look you over this way!" Beryl lifted an imaginary lorgnette to her eyes. "Why didn't you say you'd like a regular party and just have young people—there's a boys' school only ten miles from here and it would have been such fun. Of course I couldn't have come down but I could ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott |
