"Chimera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and to impose on the judges, and make them believe that magicians are only madmen and hypochondriacs, worthy rather of compassion than chastisement? We must then return to the deep examination of the question, and prove that magic is not a chimera, neither has it aught to do with reason. We can neither rest on a sure foundation, nor derive any certain argument for or against the reality of magic, either from the opinion of pretended esprits forts, who deny because they think proper to do so, and because the proofs ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... supervisor, by marking the exercises in the desk copy, can ensure the use of the key he desires. If it is objected that the tones then sung will not represent the real pitch of the written notes, why that is at once admitted. What then? The idea of teaching absolute pitch is a chimera. Pianos are not alike in pitch, neither are tuning-forks. Classes will often for one cause or another end a half tone or a tone lower than they began even if the pitch as written is given. It may not be desirable to sing in one key music that is read in another, but it certainly ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... world, was longing for a sacred King, for a Prince of Peace, who should come from the East and bring to the people some higher and truer happiness than that deceiving chimera of political bigness. Well, Christ should be this universal, sacred King, this Prince of Peace, and Messenger of a durable happiness. It is not true that Christ had His prophets among the people of Israel only. His prophets existed ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... love was unfortunate. Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person with whom he would have esteemed it the highest felicity of his life to have entered into closer ties; but it was vain to think of it, being almost an impossibility! a chimera! and yet his feelings remained the same as the very first day he had seen her! He added, "that never before had he found such harmony! but no declaration had ever been made, not being able to prevail on himself to do so." This conversation took place in Sept. 1816, at Helenenthal, in Baden, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... true ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion—as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people.' Ib p. 431. In 1770 he wrote:—'Our government has become a chimera, and is too perfect, in point of liberty, for so rude a beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of licentiousness.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple terms:—"The world is what it is, and it is because it is; any other reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a sophism or an illusion."[84] All inquiry into the origin of things is a pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with sufficient disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz. It has ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... another thinks of the unsatisfied cravings of her heart, and paints in the glowing hues of a dream an ideal lover, to whom she abandons herself with the rapture of the woman in the Roman mosaic who embraces a chimera; yet a third is thinking that this very evening some hoped-for joy is to be hers, and rushes by anticipation into the tide of happiness, its dashing waves breaking against her burning bosom. Music alone has this power of throwing us back on ourselves; the other ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... hitherto thought you a prince of great wisdom, and prudence; but what you say convinces me I was mistaken. Tell me, I beseech you, where was your wit or discretion, when you formed to yourself such a chimera as you have proposed to me? Could you conceive a thought of aspiring in marriage to a princess, the daughter of so powerful a monarch as myself? You ought to have considered the great distance between us, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... assertion, it will be sufficient to give a slight sketch of the different views and opinions of the gold-makers, Rosicrucians, manufacturers of astralian salts, drops of life, and tinctures of gold, hunters after the philosopher's stone, and other equally absurd chimera. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... and of New Zealand had been partially revealed, and the existence of that great continent which, according to Tasman, extended from Tierra del Fuego to New Zealand, began to be doubted; but it still required the long and careful researches of Cook to banish definitely into the domain of fable a chimera so long cherished. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... I understand that this is a chimera,—a dream that you have got. I know well that no duty can require you to do this mad—this suicidal thing. I know you love Eleanor Harding with all your heart, and I tell you now that she loves you as well. If there was a plain, a positive duty before you, I would be the last to ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... capital, and saw a nightmare. There is a touch of panic in the despatch which he sent to Mr. Seward at a time when both secretary and public were held too closely in the throes of reconstruction to take alarm at so distant a chimera. Agents of the Southern States, wrote the minister, claimed that not thousands of families, but a hundred thousand families, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... thing—you! My soul! I would have given it to burn for ten thousand years for one kiss, one touch of these snow-coloured hands. When I saw, or thought I saw, that you loved me, I was God. I said on reading your sweet letter, 'My life shall not pass without kissing at least once the lips of my chimera.'" ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... what I tried to do might be so easily frustrated in that cauldron—why should I risk personal happiness—the most precious and the rarest thing in life, for what may be a chimera—wasted years and a wasted life. Why are we made as we are, if to coax that hidden spark into a steady flame is not our highest destiny? It certainly is our manifest right. . . . Dreams of doing great things in this world are nine-tenths personal vanity. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... politician would lend an active hand, he only multiplies interruptions and grounds of complaint; when the merchant forgets his own interest to lay plans for his country, the period of vision and chimera is near, and the solid basis of commerce withdrawn. He might be told, that while he pursues his advantage, and gives no cause of complaint, the interest of commerce ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... longer time; the explosion resounded, the earth gaped, the smoke which rushed through the large fissures obscured the sky; the sea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from the grotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried the bark out twenty toises; the rocks cracked to their base, and separated like blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault was carried up toward heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-colored and green fire of the sulphur, the black ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of her two diplomatists was not, however, a sufficient warning to Madame des Ursins. Ever in pursuit of a position, which had become nothing more than a chimera after having served as a lure on the part of the English, she relied for success upon the persistent and obstinate will of Philip V., who made it a question of amour propre for himself as much as a just recompense for Madame des Ursins. It ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the maestro's; slender, light-haired English misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the experiments may become more intelligent; that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "Annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably have been ready to join in the prayer, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... painter of allegories may place beside the peasant a radiant angel, sowing the blessed grain broadcast in the smoking furrow. The dream of a serene, free, poetic, laborious, and simple life for the tiller of the soil is not so impossible that we should banish it as a chimera. The sweet, sad words of Virgil: "Oh, happy the peasants of the field, if they knew their own blessings!" is a regret, but, like all regrets, it is also a prophecy. The day will come when the laborer too may be an artist, and may at ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... if we ain't gwine ter git dat specimen of botanical horrorforbilicalness? I done hoped I could tell ma friends w'en I returned dat we done was successful, an' cure some ob dem ob craziness in de haid by applyin' some ob de bypunktater. If we don't find it, den dey all say we been follerin' a chimera-infantum—in odder words, dat we needs some ob de ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... confederates; so that he began to entertain suspicion of Mr. Jennings, who he could not help thinking had been at the bottom of them all, and spirited up principles of rebellion in the school, with a view of making himself independent. Possessed with this chimera, which was void of all foundation, the German descended so low as to tamper in private with the boys, from whom he hoped to draw some very important discovery; but he was disappointed in his expectations; and this mean practice reaching the ears of his usher, he voluntarily resigned his employment. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and firm it must have lain Full oft its touch of power rare Upon the curling lion-mane Of some chimera ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... paved the way for Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a third, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and not injury is his province. Strange and terrible chimera! Yet it would not be suddenly dismissed. It was surely no vulgar agency that gave this form to my fears. He to whom all parts of time are equally present, whom no contingency approaches, was the author ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... such disputation. I have learned from bitter experience that merely logical forms of argumentation do not satisfy the hungry soul. The rigid processes of Idealism annihilated the external world; and Hume proved that Mind was a like chimera; yet who was ever seriously converted by their incontrovertible reasoning? I ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... in question formed a hiding-place in which we had made it a practice to keep a magnificent antique jewel, a chimera in gold, set with rubies and emeralds and worth a great deal ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... is an altar. Adjacent is a figure, half griffon, half chimera, the Beast of Amenti, perhaps too of the Apocalypse. Beyond, an ape poises a pair of scales. For balance is an ostrich feather. Above are the spirits of fate. At the left Osiris is enthroned. From a balcony his assessors lean. At the right is the entrance. There the disembodied, ushered by Truth, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... in fact, so runs the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental Quebec, and the other provinces will follow suit shortly. Not all Home Rulers, indeed, are obsessed by this confusion. Mr. Childers, for instance, makes short work of what he calls the "federal chimera," dismissing the idea as "wholly impracticable," and pointing out that Home Rule must be "not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." But the great majority of Liberals to-day are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the Nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them in that task, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... therefore that the religion of Numa dishonoured the Deity. For a long time, therefore, people have been disputing over a chimera; which ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... it were Boulevard des Italiens—" said M. Joyeuse dreamily, and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone: "closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible Imaginaire had installed his friend in a splendid apartment on the boulevard, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... already spoken of our aptitude to be frightened by a chimera, and deceived by such words as "nature" and "cause." Laws and rules, by which we express Order, are restrictive only in a condition of intelligence short of completeness, only therefore in that province of thought which concerns itself with material facts. The musician is not fettered by the laws ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... She, thus splendidly endowed; thus allied to nobles; thus gifted with arts, and adorned with graces; that she should choose me, me for the partner of her fortune; her affections; and her life! It cannot be. Yet, if it were; if your guesses should—prove—Oaf! madman! To indulge so fatal a chimera! So ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... is unwilling to sacrifice to me this chimera of virtue," exclaimed Napoleon, "although she has already disregarded it by loving me. She is not courageous enough to give up the semblance after having already parted with the substance. Like all women she is timid, and incapable of a great resolution! How many ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... following are some of their doctrines, as found in their books expressly designed for general circulation. Sometimes standing out in their naked horror, at other times enveloped in sophistry and disguise. The Universal Cause, that God of the philosophers, of the Jews, and of the Christians, is but a chimera and a phantom—The phenomena of nature only prove the existence of God to a few prepossessed men—It is more reasonable to admit, with Manes, of a two-fold God, than of the God of Christianity—We can not know whether a God really exists, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one human heart shall find sympathy in another, so none ever interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our nearest and our dearest ties, forbear with us in mercy! When we are dead and repentance comes too late, both friend and foe ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... political serfdom, and deliverance from even the suggestion of thraldom—all of which his enfranchisement contemplates; or that these would assure, in greater degree, his national weal, would be to indulge a wild chimera, which could but superinduce the purest visionary picture of his condition under the operation of the gift. Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, an epoch, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the hope of power. I—but you know not my new dignity—I, in the Cabinet of England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest station not too high for my reasonable ambition! You, wedding yourself to some grand chimera of an object, aimless when it eludes your grasp. I, swinging, squirrel-like, from scheme to scheme; no matter if one breaks, another is at hand! Some men would have cut their throats in despair, an hour ago, in losing the object of a seven years' chase,—Beauty and Wealth, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poetry more or less well written, and the being I had delineated was certainly not to be found, as he surpassed by far all human perfections, but a woman's heart travels so quickly and so far! Mdlle. X. C. V. took the thing literally, and fell in love with a chimera of goodness, and then was fain to turn this into a real lover, not thinking of the vast difference between the ideal and the real. For all that, when she thought that she had found the original of my fancy portrait, she had no difficulty in endowing him with all the good qualities ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... task of classifying natural objects differentiated by fixed natural laws as compared with the task of classifying the products of the creative and imaginative faculties as applied to the useful arts. The chimera and other animal monsters occur only as figments of the mind. Zoological classification does not have to classify combinations of birds, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, nor does it deal in the way of classification with the ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... that place a heap of wreckage lay, Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals, With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay— Figures of fabled monsters and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... This chimera he proceeded to confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously to any symptom of mental aberration being ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... is explained why men imagined for many centuries that the sky was a solid superficies, and that the earth was a superficial plane, bounded by the horizon; that the sun moved round the earth; that the existence of the antipodes was a chimera; that the dew fell in the same way as the rain from the upper regions of the atmosphere; and other popular errors which science has corrected, but which were in a certain way justified by the undeniable testimony of the senses. How ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... another fraction; it is composed of young fellows who have been deceived, or have deceived themselves. They mistake a fancy for a vocation, and impelled by a homicidal fatality, they die, some the victims of a perpetual fit of pride, others worshippers of a chimera. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... to operate upon this chimera,' I thought. I frowned at her and sat down, worn out with the ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it. It will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in Cromwell's life. It is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny misses fire. All of Cromwell is at stake in the comedy being played between England ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... salvation and for the interests of His kingdom. We need the united strength of all these branches of Zion for the great work which the Master has set before us in calling on us to evangelize the world. In expecting to obtain this union, will it be said that we are looking for a chimera? It ought to be so, ought it not? Then it is no chimera. It may take time for the Churches to come up to this standard, but within a few years we have seen tendencies to union among different branches of the Presbyterian family in Australia. In Canada, in our own country, and in England and Scotland. ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... of the possibility of Hinge being set upon me to act as a spy and to discover my intent so strong upon me that I could not shake it off, I tossed and tumbled in a very sea of doubt and trouble. I was more than half persuaded all along that this fancy was a mere chimera, and yet it took such force in my mind. It was past two o'clock when the moon rose. I got up noiselessly, filled and lit my pipe, and sat staring at the great solemn bulk of the fortress, as it stood for the time being almost white in the moonlight against the monstrous shadow of the bills. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... a bargain and as safe a friendship from Philip as could be manufactured out of the materials placed in the French King's hands by the United Provinces. Elizabeth honestly wished well to the States, but allowed Burghley and those who acted with him to flatter themselves with the chimera that Henry could be induced to protect the Netherlands without assuming the sovereignty of that commonwealth. The Provinces were fighting for their existence, unconscious of their latent strength, and willing to trust to France or to England, if they could only save themselves ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were to relate the whole of Bellerophon's previous adventures, they might easily grow into a very long story. It will be quite enough to say that in a certain country of Asia a terrible monster called a Chimera had made its appearance, and was doing more mischief than could be talked about between now and sunset. According to the best accounts which I have been able to obtain, this Chimera was nearly, if not quite, the ugliest and most poisonous creature, and the strangest and unaccountablest, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... professional services when the occasion offered, by putting his original and fertile pen at the service of the government, to win confidence, and to overcome the manifest indisposition of those in power to think that a man who cherished the chimera of universal knowledge could be a useful public servant. On the other hand, all the while, in the crises of his disappointment or triumph, the one great subject lay next his heart, filling him with fire and passion—how really to know, and to teach men ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... susceptible; I suppose you'll be off hunting in a day or more; Mrs. Winscombe is bright wine for a young man. Women like her play at sensation, like eating figs." He thought contemptuously what nonsense was talked in connection with feminine intuition; it was nothing more than a polite chimera, like all the other famous morals and inhibitions supposed ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... woman's work all over the world, far more so than a hundred other occupations they now eagerly seek. Their repugnance to the position itself is the sticking point. This repugnance is based upon a chimera. They are, in any position in which they labor for wages, 'servants' in as complete a sense as if they labored for wages in household employments. Far be it from me to say a word to lower that just and honorable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I attempt to speak to her. Yet I would suffer this humiliation to see that glorious face once more, to hear again that voice, though it were keyed to scorn. I am a fool, Jack. What! have I gone all these years free-heart to love a chimera in the end? Verily I am an ass. She is a Princess; she has riches; she has a principality; she is the ward of a King. What has she to do with such as I? Three months in the year she dwells in her petty palace; the other months find her here and there; Paris, St. Petersburg, ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... is still held in honor among the young women. The old man who keeps the range, picks out for her his best arrows tipped with white and red feathers,—and she takes aim with a serious air. The mark is a circle, traced in the middle of a picture on which is painted in flat gray tones, terrifying chimera flying ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... not be difficult," he mused, communing with the thought which had come to him. "It would be something real, and not a chimera." ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Government at that period, and chiefly by the personal resistance of Lord Melbourne. Let that minister be held responsible, if any ground has been lost that could have been peacefully pre-occupied against the schism. This, however, seems to us a chimera. For what is it that the bill concedes? Undoubtedly it restrains and modifies the right of patronage. It grants a larger discretion to the ecclesiastical courts than had formerly been exercised by the usage. Some contend, that in doing so the bill absolutely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... a bank of national credit, supported by public funds and secured by Parliament, be a chimera or impossible thing? And if not, what would follow from the supposal ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... following, under the title of "General Observations": "In choosing among the men who were members of the Constituent Assembly it is necessary to be on guard against the Orleans' party, which is not altogether a chimera, and may one day ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sea, They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand, And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... the poem, impersonates Courtesy (or Sir Philip Sidney), now meets Artegall, declaring the queen has despatched him to track and slay the Blatant Beast,—an offspring of Cerberus and Chimera,—whose bite inflicts a deadly wound. When Artegall reports having recently met that thousand-tongued monster, Calidore spurs off, and soon sees a squire bound to a tree. Pausing to free this captive, he learns that this unfortunate has been illtreated ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... point of view in which we regard the dogma of the soul's immortality, we are compelled to consider it as a chimera invented by men who have realized their wishes, or who have not been able to justify Providence from the transitory injustices of this world. This dogma was received with avidity, because it flattered the desires, and especially the vanity of man, who arrogated to himself a superiority above ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... ch'in sogno scorge Drago, o cinta di fiamme alta Chimera, Sebben sospetta, o in parte anco s'accorge Che simulacro sia non forma vera, Pur desia di fuggir, tanto gli porge Spavento la sembianza orrida e fera: Tale il timido amante appien non crede Ai falsi inganni: e pur ne teme, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... they not melt The forehead made of snow! No cheeks, but two Roses inoculated on a lily, Between a pendant alabaster nose: Her lips cut out of coral, and no teeth But strings of pearl: her tongue a nightingale's! Would not this strange chimera fright yourself?" ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... a tiny sphinx brought in—a sphinx carved from black marble and resting in the classic pose with outstretched paws and erect head. He also purchased a chimera of polychrome clay; it brandished its mane of hair, and its sides resembled a pair of bellows. These two images he placed in a corner of the room. Then he extinguished the lamps, permitting the glowing embers to throw a dim ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet—of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that in general, from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... make them all barons living in beautiful castles and receiving the tribute of the Goyim. One may reason and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their own Scriptures, that their Talmud is filled with palpable falsehoods, and that their hope is a chimera; but they turn a deaf ear to argument and entreaty, and turn upon you with fierce resentment at your efforts to show them the truth. Although they know that their habits of grasping and hoarding wealth, driving hard and unfair bargains, their hunting ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... all that belongs to the light, was occupied with flowers, with verses, with music, which fluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was wedded from her very youth, in ideal, to a vague and heroic figure. The elder had also her chimera; she espied in the azure some very wealthy purveyor, a contractor, a splendidly stupid husband, a million made man, or even a prefect; the receptions of the Prefecture, an usher in the antechamber with a chain on his neck, official balls, the harangues of the town-hall, to be "Madame ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... tempted. Let all such allay their fears. Jesus was tempted even on the pinnacle of the temple, and we will never be above our Lord, and may well expect temptation until we pass from this world-stage to the other land. No responsible Christian student teaches any such chimera as a life without temptation ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... institutions according to the sole dictates of Reason, the appliance of mathematical methods to politics and morals, the catechism of the Rights of Man, and other dogmas of anarchical and despotic character in the CONTRAT SOCIAL.—Once this chimera is born they welcome it as a drawing room fancy; they use the little monster as a plaything, as yet innocent and decked with ribbons like a pastoral lambkin; they never dream of its becoming a raging, formidable brute; they nourish it, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... considering again whether they should march to the relief of Casale, but the chimera of the Germans put them by, and so they took up quarters in Piedmont. They took several small places from the Duke of Savoy, making advantage of the consternation the duke's subjects were in on the death ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... before her. She retired to her state-room, to ponder again her unhappy lot. "Thy will be done," murmured she, as, throwing herself into a chair, she resigned herself to the terrible reflection that she was a slave and an outcast. The bright dream of love was only a chimera, to make her feel more ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... do believe, Murray, that God will work a modern miracle in favor of America! My dear friend, I wish you would abandon this vain chimera of your imagination, and let common sense and reason convince you of the folly of ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... that I love you? That there is none other in the whole world whom I would care to marry but you? Nay, Barbara, when happiness is within our reach, let us not throw it away upon a chimera." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... were silent to our journey's end. An eager glance he gave me as he touched My hand to help me from the carriage. He Has told me since that I returned the look With one which, if not actually scorn, Was next of kin to scorn, and much resembling:— All the chimera of ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... scream rang back to the man and girl before the cabin. Followed instantly a crash, an extinguishment of the light, darkness, silence, and finally a thin quivering flame at the base of the ledge, delicate and blue, like a dancing chimera. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... differed from M. Huet concerning the attempt to unite the different religions: he thinks it as great a chimera as the Philosophers stone, or the quadrature of the circle. The truth is, to hope for success in such a project, one must suppose in all men a sincere love of truth, and a readiness to renounce their prejudices, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... fashions, and all the nameless charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the level of one of these fairies of the drawing-room was a desire formed in his youth, but buried in the depths of his heart. Thus to win the favors of Madame Marneffe was to him not merely the realization of his chimera, but, as has been shown, a point of pride, of vanity, of self-satisfaction. His ambition grew with success; his brain was turned with elation; and when the mind is captivated, the heart feels more ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in what a Charybdis art thou struggling, O youth, worthy of a better flame! What witch, what magician, with his Thessalian incantations, what deity can free you? Pegasus himself will scarcely deliver you, so entangled, from this three-fold chimera. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... leave this angel," thought he, "to lose the brightest and noblest jewel of my life, and drive myself out of paradise. And wherefore all this? Perhaps to chase a phantom that will never become a reality, to follow a chimera which may be only a meteor that dances before me and dissolves into mist when I think to reach it? No, no, the world is not worth so much that one should sell himself and his soul's happiness for its splendor and its greatness. Natalie herself shall decide. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... confederation of organisms of which the cell is the unit. This is very different from the reigning idea. It is exclusive of any difference between democrat and aristocrat, for such difference means an arbitrary classification of the different social elements. If this consoling vision is not a simple chimera, it may be remembered that the great scorners like M. Renan are active workmen for its accomplishment, in that they formulate it very exactly, and face the coming conflict with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to us. Let us all thank God, and take heart again, and try to revive those notions of human dignity and common human sense which this story sets at nought, and see if we cannot heal that great jar in our abused natures which this chimera of the nineteenth century makes in it—this night-mare of modern criticism which lies with its dead weight on all our higher art and learning—this creature that came in on us unawares, when the interpretation of the Plays had outgrown the Play-tradition, when 'the Play' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... appear to me preferable to the still, windless water which the so-much-be-praised haven of domestic life represents. You speak, my father, of chimeras; but tell me, is not the so-lauded happiness of domestic life more a chimera than any other? When the saloon is set in order, one does not see the broom and the dusting-brush that have been at work in it, and the million grains of dust which have filled the air; one forgets that they have ever been there. So it is with domestic and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... of it; but though this country be reserved, it is no longer either unknown or neglected by the Dutch, which is a point of very great consequence. To the other nations of Europe, the southern continent is a chimera, a thing in the clouds, or at least a country about which there are a thousand doubts and suspicions, so that to talk of discovering or settling it must be regarded as an idle and empty project: ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... rooted to the spot. What I saw staggered belief. Was it only a chimera of my unbalanced ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might I not come that way from the boat, as well as I was ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... proceeded at once to the wharf or station of our sky-sailer. Ah, how shall I describe my sensations on first beholding this most wonderful achievement of the age, and thus satisfying myself that it was an actual existence, and not the mere chimera of a diseased brain? There she sat like a majestic swan, floating, as it were, in the pure empyrean, and crowned with a diadem of stars. The Moon, Arcturus, and the Pleiades might well all make obeisance to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... fond of it, because it encourages our manufactures: without magnificence there is no industry. I abolished at Lyons all that parchment nobility; it was never sensible of what it owed me: it was I that exalted it, by making counts and barons of my best generals. Nobility is a chimera; men are too enlightened to believe, that some among them are noble, others not: they all spring from the same stock; the only distinction is that of talents, and of services rendered the state: our laws know ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... slip, and committed myself fortunately, to but one person, and that my daughter; and, even so, I hardly think she understood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque and infernal chimera that haunts me." ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... attempts had not the same success, and in fact that was impossible. Those which have failed seem to us only fanciful; those which have been more fortunate appear sublime. When in search of that which really existed, he has sometimes found it; when he devoted himself to the pursuit of a chimera, he could not but fail, but even then he unfolded the same qualities, and that obstinate perseverance that must triumph over all difficulties but those which are insurmountable." Berry, in his "Short History of Astronomy," says "as one reads chapter after chapter ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... all the scientific secrets and mechanical inventions till then discovered, illumination flashing after darkness successively before their smitten eyes, the floors seeming to heave and the walls to crack, thunders bellowing through the mighty dome; now yawning revealed beneath them the ghostly chimera of Tartarus, with all the shrieking and horrid ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the prospect of the interior state of the country, to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How is this disorder ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... an idea, a chimera, entered my head, of gathering during the progress of my life, notes and materials for a work embracing three divisions, Morals, Politics, Education, and I commit this notice to paper now, that many years hence, if it please God, I may ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... race of Horses, whose actions have established their goodness: and that I may have leave to prefer my opinion of the mechanical powers of a Horse, to all their opinions concerning blood, which is in reality no more than a vain chimera. If these things are so, have not we and our fore-fathers been hoodwinked all our days by the prevalence of a ridiculous custom, and the mistaken system, when by consulting our own reason and understanding, this mist of error had fled before it? If this mechanical power was considered as ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... have drawn away the Wealth of your Indian Mines; we sell our Ware in your Country, and carry your Money back to our own; By which Means we inrich our own Country, and impoverish yours: Of all the Treasures that come into Spain, you enjoy only the Name; for while you are busy in Chimera's, our Industry drains all the Treasure from you; and take this with you, that all Projects must end like the Searches for the Philosopher's Stone, that is, in Smoke, where the Interest is paid out of the Principal Stock, and is not ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... of this famous chimera, it is proper to give a few particulars concerning the individual who engendered it. John Law was born in Edinburgh in 1671. His father, William Law, was a rich goldsmith, and left his son an estate of considerable value, called Lauriston, situated about four miles from Edinburgh. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... sake of argument. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man has come to the conclusion that there probably was such a person as St. George, in spite of all the nonsense about dragons and the chimera with wings and claws that has somehow interwreathed itself with his image. Perhaps he is a little biased by patriotism or other ethical aims; and thinks the saint a good social ideal. Perhaps he knows that early Christianity, so far from ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son—the boy whom he so loved. The thing was monstrous, a thing incredible. This whole seeming was no more than a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under it.... Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... intelligence through this immense army and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most so. To control a Parisian populace has hitherto been deemed a chimera. With M. Dantes it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this—they know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his workshops, savings banks, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... have all disturbers of the public peace treated with more compassion than the hard-working and honest labourer. But that reader will have jumped to his conclusion from his preconceived prejudices. The reformation of the criminal is no chimera, it has been undertaken for thirty years and every year has seen better results. The results for 1903 (86 per cent. of reforms) ought to convince the most sceptic that the reformation of the criminal is the true ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... shows, it was mainly a search after fossil spoils at Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were their special prey, for which the long and flexible neck ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... influence over the minds of their fellow-men, which will always be felt and acknowledged in the world if mankind were equalized to-morrow. Perfect, unadulterated republicanism, is a beautiful but fallacious chimera which never has existed upon the earth, and which, if the Bible be true, (and we have no doubts on the subject,) we are told never will exist in heaven. Still we consider that it would be true wisdom ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... went upstairs. It seemed to me that life at Cray's Folly was quite agreeable, and such was my mood that the shadowy Bat Wing menace found no place in it save as the chimera of a sick man's imagination. One thing only troubled me: the identity of the woman who had been with Colonel Menendez on the ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... great many People think that Masters reserve for dangerous Occasions, or to sell it at a dear Rate. This wonderful Thing, is called the secret Thrust. I don't know whether this Error proceeded from those who have not learned, or from the Chimera of some self-conceited Masters, who have sold to ignorant Scholars, some Thrusts as infallible, of their own Contrivance, as ridiculous and dangerous as the Simplicity of the Scholar and the Knavery of the Master ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on the Solon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... . A queer question. . . ." Mari d'elle is offended. "Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a woman, and I am a man anyway, a business-like person. And what a scheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound thing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand, one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you would understand if I were to tell you about it. Only you . . . don't ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... smiling. "But for a month that has been our usual bill of fare, and when we dined we stretched ourselves full length on the ground, unless we sat astride on the trees. Consequently, the meal you have just announced seemed to me like a dream, or fiction, or chimera." ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... patent to the world. They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a nationality ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... or madness. Moreover, the author, who shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... lavished by the doctor upon the two men grew and multiplied; in return for which they diverted themselves by setting him a prancing upon every wildest chimera in the world; and promised, among other matters, to give him by way of mistress, the Countess of Civillari,(7) whom they averred to be the goodliest creature to be found in all the Netherlands of the human race; and the doctor asking who this ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... men—ought to have ceased with the coming of Christ, I say Christ, who was sent to proclaim the equality of man in the sight of God. But what is the fact? Equality up to our day has been an 'ignus fatuus,' a chimera. Saint-Simon has arisen as the complement of Christ; as the modern exponent of the doctrine of equality, or rather of its practice, for theory has ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... region, in fact, from Zalathna to Verespatak abounded in that precious metal which some fool or other has called "a mere chimera," and the gold mining was farmed out to private individuals, the yearly output from the shafts being twelve hundredweights. These private diggers are bound to deliver the gold they obtain to the minting ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... know that some would fain postpone this era, Reluctant as all placemen to resign Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera, For they have pass'd life's equinoctial line: But then they have their claret and Madeira To irrigate the dryness of decline; And county meetings, and the parliament, And debt, and what not, for ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... that not a single politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was assured by Canning in reply that the support of this ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... at last to doubt his senses, and half believe that what he had heard on the night of his arrival had been some chimera, a dream of a wearied and imperilled man in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the race of the Dennises. With a half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider themselves as original when ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli |
