"Chimerical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temperance. The Prohibitionist endeavors to accomplish his object by legislation—the Liberalist by education, by civilization, by example, by persuasion. The method of the Liberalist is good, that of the Prohibitionist chimerical and fanatical. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was by no means so chimerical as at first glance it might seem to be. The sagacious Sully examined it in all its details, and gave it his cordial support. The cooeperation of two or three of the leading powers would have invested the plan with sufficient moral and physical support to render its success even probable. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... it, for, when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady of great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes, and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... England:"—"They may talk as they will about reforms which Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual custom, they have implicitly obeyed the spirit ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... act, except when the people are assembled. Besides such extraordinary assemblies as unforeseen events may call for, there must be fixed periodical meetings that nothing can interrupt or postpone. Do you call this chimerical? Then you have forgotten the Roman comitia, as well as such gatherings of the people as those of the Macedonians and the Franks and most other nations in their primitive times. What has ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... somebody is trying to influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace it can, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combination of the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, is chimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree with each other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views of any topic or event as the ingenious rival journals are certain to discover. It is impossible, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... now set herself to devise some means of adding to her resources by private industry. The more ambitious project of securing by her own exertions a separate maintenance for herself and her children would at this time have seemed chimerical, but it haunted her as a dream long before it ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... charming instance of the force of female friendship; which you and I, and our brother rakes, have constantly ridiculed as a chimerical thing in women of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... they put mattresses under certain falls and thorns under others? Ah! the world is funny, and it seems chimerical to me to want to regulate oneself according ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Author's Postscript is it observed, that what is called poetical Justice is chimerical, or rather anti-providential Justice; for God makes his Sun to shine alike on the Just and the Unjust. Why then should Man invent a kind of imaginary Justice, making the common Accidents of Life turn out favourable to the Virtuous ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... again paced to and fro restlessly, and again muttered to himself for several minutes. At last he approached his Model,—the model of a mighty and stupendous invention, the fruit of no chimerical and visionary science; a great Promethean THING, that, once matured, would divide the Old World from the New, enter into all operations of Labour, animate all the future affairs, colour all the practical ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did, what matters, they found their match; yes, yes,' said I, 'but I am in their power, perhaps'—but I instantly dismissed the apprehension which came into my mind, with a pooh, nonsense! in a little time, however, a far more foolish and chimerical idea began to disturb me—the idea of being flung from my horse? was I not disgraced for ever as a horseman by being flung from my horse? Assuredly, I thought; and the idea of being disgraced as a horseman, operating on my nervous system, caused me very acute misery. 'After ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... does not mention the circumstance. In 1846 Wise drew up and laid before the American War Office an elaborate scheme for the reduction of Vera Cruz. This will be discussed in its due place, though it will be doubtless considered as chimerical. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... semi-barbarous States, there was one where there was neither discontent, nor turbulence, nor persecution. This favored Republic of Ecuador was in close communion with Pius IX., and its president discarding all the fine-spun views and chimerical theories of the time, ruled, as became the chief of a free State, according to the wishes and the generally accepted principles of his people. A republic, so governed, provided it remain uncorrupt, cannot fail to enjoy the highest degree of prosperity compatible with its ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Bonaparte listened to these representations with impatience and ill-humour. He replied peremptorily, "Admiral, we have no time to lose. Fortune gives me but three days; if I do not profit by them we are lost." He relied much on fortune; this chimerical idea ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... unfriendly to our prosperity in a variety of ways. By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people—increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances ...
— The Federalist Papers
... slaves—I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Besides: Lilian! Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Boulogne, the comptroller. You will be well received, and with a little wit you ought to be able to make good use of the letter. He himself will give you the cue, and you will see that he who listens obtains. Try to invent some useful plan for the royal exchequer; don't let it be complicated or chimerical, and if you don't write it out at too great length I will give you ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... what? What did dragons spring from anyway? Eggs, like snakes? Dragons were reptiles werent they? Or werent they? Give up the metaphor? I set my teeth with determination and began again. "Not unlike a fierce and belligerently furious dragon or some other ferocious, blustery and furious chimerical creature, a menacing and comminatory debacle is burning fierily in the heart of our fair and increasingly populous city. As one with an innocent yet cardinal part in the unleashing of this dire menace, I want to describe how the exposure of this threatening menace affected me as I ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of some momentous destiny? and that this Lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be chimerical, or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there no method whereby these fugitive colors can be made fast? Knowing the efficacy of mordants with certain coloring matters, is there no mordant which we can generally apply with this desirable object in view? The discovery of such a universal mordant I believe to be somewhat chimerical, and yet, curiously enough, a number of experiments have been recorded in recent years, which almost seem to point in the direction of selecting for such a purpose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... expectation of the further progress, and "extraordinary degrees" of virtue. It injoyns the encouragement of all Seminaries of Literature, which are the nurseries of Virtue depending upon these for the support of Government, rather than Titles, Splendor, or Force. Mr Hume may call this a "Chimerical Project." I am far from thinking the People can be deceived by urging upon them a dependance on the more general prevalence of Knowledge, and Virtue: It is one of the most essential means of further, and ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... PRACTICABLE suggestions. You might as well tell me to suggest what people are doing already, or at least to suggest improvements which may be incorporated with the wrong methods at present in use. There are matters with regard to which such a suggestion is far more chimerical than my own, for in such a connection the good is corrupted and the bad is none the better for it. I would rather follow exactly the established method than adopt a better method by halves. There would be fewer contradictions in the man; he cannot aim at one ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... of that cursed measure which deprived Ireland of her senate, and thereby made her a dependent upon British aristocracy and British interests. I may perhaps be told that to attempt a repeal of the union would be chimerical. I pity the man who requires an argument in support of the position that Ireland wants her parliament; and that individual who pronounces the attainment of such a consummation to be Utopian, is reminded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... removed from its realisation that his dream dazzles him, and urges him on to defend chimerical schemes. He wishes the wealth of the clergy to be taken from them and bestowed upon poor, honest, brave, trustworthy gentlemen, who will defend the country; and he does not perceive that these riches would have fallen principally into the hands of turbulent and grasping courtiers, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... then did seems for the present to be overlooked and forgotten. I am confident, however, as much as I can be of anything, that notwithstanding the almost universal reception of the new theory, which is the cause of it, it is purely chimerical, and cannot keep its ground after a sufficient scrutiny, which may be deferred, but which must take place in time. I am glad to find that Mr. Cruikshank in England, as well as chemists in France, begin to attend to my objections, though the principal of them have been published ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... design of Horace in this Epistle. In this explanation I shall call upon Horace as my chief witness, and the Epistle itself, as my principal voucher. Should their testimonies prove adverse, my system must be abandoned, like many that have preceded it, as vain and chimerical: and if it should even, by their support, be acknowledged and received, it will, I think, like the egg of Columbus, appear so plain, easy, and obvious, that it will seem almost wonderful, that the Epistle ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... ebullition of a youthful mind, romantic and intrepid, but unreasonable; he professed the sincerest pity for so gifted and brave a youth, lamented his delusion, painted in emphatic words his want of gratitude and allegiance, treated his political creed and organization as chimerical, and wound up by informing Foresti that he was condemned to die on the public square of Venice, and that nothing would save him but a complete revelation of the true plan, arrangements, and members of the secret conclave to which he belonged. Threats ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... accomplished in our minds before they are reproduced by the outer man; presentiments or predictions are the perception of these causes"—I think we may deplore in him a genius equal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical notions about angels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in trying to make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry? At the same time, Lambert, at a later period, studied comparative anatomy, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... mankind, my temperament, instead of being invigorated and enlivened by the sparkling juice of the grape, loses its wonted nerve and elasticity; a sombre gloominess pervades the system, the pulse becomes nervous and languid, the spirits flagging and depressed, and the mind full of chimerical apprehensions and ennui. It was in this mood that Eglantine found me ruminating on the noble works before me, while resting against a part of the pile of Radcliffe library, contemplating 249the elegant crocketed pinnacles of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to be sung only on certain festal occasions, as at Bayreuth, where people went with the sole object of hearing music, and with no other business oppressing them for the moment. But at a time when the struggle for existence is so severe as now it was chimerical on Wagner's part to hope that such a plan could be permanently realized. Few musical people can afford to journey to Bayreuth merely to gratify their taste for opera. Hence the Bayreuth festivals, although most delightful from an artistic point of view, would have never ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Duc d'Angouleme, surnamed by the liberal sheets the hero of Andujar, compressing in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals; the sansculottes resuscitated, to the great terror of dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchy opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of '89 roughly interrupted in the sap; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was very active in this solemnity. She carried a magnifying glass in one of her hands, and was clothed in a loose, flowing robe, embroidered with several figures of fiends and specters, that discovered themselves in a thousand chimerical shapes as her garment hovered in the wind. There was something wild and distracted in her looks. Her name was Fancy. She led up every mortal to the appointed place, after having officiously assisted him in making up his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... is the free outflowing of the spirit into the forms in which it delights; and in such forms alone, as they grow and change, can it find an expression which is not also a bondage. You will say this is chimerical. But look at history! Consider the great achievements of the Middle Age! Were they not the result of just such a movement as I describe? It was men voluntarily associating in communes and grouping themselves ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... necessary to compel General Trochu's resignation and put General Vinoy in his place. On that same day Maurice, chancing to enter a hall in Belleville where a public meeting was going on, again heard the levee en masse demanded with clamorous shouts. He knew the thing to be chimerical, and yet it set his heart a-beating more rapidly to see such a determined will to conquer. When all is ended, is it not left us to attempt the impossible? All that night he dreamed ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phaedra, formed and re-formed continually in his dazzled memory! When we of to-day read such verses at Augustin's age, some bitterness is mixed with our delight. These heroes and heroines are too far from us. These almost chimerical beings withdraw from us into outlying lands, to a vanished world which will never come again. But for Augustin, this was the world he was born into—it was his pagan Africa where pleasure was the whole of life, and one ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... institution, there existed no motive to prompt men to subject it to a closer critical investigation; and in the absence of such an investigation its influence upon the nature and extent of demand could not be discovered. The old economists were therefore compelled to believe it chimerical to think of demand as falling short of production; for they said, quite correctly, that man produces only to consume. Here, with them, the question of demand was done with, and every possibility of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... of course, they laughed louder than ever. As they laughed, he grew mad, and shouted: "Gentlemen, I will bar the years, and do it." And he did it. Without help from any one, for every man who claimed a right to express an opinion upon it scouted the project as chimerical, and no capitalist would put a dollar in it, Hiram Sibley built the line of telegraph to San Francisco, risking in it all he had in the world. He set about the work with his customary energy, all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... garb. It describes an imaginary commonwealth, the chief feature of which is a community of property, on an imaginary island, from which the book takes its name. The epithet "Utopian" is still used as descriptive of chimerical schemes. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Herbert Spencer, who teach that there is some incogitable "nature" of something which is the immanent "cause" of phenomena, delude themselves with words. The history and the laws of a phenomenon are its nature, and there is no chimerical something beyond them. They are exhaustive. They fully answer the question why, as well ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... consequences of the forfeiture of their constitutional engagements? It is impossible. The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on the wisdom of Congress, and, above all, on the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is no such Animal in Nature as a Basilisk; that Health is to be secur'd by Temperance and Exercise; and that the Art of making Health consistent with Luxury, is altogether as impracticable, and an Art, in all Respects, as idle and chimerical, as those of the Philosopher's Stone, judicial Astrology, or any other Reveries of the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... search for indications of prostitutes having taken up residence in the city at large, and am absolutely convinced that your experience has proven this bugaboo to be wholly chimerical. This conclusion has been amply verified by interviews I have had with representative business and professional men, whose homes are in the residential districts of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... I am short, and not very well made; yet upon sight of a fine woman, I have stretched into proper stature, and killed with a good air and mien. These are the gay phantoms that dance before my waking eyes and compose my day-dreams. I should be the most contented happy man alive, were the chimerical happiness which springs from the paintings of Fancy less fleeting and transitory. But alas! it is with grief of mind I tell you, the least breath of wind has often demolished my magnificent edifices, swept away my groves, and left me no more trace of them than ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... coincidence, but denied that the wishes or expectations of the letter-writer were to be regarded as proofs of a charge otherwise chimerical. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... States the possibility of ever again having sufficient political power to compete in the Senate for the mastery of the Republic. He was persuaded that the sectional contest would be fatally pursued as long as the chimerical idea of equality in the Senate should stimulate Southern ambition. He knew, moreover, that the war could not close with victory for the Union, without the proposal of certain changes in the Constitution, and to this end it was desirable ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the lines of railway now in progress from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that are now projected. Who can doubt of its ultimate accomplishment, in spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise? Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... popularity of that most laudable institution for the relief of suffering seamen and marines, and their distressed families, so happily commenced and continued by the Committee at Lloyd's. Nor is, perhaps, the idea very chimerical, when we reflect on the magnitude of the contributions, which looks forward to a possible permanent establishment, at no distant day, on this very basis; in which the voluntary subscriptions of benevolent and opulent individuals shall almost ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... follows is Florismarte of Hyrcania" said the barber. "What! is Signor Florismarte there?" replied the priest; "in good faith he shall share the same fate, notwithstanding his strange birth and chimerical adventures; for his harsh and dry style will admit of no excuse. To the yard with him, therefore." "With all my heart, dear Sir," answered the housekeeper; "and with joyful alacrity she executed the command.'" —Don ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... an individual, who from station, distempered mind, or the encouragement of chimerical ideas of glory, quits the theatre of life with at least the appearance of pleasure in his triumphs. If such there be in reality, if this rapture of departing glory be anything more than the deception of a distempered excitement, the subject of its exhibition ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... that would make them the great feature of Philadelphia. In a very few years it could buy up all its certificates of stock and own its collections free. The handsome surplus, before alluded to, accruing annually to the London society shows that this is not chimerical. The city railways are interested in this movement, and should subscribe liberally. It is proposed in the Legislature to charter a railroad running north and south in West Philadelphia, and if this be done it will render ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... danger appears to us altogether chimerical. Family affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes. The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than those ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the Antinomians, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine, expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John Agricola, a follower of Luther, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... head, lowers his eyes, says nothing, strikes the soil with his foot. And, in the silence, the impious thing which he had hardly dared to formulate to himself, seems to him little by little less chimerical, attainable, almost easy.—No, it is not impossible to regain her. And, if need be, doubtless, Arrochkoa, her own brother, would lend a hand. Oh, what a temptation and what a ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... not question the authenticity of the Scriptural narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of Christ Jesus; but in our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings to his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to the recurrence of ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... He drew a plan for the execution of his project, which, together with a map of the world, he laid before his countrymen, shewing them what grandeur and advantage would accrue to their state, should he prove successful. But the leading men of the republic considered his project as wild and chimerical, and shamefully treated him with neglect. Though mortified at this ill usage, he nevertheless remained inflexible as to his purpose, and therefore determined to visit the different courts of Europe, and offer his service ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... all I can understand, these ideas, as applied to the present state of the country, are absolutely chimerical. The Pretender is no more remembered in the Highlands than if the poor gentleman were gathered to his hundred and eight fathers, whose portraits adorn the ancient walls of Holyrood; the broadswords have passed into other hands; the targets are used ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... with politics," answered the Prince, "is very—Chimerical," he added after a pause, pleased ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... he has been seduced from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject. The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the Grand Trunk as a gradually improving property would, I repeat, be easy; but to work it so as to produce a great success in a few years can only, in my opinion, be done in one way. That way, to many, would be chimerical; to some, incomprehensible; and possibly I may be looked upon myself as somewhat visionary for even suggesting it. That way, however, to my mind, lies through the extension of railway ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... I suspect, be welcomed by every one except the gagged writers; but as the idea of its being operative is too chimerical for us to entertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is to expound the principles of success and failure, not to make Quixotic onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young interrogator: "Take warning and do not write. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... orchestra was playing. Further yet, columns upheld a ceiling so lofty that it was lost. On the adjacent wall was a frieze of curious and chimerical beasts. Belshazzar was looking at them. In their dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion amused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach his lips, it fell with a clatter on the lapis lazuli of the floor beneath. Before him, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... first tried his own countrymen at Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal, and submitted his project to John II., who laid it before his council. It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the king endeavored to steal Columbus's idea. A fleet was sent forth in the direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms and winds, it returned to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... back into the consulting-room, to compose himself upon the couch for his evening sleep, which he took according to custom, and from which he awoke refreshed and ready to work for hours, late into the night, at his wearisome chimerical task, with which he grew more infatuated the more his reason suggested ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... from all accusation by a pretence utterly destitute of any foundation in truth."(59) Here the distinction between God's permitting and doing in relation to the sins of men, is declared by Calvin to be utterly without foundation in truth, and purely chimerical. So, in various other places, he treats this distinction as "too weak to be supported." "The will of God," says he, "is the supreme and first cause of things;" and he quotes Augustine with approbation to the effect, that "He does not remain an idle spectator, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... by the voice of nature, by the clamor of justice and by the genius of wisdom." ... "Humankind cries against the thoughtless and blind legislators who have thought that they might with impunity try chimerical institutions. All the peoples of the world have attempted to gain freedom, some by deeds of arms, others by laws passing alternately from anarchy to despotism, from despotism to anarchy. Very few have contented themselves with moderate ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... respected relations between McCulloch and the Missouri leaders. McCulloch had little or no tolerance for the rough-and-ready methods of men like Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price. He regarded their plans as impractical, chimerical, and their warfare as after the guerrilla order, too ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... anticipate. Had any one, on its first appearance, predicted, that the demand for it would call forth twenty-two thousand copies during the past year, the author would have considered the prediction extravagant and chimerical. In gratitude, therefore, to that public which has smiled so propitiously on his humble efforts to advance the cause of learning, he has endeavored, by unremitting attention to the improvement of his work, to render it as useful and as unexceptionable as his time and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... probable that a large portion of the members never attempted to examine into the extent of the powers granted to the Manhattan Company; while another portion considered the project of Colonel Burr, in reference to an East India Company or a bank, as chimerical and visionary. It is, however, evident that no trick or misrepresentation was practised to procure the passage of the bill; unless, indeed, his silence on the floor of the house as to his ulterior views may be so construed. His object was a bank; and when appealed to on this particular ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... substituting a new and superior motive-power for steam will no doubt strike many minds as extravagant, if not chimerical. We have been so accustomed to regard steam-power as the ne plus ultra of attainment in subjecting the modified forces of nature to the service of man, that a discovery which promises to supersede this agency will have to contend with the most formidable preconceptions as well as with gigantic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... walnut consumption is increasing, by the time every available acre in Oregon is in full bearing the supply will still fall far short of the demand. Judging by past experience in California this is no chimerical conception. Since 1896 the walnut crop in that state has steadily increased, and in like proportion has the price advanced, from seven cents in 1896 ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread—another vote that sixteen shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public credit—proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two and two make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Hare. With entire unanimity their various branches, the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far north, and the western tribes perhaps without exception, spoke of "this chimerical beast," as one of the old missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem or clan which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect. In many of the tales which the whites have preserved of Michabo he seems ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... to the realistic, from the chimerical to the actual, from the child's poetic interpretation of life to life's practical version of itself, is too gradual to be noticed while the process is going on. It is only in the retrospect we see the change. There is still, for yet another stage, the same and even greater receptivity, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... up in the stern he was looking toward the horizon for some chimerical help. What did he hope for? What did he wish? Had he ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... are not chimerical; I know something of the situation and state of things in America; and from some little occurrences or instances that have already really happened, I can very easily figure to myself what may, and, in short, what will certainly happen, if not ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... leagues in length, should, in the space of fifty years, extend its influence to all the European courts; and that, in 1759, the most zealous patron of literature in Europe should be a Russian sovereign? The man who had said this would have been regarded as the most chimerical mortal on earth.' But all this has been done, and the career is not closed. More will be done still. It may even be our most essential policy to bring Russia into full collision with France. She is now the only rival: and I shall scarcely regret the fall of the German sovereignties, if it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... account, not only for the origin of animal life, but for its progress through all its stages. He had thus involved himself in the grossest materialism; but, being endued with an active fancy, he engendered on it theories so wild and chimerical, that they might be regarded with the same kind of wonder as the fictions of romance, if our pleasure were not continually checked by remembering the error in which they originate. What more prodigious transformation shall we read of in Ovid, than that which he supposes the organs of his strange ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... to him all the conversations he had had with Queen Elizabeth, and in conclusion advised him to push his fortune: the Duke of Nemours imagined at first that the King was not in earnest, but when he found to the contrary, "If, by your advice, Sir," said he, "I engage in this chimerical undertaking for your Majesty's service, I must entreat your Majesty to keep the affair secret, till the success of it shall justify me to the public; I would not be thought guilty of the intolerable vanity, to think that a Queen, who has never seen me, would ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... madness, increased Edmond's admiration of him; but at the same time Dantes could not believe that the deposit, supposing it had ever existed, still existed; and though he considered the treasure as by no means chimerical, he yet believed it was no ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with one word to banish from your minds the chimerical apprehensions which the suspicions of Marcel may have engendered ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... and to them they give the name of abatements of honour; others have called them blots in the escutcheon: but as no instance can be produced of such dishonourable marks having been borne in a coat of arms, they may justly be considered as chimerical, or at any rate obsolete, and unworthy of consideration at the present time. Porney pithily observes, "that arms being marks of honour, they cannot admit of any note of infamy, nor would any one bear them if they were ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... was so full of these chimerical visions, that he acted with his foot as if she had been really before him, and unfortunately gave such a push to his basket and glasses, that they were thrown down, and broken into ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... would have people attend to their chimerical distinction between the king's civil and ecclesiastical authority. They have made a successless attempt (in order to establish their antigovernment scheme) for the overthrow of a distinction, which ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... must then either be replaced, or a delay of some three hours must occur while they are being recharged. The idea of establishing charging stations at almost every conceivable terminus of a run is quite chimerical; and, even if hundreds of such stations were provided for the convenience of the users of electric traction, the limitation imposed by being forced to follow the established routes would always give to the non-electric motor ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... make before that solemn judicature? Trained up in chimerical exercises, strangers to the municipal laws, unacquainted with the principles of natural justice and the rights of nations, they will bring with them that false taste which they have been for years acquiring, but nothing ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... within her borders five million acres of land suitable for vine-culture. Suppose it to average no larger yield than that of Italy, yet, at 25 cents a gallon, it would give an income of $551,875,000. That this may not seem an entirely chimerical estimate, it may be remarked that trustworthy statistics show that in France five millions of acres are planted in vines, producing seven hundred and fifty millions of gallons, while Hungary has three millions of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and thou hast been temperate," said Zadig; "know that there is no such thing in nature as a basilisk; that temperance and exercise are the two great preservatives of health; and that the art of reconciling intemperance and health is as chimerical as the philosopher's stone, judicial astrology, or the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... stretched into proper Stature, and killed with a good Air and Mein. These are the gay Phantoms that dance before my waking Eyes and compose my Day-Dreams. I should be the most contented happy Man alive, were the Chimerical Happiness which springs from the Paintings of the Fancy less fleeting and transitory. But alas! it is with Grief of Mind I tell you, the least Breath of Wind has often demolished my magnificent Edifices, swept away my Groves, and left no more Trace ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... at New Lanark were making money, but the shareholders in London were not satisfied with their dividends. They considered Owen's plans for educating the workingman chimerical. In one respect they knew that Owen was sane: he could take the raw stock and produce the quality of goods that had a market value. He had trained up a valuable and skilled force of foremen and workers. Things were prosperous and would be much more so if Owen would only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... only by experience and the testimony of their senses, and to perceive nothing in nature except matter, essentially active and mobile and capable of producing all the beings that we see; to forego all search for a chimerical cause, and not to mistake for better knowledge of the moving force of the universe, merely a separate attribution of it to a Being placed outside of the great whole; to confess in good faith that their mind can neither conceive nor reconcile the negative attributes and theological ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... saw dangers, gulfs under my feet. Now, Jeanne, these dangers seem to me chimerical, these gulfs as if a child could cross them. I was cowardly, I tell you; oh, I had no time ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... passionate adjurations, to her tears, to her ruses even, Mlle. Gilberte invariably opposed equivocal answers, a story through which nothing could be guessed, save one of those childish romances which stop at the preface,—a schoolgirl love for a chimerical hero. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... it said, that the man who originated this road has since become insane. More likely he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild and chimerical, so evidently impossible of fulfilment. Projected it was, however, not only in fancy, but in fact, to our great content; and so, tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's base, and wind through the lovely, lively woods, tremulous with sunshine ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... conceptions of human nature. Shaftesbury's views were entitled to this advantage; but, observes Mandeville, 'the ideas he had formed of the goodness and excellency of our nature, were as romantic and chimerical, as they are beautiful and amiable.' Mandeville examined not what human nature ought to be, but what it really is. In contrast, therefore, to the moralists that distinguish between a higher and a lower in our nature, attributing to the higher everything ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... quedar(se) to stay, remain; —— en algo to abide by something. quehacer m. business, duty. queja lament. quejar vr. to complain. quemar to burn. querellante plaintiff. querer to wish, love. quien, quien who, whom, which. quijotesco Quixotic. quimerico chimerical, extravagant. quince fifteen. quinientos, -as five hundred. quinta conscription. quinto conscript. quitar to take away, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... This idea, after a lapse of twenty-six years, had so insinuated itself into my mind, that I committed it to paper, without the least suspicion of error. Yet I find, on returning to my letters of that date, that the Empress refused permission at once, considering the enterprise as entirely chimerical. But Ledyard would not relinquish it, persuading himself, that, by proceeding to St. Petersburg, he could satisfy the Empress of its practicability, and obtain her permission. He went accordingly, but she was absent on a visit to some distant part of her dominions, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... as a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely chimerical person. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thought occurred to them whether they might not yet strike a blow for the recovery of their valleys! The idea seemed chimerical in the extreme. A few hundred destitute men, however valiant, to think of recovering a country defended by the combined armies of France and Savoy! Javanel, the old Vaudois hero, disabled by age and wounds, was still alive—an exile at Geneva—and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... were my feelings? Anything, alas! but those of delight. No sooner did the public express its satisfaction at the result of my endeavours, than my perverse imagination began to conceive a thousand chimerical doubts; forthwith I sat down to analyse it; and my worst enemy, and all people have their enemies, especially authors—my worst enemy could not have discovered or sought to discover a tenth part of the faults which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... marry his daughter to the Electoral Prince Palatine, and perhaps to give his daughter the appearance of a higher rank by getting himself declared independent prince of some West Indian conquest—Jamaica had attracted his ambition[484]:—a hope not altogether chimerical; for he was still all-powerful with Charles. Foreigners were astonished that he undertook the most extensive negotiations before he had given his sovereign notice of them. Not unlike James I he cherished the hope that the threatening attitude which he took up, even if he did not strike a blow, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... letter-writing. Hence we have a record of this pursuit of the French fleet, with almost daily entries; an inside picture, reflecting the hopes, fears, and perplexities of the squadron. Bonaparte's enterprise has been freely condemned in later days as chimerical; but it did not so appear at the time to the gallant seamen who frustrated it. The preparations had been so shrouded in mystery that neither Nelson nor his government had any certainty as to its destination,—an ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... that "we might also betimes have ascertained if the Gulf of Carpentaria had any inlet to Bass Straits, and if it be discovered secure more quickly to Great Britain the right of lands which some of our enterprising neighbours might probably dispute with us. And this I trust will not be thought chimerical when it was not known whether other Straits did not exist as well as that dividing New Holland from Van Diemen's Land." Again, the Institute of France in preparing instructions for the voyage of exploration ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... hastened out of the room. M. de Marigny did the same, though without appearing at all affected by what had been said. "You heard De La Riviere," said he,—"but don't be alarmed, the conversations that pass at the Doctor's are never repeated; these are honourable men, though rather chimerical. They know not where to stop. I think, however, they are in the right way; only, unfortunately, they go too far." I ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... which statements are perhaps also a little mythical. Certain only that he vanished at this point into Scandinavia; and general Europe never saw him more. Vanished into a cloud of untenable schemes, guided by Alberoni, Baron Gortz and others; wild schemes, financial, diplomatic, warlike, nothing not chimerical in them but his own unquenchable real energy;—and found his death (by assassination, as appears) in the trenches of Frederickshall, among the Norway Hills, one winter night, three years hence. Assassination instigated by the Swedish ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... some words of his spoken in the House of Commons, Feb. 11, 1742: 'Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, and styled me a Prime Minister, they [the Opposition] impute to me an unpardonable abuse of the chimerical authority which they only ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... systems of methodical and simultaneous observations,—it wishes its influence and its power to be omnipotent over the globe, so that it may be able to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere at every point on its surface. Let it not be supposed that this is a chimerical imagination, the vain dream of a few philosophical enthusiasts. It is co-operation which we now come forward to request, in full confidence, that if our efforts are met with a zeal worthy of the cause, our associates will be astonished, individually, by the result of their labors in a body. Let ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... maxim should become a universal law. Here, now, it is the simple conformity to law in general, without assuming any particular law applicable to certain actions, that serves the will as its principle and must so serve it, if duty is not to be a vain delusion and a chimerical notion. The common reason of men in its practical judgements perfectly coincides with this and always has in view the principle here suggested. Let the question be, for example: May I when in distress make a promise with the intention not to keep it? I readily distinguish here ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... supposing the existence of some kind of vegetation; but as this involves the presence of an atmosphere, the idea hardly finds favour at the present time, though perhaps the possibility of plant growth in the low-lying districts, where a gaseous medium may prevail, is not altogether so chimerical a notion as to be unworthy of consideration. Nasmyth and others suggest that these tints may be due to broad expanses of coloured volcanic material, an hypothesis which, if we believe the Maria to be overspread with such matter, ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... are proposing is nothing so enormous or chimerical. They propose merely to put an end to one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy, the result that they—the immense majority of the Irish people—have no University, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small minority, have one. For this plain hardship they propose a plain remedy, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Captain Lewis, for instance. Should one ally one's self with a foredoomed failure? Not at all. I prefer rather success—station, rank, power, money, for myself, if you please. With us—a million dollars for the founding of our new country. With him—for the undertaking of yonder impracticable and chimerical expedition, twenty-five hundred dollars! Which ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... the improvement of the colored population, except they are removed to the shores of Africa; it is lulling the country into a fatal sleep, pretending to be something when it is nothing; it is utterly chimerical, as well as intolerant, in its design; it serves to increase the value of the slaves, and to make brisk the foreign and domestic slave trade; it nourishes and justifies the most cruel prejudices against color; it ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... might soon be expected to be decidedly thin. In excessive lowness of spirit, Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. Yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed. Public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling- off being only an accident of the season. Her novelties had been hailed with pleasure, the rather ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... political tendency of Telemaque, and caused the printing of the first edition to be suspended. Fenelon has sometimes been regarded as a forerunner of the Revolutionary movement; but he would rather, by ideas in which, as events proved, there may have been something chimerical, have rendered ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... one wild in his native country, foretells that you will pursue a chimerical fancy which will return you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the spirit of the universe are taking part in our petty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage. And this idea—even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter the character of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or of Venus—still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; and when we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperative duty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes. Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I know not what proud consolation in being able to tell ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of a promise of one of the celebrated grand-pianos of their manufacture. With this the gloom of my excursion to Paris seemed to be turned into light, for I was so rejoiced at it, that I looked upon every other result as chimerical, and upon this as the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... successfully imparted to their children. If by knowledge were meant a correct attitude of mind, the teacher would realise that the idea of testing it in any way which would satisfy the average parent was chimerical; and his clients, if they continued to ask for a guarantee of successful teaching, would require something widely different from that which has hitherto contented them. But when information is regarded as the equivalent ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... doctrine, to say the best of it, can only serve to favour the indolence of man, while professing to furnish him with a compendious method of becoming wise and good, it supersedes the necessity of his own personal labours. Quitting therefore all these slothful and chimerical speculations, it is true wisdom to attach ourselves to what is more solid and practical; to the work which you will not yourself deny to be sufficiently difficult to find us of itself full employment: the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... labored so vehemently to impress upon the people. He still, however, insisted, or appeared to insist, on the Austrian war. It may have been necessary for the new minister, in order to maintain his influence over the masses, to announce a war policy. Such policy, nevertheless, was chimerical. It was decidedly opposed by the legitimately-constituted powers of the State—the Sovereign on the one hand, who, by his name, his character, his virtues, his office, was still powerful; and on the other, the representative body. Accordingly, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... there, as in connection with the central arch; but all this has only an ornamental purpose. The spectator who is at all interested in ecclesiastical architecture will examine with much delight the elaborate mouldings and the strangely-suggestive forms of men, beasts, birds, shapes fantastic and chimerical, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... idea not only of various glands being induced to function in a modified manner, but even in the insertion upon the circulation of interceptors and artificial glandular structures. No doubt that may strike even an adventurous surgeon as chimerical, but consider what people, even authoritative people, were saying of flying and electric traction twenty years ago. At present a man probably does not get more than three or four hours of maximum mental and physical efficiency in the day. Few men can keep at their best in either physical ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... pronounced faulty, because the liquorice-plant could not be readily distinguished from other shrubs, the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix; consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto, Amor addidit (Love has added them), ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... laziness, and waits, in some obscure place, the event of his adventure. Another, instead of employing his stock in a shop or warehouse, rents a garret in a private street, and makes it his business, by false intelligence, and chimerical alarms, to raise and sink the price of tickets alternately, and takes advantage of the lies which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... that Francois de la Noue, one of the ablest generals of whom the Huguenots could ever boast, regarded the idea of capturing Paris at the beginning of the struggle, with the comparatively insignificant forces which the prince could bring to the undertaking, as the most chimerical that could be entertained. Was it less absurd now, when, if the Protestant army had received large accessions, the walls of Paris could certainly be held by the citizens for a few days, until an army of fully equal size, under experienced leaders, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... to this remark. He was already deep in thought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize a suggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turn it into an accomplished Fact. "I believe you've hit it, Hugh," he said. "We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll put into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... below, and it was certain, that the British would seize the first moment of its being practicable, to relieve this important place. Amidst these unpromising circumstances, the hopes of taking Quebec appeared to General Thomas to be chimerical, and a longer continuance before the town both useless and dangerous. It was apparent that the first reinforcements which should arrive would deprive him entirely of the use of the river, and consequently would embarrass the removal of his sick, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall |
