"Delude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes take her for a long walk, which was really much beyond her strength, solely in order that we might delude ourselves with vain hopes. And she, poor creature, would tax herself far beyond her strength in order to afford me a happiness which the real state ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady's connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived by the stratagem, with two exceptions. They were both men—vagabonds who had pertinaciously tried to delude her into marrying them in the days when she was a widow. They refused to believe in the doctor and the declining health; they had their own suspicion of the motives which had led to the sale of the inn, under very ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... to put away any regular occupation that might have proved engrossing, and so to ordain her life that she should be always ready and at her father's orders if he should appear. And, thus deliberately cutting themselves loose from such minor anchorages as they might have had, they tried to delude themselves into the belief that not only was such makeshift companionship a solace, but that it actually was able to replace that other all-satisfying companionship they had lost. But they knew in their hearts, each of them, that it was not so. And Sir William realised, more perhaps ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... boy,—a mere child, Otto, though a wonderful genius, I must confess. Thy hopes delude thee, for it would take a lifetime to ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... well or ill entirely depends upon the habit of body!" cried Mr. Squills, triumphantly. "Do you know, Mr. Caxton, that while you are looking so calm, and talking so quietly,—just on purpose to sustain your son and delude your wife,—do you know that your pulse, which is naturally little more than sixty, is nearly a hundred? Do you know, sir, that your mucous membranes are in a state of high irritation, apparent by the papillce at the tip of your tongue? And if, with a pulse like this and a tongue like that, you ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... affair by the sheriff and his abettors, in a manner that would have given the highest offence to all implicated, had they not believed that the speech was secretly designed only as a game on their opponents, whom he might think it expedient to quiet and delude a little longer. They, therefore, winked knowingly to each other, and remained silent; while the speaker sat down ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... grossly misrepresent its operation. But we are convinced that this will not do. Proofs of their humbug and falsehood are, as it were, daily forcing themselves into the very stomachs of those whom once, when an incompetent Ministry was in power, these heartless impostors were able to delude. "A single shove of the bayonet," said Corporal Trim to Doctor Slop, "is worth all your fine discourses about the art of war;" and so the English operative may reply to the hireling "Leaguers," "This good piece ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... that's what!" grunted Pike. "I tell you these heathen sit around and dream lost mission tales and lost mine lies; dream them by the dozen to delude just such innocent yaps as you and me. They've nothing else to do between crops. We should have stuck to a white man's land, north into Arizona where the Three Hills of Gold are waiting, to say nothing of the Lost Stone Cabin mine, lost not twenty miles from Quartzite, and in plain sight of Castle ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... her condition. Sickness may come, they will be the better prepared. Losses will be more easily met and discharged. No man ever succeeded by waiting for something to turn up. The object of this work is not to make people delude themselves by any conceited ideas, but to encourage, to inspire, to enkindle anew the fires of energy laying dormant. The point is, it is not a 'slumbering genius' within people that it is our desire to stimulate, but a 'slumbering energy.' We are content that others should take ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... stilled again. Did he dare to risk so much upon so hazardous a chance? Were it not better to go back home, back to his old habits and his old ease, without knowing his fate? That would at least leave him the pleasure of speculating. He might delude himself with the hope that some day—He faltered. His hand was on the gate, but his face was turned back towards the way he had come. Should he enter, or should he go back? Fate decided for him, for at this juncture the door opened, and Miss Hester appeared in the doorway and ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... scholar's conscience. He could not endure to garble a quotation or suppress a material point for the sake of illustrating an argument more vividly. . . . Besides, it might delude some unfortunate person into sitting down where self-preservation demanded a more alert posture. Somebody—dreadful thought!—might get himself severely bitten, mauled, mangled perhaps to death, merely by obeying a piece of pseudo-scientific advice. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... nine months in the twelve, the people of this rare old town live out of doors nearly all the waking hours of the twenty-four. For the remaining three months of the year, December, January, and February, they delude themselves into the notion that they are having a winter, when they gather around a winter-time hearth and listen to imaginary wind-roarings in the chimney, and see through the panes fictitious and spectral snow-storms, and dream that they are housed so snug and warm. But when the ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait of a Languedocian's dress—that whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days—I will delude my fancy, and believe it ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... heaven and hell are mentioned in the scriptures, and to be believed necessary by Christians: so cunningly can the devil and his ministers, in imitation of true religion, counterfeit and forge the like, to circumvent and delude his superstitious followers. Many such tricks and impostures are acted by politicians, in China especially, but with what effect I will discourse ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Guise, and that I followed his orders strictly. I have now noted all the heretics of the Quartier St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where I shall hold the hotel of the Belle-Etoile, at your service, my brothers. Now, although I no longer thirst for the blood of heretics as formerly, I do not delude myself as to the real object of the holy Union which we are forming. If I am not deceived, brothers, the extinction of private heretics is not all we aim at. We wish to be sure that we shall never be governed by a heretic prince. Now, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... cannot receive training for this special Mission work except on the spot; at the institution the aim should be to give them a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin, the elements of Divinity, leaving out all talk about experiences, and all that can minister to spiritual pride, and delude men into the idea that the desire (as they suppose) to be missionaries implies that they are one whit better than the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... So doth the ignorant distance still delude us! Thy fancied heaven, dear girl, like that above thee, In its mere self cold, drear, colourless void, Seen from below and in the large, becomes The bright blue ether, and the seat of gods! 50 Well! but this broil that scared you from the dance? And was not Laska ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vnarmed, vnprouided, dispersed, they make such horrible slaughters that the king or prince of the land inuaded, cannot finde people sufficient to wage battell against them, and to withstand them. They delude all people and princes of regions in time of peace, pretending that for a cause which indeed is no cause. Sometimes they say, that they will make a voyage to Colen, to fetch home the three wise kings into their owne countrey; sometimes to punish the auarice and pride ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... the news without any emotion, for of what use was such a fortune to her now, and what should she do with it? Her eyes, alas! had been too much opened by all the tears that had fallen from them for her to delude herself with visionary hopes, and her heart had been too cruelly wounded to warm itself by lying illusions, and she was seized by melancholy when she thought that in future she would be coveted, she who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... for something else,' said Theodora, impatiently. 'Do not think of me, nor delude yourself with imagining you can win me ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reason is returned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one request, which is, that, though I am convinced it would be with the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible, I do implore you not to try to help me to delude myself any more. You never know half the shock it gave me when I learned from Mr. Batt, what you had concealed from me, your fixed resolution of going abroad last October; and though I did in vain deprecate it,—your coming to Twickenham ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... time was, of course, to get an approximate age of the infant, that he might know how widely to fling his net. He did it privately, so as to keep any inkling of his plot secret till he had secured the further information which he hoped to delude them into bringing. Like other students and recluses fed upon great thoughts, the Magi were very easily deceived. Good, simple people, they were no match for Herod, and told him all without suspicion, and set off to look for the child, quite convinced of his good faith; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... wretched youth was endeavouring to delude himself and gather crumbs of comfort from such thoughts as these, the awful cry from the ship's hold again rang out, and as his thoughts reverted to the bereaved father, and the fair, light-hearted little mother on Ratinga Island, the deadly pallor ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... the World, and let darkness be no more in the world, now or in any future age; but make all people to walk as children of the Light for ever; and destroy Antichrist, that hath deceived the nations, and save us the residue by thyself alone; and let not Satan any more delude us, for the Truth is thine for ever." He then puts his "Dilemma that cannot be answered by Witchmongers." It is too long to quote, but it is a dilemma that would pose the stoutest Coryphaeus of the party ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... make him drink the cup of death.' The horse laughed when he heard the whelps words and replied, 'Far, far is it from my power to overcome him, O Prince. Let not my length and my breadth nor yet my bulk delude thee with respect to the son of Adam; for that he, of the excess of his guile and his wiles, fashioneth me a thing called Hobble and applieth to my four legs a pair of ropes made of palm fibres bound with felt, and gibbeteth me by the head to a high peg, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... I, but the voice of the Spirit of God that is in me that speaks," he said to himself, and he thought this remark so clever that he regarded it as still further proof. It is so easy to delude one's self. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they drop on you complacently level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her! A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that: she will haply learn to acknowledge that no mortal tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectably, and that practically (though she sighs to think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of great libraries,—a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,—what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal forest, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... advantages of the situation in reference to the "lung complaint," feeling a loser in some sort; for he had begun to suspect that the consumptive tendencies of the stranger were a vain pretense, assumed merely to delude the unwary. He could not have doubted long, for when he dismounted and hitched his horse to the rail fence he heard the door of the house open, and as its owner, standing on the threshold in the wind and the gusty rain, called out to him a welcoming "Hello," ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... be able in the long run to shut his eyes to the fact that his most important questions as to the meaning and significance of life must remain unanswered, if there be no access to higher worlds. Theoretically we may delude ourselves concerning this fact and so get away from it; the depths of our soul-life, however, will not tolerate such self-delusion. The person who will not listen to what comes from these depths of the soul will naturally reject any account of supersensible worlds. There are ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... careless and indifferent to its approach; but it will not thus overtake those who watch, and keep their garments. Because so many will be deceived by the strange performances of the spirits of demons, and their miracles so delude the multitude, Christ's coming will be to them sudden and unexpected. Therefore the greater necessity for watchfulness. While this is a predicted means for lulling the world to sleep, it is given to the Christian as an indication ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... my word, Kallikrates—perchance thou thinkest that I do delude thee, and that I have not lived these many years, and that thou hast not been born again to me. Nay, look not so—put away that pale cast of doubt, for oh be sure herein can error find no foothold! Sooner shall the suns forget their course ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... My husband bloody, and his friend too! murder! Who has done this? speak to me, thou sad vision: On these poor trembling knees I beg it. Vanish'd— Here they went down—Oh, I'll dig, dig, the den up! You shan't delude me thus. Hoa, Jaffier, Jaffier, Peep up, and give me but a look. I have him! I've got him, father: Oh! My love! my dear! my blessing! help me! help me! They have hold on me, and drag me to the bottom. Nay—now they pull so hard—farewell— [dies; ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... is used in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for H[o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[o]rai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor that ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... 'I love you well as a cousin, but wife of yours I can never be. Aunt Hickson, it is not well to delude him so. I say, if ever I marry man, I am troth-plight to one ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... They are, in fact, somewhat the crudest and most singularly foolish in their economic policy of any peoples in Christendom. And in view of the amazing facility with which these democratic commonwealths are always ready to delude themselves in everything that touches their national trade policies, it is obvious that any league of neutrals whose fortunes are in any degree contingent on their reasonable compliance with a call to neutralise their trade regulations ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... magic to delude the credulous—determined there and then to work a miracle for Soradici. Assuming an inspired air, he solemnly informed the spy one morning that it had been revealed to him in a dream that Soradici's devotion to the Rosary was about to be rewarded; that an ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... madness, to desire once more to look upon her face ere they delivered it to earth's keeping. Thus was it that I came to discover that she lived; thus was it that I anticipated Ramiro del' Orca. He came upon us almost before I had raised her from the coffin, yet love lent me strength and craft to delude him. We hid awhile in the sacristy, and it was there, after Madonna had revived, that the pent-up passion of years burst the bond with which reason had bidden ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... too much, therefore, from the suppression of small notes, should that scheme be carried into effect; let us not delude ourselves with the expectation that it will prove a satisfactory remedy, in any sense, for the periodical disease of the currency; for its benefits, though probable, must be limited.[E] It is a remedy which merely plays ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... heaven (of pleasures and enjoyments) as the highest object of acquisition,—utter and promises birth as the fruit of action and concerns itself with multifarious rites of specific characters for the attainment of pleasures and power,—delude their hearts and the minds of these men who are attached to pleasures and power cannot be directed to contemplation (of the divine being) regarding it as the sole means of emancipation.[143] The Vedas are concerned with three qualities, (viz., religion, profit, and pleasure). ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Another class of visitors deserving notice were those who preferred to occupy the kitchen and back chambers, humbly proud and bashfully arrogant people, who kept their hats and bonnets by them, and small bundles, to delude themselves and us with the idea that they "had not come to stay, and had no occasion for any attention." These people criticised us with insinuating severity, and proposed amendments with unrelenting affability. To this class Veronica was most ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... late, etc. As Caliban gets some poor solace out of imitating Prospero, so one reason for Setebos's creation of the world was a half-scornful attempt to delude himself into apparent content. His imitations, his "make believes," are the unwilling homage his weakness pays to the power of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... La Boulaye. "I am but the mouthpiece of the great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come from me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as to delude myself into believing ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... is instructed to make himself center of the party of extremes, and in different companies to pity the country, to laugh at moderate progress as a sham, and to say that the concessions of the local governments are merely ruses to pacify and delude the people,—as in great part they were, though Giusti and his party did not believe so. The instructions to the emissary conclude ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... hope to tell my little girl about you." Suddenly he became grave again and said, "Mr. Baron, you are somewhat isolated here, and may not be so well informed as I am. However the prospective conflict may turn, I cannot remain in this region. Many of our wounded may be left. Do not delude yourself, sir, nor, if you can help it, permit your friends to be deluded by the belief, or even hope, that our forces will not soon control this and all other parts of the land. While I trust that humanity will lead to every effort to assuage suffering and ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... thieves, but in expectation of being robbed? Or, who would herd with sharpers, and not expect to be cheated? We would therefore advise the stranger in London to shun these reptiles of the creation, fraught with guile, and artful as the serpent to delude. Beware of their conversation, avoid their company, take no notice of their tricks, nor be caught by their wheedling professions of friendship; listen not to any of their enticements, if you would preserve your peace and property; be not ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... your class, my good woman; and you can scarcely expect me to listen to that kind of thing. If you come here to me, hoping to delude me by the language with which you tell the country people their fortunes at fairs and races, the sooner you go away the better. I am ready to listen to you patiently: if you need help, I am ready to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... promise of a hidden treasure, to lead an honest man, who has hitherto faithfully followed his calling, into ruin—to induce him to neglect his business—and to bring misery upon his wife and children, by rendering him improvident and idle. Begone! and delude them no longer with such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... appointed the Senators, but it was different with the Tribunats. He hesitated long before he fixed upon the candidates for that body, which inspired him with an anticipatory fear. However, on arriving at power he dared not oppose himself to the exigencies of the moment, and he consented for a time to delude the ambitious dupes who kept up a buzz of fine sentiments of liberty around him. He saw that circumstances were not yet favourable for refusing a share in the Constitution to this third portion of power, destined apparently to advocate the interests of the people before the legislative ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the "pullulating colleges and universities" of America—"the multitude of institutions the promoters of which delude themselves by taking seriously, but which no serious man can so take"; and he would be surprised to see to what purpose some of those institutions have "pullulated" in the eighteen years that have passed since he ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... confirms the theory that the above-mentioned six plays, which have been wrongly claimed for Shakespeare, were really by Wentworth Smith. The use of the initials 'W.S.' was not due to the publishers' belief that Wentworth Smith was the author, but to their endeavour to delude their customers into a belief that the plays were ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... being here at a time so unluckily coinciding with the execution of your projects, I can only account by supposing that those who make it their trade to impose on others do sometimes egregiously delude themselves. The engineer is sometimes killed by the springing of his own petard.—For what is to follow, let it depend on the event of this solemn inquiry.—Bring hither ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... request of a lady, but on this occasion it cannot be otherwise. In your island many glorious things have been conjured together by your forbidden art, and many lovely forms which the good God has created have been transformed. These might dazzle my senses, and at last delude them. If you will, therefore, hear the best and purest things which I can relate to you, you must rather come out to me on this desert sand. The palm-wine and the dates of the Arab will suffice for me for many a day to come." "You would do better to come with me," said Zelinda, ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... arrive; some they are good, and some they work evil. Therein is a race very numerous, that cometh among men; they are named full truly Incubi Daemones; they do not much harm, but deceive the folk; many a man in dream oft they delude, and many a fair woman through their craft childeth anon, and many a good man's child they beguile through magic. And thus was Merlin begat, and born of his mother, and thus it is all transacted," ...
— Brut • Layamon
... curious how we delude ourselves, fancying that the body can be improved, but that it is impossible to evoke the hidden powers of the soul," Gandhi replied. "I am engaged in trying to show that if I have any of those powers, I am as frail a ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... his close-mouthed general manager, Andrew Daney, were the only persons who knew the extent of The Laird's fortune. Even their knowledge was approximate, however, for The Laird disliked to delude himself, and carried on his books at their cost-price properties which had appreciated tremendously in value since their purchase. The knowledge of his wealth brought to McKaye a goodly measure of happiness—not ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... one any day at the lock on the canal at home! only we do not delude people into coming to see ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a second time the Ortegna jewels were passed on, by a written bequest, into the keeping of that mysterious, certain, uncertain thing we call the future, and delude our selves with the fancy that we can have much to do with ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the men present who had been farm-boys, with loud laughter ridiculed the suggestion. Did I not know that nature had provided a conduit through which the needed sustenance was conveyed from the maternal udder, and that it was quite possible to delude the unsuspecting calf into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was that conduit? The triumph of the Irish girl was explained, and I sank back, covered with confusion. Fiske, however, blurted out: "Why, I never should have thought of that in all my life," whereat he ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Woods to burne instead of Candles. And as for the rednesse wont to be met with in such solutions, I could easily shew, that 'tis not necessary it should proceed from the Sulphur of the Concrete, Dissolv'd by the Spirit of Wine; if I had leasure to manifest how much Chymists are wont to delude themselves and others by the Ignorance of those other causes upon whose account spirit of Wine and other Menstruums may acquire a red or some other high colour. But to returne to our Chymical Oyles, supposing ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Mind what you do, and be sure vanity doesn't delude you, for you are only a woman, and in tilings of this sort we are so blind and silly. I'll think of this possibility soberly, but I won't flirt, and then which ever way I decide I shall have nothing to ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... chronicling of his deeds, his heedlessness as to fame and glory. As one of his eulogists truly says: "In none of his writings does Vespucci claim for himself advancement, honor, or emolument, nor does he seek to delude his patrons with visions of untold wealth. His letters are the easy effusions of a great mind filled with admiration at the fertile regions, balmy climate, and primitive races of the New World. Ever modest, he merges himself in the greatness of his undertaking; and if the civilized world ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... thoughts lodge within you? O when will you be washed from them? How long shall not your thoughts transcend this temporal and bodily life? How long do you imagine to live in sin, and die in the Lord,—to continue in sin and escape wrath? Why do you delude your souls with a dream of having interest in the love of God, and purchasing his favour by your works? These are some of those many inventions man ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Mr. Sawyer substitutes "despised" for "mocked," as the translation of [Greek: henepaichthae]. Is this literal? or is it an improvement? The Greek verb [Greek: hemaiso] has the signification primarily to deride, to mock, to scoff at, and secondarily to delude, to deceive, to disappoint, but it has not the meaning to despise. The word mock is used in our language in both these significations,—in the secondary sense when it refers to men's hopes or expectations,—as, to mock one's hopes, that is, to delude or disappoint one's expectations. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his mind than revenge. Kotsuke no Suke, in the meanwhile, suspecting that Takumi no Kami's former retainers would be scheming against his life, secretly sent spies to Kioto, and caused a faithful account to be kept of all that Kuranosuke did. The latter, however, determined thoroughly to delude the enemy into a false security, went on leading a dissolute life with harlots and winebibbers. One day, as he was returning home drunk from some low haunt, he fell down in the street and went to sleep, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Tadayoshi withdrew to Echizen and from thence made his way to Kamakura. In these circumstances, Takauji desired to take the field himself, but since to do so would have exposed Kyoto to danger from the south, he attempted to delude the Court at Yoshino into crediting his loyalty and his willingness to dethrone Suko by way of preliminary to welcoming the return ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and systematically wicked: even the worst find good motives for bad deeds, and are as intent upon discovering glosses for conduct to deceive themselves as to delude others. What wonder, then, that poor Lady Westborough, never too rigidly addicted to self-examination, and viewing all things through a very worldly medium, saw only, in the alternate art and urgency employed against her daughter's real happiness, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is part of our compact," rejoined the demon. "He who has once closed hands with Herne the Hunter cannot retreat. But I mean you fairly, and will not delude you with false expectation. What you seek cannot be accomplished on the instant. Ere three days Anne Boleyn ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and stratagems were practiced—anything that would tend to make the Confederates believe we were being reinforced, while Hancock was preparing for a rapid return to Petersburg at the proper time. In order to delude the enemy still more after night-fall of the 28th I sent one of my divisions to the south side of the James, first covering the bridgeway with refuse hay to keep the tramp of the horses from being heard. After daylight the next morning, I marched this division back again on foot, in full ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... I had been so, was base enough; the putting the face of great things upon poor circumstances was a fraud, and bad enough; but the case a little differed too, and that in his favour, for he was not a rake that made a trade to delude women, and, as some have done, get six or seven fortunes after one another, and then rifle and run away from them; but he was really a gentleman, unfortunate and low, but had lived well; and though, if I had had a fortune, I should have been enraged at the slut for betraying me, yet ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... might hope for escape, but even now he could not delude himself with the thought that he might win through without ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the act rewarded, Since it is good; howe'er you must put on An amorous carriage towards me, to delude Your subtle father. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... natural or adventitious, I was very sure that if my proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it just as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the Inspector. "I'm not even trying to delude myself. . . . And he never was such a friend of mine as you thought he ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... situation, and therefore I excuse the little aberrations from truth which your letter contains. At the same time it is possible that you may have been misinformed. For I will not suppose that your letter was intended to delude the people of these States. Such unmanly, disingenuous artifices have of late been exerted with so little effect, that prudence, if not probity, would prevent a repetition. To undeceive you, therefore, I take the liberty of assuring your Excellencies, from ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... between us would not continue long. For these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you with Laelius were accustomed to wonder at this), old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself: nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... that man as if he were an open book," the boy announced, with callow boastfulness. "He has the subtlety of Satan, yet he does not delude me. It was at me he struck through Killigrew. Because he desires you, Rosamund, he could not—as he bluntly told me—deal with me however I provoked him, not even though I went the length of striking him. He might ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... irritated most easily. To speak incautiously on such subjects, is an offence of no venial order; but deliberately and wilfully to connect the words, war and scarcity, were infamous, a treachery to our country, and in a peculiar degree cruel to those whom alone it can delude, the lower uneducated classes. I will not enlarge upon that subject, but retire with a firm conviction that no new facts have occurred which can have altered the opinion of this House on the necessity of the war, or the suitableness of similar measures to the present to the effectual ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... was rais'd, when many lofty towers Methought I spied. "Master," said I, "what land Is this?" He answer'd straight: "Too long a space Of intervening darkness has thine eye To traverse: thou hast therefore widely err'd In thy imagining. Thither arriv'd Thou well shalt see, how distance can delude The sense. A little therefore ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Indignant and inflamed, the favouring audience shouted their sympathy with his wrongs. "Son of Hippocrates," said Solon, advancing to the spot, and with bitter wit, "you are but a bad imitator of Ulysses. He wounded himself to delude his enemies—you to deceive your countrymen." [227] The sagacity of the reproach was unheeded by the crowd. A special assembly of the people was convened, and a partisan of the demagogue moved that a body-guard of fifty men, armed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves the calls of conscience which demanded personal effort, personal risk, and these are they who are most merciless in their judgment of the helper if he is unable to help. The rest are happy if they can delude themselves for the moment. "What could he do?" cried one. "Help! Rescue!" cried others. "Even if one had wings, he would not dare the ascent in such a storm." "Nettenmair surely would." In the depths of their hearts, however, even the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... he comes. Mother, some of the wonderful bottle- —ay, you covetous miser of a woman, or I'll make a libation of it all. Audley, it must have wrung your father's butler's heart to have thrown away this port on a picnic. What did you tell him to delude him?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... banks which formed a gap in the immense bulwarks of the island peeped forth, as it were, a sketch of a Dutch landscape—a painted cottage, a windmill, a boat—which seemed to reveal a secret created to arouse the curiosity of travellers, and to delude it directly ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... that he fell into a doze on a seat. But afterward he dimly remembered that he heard the two colonels talking. They were trying to probe into the depths of Jackson's mind. They surmised that this march over the mountains had been made partly to delude Banks. They were right, at least as far as the delusion of Banks went. He had been telegraphing that the army of Jackson was gone, on its way to Richmond, and that there was nothing in front of him save ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enchanters, wicked spirits and terrible diseases. Best of all, he banished "eye-bite," which was the name the people gave to witchcraft. Luid-i-ger, also, made it hard for the naughty elves and sprites that delude men. ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... rightly, as madmen do, from his own premises. And this is the reason I object to Cervantes's treatment of him in the second part—which followed the other after an interval of nearly eight years. For, except in so far as they delude themselves, monomaniacs are as sane as other people, and besides shocking our feelings, the tricks played on the Don at the Duke's castle are so transparent that he could never have been ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... shares of the company went on rising in value until they reached thirteen hundred per cent. Nothing was now spoken of but the price of shares, and the immense fortunes suddenly made by lucky speculators. Those whom Law had deluded used every means to delude others. The most extravagant dreams were indulged, concerning the wealth to flow in upon the company from its colonies, its trade, and its various monopolies. It is true nothing as yet had been realized, nor could in some time be realized, from these ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... was but one of many? Tell me, sirs, what cause have you to believe that I should rule you wisely and well? It so chances that in the crisis now threatening Babbiano a captain is needed for its ruler. But let not this delude you, for there may come a season in the fortunes of the State when such a man might be as unfitted for dominion as is the present Duke in this. What then? A good knight-errant is an indifferent courtier and a bad statesman. Lastly, my ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... science. Wier believed in demons, and in possession by demons, but his practice as a physician had convinced him that the so-called witches were patients and victims, that the devil took advantage of their diseased condition to delude them, and that there was no consent of an evil will on the part of the women. He argued that the word in Leviticus translated "witch" meant "poisoner," and besought the princes of Europe to hinder the further spilling ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... didn't leave her. I would have." Miss Pringle attempting to delude herself with the idea that she was a mettlesome, high-spirited person who would stand no nonsense, was immensely diverting to Nora. To hide an irrepressible smile, she went over to a bowl of roses which stood on one of the little ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... certain seemingly indisputable historical facts were generally known and accepted and permitted to play a daily part in our thought, the world would forthwith become a very different place from what it now is. We could then neither delude ourselves in the simple-minded way we now do, nor could we take advantage of the primitive ignorance of others. All our discussions of social, industrial, and political reform would be raised to a higher ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... to have been one of those persons, who make it their whole study to delude their fellow-men, and to obtain for themselves the reputation of possessing supernatural gifts. Such persons, almost universally, and particularly in ages of ignorance and wonder, become themselves the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was any real change, after all, in the sordid, wornout worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the truth of the process, I can suggest ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but there was a weird, ghastly look about the boat which made us shudder. An unburied corpse, left to the winds and waves, without a prayer or a blessing! how could it be otherwise? Even if we could delude ourselves into fancying the Dyaks happy during their lives without Christianity, there can be no doubt of their being miserable when death comes. They all believe dimly in a future state, but their dread of spirits is so great that they can ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... get them. Thy reign is the blast of womanly virtue and manly strength. Thou art the precursor of destruction. Thou dost intoxicate, bewilder, and make mad the nations whom thou wouldst destroy. Thou dost lead to dazzle and delude to ruin. Avaunt, thou grand sycophant of the nineteenth century, thou vile usurper of the ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... who over all things terrene is omnipotent? Thy god is powerless and cannot guard itself from harm; and indeed a stoned Satan had clothed himself therewith as with a coat that he might debauch thee and delude thee. But now hath its devil departed; so do thou worship Allah and testify that there is no god but He and that none is worshipful nor worshipworth but Himself; neither is there any good but His good. As for this thy god, it cannot ward off hurt from it; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... his discourse. He is the very landskip of our age. He is all ayre; his eare alwayes open to all reports, which, how incredible soever, must passe for currant, and find vent, purposely to get him currant money, and delude the vulgar. Yet our best comfort is, his chymeras live not long; a weeke is the longest in the citie, and after their arrival, little longer in the countrey; which past, they melt like Butter, or match a pipe, and so Burne[DK]. But indeede, most commonly ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... furrowed brow—all proclaimed their cause and origin. Yes, he seemed to carry about him the invisible walls which filled him with agony and gloom, and which, month after month, pictured to him with more and more hopeless brilliance the images of freedom, until finally they refused to delude him with blooming tree or flourishing field; then they resembled the desolate gray of an autumn evening, when the air already smacks of winter, the hearse rattles oftener than usual past the garden-gate ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the taxes by a duty on imports prevents the mass of the people from readily perceiving the amount they pay, and has enabled the few who are thus enriched, and who seek to wield the political power of the country, to deceive and delude them. Were the taxes collected by a direct levy upon the people, as is the case in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... bad enough, but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines they used to rule in the copy-books at school, to make the boys slope well. For a moment it would die away, and the traveller would begin to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted with its previous fury, it had quietly laid itself down to rest, when, whoo! he could hear it growling and whistling in the distance, and on it would come rushing over the hill-tops, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "Don't think to delude me," says his Riv'rence, "don't think to back out ov your challenge now," says he, "but come to the scratch like a man, if you are a man, and answer me my question. What's the rason, now, that Julius Caesar and the Vargin Mary was born upon the one day,—answer me ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... stony and unmoved, and spoke no word. She said to herself that San Miniato was again attempting to prepare the scenery for a comedy, and she could have laughed to think that he should still delude himself so completely. Teresina would have clapped her hands in applause had she dared, but she did not, and contented herself with trying to see into Bastianello's eyes. She was very near him as she sat furthest forward in ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... delude yourself," she added. "Sir Crispin will have reached London long ere this, and by now Joseph will be well on his way to see that there is no mistake made, and that the life you ruined hopelessly years ago is plucked at last from ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... proper to censure him the most loudly and with the greatest asperity. Here they fasten, and, if they are right in their fact, with sufficient judgment in their selection. If he be guilty in this point, he is equally blamable, whether he is consistent or not. If he endeavors to delude his countrymen by a false representation of the spirit of that leading event, and of the true nature and tenure of the government formed in consequence of it, he is deeply responsible, he is an enemy to the free Constitution of the kingdom. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the democratic movement as compared with the magnitude of its proposition and the forces behind it ought to have suggested to them that its evolution was yet but in the first stage. How could intelligent men delude themselves with the notion that the most portentous and revolutionary idea of all time had exhausted its influence and fulfilled its mission in changing the title of the executive of a nation from king to President, and the name of the national Legislature from Parliament to Congress? If your ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... faithful counsellor and an able Minister. As loyal as wise, he was, from 1789, an enemy to the French Revolution. He easily foresaw that the specious promise of regeneration held out by impostors or fools to delude the ignorant, the credulous and the weak, would end in that universal corruption and general overthrow which we since have witnessed, and the effects of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... outskirts, for he thought that would remove him from every centre of action or employment. But he saw no lodgings anywhere. Growing tired and hungry, he went at length into an eating-house, which he thought looked cheap; and proceeded to dine upon a cinder, which had been a steak. He tried to delude himself into the idea that it was a steak still, by withdrawing his attention from it, and fixing it upon a newspaper two days old. Finding nothing of interest, he dallied with the advertisements. He soon came upon a column from which single gentlemen ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now my happiness is to be one more lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end. If you can so easily dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your friend nor your lover, you do not care for me! And ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... for his own blunders. And so, if a man can find a friend, the hypostasis of all his hopes, the mirror of his ethical ideal, in the Jesus of any, or all, of the Gospels, let him live by faith in that ideal. Who shall or can forbid him? But let him not delude himself with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective reality of that in which he trusts. Such evidence is to be obtained only by the use of the methods of science, as applied to history and to literature, and it amounts at present to ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... All attempts to delude the people, or to abuse their understanding by exercise of the pretended arts of witchcraft, conjuration, enchantment, or sorcery, or by pretended prophecies, shall be punished by ducking and whipping, at the discretion of a jury, not, exceeding ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... extremest need, a god might vouchsafe some glimpse of his own beauty .... Athene might pity at last.... Or, if not Athene, some archetype, angel, demon.... And then she shuddered at the thought of those evil and deceiving spirits, whose delight it was to delude and tempt the votaries of the gods, in the forms of angels of light. But even in the face of that danger, she must make the trial once again. Was she not pure and spotless as Athene's self? Would not her innate purity enable her to discern, by an instinctive antipathy, those ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... tried to dismiss the matter from his mind and think of pleasanter subjects, such, for instance, as Oliver's crime, and his own clever use of it to delude the Sixth. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... to every art of dissembling, and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisies, and flatteries; so that in a short time we no longer see what the first impression had clearly shown us. It is said that "most people gain on further acquaintance" but what ought to be said is that "they delude us" on further acquaintance. But when these bad traits have an opportunity of showing themselves later on, our first impression generally receives its justification. Sometimes a further acquaintance is a hostile one, in which ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... who are expected to address their employers as "Sir" and "Ma'am," but that well-mannered young people in all conditions of life can be found who use this form of address to persons older than themselves. I do not suggest for one moment that any attempt should be made to delude a girl into the belief that she will not be expected, in conventional households, to behave with equal deference to persons younger than herself. Such deception would be unpardonable. But it is ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque.' Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference toward moral ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... replied Lady Helena. "Heaven forbid that I should answer you lightly such a question; I would not delude you with ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... all the dangers which our Nation has yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from the success of the effort now making to Africanize the half of our country." "We must not," said he, "delude ourselves. It will require a strong standing army, and probably more than two hundred millions per annum, to maintain the supremacy of negro governments after they are established,—a sum thus thrown away which would, if properly used, form ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... having by this time lost the deceitful track. No matter if he go astray; even were it after nightfall instead of noontime, a will-o'-the-wisp, or Puck himself, would not lead him into worse harm than to delude him into some mossy pool, the depths of which the truant schoolboys had known for ages. Nevertheless, some little time after his disappearance, there was the report of a shot that echoed sharp and loud, startling the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with an unkindly deed. Within his soul was hate like garden weed, That choked the buds and bulbs. In childish feud, His glee, like noisy urchins brash and rude, Who trample flowers, pay no thoughtful heed. The careless acts bring harm and pain with speed. And sin-scarred hearts deceive themselves, delude No one. Such souls will have few friends at last. When life is hard, no one will bear his care Unless a kindly one, who looks about To help, to pull and clear. The field is vast! O weary man! Unhappy world! "Unfair Is life" men say, "The whole ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... they seldom remount one horse, till after three or four days rest. Should even the Tartars retire towards their own country, our army ought by no means to retreat or separate; as they often practise this stratagem to delude their enemies and induce them to divide, and then return suddenly to destroy the country at their pleasure. Our generals ought to keep their troops day and night on the alert, and always armed, ready ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... expression of ridicule on his countenance; "yet all this approximation to the philosopher's stone wringeth not one single crown out of my Lord Leicester's pouch, and far less out of Richard Varney's. WE must have earthly and substantial services, man, and care not whom else thou canst delude with thy philosophical charlatanry." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of truths; and statements are to be found in every stage of approach to this final condition. Every time there is an impotency or unreality in their enunciation, they are borne a step nearer the sepulchre. If the smirking politician, who wishes to delude me into voting for him, bid me his bland "Good-morning," not only does he draw a film of eclipse over the sun, and cast a shadow on city and field, but he throws over the salutation itself a more permanent shadow; and were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... delude herself on this score. At Pilnitz, in 1791, the German potentates issued a declaration touching France which was too moderate to suit the emigrants, who published upon it a commentary of their own. This commentary was so revolting that when the Queen read her brother-in-law's signature ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... aghast; there was, of course, the gleam of hope that I might attract the attention of a passing ship, but the Channel at that point must be fairly on the way to becoming the Atlantic, and I dared not delude myself too boldly lest I be disappointed. He wasn't coming back for me; he had made that quite clear. He had left beside me on the bottom of the buoy a parcel of food and a bottle of water, enough, he had said, to keep me for a week if I used ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... short of nonsense to speak of reopening the Mongolian Mission so long as there is only one man in the field. I am fully aware of the difficulty of finding suitable men, and most fully sympathise with you, but don't let us delude ourselves with the idea of Mongol Mission work progressing till another man or two come and put their shoulder to the wheel. All that I can do I am quite willing to do, but my own progress is most seriously hampered ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... desiderated. Every time a lady goes to have a row on a lake she is liable to be upset by the clumsiness of those who accompany her, and although it may be close to shore, if she cannot swim, down she goes to the bottom. And floating won't do. Some ladies delude themselves with the idea that floating is of great value. In nine cases out of ten it is of no value at all; for unless water be perfectly smooth and still, a person cannot float so as to keep the waves from washing over the face, ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... of them to be only wooden pheasants, set up to delude poachers. Well, you are far more of a Philister and a Conservative than I ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... him in euerie respect, how lyke the wolfe he must drawe the breath from a man before he be seen, how lyke a hare he must sleepe with his eyes open, how as the Eagle in flying casts dust in the eyes of crowes & other foules, for to blind them, so he must cast dust in the eies of his enimies, delude their sight by one meanes or other, y they diue not into his subtilties: how he must be familiar with all & trust none, drinke, carouse and lecher with him out of whom he hopes to wring anie matter, sweare and forsweare, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... itself? It had lost none of its strength; while his fastidious notions of excellence, and a far-reaching clear-sightedness, which belonged to his truth of nature, greatly narrowed the sphere of its possible action. He could not delude himself into the belief that the oversight of his plantations, and the perfecting his park scenery, could be a worthy end of existence; or that painting and music were meant to be the stamina of life; or even that books were their own final cause. These things had refined ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I partly believed I had seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner, "How and when came these Haunted Ships there? To me they seem but the melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to warn people to shun destruction than entice and delude them ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... delude, beguile, inveigle; reveal, disclose; give up treacherously, give over to the enemy, act the ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... darling Fancy; thou art jesting with me," whimpered the hag; "thou wouldst not delude ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... priests to give us the blessed host and lead us in the way of salvation. And on the other side, I cannot but see the lewd and sinful and worldly lives of the most part, and hear the lies whereby they amass wealth and turn men from the spirit of truth and holiness to delude them into believing that wilful sin can be committed without harm, and that purchase of a parchment is as good as repentance. That do I see and hear. And therewith my master Lucas and Dan Tindall, and those of the new light, declare that all ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... also by intention, on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining. This accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling messages, or answers to questions, ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... no other President had incurred—arrived at Washington, his mind was utterly unaffected by the illusions of passion. His Inaugural Message was eminently moderate. The Slave Power, having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to intimidate the people,—having failed to murder the elected President on his way to the capital,—was at wits' end. It thought it could still rely on its Northern supporters, as James II. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... she was very firm. They all tried—husband, daughter, and friends—to delude her with false hopes, thinking thus to fan the flame of life and keep the brief candle burning a little longer. She was not deceived. She felt herself gradually, painlessly sinking. She complained but little; much less than ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... however, to have soon again broken out: having been excited, it is said, by Patrona Bey, who was desirous of supplanting Cadir Bey; but who, not very long afterwards, had rendered himself so obnoxious to the men whom he thus endeavoured to delude, that they suddenly rose on him, and literally cut him to pieces. It was well, therefore, that the generous friendship of Lord Nelson had impelled him to pen a letter to the Grand Signior, previously to Cadir ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Paradise, the bait of Eve Us'd by the Tempter: on that prospect strange Thir earnest eyes they fix'd, imagining For one forbidden Tree a multitude Now ris'n, to work them furder woe or shame; Yet parcht with scalding thurst and hunger fierce, Though to delude them sent, could not abstain, But on they rould in heaps, and up the Trees Climbing, sat thicker then the snakie locks That curld Megaera: greedily they pluck'd 560 The Frutage fair to sight, like that ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... a less distinct manner. In the "Beowulf" it is said:—"Wyrd often keeps alive the man who is not destined to die, if his courage is equal to the occasion." Wyrd is said to weave, to prescribe, to ordain, to delude, to hurt. In Cdmon she is wlgrim bloodthirsty. And the heathen association may still be felt, even when the name of Wyrd is displaced by a name of the Christian's God, as in "Beowulf" where we read:—"The Lord gave him webs to speed ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... it is only a passing mood, and fortunately for the world, and for them also, it soon dies out in some more genuine work or passion. Very few have the real gift, and those to whom it IS given wait and work and slowly reach the height of their powers. Many delude themselves, and try to persuade the world that they can sing; but it is waste of time, and ends in disappointment, as the mass of sentimental rubbish we all see plainly proves. Write your little verses, my dear, when the spirit moves,—it is a harmless pleasure, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... again the resourceful woman who was glad to pit her brain against the contriving of those who fought her. So, at this moment, she seemed pliant to the will of the man who urged her thus cunningly. Her quick glance around the office was of a sort to delude the Inspector into a belief that she was yielding ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... miseries and distresses of a fellow-tradesman, who sinks, as it were, by his side, and refuse to accept his offer of composition; at least, if he cannot object against the integrity of his representations, and cannot charge him with fraud and deceit, breaking with a wicked design to cheat and delude his creditors, and to get money by a pretended breach? I say, why should any tradesman harden his heart in such a case, and not, with a generous pity, comply with a reasonable and fair proposal, while ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... transported, every dull design; Are seldom cautious, all advice detest, And ever think our own opinions best; Nor shows my Muse a muse-like spirit here, Who bids me pause, before I persevere. But she—who shrinks while meditating flight In the wide way, whose bounds delude her sight, Yet tired in her own mazes still to roam, And cull poor banquets for the soul at home, Would, ere she ventures, ponder on the way, Lest dangers yet unthought of, flight betray; Lest her Icarian wing, by wits unplumed, Be robb'd of all the honours she assumed; And Dulness ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... endeavored to impress it upon others, that entitled him to vote, though he knew nothing whatever of letters. It is true, in my opinion, that men brood over things at times which they would have exist until they delude themselves and actually, sometimes honestly, believe that such ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and easy Gospel so commonly preached to the wayside hearers, as if we were saved by 'believing' this or that. Nothing short of the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul of each one could save us, and to preach anything short of this was simply to delude the simple and unwary in the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Earth had done, but th' angry water moved. Sister (quoth she) it had full well behoved Among your boastings to have praised me Cause of your fruitfulness as you shall see: This your neglect shews your ingratitude And how your subtilty, would men delude Not one of us (all knows) that's like to thee Ever in craving from the other three; But thou art bound to me above the rest, Who am thy drink, thy blood, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... interest aroused. But, contrary to his expectation, nothing further occurred; none of the masters alluded to his misdemeanour, and Hart Minor almost thought that the incident was closed—almost, and yet really not at all; he tried to delude himself into thinking the affair would blow over, but all the while at the bottom of his heart sat a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... will he not? And so with Dolly. Having found Grif, she had nothing to die for and so much to live for, that she lived. It seemed, too, that even if she had been inclined to die, Grif would have held her fast to earth. It was worse than useless to attempt to delude him into leaving her side, even for an hour; he hung over the invalid's couch, in such an anguish of half-despairing anxiety that the hearts of the unceremoniously deposed nurses were quite touched. He watched every change in Dolly's face, every brightening ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fear of the bitter; because a child is more easily deluded by bitterness than by anything else. So this man wants to do to you, suggesting to you the bitterness of poison and of great persecution, to delude the childishness of your weak sensuous love, that you may leave the milk through fear: the milk of grace, which follows on your sweet return. And I beg of you, on behalf of Christ crucified, that you be not a timorous child, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... politician to have his education among them. Nay, there is a much greater analogy between these two characters than is imagined; for both concur in their first and grand principle, it being equally their business to delude and impose on mankind. It must be confessed that they differ widely in the degree of advantage which they make by their deceit; for, whereas the beggar is contented with a little, the politician leaves but ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... adoration of a philosopher will never reach. I may be thought fanciful; but it has continually occurred to me, that, though, I allow, reason in this world is the mother of wisdom—yet some flights of the imagination seem to reach what wisdom cannot teach—and, while they delude us here, afford a glorious hope, if not a foretaste, of what we may expect hereafter. He that created us, did not mean to mark us with ideal images of grandeur, the baseless fabric of a vision—No—that perfection we follow with hopeless ardour when the whisperings ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... as much about medicine as a pig knows about the opera. So I set to work to delude him, first asking if he could secure me, as a clergyman, an hour alone with File just before the execution. He said money would do it, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... seekest parting, stay thy feet: Let clips and kisses not delude thy spright. Softly, for fortune's nature is deceit And parting is the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... I can't conceive, though probably many of his flock do. He prejudiced the minds of the maidens against me, and made an attempt to injure my reputation among the young men and elders—in vain. The man who could paint a scorpion on the wall so naturally as even to delude Father Ciprian into beating it for ten minutes with that bundle of sticks they call a broom; the man who could win three races on a bare-backed horse, treat all hands to wine, and even bestow segars on a few of the elders; win a terno at the Timbola, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the gods and ruled the world this night," he said. "We may not delude ourselves that we have escaped, my Lady. As sure as there is a first-born in thy father's house and in mine, that one is dead. And think of those others whom we love, the eldest born of other houses! Do thou pray for us, thou perfect spirit. I can not, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the manifest existence of the invisible world; the reality of spirits, and intelligence between us and them. What I have said, I hope, will not mislead any person, or be a means whereby they may delude themselves; for I have spoken of these things with the utmost seriousness of mind, and with a sincere and ardent desire for the general good and benefit ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... not plain sailing here. Life here is a very serious, very intricate, very difficult business. The only complications which are removed are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them. You must not delude yourself. You have many good qualities. You have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in that night. In a single flash, I had beheld things hitherto unknown to me: the perfidy of which a woman was capable, the falseness of that self-confidence and vanity which may delude a man into thinking himself the conqueror of a woman's heart, the danger of going, carelessly, on in a suspicious matter without looking forward to possible consequences. I saw the folly of thoughtlessness, of blind self-confidence, of reckless trust in the honesty of others ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... between us would not continue long. For these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you with Laelius were accustomed to wonder at this), old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... did not seem to share his father's hopes, "You will perhaps think it unkind in me, sir," said he, sadly, "to dispel this last illusion of yours; but I must. Do not delude yourself with the idea of an amicable arrangement; the awakening will only be the more painful. I have seen M. Gerdy, my father, and he is not one, I assure you, to be intimidated. If there is an energetic will in the world, it is his. He is truly your son; and his expression, like yours, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend of my family, and I may say my guardian," said I; "but I have forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking me a herald, sir! I am only an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bench of judges; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a senate, and Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand; but no one of these men could do more than this ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... had avowed their faintness as often as they felt it, the complaint would have been perpetual. But they generally made a point of deceiving each other, and tried to delude themselves; professing that no diet could be better for their particular needs than ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... pedigree at home with noble coats-of-arms emblazoned all over the branches, and titles dating back before the Conquest and the Crusaders. When a knight of old found a friend in want, did he turn his back upon him, or an unprotected damsel, did he delude her and leave her? When a nobleman of the early time received a young kinsman, did he get the better of him at dice, and did the ancient chivalry cheat in horseflesh? Can it be that this wily woman of the world, as my aunt ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... supposition, his fortitude would be stimulated by his immediate interest in the power of his office; in the latter, by the probability of the sanction of his constituents, who, though they would naturally incline to the legislative body in a doubtful case, would hardly suffer their partiality to delude them in a very plain case. I speak now with an eye to a magistrate possessing only a common share of firmness. There are men who, under any circumstances, will have the courage to do ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... has given me a shock. Everything about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money—and those jewels—if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old thing has chopped up, in order to delude ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon |
