"Delusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a genius for it. Some people are born with a genius for one thing, and some with a genius for another. I, for example, am an artistic genius, forced to be an amateur by the delusive possession of early wealth, and now burning with a creative instinct in the direction of the sheep or cattle business; you have the gift of universal optimism; Lurella Blood has the genius of good society. Give that ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... lovely Westover summer days as things we could not have any more of. And when you begin to feel that about anything, it would be a relief to have had the last of it. Nothing lasts always; but we like to have the forever-and-ever feeling, however delusive. A child hates his Sunday clothes, because he knows he cannot put them on ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... this little cluster of slave-owners should possess, besides their own share in the representative hall of the nation, the exclusive privilege of appointing two-fifths of the whole number of the representatives of the people. This is now your condition, under that delusive ambiguity of language and of principle, which begins by declaring the representation in the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one class of persons shall have neither part nor lot in the choice of their representatives; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... our horses to a gallop. Again thin smoke lines arose from the prairie and simultaneously the wigwam began to vanish. I had almost concluded the tepee was one of those delusive mirages which lead prairie riders on fools' errands, when I descried figures mounting ponies where the peaked camp had stood. At this we lashed our horses to faster pace. The Sioux galloped off and more smoke lines ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Moreover, a denizen of the side scenes said to me one day, 'Whoever has lived with dancers has lived with sheep; for in their exhaustion they can think of nothing but strong food.' Believe me, then, the love which a ballet girl inspires is very delusive; in her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a soil which is cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly dulled. The Calabrian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for the hysteric affections which are common among ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... conspiracy of delusive kindness from the day Wesley entered Rosedale. The frankness and kindliness of the Atterburys had been assumed to lure him to his fatal adventure. Boone himself believed that Jack's ignoble ambition and envy had been the main motives in the murder. To this Kate, from ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... time-piece, and by turns A quivering energy to jump For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns, Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud Capping a sullen crater: and mankind We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark, Because of thy straight leadership declined; At heels of this or that delusive spark: Now when the multitudinous races press Elbow to elbow hourly more, A thickened host; when now we hear aloud Life for the very life implore A signal of a visioned mark; Light of the mind, the mind's discourse, The rational in graciousness, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and organic lesions, causing its very defenders as a food to stultify themselves when in fealty to facts they are compelled to disclose its destructions, and to find the only defense in that line of demarcation, more imaginary than the equator, more delusive than the mirage, between ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... with Brandenburg alone, and wedded to his first love, not a king's daughter, might have done tolerably well there; better than Wenzel, with the empire and Bohemia, did. But delusive Fortune threw her golden apple at Sigismund too; and he, in the wide high world, had to play strange pranks. His father-in-law died in Hungary, Sigismund's first wife his only child. Father-in-law bequeathed Hungary to Sigismund, who plunged into a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... they perceived that a reputation so lightly established, was still more weakly sustained: the prejudice remained: the Countess of Castlemaine, a woman lively and discerning followed the delusive shadow; and though undeceived in a reputation which promised so much, and performed so little, she nevertheless continued in her infatuation: she even persisted in it, until she was upon the point of embroiling ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Taj—with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at second-hand from people to whom in the majority of cases they were also delusions acquired at second-hand—a thing which you fortunately did not think of or it might have made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... replete with curious illustrations of the genius and manners of the Middle Ages. Such works, from the truthfulness of their spirit, furnish a more lively picture of the tunes than even the graphic, though delusive, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to balls for pleasure, no doubt, but it must be admitted, nevertheless, that the pleasure they seek there is of a delusive kind and lasts but for a few ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... made upon the partisans of Montmorency should at once be repressed by his guards. It was not until the soldiers returned with the assurance that everything was quiet throughout the city, that he consented to retire to his rest again. For an entire week the delusive cries seemed to return at the self-same hour.[1228] These fancies—the creations of his fevered brain—may soon have left him, not to return until the general closing in at the death-bed. But there were marks of the violence of the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... letters (how admirable, as a rule, they are!) of soldiers at the front, telling their families to expect them back in a month or two's time. The other danger is that, harassed by the continuance of the struggle, or attracted by delusive offers of peace or affected by economic or industrial conditions which have fortunately not so far developed, a section of the nation may cry out for peace before the victory has been consummated and before the peril we are fighting ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... with our prayers, we may exhaust ourselves with weeping over the sorrows of the poor; we may narcotize ourselves and others with the opiate of Christian resignation; we may dissolve the realities of human woe in a delusive mirage of poetry and ideal philosophy; we may lavish our substance in charity, and labor over possible or impossible Poor Laws; we may form wild dreams of Socialism, industrial regiments, universal brotherhood, red republics, or unexampled revolutions; we may strangle ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... dollars. It was not strange, therefore, that before the war more than one third of the tonnage afloat under the British flag was launched from American dock-yards. The war had violently deprived England of this enormous advantage, and now she sought to make the privation perpetual, in the delusive hope of confining British trade to British keels, and in the belief that it was the height of wisdom to impoverish the nation which she regarded as her best customer. In July, 1783, an order in council proclaimed that henceforth all trade between ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... odd were wrong. In the four dwelt what aforetime would have been called faith, nothing magical, nothing superstitious, but really the noblest form of reason, for it is the ability to rest upon the one reality which is of value, neglecting all delusive appearances which ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... meant this, that we, thus unsuspecting, should be led away by delusive joy; that now in hope, {all} fear being removed, we might during our supineness be surprised, so that there might be no time for planning a rupture of the marriage. ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the present campaign, which is but a single episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an independent event which began in August 1914 and may end this year or the next. These same leaders are busily inculcating the delusive notion that the diplomatic instrument which will one day close hostilities will be a treaty of peace. And they are seemingly prepared to negotiate its terms on ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... came into my room, and, for all that, it will be seen that there were plenty of the same set to attest upon oath that I saw my brother every day during this period; that I persecuted him, with my presence day and night, while all the time I never saw his face save in a delusive dream. I cannot comprehend what manoeuvres my illustrious friend was playing off with them about this time; for he, having the art of personating whom he chose, had peradventure deceived them, else ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Fragariastrum).—How often has "mustn't pick the strawberry blossom" been quoted to this delusive little white cinquefoil in early spring, when it peeps out among leaves very like ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!—and sometimes wonder if the memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... calls. He soon feels symptoms of mild interest. The contagion is pleasing. These visits grow in length and frequency. Sir Donald is losing zeal for man-capture. He is in danger of yielding to the delusive heresy which sees more of interest in human suffering than ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... while in the hour of prayer I give myself up to the thought of heaven, as though I had in reality left the world, and was enjoying what is promised to the Christian. I fear, however, these feelings are too often delusive; we substitute the love of ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... a wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 640 To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. So glister'd the dire Snake and into fraud Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree Of prohibition, root ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... those subtler minds who instantly perceived its beauty, and saw how his language and his imagery often recalled those of the seventeenth-century metaphysicals, such as Crashaw, too readily perhaps asserted a bond between his thought and theirs. Like them, it is true, he turned his back on the delusive splendours of the world; he accepted and expressed in song the divine ordinance of the universe. But he was afflicted with the pain of modern doubt; fear and speculative curiosity struggled with his faith; sometimes the sheer beauty of the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of Austria were delusive, its political reforms were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State; but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... stuffed veal repent themselves, and send in a delicate broth or a bit of tenderloin, hovering softly in a sudden regard, and at length a healthier thought is born. It is to arise with desperate will, put a fresh rose in the bonnet and a delusive veil over the face, creeping down to the street with what steadiness can be summoned. There one meets friends, and is pretty well, with thanks, and is congratulated. Affairs grow brilliant, but the veil never comes up; underneath there is some one forty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... corner of Andros, we found ourselves face to face with a variety of difficulties: glimmering sandbars, reaches of moon-white shoals, patches of half-made land with pines struggling knee-deep in the tide; here and there a mile of mangroves, and delusive channels of blue water; beauty everywhere spreading out her sweeping laces of foam—a welter of a world still in its making, with no clear passages for any craft drawing more than a canoe. Loveliness everywhere—again ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the worst," she said, "is that perhaps we shall never be certain, when we see each other again, whether it is not a delusive image, a product of our own imagination, instead of the other's actual being. For then we no longer, as now, have our senses and thus nothing to convince us that what we perceive is the same as what we ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... now, that's too—why, angels and ministers of grace! Ray, is it love? delirious, delicious, delusive love, again? Sweet William! Billy Doux! bless my throbbing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed; and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... might be glancing towards her. A young man of foreign title and of Bohemian tastes met her at a studio dance, and, misled by the smartness of her dress and her always carefully carried air of careless prosperity, began to pay a delusive court to her. For a few weeks all her freshest frocks were worn assiduously and credit was strained to buy new ones. The flat was adorned with fresh flowers and several new yellow and pale blue cushions ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... so fatal to the peace of mankind, has been practiced in every period of time. Under a belief that the characters and the fates of men are dependent on the various aspects of the stars and conjunctions of the planets, the most unfounded apprehensions, as well as the most delusive hopes, have been excited by the professors of this fallacious science. Such impositions on the credulity of mankind are founded on the grossest absurdity and the most palpable ignorance of the nature of things; ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... processes. There is no trace of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or sudden destructions of a whole fauna or flora. The appearances which were formerly interpreted in that way have all been shown to be delusive, as our knowledge has increased and as the blanks which formerly appeared to exist between the different formations have been filled up. That there is no absolute break between formation and formation, that there has been no sudden disappearance of all the forms of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Vicksburg and Port Hudson fall, as fall they must, the emptiness of all their triumphs will be felt and appreciated. Bull Run, twice famous, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Chancellorsville—all will then appear in their true light as magnificent phantoms of delusive success, alluring the proud victors to further fruitless efforts and barren victories, only to overwhelm them with more tremendous ruin, in the end which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it in the Coffin? Is it in the Grave? Alas! all the Loveliness of Person, of Genius, and of Temper, serves but to point and to poison the Arrow, which is drawn out of our own Quiver to wound us. Vain, delusive, transitory Joys! "And such, Oh my Soul," will the Christian say, "such are thine earthly Comforts in every Child, in every Relative, in every Possession of Life; such are the Objects of thy Hopes, and thy Fears, thy Schemes, and thy Labours, where Earth alone is concerned. Let me then, once ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... appropriate as he would have been had the polities of the gods only coincided more exactly with those of the party. There was a distinct moment when, without saying anything more definite to me, Gravener entertained the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such a project was delusive, for the discovery of analogies between his body of doctrine and that pressed from headquarters upon Clockborough—the bottling, in a word, of the air of those lungs for convenient public uncorking in corn-exchanges—was an experiment ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... would be all over with the American Trusts and the African forward finance. But it will not be done: for the governing class either does not care, or cares very much, for the criminals, and as for me, I had a delusive opportunity of being Constable of Beaconsfield (with grossly inadequate powers), but I fear I shall never really be Steward ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... consumers of the European continent. The prospect of reviving what had always been an imperium in imperio, but now uncontrolled by the previous conditions of political subjection, seemed ominous; and besides, there was cherished the hope, ill-founded and delusive though it was, that the integrity of the empire as a self-sufficing whole, broken by recent revolt, might be restored by strong measures, coercive towards the commerce of the United States, and protective towards Canada and the other remaining continental colonies. It was believed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... fear we are being placed in an awkward position. I am desirous to have the language of the proposition clear and not delusive. The amendment of Mr. JOHNSON embarrasses me; I hardly know how to vote upon it. If I vote for Mr. JOHNSON'S motion, I shall have the semblance of favoring the limitation of the proposition to present territory. Mr. RUFFIN and myself both want the same thing, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... and witnessed the assault, but I well know my life would be in jeopardy if I attempted to interfere. I, however, screwed up my courage to stay, in the hope that some sense of shame might induce the fellow to hold his hand. This was, however, a delusive hope, for he continued to lay on the whip ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... seed. When Hother had heard this, the place melted away and left him shelterless, and he found himself standing in the open and out in the midst of the fields, without a vestige of shade. Most of all he marvelled at the swift flight of the maidens, the shifting of the place, and the delusive semblance of the building. For he knew not that all that had passed around him had been a mere mockery and an unreal trick ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... wait, If fate's decrees the thinking being doom To lose existence in the silent tomb. All may be well; that hope can man sustain. All now is well; 'tis an illusion vain. The sages held me forth delusive light, Divine instructions only can be right. Humbly I sigh, submissive suffer pain, Nor more the ways of ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... define."[615] And yet, "He whom scripture and philosophy have sung and whom the saints love to contemplate, even the Lord God, he is the son of Dasarath, King of Kosala."[616] By the power of Rama exist Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, as also Maya, the illusion which brings about the world. His "delusive power is a vast fig-tree, its clustering fruit the countless multitude of worlds, while all things animate and inanimate are like the insects that dwell inside and think their own particular fig the only one in existence."[617] God has made all things: pain and pleasure, sin ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Every one present, except Lady Annabel, appeared to entertain for him as much affection as admiration: those who had only met him in throngs were quite surprised how their superficial observation and the delusive reports of the world had misled them. As for his hostess, whom it had ever been his study to please, he had long won her heart; and, as she could not be blind to his projects and pretensions, she heartily wished him success, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... considerations it would appear better to abandon the use of the expression prolification of the fruit, as unnecessary where it is really applicable, and as delusive in the numerous other cases where ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... impression seemed to have been made on a few; and had there been missionaries there at the time, their efforts might have proved successful. But the influence of the "men of medicine," who strenuously withstand a religion which exposes their delusive tricks, and consequently deprives them of their gains,—together with the dreadful depravity everywhere prevalent,—renders the conversion of the Tekallies an object most difficult ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... that had gathered them. In calling his Parliament Edward the First sought mainly an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... and why you came in here praising spring in its words. You are happy because you have sold a poem, probably for more than it is worth. But why do you praise spring? What do you fellows do it for? You know perfectly well that it is the most capricious, the most treacherous, the most delusive, deadly, slatternly, down-at-heels, milkmaid-handed season of the year, without decision of character or fixed principles, and with only the vaguest raw-girlish ideals, a red nose between crazy smiles and streaming eyes. If it did not come at the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... broken down by want, having begun to practise physic in a strange place, and selling his antidote[15] under a feigned name, gained some reputation for himself by his delusive speeches. ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... He dreams and finds himself among the fairies, whom he approaches and requests permission to join. They snatch him up forthwith and fly off with him over cities and realms, lands and seas, until he begins to fear for his life. They come to a huge castle—Castle Delusive, where an Angel of light appears and rescues him from their hands. The Angel, after questioning him as to himself, who he was and where he came from, bids him go with him, and resting in the empyrean, he beholds the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... God. For if all, as he says, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for the differences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beauty and worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory and evanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself a delusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against the finite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as soon as we inquire ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... flies he onward, like a phantom he disappears there on the border of the forest. Was it only a delusive appearance, a fata ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... all—but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too emphatically insisted that without a personal God religion simply ceases to be. It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part, and that of a good many people, that "the religious emotions" will survive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men will remain "deeply religious" even when it is recognised that the "Great Enigma," ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... right outside them, so that it may properly constitute a part of the magnetic circuit. The constructions known as Camacho's and Cance's, and one patented by Mr. S.A. Varley, in 1877, belonging to this delusive order of ideas, are now ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... went to the camp; but what was my astonishment on reaching the hut to find every servant gone, along with the pots, pans, meat, everything; and all in consequence of the king's having taken the drums on board, which, being unusual, was regarded as one of his delusive tricks, and a sign of immediate departure. He had told no one he was going to the N'yanza, and now it was thought he would return in the same way. I fired for my supper, but fired in vain. Boys came out, by the king's order ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... delusive impression was of short continuance. The rumor of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately propagated in that city, from the singular commotion produced by extraordinary events, which ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... for the opinions artistic and otherwise of the manager, and he is therein justified. The manager's vocation is not to write plays, nor (let us hope) to act in them, nor to direct the rehearsals of them, and even his knowledge of the vagaries of his own box-office has often proved to be pitiably delusive. The manager's true and only vocation is to refrain from producing plays. Despite all this, however, the manager has already collaborated in the play. The dramatist sees it differently now. All sorts of new considerations have been presented to him. Not a word has ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... there who has not had some such moment; and who would exchange it, with all the delusive and deceptive influences by which it comes surrounded, for the greatest actual happiness he has partaken of? Alas, alas, it is only in the boundless expanse of such imaginations, unreal and fictitious as they are, that we are truly blessed! Our choicest ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of steam in a boiler, which is an admirable agent, but demanding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Morley has the doubtful merit of consistency. As recently as April 27th, 1906, he alluded to the South African War as "that delusive and guilty war," in an address to the Eighty Club. According to The Times report this expression was received ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... undressed, he wondered what contemptible impulse had forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the highest feeling of which he supposed himself capable was blent with ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... what further to say. She half believed that Sir Thomas did labour under some delusion; but then she half believed also that he had upon his mind a sorrow, terribly real, which was in no sort delusive. Under such circumstances, how could she advise her son? Instead of advising ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the many women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties—as at least a negative service they can render their ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... his heart of hearts; He cannot wear this falsehood in his soul, Or deem me perjur'd; no delusive arts Can make him blot my name from honour's scroll: The sun will shine forth when the ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... matter prompt attention. Do not delay to adopt curative measures under the delusive idea that the difficulty will disappear of itself. Thousands have procrastinated in this way until their constitutions have been so hopelessly undermined as to make treatment of little value. The intrinsic tendency of this disease is to continue to increase. It progresses ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... see, ah! see, while yet her ways With doubtful step I tread, A hostile world its terrors raise, Its snares delusive spread. O how shall I, with heart prepared, Those terrors learn to meet? How, from the thousand snares to guard ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... invented,—he has no other guide than the vague terms employed to designate the time to be taken, and his own instinct, his feeling—more or less distinguishing, more or less just—of the author's style. We are compelled to admit that these guides are too often insufficient and delusive. Of this we have proof in seeing how old operas are given in towns where the traditional mode of performance no longer exists. In ten different kinds of time, there will always be at least four taken wrongly. I once heard ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... 216. By a delusive offer of marriage with the daughter of Artabanus, Caracalla decoys the Parthians into his camp, where he treacherously attacks and slays a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... daylight of common sense became intolerable to his eyes. He called the sun an ignis fatuus; and exhorted all who would listen to his friendly voice, which were about as many as called 'God save King Richard,' to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... whether of good or of truth, is the feeling of the moment for the man who feels it; all question of causes of feelings is delusive. We can say with truth and certainty, I have the sensation of white or the sensation of sweet. But that there is a white or a sweet thing which is the cause of the sensation, that we cannot say for certain. A man may ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... apostacy from Christianity; he hated the religion he had deserted, and laboured strenuously to substitute in its place an idle system which combined the most rational part of the old heathen system with the delusive philosophy of the schools. Vanity was his besetting sin; he chose to be considered a philosopher rather than a sovereign, and to acquire that title he thought fit to reject the decencies of this life, and the best guide to that which is to come. A treatise is extant from Julian's pen, in which ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Devil to seek in new Measures; for tho' he could not give out his delusive Trash as he did before, in Pomp and State, with the Solemnity of a Temple and a Set of Enthusiasts call'd Priests, who plaid a thousand Tricks to amuse the World, he then had Recourse to his old Egyptian Method, which indeed was more antient than that ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... and cantonal sovereignty. The Sonderbund was dissolved, and a new Federal Constitution was adopted, avowedly and ostensibly charged with the duty of carrying out democracy, and repressing the adverse influence of Rome. It was a delusive imitation of the American system. The President was powerless. The Senate was powerless. The Supreme Court was powerless. The sovereignty of the cantons was undermined, and their power centred in the House ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... herself his affianced bride,—all with most prudential—it may be, most praise-worthy—motives. On a sudden, the man discovers that this was no real attachment, but a fictitious, almost an enforced, one; that the methods (so he thinks) were artificial, the results delusive. What happens? The man withdraws—politely—gallantly: t'was a mistake; he is sorry; they are unsuited; he did not know his own mind; he is sorry;—and so on, and so forth. They separate. And, in this concatenation of circumstances, action for breach of promise ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... sincerely. Moreover, a similarity of habits and a like station in life and the fact that the same objects are disastrous and beneficial to persons are the only forces that can create true, firm friends. Wherever any one of these conditions is lacking, you see a delusive appearance of comradeship, but find it to be without secure support. (Mai, p.170 ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... shares, each one of which had seemed a fortune, found no more purchasers, and in its fall the Company dragged down with it its ally and chief creditor, the bank. All was dismay and despair, except in those who had sold out in time, and turned delusive paper into solid values. John Law, lately the idol and reputed savior of France, fled for his life, amid a ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... wolfish dogs which they had brought to the place prowling about the court-yard. Sometimes I prayed, and felt tranquillised, and fancied that I was perhaps to have a short interval of sleep. But the serenity was delusive, and all the time my nerves were strung hysterically. Sometimes I felt quite wild, and on the point of screaming. At length that dreadful night passed away. Morning came, and a less morbid, though hardly a less terrible state of mind. Madame paid me ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... doubts (arising partly from my own neglect of the means of grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed, cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction that prayers were unavailing and delusive) prevented my embracing the opportunity, as a religious one. Life, in itself, had almost become burdensome to me. All my outward relations were against me; I must stay here and starve (I was already hungry) or go home to Covey's, and have my flesh torn to pieces, and my spirit ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... her chair to walk the room—not from the old, restless energy, which needed physical exercise to keep it within bounds, for Cornelia was now white and faint, from exhaustion of mind and body, but from the tumult of pervading fear and delusive hope—the attention strained to catch some sound from below, and the dread lest it should never come. As the suspense grew more painful, the rapidity ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... insisted that this progressively liberal system of Turkey had no existence. Which of these two propositions was true may be left to the decision of those who lent to the Turk many millions of money on the strength of Lord Palmerston's ignorant and delusive assurances. It was mainly owing to Lord Palmerston, again, that the efforts of the war were concentrated at Sebastopol. Sixty thousand English and French troops, he said, with the co-operation of the fleets, would ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... youth, near his home. This is a simple custom the Chinese cherish and reverence, of highest honor to the dead and of no mean value to the living. To the dead, because buried near the home of his fathers he would not be subject to those delusive temptations in the future state of that confused and complex life; to the living, because it gave work to a dozen men for several days, and enabled them to have a good time at the expense of the departed. A perpetual and excruciatingly unmusical chant, in keeping with the occasion's ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... accident) would offer the flattest of all possible contradictions to what Magdalen had just said of her. "There is some remote nervous mischief which doesn't express itself externally. You would think my wife the picture of health if you looked at her, and yet, so delusive are appearances, I am obliged to forbid her all excitement. She sees no society—our medical attendant, I regret to say, absolutely ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... delusive in thus looking back, through the long vista of departed years, and catching a glimpse of the fairy realms of antiquity. Like a landscape melting into distance, they receive a thousand charms from their very obscurity, and the fancy delights to fill up their ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the agitators proved as delusive as those of the propagandists. The muzhik turned a deaf ear to their instigations, and the police soon prevented their further activity. Thus the would-be root-and-branch reforms found themselves in a dilemma. Either they must abandon their schemes for ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... is seldom difficult to find arguments in favour of that which the heart is set upon. The one that knows the Lord, will pray until the other is brought to him; neither will be guilty of casting the slightest hindrance in the way of the other, etc., etc., but how often have these pretty delusive devices been cast to the winds, or broken to atoms like glass toys in after life, and their framers made to pay the bitter penalties of disappointment, regret, and even backsliding for their early transgressions? The selection of a husband or ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... the letter written about little Miss Thompson (Horatia, be it understood) were not sufficiently delusive, he sends an equally absurd production to his niece, Charlotte Nelson, who lived a good deal at Merton, in which he says that he is "truly sensible of her attachment to that dear little orphan, Horatia," and although ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... against the Puritans, which had been considered the safeguard of monarchy, were declared inoperative. The ministers, including Shaftesbury, expected to obtain the support of Nonconformists. This calculation proved delusive. The Dissenters, on an assurance that they would be relieved by parliament if they resisted the offers of the king, refused to accept them. The object of his declaration was too apparent, and was indeed too openly avowed. Just then the Duke of York became a Catholic, and although ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. That the chance was not delusive was sufficiently guaranteed by the completeness with which he could finally figure it out that, in case of his taking action, neither Ida nor Beale, whose book, on each side, it would only too well suit, would ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... pray, what place is the castle yonder in the north?" "The castle above in the air," said he, "belongs to Belial, prince of the power of the air, and governor of all the great city below: it is called Delusive Castle, for Belial is a great deluder, and by his wiles he keeps under his banner all you see, with the exception of the little street yonder. He is a great prince, with thousands of princes under him—what were Caesar or Alexander ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past. To be at home with both his girls, and resting—for his holiday would not be over for ten days—was like old times. Now George was going on so well Gratian ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thy case turn out Hopeless and delusive, Still I'd rave and shout, Using terms abusive. Truth and sense might perish, Still thy cause I'd cherish, Hallow'd by thy gold,—then give ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... nor will any oppression exercised over his subjects be thought to justify foreign intervention. Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and equally vain remonstrances. In these days, not Warsaw, but St. Petersburg, is the centre of disaffection, and the ramifications extend inland, their action stimulated, it may be, to some extent from external sources, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... that after reaching Natchez my difficulties would have been over; but I very soon discovered that this was a delusive hope. I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours. Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi, more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed whether I should be able to ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... withdrawn as he was from active life in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone was far too acute an observer to have any leanings to the delusive self-indulgence of temporary retirements. To his intimate friend, Sir Walter James, who seems to have nursed some such intention, he wrote at this very ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862] the carved work ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... more than express this abstract opinion, but they had done all that. Lincoln's administration might have done apparently little, and after it the pendulum would probably have swung back. But the much-talked-of swing of the pendulum is the most delusive of political phenomena; America was never going to return to where it was before this first explicit national assertion of the wrongfulness of slavery had been made. It would have been hard to forecast how the end would come, or how soon; ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... system, deadens sensibility, and the mind becomes inactive. When used habitually and excessively it becomes a tonic, which stimulates the whole nervous system, producing intense mental exaltation and delusive visions. When the effects wear off, proportionate lassitude follows, which begets an insatiate and insane craving for the drug. Under the repeated strain of the continually increasing doses, which have to be taken to renew the desired effect, the nervous system ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... more deceptive than the pretended curative virtues of corrosive sublimate in dysentery, and that it is a matter of duty to be mindful, in this very particular, of the warning words of the master who, having himself been deceived at one time by the delusive palliation of mercury, addresses to us the remarkable warning that "mercury, so far from responding to all non-venereal maladies, on the contrary is one of the most deceitful palliatives the temporary action of which is not only soon followed by a return of the original symptoms of disease, ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... part requires no further illustration after what has been said elsewhere; it would have been well for his age if all its children had been as clear-sighted in these matters as he, to whom the practices connected with these delusive sciences seemed, and justly so from his point of view, not less impious than futile. His "Canon Yeoman's Tale," a story of imposture so vividly dramatic in its catastrophe as to have suggested to Ben Jonson one of the most effective ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... impregnable mountain fastnesses, were brave, warlike, independent tribes, which had never known anything but freedom, whose names even, Rome had not yet heard. The stern virtue and nobility of Scipio proved a delusive promise. Rome had not an easy task, and other and brutal methods were to be employed in subduing stubborn tribes and making of the whole a Latin nation. In one of the defiles of the Pyrenees there may now be seen the ruins ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... neither gold nor good paper, but are a kind of fiat currency, having no intrinsic character, being cheap, delusive, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... by a system of patrolling, which rendered communication from within or without almost impossible. A few messengers (natives) occasionally came into the town, but these were mostly charged with the delivery of delusive messages invented for special purposes by the Boers. There was an ever-present difficulty—that of keeping the natives in check. Many examples of Boer cruelty to these poor blacks are recorded, and they naturally shuddered at the prospect of once more being delivered over ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... poison too drained; Ah! 'twas all delusive, for sorrows would come, Oh, 'tis home where the heart is, where the heart is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the common trials of life, to mar our happiness in our family- like institution (February 23d) was the listless waywardness of some of our dear students, in a determined purpose to attend a dancing party under the guise of an oyster supper. How many delusive snares are laid to entrap and turn aside the youth into divergent paths. We found it necessary to suspend eight of our students for the remainder of the term. It is a painful duty of the surgeon to amputate a limb, yet it may be an imperative ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... moments of sober thoughts, if any such happened to him, he could not reject the testimony before him, of the termination of the war. He certainly, at least, thought it worthy to be announced to the people, although he "forewarned them from being thrown into security by hopes that might be delusive." This was a prudent caution, and sufficient. "On the 22d, the gladsome tidings were confirmed, and a Gazette of Charleston was received, announcing the ratification of the Treaty by the Prince Regent." We assume then, that on the 22d of January, such intelligence was received of the Peace ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... fortitude and alarm for her former pleasing dreams respecting Mr. Falkland. These she bore without impatience. She was even taught by the uncertainty of the event to desire to prolong, rather than abridge, a situation which might be delusive, but which was not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... have ourselves passed through much the same phases. Vandal and others have told us of the Utopia which was created in the minds of the French when the old regime crashed to the ground. Sydney Smith caricatured the delusive hopes excited by the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, when he said that all the unmarried young women thought that they would at once get husbands, and that all the schoolboys expected a heavy fall ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... in his cabinet with his head full of Mucio, Don Antonio, and Queen Elizabeth; while Alexander himself was left neglected, almost forgotten. His army was shrinking to a nullity. The demands upon him were enormous, his finances delusive, almost exhausted. To drain an ocean dry he had nothing but a sieve. What was his position? He could bring into the field perhaps eight or ten thousand men over and above the necessary garrisons. He had before him Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, Ghent, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it is claimed again that females should have the ballot as a protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband is brutal, arbitrary or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to conform to his wishes in other respects would also compel her to use the ballot, if she possessed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... refractor quickened and strengthened the current of prevalent opinion. It is now certain that the evidence furnished on both sides of the Atlantic as to the stellar composition of some conspicuous objects of this class (notably the Orion and "Dumb-bell" nebulae) was delusive; but the spectroscope alone was capable of meeting it with a categorical denial. Meanwhile there seemed good ground for the persuasion, which now, for the last time, gained the upper hand, that nebulae ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... in what I conceived the most agreeable way, I begged permission to introduce Mr. Sydney Dawson, and thus provided her with what, I dare say, she considered a most enviable partner. I had told Dawson she was a very clever girl; (he was fond of what he called "talented women," and had a delusive notion that he was himself a genius:) he had the impertinence to tell me afterwards he found her rather stupid; I ought, perhaps, to have given him the key-note. During the dance which followed, I remember I was silent and distrait; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... they expect it twice in three deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the blue clay Number 1 is in the centre; and where the other strata 2, 3, 4, 5 are coiled round it; the entire mass being 20 feet in perpendicular height. This appearance of concentric arrangement around a nucleus is, nevertheless, delusive, being produced by the intersection of beds bent into a convex shape; and that which seems the nucleus being, in fact, the innermost bed of the series, which has become partially visible by the removal of the protuberant portions of the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... of this—and it was a relief to him to give audible voice to the reflexion—"It's a great mistake, either way, for a man to be in love with an actress. Either it means nothing serious, and what's the use of that? or it means everything, and that's still more delusive." ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... byplay of the six paper bags, and of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to reality; and Carlyle constructs ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... an empty Form, Like me alone, thou'rt made; Like me delusive seem'st a Man, But only ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the mystic glass. Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye, Like him, led on, to triumph and to die; Like him, by mighty magic compass'd round, And seeking sceptres on enchanted ground. Such spells invest, such blear illusion waits The trav'ller bound for Fame's receding gates, Delusive splendours gild the proud abode, But lurking demons haunt th' alluring road; There gaunt-eyed Want asserts her iron reign, There, as in vengeance of the world's disdain, This half-flesh'd hag midst Wit's bright blossoms stalks, And, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... extended, and their mischievous consequences are most felt by the indigent and ignorant, who are seduced, deceived, and cheated out of their money, when their families are often suffering for the necessaries of life. Their principles are vitiated by lotteries, they are deceived by vain and delusive expectation, and are led into habits of idleness and vice, which produce innumerable evils, and, ultimately, end in ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... that are daily befalling mankind. I was, indeed, much in the position of those who stimulate the fancy by extraneous applications; all the boasted efforts of judgment I tried to mix up with and control the workings of my fancy, I found were but a species of delusive energies, to take myself out of a class of dreamers I heartily despised. I was, in fact, just as complete a visionary as they—with this difference,—I thought I required to satisfy the condition of a waking judgment, which, after all, had very ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... visions. In his Life of Dion[28] he notes the singular fact that both Dion and Brutus were warned of their approaching deaths by a frightful spectre. "It has been maintained," he adds, "that no man in his senses ever saw a ghost: that these are the delusive visions of women and children, or of men whose intellects are impaired by some physical infirmity, and who believe that their diseased imaginations are of divine origin. But if Dion and Brutus, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... was almost like his old self, and these delusive periods came oftenest when he met some old friend, or in quiet morning hours when his daughter—so he always called her—sat at his feet in the sunny breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or perhaps read to him from ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... LINCOLN, to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the moment of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin of Egyptian Thebes ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The Othello meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow; but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of efforts, the Saint-Ferdinand sprang forward, Gomez himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to this appeal. They were ready, they said, to follow him wherever he should lead. All this apparent enthusiasm, however, was very delusive and unsubstantial. A general named Bessus, combining with some other officers in the army, conceived the plan of seizing Darius and making him a prisoner, and then taking command of the army himself. If Alexander should pursue ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... reigned, And making every heart his own The love of all men gained. With trusty agents, as beseems, Each distant realm he scanned, As the sun visits with his beams Each corner of the land. Ne'er would he on a mightier foe With hostile troops advance, Nor at an equal strike a blow In war's delusive chance. These lords in council bore their part With ready brain and faithful heart, With skill and knowledge, sense and tact, Good to advise and bold to act. And high and endless fame he won With these to guide his schemes, As, risen in his ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the human Constitution. However, it is of the greatest consequence to point it out here, lest the want of discrimination should occasion an idea of security from the infection of the Small Pox, which might prove delusive.] ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... was the last gleam of the delusive well-being in which Madame de la Baudraye had lived since coming to Paris. Three days later she observed a cloud on Lousteau's brow as he walked round the little garden-plot smoking a cigar. This woman, who ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... All talk of their honor without the slightest occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you about their lives, braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false cards they have up their sleeves, as delusive as their names—in short, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... candidly interpreted aspects, was sufficiently amenable to censure; surmises taken for certainties; superstitions—the genuine hereditary offspring of the frame of public mind which produced the witchcraft delusion—all fermenting together; and all this evil and uncharitableness taking the delusive hue of benevolent interest in two helpless children;—we may partly judge what was the odium in which the grim Doctor dwelt, and amid which he walked. The horrid suspicion, too, countenanced by his abode in the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with silence and surprise We see Britannia's monarch rise, A godlike form, by thee displayed In all the force of light and shade; And, awed by thy delusive hand, As in the presence-chamber stand. The magic of thy art calls forth His secret soul and hidden worth, His probity and mildness shows, His care of friends and scorn of foes: 10 In every stroke, in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Lord Chatham's talents as a planner of military operations are deserved; but it may very fairly be contended that the disparaging views of Pitt's military policy which he has advanced are founded solely on what is in this as well as in many other instances a most delusive criterion, success. It is true, unquestionably, that in the campaigns of 1793-4-5 against the French revolutionists, while he took upon this country the entire burden of the naval war, on land he contented himself with playing a secondary part, and employing ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... myself like God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave that Light,— But stand its ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... rights; and are made to respect the just pretensions of mankind; in proportion as they are willing to sustain, in their own persons, the burden of government, and of national defence; and are willing to prefer the engagements of a liberal mind to the enjoyment of sloth, or the delusive hopes of a safety purchased ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... business and opulence on their own ground. If this principle will fill one's own treasuries, it will fill the treasuries of the Lord. Let it then be regarded. I would sound it in the ears of the million who are delving the earth for gold, and startle them from their delusive dreams. I would that it might echo and re-echo till its solemn utterances should make every votary of Mammon tremble. Hear, ye rich men; give ear, ye who are pursuing the bubbles of wealth! is it christian, is it right, to adopt principles of prudence and self-denial in filling ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... instances it were so, that the end be thus. What a hollow mockery does it impart to the heart of Lady Rosamond, whose cause of misery remains as yet half told. Life—a troubled dream, a waking reality, yet we cling to it with fond delusive hopes. What astute reasoner will solve, the intricacies of this problem? Can one who has suffered? The muffled throes of crushed hearts are the only response. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... his cabinet and then attempting to set it on fire, for which exploit the "learned and judicious Bianchi," as Smollett called him in his first edition, was sent to prison for life. The Arrotino which Smollett so greatly admired, and which the delusive Bianchi declared to be a representation of the Augur Attus Naevius, is now described as "A Scythian whetting ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend: And such was mine! who basely plunged her sword Through the fond bosom where she reign'd adored! Alas! I hoped the toils of war o'ercome, To meet soft quiet and repose at home; Delusive hope! O wife, thy deeds disgrace The perjured sex, and blacken all the race; And should posterity one virtuous find, Name Clytemnestra, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... my face, and it came disagreeably into my head that he was playing some part; that his talk was delusive, his anger feigned; that, perhaps, he still suspected me of being a Separationist. He went on talking about the failure of the boat attack. All Jamaica had been talking of it, speculating about it, congratulating ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... natural desire to relieve them by some special means, such as alcohol. To do so is often but to make a beginning of the end. How many bright lights in the dramatic and musical professions have been prematurely quenched through indulgence in the delusive draught! If tonics, sedatives, etc., are to be taken, which should not be a habitual practice, they should be used only under the direction of a ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... of all at the infinity of streets branching off in all directions. Dingy Clerkenwell and Aldersgate Street were gilded with a plentiful and radiant deposit of that precious metal of which healthy youth has such an infinite store—actual metal, not the "delusive ray" by any means, for it is the most real thing in existence, more real than the bullion forks and spoons which we buy later on, when we feel we can afford them, and far more real than the silver tea-service with which, still ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... consider the nature of this thing called criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and scrupulously on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by page, comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united in a conscientious verdict, publishing it for the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... really only an honest attempt to make the best of a commercial contract of property and slavery by subjecting it to some religious restraint and elevating it by some touch of poetry. But the actual result is that when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. And though of course nobody expects them to do anything so impossible and so unwholesome, yet the law ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... he knows his friends are of that party. Many a good citizen votes the opposite, not because he agrees with the great principles of state which separate parties, but because, generally, he is opposed to negro rule. This is a most delusive cry. Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle. Then we shall have no complaint ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... That screen is emblematic of their real exclusion from the higher government which their social participation in parliamentary elections, and the men's habit of talking politics with them, flatter them into a delusive sense of sharing. A woman may be the queen of England, but she may not be one of its legislators. That must be because women like being queens and do not really care ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... utterance conveyed nothing more to him than a belief of a material heaven to follow his exit from a world of matter. It had never occurred to him that the world of matter might be the product of those same delusive physical senses, through which he believed he gained his knowledge of it. It is true that while in the seminary, and before, he had insisted upon a more spiritual interpretation of the mission of Jesus—had insisted that Christian priests should obey the Master's injunction, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the enemy he could at once shake off associations which were now become intolerable to him, gain perpetual immunity from his liabilities, and secure for himself a life of distinction and luxury. He grasped at the delusive vision ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various |
