"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kingdoms of man's mind, with a chasm between. For the point is this: that the umbrella is a shield against an enemy so actual as to be a mere nuisance; whereas the stick is a sword against enemies so entirely imaginary as to be a pure pleasure. The stick is not merely a sword, but a court sword; it is a thing of purely ceremonial swagger. One cannot express the emotion in any way except by saying that a man feels more like a man with a stick in his hand, just as he feels more like a man with ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... intellectual and religious conditions of the Massachusetts colony that it may properly be described here. Belief in witchcraft was not by any means confined to Massachusetts. The statutes of England, as well as of the American colonies, dealt with the imaginary crime. Among the intelligent and educated classes, however, both in Europe and America, the subject was generally considered of too doubtful a nature to be dealt with by the infliction of the penalties which ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... was altogether an imaginary person conjured up by Chatterton as a vehicle for his wonderful forgeries. He was described by him as the intimate friend of Canynge, his constant companion, and a collector of books and drawings for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the center of the earth as the place from which to observe these celestial bodies and, in imagination, transfer our eye there. Then we will find projected on the celestial sphere not only the heavenly bodies but the imaginary points and circles of the earth's surface. Parallels of latitude, meridians of longitude, the equator, etc., will have the same imaginary position on the celestial sphere that they have on the earth. Your actual position on the earth will be ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... the major had been babbling of wine and water, been beholding things that were not, been hurling jewels at imaginary vultures. Now, well, the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... did not in his letter caution Fanny against going out alone. She remarked this; and having completely recovered her own alarm at the attempt that had been made on her liberty, she thought she was now released from her promise to guard against a past and imaginary peril. So after dinner she slipped out alone, and went to the mistress of the school where she had received her elementary education. She had ever since continued her acquaintance with that lady, who, kindhearted, and touched by her situation, often employed her industry, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sole of my foot, I was commencing to feel rather flat, in fact, anything but bright. What is the use of civilization? if we are to go on butchering our neighbours, or allowing them to make targets of us for every imaginary cause. Why be civilized in some matters, and in others remain savages? If a man strike me I shall knock him down, if he strike someone else even, in whom I am interested, he must fight his own battles, and let me look after my ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... it must be something of the kind. "Though," she said, "dogs always seem to have some end in view, or perhaps a dozen ends, for though they tear off after an imaginary interest as if there was nothing else in the world, they get tired of it, or else start another, and forget all about ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... statue to which various feelings were successively imparted. Its first feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance. But to avoid all possible complication with the question of genesis, let us not attribute even to a statue the possession of our imaginary feeling. Let us rather suppose it attached to no matter, nor localized at any point in space, but left swinging IN VACUO, as it were, by the direct creative FIAT of a god. And let us also, to escape entanglement with difficulties about the physical or psychical nature ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... is waiting, waiting. Waiting, I may say, on the affairs of State. Youth," continued the Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, addressing an imaginary constituency, "is nothing but a season ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... fought against the superstitions of the Russian peasantry. He had seen the work of his hands brought to naught, and a boring abandoned just short of the oil because a cross-eyed man, attracted by curiosity, had come and looked at the work. He had seen his wells go up in smoke for some imaginary act of witchcraft on the part of his foreman, and, though he laughed, he was in no ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... I should," I said, not too civilly. "Why should I be at her beck and call? If she had been in any trouble, any serious trouble, such as she anticipated when talking to me at the buffet, and a prey to imaginary alarms since become real, I should have been ready to serve her or any woman in distress, but nothing of this could have happened in the ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... which present an imaginary picture of the interior structure of the great geysers of the Park, that bears a striking resemblance to what the two caves of the Black Hills prove to be the true conditions; although it is evident he had in mind caverns ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Greek and Roman authors. Those authors, and the conversation of contemporaries, are Gellius' professed sources, but in some cases the author he names is evidently quoted at second-hand, and many of the conversations are doubtless quite imaginary. Our obligations to ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... look to, at this moment, is to destroy the Rio squadron. The usurper who rules in that Capital thinks that, reaching the bar with the squadron of his imaginary Empire, we should be attacked on all sides, and compelled to make a shameful capitulation. How much you are mistaken—new-born monster! We have abundant force at our disposal; but in the meantime we must overthrow the plans of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... region, when the sudden attack at sunset of 25,000 Bulgarians drove the Greek defenders back some six miles upon their supports. On each occasion the Bulgarian Government disclaimed all responsibility, and attributed the bloodshed to the personal initiative of individual soldiers acting under (imaginary) provocation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... anybody. Being a master of the pianoforte and a composer of rare talent, he can hardly be called sane. And yet, though I have seen him enthusiastic, misled, moved to tears over nothing, indignant over an imaginary insult, or ready to forgive any one who could be fool enough to be his enemy, I have never known him so thoroughly upset or so positive in his convictions as when the other morning, as I sat loafing before my fire, he entered ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... considered to be ruling in some mystical fashion over an imaginary country, might have welcomed this species of circular communication. It was certainly wasted on the inhabitants of Hispaniola, who were considerably more concerned with their own health and prosperity than with that of Ferdinand and Isabella, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... as follows:—Taking an imaginary line drawn from the Areonal to Mars as the base line of an isosceles triangle, we were moving along the left side of the triangle, and Mars was moving in a slightly curved line along the right side. Our paths were therefore converging, and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Carpi said of Erasmus he was so thin-skinned that a fly would draw blood from him. The author of the "Imaginary Conversations" had the same infirmity. A very little thing would disturb him for hours, and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. I was present once when a blundering friend trod unwittingly on his favorite prejudice, and Landor went off instanter like a blaspheming ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... rulers being selected on the hereditary plan. There was a federal union between them for purposes of offense and defense, and they called themselves, collectively, the "People of the Long House." This imaginary house had an eastern door at the mouth of the Mohawk River, and a western door at the Falls ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... his people. When that is effected, how will the perfect sunshine break out from that face! Ah! how blest must Scotland be under his reign, when all will be light, virtue, and joy!" Bliss hovered like an angel over the image of this imaginary Bruce; while sorrow, in mourning weeds, seemed ever dropping tears, when any circumstance recalled ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... first having prepared, to some extent, at least, his closing address to the jury. He has thought about this for weeks and perhaps for months. In his dreams he has formulated syllogisms and delivered them to imaginary yet obstinate talesman. He has glanced through many volumes for similes and quotations of pertinency. He has tried various arguments on his friends until he knows just how, if he succeeds in proving certain ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... contradict each other, as in the case of the 4th-century Christian pilgrim to Jerusalem who boasted that she had not washed ner face for eighteen years for fear of removing therefrom the holy chrism of baptism. The purport, then, of ablutions is to remove, not dust and dirt, but the—-to us imaginary—stains contracted by contact with the dead, with childbirth, with menstruous women, with murder whether wilful or involuntary, with almost any form of bloodshed, with persons of inferior caste, with dead animal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... feeling. To take a single example among many: in a passage in his de Legibus he says that to worship private or strange or foreign gods, "confusionem habet religionum";[969] and again he calls his own imaginary ius divinum in that treatise a constitutio religionum, a system of religious duties.[970] In many other passages, on the other hand, we find both the feeling which prompts and the cult-acts which follow on it equally connoted by the word; for example, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Paul Jones. The latter hero actually made a voyage in the brigantine 'John' about the time he picked up Richard Carvel from the Black Moll, after the episode with Mungo Maxwell at Tobago. The Scotch scene, of course, is purely imaginary. Accuracy has been aimed at in the account of the fight between the 'Bonhomme Richard' and the 'Serapis', while a little different arrangement might have been better for the medium of the narrative. To be sure, it was Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... correct. This is true: because to make it perfectly accurate, would be to make it also unintelligible to nine out of ten readers, and this not so much on account of obsolete words, which might be explained in a note, as of the entirely different turn of the phraseology. An imaginary diary of the reign of Elizabeth can be written in pure Elizabethan language, and with an occasional explanatory note, it will be understood by modern readers: but a narrative prior to 1400 at the earliest cannot be so treated. The remaining possibilities are either to use as much ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being only a vile peasant. To this insult Henry's son Arnold responded by attacking ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had made his old comic entrance, tripping his right toe over his left heel, and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary enemy. The boys, determined to be pleased, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... First Cause, least understood.' No man can be so fully and perfectly satisfied there is a God in heaven as the Author of this Apology cannot but be of his own existence on earth. No man's faith in the imaginary is ever half so strong as his belief in the visible ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the ceremonial performance. In one of the formulas it is specified that the doctor must blow first upon the right hand of the patient, then upon the left foot, then upon the left hand, and finally upon the right foot, thus making an imaginary cross. ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... concluded his examination, seemed a little puzzled. No doubt I had, in my ignorance, described some imaginary symptom which was not in accordance with what he expected to find. He, however, gave me another prescription, and as he wrote it I wondered how he would act if he knew that my object in becoming his patient was to probe the mystery of ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... he always wandered off to accounts of previous outrages committed by the press-gang, or to passionate abuse of the trick by which men had been lured from their homes on the night in question to assist in putting out an imaginary fire, and then seized and carried off. Some of this very natural indignation might possibly have some effect on the jury; and this seemed the only ground of hope, and was indeed a slight one, as the judge was likely to warn the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he rejected the humiliating aid; he secretly compared the ignominious, at least the inglorious, period of his own reign, with the fame of a beardless youth; and Valens rushed into the field, to erect his imaginary trophy, before the diligence of his colleague could usurp any share of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... go faster would have rendered careful exploration of the country difficult. Having completed ten miles without passing over a single spot of clear ground, he flew about five miles due west, then turned the machine and steered back towards the fort along the next imaginary radius of his circle. He had arranged that Rodier should scan the country to the left while he himself kept as good a look-out to the right as was possible when he had engine and compass to attend to. They had not flown far on this backward ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... have employed in some six or eight other stories, and whom I made as much the hero and heroine of 'Their Wedding Journey' as the slight fable would bear. In venturing out of my adoptive New England, where I had found myself at home with many imaginary friends, I found it natural to ask the company of these familiar acquaintances, but their company was not to be had at once for the asking. When I began speaking of them as Basil and Isabel, in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... P—— is too accomplished a politician to go the simple straight road to her object. I now perfectly comprehend why she took such pains to persuade me that an imperial lover was alone worthy of my charms. She was alarmed by an imaginary danger. Believe me, I am incapable of disputing with any ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... lawyers? How the laws of the two States could be said to come into conflict in such circumstances, I question whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or understand. No matter whether the line that divides one sovereign State from another be an imaginary one or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it, the State you leave is blotted out of existence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar might as well claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Porte. A Turkish kawwas in attendance on him, I observed to shrug up his shoulders when he heard nothing but Arabic being spoken among us. They arrived here in the company of Shaikh Yusuf, whose son is nominally a Turkish military officer, commanding three hundred imaginary Bashi-Bozuk, or irregular cavalry. By means of such titles they tickle the vanity of the Arab leaders, and claim an annual tribute of 218 purses, (about 1000 pounds,) and are thus enabled ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... gongs and two large bamboo drums. The men stood up first, in war costume, brandishing their spears and shields, and throwing themselves into the most extraordinary attitudes, as they cut with their knives at some imaginary enemy; at the same time uttering the most unearthly yells, in which the Dyak spectators joined, apparently highly delighted with the exhibition. The women then came forward, and went through a very unmeaning kind of dance, keeping time with their hands and feet; but still it ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... on with submissive wonder as his master, transfigured with enthusiasm, went hastily to and fro through the room, occasionally clinching his fist and smiting an imaginary Dutchman. The valet at last ventured to remind him that he had forgotten ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... occupy my leisure in constructing imaginary cases, mostly criminal, for the purpose of study and for the acquirement of experience. For instance, I would devise an ingenious fraud and would plan it in detail, taking every precaution that I could think of against failure or detection, considering, and elaborately ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... whose red hair as she wound it round her throat fascinated Heine with its grim suggestion of blood. There had been his cousin Amalie, whose marriage to another is said to have been the secret spring of sorrow by which Heine's laughter was fed. And there had been others, whose names—imaginary, maybe, in that they were doubtless the imaginary names of real women—are familiar to all readers of Heines poetry: Seraphine, Angelique, Diane, Hortense, ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... of young trees do not extend to any great distance away from the trunk. In distributing the fertilizer this fact should be remembered. A safe rule for all small-sized trees is to commence just outside an imaginary circle of two feet radius and apply the fertilizer in a circular band extending out some distance beyond the spread of the branches. Old trees, or those having a considerable spread of top, when planted in orchard form, should be fertilized by broadcasting ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... What's his private judgment to me, or mine to him? But for the sake of it, he'll make everything mud and puddle! Of course you may say to me—it is perfectly open to you to say'—he looked away from her, half-forgetting her, addressing with animation and pugnacity an imaginary opponent—'what do morals matter?—how do you know that the present moral judgments of the world represent any ultimate truth? Ah! well'—he shrugged his shoulders—'I can't follow you there. Black ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Shakespeare. While as a rule it is deemed wrong to assume to possess any virtue that we do not possess, we may and no doubt should, at times, appear to be happy even though we may feel more like indulging in lamentations. To come to the breakfast table enumerating a list of real or imaginary ailments is a most ill-advised thing to do. We should endeavor to forget our troubles and above all we should be slow to give voice to them so that thereby they will be multiplied in the minds of others. It has been truly said that most people who are unhappy are really miserable and ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... out of his hate of cruelty itself, and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon the judge, and produce in him the bad passions he punishes. It is true the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such things, he must be dehumanised or he would cry out against them with horror and detestation. But the poem draws them as truths; the writer's creed threatened them; he himself contributed to maintain the belief; and however we may suppose such a belief ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... dark, and he never went without his staff." How it came about that Angelical Thomas was burned in company with his staff, and his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether these two were simply religious maniacs of the more furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our intention. At least, it is suitable enough that out of this superstitious city some such example should have been put forth: the outcome and fine flower of dark and vehement religion. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and bravery that overcame them. Peasants gazed with wild astonishment on the village lad returned, after a few years absence, a veritable 'Jack tar.' The credulity of these delighted listeners tempted Jack to 'spin his yarns,' and tell his tales of nautical adventures, real or imaginary. Hence, he was everywhere greeted with a genial and profuse hospitality. The best seat in the house, the choicest drinks in the cellar, were for Jack. Our ships of commerce, like so many shuttles, were rapidly weaving together the nations ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... not one golden ray of all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distils is wasted. Let us consider how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in. We weave little stories in our minds, expending love and pity upon the imaginary beings we have created, and I have been led to think that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are living just in that way, and we merely reform and live over again in our life the story of another life. Sometimes these far-away intimates assume ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Druce, Lord Weston, and other eminent breeders, as finding from experience that close interbreeding does produce bad effects; and it cannot be supposed that there would be such a consensus of opinion on this point if the evil were altogether imaginary. Mr. Huth argues, that the evil results which do occur do not depend on the close interbreeding itself, but on the tendency it has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... that Constancy profess'd Was but a well Dissembler at the best; And that imaginary Sway She feign'd to give, in seeming to obey, Was but the height of prudent Art, To deal with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the fable are closely akin to allegory. A parable is a brief narrative of real or imaginary incidents for the purpose of inculcating some moral or religious truth. It has been described as "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." A considerable part of Christ's teaching was in parables, many of which are as beautiful as ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Clarence, that he had unwarily, to his own ruin, become the instrument of Warwick's vengeance, and had thrown himself entirely in the power of his most inveterate enemies; that the mortal injuries which the one royal family had suffered from the other, were now past all forgiveness, and no imaginary union of interests could ever suffice to obliterate them; that even if the leaders were willing to forget past offences, the animosity of their adherents would prevent a sincere coalition of parties, and would, in spite of all temporary and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... It is a very domestic bird, and fond of notice, its voice on such occasions is pleasing, on some others very harsh and hawk or eagle-like. Its manners are curious, depressing its tail, and arching its neck, and pecking at imaginary objects in a curious way. From the expressive manner in which it looks up at sunset on surrounding objects, especially trees, it ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... say, I have no wish to make your life harder than it is. I do not want our engagement to impose impossible laws upon you, nor do I set up an imaginary standard for you. You have your honour and your own self-respect, and I know I shall always be satisfied with the standard ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... bear in mind that Sir E. Arnold's poem is written in the person, and from the stand-point of an imaginary Buddhist. This is indicated plainly on the title-page, in the preface, and in the course of the poem itself; and when the book comes to be read by the light of this explanation, a limitation is cast about much of its more startling language. To take, for ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... State bank-notes. The bank-notes were in fact practically worthless, for the State finances were suffering a violent reaction from the extravagant legislation of 1836 and 1837. One of the popular ways of attacking an obnoxious political doctrine in that day was writing letters from some imaginary backwoods settlement, setting forth in homely vernacular the writer's views of the question, and showing how its application affected his part of the world. These letters were really a rude form of the "Bigelow Papers" or "Nasby Letters." Soon after the order was issued by the Illinois ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... pretends that he does not apply his views to the human body, but only to an imaginary machine which, if it could be constructed, would do all that the human body does; throwing a sop to Cerberus unworthily; and uselessly, because Cerberus was by no means ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... away his wife's money on race-horses until the sheriff had seized the business), and she was acting now as companion to a Mrs. Wititterly, a pale, languid lady who considered herself a very fashionable person indeed, and was always suffering from imaginary ailments. Lord Frederick and Sir Mulberry Hawk came often to the house, pretending to flatter Mrs. Wititterly, but really to see Kate, who heartily ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... just the effect he designed it to have. It was an apology for the children, as it classed them with other real children, in contradistinction to the imaginary offspring of the unmarried, that are known by every one to ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... in a little mild blasphemy; hardly blasphemy—imaginary details, say, about hell, in the manner of Mark Twain. "Aw, my dear soul!" she exclaims. "How yu du go on! Aw, my dear soul! Yu'm going to hell, sure ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... this the night o' the mix-up" he explained as he returned it. He looked hard at Bob. "When you're ready to toddle about" he added, with a lightning wink and a slight movement of his fat thumb and forefinger, as if counting a stack of imaginary bills, "send Sam Singer up to let ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that carries with it corruption, rapine, pollution, and devastation; that threatens without courage, robs without fear, and is pampered without labour.' In The Idler, No. 21, he makes an imaginary correspondent say:—'I passed some years in the most contemptible of all human stations, that of a soldier in time of peace.' 'Soldiers, in time of peace,' he continues, 'long to be delivered from the tyranny of idleness, and restored ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... lots of bob-tail stories,—docked short in from one to three months. Can't you give us a switch-tail one, that will hang on so as to touch next December? Something imaginary, based on your recollections,—the incidents of the War of 1812, for instance;—but, at any rate, a regular "to be continued" "piece ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... reading men and rowing men, as arbitrary and most illogical; there being a great many who have no claim to be reckoned either in one class or the other, and a great many who hover between both. And this imaginary distinction, existing as it notoriously does at Oxford, and fostered and impressed upon men by the tutors, (often unintentionally, or with the very best intentions,) is productive in many cases of a great deal of harm. A man (or boy if you please) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... of the Indian nature. We all know that the carnal Indian man is a bad enough fellow at the best, and capable of dreadful crimes and misdemeanors, if only to gratify his whim or the caprice of the moment. And when he is bent upon satiating his revenge for some real or imaginary wrong, I would back him in the horrible ingenuity of his devices for torture, in the unrelenting malice of his vengeance, against any—the most fierce and diabolical—of all the potentates in the kingdoms of eternal and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... took place just as I, driving the five mules, entered the great mountain gateway, thrilled with anticipation which almost amounted to foreboding. As I was about to set foot across the imaginary frontier which divided the world from the unknown land, Professor Smawl hailed me and I halted ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the grizzly bear, at this night encampment, were not imaginary, was proved on the following morning. Among the hired men of the party was one William Cannon, who had been a soldier at one of the frontier posts, and entered into the employ of Mr. Hunt at Mackinaw. He was ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... readily substitute a familiar word with similar letters. Everybody knows how difficult it is to read proofs. We overlook the misprints, that is, we replace the wrong letters which are actually in our field of vision by imaginary right letters which correspond to our expectations. Are we not also familiar with the experience of supplying by our fancy the associative image of a movement when only the starting point and the end point are given, if a skillful suggestion influences our mind. The prestidigitator ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... for many a comfortable round hole in life. But under the stress of present circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means. Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of leaves in December, he developed a sudden sense of obligation to an imaginary cousin whom he added, without legal authority, to the population of Peru, Indiana. By means of Miss Bartlett's white hand he frequently informed her that she was not to worry about him, because he was "doing splendid," and that a hospital ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Mrs. Wiggs. "I'm 'feared I use' to worry some over Mr. Wiggs. T'words the last he uster pretty often—" Here Mrs. Wiggs tipped an imaginary bottle to her lips, and gave Lucy a significant wink. Even in the strictest confidence, she could not bear to speak of the weakness of ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... up, and we were left alone, Mr. Fellows, turning to me, said, "You lay great stress on the origination of such a character as Christ. But can we make its reality a literary problem? May it not have been imaginary? As Mr. Newman says, Human nature is often portrayed in superhuman dignity; Why not in ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... different scenes. As the man went on he watched him keenly and earnestly. He heeded not the oaths, or the taunts, or the threats which flowed from his lips; but as word followed word, and gesture gesture, and look look, he became gradually convinced that the resemblance was more than imaginary—that, indeed, this blaspheming convict was one whom he had once known ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... normal man, is always a momentary delusion; with the dog, however, it may last for some little time. Thus, I have seen my dog chase imaginary rats around my room after having been aroused while in the midst of a dream. His chagrin when he "came to himself" and saw me laughing was ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Cavities, intercepted between the extant Particles, without being so much greater in Black Bodies than in White ones, as to be perceptibly so to the Gross Organs of Touch, may be very much greater in reference to their Disposition of Reflecting the imaginary subtile Beams of Light. For in Black Bodies, those Little intercepted Cavities, and other Depressions, may be so Figur'd, so Narrow and so Deep, that the incident Beams of Light, which the more extant Parts of the Physical Superficies are dispos'd to Reflect inwards, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... fell, dread, premonitory. It was plain to every man of the outfit, awake and listening, that Dorgan had a grievance—whether real or imaginary, it made little difference—and that he was determined to force trouble. Only Owen, apparently, knowing the real state of affairs, knew that the reference to Randerson's inefficiency was a mere pretext. But that violence, open, deadly, was imminent, foreshadowed by ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Longstreet's corps to Jackson, leaving only D. H. Hill's at Richmond. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 177, 552.] From that moment McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the Confederacy paralyzed everything, and the ponderous task of moving the Army of the Potomac and its enormous material by water to Washington went on. The lifeless and deliberate way in which it went on made it the 1st of September when Sumner and Franklin reached Centreville, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... thoroughfare reaches into the Park,) and retreats suddenly down towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... make them any less humorous or plentiful. That debate did me good in one way, for I was so angry with this man of distinction that I wished I could have told him what I thought, and for three consecutive mornings I addressed an imaginary audience while I was having my bath. But if my remarks had been made at the Union I am afraid they would have caused a tumult, they were more suited to the House of Commons, where, if the worst happens, you have the consolation of being led out by a dignified official, and can read ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... enjoyment in it. Then she could "make believe" it had really grown out; and the comfort she took in "going through the motions"—pretending to tuck behind her ears what scarcely touched their tips, and tossing her head continually, to throw back imaginary masses of curls, was truly indescribable, and such as I could not begin ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Saturday, July 27th, that the convoy was approaching the imaginary line in the ocean that Germany had established as the dead-line, past which her U-boats were operating in unrestricted warfare. The approach of the danger zone was the signal for all on board to remove no article of clothing while asleep at night ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... background I saw a hunched, unnatural figure. The real was more dreadful even than the imaginary—for some stray beam of light touched into cold radiance a huge curved knife which the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... preferably to the main highways, where our autos would be more easily discerned by the German aeroplanes constantly hovering about. In these lanes we found lines of men sneaking along, sometimes crawling inch by inch, to surprise an imaginary enemy down around the bend. In the fields we saw charges and counter-charges from trench to trench. We saw cavalry manoeuvres across the open country and cavalry on foot facing each other in long lines along the roadsides, fighting desperately ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... quieted it, Mr. Fogg, although a little nervous and excited, concluded to try it again. Turning on the imaginary mutton, he began. Only sixty-four sheep had slid over the fence, when Fogg's aunt knocked at the door and asked if he was awake. When she learned that he was, she said she believed he had forgotten ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... divides the end of the gallery from the bank of the stream. The house, therefore, does not literally rest on opposite edges of the Cher, but rests on one and just fails to rest on the other. The pavilion would have made that up; but after a moment we ceased to miss this imaginary feature. We passed the little drawbridge, and wandered awhile beside the river. From this opposite bank the mass of the chateau looked more charming than ever; and the little peaceful, lazy Cher, where two ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphal columns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard and Harold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his "mea culpa" to God the Father and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfth century Saint Bernard recited "Ave Stella Marts" in an ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... LINCOLN arrived at Washington nine days before his inauguration. The outgoing President, at the opening of the session of Congress, had still kept as the majority of his advisors men engaged in treason; had declared that in case of even an "imaginary" apprehension of danger from notions of freedom among the slaves, "disunion would become inevitable." LINCOLN and others had questioned the opinion of Taney; such impugning he ascribed to the "factious temper of the times." ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... that is composed of something indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary chariots when they were dead. Heloise lived with you on illusions and supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure that having taken a vow at the Paraclet monastery to love you no longer, her kisses thereby became more precious as more guilty. A woman ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... began to steal from the poets and musicians that he knew in order to keep abreast of his own original powers of production. He even went so far as to draw inspiration from men of uneven heights stood in line: he would hum the intervals as scored by their heads on an imaginary staff and fashion his tune accordingly, but this tended to a somewhat compressed range and was not always happy in its results. His efforts, however, were appreciated, and the emaciated young Irishman became a most exceptional ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... or two remarks, then, turning, walked away together. And, as they walked, Dick's hand went up his back and he scratched an imaginary flea. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... only female in the piece, is a beautiful creation; but as imaginary as her persecutor Franz. Still and exalted in her warm enthusiasm, devoted in her love to Moor, she moves before us as the inhabitant of a higher and simpler world than ours. "He sails on troubled seas," she exclaims, with a confusion of metaphors, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... from such cases, it is possible to understand how the power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may, through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt—and not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries prosecute in the courts—to spread terror among those who feel the political or economic power slipping ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... lover pendent on a willow-tree. Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought, And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose: But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and, eager, in a dream, Tipples imaginary pots of ale, In vain; awake I find the settled thirst Still gnawing, and the pleasant ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of Gabriel, Father d'Aigrigny continued his imaginary picture of the dangers of the Company, which, far from being really in peril, was already beginning secretly ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... who live are unconscious that they are seen of them and talk with them (for indeed they are not really themselves present, or themselves make speeches, but through troubled senses these persons are wrought upon by such like imaginary visions), just so they also who have departed this life, to persons thus affected appear as present while they be absent, and are themselves utterly unconscious whether any man sees them in regard ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... it possible that this could be an imaginary cavity into which he was looking? He drew back; he was about to put out one foot to feel if it were really solid ground upon which this light was pouring, but he refrained. He got a long stick, and with it touched the centre of the light. What he felt ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... Dr. Marmion appended to his MSS.:—"Many of the conversations and monologues in this history, not heard by myself when they occurred, were told to me afterwards, or got from the diaries and notes of the persons concerned. Only a few are purely imaginary."] ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be our magnet, and let n represent a particle of north magnetism placed exactly opposite the middle of the magnet. Of course this is an imaginary case, as you can never in reality thus detach your north magnetism from its neighbour. But supposing us to have done so, what would be the action of the two poles of the magnet on n? Your reply will of course be that the pole S attracts n while the pole N repels it. Let the magnitude and direction ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... fraternized with Sigurd too—that is, as far as he would permit them—for the unhappy dwarf was uncertain of temper, and if at one hour he were docile and yielding as a child, the next he would be found excited and furious at some imaginary slight that he fancied had been inflicted upon him. Sometimes, if good-humored, he would talk almost rationally,—only allowing his fancy to play with poetical ideas concerning the sea, the flowers, or the sunlight,—but he was far more often ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... at all clear. And I will note the point here, because it is some testimony to its vivid importance that it was really the first I had to discuss on American soil with an American citizen. In a double sense I touched Ireland before I came to America. I will take an imaginary instance from another controversy; in order to show how the apology can be worse than the action. The best we can say for ourselves is worse than the worst that ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... slumber when something caused her to open her eyes. For a few moments she lay in that strange debatable region between sleeping and waking when the mind cannot distinguish between the real and the imaginary. All at once she sat up, fully awake, every sense strained and alert. Something was wrong. What was it? She listened intently, but such an intense stillness reigned throughout the house that Sally's soft breathing smote her with a sense of disturbance. ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Burnham points out, all talk to children; when the dew is on the grass "the grass is crying," the stars are candles or lamps, perhaps cinders from God's stove, butterflies are flying pansies, icicles are Christmas candy. Children have imaginary play-brothers and sisters and friends, with whom they talk. Sometimes God talks with them. Even the prosiest things are vivified; the tracks of dirty feet on the floor are flowers; a creaking chair talks; the shoemaker's ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Chalotais's Essai d'education nationale (1763). Rene de la Chalotais, a Solicitor-General for the Parliament of Bretagne, was one of the notable French parliamentarians of the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike Rousseau's highly imaginary, exaggerated, sentimental, and paradoxical volume, La Chalotais produced a practical and philosophical discussion of the problem of the education of a people. Declaring firmly that education was essentially a civil affair; that it was the function of government to make citizens contented ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... them entered, and the commotion that had gone on without ceasing since Frank first heard it, quieted down. As the boy passed the apartment he saw a little man, standing in a fighting attitude, grasping the leg of a chair for a weapon, and seemingly bidding defiance to a horde of imaginary enemies. ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... to the northward as the 25th degree of latitude, and more particularly Glasshouse and Harvey's Bays. The English government at length resolved that they would wipe off the reproach, which, as Captain Flinders observes, was not without some reason attributed to them, "that an imaginary line of more than 250 leagues of extent, in the vicinity of one of their colonies, should have been so long suffered to remain traced upon the charts, under the title of UNKNOWN COAST," and they accordingly appointed him to the command of an expedition fitted out in England ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Socialists were not supposed to know "the boundaries of nations, sects or factions," but were to "speak one voice and work together as one man for one purpose," the Spartacans, it seems, would be better off if they had not only an imaginary boundary to separate barbarians of their type from the rest of civilization, but a barrier of mountains with heights towering in the clouds to divide Germany into two parts, in one of which the Spartacans could rest in peace, safe from the attacks of their beloved ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... arrow, the barbing of hooks, and so forth, we understand them at once. Nothing can be more natural than that man should believe in an original inventor of the arts, and should tell tales about the imaginary discoverers if the real heroes be forgotten. So far all is plain sailing. But when the savage goes on to say that he who taught the use of fire or who gave the first marriage laws was a rabbit or a crow, or ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... spoke Grace. "I'm sorry about the chocolates. Wait until I see Will," and she shook an imaginary brother. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope |
