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Visionary   /vˈɪʒənˌɛri/   Listen
Visionary

adjective
1.
Not practical or realizable; speculative.  Synonyms: airy, impractical, Laputan, windy.  "Visionary schemes for getting rich"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Visionary" Quotes from Famous Books



... the proletary's case; and he knew that his opinion was shared with complete unanimity by all who had known Griswold in Printing House Square. To a man they agreed in calling him Utopian, altruistic, visionary. What milder epithets should be applied to one who, with sufficient literary talent—not to say genius—to make himself a working name in the ordinary way, must needs run amuck among the theories and write a novel with a purpose? a novel, moreover, in which the purpose so overshadowed ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... visionary to them seemed the real transitions they noted from the moving train. How one morning they missed the changeless, motionless, low, dark line along the horizon, and before noon found themselves among the rocks and trees ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... Smith family for a number of years, while they resided near this place, and we have no hesitation in saying that we consider them destitute of that moral character which ought to entitle them to the confidence of any community. They were particularly famous for visionary projects; spent much of their time in digging for money which they pretended was hid in the earth, and to this day large excavations may be seen in the earth, not far from their residence, where they used to spend their time in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... embracing the best elements, attaining the most satisfactory results at the least possible cost to the student. This project, for a youth without capital, dependent upon his abilities for his personal support, was regarded even by sympathetic friends as visionary. But nothing progressive is accepted as a mere optimistic vision by the predestined reformer. Remote Huguenot and immediate Yankee ancestry is perhaps a good combination for pioneer material. However this may be, his efforts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... the affair given by themselves; although more, it is believed, to suit the taste and belief of the time they lived in than their own. The two brothers had passed many hours silent and in the dark; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the visionary world, into which they had unconsciously slipped, presented to both such phenomena—founded on the meditations and recollections in which both had been immersed—as were easily rendered in the exoteric types of romance. The brothers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... benevolence,—quoth Reason, whispering in his ear, would have been 19 a better metaphor,—certainly inhabits the aged bosom of your father's sister). Horatio's upraised eye rested on the wrinkled front of his antique relative, just as the corrective thought gleamed in visionary brightness o'er his brain; the poetic inspiration of the moment fled like the passing meteor, but the feeling which excited it remained engrafted on his memory for ever. "How shall we find him out, my dear Horatio?" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... that come not at an earthly call Will not depart when mortal voices bid; Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid, Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall! Dion. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... proposed to raise an immediate sum of L2,000 in furtherance of the Projector's views, and as some protection to the parties who may embark in the matter, that this is not a visionary plan for objects imperfectly considered, Mr Colombine, to whom the secret has been confided, has allowed his name to be used on the occasion, and who will if referred to corroborate this statement, and convince any inquirer of the reasonable prospects ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... faculty, is quite inadmissible; for, in this case; the connection of phenomena reciprocally determining and determined according to general laws, which is termed nature, and along with it the criteria of empirical truth, which enable us to distinguish experience from mere visionary dreaming, would almost entirely disappear. In proximity with such a lawless faculty of freedom, a system of nature is hardly cogitable; for the laws of the latter would be continually subject to the intrusive influences of the former, and the course of phenomena, which would otherwise ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... singing like an angel. And as he sang it was as if two passions, two longings, the earthly and the heavenly, met and mingled in him, so that through all its emotion his face remained incongruously mystic, queerly visionary. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... been introduced to Bob, and had heard that young gentleman's flowery description of the vast amount of wealth which was only waiting to be brought to the surface of the earth, he was disposed to look upon it as a visionary scheme, the value of which only existed ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... not, as you say when you can't," he replied. "But I will come down a little nearer earth, if you prefer. Short of those visionary distances there are features of the prospect either way in which I differently rejoice. One thing is the shining black roofs of the cabs, moving and pausing like processions of huge turtles up and down the street; obeying the gesture of the mid-stream policemen where they stand at the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... German statesmen and philosophers this Court of Public Opinion is a visionary abstraction. A group of distinguished German soldiers, professors, statesmen, and even doctors of divinity, pretending to speak in behalf of the German nation, have consciously or unconsciously attempted ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... the world, I have occasionally built castles in the air, and equally of course they have invariably tumbled down in due time with a crash This particular castle however, not only attained to a great elevation in the visionary builder's eyes, but it covered so vast an area of land, that the story of its rise and fall deserves to be placed on record, as a warning to aerial architects and also as a ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... knight and encounter all these strange and visionary dangers it was necessary for him, however, to have a war horse, a stout lance and a suit of armor, and he cast about among his possessions to see what he could find that would answer the purpose—for he had no money to buy them, and no shop ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... conditions which will have to be met. I for one, leaving out of consideration for the present details which are subject to modification and change, believe that it will be a fatal error for the nation to commit itself to the practically hopeless and visionary sea-level project and to delay for many years the opening of this much needed waterway connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific. I for one am opposed to a waste of untold millions and to additional burdens of needless taxation, while the project of a lock canal offers every ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... work. The phantom flies, Wrapped in battle clouds that rise; But the brave—whose dying eyes, Veiled and visionary, See the jasper gates swung wide, See the parted throng outside— Hears the voice to those ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... time, however, I seemed to be, as it were, but an inactive spectator of all that happened; looking on the visionary events of my dream as if I had no share or part in them. I appeared to possess, while they occurred, a sort of dual existence, of which I was perfectly ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... papers of the past week the beginning of what concerned Notely Garrison was a medley. 'Reformer,' 'The old never-heeded cry of a St. John in the wilderness,' and again, from the other side, 'Fanatic,' 'Visionary,' 'Throwing out his by no means boundless wealth like water for the sake of chimeras, ideally noble enough, but still vain chimeras!' And the news at the week's end, 'Young Garrison stricken: a shock. Overwork, over-excitement, and the result of ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... order, which are bound to fail. We consider too little plans for putting our own households in order, which might easily be made to succeed. A large part of our seeming ills would be dispelled if we could but turn from the visionary to the practical. We need the influence of vision, we need the inspiring power of ideals, but all these are worthless unless they can be translated into ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney

... system, the Third Universal Theory. The system is a combination of socialism and Islam derived in part from tribal practices and is supposed to be implemented by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy." QADHAFI has always seen himself as a revolutionary and visionary leader. He used oil funds during the 1970s and 1980s to promote his ideology outside Libya, supporting subversives and terrorists abroad to hasten the end of Marxism and capitalism. In addition, beginning in 1973, he ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... threatened violence. In England, since the time of Cromwell, revolutions have been bloodless; and reforms have been gradual,—to meet pressing necessities, or to remove glaring injustice and wrongs, never to introduce an impractical equality or to realize visionary theories. And they have ever been effected through Parliament. All popular agitations have failed unless they have appealed to reason ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... his grave, dignified air, in order to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him. It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and Samuel Brohl ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... that word Swann, I found again as soon as it was uttered. And then it occurred to me suddenly that my parents could not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... into uneasiness. "Do you?" she said, making an effort to stay balanced under the visionary gaze of the shining grey ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... months of his life; he busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude. But one day the consciousness of his own folly and inaction pierced him deeply. He compared twenty months with the life of man. "The period of human existence," said he, "may be reasonably estimated at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man, now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture was of a humble sort and not over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... whole interview, was accurate where he had been visionary, intelligent where he had been dazed. He saw it all, before he was half done; he did not need Torrey's ejaculated summary: "The swindling scoundrel!" ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... had proved a bloody knave; my visionary lands and riches all had vanished; instead of silk attire and sword, I wore a rifle-shirt and skinning-knife; and out of the dawn-born glory of the hills had stepped no silken damsel of romance to pause and worship ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... confederates! with attentive ear Receive my words, and credit what you hear. Late as I slumber'd in the shades of night, A dream divine appear'd before my sight; Whose visionary form like Nestor came, The same in habit, and in mien the same.(80) The heavenly phantom hover'd o'er my head, 'And, dost thou sleep, O Atreus' son? (he said) Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... Homer's Nausicaa, the Antigone and Electra of Sophocles, Rosalind, Miranda, Imogen, Portia, Cordelia—all these live for me, but not quite as Gretchen. Their presence I feel as something living, but a little visionary. Gretchen I can see, and hear and almost touch. I need not recount at length her story, for it is too well known. I need only recall to you memories of certain facts and scenes: that first meeting in the street; the mysterious presents from the unknown lover; the meeting in the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... And lo, a visionary blush Stole warmly o'er the voiceless wild; And in her rapt and wintry hush The lonely face of ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... but if Byron did not hold intercourse with unearthly beings, he has, by his writings and speech, left room for simple-minded people who have read his works and history, to suppose that he did. His belief in presentiment was very strong, as also visionary warnings of imminent danger or ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Such reflections appear visionary to the eye of the practical statesman, but they are within the range of possibility to the philosopher. He can imagine that in some distant age or clime, and through the influence of some individual, the notion of common property may or might have sunk as deep into the heart ...
— The Republic • Plato

... then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman—a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... velvet; little blue flames start up and flicker and play about in the glowing depths of the brasier. A mysterious artist comes and adapts that flame to his own ends; by a secret of his own he draws a visionary face in the midst of those flaming violet and crimson hues, a face with unimaginable delicate outlines, a fleeting apparition which no chance will ever bring back again. It is a woman's face, her hair is blown back by the wind, her features speak of a rapture of delight; she breathes ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... do without any dilemma at all: to treat the man simply as a man, and give him no more and no less favour than he would to anybody else. In short, I am sure a practical physician would drop all these visionary, unworkable modern dreams about type and criminology and go back to the plain business-like facts of the French Revolution and the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Kitty's side. As he approached her his eyes fastened on the loveliness of her attitude, her fair head. In his own expression there was a visionary, fantastic joy; it was the look of the dreamer who, for once, finds in circumstance and the real, poetry adequate ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... write of prominent persons and political events indulge too much in sycophantic flattery, while others have their brains addled by brooding on some fancied wrong, or their minds have lost their even poise by dwelling on insane reforms or visionary projects. All this may have its use, but the subscriber has preferred to look at things in a more cheerful way, to pluck roses rather than nettles, and neither to throw filth nor to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... Minnesota. Then he would give his life to training boys to live without meat or practical jokes, to love truth, honesty, and hard lessons; he would teach girls to forego jewelry and cucumber-pickles, to study physiology, and to abhor flirtations. Visionary, was he? You can not help smiling at a man who has a "vocation," and who wants to give the world a good send-off toward its "goal." But there is something noble about it after all. Something to make you and me ashamed of our selfishness. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... ought to use every honest exertion to turn out of power those weak and wicked men whose wild and visionary theories have been tested and found wanting. Above all, we ought to drive from our shores foreign influence, and cherish American feeling. Foreign influence has been in every age the curse of republics—its jaundiced eye ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... present for a boy or girl, or for Byron's Don Juan as a present for a swain or lass. Pickwick is the safest saint for us in our nonage. Flaubert's Temptation of St Anthony is an excellent book for a man of fifty, perhaps the best within reach as a healthy study of visionary ecstasy; but for the purposes of a boy of fifteen Ivanhoe and the Templar make a much better saint and devil. And the boy of fifteen will find this out for himself if he is allowed to wander in a well-stocked literary garden, and hear ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... take an imaginary pupil, to assume on my own part the age, health, knowledge, and talents required for the work of his education, to guide him from birth to manhood, when he needs no guide but himself. This method seems to me useful for an author who fears lest he may stray from the practical to the visionary; for as soon as he departs from common practice he has only to try his method on his pupil; he will soon know, or the reader will know for him, whether he is following the development of the child and the natural growth of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... united; and which incite, and enable every one to obtain lawful pleasures, and to augment the general felicity. But the peculiar virtues of the New Testament, either debase the mind by overwhelming fears, or intoxicate it with visionary hopes, both which, are equally fitted to turn away men ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... with these trains of thought and these plans. He would repair and put in order implements of hunting, or any thing else which might be deemed to have some relation to war. He would make bows and arrows in the chimney corner—lost, all the time, in melancholy reveries, or in wild and visionary ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... from him to them) are covered with the traces of previous labour and have had their earlier [8] proprietors. If at times we become aware in reading him of certain anticipations of modern knowledge, we are also quite obviously among the relics of an older, a poetic or half-visionary world. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in Plato, in spite of his wonderful savour of literary freshness, there is nothing absolutely new: or rather, as in many other very original products of human genius, the seemingly new is old also, a palimpsest, a tapestry of which ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... the faggots were alight, And that myself was fasten'd to the stake, I And found it all a visionary flame, Cool as the light in old decaying wood; And then King Harry look'd from out a cloud, And bad me have good courage; and I heard An angel cry 'There is more joy in Heaven,'— And after that, the trumpet of the dead. [Trumpets without. Why, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Hermitage last night; the glow still suffuses my memory. I was growing positively niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had one bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune; let us have a second to console us for its occultation. The third I hereby dedicate to ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... All Good still continues to call for our warmest gratitude. Especially have we reason to rejoice in the exuberant harvests which have lavishly recompensed well-directed industry and given to it that sure reward which is vainly sought in visionary speculations. I cannot, indeed, view without peculiar satisfaction the evidences afforded by the past season of the benefits that spring from the steady devotion of the husbandman to his honorable pursuit. No means of individual comfort is more certain and no source of national ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the following inquiries, on which they solicit the opinion and advice of the association. Whether, with their present views and feelings, they ought to renounce the object of missions, as visionary and impracticable; if not, whether they ought to direct their attention to the Eastern or Western world? Whether they may expect patronage and support from a missionary society in this country, or must commit themselves to the direction of a European ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... be limited. Quite possibly in my final two years at Albion I could even save enough money to make the experience in Boston less difficult, and the clear common sense I had inherited from my mother reminded me that in this course lay wisdom. Possibly it was some inheritance from my visionary father which made me, at the end of three months, waive these sage reflections, pack my few possessions, and start for Boston, where I entered the theological school of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... for the first time Bienville the man, Bienville the visionary, Bienville the enthusiast, the dreamer of dreams and the builder of castles. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his brain; but how did they happen to remain on his belief as gospel truths? The delirium had vanished: why had not the painted scenery of the delirium vanished, except as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was cancelled? Why was it that craziness settled upon this mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain, or another Wandering Jew, to 'pass like night—from land to land;' and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching him until he made rehearsal of his errors, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... better boat than Prince's old tub. But he did not think much about this matter; in fact, he was gazing at Miss Grace and Miss Emily, as they walked so gracefully on the deck. He was not sentimental, romantic, or very visionary; but these two young ladies were so pretty, and so elegant, and so finely dressed, that he could not help looking at them; besides, they were as sociable now as he could wish. Bobtail joined them in their promenade on the deck, and was admitted to ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... character—namely, that not only had she a mother's affection for me, but that the two shrewd and scrutinising eyes of a very clever head were looking down upon me. Rational as she was through and through, she met my visionary inclinations, both religious and philosophical, with unshaken common sense, and if I were sometimes tempted, by lesser people's over- estimating of my abilities, to over-estimate them myself, it was she who, with inflexible firmness, urged her ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... "liberal" construction placed upon their work by the judicial magi, together with a long and disastrous rebellion, to the cruel arbitrament of which the question had been, as was finally hoped, in the last resort, submitted, have failed, all and each, to define that visionary thing the so-called Federal government, and its just rights and powers. As Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson left it, so it is to-day, a bone of contention, a red flag in the hands of the political matadors of one party to infuriate those of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... a dreamer yet, in spite of all, Is man, that splendid visionary child Who sent his fairy ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... younger, was Lancelot's child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic cathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by rivers of colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by the fragment, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... all the dangers we heard about the French possession of Louisiana as visionary and idle. Twenty years must roll over our heads before France can establish in that country a population of two hundred thousand souls. What, in the meantime, will become of your Southern and Western ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... passed, and a strong one of his own character. With his fellow-traveller, though kindness sometimes made him over-officious, he was so well pleased, as to project a voyage up the Baltic, and a visit to the northern countries of Europe, in his society. He had before indulged himself with a visionary scheme of sailing to Iceland, with his friend Bathurst. In 1774, he went with the Thrales to the extremity of North Wales. A few trifling memoranda of this journey, which were found among his papers, have been lately published; but, as he wrote to Boswell, he found the country so little different ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... find it, open the envelope, read it through, and seal it again. Next morning, at nine o'clock, he would cancel the will and make a new one in the presence of two notaries, everything in due form and order. La Cibot had treated him as a madman and a visionary; he saw what this meant—he saw the Presidente's hate and greed, her revenge in La Cibot's behavior. In the sleepless hours and lonely days of the last two months, the poor man had sifted the events ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... save Ericsen, who would be seen with him in the open daylight. A foolish, strangling expectancy rose up within him. Might he not be the bearer of important and good news from the homeland? What news? Oh, anything! That his father, the visionary explorer of Guiana, who twenty years ago had set out on his last mad search for El Dorado, the fabled city of the Incas, and who for many years had been given up for dead, had returned at length with gold, successful from his quest—or, at the least, that his mother had relented and wanted ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... as to the character of the creature that had made those tracks. He had hunted elephants in the jungles of Bengal, and knew all the peculiarities of the grand quadruped. Such footmarks as were now under his eyes could not have been made by a mere visionary animal, but only by a real ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... there will be none. Nor am I ignoring the complexities of the situation; but I believe that all the details, the first step once taken, would settle themselves with unexpected facility through the medium of international tribunals. Of course this will be called visionary: but whosoever is tempted so to call it, let him read history in the records of contemporary writers and see how visionary all great forward movements in the progress of the world have seemed until ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... which was designed to a great extent by the first earl, with the assistance of Pope, has been entirely thrown open to the people of Cirencester; and "the future and as yet visionary beauties of the noble scenes, openings, and avenues" which that great poet used to delight in dwelling upon have become accomplished facts. The "ten rides"—lengthy avenues of fine trees radiating in all directions from a central ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... they still held arms in their hands, and the consciousness of unity had awakened an enthusiastic reliance on their own strength; when by past success, by the promises of foreign assistance, and by visionary expectations of the future, their courage had been raised to an undoubting confidence. Disregarding the rights already conferred on Ferdinand, the Estates declared the throne vacant, and their right of election entirely unfettered. All hopes of their peaceful submission ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... hope, for a very long period indeed enjoy this blessing, and cultivate a situation of prosperity unexampled in our history. The state of our commerce, our revenue, and, above all, that of our public funds, is such as to hold out ideas which but a few years ago would indeed have appeared visionary, and which there is now every ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... Isabel hid her face on her arm—he was no ghost: he knew what he wanted and he meant to have it: and it was a far cry from visionary Heroes to Lawrence Hyde in the flesh, son of a Jew, smelling of cigar-smoke, and taking hold of her with his large, fair, overmanicured hands. A far cry even from Val or Jack Bendish: from the cool, mannered Englishman to the hot Oriental blood. When people were engaged ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... characteristics which he afterward treated in modified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes,—both of them remote and chilly,—of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of these persons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked a few characteristic portions of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... made her suspect that some engagement was in agitation on his own part, and that while she thought him so sedulous only to avoid her, he was simply occupied in seeking another. This painful suggestion, which every thing seemed to confirm, again overset all her schemes, and destroyed all her visionary happiness. Yet how to reconcile it with what had passed at their last meeting she knew not; she had then every reason to believe that his heart was in her power, and that courage, or an opportunity more seasonable, was all he wanted to make known his devotion to her; why, then, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... either in part or altogether, as the physiological cause of the phenomenon. This is clearly the case when, on the subjective side, the hallucination answers to a preceding energetic activity of the imagination, as in the case of the visionary and the monomaniac. Sometimes, however, as we have seen, the hallucinatory percept answers to previous prolonged acts of perception, leaving a kind of reverberation in the structures concerned; and in this case ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... go to church," said Udell thoughtfully; "Well, Mr. Wicks, I'll tell you why I don't go to church. Just because I've got too much to do. I make my own way in the world and it takes all the business sense I have to do it. The dreamy, visionary, speculative sort of things I hear at meeting may be all right for a fellow's soul, but they don't help him much in taking care of his body, and I can't afford to fill my mind with such stuff. I am ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... not matter what other people think of you, of your plans, or of your aims. No matter if they call you a visionary, a crank, or a dreamer; you must believe in yourself. You forsake yourself when you lose your confidence. Never allow anybody or any misfortune to shake your belief in yourself. You may lose your property, your ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... athirst of dreams! And all earth's common goals and gifts have been But fuel to flame. O strange and piteous heart! O credulous and visionary heart! Desirous of the infinite—from defeat Arising still to grope again for light And the high word of vision! And in vain! Till, not having found, its bitterness corrodes Inward—like one betrayed by his ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... Or lured the robin to its scatter'd food; Or woke with song the woodland echo wild, And at each gay response delighted smiled. How oft, when childhood threw its golden ray Of gay romance o'er every happy day, Here, would I run, a visionary boy, When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky, And, fancy-led, beheld the Almighty's form Sternly careering on the eddying storm; And heard, while awe congeal'd my inmost soul, His voice terrific in the thunders roll. With secret joy I view'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter. The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the ...
— The Federalist Papers

... must resent nothing!" he cried. "You must cease to be a Spanish woman when you become my wife, and help me as only you can in those inevitable years I have mapped out; and not so much for myself as for Russia. My enemies have sought to persuade three sovereigns that I am a visionary, but I have already accomplished much that met with resentment and ridicule when I broached it. And I know my powers! I tingle with the knowledge of my ability to carry to a conclusion every plan I have thought worth the holding ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it increases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders forgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyond less visionary. If it does these things it is good, little matter its name: however rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office it comes from the true source, it binds you ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... both. You know what happened to Madame de Riva, a nun in the convent of St.——. She had to disappear after it became known that she was with child, and M. de Frulai, my predecessor, went mad, and died shortly after. J. J. Rousseau told me that he died of poison, but he is a visionary who sees the black side of everything. For my part, I believe that he died of grief at not being able to do anything for the unfortunate woman, who afterwards procured a dispensation from her vows from the Pope, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it—as thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... in a dream. She had married a vision of perfection, and entered on a romance of happy poverty, and she had no desire to awaken; so she never exerted her mind upon the world around her, when it seemed oppressive; and kept the visionary James Frost before her, in company with Adeline and the transformed Sir Hubert. It was much easier to line his tent with a tapestry of Maltese crosses, than to consider whether the hall should be ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for success, that the State should step in with a liberal bonus to bridge over the difference between what the tenants could afford to give and the landlords afford to take. When this proposal was first mooted it was regarded as a counsel of perfection, and Mr O'Brien was looked upon as a genial visionary or a well-meaning optimist. But nobody thought it was a demand that the Government or Parliament would agree to. Happily, however, for the foresight of Mr O'Brien, it was his much-derided bonus scheme which became the very pivot ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... associates indulged a hearty laugh at the expense of the visionary, although they did him the justice to believe that his theoretical improvements on the policy of majesty were the ebullition of a generous heart, warm in fraternal regard for the whole ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... varied now and then by one or two men revolting enough in speech and aspect to drive Hitty to her own room, where, in a creaking chair, she rocked monotonously back and forth, watching the snapping fire, and dreaming dreams of a past that seemed now but a visionary paradise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Sir, congratulate me on my return to London with the full approbation of Mr. Hayley and with promise. But alas! now I may say to you—what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else—that I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoyed, and that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, see visions, dream dreams, and prophesy and speak parables, unobserved, and at liberty from the doubts of other mortals: perhaps doubts proceeding from ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... life, that is, of man's connection with nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and brings the mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call real, and that real, which it uses to call visionary. Children, it is true, believe in the external world. The belief that it appears only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this faith will as surely arise on the mind as did ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... this there was a strangeness that attracted and enchanted me. He was, as it were, now awakened from his long, visionary sleep, and he felt some what like one of the seven sleepers, or like Nourjahad,[17] in that sweet imitation of an eastern tale: Diana was gone; his friends were changed or dead, and now on his awakening I was all that he ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... suffered themselves to fall behind the times, and she was to be her husband's good angel by helping him to catch up with them. And it was evident that Pauline would be her ally. Selma for the first time asked herself whether it might be that Wilbur was a little visionary. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... visionary such hopes as these must for a long series of years remain, the fact of their existence, and of their being in a variety of ways advanced from time to time, has a very marked influence upon all classes of people ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... a partner as a wholesome complement to the ardors of marriage. She knew that her husband differed from the legendary bohemian in having a strictly upright code in money matters, but she wished it could be less visionary. He mentally oscillated between pauperism and riches. Let him fail to sell a picture and he offered to pawn his coat; but the picture sold, he aspired to hire a mansion. In a word, she began to see that he was incapable ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... and they were playing with them like men in a ghostly dream. They never lifted their eyes. They threw down cards on the table in silence, they gathered them up with a muttered word and went on again. They seemed to John like the wild phantasmagoria of some visionary hell. Their silent, mechanical movements, their red eyelids, their broad white faces, utterly devoid of intellect or expression, terrified him. He could not avoid the tense, shocked accent with which he ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... girl from this house; his cab and bag were at the very door. He had told her she was going to await the marriage license at the house of his aunt. That aunt," continued Cyrus Pym, his face darkening grandly—"that visionary aunt had been the dancing will-o'-the-wisp who had led many a high-souled maiden to her doom. Into how many virginal ears has he whispered that holy word? When he said 'aunt' there glowed about her all the merriment and high morality of the Anglo-Saxon home. Kettles ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... satin elaborately disfigured with embroidery, ermine, lace, and jewels. You were prompt in your condemnation of the fashion to which your eye had not been accustomed: now turn to the costume that you wear, and which you are in a manner compelled to wear; for I am not so visionary as to expect a woman, or even a man under sixty, to fly directly in the face of fashion, although her extravagant caprices may be gracefully disregarded by both sexes and all ages. Here are two fashion-plates of the last month,—[Footnote: March, 1869.] not magazine caricatures, mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace's approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned visionary theme. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... fear is without cause, visionary, unreasonable, jealousy partakes of the nature and malice of envy. It is even more malignant a passion, and leads to greater disorders and crimes, for while envy is based on nothing at all, there is here ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... principles and profound conviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to take counsel of experience—were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events required the need alike of movement and reform, put the visionary and experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible, the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the evening star of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom: but I have done with all such visionary schemes for ever.—Gulliver's ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... the labours of benevolence, The world, and man himself, appeared a scene Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh With mournful joy, to think that others felt What he must never feel: and so, lost man! On visionary views would fancy feed, Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale He died, this ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... he is neither shy nor slow nor visionary. Nor shall his theory of immanent morality trouble him for the while. Reality is met with reality on solid, though sometimes slippery, ground. His animalism, long leashed and starved, is eager for prey. His Phoenician passion is awake. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... tragedy, the epic, and the pastoral. But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind. His tradition was not that of the parodist but rather that of the visionary—the mystic whose tendency is to merge the high and the low, the sublime and the absurd, within a single work.[7] He was not attacking the extravagant rants of the heroic play as Fielding was to do in his Tragedy of Tragedies (1731) or reflecting on opera ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... of wrath!" and the old man's countenance worked convulsively, as he seemed to be revolving some terrible idea; but at last growing calmer he exclaimed: "Down, down, ye cruel thoughts, ye horrible conceptions; hence, busiest suggestions of the fiend; be silent at my ears, ye visionary lips; ye perilous and importunate prompters, peace!" But scarcely had he uttered these words, when a report of firearms sounded amongst the trees, and a shot rattled through the boughs, scattering the leaves upon his head; and the replicated ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... Jesus, and afterwards Dean of Ely, did all he could, records a friend of a somewhat later date, "to keep him within bounds; but his repeated efforts to reclaim him were to no purpose, and upon one occasion, after a long discussion on the visionary and ruinous tendency of his later schemes, Coleridge cut short the argument by bluntly assuring him, his friend and master, that he mistook the matter altogether. He was neither Jacobin, [8] he said, nor Democrat, but a Pantisocrat." And, leaving the good doctor to digest this new and ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... man taken by most of those who come in his way either for Dry- as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are, doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the visionary character of existence. Without a companion, a man is always condemned to intercourse with spirits. In his hermitage Frederick had merely to think of someone to see him in person, talking and acting as in life. This inflammability of his imagination ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the babe leaps up on his mother's arm;— I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!— But there's a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon,— Both of them speak of something that is gone; The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... invisible object, shouting in a voice of thunder: "Unhand the maiden, foul caitiff! Give place, I say, and let the princess go! What, wilt thou face me, vile robber? Have at thee, then, and take the wages of thy villainy." As he uttered the last words he aimed a tremendous thrust at his visionary opponent and narrowly escaped transfixing the comely person of a young lady who at this very moment entered the room, with signs of haste and alarm. Behind her, in the dimly-lighted passage, appeared the portly figure of an elderly dame, who was proclaimed, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... That one word was more eloquent than all the rest of his words put together. This fellow is no visionary. His scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but—he knows very ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism is not a "visionary" theory dealing with vague "ideas," but actually a scientifically devised system of drill. It is a system by which each particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes of its own free-will and with ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... endure its price and its counterpoise. Dante was alone—except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless. The blind Greek had his throng of listeners; the blind Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; Shakespeare had his free associates of the stage; Goethe, his correspondents, a court, and all Germany ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the "Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I. to that of Burns has been so singularly characteristic of Scots ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... I have said, a strong visionary tendency in Hugh, which had been to a certain extent restricted in the days of his professional life; but now that he was free, it began to recur with extraordinary frequency and force. It was when he was reading that this faculty visited him, as a rule, and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... convalescence Mary-Clare had strange visionary moments. She seemed to be able at times to detach herself from her surroundings and, guided by almost forgotten words of Northrup's, find herself—with him. And always he was alone. She never visualized his mother; she could, thank heaven, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... quarter of the century reflected the prestige of science, the dominant poetry of the fourth reflected the idealistic reactions against it, and Villiers de l'Ile Adam, its founder, came forward proclaiming that 'Science was bankrupt'. And so it might well seem to him, the visionary mystic inhabiting, as he did, a world of strange beauty and invisible mystery which science could not unlock. The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but they were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which language cannot articulately express, and which are yet more ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... ensure its success. These were the Philomuse Society, founded at Athens in 1812, and the Philike Hetaireia, established in Odessa in 1814. The former was a literary club, the latter a political society whose schemes were wild and visionary. The object of the inhabitants of Greece ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... judgment which imperfect human nature allows. With the wide diversity of opinion that prevails, each of us must make concessions in order to secure such a measure as will accomplish the objects sought for without impairing the public credit or the general interests of our people. This is no time for visionary theories of political economy. We must deal with facts as we find them and not as we wish them. We must aim at results based upon practical experience, for what has been probably will be. The best prophet of the future ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... the first man in America to cultivate literature as a profession; Dennie was the second. When inaugurating the Port Folio he wrote of himself: "He has long been urged by a sober wish, or, if the sneering reader will have it so, he has long been deluded by the visionary whim, of making literature the handmaid of fortune, or at least of securing something like independence, by exertion, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... the best means of bringing them up, and descending into the vault, he observed it began slowly to fill with water. Bailing and pumping were resorted to, and when he had exhausted his own and his wife's strength, they summoned the assistance of the neighborhood. But the vengeance of the visionary lady was perfect; the waters of the lake had forced their way into the vault, and John, after a year or two spent in draining and so forth, died broken-hearted, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable, that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr. Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... the Romantic school has also broadened the realm of poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by giving to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the Greeks brought an antagonism to the logic and the materialistic views of the times. It set itself firmly against tradition of whatsoever sort. The body of man had not been considered with care until anatomy began to be studied in the period of the Italian renaissance. The visionary notions of the world which the people had accepted for a long time began gradually to give way to careful consideration of the exact facts. Patience and loving admiration in the study of man and nature yielded immense returns to the scholars of Italy. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... made by this minister, of paying so vast a debt, under the pressures of a long war, and the difficulty of finding supplies for continuing it, was, during the time of his illness, ridiculed by his enemies as an impracticable and visionary project: and when, upon his return to the House, he had explained his proposal, the very proprietors of the debt were, many of them, prevailed on to oppose it; although the obtaining this trade, either through Old Spain, or directly to the Spanish West Indies, had been one principal end we ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... latitude. The brightest boys in the town ran untaught in the streets. She offered to teach a free school for three months at her own expense, to convince the citizens that it could be done; and she was laughed at as a visionary. Six weeks of waiting and debating induced the authorities to fit up an unoccupied building at a little distance from the town. She commenced with six outcast boys, and in five weeks the house would not hold the number that came. The commissioners, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... to the people of the United States. He knew very well, unquestionably, the stories circulated in the American camps, that his voice had been loudest and last in urging hopeless war, in telling impossible tales of visionary Spanish reinforcements, and denouncing the Americans as "niggers" and "pigs." It is a fact that Spaniards have cultivated the notion among the rural Filipinos, that Americans are black men, and pigs ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... was a pitiable object for some time. He not only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... desires, to cover his expenditure, and the profits derived from his books being fluctuating and altogether inconsiderable, he experienced the worst pangs of poverty in the terrible knowledge of being constantly in debt. To improve his position, he formed a thousand plans, some practicable and some visionary; but all equally barren as to the net result. The first and most natural idea that occurred to him was to write as many verses as possible and to sell them immediately. In order to effect this, and seeing the very moderate success of his last published ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... And not rank with thee! (A knock.) Oh death! I know it—'tis my famulus— My fairest fortune now escapes! That all these visionary shapes A soulless groveller should banish thus! (WAGNER in his dressing gown and night-cap, a lamp in his hand. FAUST ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... then, no one but the widow and her daughter knew what the fight had been, for Clay Westmore, the brother, was but a boy and in college at the time. He had graduated only a few months before, and was now at home, wrapped up, as Richard Travis had heard, in what to him was a visionary scheme of some sort for discovering a large area of coal and iron thereabouts. He had heard, too, that the young man had taken hold of what had been left, and that often he had been seen following the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... travelled farther yet and saw all the country beyond, all the land of the To Be, all the giant valley of the Mississippi, all the rolling, endless plains, all Mexico with snowy peaks and mines of gold. The apparition did not come dazzlingly. He was no visionary. He weighed and measured and reckoned carefully with his host. But there, beyond the mountains, lay no small part of the habitable world,—and the race of conquerors had not died with Alexander or Caesar, Cortez or Pizarro! Witness Marengo and Austerlitz and that throne ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... this country, extend our naval power, and raise the reputation of this nation; the most distant prospect of which is sufficient to warm the soul of any man who has the least regard for his country, with courage sufficient to despise the imputations that may be thrown upon him as a visionary projector, for taking so much pains about an affair that can tend so little to his private advantage. We will now add a few words with respect to the advantages arising from having thus digested the history of circumnavigators, from the earliest account of time to the present, and then shut up the ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton



Words linked to "Visionary" :   individual, soothsayer, seer, idealist, diviner, fantast, somebody, mortal, futurist, prognosticator, person, intellectual, utopian, dreamer, forecaster, predictor, vision, someone, airy, soul, anticipator, anticipant, intellect



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