|
|
|
More "Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... What have I to gain by living? I have won some little fame. I have conquered all Gaul. I have invaded Britain. I have made the Germans tremble. Life is an evil dream, a nightmare, a frightful delusion. Death is real. Sleep—sleep—forever sleep! No care, no ambition, no vexation, no anger, no sorrow. Cornelia, the wife of my love, is asleep. Julia is asleep. All that I loved ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... My own Charles, have mercy! Do not let me die in this horrible uncertainty; what fatal delusion is blinding you? Speak, my son, speak: I am not feeling the poison now. What have I done? Of what have ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... doubly interesting in that country where the horrors of the revolution have ended in producing a very prevalent, though vague belief, in the influence of fatality upon human character and human actions, among those who pretend to ridicule, as unmanly prejudice and childish delusion, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... ache that had been at Phil's heart for some days took wings and flew away to the Land of Delusion from ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... with distrust and contempt. They sometimes talked the language of devoted subjects, sometimes that of ardent lovers of their country. But their secret creed seems to have been, that loyalty was one great delusion and patriotism another. If they really entertained any predilection for the monarchical or for the popular part of the constitution, for episcopacy or for presbyterianism, that predilection was feeble and languid, and instead of overcoming, as in the times of their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... educated in Europe. His sole aim is to free his nation from its bondage, and lead it back to Lebanon. But in order to strengthen the people's trust in him, and to lead them back in greater glory, he pretends that he is "Hakeem," their divine, predestined deliverer. The delusion grows upon himself; he succeeds triumphantly, but in the very moment of triumph he loses faith in himself, the imposture is all but discovered, and he dies, a victim of what was wrong in him, while the salt of his noble and successful purpose keeps alive his memory ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... how he got round her. He said to me that night, in private: "Mrs. Nicholson," said he, "your niece is a very interesting historical subject. I am deeply anxious, apart from my own passion for her, to relieve her from a singular but not very uncommon delusion." ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... all those soft resources of regret which were the right of the meanest women in her realm. For, whatever she might say to her Parliament and people, she knew that all was too late—that she would never marry and that she must go childless and uncomforted to her grave. Years upon years of delusion of her people, of sacrifice to policy, had at last become a self-delusion, to which her eyes were not full opened yet—she sought to shut them tight. But these refugees, coming at the moment of her own struggle, had changed her heart from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pints; and another fourth, from gangrene due to too tight bandaging of the limb to prevent the poison from getting into the circulation, or from pus infections of the wound from cutting it with a dirty knife. Alcohol is as great a delusion and fraud in snake-bite as in everything else; instead of being an antidote, it increases the poisoning by its depressing effect on the heart. If you should be bitten, throw a bandage round the limb, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... as it has been almost incessantly through the six years since his death, has required nothing less than the intervention of all the great powers of Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded. That Byron himself was under no delusion, as to the importance of his own solitary aid—that he knew, in a struggle like this, there must be the same prodigality of means towards one great end as is observable in the still grander operations of nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... did not consider Mr. Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart—and, in short, that she had never really cared for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... but that Sterne's master was "very much hurt" at the boy's having been justly punished for an act of wanton mischief, or that he recognized it as the natural privilege of nascent genius to deface newly-whitewashed ceilings, must have been a delusion of the humourist's later years. The extreme fatuity which it would compel us to attribute to the schoolmaster seems inconsistent with the power of detecting intellectual capacity in any one else. On the whole, one inclines to suspect ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... hardly see her again. I regret that I met her. To-day is the first time that I have wholly lost Helene, and the loss gives me pain. It was a beautiful self-delusion, and I would gladly have treasured it to my ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... going on at the settlement, the avengers were pushing their way through the woods in pursuit of the smaller body of savages. Nothing could have been more satisfactory to these latter. From every eminence and knoll unseen eyes watched the movements of the white men, who remained under the delusion that they were striking terror into the hearts of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... giving us, Jack," remarked George; "and I hope it won't prove a delusion and a snare. I've had about as much of that push pole business as is good for my constitution, ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... had sold them to their infatuated confessants. The monks of the Greek and Syrian churches likewise deal in this ware, which they know to be poison, but which they would rather vend than the wholesome balm of the gospel, because it brings them a large price, and fosters the delusion which enables them to live ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Miss Todd's party. Assist me, my muse. Come down from heaven, O, Calliope my queen! and aid me to spin with my pen a long discourse. Hark! do you hear? or does some fond delusion mock me? I seem to hear, and to be already wandering through those sacred recesses—the drawing-rooms, namely, at Littlebath—which are pervious only to the streams and breezes of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... quite so illiterate as Elder Hankins, and it is but fair to say that the Adventists of to-day are a very respectable denomination, doing a work which deserves more recognition from others than it receives. And for the delusion which expects the world to come to an end immediately, the Adventist leaders are not responsible in the first place. From Gnosticism to Mormonism, every religious delusion has grown from some fundamental error in ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... first perceived the unusual; for mothers, despite their reputation to the contrary, really are the blindest creatures. Sophia, the naive ninny, had actually supposed that her walking along a hundred yards of pavement with a god by her side was not going to excite remark! What a delusion! It is true, certainly, that no one saw the god by direct vision. But Sophia's cheeks, Sophia's eyes, the curve of Sophia's neck as her soul yearned towards the soul of the god—these phenomena were immeasurably more notable than Sophia guessed. An account of them, in a modified ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... possibly four years ago, Mr. Kelly was sitting in his private office opening his personal letters, and enjoying the delusion that everything was working satisfactorily, when, to his surprise, he found one letter from Washington calling his especial attention to the 'inclosed editorial,' cut from the Tribune, in which the carelessness of his clerks, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... trouble anyone seriously; but considered in retrospect it must be admitted that these, their first billets, were very poor for a village so far behind the line. If it was an unpromising beginning for the companies, it proved a delusion and a snare for headquarters, for they scored on this occasion in having at the Chateau the most comfortable billets they ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... mercy had now brought me, seeing I placed a confidence in the father of whom I have spoken, and that I steered in a road which was unknown to him, declared openly against me. The monks of his order persecuted me much. They even preached publicly against me, as a person under a delusion. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... the true point of attack. The fiend makes preparation his favorite object of mockery, that he may fatally persuade us against our taking out waterproofs when he is well aware the sky is going to clear, foreseeing that the imbecile will turn this delusion into a prejudice against waterproofs instead of giving a closer study to the weather-signs. It is a peculiar test of a man's metal when, after he has painfully adjusted himself to what seems a wise provision, he finds all his mental precaution a little beside ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... consideration to-day; of those who lived, some have obtained celebrity, and all a reasonable measure of success. Muerger's Bohemians would have called them Philistines. But they have started a tradition that will survive from generation unto generation; a tradition of delusion so long as the glamour of poetry, romance, and adventure hang around the mysteriously attractive personality of a Bohemian. Ever since then New York has had, and always will have, the posing ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Strange delusion! that can confine all their thoughts to a race of men whom they neither know, nor can know; from whom nothing is to be feared, nor any thing expected; who cannot even bribe a special jury, nor have so much as a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... we should give names to all the parts of our island known to us, in order that, by a pleasing delusion, we might fancy ourselves in an inhabited country. My proposal was well received, and then began the discussion of names. Jack wished for something high-sounding and difficult, such as Monomotapa or Zanguebar; very difficult ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... there be likeness in the difference, difference in the likeness, and a reconcilement of both in one. If there be likeness to nature without any check of difference, the result is disgusting, and the more complete the delusion, the more loathsome the effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as wax-work figures of men and women, so disagreeable? Because, not finding the motion and the life which we expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood, every circumstance ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... have been to find in a life of business routine and social submission such moral compensations as may reward the citizen if they fail the man; but to attain to these I should have had to accept the old delusion that the social and the individual man are two. Now, on the contrary, I found soon enough that I couldn't get one part of my machinery to work effectively while another wanted feeding: and that in rejecting what had seemed to me a negation of action I had made all ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... and too deep for man with his limited vision to penetrate; others, again, who set only certain bounds to man's understanding, reality consisting, they hold, of knowable and unknowable parts; and others still who see in the very shifts and changes of philosophic and scientific opinion the delusion of reason and the illusiveness of reality. The history of thought certainly does present an array of conflicting views concerning the limits of human reason. But all the contradictions and conflicts ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... might be stemmed, Innocent III launched against the brilliant civilisation of Languedoc the brutal and avaricious feudalism of the North. Sometimes the error was recognised after it had been committed. But no experience could cure the official Church of the delusion that every volunteer must be credited with the purest motives until the contrary is proved. The same ignorance of human nature characterised her methods of administrative routine. Even if, for the sake of argument, we admit the truth of the principles which were alleged ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... all these houses eternally, generation after generation, pouring boys out into life as at Shotley iron foundry he had seen molten metal poured out of a cauldron. And every boy, poured out, imagined he was going to live his own life. O hapless delusion! Lo, as the same moulds awaited and confined the metal, so the same moulds awaited and confined the living stuff. Mysterious conventions, laws, labours; imperceptibly receiving; implacably binding and shaping. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... forgotten that he had reached his fifty-sixth year, that he was rapidly becoming a martyr to the gout, and that he was no longer calculated to enter into a successful rivalry with his younger and more attractive nobility; a delusion which was unfortunately encouraged, according to Mezeray, by his confidential friends, the relatives of the lady, and even the members of the Queen's household, who, in the hope of at length triumphing over his former favourites, exerted themselves to increase his passion for the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... not humour her in that delusion," David said sternly to Tommy; "when we cease to fight it we have ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Fuller," as every one called him, was the incumbent of St. Nicholas, Willansborough, a college living always passed by the knowing old bachelor fellows, and as regularly proving a delusion to the first junior in haste for a wife. Twenty-five years ago Mr. Fuller had married upon this, which, as Mr. Bindon said, was rather a reason for not marrying—a town with few gentry, and a petty unthriving manufacture, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [Footnote 63: Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public hot baths, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... family, and asked where Foylge was; and they answered that he was then within in the house, when the saint replied: "The soul of Foylge, for that he unjustly slew my chariot-driver, God justly judging and vindicating my cause, hath gone cut of his body, and descended into hell; but Satan, to the delusion and the seduction of mankind, hath entered into his corpse, and occupieth it as his own proper vessel." Then the saint forbade Satan that in that vessel he should longer abide, or deceive mankind with so wicked a phantom. And forthwith, at the command of the man of God, the deceiving ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... that it was discreditable to be a barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, and lured him, by the force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer's chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself for practice at the Bar. After a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain fell from his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and shut up his books. But the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little casual errors of industry followed them still. He could get away from the conveyancer's chambers, but he could not get away from ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... constituted themselves into a brotherhood of the Cross, in imitation of the children who, about a hundred years before, had united, at the instigation of some fanatic monks, for the purpose of recovering the Holy Sepulchre. All the inhabitants of this town were carried away by the delusion; they conducted the strangers to their houses with songs of thanksgiving, to regale them for the night. The women embroidered banners for them, and all were anxious to augment their pomp; and at every succeeding pilgrimage their influence and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the patch and plumping his wooden foot into every melon he could find, smashing them wantonly against the ground. The discovery filled them with horror. They had thought inducing the agent to rob his own patch of a few melons, while under the delusion that they belonged to his enemy Brayley, a bit of harmless fun; but here was the vindictive fellow actually destroying his own ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... brazen front! So to abuse us is to oblige us. I believe you are under the delusion that you are really talking to slaves; after the insolent excesses of your tongue, do you propose to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... stillness, and the thoughts, always present to our knight's mind, of the incidents described at every turn in the books that were the cause of his misfortune, conjured up to his imagination as extraordinary a delusion as can well be conceived, which was that he fancied himself to have reached a famous castle (for, as has been said, all the inns he lodged in were castles to his eyes), and that the daughter of the innkeeper was daughter of the lord of the castle, and that she, won by his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... consists—not in the mind's judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is so important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may arise, and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual delusion (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of their tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems the end of Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the very same consequences, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... a delusion that had grown up in the girl's mind, and now held full possession of it—that she was in a world with which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that the influences of it were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... was a great surprise to them. At the same time they attributed to themselves the lion share in the overthrow, presumably on the ground that masses follow leaders and the Constitutional Democrats were the only ones who had a chance for open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led to a series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and were forced ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... of human beings have perished in the course of this delusion; but countless numbers will have cause, yet in our day, to rejoice at the exposure of the stupid and unnatural theory, so long legally enforced, that the introduction into the human system of such poisonous substances ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... hurriedly; 'pray hear me. This is the grossest and wildest delusion, the completest and most signal mistake, that ever human being laboured under, or committed. I have scarcely seen the young lady half-a-dozen times, but if I had seen her sixty times, or am destined to see her sixty thousand, it would be, and will be, precisely the same. I have not one thought, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes—the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is delusion, an ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. The elementary processes of printing are indeed so simple that they might have justified Dogberry in adding typography to the accomplishments of the "reading and writing that come by nature." With this delusion comes the desire for amateur performance. Men who would not undertake to make a coat or a pair of shoes are confident of their ability to make or to direct the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay—a delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily handicapped ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... there. It is for your Majesty to open it when you please. Here, too, sire, are my weapons. I am your prisoner, the Provost-Marshal is outside, and you can at a word deliver me to him. Only one thing I beg, sire,' I continued earnestly, 'that your Majesty will treat; as a delusion the idea that I meditated for a moment disrespect or violence to ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... those wayward inclinations, whose workings too often baffle human foresight. If the hopes of the ardent and generous themselves are deceived in the uncertain lottery of wedlock, the victim will struggle hard to maintain the delusion; but when the calculations of others are parent to the evil, a natural inducement, that comes of the devil I fear, prompts us to aggravate, instead of striving to lessen, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... him into has something of the Correggiesque in it,) is contemplating the picture of a bottle, which he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs beside him, in the print of Beer Street,—while we smile at the enormity of the self-delusion, can we help loving the good-humor and self-complacency of the fellow? would we willingly wake ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... compensate these evils? Can any temptation have sophistry and delusion strong enough to persuade you to so simple a bargain? Or can any carnal appetite so overpower your reason, or so totally lay it asleep, as to prevent your flying with affright and terror from a crime which carries such punishment ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... her with a love no mere woman, were she fair as Troy's Helen, could ever arouse in me! Of course,—in spite of the contrary assertions made by that remarkably interesting Chaldean monk Heliobas,—I feel I am the victim of a brain-delusion,—therefore it is just as well I should see this 'field of Ardath' and satisfy myself that nothing comes of it—in which case I shall be ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... propaganda of yours, Senor Conway," Don Mike interrupted. "Our friends here haven't listened to anything else since I got home last night. Mr. Parker, being quite ignorant of the real issue, has, of course, fallen under the popular delusion; and I've been trying my best to lead him to the mourner's bench, to convince him that when he acquires the Rancho Palomar—which, by the way, will not be for at least a year, now that I've turned up to nullify his judgment of foreclosure—that it will be a far more patriotic ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... tragic fallacies of the period was this crazy notion that not alone pleasure, but happiness, could be bought with money, and in no other way. And the few who were stung by the prevailing suffering and wretchedness into recognition of our parlous state, we, for the most part, cherished my wild delusion, and insisted that the trouble could be remedied if the State would contract and discharge new obligations. We clamoured for more rights, more help, more liberty, more freedom from this and that; never seeing that our trouble was our incomplete comprehension of the rights ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... were now at an end; but this pleasing delusion was speedily dispelled, by Mr. Blades saying - "The next part of the ceremonial is the delivery of the red-hot poker. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... and who is anxious to see things as far as possible from their own point of view. And this is how experience teaches that we must deal with monomaniacs, whom we simply infuriate by contradiction, but whose delusion we can sometimes persuade to hang itself if we but give it sufficient rope. All which has its bearing upon politics, too, at much sacrifice, it may be, of political principles, but a politician who cannot see principles where principle-mongers ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... are doctors, whom she consults about the child, and to whom she listens as oracles. A crisis which lately happened in her malady has convinced Horace Bianchon, that prince of science, that if the reality could be substituted for this long delusion of motherhood, her reason would assert itself. It is surely a worthy task to bring back light to a soul in which it is scarcely veiled; and the existing bond of relationship has seemed to me to point you out as specially designated to effect this cure, the success of which ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... slaves from the moment of his birth and brought up as a slave. How is he, when he is at last set free, to be anything else than the slave he actually is, clamoring for war, for the lash, for police, prisons, and scaffolds in a wild panic of delusion that without these things he is lost. The grown-up Englishman is to the end of his days a badly brought-up child, beyond belief quarrelsome, petulant, selfish, destructive, and cowardly: afraid that the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... further inquiry. As a general rule, the talk of a great man is the reflection of his books. Nothing is so false as the common saying that the presence of a distinguished writer is generally disappointing. It exemplifies a very common delusion. People are so impressed by the disparity which sometimes occurs, that they take the exception for the rule. It is, of course, true that a man's verbal utterances may differ materially from his written utterances. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... to see at Boulogne, and we soon saw it. For a week or so Mrs O'D. used to go out muffled like one of the Sultan's five hundred wives, protesting that she'd surely be recognised; but she grew out of the delusion at last, and discovered that our residence at the Cour de Madrid as effectually screened us from all remark or all inquiry as if we had taken up our abode in ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Maisie, no longer seeing the model before her, began to waver about the reality of the whole occurrence. Might it not have been a dream, a delusion; at least, an exaggeration? There was a model, with horses, and a waggon—yes! But was she quite sure it was her old mill—her father's? How could she be sure of anything, when it was all so long ago? Especially when her pulse was thumping, like this. Besides, there was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Hindu doctrines. In theological conversations with Hindus, three doctrines very frequently show themselves as a theological background. These are, first, Pantheism; secondly, Transmigration and Final Absorption into Deity; and, thirdly, Maya, i.e. Delusion, or the Unreality of the phenomena of Sense and Consciousness. I find a recent pro-Hindu writer making virtually the same selection. In the ninth century, she writes, Sankarachargya, the great upholder of Pantheism, "took up and ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... that the Baroness' thoughts had been wandering; that she was even then expecting a letter from de Marsay, one of those letters that bring about a rupture that rends the soul; so, happy in his delusion, Eugene went with the Vicomtesse to the peristyle, where people were waiting till their carriages ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... contend with Edward?) by your valor and their union you must have surmounted every difficulty under which we struggle, and have closed the contest with success and honor. If you now start from your guilty delusion, it may not be too late to rescue Scotland from the perils which surround her. Listen then to my voice, prince of the blood of Alexander! forswear the tyrant who has cajoled you to this abandonment of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... their gifts by their arrogance is by proving to them that benefits do not appear greater because they are bestowed with great pomp and circumstance; that no one will think them greater men for so doing, and that excessive pride is a mere delusion which leads men to hate even ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... fear that something of the kind has taken place here, and that I should have acted a wiser part, had I been contented with even the still small voice of a few partial friends, and retired from the boards in the pleasing delusion of success; but unfortunately, the same easy temperament that has so often involved me before, has been faithful to me here; and when you pretended to be pleased, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... fire and sword which we have seen pursued so ruthlessly in the seventeenth century. It is still the land-war, conducted according to modern tactics, aiming with deadly effect at the same object, the slow but sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'Celtic race.' This may be a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure of the occupiers independent ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... acclamation that the Armenians were Christians, and would continue such, whatever it might cost them. If it was hoped by this to induce Isdigerd to lay aside his proselytizing schemes, the hope was a delusion. Isdigerd retaliated by summoning to his presence the principal chiefs, viz., Vasag, the Margrave; the Sparapet, or commander-in-chief, Vartan, the Mamigonian; Vazten, prince of Iberia; Vatche, king of Albania, etc.; and having got them into his power, threatened them ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... But that delusion was shattered like all the rest, Jonathan, when, soon after, the Democratic President you were so proud of, to whom you looked up as to a modern Moses, sent federal troops into Illinois, over the protest of the Governor of that Commonwealth, in ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... impossible, under the plea of keeping it warm, the nurse covers it in her lap with a shawl, and, under this blind, surreptitiously inserts a finger between the parched lips, which possibly moan for drink; and, under this inhuman cheat and delusion, the infant is pacified, till Nature, balked of its desires, drops into a troubled sleep. These are two of our reasons for impressing upon mothers the early, the immediate necessity of putting themselves sympathetically in communication with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with you last, additional reasons have developed to justify your leaving him immediately. Your belief that with all his faults he has adhered to his marriage vows is but a delusion born of your own pure nature. I have the proof, if you care to hear it. Grace, you told me you loved me. My love for you is undiminished. Why sacrifice yourself longer—why sacrifice me? I cannot endure to be parted from you. Start for Reno at once—to-morrow is not ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... kind of epilepsy in which the victim always thinks that he is pursued by some monster who is before his eyes. When epilepsy is accompanied by some delusion of the sensorium, it comes to be called by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never openly proclaimed in any offensive way, but the harmless delusion that she could relieve the sick was a favorite notion with her; and we find in the London Gazette (March 12, 1712) an official announcement, stating that on certain days the Queen would "touch" for the cure of "king's evil," ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... stool in some sooty provincial town, dreaming of Fleet Street as of a shining thoroughfare in the New Jerusalem, where move authors and poets, angelic beings, in 'solemn troops and sweet societies.' For, indeed, was that not the dream of all of us? For my part, I remember my first, most beautiful, delusion was that poets belonged only to the golden prime of the world, and that, like miracles, they had long ceased before the present age. And I very well recall my curious bewilderment when, one day in ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... fortunate in securing material advantages, too many times look upon the world as an accident placed here for their personal enjoyment. It never takes long in business to relieve their minds of this delusion, but they sometimes accomplish a tremendous amount of damage before it happens. For a pert, know-it-all manner coupled with the inefficiency which is almost inseparable from a total lack of experience is not likely to make personal contacts pleasant. Every young man worth ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... astray, I doubt not that, when the consensus of opinion is taken, the greater number will be for using mild and gentle methods with them. Only be not too stiff necked, good Anthony. Do not fall into the delusion of thinking that none can be true Christians save your brethren. Bear an open mind as well as a bold front, and I doubt not we shall weather this storm without great ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the same relay work on July 1, but found the pulling still harder; and it was all that we could do to move the one sledge forward. From now onwards Wilson and I, but not to the same extent Bowers, experienced a curious optical delusion when returning in our tracks for the second sledge. I have said that we found our way back by the light of a candle, and we found it necessary to go back in our same footprints. These holes became to our tired brains not depressions but ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that I was the victim of some hallucination, or that the refraction from the intense light produced an optical delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing where it ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... we may term insanity. The governors and leaders imagined an irreconcilable antagonism. If they were right their case is justified; if they are wrong we must no more hate them than we should hate a patient suffering temporarily from delusion.—International ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the affections, however, seem to be shorn of their highest beauty and glory when they are restricted to a merely earthly origin and compass of power. It is altogether impossible to believe that their own impulse to look beyond the human is a delusion, and that they really have nothing to report that is valid from beyond the little round which man treads. To believe in the human beauty and glory of the feelings, and to rejoice in their power to unite us to our kind, need imply no forgetfulness of their ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... part of the housekeeper intended to be a substitute for watchfulness, will prove a delusion and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Harley had begun, preserving a discreet silence about the man's delusion concerning the ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... case:—"If the doubts which have been thrown upon this judgment be allowed to have any weight in them, it goes the length of declaring, that every thing which has been decided in similar cases was mere error and delusion. Nothing can be more dangerous than such an impression. I cannot conceive any thing more appalling than that it should be held, that every one of the cases similarly decided ought to be reversed; that the judgments without number under which parties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... I prepare Miss Dale. I will not have a wedding on our wedding-day; but either before or after it, I gladly speed their alliance. I think now I give you the best proof possible, and though I know that with women a delusion may be seen to be groundless and still be cherished, I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exists because we cannot but believe it to exist. You must prove its existence by a better argument than mere belief."—This mode of meeting the appeal we hold to be pure trifling. We join issue with Dr Reid in maintaining that our nature is not rooted in delusion, and that the primitive convictions of common sense, must be accepted as infallible. If the sceptic admits that we have a natural belief in the independent existence of matter, there is an end to him: Dr Reid's victory is secure. This first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the priestess, she, naturally demands acolytes; but she'll let you know that she holds the prior place. The tent is so fixed that she sees nothing beyond your hands; so there's absolutely no delusion." He laughed once more. Then suddenly he lowered his voice and slackened his steps. "Here we are!" ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... himself has told us in the Scriptures of the methods and results of his work." Still another theological authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that before, too. Your young remembrance cannot recall the man; but he flourished in my day—a great actor, sir—a noble actor—thorough artist! I have seen him do wonders in that way. He retired from the stage early in life (having a monomaniacal delusion that he was old), and is said to be ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... did not understand, had developed a slant that made him doubt what others accepted so easily as facts. Martin knew he was bound to things of substance but he followed the lure of property and accumulation as he might have followed some other game had he learned it, knowing all along that it was a delusion and at the same time acknowledging that for him there ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... mediaeval religious sentiment, and its themes consequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone: these, however, were treated by painters who had none of the true earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they followed Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico da Fiesole and others like them, rating them higher even than the really great masters who followed. It was in view of this terror, and because in poetry an analogous aim had at the same time found favor, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... invited to it. This operation sometimes continues for several days, after which it is delivered to the proprietor, and declared by the old men and jugglers to be a security against arrows; and provided the feast has been satisfactory, against even the bullets of their enemies. Such is the delusion, that many of the Indians implicitly believe that this ceremony has given to the shield supernatural powers, and that they have no longer to fear any weapons ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... dignity of labor. 'We shall one day,' he says, 'supersede Politics by Education.' Pause well here, you who grope forward into the dark future with misgiving and faithless hearts. This is not the chimerical delusion of a transcendental philosophy, this death-knell to the Slavery of Ignorance and Vice. Recognize in it the wide generosity that says with Leczinsky, 'Je ne connais d'avarice permise que celle du temps.' Here is wealth for want, industry for indolence, distinction for degradation, virtue for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blighting influence upon the views with which the individuals are at length joined in marriage. What was commenced in gaiety and sport, and has been continued in the same spirit, is consummated in thoughtlessness. It is only when these scenes of mutual delusion and folly are over, and the two beings are united by an inseparable bond, and begin to feel the pressure of real duty and actual life, that they look on each other as rational creatures ought. The ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... precious effects from the knowledge of Justinian." The youth resumed his garments, and the pious husband consented to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. From this pleasing and perhaps voluntary delusion, Belisarius was awakened at Syracuse, by the officious information of Macedonia; and that female attendant, after requiring an oath for her security, produced two chamberlains, who, like herself, had often beheld the adulteries of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... everything was in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained shut up there until ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to see, damped cousin Serena's ardor; for this working by proxy, as it were, did not at all coincide with her old-fashioned notions; and "ready-made garments" were to her a delusion and a snare, giving opportunity to Satan to find mischief for idle hands to do. I hated to disappoint her when she was so enthusiastically preparing to cut put work for both Bessie and me; but I hated still more to sew, and held my ground, being borne out by Bessie, who was not any more ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... general, and then announced himself as generalissimo. As though this were not enough, he next proclaimed himself pope, "Papa Rios," and then crowned his earthly glories by calling himself Jesus Christ, and as such was hanged. Our pity for such sell-delusion is tempered by the fact that the purpose in ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... nature—that it does not tell us "why we are here." Man inevitably desires to know why he is here; but "science," as that word is now understood, does not profess or even seek to answer that question, although the false hope has been raised in ignorant minds, sometimes by knavery, sometimes by honest delusion, that it could do so. By knowledge of nature mankind can escape much suffering and gain the highest happiness, but that is all that we can hope for from it. We shall never satisfy our curiosity; we shall never know in the same way as we know the order of nature, why—to what ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... not know me," she whispered—"he does not know me. Well, I will not undeceive him now. He is happy in this delusion,—let him keep it for the present." Then, aloud, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... As Wave with Water; Flame with Fire,— Let me dream once the dear delusion That I ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... stranger to India, especially when paying only a brief visit, to lose the impression that he is at an exhibition—in a section of a World's Fair. How long it takes for this delusion to wear off I cannot say. All I can say is that seven weeks are not enough. And never does one feel it more than in the bazaar, where movement is incessant and humanity is so packed and costumes are so diverse, and where the suggestion of the exhibition is of course heightened ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... sweet dream, a beautiful delusion, a spirit-spell that moves the soul with pictures of love and enchantment, and from which some stern reality would soon awake him and dispel the charm? No, it was reality, appealing more forcibly to all that was true and kindly in his nature, and filling ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... in God's kingdom than the heathen do. And if you ask him, you will find out most probably that he fancies that God's kingdom is not on earth now, but that it will be on earth some day. A cunning delusion of the devil, that, my friends! To make us go his way while we fancy that we are going our own way. To make us say to ourselves: "Ah! it is very unfortunate that God is not King of the earth now. Of course He will be after the resurrection, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... civilizing process ends. A man's spiritual growth is not dependent upon his inventions, his sciences or his arts, but is a thing apart from mental growth. If this were not so, his hope of ultimate deliverance would be a delusion. Contagious diseases were unknown to us until introduced among us by white men. As for criminals, they are very rare among us. When all men have an equal opportunity in life there is no incentive to commit crime. Acts that are the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... like warm sunbeams upon a teeming soil. The soil smoked and sent up clouds of mist, fantastic pictures, pictures in which there was reality; and from these floating islands he looked across at human life. He found it vanity and delusion—and vanity and delusion it had been to him. They told him that art was a sorcerer, betraying us to vanity and to earthly lusts; that we are false to ourselves, unfaithful to our friends, unfaithful towards Heaven; and that the serpent was always repeating within us, "Eat, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... old age and death as a consequence of disregarding the warnings that have just been given! How frequently do we observe young men rejoicing in the emancipation from home and school and spurred on by the fatal delusion that while others might suffer they will not, becoming in the end the victim of that arch enemy of early manhood, consumption! Every practicing doctor has seen this, not once, but hundreds of times, and in the vast majority of instances he can say with ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... any race, I fancy, can divest himself of the notion that one man is as good as another; in the eyes of God, they add—meaning in their own eyes. No Greek, no ancient of any race, I fancy, could have burdened himself with so preposterous a delusion. Democracy has killed my point of view. It has substituted progress for civilization. To appreciate things of beauty, as do the Americans, a man requires intelligence. Intelligence is compatible with progress. To create them, as did the Greeks, he requires intelligence and something else ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... object was of a ghastly gray—the emblem of vegetable death in its saddest aspect. Vulcan had driven out Ceres. In some places I heard a sort of chirruping sound, as of some forlorn bird haunting the ruins of the old farmsteads. But no! the chirrup was a vile delusion. It proceeded from the shrill creaking of the coal-winding chains, which were placed in small tunnels beneath the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Renaldo, starting from the couch, "am I under the delusion of a dream; or are these things really so, as my friend has represented them? Such a total and sudden degeneracy is ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... has fairly peopled a territory. Think of the pretensions of clairvoyance, claiming almost omniscience and omnipresence for the human spirit. Think of Matthias and his followers. But remarkable as that delusion was, it is almost forgotten now, so many extravagancies tread upon one another's heels, and hustle each its predecessor off the stage. Spirit-rapping is the last, and is spreading like wildfire throughout ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... simple confession touched the magistrate who listened to it with profound pity. He shaded his eyes with his hand. The girl's sense of her unworthiness, the love she had given so unstintingly to Harry Wethermill, the deep pride she had felt in the delusion that he loved her too, had in it an irony too bitter. But he was aroused ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... Mr. Polk, and George M. Dallas was substituted by the quick and competent management of Mr. Robert J. Walker. The refusal of Mr. Wright led the Whigs to hope for distraction in the ranks of the New-York Democracy; but that delusion was soon dispelled by Wright's acceptance of the nomination for governor, and his entrance into the canvass with unusual energy and spirit. It was widely believed that Jackson's great influence with ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... It may be that the scorn of the world had opened his eyes to behold of what mean materials was shapen the divinity he had so honored. It may be that the glitter of the gems he had heaped around it had perpetuated the delusion which had first charmed him, and he had thus been saved the last, worst pang of wasted idolatry. It matters not. He died—as all such men must die—in sorrow and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... earth; still full, high, advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased nor polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of folly and delusion: 'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' but everywhere spread all over it characters of living light blazing on all of its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... artistries of dreamland. It was close up under the thatched roof, and it was the most easy and natural thing in the world for the fancies of the midnight hour to turn that thatching into hair, and to cheat my willing mind with the delusion that I was sleeping with the long, soft tresses of Her Submarine Ladyship wound around my head. It was a delightful vagary of the imagination, which the morning light, looking in through the little checker-work window, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... This delusion appears in the memorable decree of 15th December. The French Convention thereby asserts its resolve to revolutionize all countries where its armies are or shall come. It will recognize no institutions alien to the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. All feudal ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... insecurity takes various forms. Sometimes the patient experiences a profound and intimate conviction of the unreality of the world about him. His whole physical environment comes to seem a mere phantasy and a delusion. In some cases he finds himself unmoved by the normal interests and excitements of men, unable to find any stimulus, value, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... blessed—and all that. Well, there wasn't one of them who hadn't forgotten more than I ever knew—who wasn't working me when I supposed she was hanging on my wisdom—who wasn't laughing at me behind my back when I was under the delusion that she was following my good example. And if you've got one of them on your hands she'll fool the eyes out of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Honour. It was given to him by the hand of the Emperor: must he pawn or sell it? Out on the pomp of decoration which we have substituted for the voice of passionate nature on our fallen stage! Scenes so faithful to the shaft of a column,—dresses by which an antiquary can define a date to a year! Is delusion there? Is it thus we are snatched from Thebes to Athens? No; place a really fine actor on a deal board, and for Thebes and Athens you may hang up a blanket! Why, that very cross which the old soldier holds—away from his sight—in that tremulous hand, is but ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her with a keen anxiety, which only agitated her the more. Every one seemed uneasy and rather dull;—a circumstance not very remarkable, since, in spite of the popular delusion on that subject, very few ever really look happy at a wedding. It makes clearer to each one the silent ghost sitting in every human heart, which may take any form—bliss long desired, lost, or unfulfilled—or, in the fulfilling changed to pain—or, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... choice? my mother! Is it choice when man Obeys the might of destiny, that brings The awful hour? I sought no beauteous bride, No fond delusion stirred my tranquil breast, Still as the house of death; for there, unsought, I found the treasure of my soul. Thou know'st That, heedless ever of the giddy race, I looked on beauty's charms with cold disdain, Nor deemed of womankind there ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... knowledge of geometry, like the rest of our knowledge, is derived partly from logic, partly from sense, and the peculiar position which in Kant's day geometry appeared to occupy is seen now to be a delusion. There are still some philosophers, it is true, who maintain that our knowledge that the axiom of parallels, for example, is true of actual space, is not to be accounted for empirically, but is as Kant maintained derived from an a priori intuition. This position is not logically refutable, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... than himself, for though he know nothing, he would not have the would know so much. He conceits nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase without it, though he might with less labour cure his ignorance than hide it. He is indeed a kind of scholar-mountebank, and his art our delusion. He is tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. He is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... is naturally curious to know whether any bonds of faith, or suggestion of conscience ever checked, even for an instant, the career of this base, unprincipled man. After much deception, much shuffling, and perhaps much self-delusion, Lord Lovat was, by his own declaration, a Roman Catholic: his sincerity, even in this avowal, has been questioned. In politics, he was in heart (if he had a heart) a Jacobite; and yet, on his trial, he insisted strongly upon his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... mantle, while the females of inferior rank pressed about him to kiss its hem! The air with which he received this adulation, fairly imposed on even me; and fearful that the monikinas might mob me, should I attempt to undeceive them—for monikinas, let them be of what species they may, always hug a delusion—I abandoned my hostile intentions for the moment, and hurried after Mr. Poke, little doubting my ability of bringing one of his natural rectitude of mind to ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unwearied industry, secured and classified over five hundred distinct species of fishes from this very division of the Indian Ocean; many of which are characterized by colors as gay and various as those of tropical birds and flowers. Mirage played us strange tricks, in the way of optical delusion, in these regions. We seemed constantly to be approaching land that was never reached, and which, after assuming the undulating shore-lines of a well-defined coast, at the moment when we should fairly make it, faded into ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Silence, this singularly developed doctor, was able to select his cases with a clear knowledge of the difference between mere hysterical delusion and the kind of psychical affliction that claimed his special powers. It was never necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of divination; for, as I have heard him observe, after the solution of some peculiarly ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... is madness, Love, delusion; Friendship, sham; Pleasure fades away to sadness, None of these ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... chase the pallor from my brow? Did I not, amongst these thickets, weave my thoughts and passions into rhyme, Trusting that the words were golden, hoping for the praise of after-time? Where have all those fancies fled to? Can the fond delusion linger still, When the Evening withers o'er me, and the night is creeping up the hill? If the years of strength have left me, and my life begins to fail and fade, Who will learn my simple ballads; who will stay to sing the songs ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... to the name of Catholic, why not come out openly and write it on the title-pages of their Bibles and Prayer-Books? Afraid of going so far, they gratify their vanity by privately calling themselves Catholic. But the delusion is so transparent that the attempt must provoke ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... How many do we not each of us know to whom Christ is the spiritual meat and drink of their whole lives. Yet our opponents call upon us to ignore all this, and to refer the emotions and elation of soul, which the love of Christ kindles in his true followers, to an inheritance of delusion and blunder. ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... herself suddenly and passionately that her home-coming had been a miserable farce, a sham, and a delusion. And she called bitterly to mind words that she had once either read or heard: "Where the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... he received at home as an only child; but Jo's swift imagination painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, Josephine undertook his education,—undertook to teach him faith and hope and charity, to set right his wayward soul, to renovate his bitter opinions, to make him a better and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... tempting shades, The secret charm their languid sense invades, Around, a stream in lulling manner flows, Of deep forgetfulness, of soft repose; Bound in the chain no more they seek to move; 215 Fame, honor, duty, what are you to Love? Here all alike the sweet delusion share, And breathe delicious poison with the air. All whispers love, the birds on ev'ry spray Prolong the kiss, and swell the am'rous lay; 220 The hardy swain, who with the peep of dawn, Jocund and careless sought the russet lawn, Heaves as he ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... much wrapped up in himself to meddle with any domestic affairs. He seemed to be under some mystification that the lively French girl was a guest of Miss Rothesay's, and his sister ventured not to break this delusion. Christal's surname created no suspicions; the very name of his former model, Celia Manners, had long since passed from ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... in digs it was my landlady's fondest delusion that I could do nothing to help myself. And, of course, I was bound to foster the idea. Every night I used to hide my pipe behind the coal-scuttle or my latchkey in the aspidistra, just for her to find. There was rather a terrible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... can be no question that Schofield's dispositions were made under the conviction that Hood would march down the river, after crossing, to clear the way for Lee to cross. And so deeply infatuated was he with this self-imposed delusion that, disregarding the order of Thomas and the advice of Wilson, he cherished it for about five hours after Post had reported that Hood was ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... attended to, the seeds of knowledge afterwards cast into the soil thus broken up and prepared, will be readily received and nourished to perfection; but if the soil be neglected, both the seed and the labour will be lost, the anticipations of the spring and summer will end in delusion, and the folly of the whole proceeding will be shewn by a succession of noxious weeds, and at last ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... very spring, he had asked her to pledge herself to him. Fortunately—oh, how very fortunately!—she had refused, and he had been left free. Now he knew that his fancied love for her had been merely a passing whim, a delusion of the moment. This—THIS which he was now experiencing was the grand passion of his life. He wrote a poem with the title, "The Greater Love"—and sold it, too, to a sensational periodical which circulated largely among sentimental shopgirls. It is but truthful to state that the editor of the ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Louise, and hatred of me Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. You really grew to hate me for love of me, Because I was your soul's happiness, Formed and tempered To solve your life for ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... intrude upon the festivities of this anniversary. Serene skies and balmy breezes are not congenial to the climate of freedom. Progressive improvement in the condition of man, is apparently the purpose of a superintending Providence. That purpose will not be disappointed. In no delusion of national vanity, but with a feeling of profound gratitude to the God of our fathers, let us indulge in the cheering hope and belief, that our country and her people have been selected as instruments for preparing and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... you under the delusion that I'm going to be Queen of the May? You've called me early all ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will study to prevent; because, in every religion except the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the truth, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... in the hollow of the ear, so the sweet air ripples in the grass. The ashes of the man interred in the tumuius are indistinguishable; they have sunk away like rain into the earth; so his body has disappeared. I am under no delusion; I am fully aware that no demonstration can be given of the three stepping-stones of the Cavemen. The soul is inscrutable; it is not in evidence to show that it exists; immortality is not tangible. Full well I know that reason and knowledge and experience ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the voice of God which pronounced the command, and not a delusion, might be made certain to Abraham's mind, by means we do not comprehend, but which we know to be within the power of him who made our souls as well as bodies, and who can control and direct every faculty of the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... plain that lunacy, but partially subdued, had resumed its former mastery over the unfortunate gentleman. But what an extraordinary delusion! I took a candle, and examined the picture with renewed curiosity. It certainly bore a strong resemblance to Mrs Irwin: the brown, curling hair, the pensive eyes, the pale fairness of complexion, were the same; but it was scarcely more girlish, more youthful, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... this point at length, because it is one regarding which much delusion prevails; but I might have passed it over without detriment to my argument, which only requires me to show that, be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may—the differences between those of the Gorilla, and those of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might I not come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again, I considered also that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if, at last, this was only ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Boyce"—the letters began—leading up to a "Yours faithfully," which Marcella read as carefully as the rest. Often, as she turned them over, she asked herself whether that scene in the library had not been a mere delusion of the brain, whether the man whose wild words and act had burnt themselves into her life could possibly be writing her these letters, in this key, without a reference, without an allusion. Every day, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... of the majority, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly supposed to achieve it. And I may add an expression of my thankfulness that they do not. The popular delusion is that success is attained by what I may call the "Benjamin Franklin" method. Franklin was a very great man; he united in his character a set of splendid qualities as various, in their different ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da Vinci. I have an immense admiration for ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... substance does exist in order to prove that it must. If it cannot be produced and exists, then, of course, it exists in virtue of its own nature. But supposing it does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof falls to pieces. We have to fall back on the facts of experience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that the thing which we call the world, and the personalities which we call ourselves, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... occurred? What was it she tried to escape by throwing herself into space? I saw the whole room, there was no one with her. She must have been the victim of a delusion." ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... said the unblushing Antonina, "I was secreting our most precious effects from the knowledge of Justinian." The youth resumed his garments, and the pious husband consented to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. From this pleasing and perhaps voluntary delusion, Belisarius was awakened at Syracuse, by the officious information of Macedonia; and that female attendant, after requiring an oath for her security, produced two chamberlains, who, like herself, had often beheld the adulteries of Antonina. A hasty flight into ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... common delusion that holds us back from doing something because we are not skilled in doing it. "Let the pastor speak to that young man; I can't do it very well." "I can't teach very well; let some one else take that class." The Master says, "Use what you have." Do your ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... public process as non compos mentis, recovered his reason at the same time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done under the influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept over New England, except ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... has," said I, "he has done it unwittingly; I never heard before that he was a favourer of the popish delusion." ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... charge that the clergy, by teaching that the prophecies refer to events yet to occur, are perpetuating a most stupendous fraud upon Christendom, and an earnest and efficient protest should be inaugurated against the further agitation of the monstrous delusion of second adventism, which is frightening thousands of weak-minded people into insanity and causing a vast amount of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... and Christianity, Nature was a fallen angel, separated as far as possible from her God. They only recognized one world—that of spirit; and one sphere of the spiritual, religion—the relation between God and man. Material things were a delusion of Satan's; the heaven on which their eyes were fixed was a very ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... 'Wilderness' at all, but a garden of sweet sights and sounds, where every day should be a glory and every night a benediction. For when the veil of mere Appearances has been lifted we are no longer deceived into accepting what Seems for what Is. The Reality of Life is Happiness;—the Delusion of Life, which we ourselves create by improper balance and imperfect comprehension of our own powers, must needs cause Sorrow, because in such self-deception we only dimly see the truth, just as a person born blind may vaguely guess at the beauty of bright day. But for ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... scarce had the guest, in that peaceful seclusion, His lodging secured, when a conflict arose, Each feeling was changed, every thought was delusion, Nor longer my breast knew the calm ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... calls a fine countenance!" thought Rachel. "Is it a delusion of insipidity as usual? The brow is good, massive, too much for the features, but perhaps they were fuller once; eyes bright and vigorous, hazel, the colour for thought; complexion meant to be brilliant brunette, a pleasant glow still; hair with threads of grey. I hope she does not affect ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strength to do his will. May he give me grace to trust him till the last moment! I do not fear death, because I believe that he has taken away its sting. And oh! what happiness beyond! Tell me, sir, whether you think I am right. I hope I am under no delusion. I dare not look for my hope in anything short of the entire fulness of Christ. When I ask my own heart a question, I am afraid to trust it, for it is treacherous, and has often deceived me; but when I ask Christ, he answers ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in their delusion, and even to form societies for its propagation. But mankind at large is sufficiently sane to avoid a fall into this abyss of the absurd, and, having paid its tribute of laughter, goes its way without being a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and think the same very well proved out of this, and other such places? and yet there is no place of Scripture, that telleth us what on Enchantment is. If therefore Enchantment be not, as many think it, a working of strange effects by spells, and words; but Imposture, and delusion, wrought by ordinary means; and so far from supernaturall, as the Impostors need not the study so much as of naturall causes, but the ordinary ignorance, stupidity, and superstition of mankind, to doe them; those texts that seem to countenance ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... almost succeeded. I had forgotten that the great poet was jealous of my 'Captive Queen,' and told myself it would be a grand thing to be like him. I thought I should like to see a live Emperor. But just when the delusion was perfect, there was a row in the street. The people had found me out, and I must show myself at the window. The spell was broken. I have ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling that herein lay its whole value,—that the actual is not what it seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure seeming, so that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... last who suffered for the Popish plot, was tried and executed in 1680. It appears, that his life was foully sworn away by Dugdale and Turberville. The manly and patient deportment of the noble sufferer went far to remove the woful delusion which then pervaded the people. It would seem that Hunt ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... angels are depraved. Therefore, if the reasonable question which I originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," the goodness of God must simply be pronounced a delusion. For the question which I originally put was no mere flimsy question of a stupidly unreal description. My own moral depravity is a matter of painful certainty to me, and I want to know why, if there is a God of infinite power and goodness, he should have made me thus. And in ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the month of December, 1719, was the term of this delusion of three months. A certain number of stock-jobbers, better advised than others, or more impatient to enter upon the enjoyment of their riches, combined to dispose of their shares. They took advantage of the rage which led so many to sell their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... stranger. And at most of our grand entertainments two great rushes take place—the one toward the dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and a snare. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... prisoners—drunkenness, gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism—were not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the incomprehensible delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff saw that cannibalism did not commence in the marshes, but in the ministry. He saw that his brother-in-law, for example, and, in fact, all the lawyers and officials, from the usher to the minister, do not care in the least ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... shivering all the while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of discipline or systematic thought. They revealed throughout the dawn of an experience of an immutable Reality as the self of man, as the only abiding truth behind all changes. But Buddhism holds that this immutable self of man is a delusion and a false knowledge. The first postulate of the system is that impermanence is sorrow. Ignorance about sorrow, ignorance about the way it originates, ignorance about the nature of the extinction of sorrow, and ignorance about the means of bringing about this extinction ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... coming near, either of the sand, or me. And then the sun rose behind him, and he looked up, and lo! it was reflected from the wall of a city before him, which resembled another sun of hope rising in the west to cheer him. And he rubbed his eyes, and looked again, saying to himself: Is it a delusion of the desert, to mock me as I perish, or is it really a true city? And he said again: Ha! it is a real city. And his ebbing strength came back to him with a flood of joy. And he stooped, and took up a little sand, and turned, and threw ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly 'Liberty first and Union afterward'; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... need of a culture in statecraft will seem to many people an old-fashioned delusion. Among the more rigid socialists and reformers it is not customary to spend much time discussing mental habits. That, they think, was made unnecessary by the discovery of an economic basis of civilization. The destinies of society are felt to be too solidly set in industrial conditions to allow ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... that, so far as we know, proceeded from her pen in the sad period between the two attacks on the palace. Brief as they are, they are characteristic as showing her unshaken resolution to perform her duty to her family, and proving at the same time how absolutely free she was from any delusion as to the certain event of the struggle in which she was engaged. No courage was ever more entirely founded on high and virtuous principle, for no one was ever less sustained by hope. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the long-sought good at last we find, When least we fear it, Death our treasure steals, And gives our heart a wound that nothing heals. Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Ah, what delusion lured me from my flocks, To traverse Alpine snows, and rugged rocks! What need so great had I to visit Rome Now sunk in ruins, and herself a tomb? 160 Or, had she flourish'd still as when, of old For ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him:—It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... and his crimson necktie had got a stain on it at breakfast; but to Virginia's astonishment, he appeared sublimely unconscious both of his bathtubs and his appearance. He was doubtless under the delusion that a pongee coat, being worn for comfort, was entirely successful when it achieved that end; and as for his business, it was beyond his comprehension that a Pendleton could have reason to blush for a bathtub or for any other object ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... "There is nothing particularly holy about love." So far as I had given thought to the subject, I had, perhaps, agreed with him. It is easy for a physician to agree to anything which emphasizes the visible, and erases the invisible fact. If there were any one form of the universal delusion more than all others "gone out" in the days of which I speak, it was the dear, old-fashioned delirium called loving at first sight. I was never exactly a scoffer; but I had mocked at this fable as other men of ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... minutes of the Hotel de Ville: "The electors (those who had accompanied Bailly out to the square) reported in the Hall the certainty that the calm would not last long." The new historian adds: "How could the Mayor alone labour under this delusion? It is too evident, that on such a day, the public tranquillity was much too uncertain, to allow of the chief magistrate of the town absenting himself without deserving the reproach of weakness." The remainder of the passage shows too evidently, that in the author's estimation, weakness here ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... frankly, do you notice so great a difference in her from time to time, as to account for the positively insane delusion she has got ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... seems to be disturbed. If the second figure is presented to any one without sufficient science to understand this delusion, the impression is created that these lines converge to the right and diverge to the left. The vision is deceived in its mental factor and judges wrongly of ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... all that exists, reality is a delusion; and if there is a substance beyond consciousness, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the pain subsided. What a blessed relief! Carley had keen sense of the difference between riding in Central Park and in Arizona. She regretted her choice of horses. Spillbeans was attractive to look at, but the pleasure of riding him was a delusion. Flo had said his gait resembled the motion of a rocking chair. This Western girl, according to Charley, the sheep herder, was not above playing Arizona jokes. Be that as it might, Spillbeans now manifested a desire to remain with the other horses, and he broke ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come, in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is—one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come, in which in it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to a serious delusion and panic. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... weakness unworthy one of the shining lights of the bench, it lay in thinking that his fifty years were only thirty, and that he was yet a young man. Other men than the Judge have labored under the same delusion, and found sick rooms and decrepitude necessary to disabuse them. Probably nothing in his daughter's power to utter would have made him so angry. He had only muttered ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... pass me through his dominions; and besides the natural jealousy of these people when intruded upon, they have very good reasons for concealing the amount of revenue they raise from their position, and for keeping up the delusion that they alone can endure the excessive climate of these regions, or undergo the hardships and toil of the salt trade. My passport said nothing about the passes; my people, and especially the Ghorkas, detested the keen, cold, and cutting wind; ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... am sorry to say that I cannot, to- night, find a bottle large enough for the purpose intended; but to-morrow I faithfully engage to go into a pint bottle, in atonement of the present disappointment!" He then retired. The shock was electrical,—a dead silence prevailed for a moment;—the delusion vanished, and "confusion worse confounded" ensued; the interior of the house was nearly demolished. His It. H. the D. of C. was present, and lost a gold-hilted sword. During "the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds," the speculator made ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... man his healthy taste for what is good, and his power to loathe evil, it deludes him with the fancy that he still enjoys them. Temptation, when we yield, is succeeded by self-delusion. ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... is a delusion and a snare; it palters with the hope of true courage, and binds it at the feet of crafty and cruel skill. It surrounds its victim with the pomp and grace of the procession, but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It substitutes cold ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... considered that this plant was succeeding so well, that "there were hopes," says Olivier de Serres, "that France would soon be able to furnish her own Malmsey and Greek wines, instead of having to import them from abroad." It is evident, however, that they soon gave up this delusion, and that for want of the genuine wine they returned to artificial beverages, such as vin cuit, or cooked wine, which had at all times been cleverly prepared by boiling down new wine and adding ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... and infection of those many damnable and abominable errours which have taken hold on them yet our vicinity unto and daily commerce with that Nation, may justly make us afraid that the Lord may give up many in this Land unto a spirit of delusion to beleeve lies, because they have not received the love of ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... opinion it was a humbug, which deserved no other treatment than severe corporal punishment. The Russian peasantry, he said, were very superstitious and would believe almost anything, and the "Anadyrski bol" was partly a delusion and partly an imposition practised by the women upon their male relatives to further some selfish purpose. A woman who wanted a new bonnet, and who could not obtain it by the ordinary method of teasing, found it very convenient as a dernier ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... will carry; for, outside your telling of it, "Johnnie Kigarrow" is not a name of heroic sound. What touches me as so strangely complete about it is that you should have got that impression and momentary romantic delusion as a child, and now hear, years after, of his disappearing out of life thus fittingly and mysteriously, so that his name will fix its legend to the countryside for many a long day. I would like to go there some day with you, and ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... would be false. It is better that I should go away. I cannot pretend to agree with him, when I know that his mind is working altogether under a delusion." When the hour for her departure came, and Hugh was waiting for her, she thought that it would be better that she should go, without seeing Trevelyan. "There will only be more anger," she pleaded. But her sister would ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the bush road. It concerned only those who had money to spare. Months, too, must go by before, from even the most promising of these co-operative affairs, any return was to be expected. As for him, there still came days when he had not a five-pound note to his name. It had been a delusion to suppose that, in accepting John's offer, he was leaving money-troubles behind him. Despite Polly's thrift, their improved style of life cost more than he had reckoned; the patients, slow to come, were slower still to discharge their debts. Moreover, he had not guessed how ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... against their will the drudges, false soul-destroying quiet of conscience, as this text, 'John' xx. 23. misinterpreted. It is really a tremendous proof of what the misunderstanding of a few words can do. That even Luther partook of the delusion, this paragraph gives proof. But that a delusion it is; that the commission given to the Seventy whom Christ sent out to proclaim and offer the kingdom of God, and afterwards to the Apostles, refers either to the power of making ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the delusion. If I'd been a woman with—with more claim, let us say, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... all; it did not budge her the fraction of an inch from her position. If this was hard for me to endure, it did not begin with the blister she put upon the raw when she began to put my sworn oath out of court with arguments to prove that I was under a delusion and did not know what I was talking about. Arguments! Arguments to show that a person on a man's outside can know better what is on his inside than he does himself! I had cherished some contempt for arguments before, I have not enlarged my respect for them since. She refused to believe ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... infantry division of General Baird, and moved back for Waynesboro' on the 2d of December, the remainder of the left wing continuing its march on toward Millers. Near Waynesboro' Wheeler was again encountered, and driven through the town and beyond Brier Creek, toward Augusta, thus keeping up the delusion that the main army was moving toward Augusta. General Kilpatrick's fighting and movements about Waynesboro' and Brier Creek were spirited, and produced a good effect by relieving the infantry column and the wagon-trains of all ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to-day, and we lunched at W——'s. I was horribly bored. Imagine running down a long corridor, so long that you cannot see the end, springing forward and finding only a delusion, coming with your outstretched hands against a ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... are those who hold that the humanitarian ideal is an error, maintaining that human nature has no moral aptitude, and can be saved only by submission to a definite system of dogma. Then there are those who look for salvation solely in political action and social agitation, who live in the delusion that man can be made better by passing laws and counting votes, and to whom Masonry has nothing to offer because in its ranks it permits no politics, much less party rancor. Advocates of the first view have fought Masonry ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... that the love of nature is not only a delusion, but a snare. I should have no right to object, were he not equally sure of the existence of a God who created and rules it. By the way, if I believed in a God, I should say creates not created. I told him once, not long ago, when he fell out upon nature—he had laid hands on a copy of Endymion ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of somehow, sometime doing this is to sin against the light of Christmas Day, to confess its ideal a delusion, its practice a failure. If on no other day of all the three hundred and sixty-five, we must on this day renew our faith in justice, which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... house, there were only two courses before her—to charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken delusion, or to submit to circumstances. Though she owed to the old sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his expense—even ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... conformed, by a kind of instinctive hypocrisy, to her views; I spoke and felt from the influence of immediate and momentary conviction. She imagined she had found in me a friend worthy to partake in all her sympathies and forward all her wishes. We were mutually deceived. She was the victim of self-delusion; but I must charge myself with practising deceit ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... seem almost incredible in those practising what should be an inspiring art. To men so trained, so employed, all counsels of perfection are foolishness; all idea of tentative work, experiment, modification while in progress, is looked upon as mere delusion. To them work consists of a series of never-varied formulas, all fitting into each other and combined to aim at producing a definite result, the like of which they have produced a thousand times before and will ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... slow, and our spirits subsided in this changed and tenebrose scenery. The void and the darkness brought back, I suppose, my recollection of the dubious terms on which these young men stood, and a feeling of the hollowness and delusion of the genial hours just passed under the brilliant lights, together with an unpleasant ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... part of it? If the slave were willing to be a slave, his voluntariness, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master in holding him as property, and call ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Rossiter, why on earth could he not lock his door and so protect himself? His own answer that he might wish to be attacked was absurd. Why should he possibly wish to be attacked? And who would wish to attack him? Clearly, Lord Linchmere was suffering from some singular delusion, and the result was that on an imbecile pretext I was to be deprived of my night's rest. Still, however absurd, I was determined to carry out his injunctions to the letter as long as I was in his employment. I sat, therefore, beside the empty fireplace, and listened to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... earnest,—deluded, of course, with devotion to a false idea, but it is the delusion that spells accomplishment. The country is earnestly and honestly possessed with an Idea, and the idea is that Might is Right. That is the awful pity of it. ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... word which ne'er my Nanna's lips should sully; Thy excusations kill me! I imagined It was a chaste, a maidenish reflection, That made my Nanna blush at our affection: Unmurmuring I obeyed, and kept in secret. Why hast thou ta'en from me that sweet delusion? Why spak'st thou not, and say for whom thou tremblest? For Balder's death? Thou lovest then thy half-god. But no, ye gods! No, I believe thee, Nanna! It is for mine, for Hother's death, thou fearest. Then think'st ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... wish for happiness to be my reward, and not titles or money;" and happiness means being with her whom he repeatedly calls Santa Emma, and his "guardian angel,"—a fond imagining, the sincerity of which checks the ready smile, but elicits no tenderness for a delusion too gross ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... vain for thousands of years to find it out? You descend beneath the level of human understanding by madly wallowing in the mire; and the more clearly you are convinced that you have seized the truth, the more utterly you are involved in the toils of a miserable delusion." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... month of happiness—meaning a month of delusion. The delusion expires to-night. You will awaken to see your end of it in the morning. You have never looked beyond the month since ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... because he is giving him a false hope—in fact the most futile hope that any stammerer ever had. I wish I could paint in the sky, in letters of fire, the truth that "Stammering cannot be outgrown," because this, of all things, is the most frequent pitfall of the stammerer, his greatest delusion and one of the most prolific causes of continued suffering. I know whereof I speak, because I tried it myself. I know how many different people held up to me the hope that ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... his work." Still another theological authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture from ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in some such familiar but neglected haunt, and instinctively you look about expecting to see the old house that was once called home and hear the welcome voice and footfall of cherished memory. It is no little disappointment to be roused from such a reverie to find the resemblance only a delusion and the spot deserted. Forsaken as it has been for many years by the native savage Indians and prowling wild beasts, the land waits in silence and patience ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... amateur critics at home who write indignant letters about the War Office labour under a twofold delusion. They frequently ask indignantly how it is that our guns have been outclassed by those of the Boers? As a matter of fact in almost every engagement of the present campaign our artillery has been superior to that of the enemy; but, of course, the artillery of a defending force, well posted on ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... extremes I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith Making too much of it—a trick of the vulgar More argument I cannot bear None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness Reproof of such supererogatory counsel She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep Slaves of the priests The healthy only are fit to live The world without him would be ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... The torturing delay! Gladys dreaded to witness their effects on Lillian, baffled at the outset in this miserable delusion that her child still lived, because of a bit of stone in the pocket of a coat he had worn. It would debilitate her as completely as if her belief were founded on cogent reason. But Lillian, with a singularly fresh aspect, with a buoyant energy, swept into the room after calling ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... its inseparable companion, the last degree of hypochondria. This misery is so much more lamentable, as it is, so to say, forced upon mankind from the cradle to the grave by the still prevailing and almost ineradicable delusion of ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... Giant's Stairs in the court of the palace, the inexorable dates would not permit me to rest in the delusion that the head of Marin Falier had once bloodily stained them as it rolled to the ground—at the end of Lord Byron's tragedy. Nor could I keep unimpaired my vision of the Chief of the Ten brandishing the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... thief upon me in the night," I knew not when. I spent the day in grateful tears—how could I help it? It passed off as quietly as it came, leaving my head clear of that dreadful, burning pressure! My nerves were steady; indeed, my improvement was so remarkable, that it seemed almost a delusion. My appetite had returned, and I was hungry for the first time in over a year. I slept well—awoke refreshed and feeling stronger. After two weeks, I was able to walk around the house and yard without support; a day or two after that I walked a hundred yards, visiting and spent the day. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Faber Street in Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury—people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was excluded; Ditmar's world. He was at home here. But she? The delusion that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by their glances. What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... spirit in every respect the direct contrary of that of our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular attainments; and it is more woful still, that many young people should be scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretched delusion, that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing Christianity, are fairly representing it. I have beheld more deliberate malice, more lying and cheating, more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong-headed religionists, than among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... season, particularly for a first experiment in authorship, and advised the postponement of the publication till October. But the translators were too eager for the rich harvest of emolument they had promised themselves, and too full of that pleasing but often fatal delusion—that calenture, under the influence of which young voyagers to the shores of Fame imagine they already see her green fields and groves in the treacherous waves around them—to listen to the suggestions of mere calculating men of business. The first ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... he dealt with the strange treatises in which the earth is flattened, the circle squared, the angle divided into three, the cube doubled (the famous problem which the Delphic oracle set astronomers), and the whole of modern astronomy shown to be a delusion and a snare. He treated these works in a quaint fashion: not unkindly, for his was a kindly nature; not even earnestly, though he was thoroughly in earnest; yet in such sort as to rouse the indignation of the unfortunate paradoxists. He was abused roundly for what he said, but much more ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... insincerity in the phrase as may at first appear. Nearly all women consider it necessary to maintain to themselves and to others that they deeply regret having sinned. The delusion at once pleases and consoles them, and they cling to it ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the spider sucks poison out of the sweetest flower, so the most part of souls suck nothing but delusion and presumption and hardening out of the gospel. Many souls reason for more liberty to sin from mercy. But behold, how the Lord backs it with a dreadful word, "who will by no means clear the guilty." As many as do not condemn themselves before the tribunal of justice, there ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... regularly. I continued to write, as directed by Pierre Lanier, and Mary received my letters. It was evident that Pierre had furnished the information of my being in Bombay, and I kept up the delusion. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested that they hid passed through the barber's saloon on ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... circumstances. This is accident, not disease—circumstance, not temperament. The injury to the brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son, and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury's the main thing. I don't doubt there's a clot of blood formed just here on the brain, obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In every other way, you say, he's a good man of business. The very ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... I enclose to you another which, unaided by any explanation from me, tells a startling tale. I wish, however, to add a few words to make your delusion yet more ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... traditions. Therefore, those whose reflection or sentiment does not furnish them with a key to the moral symbolism and poetic validity underlying theological ideas, if they apply their intelligence to the subject at all, and care to be sincere, will very soon come to regard religion as a delusion. Where religion is primary, however, all that worldly dread of fraud and illusion becomes irrelevant, as it is irrelevant to an artist's pleasure to be warned that the beauty he expresses has no objective existence, or as it would be irrelevant to a mathematician's reasoning to suspect that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... course, any well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was present at all this, and understood Don Quixote's humour so thoroughly, took it into his head to back up his delusion and carry on the joke for the general amusement; so addressing the other barber ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of getting it through the press, whether it is, for general use, so superior to those already published, as to induce teachers to make a change in favor of yours. I have italicised the words for general use, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to suppose, that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in manuscript, is better for him than any other work which he can obtain, it will therefore be ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the immense ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... master or wife, or even his own name, and as no one was left old enough to remember him, the neighborhood having been entirely deserted after the war, he simply passed as a harmless old lunatic laboring under a delusion. He was devoted to children, and Ephraim's small brood were his chief delight. They were not at all afraid of him, and whenever they got a chance they would slip off and steal down to his house, where they might be found any time squatting about ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... felt free to labour, to prosper, and to rise from manual to head work. No one had hindered him; his personal liberty had never been interfered with; and he had freely employed his earnings as he thought proper. But now the whole thing appeared a delusion. Those rosy-cheeked old country gentlemen who came riding into Shrewsbury to quarter sessions, and were so fond of their young Scotch surveyor occupying themselves in building bridges, maintaining infirmaries, making roads, and regulating gaols— those county magistrates and members of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Peace, brother: be not over-exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; 360 For, grant they be so, while they rest unknown, What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid? Or, if they be but false alarms of fear, How bitter is such self-delusion! I do not think my sister so to seek, Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, As that the single want of light and noise (Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 370 Could stir the constant ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... vision was not in itself a delusion, nor, indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought out new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The misery was and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that besides ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... I love you too well, and you and I must part. I had schooled myself to believe that I loved you only as I might have loved a brother; that you could be Lady Mabel's husband and my true friend. But that was a delusion—that can never be. You and I must part, Rorie. This night-ride in the Forest must be our last. Never any more, by sun or moon, must you and I ride together. It is all over, Rorie, the old childish friendship. I mean to do my duty, and ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... received not the love of the Truth will surely not take up the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom, for we read in the Word of God that those who received not the love of the Truth that they might be saved will follow the strong delusion of Antichrist and believe the lie (2 Thess. ii:10-11). Who then are the preachers? An elect company of God's ancient people, Israel. They are now scattered among all the nations of the earth, judicial blindness is upon them; but it will not be always so, ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... with an air of regret and several other picturesque emotions mingled carefully, "my aunt has one delusion. It is connected with this necklace, which she certainly did possess at one time. She imagines things about it, queer things, where it went and where it is now. But you mustn't let her tell you about it, and if she ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... students, unsuccessful professional men, all in the first delirium fever-fit of the gold fever, had come in the expectation that hands unused to hard toil could use the pickaxe of the gold-digger, or wash the rubble for the precious ore. Ah, it was a wild, a fatal delusion! Many a gentleman and scholar pined to death with hardships and disappointments, while some, after weeks of sickness, rose to earn their bread by the humblest manual labor. Working on the roads, for which government ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... number over the fanlight," Steel went on. "And I came here by arrangement. And there was everything as I see it now. Bell, you must either cure me of this delusion, or you must prove logically to me that I have made a mistake. So far as I am concerned, I am like a child ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
