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noun
Reality  n.  (pl. realities)  
1.
The state or quality of being real; actual being or existence of anything, in distinction from mere appearance; fact. "A man fancies that he understands a critic, when in reality he does not comprehend his meaning."
2.
That which is real; an actual existence; that which is not imagination, fiction, or pretense; that which has objective existence, and is not merely an idea. "And to realities yield all her shows." "My neck may be an idea to you, but it is a reality to me."
3.
Loyalty; devotion. (Obs.) "To express our reality to the emperor."
4.
(Law) See 2d Realty, 2.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reality" Quotes from Famous Books



... Wednesday, August the first; and as the fleet passed between La Galera and La Playa, the South American continent was first discovered, some twenty-five leagues distant. Fernando Columbus affirms that his father, thinking it was another island, called it Isla Santa; but in reality Columbus named the continent Tierra de Gracia. Punta del Arenal forms the south-western extremity of the island and is separated by a channel, according to Columbus, two ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... sides. Anon about five o'clock, Sir G. Carteret and his lady and I took coach with the greatest joy and kindnesse that could be from the two familys or that ever I saw with so much appearance, and, I believe, reality in all my life. Drove hard home, and it was night ere we got to Deptford, where, with much kindnesse from them to me, I left them, and home to the office, where I find all well, and being weary and sleepy, it being very late, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... lords, we will ourselves see this blithesome bridal." He gave the signal by rising, and moved towards the door, followed by the train. Lord Dalgarno attended, speaking to none, and spoken to by no one, yet seeming as easy and unembarrassed in his gait and manner as if in reality ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... piece of furniture which, in the struggles of my nightmare, I have just broken. This very prosaic avalanche recalls me to the reality. I laugh at my terrors, a contrary current of thought gets the upper hand, and with it ambitious ideas. I need only use a little effort to reach this summit, so seldom attained. It is a victory, as others are. Accidents ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... seemed to them, it was not in reality more than a quarter of an hour before the jury returned, and with slow grave movements, and serious countenances, resumed their places. Leonard was already in his; his cheek paler, his fingers locked together, and his eyes scanning each ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... room, with its evidences of want, its signs of suffering; nor of all that might have been said and was not. By the bedside of the woman whom I had loved and lost, and who was now passing from the world into the great reality of life, I had few words to speak. The only witness of the promise I made—except the Lord and His angels—was the silently weeping girl, his only remaining child. ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... their midst. Some hurried to lead out the hose, some to get the gun sights and firing lanyards, some to get belts and revolvers for the guns' crews, some down into the hot, dark magazines, and some to open up the magazine hoists. All was apparent confusion, but was in reality perfect discipline. Soon boxes of shell were ready by the guns, but the order "load" ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... possible from the painful weakness of compassion, or that she may avoid the danger of being interrogated by the family as to the cause of the disturbance. It is less trouble to her to yield to caprice and ill-humour than to prevent or cure it, or at least she thinks it is so. In reality it is not; for an humoured child in time plagues its attendant infinitely more than it would have done with reasonable management. If it were possible to convince nurses of this, they would sacrifice perhaps the convenience of a moment to the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... enemy, must have seemed to the weary and war-worn General like a call from the Hesperides. Men of his iron nature, and of his capacity for work and joy in it, do not, of course, really delight in idleness. They may think that they crave idleness, but in reality they crave the power of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... the Bee, a collection of essays, and published his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, in which he speaks of the Monthly Review in terms not very respectful. There is, I doubt, in this little essay more display than reality of erudition. It would not be easy to say where he had discovered "that Dante was persecuted by the critics as long as he lived." The complaints he made of the hard fate of authors, and his censure of odes and of blank verse, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... hair drawn analyses and superstitious broodings upon the subject, overshadowed by the supernatural hierarchy in which they lived, surrounded by a thick night of ignorance, persecution, and slaughter, it was no wonder they could believe the system they preached, although in reality it was only a traditional abstraction metaphysically wrought up and vivified by themselves. Being thus wrought out and animated by them, who were the sole depositaries of learning and the undisputed lords of thought, the mass of the people, lying abjectly in the fetters of authority, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... white bodies conspicuous as they strode on in long drawn file across the waste of pale green grass, and the sound of their deep voices booming faintly over the vast solitude. Surely and steadily they pressed on, seeming like the deer to move but slowly, but in reality running their hardest with a swinging relentless stride. There was something almost dreamlike in this strange procession as it moved on between green earth and blue heaven, with none to see it, as it appeared, but the white-winged curlew which whistled ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... Major Woodruff, decisively. "In reality operations will be suspended at this point until we have run Millard down. Yet we must have the appearance of being as busy as ever. The submarine will hover about, and this tug will be busy, apparently, in laying the bay with mines. You have a ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... man has done, man can do, and the ingenious recourse of Abe Storms was resorted to again. With great care the fractured pieces were reunited and bound, but the task was, in reality, harder than before, since the terrific grinding and wrenching to which it had been subjected broke off ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... be debating whether to explain further, and finally resumed: "Matter thus being in reality a manifestation of force or ether in motion, it is necessary to change and control that force and motion. This assemblage of machines here is for that purpose. Now a few ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... cross-fires of wit and humor by which the way was enlivened during this cold and tedious journey. The scene was certainly a rude one, and seems more like a dream than a reality, when we remember that it occurred not very many years ago, in a State which contains hardly less than three millions of people and seven thousand and ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger

... though older by a year, might have passed for being several years younger. He was in reality two and thirty years of age, but his clear complexion was that of a boy, his dark brown hair curled closely on his head, and his soft brown eyes had a young and trustful look in them, which contrasted strangely with his brother's hard and dominating expression. He was shorter, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... his powers as a writer. He had preferred to live hidden away from every one if he must give up the beauty and purity of the thought-world for the harshness and ugliness of the actual world without. But in his association with Sophia Peabody his faith in the reality that lay back of his beautiful visions was so strengthened that he felt a deep peace and joy never known to him before. The loveliness of her character is shown in her letters, and it is not surprising that Hawthorne should ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... "is very long. Of what use but to mislead in that course is my bodily sight, which bids me doubt the reality of all the higher truths which my inner ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... before that, you've gone the pace. The lavishness of this bachelor establishment of yours is common talk in New York—far in excess of a bank cashier's salary. But you were supposed to be a wealthy man in your own right; and so, in reality you were—once. But you went through your fortune two years ago. Counted a model citizen, an upright man, an honour to the community—what were you, Carling? What ARE you? Shall I tell you? Roue, gambler, leading a double life of the fastest ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... are magnificent portraits—like the Mona Lisa—crowded with a penetrating but question-provoking psychology. Into such parts and situations as the drama could afford are impressed every possible revelation of our motives; but his model was always reality and he never yielded ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... in Florence the self-possessed, assured, light-hearted woman of fashion; but there was a reality and depth of feeling in the few words she had spoken to him, in this interview, that opened to him entirely a new view in ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... looking at the telegram again. In reality, he was considering matters. Should he tell Fullaway what he knew? He was more than a little tempted to do so. But his natural sense of caution and reserve stopped the words before they reached his tongue, and he took ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... terribly alive to-day; not even fifteen years in a new life, with new interests, had done anything but draw a thin curtain of silence over the unforgettable pain. Would anything ever ease it in reality? Had he for a moment believed that it would? Or had he always known, that just as surely as his hand had held the gun which killed her, so to his last breath the tragedy would cast a shadow over ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... be greatly concerned lest he cause trouble between Callum and Hibbs. He protested that he did not want to, when, in reality, he was dying to tell. At last he came out with, "Why, he's circulated the yarn that your sister had something to do with this man Cowperwood, who was tried here recently, and that that's why ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind free of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing himself to confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality. Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains at the foot of the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... at first view, may seem more unbounded than the thought of man, which not only escapes all human power and authority, but is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects. And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... enough; all that is necessary is to combine speculative ideas, and any Academy can do that. The National Assembly of 1789 had proclaimed it with the rattling of drums, but merely as a right and with no practical effect. Napoleon turns it into a reality, and henceforth the ideal rule is applied as strictly as is possible with human material, thanks to two pieces of fiscal machinery of a new type, superior of their kind, and which, compared with those of the ancient Regime, or with those ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... confided to them. But in more favourable cases the minister chosen for this supreme office by the crown has the power of distributing all the political offices of the government as may seem best to himself, subject only to the ultimate approval of the sovereign. The prime minister is therefore in reality the author and constructor of the cabinet; he holds it together; and in the event of his retirement, from whatever cause, the cabinet is really dissolved, even though its members are again ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... come back, after sleeping in civilization with a blessed sense of safety, had a few minutes of queer surprise that, after all, this business of war was something more real than a fantastic nightmare, and then put on their moral cloaks against the chill and grim reality, for another long spell of it. Very quickly the familiarity of it all came back to them and became the normal instead of the abnormal. They were back again to the settled state of war, as boys go back to public schools after the wrench ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... was passed there must be another immediately upon it; in the meantime most violent pledges would be taken as to Reform if a general election were to take place now. Lord Derby concurred in all this, and said he advised the threat particularly in order to render the reality unnecessary; when she persisted in her refusal, however, on the ground that she could not threaten what she was not prepared to do, he appeared very ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... in the West Mary Ellen spoke but little, though never with harshness, and at times almost with wistfulness. Her history had seemed too full of change to be reality. For the future she made no plans. It seemed to her to be her fate ever to be an alien, a looker-on. The roses drooped across her lattice, and the blue grass stood cool and soft and deep beyond her window, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... spiritual Communion? A. A spiritual communion is an earnest desire to receive Communion in reality, by which desire we make all preparations and thanksgivings that we would make in case we really received the Holy Eucharist. Spiritual Communion is an act of devotion that must be pleasing to God and ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... to the "Young Person" of Crete to whom the epithet "ombliferous" is applied, we may be pardoned—on the ground of the geographical proximity of the two countries named—for quoting together two stanzas which in reality are separated by ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... minute, during the hour and a half preceding sunset. To speak more definitely, but well within the mark, those flying south, easily within range of sight from the sand spit here, may be calculated at something like 27,000. But in reality the procession of birds may cover a breadth of 2 miles, while only those flocks nearest to the observer are included in the estimate. No doubt, fully 100,000 come and go evening and morning. When the incubating season is at its height the number lessens; when all the young are hatched the unmarshalled ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... of place here to say a few words about this important class, which is in reality the backbone of the British constitution; it was the mainstay of the ANGLO-SAXON monarchy; it lost its influence during the civil wars of the Plantagenets, but reasserted its power under Cromwell. Dr. Robertson thus draws the line between them ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... promised to be brilliant. As a bride, I wore white, and when, at the moment of going down-stairs, my husband suddenly clasped about my neck a rich necklace of diamonds, I was seized by such a bitter sense of the contrast between appearances and the awful reality underlying these festivities, that I reeled in his arms, and had to employ all the arts which my dangerous position had taught me, to quiet his alarm, and convince him that my emotion ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... authority, is a common blessing to the place he lives in: happiness grows under his influence. This good principle in inferiors would discover itself in paying respect, gratitude, obedience, as due. It were therefore, methinks, one just way of trying one's own character to ask ourselves, am I in reality a better master or servant, a better friend, a better neighbour, than such and such persons, whom, perhaps, I may think not to deserve the character of virtue and religion ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... ever to lay hold of the lessons, to his mind so genial, in hers bringing forth more labor than fruit, which Godfrey set before her, but success seemed further from her than ever. She was now all the time aware of a weight, an oppression, which seemed to belong to the task, but was in reality her self-dissatisfaction. She was like a poor Hebrew set to make brick without straw, but the Egyptian that had brought her into bondage was the feebleness of her own will. Now and then would come a break—a glow of beauty, a gleam of truth; for a moment she would forget ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... this Introduction to a close I should like to quote what my Father wrote in his Preface to the last edition published by him, as it embodies what many people are realising to-day. To them, as to him, the reality of the "Invisibles" is no longer a speculation. Therefore I feel that these thoughts of his should have a place in this new edition of his collection of ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... sense every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph. We should all remember that to be like other folks is to be unlike ourselves, and that nothing can be more detestable in character than servile imitation. The great trouble with imitation is that we are apt to ape those who are in reality far below us. After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make is to trade off his individuality for ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... he swung his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame. The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not. A man, knowing his weakness and insufficiency in many and many a thing, may yet know his strength in one ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... French window to stand at the foot of her bed? Waking to a burst of sunlight across her face, Eleanor could not tell in the least whether the memory of the half-breed woman standing in the shadows were dream or reality. The sun was coming over the Rim Rocks in a fan-shaped shield of spear shafts; and every single shaft wafted down thoughts that refused to lie quiet. Shafts that have a trick of turning your heart into a target can't be shut out by ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... convenient playground for Westminster scholars, who were allowed, as late as 1829, to keep the scenes for their annual play in the triforium of the north transept.[878] Nevertheless 'Paul's Walk' and all customs in any way akin to it, so far as they survived into the last century, had in reality little or nothing to do with the irreligion and neglect of which the century has been sorely, and not causelessly accused. Rather, they were the relics of customs which had not very long fallen into desuetude. The time had been, and was not so very long past, when the stalls and bazaars of St. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... drink, sleep, and obey the calls of nature here, you may form some idea of the disagreeable situation I must have been in, unable as I was to help myself (being deprived of the use of both my legs and hands), but by no means adequate to the reality. ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... possibly be, that the matter is forever settled. They ignore the fact that it is possible that Man's Intellect, in its present state of unfoldment, may be able to take cognizance of only a very small part of the Universal Fact, and that there may be regions upon regions of Reality and Fact of which he cannot even dream, so far are they removed from his experience. The unfoldment of a new sense would open out a new world and might bring to light facts that would completely revolutionize our ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... of several thousands, with a handsome house in Cumberland, was a consideration which I could scarcely admit into my mind—so fearful was I, that the very first occurrence of the day should dispel the illusion, and throw me back into the dull reality which I was hoping to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... truth," he said. "We understand each other, and we love each other. But you—you are even now more to her than I have ever been. She has need of you as she has never had of me. You are the reality in her life. I"—he spread out ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... Yet in reality, the condition was less serious, for representatives of Capital, Labor, and Government were in consultation. Inside the station, in the Directors' room of the railroad, its officials, a committee of the strikers, and an officer ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... preach, and shall not our lives be a living comment on our doctrines? Shall our conversation prove that our unsanctified hearts are devoted to sensuality and aggrandisement, that we hold the censers with unhallowed hands, and in reality love the riches and pleasures which in our pulpits we affect ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... will proclaim the freedom of four millions of human slaves, the most important event in the history of the world since Christ was born. Our boast that this is a land of liberty has been a flaunting lie. Henceforth it will be a veritable reality. The defeats of our armies in the past we have deserved, because we waged a war to protect and perpetuate and to rivet firmer the chains of slavery. Hereafter we shall prosecute the war to establish and perpetuate ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... CDH 8 Ecolo 4, other 2 note: as a result of the 1993 constitutional revision that furthered devolution into a federal state, there are now three levels of government (federal, regional, and linguistic community) with a complex division of responsibilities; this reality leaves six governments each with its own ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... record his indebtedness to the columns of The Peking Gazette, a newspaper which under the brilliant editorship of Eugene Ch'en—a pure Chinese born and educated under the British flag—has fought consistently and victoriously for Liberalism and Justice and has made the Republic a reality to countless thousands who otherwise would have refused to believe ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... expansion of heart which one gets at the scramble of the hospitable man. So that we are driven to remark, even in such everyday matters as these, but it is the invisible, the spiritual, which after all gives value and reality even to dinners; and, with Solomon, to prefer the most touching diner Russe, the dinner of herbs where love is, though I trust that neither we nor Solomon should object to well-dressed cutlets with our salad, if they ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... but for one circumstance, that face would have been beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most hideous feature. I can scarcely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... burning the "midnight oil" of the modern student, they kept the midnight watch against savage foes, at least at certain periods. To us, this all looks like romance. To them, it was stern reality. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... Europe has abolished [44] a cruel and odious prejudice, which reigned in every climate of the globe, and adhered to every system of religious opinions. [45] The nations, and the sects, of the Roman world, admitted with equal credulity, and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal art, [46] which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs, and execrable rites; which could extinguish or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... hands of the individual stockholders who then in their private capacity may of course spend it, but by proper investment may keep it permanently stored as capital. It is the creation of capital then, that is in reality the ultimate money-making aim ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman

... government. Of these irritating differences, that which related to the Mississippi was far the most operative, and embarrassing. The imagination, especially when warmed by discontent, bestows on a good which is withheld, advantages much greater than the reality will justify; and the people of the western country were easily persuaded to believe that the navigation of the Mississippi was a mine of wealth which would at once enrich them. That jealousy which men so readily entertain of the views of those with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... feet now examining the sketches—all running-brook studies—most of them made in that same pair of high-water boots. No one but the late Fritz Thaulow approaches him in giving the reality of this most difficult subject for an outdoor painter. The ocean surf repeats itself in its recurl and swash and by close watching a painter has often a chance to use his "second barrel," so to speak, but the upturned face of an unruly brook-is ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... upon my senses, I call matter, and all the particles of matter which I suppose to be united into separate entities I call bodies. Thus all the disputes of the idealists and the realists have no meaning for me; their distinctions between the appearance and the reality ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... it would not be better that all things were operated by a good, wise, intelligent Being, than by a blind nature, in which not one consoling quality is found; by a fatal necessity always inexorable to human intreaty? It may be replied, first, that our interest does not decide the reality of things, and that when this should be even wore advantageous than it is pointed out, it would prove nothing. Secondly, that as we are obliged to admit some things are operated by nature, it is certainly on the side of probability that she performs ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... be assured. Whether those ties shall be organic or conventional, the destinies of Cuba are in some rightful form and manner irrevocably linked with our own, but how and how far is for the future to determine in the ripeness of events. Whatever be the outcome, we must see to it that free Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... merchants, who affected to appear very much pleased that he had met with no obstruction in getting thither, and who thence pretended to conclude that the viceroy was satisfied about the former mistake, the reality of which they still insisted on; they added, that as soon as the viceroy should be informed that Mr Anson was at Canton (which they promised should be done the next morning,) they were persuaded a day would be immediately appointed for the visit, which was the principal business that had brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations." Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of "payment by results" cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... brandy-ball brooch, a light shawl waistcoat, and a rhubarb-coloured coat of the sort which, I believe, are called Taglionis, and which have no waist-buttons, and made a pretence, as it were, to have no waists, but are in reality adopted by the fat in order to give them a waist. Nothing easier for an obese man than to have a waist; he has but to pinch his middle part a little, and the very fat on either side pushed violently forward MAKES a waist, as it were, and our ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... live ideally: We breed our firmest facts of air; We make our own reality— We dream a thing and it is so. The fairest scenes we ever see Are mirages of memory; The sweetest thoughts we ever know We plagiarize from Long Ago: And as the girl on canvas there Is marvelously rare and fair, 'Tis only inasmuch as she ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... or blame; no responsibility attaches to it, and the condition on which it acts is perfectly incongruous with all the ideas we have of reward or punishment. These are inapplicable to a state of fatalism. The volitions, and the actions they produce, are in reality those of the Deity. To Him they belong, and to Him alone. On this critical and decisive point all the great Calvinistic writers break down. While they award to human beings the treatment due to moral agents, they deny to them the attributes without which they cannot ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... two hundred years. Here, everything is redolent of the past. The chance wayfarer from these western shores who happens to stray within the walk of this majestic specimen of mediaeval architecture will have some difficulty, for the nonce, in believing in the reality of such contrivances as steamboats and railways. Certainly it is one of the last places in the world where one might naturally expect to see anything to remind him of so modern a spot as the capital of ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... expectancy pervading his thoughts and feelings, he became clearly convinced that the recent past was no flight of the imagination—that he was in very truth a soldier, and that his fighting career had in reality begun! ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... has external and internal perceptions (for which it has cerebral organs). When the former predominate too greatly, the human body and all external objects are realized most vividly, and the reality of psychic life is not so well realized or understood. Hence persons so organized are disposed to materialism, and either doubt the existence of their psychic being, or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... but as a most skilful conveyancer, and great real property lawyer, with a deep knowledge of all its intricacies and moot points, he, at once, obtained considerable practice, and a fine income, which, I believe, by present provincial counsel would be regarded rather as a fiction than reality. He was, moreover, a fluent speaker, with diction pure, and most grammatical. I ought, here, perhaps, to mention what will seem strange to the present generation, that I have often heard my father say, that the first book he began to study law from was "Wood's Institutes," a ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... to our children after us—the procession of the nation's favourites among the characters created by our great dramatists and novelists, the eternal types of human nature which nothing can efface from our imagination. Or is there less reality about the "Knight" in his short cassock and old-fashioned armour and the "Wife of Bath" in hat and wimple, than—for instance—about Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman? Can we not hear "Madame Eglantine" lisping ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... flanking and outward walls, every projecting point of rock, which served as its site, it seemed as completely surrounded by water as the nest of a wild swan, save where a narrow causeway extended betwixt the islet and the shore. But the fortress was larger in appearance than in reality; and of the buildings which it actually contained, many had become ruinous and uninhabitable. In the times of the grandeur of the Avenel family, these had been occupied by a considerable garrison of followers and retainers, but they were now in a great measure deserted; ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... park came to be spoken of; and immediately after dinner they went to look at what was going on. Ottilie withdrew, under pretence of having household matters to look to; in reality, it was to set to work again at the transcribing. The Count fell into conversation with the Captain, and Charlotte afterward joined them. When they were at the summit of the height, the Captain good-naturedly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... The reality of witchcraft or enchantment, which, though not strictly the same, are confounded in this play, has in all ages and countries been credited by the common people, and in most by the learned themselves[1]. These ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... be written in a day. If the list is overlong, or the one who received the flowers and messages is in reality so prostrated that she (or he) is unable to perform the task of writing, then some member of her immediate ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... day's journey, but a moment later he discovered his mistake. It was suddenly borne in upon him that the tall, thin object which nestled so closely among the trees a mile to the south that it was scarcely distinguishable from them, was in reality the spire of some church; and he knew that he was much closer to his kind than ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... grow dark. "Dodd's" doubts left the earth, and reached even to heaven. He not only doubted the men who had led him to the promised relief; he doubted even the power of religious experience to save a tempted man, and the reality of ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of the flat, where Lawrence was breathing loudly in her sleep; the oily smell of hairs tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden, frightened ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... gazed as one who is awoke By a distant organ, doubting if he be Not yet a dreamer, till the spell is broke By the watchman, or some such reality, Or by one's early valet's cursed knock; At least it is a heavy sound to me, Who like a morning slumber—for the night Shows stars and women in ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... not? It cannot be: for thousands say it every day, without giving the least suspicion, that their bodies are not capable of being touched. The conclusion then must be built on those other words, For I have not yet ascended to my Father. but what have these words to do with the reality of his body? It might be real or not real, for anything that is here said. There is a difficulty in these words, and it may be hard to give the true sense of them; but there is no difficulty in seeing that they have no relation ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... Bart. (Vol. vii., p. 528.).—The particulars given by NEWBURY, while introducing his Query, are extremely vague and inaccurate. In the first place, the individual he styles Sir George Browne, Bart., was in reality simple George Browne, Esq., of Caversham, Oxon, and Wickham, Kent. This gentleman, who would have been a valuable acquisition to any nascent colony, married Elizabeth (not Eleanor), second daughter of Sir Richard Blount, of Maple Durham, and had by her nineteen children, pretty evenly divided ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various

... object was a reality and not an unwonted visitation, the lookout began deliberately to unloosen a gasket. Moments might be eternity to the man below, but Muscovite slowness is not to be hurried. The yacht's bow poised in mid air a breathless instant; chaos seemed leaping upward toward Mr. Heatherbloom, when something—a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own; and in process of time they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority." This, "kind of separate and independent people," had now in fact and in reality appeared, and were evincing a most decided inclination to "set up for themselves" ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... no relation of the above. A much-abused ancient whose life and story has been written by malicious biographers. In reality L. was a kind soul who invited us to dinner, permitted the gas to be turned down, and always knocked before she came into the room. Later she wiped the dishes, took care of her grandchild (see Baby), helped pay the bills, and told the neighbors what a fine ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... he had hurried back after his humiliation at the durbar, called for his horse, and ridden forth on a journey with a handful of attendants—to Adamkot, so the servants believed. The blow was so heavy that Gerrard refused at first to believe in its reality, and sent messengers to the city gates. The news they brought served only to confirm the first report. The Regent and his band had passed through two hours before, bound for Adamkot in hot haste. Gerrard ordered the procession to return, and it retraced its steps slowly, while he laid his ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... eyes, it was distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table, had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant's damp pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural disinclination to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... Reason had been more completely emancipated at the Reformation than it was at first at all aware of. Men who were engaged in battling against certain definite abuses, and certain specified errors, scarcely discovered at first, nor indeed for long afterwards, that they were in reality contending also for principles which would affect for the future the whole groundwork of religious conviction. They were not yet in a position to see that henceforward authority could take only a secondary place, and that they were installing in its room either reason ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... legislation and executive orders. After World War II most Americans moved slowly toward acceptance of the proposition that equal treatment and opportunity for the nation's minorities was both just and prudent.[24-2] A drawn-out process, this acceptance was in reality a grudging concession to the promptings of the civil rights movement; translated into federal legislation, it exerted constant pressure (p. 612) on the racial policy of the armed forces. The Selective Service Acts of 1940 and 1948, for example, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... fearless man did verily walk the untrodden forest alone, with as little disquiet as we parade the streets of a populous city? Can any paradoxical reasoning about eternal truths, and the universal reality of human sentiments, assimilate this history of Daniel Boon to the very best creation of the novelist? Here was the veritable hero who did exist. "You see," says Boon, "how little human nature requires. It is in our own hearts, rather than in the things around us, that we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... used to get our horses and ride off quietly in the afternoon, as if we were going after cattle; but, in reality, as soon as we were out of sight of mother, to ride over to that old villain, Grimes, the shanty-keeper, where we met the young Dalys, and others of the same sort—talked a good deal of nonsense and gossip; what was worse played at all-fours and euchre, which we had learned from an American harvest ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... later life, Benjamin Franklin referred to this event, and spoke of himself as having received retribution for his influence over Collins. For, when they were so intimate in Boston, Benjamin corrupted his religious opinions by advocating doubts about the reality of religion, until Collins became a thorough sceptic. Until that time he was industrious, temperate, and honest. But having lost his respect for religion, he was left without restraint, and went rapidly to ruin. Benjamin was the greatest sufferer by his fall, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... childhood which we must leave behind; a childlikeness which is the highest gain of humanity, and a childishness from which but few of those who are counted the wisest among men, have freed themselves in their imagined progress towards the reality of things. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... for concealing from me the presence of that miserable woman in the house," she said. "It is good and kind, like all your motives; but it is useless. While I lay in the trance I saw everything exactly as it was in the reality; and I, too, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... with the liveliest sentiments of compassion and sympathy for the oppressed, and of horror and indignation against the oppressor. Leaseholds cancelled, houses demolished without the smallest compensation, on the plea of public utility, but in reality from motives of private hatred and revenge; freemen imprisoned on arbitrary warrants issued without reference to the magistracy, and even publicly flogged in the same illegal and oppressive manner: such were ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... not believe all the saucy things that are told you—you should not care for the impertinence of young soldiers," said Hedouville, who suspected that his affairs were reality in a critical state, and had now resumed his usual smoothness of manner. He led the way up the alley between the rose-trees, that the torn proclamation might ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... especially so fearful that he would not get a chance to read a prayer over a dead soldier, that the chaplain found it necessary to assure him that the opportunity to pray should not be taken from him; and thus another popular horror was found to be without reality. ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... through the closed doors, and stood in the midst of the disciples, and greeted them as he had done so often before, "Peace be unto you!" They told Thomas afterwards that they had seen the Lord. But he refused to believe them; that is, he doubted the reality of what they thought they had seen. He said that they had been deceived; and he asserted that he must not only see for himself, but must have the opportunity of subjecting the evidence to the severest test. He ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... passage, I discovered that it had been given by Humboldt in his Kritische Untersuchungen ueber die historische Entwickelung der geographischen Kenntnisse von der Neuen Welt, I. 553, and by Peschel in his Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 97, note 2. It may be objected to this explanation that in reality Columbus had only gone about 75 degrees west of Cape St. Vincent in Portugal. The accurate calculation of longitude at that time, however, was impossible, and as will be seen in the following note Columbus's calculation was ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... on the lawn, and his breast was filled with a storm of emotions. He pictured the horrors of the prison to which they were about to send him, and his fancy made the prospect far worse than the reality could possibly have been. Mr. Grant led the way towards the building occupied by the servants. Noddy was desperate. Squire Wriggs was the visible manifestation of jails, courts, constables, and ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite still remains outside of absolute reality, 40. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... will have their full scope, proportionably as they civilize. In a word, it lays open an endless field of commerce to the British manufactures and merchant adventurer. The manufacturing interest and the general interests are synonymous. The abolition of slavery would be in reality an ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... more about the clergyman, Lily, and less about the church," said Mrs Boyce very sententiously, "more about the matter and less about the manner, more of the reality and less of the form, I think you'd find that your religion would go further with you. Miss Crawley is the daughter of a clergyman, and I'm sure she will agree ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... in a lower tone, "I know you have been good, and in your memory you can be happy; but, alas! there is a present upon which we must look—there is a reality upon which we must dwell. We must ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... shyness—a flicker of the eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least ascetic. In his dreamy life before Hazel came, he had thought of a sane and manly and normal future when he thought of it at all. Now he found that the reality was not like his dreams. The saneness and manliness were still needed, but the joy had gone, or at ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... was "filmed," Russ and his camera associates grinding away at the machines. It was not easy work, for the wind and spray often interfered with the clearness of the picture. But of course that only added to the reality of it when the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... and represented different shades of opinion rather than diverging sects. There were, however, symptoms of opposition, which, at the time, might be set down as simple reluctance to listen to disagreeable truths. In reality, they were indications of a dissatisfaction which was to become of more importance and to lead in time to a more decided revolt. I must indicate some of them, though the expressions of dissent were so various and confused that ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... been incredulous all this time about the reality of the death, and was anxiously watching the face of the physician, now burst into violent weeping, and had to be led from the room by Joseph ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... a poet. Poetry is my profession. And the only way I can succeed in it, the only way it is worth succeeding in, is to relate it to life, real life, the big, elemental struggle for existence that is going on, here in London, and everywhere; to wed Art to Reality, lest the jade saunter the streets, a light o' love, seeking ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... yet, sweet and warm on his cheek? Into the past, having gone so far, he stepped now boldly, as though to grasp again those illusive colors and seize anew the intangible substance. He was but young, when shadows seem solid, when dreams are corporeal stuff, and fantasies, rock-like strata of reality. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... and these poor banished Hogtons, thought I,—hateful parvenu! I was pleased when a curve in the shrubberies shut out the house from view, though in reality bringing us nearer to it. And the boasted cascade, whose roar I had heard for ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... young and thoughtless of the fair sex, this Tale of Truth is designed; and I could wish my fair readers to consider it as not merely the effusion of Fancy, but as a reality. The circumstances on which I have founded this novel were related to me some little time since by an old lady who had personally known Charlotte, though she concealed the real names of the characters, and likewise the place where the unfortunate scenes ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... detail with your imagination when you look away from an object after a glance at it. Try glancing at the furnishings of your room, then shut your eyes and construct a mental picture. When this is definitely clear to you, open your eyes. The reality will be very different from your imagined picture. But sharpen your perceptive faculties, develop a "camera eye;" then the reality will be exactly impressed on your mind. Witnesses in court often contradict one another, in all honesty, simply because ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... to myself a little later, outstretched upon a wire cot, and with a cretonne cushion beneath what felt like a very large and much-battered prize pumpkin, but what was in reality my head. There was a glow of electric light all about and above me, and bottles of all sizes ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... III, 7, 23). How then can it be said that the origination of knowledge in the transmigrating soul depends on a body, while it does not do so in the case of the Lord?—True, we reply. There is in reality no transmigrating soul different from the Lord. Still the connexion (of the Lord) with limiting adjuncts, consisting of bodies and so on, is assumed, just as we assume the ether to enter into connexion with divers limiting adjuncts such as jars, pots, caves, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... our earnest disapprobation on the system of slavery, let us not flatter ourselves that we are in reality any better than our brethren of the South. Thanks to our soil and climate, and the early exertions of the excellent Society of Friends, the form of slavery does not exist among us; but the very spirit of the hateful and mischievous thing is here in all ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... this difference. {0a} Almost every word which my assistant declared to be Gipsy I have found either in Hindustani or in the works of Pott, Liebich, or Paspati. On this subject I would remark by the way, that many words which appear to have been taken by the Gipsies from modern languages are in reality Indian. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... the day or the girls would probably not have been permitted to carry out their unusual undertaking. They quickly made their preparations with much joking about the boots, and twenty minutes later came to the banks of the slough. The slough was in reality a continuation of the spring stream, which spread out in the meadows below the pond until it lost all semblance of a stream and became merely a marshy stretch, whose waters finally found their way into the creek. In the meadows adjoining, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie



Words linked to "Reality" :   realness, reality check, materiality, unreal, existent, virtual reality, historicalness, physicalness, real, corporality



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