"Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called by Elizabeth her "Little Lord Keeper." At twelve he went to Cambridge, but left the university after two years, declaring the whole plan of education to be radically wrong, and the system of Aristotle, which was the basis of all philosophy in those days, to be a childish delusion, since in the course of centuries it had "produced no fruit, but only a jungle of dry and useless branches." Strange, even for a sophomore of fourteen, thus to condemn the whole system of the universities; but such was the boy, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... disguise, especially when it involved the seeming rejection of advances like the Sergeant's. Still, converting his real amazement into affected surprise, Israel, in presence of the sentries, declared to Singles that he (Singles) must labor under some unaccountable delusion; for he (Potter) was no Yankee rebel, thank Heaven, but a true man to his king; in short, an honest Englishman, born in Kent, and now serving his country, and doing what damage he might to her foes, by being first captain of a carronade on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... collect armor and relics: in this period grew up such an antiquary as Mr. Oldbuck, who curiously sought out every relic of the Roman times,—armor, fosses, and praetoria,—and found, with much that was real, many a fraud or delusion. It was an age which, in the words of old Walter Charleton, "despised the present as an innovation, and slighted the future, like the madman who fell ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... given to future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it went on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council of the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... strange thing about it, that, though the patient sees rats, or snakes, or what-not, as real-looking as the real things, and though they possess his mind for a moment, almost immediately he recognises that he is suffering from a delusion. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 |
