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Make-believe   /meɪk-bɪlˈiv/   Listen
Make-believe

noun
1.
Imaginative intellectual play.  Synonyms: pretence, pretense.
2.
The enactment of a pretense.  Synonym: pretend.






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"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books



... distinguished had cork stoppers for heads, with faces marked on the sides, the rest, only wads of paper or cloth fastened on the ends of sticks that reached down into the bodies. A strip of cloth tied around each neck, below the bulge, served as make-believe arms, suitable for all ordinary purposes, and, with a little assistance, capable of saluting an officer or waving to ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... you said to me, In pretty make-believe of revelry, So the night long said Death With his magniloquent breath; (And that remembered laughter Which in our daily uses followed after, Was all untuned to pity and to awe): "A cup of chocolate, One farthing is the rate, You drink ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... and only one row of buildings; the other side of the street is given up to piles of metal rails and wooden ties and ballast for the track. The stores are large fronted, with a mockery which would lead the unenlightened to believe they are two-storied; but this is make-believe. The upper windows have no rooms behind them. They are the result of overweening vanity on the part of the City Council and have nothing to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... discern that some things were good and other bad—that some things they liked, and others they hated. They hated the lack of ideas in art, and the lack of character; the silliness and vacuity which belong to the one, the flimsiness and make-believe which result from the other. They hated those forms of execution which are merely smooth and prettyish, and those which, pretending to mastery, are nothing better than slovenly and slapdash, or what the P.R.B.'s ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... tossed, by tempests crossed, Yet never a soul on board was lost! Though the boat be a sieve, I do not grieve, They sail on the ocean of "Make-believe." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... words, to make things smooth and brief,— A commodious and short make-believe of belief, Which our Church has drawn up in a form thus articular To keep out in general all who're particular. But what's the boy doing? what! reading all thro', And my luncheon fast cooling!—this never will do. Boy (poring over the Articles).— Here are points which—pray, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Phil!" cried Joel Jackman, showing signs of growing excitement. "Nothing make-believe about that alarm, let me tell you. There's a genuine fire broken out ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... mother both acted their parts very well. He rushed to the arms of the old woman for protection, and screeched small, while the widow shouted "millia murther!" at the top of her voice, and did not give up her hold of the make-believe young woman until her cap was torn half off, and her hair streamed about her face. She called on all the saints in the calendar, as she knelt in the middle of the floor and rocked to and fro, with her clasped hands raised to heaven, calling down curses on the "villains ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... line of argument in The Prophetical Office of the Church was taken by Mr. Newman. It was certainly no make-believe, or unreal argument. It was a forcible and original way of putting part of the case against Rome. It was part of the case, a very important part; but it was not the whole case, and it ought to have been evident ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... thought he had broken his ankle. Now of course that would have been a catastrophe indeed, but so was that slip into the German tongue. A kindly Providence saw to it that an alert Tommy had heard, and in a trice those six make-believe English soldiers had been rounded up and were on their way to headquarters. Next morning there was a sunrise party, for those Germans must be taught it isn't ever healthy for them inside ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... going into business, sport, social events, frivolities, make-believe and the deliberate destruction of waste and war could be directed to planning, utilizing, beautifying on the circumferences and at the centers of population concentrations, immense forward strides could be taken in ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... really believed I'd get the chance to see any whale-spearing," he said. "Whaling with a cannon is only a make-believe. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to embrace that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it really was what she ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... two main kinds; fights between men and beasts—occasionally between two kinds of wild beast—and fights between men and men. There was no make-believe about these combats; they meant at least serious wounds, even when they did not mean death. Those who fought with beasts might in some cases be volunteers; in general they were captives or condemned criminals, and it perhaps hardly needs pointing out that, when St. Paul says he ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... with the sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the sonorous and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... as if it were a picnic. She had never seen him so cheery and inconsequent. It was as if he also were engaged in some species of make-believe. Or was it the enchantment of spring that had fallen upon them both? Dinah could not have said. She only knew that she had never felt so happy ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... bolted plates, with corner posts and diagonal bracing and a single guard rail running around the four sides—but for the first time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down; that this was not all make-believe, or a futile gesture. He would stand on that platform; he would go down where Dean had gone. And then.... But what would come after he knew he could ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... evidence than the evidence of a dream? Reasonable as it undoubtedly was, this view left certain doubts still lingering in my mind. The child's instinct soon discovered that her mother and I were playfellows who felt no genuine enjoyment of the game. She dismissed her make-believe guests without ceremony, and went back with her doll to the favorite play-ground on which I had met her—the landing outside the door. No persuasion on her mother's part or on mine succeeded in luring her back to us. We were left together, to face ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... quite easy to show children that if one keeps things where they belong, they are true with regard to each other, but that if one drags these things out of the shadowy atmosphere of the "make-believe," and forces them into the land of actual facts, the whole ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... power within him to merit the like; finds his way back at last, still light of heart, to his own poor fare, able to do without what he would enjoy so much. As, grateful for his scanty part in things—for the make-believe of a feast in the little white loaves she too has managed to come by, sipping the thin white wine, he touches her dearly, the mother is shocked with a sense of something unearthly in his contentment, while ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... and the thing that has set me writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others it is a painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows it as willingly ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... ever get really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time—because you know it's all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It's always safe, always just in the theatre, just on the stage, no matter ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... a moment looking down at her. There had been no make-believe on her part when he held her in his arms. He knew that. And now? She had said that she hated him. Perhaps she did for having made her do that which she had never dreamed of doing. But he told himself that he could stand a whole lot of that kind of hate. And ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... I think it only right as you should know the truth about your husband, and because me and my sister can't go on any longer as we are. My sister's name is Emma Vine. She was engaged to be married to Richard M. two years before he knew you, and to the last he put her off with make-believe and promises, though it was easy to see what was meant. And when our sister Jane was on her very death-bed, which she died not a week after he married you, and I know well as it was grief as killed her. And ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... reflect upon the lives of theatrical artists, that they are altogether unnatural existences, and produce—pardon the bull—artificial natures, which are misplaced anywhere but in their own unreal and make-believe sphere. They are the anomalous growth of our diseased civilizations, and, removed from their own factitious soil, flourish, I half believe, in none other. Do not laugh at me, but I really do think that creatures with ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... was showing a magic lantern without a light, and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her, however, to be there on such good authority, we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother, when we were unexpectedly relieved, by finding it was only a bit of make-believe; for it was now divulged, che questa madre che piangea il suo figlio, was not in fact his personal mother, but "Italy" dressed up like his mother, and gone to Paris on purpose to weep and put garlands on the composer's tomb, amaranth and crocus, and whatever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... ever much rejoiced me save that of Italy. Wine-drinking in England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing with an exotic inspiration. Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a good old tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these drinks are not for us. Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux or Burgundy; to get good of them, soul's good, you must be on the green ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... part in it he would have enjoyed the adventure, as an adventure, keenly. He had no objections to fighting on the side of rascals, or against rascals. He objected to them only in the calmer moments of private life; and as he was of course ignorant that the expedition was only a make-believe, he felt a certain respect for his fellow-conspirators as men who were willing to stake their lives for a chance of better fortune. But that their bravery was of the kind which would make them hesitate to rob and deceive a helpless girl he very much doubted; for he knew that even the ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... had already found out, and whatever he might confide to her in the future, exceedingly repugnant. And she acknowledged with a shiver of revolt that the creature's fascination for her was not altogether a matter of make-believe. She was going to find it very hard to keep a proper perspective and point of view; to continue to regard him as just another "case" and ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... the North, with subtler smile Than hers who in the yellow South, With make-believe mysterious mouth, Deepens the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... ought to tell Hugh," he said at once. "A ring like that must cost a lot—Aunt Trudy wouldn't have any make-believe stones. You can't earn money without he finds it out and then there will be a pretty row. Hasn't Sarah enough backbone to face ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... attentively for a nearer approach of the girl-voice he heard within the house. "He calls it one of the big things Dade is always doing for his friends." He dropped a hand on Dade's shoulder and shook him with an affectionate make-believe of disfavor. "He's always risking his valuable neck to save my worthless one, Don Andres. He means well, but he doesn't know any better. He packed me out of a nest of Indians once, just as foolishly; we were coming out from Texas at the time. You'd ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... rage. Their tales were a long catalogue of deeds of ruthless barbarity, cold-blooded cruelty, lust, and rapine. The smoke of burning houses seen in the distance gave emphasis to their tales of horror, and Max and Dale at last felt as though the world must be coming to an end. Indeed, the world of make-believe German civilization was coming to an end in a wild outburst of ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history. These dry details of what had actually happened were a relief, she told herself, from all that make-believe. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... Queen were married almost before they knew it themselves, and certainly before the people discovered that somebody was really being married at last. This, however, was not at all surprising, for the real wedding was very much the same as all the make-believe ones, except that it took a little longer because the King and Queen were not so used to being married as the people were ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp

... infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that great liner, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... which, unless I please, I have no part whatever, attracts me more than I could have thought possible. No one in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me. I have cut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors' meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years. I go to concerts and theatres; I look at the people in the streets; I even begin to take an outsider's interest in social questions, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a'd thought better on thee. It's like last week thy last sweetheart were drowned; but thou's not one to waste time i' rememberin' them as is gone—if, indeed, thou iver cared a button for yon Kinraid—if it wasn't a make-believe.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... down her back," cried the woman, greeting with a chuckle her first game of make-believe for many a long year; "your nobleman might pass his daughter twenty times like that, an' ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... of it, Robert Louis Stevenson, had the romantic strain in him intensified by the conditions under which he worked; a weak and anaemic man, he loved bloodshed as a cripple loves athletics—passionately and with the intimate enthusiasm of make-believe which an imaginative man can bring to bear on the contemplation of what can never be his. His natural attraction for "redness and juice" in life was seconded by a delightful and fantastic sense of the boundless possibilities of romance in every-day things. To a realist a hansom-cab driver ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... is, moreover, cruel that a man, because he has been a poet or genius or artist, must needs have every weakness (real or conjectured) in his life served up and grinned at and chatted over, as if he forsooth were a clergyman or some kind of make-believe saint. However, the more vulgar a nature is the more it will gloat on gossip; and herein the most pretentious of the higher classes show themselves no ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... the opportunities for illicit gain afforded by the service made an irresistible appeal. Sham gangs and make-believe press-masters abounded, thriving exceedingly upon the fears and credulity of the people until capture put a term to their activities and sent them to the pillory, the prison or the fleet they pretended to ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... can't want to marry your little niecelet, the funny little 'kiddo,' that used to burn her fingers and the beefsteak over that old studio gas stove. We had such lovely kinds of make-believe together. That's what our association always ought to mean to us,—just chumship, and wonderful and preposterous pretends. I couldn't think of myself being married to you any more than I could Jack the giant killer, or Robinson Crusoe. You're my ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... had already begun to know him no more, and because of the sham affliction with which they were all supplementing the true. It was she who shed the truest tears, but it was she also who rebelled most at the make-believe which convention forced upon her; and the usual sense of hopeless exasperation was strong in her mind. After a while she threw off the shawl from her feet and the cushions that supported her shoulders, and got up and walked about the room, looking out upon the afternoon sunshine ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... speedily, and as the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while as his boat drifted still ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... found a scene before me which was not Tolstoi's scene, a foolish, sentimental conversation in which I recognised hardly more than a sentence of Tolstoi (and this brought in in the wrong place), and, in short, the old make-believe of all the hack-writers for the stage, dished up again, and put before us, with a simplicity of audacity at which one can only marvel ("a thing imagination boggles at"), as an "adaptation" from Tolstoi. Tolstoi has been hardly treated by some translators and by many ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... marked by the utmost caution and self-containment. Contemplated from a distance by certain of the Allies whose attention was absorbed by the political aspect of the matter, this method of cool calculation seemed to smack of hollow make-believe. Why, it was asked, should Italy hold back or weigh the certain losses against the probable gains, seeing that she would have as allies the two most puissant States of Europe, and the enormous advantage of ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... whether I make trouble with you or not. I'm not going to pretend and make-believe, if that's what you want. I ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... on Beppo's make-believe grave in the garden, and Fronto's problems filled the vacuum in their hearts. Fronto gave his lessons to Marcus, and Marcus gave them to Faustina—thus do we keep things ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... struggle for that time. His glare of wrath at Banks had been followed by one last yearning look at Brenda, and some sentimental realisation of his loss rose and choked him, temporarily superseding the powers both of make-believe and instinct. One lesson he had learnt at Harrow and Oxford so thoroughly that he re-acted to it even in this supreme crisis of his life. He might give expression to brutal passion, but in no circumstances whatever must he break down and weep ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... portrait of the Old Senior Surgeon. "I had to," she said at last. "When a person is born with absolutely nothing—nothing of the human things a human baby is entitled to—she has to evolve something to live in; a sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all over it to keep prodding away life as it really is. If she didn't the things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp—just skin ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... nonsense of Maggie's, smashing the earwig at once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Maggie and say, "Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... which was loose and heavy, slip from her finger into the pool. It had lodged endwise between two pebbles, and she had taken some minutes to find it. "As for these," she said, "the flowers are all done, but I like the leaves better. In summer our housekeeping might have been make-believe; now, with the frosts upon us, we shall have hard work, and a fire to give ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... of fasting. Moreover, I apprehend a bale of carpets on my back at every moment. We will, so please you, sup. If you and the lady whom you escort will do me the honour of sharing my table we can arrange other matters at our leisure. I have always understood that encounters before ladies are make-believe; but your experience should inform you how far that is true. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... friendship. Upon her mother's death, Alaire had been sent abroad, and there she remained while "Young Ed" attended an Eastern college. For any child the experience would have been a lonesome one, and through it the motherless Texas girl had grown into an imaginative, sentimental person, living in a make-believe world, peopled, for the most part, with the best-remembered figures of romance and fiction. There were, of course, some few flesh-and-blood heroes among the rest, and of these the finest and the noblest had been "Young ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... come as he would, unquestioned, unblamed. He thought with a pitying horror of what his life had previously been—the tangle of small engagements, the silly routine work, in which no one believed; they had all been bound on a kind of make-believe pilgrimage, carrying burdens round and round, and putting them down where they had ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... forward to the footlights, pouring into the helpless mass before them repeated volleys of explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe, and, in the opinion of Signor G——, at least, very much inferior to it. Instead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feathered and looped, these irregulars wore huge sombreros, much the worse for time and weather, flapped over their faces. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... lost his voice for weeks may get it back as soon as the physician has looked into his larynx with a mirror and has held an electrode without battery connection on the throat. Another way of helping by make-believe methods is to give the impression that a decided improvement is noticeable. The uneducated patient believes it easily when the physician at his very entrance into the office expresses his surprise about the external symptoms of a change for the better, perhaps seen in the color of the skin or the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... his anger against his wife for more than a week after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order that he might make progress ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... beans, the Indian corn on the cob, the pea-soup, and the bread baked in the roadside oven, with a relish which was not all pretence; for indeed he was as primitive as he was subtle. He himself could not have told how much of him was true and how much was make-believe. But he was certainly lovable, and he was not bad by nature. Since coming to St. Saviour's he had been constant to one attraction, and he had not risked his chances with Zoe by response to the shy invitations ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... merely, but "noble patriotism" as well; "a true English heart breathes, calm and strong through the whole business ... this man (Shakespeare) too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that." I find no valour in it, deathless or otherwise; but the make-believe of valour, the completest proof that valour was absent. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... again. It did not strike her as strange. She took it as naturally as any other incident of everyday life-so dry and apathetic had her mind become during the last few moments. Only the world and love seemed to her as a void and make-believe from beginning to end. Even the memory of the protestations of love, which her husband had made to her in days past, brought to her lips a dry, hard, joyless smile, like a sharp cruel knife which had cut through her heart. She was thinking, perhaps, that the love which seemed ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... and for all, that, by tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his hair, and listened to the soothing noise it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... plastiques. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius, Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a plaster ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a laugh, slap him on the back, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... too," said Fred soberly. "But I guess it's hard work to be the real thing. Maude must be a make-believe ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... for another year," murmured Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "We can have a make-believe county fair and charge admission, and ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... long in arriving, and when it did come around Calvin Gray regretted that he had elected to play a game of make-believe with "Miss Good," for she rigidly held him to his promise, and however adroitly he undertook to ascertain who or what she was, she foiled him. It gave her a mischievous pleasure to evade his carefully laid conversational ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... a little make-believe world for himself as he sat with a blanket hugged close about him, staring into the fire. In a hundred different ways he saw her face, a will-o-the-wisp thing amid the flames; an illusive, very girlish, almost childish face—yet always with the light of a woman's soul shining in it. That was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... still water of jungle pools, and the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast, radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory, climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself, and almost always impress his brother, with ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... With Meg, enthusiastic make-believe had never wholly given place to common sense. Throughout the long, hard days of her childhood and early apprenticeship to a rather unkindly world she had pretended joyously, and invented for herself all sorts of imaginary ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... great hunter. He knew well how to track the deer and buffalo. Every day he came home carrying on his back some wild game. This kept mother badger very busy, and the baby badgers very chubby. While the well-fed children played about, digging little make-believe dwellings, their mother hung thin sliced meats upon long willow racks. As fast as the meats were dried and seasoned by sun and wind, she packed them carefully away in ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa

... special thought to this matter, most of us grown-ups do not appreciate how very real the child's world of make-believe is to him, and how essential to his happiness that we do not break into it rudely. When one of my boys was two and a half years old he was one day playing with an imaginary baby sister. A member of the household came into the room, whereupon he immediately ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... criticism, more or less skilful. There must be a struggle for existence among opinions, as among all other things, and the egoist is content to send the children of his thought into the thick of the fray, confident that the fittest will survive. Only he is not so childish as to make-believe that an impersonal dignified something-not-himself that makes for the ink-pot is speaking—and not he himself, he "with his little I." The affectation of modesty is perhaps the most ludicrous of all human shams. I ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its believing and make-believe nature—a vessel (An untranslatable pun,—dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... thieving, no drunkenness, no abject poverty. They are not more perfect than others of human kind, but according to their light and sphere they are as good as a similar average of whites anywhere. The wise purpose is to make them kind, moral, educated and industrious Indians, not make-believe white men, and the work is doing and promising well in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... old story of the way in which the prisoners in the time of the French Revolution used to behave? The tumbrils came every morning and carried off a file of them to the guillotine, and the rest of them had a ghastly make-believe of carrying on the old frivolities of the life of the salons and of society. And it lasted for an hour or two, but the tumbril came next morning all the same, and the guillotine stood there gaping in the Place. And ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... as pretty a little make-believe as ever I saw!" laughed the brutal Thorg, now perfectly at his ease, and gloating over her beauty, and helplessness, and, deadly terror. "As pretty a little sham as ever ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... awake in the night, are caused by mice running about and playing behind the wainscot: and what reasonable person would suffer themselves to be alarmed by such little creatures as those? But it is time I should return to the history of my little make-believe companion, who ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... absurdities of a made-up theology and a make-believe religion: and the Utopia designed by Comte was as impracticable and unattractive as Utopias generally are. But the critical and destructive part of the case was sound enough. Here was a man who challenged the existing order of society and pronounced it wrong. It was in his view based ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... but they must be white dresses, I think,—Amelia is such an innocent little thing," laughed T.O. softly. It was odd how they always laughed or talked softly when it was about little make-believe Amelia. ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... road he mused deeply. It was a knock-down blow, surely. He was a just man, so far as he knew, and as he studied the situation over he could not blame the girl. In the light of her convincing wrath he comprehended that the sharp things she had said to him in the past were not make-believe-not love taps, but real blows. She had not been coquetting. with him; she had tried to keep him away. She considered herself too good for a hired man. Well, maybe she' was. Anyhow, she had gone out ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... words spoken from under the brim of her hat (oh yes, certainly, her head was down—she had put it down) gave me a thrill; for indeed I had never doubted her sincerity. It could never have been a make-believe despair. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... horses, with almost human intelligence, were wild to be off. Riders could scarcely gain saddles, and before feet were well in the stirrups, the bronchos had reared and bolted away, only to be reined sharply in and brought back to the ranks. The dogs, too, were mad, tearing after make-believe enemies and worrying one another till there were several curs less for the hunt. Inside the cart circle, men were shouting last orders to women, squaws scolding half-naked urchins, that scampered in the way, and the whole encampment ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... this was going to be something exciting," replied Tom, motioning toward the book he had discarded. "But say! the make-believe adventures that fellow had, weren't anything compared to those we went through in the city of gold, or while rescuing the ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... images, and take off and put on garments at your prayers, and kneel down in a make-believe, profane way: and don't you turn ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... quickly out into the light and confronted her. "It's not only your going. You know what's the matter with me. It's because you want to go. You are glad of a chance to get away among all those preachers, with their smooth talk and make-believe." ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... true feelings under a mask? I suppose it is lest the world give a wrong meaning to them; but if I had kissed him, the way I used to, I'm sure that Donald would have understood. He knows that I love him as dearly as though I were truly his sister, instead of a make-believe one." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... of the theatre is simply due to the fact that the majority of human beings retain the child's love of "make-believe" but are too unimaginative to create a dream-world for themselves. Having lost the child's power of creation, a more material dream-world has to be elaborately constructed for them, with every adjunct that can heighten the sense of illusion, an element the unimaginative are unable to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... than obscurity—besides which there was another sort of contrast, for a soldier hat on Janet was a striking foil for her utter femininity. And its romantic pretense (so different from the dark gypsy-like romantic) was such an arrant little piece of make-believe that it had the effect of playful candor, acknowledging how impossible a man she would make; and while it was, strikingly, a pure case of art for art's sake, you could not but remark how much better she looked in it than any soldier could ever have done. To tell the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... are in bed. The very worldly minded and the young are on deck reluctantly finishing the last dance under a canopy of make-believe cherry blossoms and wistaria. I am on the deck between, closing this letter to you which I will mail in Yokohama in a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... are not impelled of their own motion to shape some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may in large measure be overborne by the more immediately constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress reform, in proficiency ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... the molten iron kneaded like dough, and planed and shaved like wood; he gets the dead and dissected body in the one case; he sees and feels the living spirit and body working as one, in the other. And upon all this child's-play, this mere make-believe, our good-natured nation is proud of spending some half-million of money. Then there is that impertinent, useless, and unjust system of establishing Government Schools of Design in so many of our towns, avowedly, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... count 'Uncle Tom' or 'Ten Nights in a Barroom,' or some of those other plays that come to Bayport," she added. "I suppose I'm making a perfect fool of myself laughin' and cryin' over what's nothin' but make-believe, but I can't help it. Isn't it splendid, Hosy! I wonder what Father would say if he could know that his daughter was really travelin'—just goin' to Europe! He used to worry a good deal, in his last years, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... "That's my make-believe grandfather. My truly real one has been dead for ages. Then papa died, and fin'ly mother, which left us to dig for ourselves. We were worse off than you, 'cause there were six of us and not one knew how to write stories for money. I guess we'd all have starved to death or gone to the poor farm ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove but a lying and treacherous ally—and for more reasons ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... standard was not, to an excessive degree, a standard of subtlety rather than of creative imagination—at least, in his later period. And undoubtedly his subtlety was to some extent a matter of make-believe. He loved to take a simple conversation, and, by introducing a few subtle changes, to convert it into a sort of hieroglyphics that need an interpreter. He grew more and more to believe that it was not possible to tell the simple truth except in ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... should I hear of any situation which you can fill with advantage, I will not fail to let you know, and I hope that your father and the Colonel will approve of your accepting it; you know that I mean what I say, and therefore do not look upon it as a mere make-believe promise." ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... and then another, brought them back rudely from a make-believe wood near Athens to a peril-haunted park in an English county. For the second time that night Sylvia knew what fear meant. Intuitively, she shrank close to the strong man who seemed destined to be her protector; ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... What good can that do? At least we were make-believe friends before. Suppose I were to tell you that I care, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... we often hear of hobgoblins and dragons and like fearful beings, and we think of them as make-believe creatures, and sometimes are afraid of them, even though if we are questioned we say we know they do not really exist. But in Raphael's day, dragons were by no means unreal things to people. Some thought they had seen ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... glorious, happy, make-believe days too soon came to an end. The swinging cane of the great John Thomas Corlett, and the rod of a yet more relentless tyrant, darkened the sunshine of both the children. Pete was banished from school, and Catherine's father ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... I kept silent. "Tell me, tell me!" she insisted. "I saw my mother in a dream." "Is she alive yet?" I told a lie. I said my mother was long dead. "And what did she tell you?" "She said that . . . ." "Tell me, tell me!" "I cannot repeat that in Russian." "Then say it in Yiddish." I looked with make-believe surprise at Anna. "She said: 'I shall come to Anna at night and choke her, if she doesn't give up abusing you.'" At this Anna turned red. I continued: "And she said also, 'Anna ought to have pity ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... It will do you good, too, or you'll become a dull boy with nothing but work, work, work. You needn't tell me the world was only made to work in. If it was, I've no business here. You must think up something spicy, and no make-believe. I want to go somewhere where I can laugh with my whole heart. I can't go on much longer at this old humdrum, monotonous jog, any more than your colts up at the farm could go around like the plow-horses, and I ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... I have personally gone through. I once wrote an essay on our right to believe, which I unluckily called the WILL to Believe. All the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The "will to deceive," the "will to make-believe," were wittily ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... morality have no place in satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy to be other than satiric. We know what happened when the dramatists gave way: there followed, Hazlitt says, 'those do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath.' These in place of 'the court, the gala day of wit and pleasure, of ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... held a burden of responsibility. Hamilton was a quiet fellow enough in ordinary; but now nobody was more ready for all the life of the play. He threw himself back into an attitude of irresolution and perplexity, with the letter in his hand which had brought the fatal news; that is, it was the make-believe letter, though it was in reality only the New York Evening Post. And Daisy thought his attitude was very absurd; but they all declared it was admirable and exactly copied from the engraving. He threw ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... cases, we have to do, not with the general culture of the people with the utterances of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and fashionable make-believe. For with many, antiquity was only a fashion, even ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... to pay sufficient attention to its development. It is well known that imagination is the creative power of the mind which gives life to all work, so that without it Newton would never have found the law of gravitation, nor Columbus have discovered America. The world of make-believe is filled with delight for the small child. He loves stories of imaginary adventure that he can act out ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman

... Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; The manna gathered yesterday Already savors of decay; Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown Question us now from star and stone; Too little or too much we know, And sight is swift and faith is slow; The power is lost to self-deceive With shallow forms of make-believe. We walk at high noon, and the bells Call to a thousand oracles, But the sound deafens, and the light Is stronger than our dazzled sight; The letters of the sacred Book Glimmer and swim beneath our look; ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... find one of the busy sawyers. The bark was strong, but presently it seemed to come up of its own accord, and out jumped the queerest little man they had ever seen or even heard of except in make-believe story-books. Buster John dropped his knife, and down it went into the wood-pile. He could hear it go rattling from log to log nearly to the bottom. Sweetest Susan gave a little screech. Drusilla ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... in that? How does he know what's in your heart? He doesn't need to understand that your action is make-believe, and not sincere. You'll see, after such actions, he'll believe in you so much that even though you made love before his very eyes, he wouldn't ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... creature of the woods, with flowing hair; your mother a natural parent, who resigns herself cheerfully and becomingly to age, whose face is coloured uniquely by the sun, despising as much as you yourself surely do those petty tricks of make-believe,—those cosmetics and hair-dyes, that don't even deceive the coarsest chauffeur on the road,—and realising the charm of her years as much as she admires the beauty of yours. It makes me boil to see you ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... rather have me," he laughed. "I've often wondered at that myself. I suppose," he puzzled it out, "I do a good lot of make-believe. While I'm playing a game like this game to-night, I IMAGINE the stakes are huge. And I IMAGINE I haven't another ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm

... must be so, I'll try to be worthy of my soldier and not disgrace you, dear," she said fondly, bravely. "Let's try to forget it for a while and not let it spoil our last hours together. Let's 'make-believe,' as the children say. Let's pretend that this is all a hideous nightmare, that our lives and our love ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... they caused their respective families to telephone and give parties and visit back and forth, and to discuss openly their most private affairs and move into new houses and make improvements and purchases that would have wrecked Rockefeller if the bills had ever fallen due. That is the glory of make-believe—one may go as far as he likes, building his castles and his kingdoms, with never a cent to pay. It is only when one tries to realize in acres and bricks and shingles that the accounts come in. A spiritistic friend of mine told me recently that the latest communications from ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... himself. He began with calling his daughter, in various discordant keys, and with such a variety of impatient and exasperated intonation, that the whole room was full of laughter. His daughter not appearing nor answering, he next instituted a make-believe search for her, feigning to go into the kitchen, the buttery, her bedroom. Not finding her, and making a great deal of amusement for the spectators by the way, he at last comes back and asks in a deploring tone, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... Charming addition to my beauty. But it'll take half an inch off my nose, and it'll cover my mouth, which means a lot in my case. Then my complexion! It must be changed naturally. I'll consult a doctor about that. No sort of make-believe will go with this man. If my eyes look weak, they must really be so. If I walk slowly and speak huskily, it must be because I cannot help it. I can bear the slight inconvenience of temporary ill-health ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... wee hands in the fuzzy hair of the cub and pull with all his might, and the cub would growl with make-believe fury, but it seemed to know that the baby did not intend to hurt it, and did not offer to bite. When the baby pulled its ears too hard, it ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... guess that there was much Upani@sad influence in this interpretation of Buddhism, which compares so favourably with the Vedanta as interpreted by S'a@nkara. The La@nkavatara admitted a reality only as a make-believe to attract the Tairthikas (heretics) who had a prejudice in favour of an unchangeable self (atman). But As'vagho@sa plainly admitted an unspeakable reality as the ultimate truth. Nagarjuna's Madhyamika doctrines which eclipsed the profound philosophy of As'vagho@sa seem to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and it is hard to make-believe to Him. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... approach. Vernon King, to whom I have in another part of this record alluded, at that time doing his baccalaureat on the other side of the Seine and coming over to our world at scraps of moments (for I recall my awe of the tremendous nature, as I supposed it, of his toil), as to quite a make-believe and gingerbread place, the lightest of substitutes for the "Europe" in which he had been from the first so technically plunged. His mother and sister, also on an earlier page referred to, had, from their distance, committed him to the great city ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... Europe. It is much to say. We shall not see it, but our children will. The Government is going to conquer the people. She has done so already in certain provinces, and in a few years the reform—deep and real, not the make-believe we see in many parts of the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping, while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to other matter. Notice also," I continued, holding up the scrap of paper between her and the light, "that the alignment on one side is not exactly ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... seen in the lumber-room, hanging upon some pegs high upon the wall, a row of old bonnets, and a black one among them. Other black things could be had for the hunting. I was a fanciful child, too used to conjuring up weird situations and make-believe happenings to be easily scared by what other children might dread. Nor was I then, or ever, a physical coward. As soon as the idea of visiting that upper room came to me I acted upon it. Tripping up the narrow stairs, I pushed hard ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... exclaimed Babe, as soon as she could control her laughter, "that rock didn't tetch ole Blue. He's sech a make-believe, I'm a great mind to hit him a clip jest to show you how he ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... her voice. "For after all you can't make them real. I play school with them. I read them stories. I dress them and take them out riding, but I have to do the talking for them and sometimes it gets so dull. There's too much make-believe. I shall be glad when summer comes and there won't be any bad boys next door. What do you suppose God did with them? They couldn't like heaven, you know, for there they have to be good all the time. And there are so many ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... voice, and by and by the people began to sing, and she rose solemnly, as if it were her own parishioners in the garden who lifted up their voices. A cheerful robin began a loud solo in one of Dr. Leslie's cherry-trees, and the little girl laughed aloud in her make-believe meeting-house, and then the gate was opened and shut, and the doctor himself appeared, strolling along, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... as well to let them take their time about it," remarked Captain Link. "These Moros always get very much worked up in their war-dances, and occasionally they forget that it is all make-believe and send a spear into a spectator. It's safer to leave them alone. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... telephone station to another. Suppose also that Z{1} is a telephone line exactly like Z{2} except that it doesn't go anywhere at all because it is all shut up in a little box. We'll call Z{1} an artificial telephone line. We ought to call it, as little children would say, a "make-believe" telephone line. It doesn't fool us but it does fool the electrons for they can't tell the difference between the real line Z{2} and the artificial line Z{1}. We can make a very good artificial line by using ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... Grizel what Aaron had said and what Elspeth had said. He could keep nothing from her now; he was done with the world of make-believe for ever. And it seemed wicked of him to hope, he declared, or to let her hope. "I ought to give you up, Grizel," he said, with ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... laughed Freddie. "You ought to have seen that monkey's face when he bit on those make-believe cherries on Flossie's hat!" and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope

... the blueness of the sea seems almost unnatural, and the golden greens of the pretty little gardens among the houses seem perhaps a trifle theatrical; but the fisher-folk play their parts too well, and there is nothing make-believe about the delicious bread-and-butter and the newly-baked cakes which accompany the tea awaiting us in a spotlessly ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... we would have to suffer. He said that they'd get you, too, before mornin' an' that we'd all be hanged as rebels an' traitors to Mexico. He laughed at the way he fooled us. He said that spat he had with Sandoval was only make-believe. He said that we'd never get San Antonio; that he'd kept Cos informed about all our movements an' that Santa Anna was comin' with a great army. He said that most of us would be chawed right up, an' that them ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... obstinate; but I thank God I am more wilful and obstinate than you. I am sick of this fencing and diplomacy and irony. You know what I am—I am not at all the fine gentleman that leaned his head on the chimney-breast—that was make-believe and foolishness. I am a bully and a brute—you ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... the boat for a while, talking make-believe out-on-the-ocean talk, hauling sails and working the helm. Turly was captain, and Terry had to be the entire ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland

... of ten or twelve years of age have passed the "make-believe" stage of play; they want the "real," but of their own kind and age. After little children have made and played with toys and foreshadowed the needs of the actual home, the time has come for the youth to have his demands, which are not yet the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... little tree or town; making a journey of lazy discovery in a sort of world of Prince Charmings, the real realm of the "Faery Queen," quite different in enchantment from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with its pale allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical, and its make-believe allegorical ogres and giants. This is the real Fairyland, this of Boiardo: no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real, playfully cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as paladins and Amazons, and making ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... grind something a great deal better than that," cried Kitty. "I'd grind a real piano, and I'd learn to play on it my own self. I wouldn't have any old make-believe music-boxes to ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... shy for make-believe, but this time she was stirred to stand with her fat doll-arms akimbo, and to retort, "You'll get nothing here, young fellow. This is a place for ladies ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... prevents our putting one unpleasant question to you, anyway. I knew that your innuendo in the cabin was all make-believe." ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... is the last place that lends itself to decoration. Death is the crowning evil, the absolute bankruptcy, the final defeat, the endless exile. Let us not shut our eyes to this. The skeptic often tells us that he will have no "make-believe." Let us have no "make-believe" about death. Let us candidly apprehend death for all that it is of mystery and bitterness, and reconcile ourselves to it, if reconciliation be possible. If we are foolish enough to shut the gate on the thought of death, by no stratagem can we shut the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... with elaborate detail, until every waking moment of Jinny's day was accounted for. It was absorbing to Isabelle, and it was a satisfaction for Ann to have this outlet for her homesickness. So it began, but it grew to be a significant make-believe, for as the days went by, she discovered that Isabelle could be absolutely ruled by her imagination. The new game was called "Playing Jinny." She began to dust the nursery chairs and to pick up toys and playthings. She demanded ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... I don't know that our republican friend there spoke what is every thoughtful man's verdict upon me? (They are silent.) But how could I possibly undertake my task, as long as I believed everything to be make-believe and falsehood, without exception? Now I know the root of the falsehood! It is in our institutions; he was quite right. And one kind of falsehood begets another. You cannot imagine how ludicrous it appeared to me—who up till then had led such a sinful, miserable existence—when ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... callers under observation. At my expressing some surprise that this was necessary, I was met with the oracular reply that though it wasn't talked about, such an arrangement would be found "in every office in London." Of a piece with this half-reality, half make-believe, with which, as I say, Townsend transformed his quiet life into one long and thrilling adventure, was a remark which I remember his making in the course of a most innocent country walk: "If the country people ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite must inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the truth versus make-believe. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... replied Toby, quickly; "but you see that was a real one, an' this of ours is only a little make-believe for three cents. We want to get you to let us have the lot between the barn an' the road to put our tent on, an' then lend us old Whitey. We're goin' to have Jack Douglass's hoss that's blind, an' we've got a three-legged cat, an' one without any ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... you were the Queen of Make-believe And I were a Prince o' Dream, We'd dress the world in a rich romance With Pans a-piping and Queens that dance, With plume and mantle and rapier ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... with these make-believe dudes," he shouted. "That's the kid old Skin Flint Crawford took out of an orphan asylum. He's a kid that old Crawford took up with because he was too mean t' have t' Lord bless him with one o' his own. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... much courteous make-believe of amiable and upright solicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomatic intercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is a matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of course, that no overt recognition ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... hunters at the temporary camp were aroused to a high pitch of excitement. Some turned their buffalo robes and put them on in such a way as to convert themselves into make-believe bison, and began to tread the snow, while others were singing the buffalo song, that their spirits might be charmed and allured within the circle of the camp-fires. The scout, too, was singing his buffalo bull song in a guttural, lowing ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... at him in her direct serious fashion. "I fink I tan't sell you all 'at, but I'll make you a moon to go wiv the stars—not a weally twuly one, jus' a make-believe moon," ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... Real steamboat, real landing, real water, real smoke coming out of a real chimney on the steamboat. Real captain and real passengers. (It is understood that there is to be no make-believe about the fares.) A real chambermaid in the back cabin would add to the effectiveness of the scene, but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various

... contemptuous laugh. "They're going to join us, knowing, as they do, that the game is all up at Kimberley; but they put on all this make-believe. They want to be able to say that they were forced to serve, so as to hedge—so as to make it all comfortable with their consciences, as ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... noon, when the sun was shining broadly and the silken tassels of the corn were shrivelling up into make-believe tobacco for bad little boys to smoke, there was a heavy step on the garden walk, and Tom felt the signal "Snuggle!" Then he hugged as close as he could to his mother's side, and the gardener with his sharp ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed would be for that one day a gang of make-believe banditti; in another, they would constitute themselves a fife-and-drum corps—with barreltops for the drums—and would march through the streets, where scandalised adults stood in their tracks to watch them go by, they all the while making weird ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... waiting for children to get out of bed backwards. And when they do, she catches them by the heels and turns everything topsy-turvy all day long; but when you get out of bed toes first, I'll be there to start you on a pleasant day and Witchy Crosspatch will have to return to Make-Believe Land and hide her head!" "Sure enough, I did crawl out of bed backwards this ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... and a garden in which to grow a few vegetables. Our life was to be spent in continual contemplation, one praying while the other engaged in active duties. All was done with religious gravity and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... She even gave him a quick, friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at her. And yet the moment after he knew that it was all make-believe. His anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile and afraid of pain. Now that she had gone out of the barren little room she had taken with her the sense of a secret, gracious intimacy which had been its warmth and colour. He saw that the sunlight had shrunk to a pale gold ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie



Words linked to "Make-believe" :   imagination, imaging, unreal, make believe, feigning, simulation, pretending, imagery, mental imagery, pretend



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