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More "Delusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horses to a gallop. Again thin smoke lines arose from the prairie and simultaneously the wigwam began to vanish. I had almost concluded the tepee was one of those delusive mirages which lead prairie riders on fools' errands, when I descried figures mounting ponies where the peaked camp had stood. At this we lashed our horses to faster pace. The Sioux galloped off and more ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... this, that we, thus unsuspecting, should be led away by delusive joy; that now in hope, {all} fear being removed, we might during our supineness be surprised, so that there might be no time for planning a rupture of the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the untrammelled mind of man capable of these bolder conceptions, but even the wretched fool who sees in the material world the whole of what man can know, could never get so far as to think even of the delusive objects on which he pins his foolish faith, unless the very mind which he insults and misunderstands, had by its nature that infinite capacity of comprehension which, he says, exists not. For otherwise, if the mind be limited, there must be a definite ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... miles from the town, and were connected by a system of patrolling, which rendered communication from within or without almost impossible. A few messengers (natives) occasionally came into the town, but these were mostly charged with the delivery of delusive messages invented for special purposes by the Boers. There was an ever-present difficulty—that of keeping the natives in check. Many examples of Boer cruelty to these poor blacks are recorded, and they naturally shuddered at the prospect of once more being delivered ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... known, digested, tested; nothing new is left to learn When the soul, serene, reliant, Hope's delusive dreams can spurn.' ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... have fondly dreamed of Utopia and the Millennium, when we have begun almost to believe that man is not, after all, a tiger half tamed, and that the smell of blood will not wake the savage within him, we are of a sudden startled from the delusive dream, to find the thin mask of civilization rent in twain and thrown contemptuously away. We lie down to sleep, like the peasant on the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The mountain has been so long inert, that we believe its fires extinguished. Round us hang the clustering ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thought the letter written about little Miss Thompson (Horatia, be it understood) were not sufficiently delusive, he sends an equally absurd production to his niece, Charlotte Nelson, who lived a good deal at Merton, in which he says that he is "truly sensible of her attachment to that dear little orphan, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of my life from a later and relatively assured, though never prosperous condition, I can see that most of my straits in life have been owing to my having accepted the miserable and delusive advantage of an official position under my government. I was not indolent, and asked for an appointment not to escape work, but to be put in the way of work which I wanted to do; and when I was disappointed ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... otherwise of the manager, and he is therein justified. The manager's vocation is not to write plays, nor (let us hope) to act in them, nor to direct the rehearsals of them, and even his knowledge of the vagaries of his own box-office has often proved to be pitiably delusive. The manager's true and only vocation is to refrain from producing plays. Despite all this, however, the manager has already collaborated in the play. The dramatist sees it differently now. All sorts of new ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... a totally different process, not merely in degree, but in kind, from anything that takes place as a result of the invasion of the body by an infectious germ or parasite of any sort. There is a certain delusive similarity between the cancer process and an infection. But the more closely and carefully this similarity is examined the more superficial and unreal does it become. The invading germ may multiply ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... will conquer the world, for this idea is nothing but the real, well understood interest of mankind."[21] "Its principles will carry the whole human race to a higher state of perfection."[22] "It is the great modern protest against unreality, against the delusive shams which now masquerade as verities."[23] "Socialism is of the character of a historical discovery."[24] "Socialism, the inspiring principle of all Labour Parties, whether they know it or not, is the next world movement—the movement ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... name to portals twain; One all of horn, they say, Through which authentic spectres gain Quick exit into day, And one which bright with ivory gleams, Whence Pluto sends delusive dreams. Conversing still, the sire attends The travellers on their road, And through the ivory portal sends From forth the unseen abode. The chief betakes him to the fleet, Well pleased again his crew to meet. CONINGTON, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... would have me look upon you and live!" Lord Etherington remained standing, as if uncertain whether to advance or retreat, while with incredible rapidity she poured out her hurried entreaties that he would begone, sometimes addressing him as a real personage, sometimes, and more frequently, as a delusive phantom, the offspring of her own excited imagination. "I knew it," she muttered, "I knew what would happen, if my thoughts were forced into that fearful channel.—Speak to me, brother! speak to me while I have reason left, and tell me that what ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... on her separate idea. Mrs Forrester's start was made on the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether I thought he was meant for the Great Lama, though Peter was not so ugly, indeed rather handsome, if he had not been freckled. I was thankful to see her double upon Peter; but, in a moment, the delusive lady was off upon Rowland's Kalydor, and the merits of cosmetics and hair oils in general, and holding forth so fluently that I turned to listen to Miss Pole, who (through the llamas, the beasts of burden) had got to Peruvian bonds, and the share market, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye, Like him, led on, to triumph and to die; Like him, by mighty magic compass'd round, And seeking sceptres on enchanted ground. Such spells invest, such blear illusion waits The trav'ller bound for Fame's receding gates, Delusive splendours gild the proud abode, But lurking demons haunt th' alluring road; There gaunt-eyed Want asserts her iron reign, There, as in vengeance of the world's disdain, This half-flesh'd hag midst Wit's bright blossoms stalks, And, breathing winter, withers where she walks; Though there, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Sink from twilight's walls of gray,— From the window of my dreaming, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming Down the locust-shaded way; But away, swift away, Fades the fond, delusive seeming, And I kneel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... It has fluttered, a delusive vision, before our men since the start. "Is it true that the cavalry are through?" I suppose that was another delusion, that riding down of a flying foe by horsemen. But it was not only the stretcher-bearers ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... concealment of the grave. Ay—the grave! Delightful haven to pigeon-hearted malefactors—inconsistent criminals, who fear the puny look of mortal man, and, unabashed, stalk beneath the eternal and the killing frown of God. Michael fixed upon his remedy, and the delusive opiate gave him temporary ease; but, in an another instant, he derived even hope and consolation from another and altogether opposite view of things. A thought suddenly occurred to him, as thoughts will occur to the tossed and working mind—how, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Rut. Delusive dream of fancied happiness! And has my fatal fondness then destroy'd thee? Oh, have I lured thee to the deadly snare Thy cruel foes have laid? I dreaded Cecil's malice, and my heart, Longing to see thee, with impatience ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... been a conspiracy of delusive kindness from the day Wesley entered Rosedale. The frankness and kindliness of the Atterburys had been assumed to lure him to his fatal adventure. Boone himself believed that Jack's ignoble ambition and envy had been the main ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the Reformers of French origin, on the part of Sir Allan MacNab and the Upper Canada Conservatives. The Ministerial strength lay in the support which it received from the British party of Lower Canada, and from the majority of the Upper Canada Reformers."[41] Well might Sydenham speak of the delusive nature of the party nicknames borrowed by his ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... human kind; How just that scorn, ere yet thy voice declare, Search ev'ry state, and canvass ev'ry pray'r. [i]Unnumber'd suppliants crowd preferment's gate, Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great; Delusive fortune hears th' incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman's door Pours in the morning worshipper no more; For ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... respect the just pretensions of mankind; in proportion as they are willing to sustain, in their own persons, the burden of government, and of national defence; and are willing to prefer the engagements of a liberal mind to the enjoyment of sloth, or the delusive hopes of a safety purchased ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... put in circulation almost at will, and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of steam in a boiler, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in its words. You are happy because you have sold a poem, probably for more than it is worth. But why do you praise spring? What do you fellows do it for? You know perfectly well that it is the most capricious, the most treacherous, the most delusive, deadly, slatternly, down-at-heels, milkmaid-handed season of the year, without decision of character or fixed principles, and with only the vaguest raw-girlish ideals, a red nose between crazy smiles ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Hereupon Josephus, who hitherto suspected nothing of John's plots against him, wrote to the governors of the city, that they would provide a lodging and necessaries for John; which favors, when he had made use of, in two days' time he did what he came about; some he corrupted with delusive frauds, and others with money, and so persuaded them to revolt from Josephus. This Silas, who was appointed guardian of the city by Josephus, wrote to him immediately, and informed him of the plot against him; which ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... part in the world of thought, seem to me to be invalidated by this same defect, to have no content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable content. For example, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses me as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it is really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that the thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and relationships, that knowledge is comprehension, and so ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... films overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock sun—a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals by four globes—seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron which shed enchantment for one hour over the white ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... shop out of London?' said my father; and for some time he succeeded in making us sit for the delusive picture of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... surprise We see Britannia's monarch rise, A godlike form, by thee displayed In all the force of light and shade; And, awed by thy delusive hand, As in the presence-chamber stand. The magic of thy art calls forth His secret soul and hidden worth, His probity and mildness shows, His care of friends and scorn of foes: 10 In every stroke, in every line, Does some exalted virtue ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... my fault," she said to herself; "I was placed here to help them, and I have neglected that very clear duty by giving way to delusive fancies." ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... our lovely Westover summer days as things we could not have any more of. And when you begin to feel that about anything, it would be a relief to have had the last of it. Nothing lasts always; but we like to have the forever-and-ever feeling, however delusive. A child hates his Sunday clothes, because he knows he cannot put them on ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second editions another ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... the chemist's workshop, taken for granted in Paracelsus, are now painted with a realism reminiscent of Romeo's Apothecary and The Alchemist. And the outward drama of intrigue, completely effaced in Paracelsus by the inward drama of soul, sounds delusive scorn and laughter in the background, the more sinister because it is not seen. These lyrics and romances are "dramatic" not only in the sense that the speakers express, as Browning insisted, other minds and sentiments than his own, but in the more legitimate sense that they are ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... time of inhalation of a foreign body may be unknown or forgotten. 2. Cough and purulent expectoration ultimately result, although there may be a delusive protracted symptomless interval. [130] 3. Periodic attacks of fever, with chills and sweats, and followed by increased coughing and the expulsion of a large amount of purulent, usually more or less foul material, are so nearly diagnostic of foreign body as to call for exclusion of this ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... rush towards the child,—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began,—to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,—not so much from overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the young the joys of personal exuberance; it is all honeycombed, or rather, filled (like champagne) with the generous gaseousness of self-analysis, self-accusation, self-pity, self-righteousness, and autobiography. The poor mortal, in that delusive sense of sympathy and perfect understanding which comes of perfect indifference to one's neighbour's presence, has quicker pulses, higher temperature, more vigorous movements than are compatible with the sober sense of human unimportance. In conversation, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Liberalism had done for them. The Socialists of practical politics, the Labour Party, found that they could by no means dispense with the discipline of Cobden. Free Trade finance was to be the basis of social reform. Liberalism and Labour learned to co-operate in resisting delusive promises of remedies for unemployment and in maintaining the right of free international exchange. Meanwhile, Labour itself had experienced the full brunt of the attack. It had come not from the politicians ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... in the open forest near St. Germain-en-Laye on a particular day. All the members of this party were in the secret, except a certain lady, here designated by the title of the Countess de B. who was pitched upon as a proper person for Monsieur St. Gille's delusive powers, as she knew nothing either of him or of ventriloquism; and possibly for another reason, which the Abbe, through politeness, suppresses. She had been told in general, that this party had been formed in consequence ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... as you call it, are delusive," the Tenor answered. "I just happened to have money enough to furnish my house when I came here; but I am a very poor man now. I have little or nothing, in fact, but my salary for singing in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... passed. But the deeper reason for all this clamour from the rural districts was the stagnation of ideas, and incapacity of improvement, engendered by an artificial monopoly of the national food supply. This was not the special lesson impressed upon landlords or tenants by Cobbett, whose violent and delusive writings had a large circulation in the country. But his teaching was so far beneficial that it quickened the demand for parliamentary reform, though the fruits of that reform were destined to be very different from the expectations ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... has no other guide than the vague terms employed to designate the time to be taken, and his own instinct, his feeling—more or less distinguishing, more or less just—of the author's style. We are compelled to admit that these guides are too often insufficient and delusive. Of this we have proof in seeing how old operas are given in towns where the traditional mode of performance no longer exists. In ten different kinds of time, there will always be at least four taken wrongly. I once heard a chorus of Iphigenia in Tauride ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... is to say, upon human actions? The former of these propositions you would be as unwilling to admit as your friend Wesley, or the old Welshman Pelagius himself. The latter leaves you little other foundation for your opinion than a desire, which, from its very benevolence, is the more likely to be delusive. You are in ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... another. He stretched himself on the sofa; his good friend considerately took up a newspaper. For the first time that day, he had now the prospect of a quiet interval for rest and thought. In less than a minute the delusive prospect vanished. He started to his feet again, disturbed by a new anxiety. Having leisure to think, he had thought of Regina. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed; "she's waiting to see me—and I never remembered it till this moment!" He looked at his watch: ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... they were furious. Even the moderate Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a second civil war. But 'death cut the inextricable knot.' His deadly disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom. His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the sight. It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of his office. He asked to be recalled; ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... pondering over the meaning of this dream, and was struck at the amount of truth in it. I thought—How fair are the promises of the world to begin with, and how delusive and disappointing they are at the end! Of course, Satan, the god of this world, will make the way to hell as bright and pleasing as he possibly can; and if people take outward circumstances and pleasing prospects for indications of safety, they wilfully lay themselves ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... saddened face and battered hat And eye that told of blank despair, On wooden bench the traveller sat, Cursing the fate that brought him there. "Nine hours," he cried, "we've lingered here With thoughts intent on distant homes, Waiting for that delusive train That, always coming, never comes: Till weary, worn, Distressed, forlorn, And paralyzed in every function! I hope in hell His soul may dwell Who first invented ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... love passages with Dora, and his social unbendings with Mr. Micawber. Regaling the latter inimitable personage, and his equally inimitable wife, together with David's old schoolfellow, Tradelles, on a banquet of boiled leg of mutton, very red inside and very pale outside, as well as upon a delusive pigeon-pie, the crust of which was like a disappointing phrenological head, "full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath," David afforded us the opportunity of realising, within a very ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of Hope, until our enemies shall have bound ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... in the sphere of liberty and social enjoyment and among those who did not believe that wine was a mocker, but something to make glad the heart and give joy to the countenance; and when it began to flow he was among the first to taste its delusive sweets. Blanche, for whom he poured a glass of champagne, took it from his hand, but with only half a smile on her lips, which was veiled by something so like pain or fear that Ellis felt as if the lights about him had suddenly lost a portion of their brilliancy. He stood holding his own glass, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... question in Congress, leading to hopes of cheap money, and the higher prices due to this temporary and delusive stimulus; the large gross railroad earnings, demand for structural iron; the Buenos Ayres crisis, leading London to ship us large amounts of our securities; our small wheat, oats, and corn crops, and large cotton crop; the tariff discussion, ending with the McKinley Bill on October ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... it seems," he muttered, "who forever appears in my path to snatch from me every prize I set my heart on, is secretly an officer in the British service, commissioned, probably, to head a regiment of tories, whom he is now by his false statements and delusive promises, attempting to gather from the weak and wavering of our overawed people. This must be instantly made known. Heavens! what effrontery!—to be playing the spy under the garb of pretended neutrality, and seducing away the deluded men under our ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... to Louis Bonaparte's temporary success, Kossuth argued, that it would secure, when France makes her next move for freedom, two results beneficial to liberty: First, that in future, the French republicans would abandon their delusive and disastrous Centralization. We have shown (said he) in Hungary, that for a nation to be invincible, its life must not be bound up with its metropolis. Henceforward, in European aspirations, centralization is replaced by federative harmony. I thank Louis Napoleon for it. Your principles ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... all that, it will be seen that there were plenty of the same set to attest upon oath that I saw my brother every day during this period; that I persecuted him, with my presence day and night, while all the time I never saw his face save in a delusive dream. I cannot comprehend what manoeuvres my illustrious friend was playing off with them about this time; for he, having the art of personating whom he chose, had peradventure deceived them, else many of them had never all attested the same thing. I never saw any man so steady in his ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... thing to do. "Let me only get there," he had said with the fatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, "and the rest is but a matter of time and energy." It would have been far better for him in every way if he had never come within sight and sound of the delusive precincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in true perspective. Well, all that was clear to him amounted to this, that the whole scheme had burst up, like an iridescent soap-bubble, under the touch ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all has been dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says, "Well, the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free country ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... poison too drained; Ah! 'twas all delusive, for sorrows would come, Oh, 'tis home where the heart is, where the heart is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... reviving what had always been an imperium in imperio, but now uncontrolled by the previous conditions of political subjection, seemed ominous; and besides, there was cherished the hope, ill-founded and delusive though it was, that the integrity of the empire as a self-sufficing whole, broken by recent revolt, might be restored by strong measures, coercive towards the commerce of the United States, and protective towards Canada ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... attractive, that the senator, as he bent over the couch, though the warm, soft breath of the young girl played on his cheeks and waved the tips of his perfumed locks, could hardly imagine that the scene before him was more than a bright, delusive dream. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... innocence, under the colour of clemency to guilt. He ordered her to call on his chamberlain, Darinsson, in an hour, and she should obtain an answer. There, either seduced by paternal affection, intimidated by threats, or imposed upon by delusive and engaging promises, she exchanged her virtue for an order of release for her parent; and so satisfied was Louis with his bargain that he added her to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. Not only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of class or race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than half the world's most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed by women, from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, to the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... draws; And Fancy's flights are subject to thy laws. From Thee that bosom-spring of rapture flows, Which only Virtue, tranquil Virtue, knows. When Joy's bright sun has shed his evening ray, And Hope's delusive meteors cease to play; When clouds on clouds the smiling prospect close, Still thro' the gloom thy star serenely glows; Like yon fair orb, she gilds the brow of night With the mild magic of reflected light. The beauteous maid, that bids the world adieu, Oft of that world will snatch a ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... glowing shrine My early vows were paid; My hopes, my dreams, my heart was thine, But these are now decay'd; For thine are pinions like the wind, No trace of thee remains behind, Except, alas! thy jealous stings. Away, away! delusive power, Thou shalt not haunt my coming hour; Unless, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... idleness, the lavish professions of sentimental sympathy, and the dogged refusals of substantial help since the present Government took office. Above all, our Commissioner has provided conclusive evidence that Irish Nationalism is a mere delusive sham—a paltry euphemism for the predatory passion which a succession of professional agitators have aroused in the hearts of the people. If the Land Question could be settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... is much advanced it goes without saying that no honest physician would recommend a change of climate, and especially so great a change as to an elevation of several thousand feet; but cases do often come of their own will, cheered by the delusive hope that is characteristic of the disease, and though the result is usually a hastening of the end, yet death is generally less tedious and harassing, the sick one frequently being out enjoying the sunshine up to the last day, dying ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... and flowery cretonnes, had become altogether hateful in his eyes now. Instead of feeling grateful (as he surely ought to have been) for the one night of perfect security and comfort he had passed there, he only loathed it for the delusive peace ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... thought's bewild'ring maze, Touching the ling'ring chords of childlike feeling, With sweet harmonies of happier days: So curse I all, around the soul that windeth Its magic and alluring spell, And with delusive flattery bindeth Its victim to this dreary cell! Curs'd before all things be the high opinion, Wherewith the spirit girds itself around! Of shows delusive curs'd be the dominion, Within whose mocking sphere our sense is bound! Accurs'd of dreams the treacherous wiles, The cheat of ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past. To be at home with both his girls, and resting—for his holiday would not be over for ten days—was like old times. Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again; now Cyril ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker's portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink—then my debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and Faust's Titanic heaven-storming aspirations after absolute truth. When he is once more left alone, longing to face the mystery of life but crushed by the contempt of the Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair. He shrinks from encountering life, with its delusive joys, its pitiless injustice and its arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty—to solve the riddle of life by death. As he moves the cup of poison to his lips there comes floating through the air the chime of bells and, perhaps from some near chapel, the hymn ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... quite half the time bailing. No occupation, notwithstanding the danger, could prevent me from looking about the cauldron of angry waters, in quest of the ship. Fifty times did I fancy I saw her, and as often did the delusive idea end in disappointment. The waste of dark waters, relieved by the gleaming of the combing seas, alone met the senses. The wind blew directly down the estuary, and, in crossing its mouth, we found too much swell to receive it on our beam, and were soon ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties—as at least a negative service they can render ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... organism. It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts" investigated by the Psychical Society—such "facts" as the appearance of men at the moment of death in places remote from the scene of their decease, with such real or delusive experiences as the noises and visions in haunted houses—are familiar to savages. Without discussing these obscure matters, it may be said that they influence the thoughts even of some scientifically trained and civilised men. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... hating it. They hated it also and would have preferred some other out-door employment. So Harry's return was far more interesting than the supply of cotton, and then England might do this and that and perhaps France might interfere. That wide, slippery word "perhaps" led them into many delusive suppositions. ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... put together, at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels and springs and balances and counteracting and cooeperating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill. The British Constitution may have its advantages pointed out to wise and reflecting minds, but it is of too ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... incessantly, but his tears did not bring him comfort, for they were tears of anguish and despair. Ten times a day he would proceed to her chamber, or follow her to the garden where she loved to walk, always in the delusive hope that he might catch some spark of returning reason from those calm-looking but meaningless eyes, after which he would weep like a child. With respect to his daughter, every thing was done for her that wealth and human means could accomplish, but to no purpose; the malady was too deeply ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... but the Dissenters protested against his being given to an Anglican refuge. The scene at the mass-meeting to celebrate young Ginx's rescue from the incubus of a delusive superstition is described with rare appreciation of the foibles of character. The bombast, the cant, the flapdoodle and flubdub, the silly unction of different kinds of preachers are "done to a hair." Five hours the meeting raged, and at last a resolution that the Metropolitan ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... crumbling margin, and thy silver breast, On which the self-same tints still seem to rest, Why feels my heart a shivering sense of pain! Is it, that many a summer's day has past Since, in life's morn, I carolled on thy side! Is it, that oft since then my heart has sighed, As Youth, and Hope's delusive gleams, flew fast! Is it, that those who gathered on thy shore, Companions of my youth, now meet no more! Whate'er the cause, upon thy banks I bend, Sorrowing; yet feel such solace at my heart, As at the meeting of some long-lost ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,—there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as a regency of destruction to all forms of idolatrous error. That argument is multiplied beyond all power of calculation; and to have ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... diametrically opposite view. So far from Soul and Sin being co-eternal with God they are not really existent at all. Both are illusory. There is only one existent entity. It is the Divine Spirit, and it has neither personality nor any personal qualities. All apparent separate existences are delusive. Meditation, of the same absorbing type held necessary by the other, is the only way to reach the stage of enlightenment which leads to reabsorption into the Divine essence, in which we finally merge, and lose what appeared to be our separate ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... scene, falls asleep. He dreams and finds himself among the fairies, whom he approaches and requests permission to join. They snatch him up forthwith and fly off with him over cities and realms, lands and seas, until he begins to fear for his life. They come to a huge castle—Castle Delusive, where an Angel of light appears and rescues him from their hands. The Angel, after questioning him as to himself, who he was and where he came from, bids him go with him, and resting in the empyrean, he beholds the earth ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... God's promises. This gave him much comfort, but it took him years to clarify his ideas and to reach the conclusion that the existing Church was opposed to the idea of justification by faith, because it fostered what seemed to him a delusive confidence in "good works." He was thirty-seven years old before he finally became convinced that it was his duty to become the leader in the destruction of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... delusive day-dreams, and rejoice when, now and then, Some old heartstring stirs within us and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... is adopted, and we see the meaning of all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to reality; and Carlyle constructs a ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Then the people who eat stuffed veal repent themselves, and send in a delicate broth or a bit of tenderloin, hovering softly in a sudden regard, and at length a healthier thought is born. It is to arise with desperate will, put a fresh rose in the bonnet and a delusive veil over the face, creeping down to the street with what steadiness can be summoned. There one meets friends, and is pretty well, with thanks, and is congratulated. Affairs grow brilliant, but the veil ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Jewish question my bigotry makes me liberal. To symbolise the Christianity of the House of Commons in its present form is to substitute a new Church and creed for the old Catholic one; and as this is delusive, I would do nothing to countenance it. Better have the Legislature declared what it really is—not professedly Christian, and then let the Church claim those rights and that independence which nothing but the pretence of Christianity can entitle the Legislature to withhold ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... could ever understand!— No one has entered Rome. None will ever come. I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished, and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as delusive, as false, but to which I now cling with ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of political, of religious ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... place of reunion than the Conversation-house at Baden-Baden. It was a small, low structure of brightly painted wood, containing but three or four rooms, and furnished all along its front with a narrow covered gallery, which offered a delusive shelter from the rougher moods of the fine, fresh weather. It was somewhat rude and shabby—the subscription for the season was low—but it had a simple picturesqueness. Its little terrace was a very convenient place ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... native German princes came spontaneously into his camp, subscribed such conditions as he thought fit to dictate, and complied with his requisitions of tribute in horses and provisions. This, however, is a delusive gleam of Roman energy, little corresponding with the true condition of the Roman power, and entirely due to the personal qualities of Probus. Probus himself showed his sense of the true state of affairs, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of the book throughout is excellent. The delusive character of sin is plainly pointed out. The devices of Satan are laid bare with unsparing hand. The abominations of vice are not concealed. All this is done in language well chosen and unexceptionable. The Christian ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... more deceptive than the pretended curative virtues of corrosive sublimate in dysentery, and that it is a matter of duty to be mindful, in this very particular, of the warning words of the master who, having himself been deceived at one time by the delusive palliation of mercury, addresses to us the remarkable warning that "mercury, so far from responding to all non-venereal maladies, on the contrary is one of the most deceitful palliatives the temporary action of which is not only soon followed by a return of the original symptoms of disease, ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... south. The country still retained the same woody, hilly, and irregular, though not unpleasing, appearance; but in running along the shore it manifestly grew worse, having more tendency to sand. The small projections of land which appeared as they sailed along often presented the delusive appearance of openings behind them; and they were the more inclined to entertain these hopes, as Captain Cook passed along this part of the coast ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... this disturbance. He always thought the relation between the lord and the pauper peasant was the happiest possible; he cannot conceive what people mean by proposing a change. But then Lord Malmesbury was placed at rather a delusive point of view. If he knew the real state of Hodge's heart he would rejoice in the prospect of a change, not only for Hodge's sake, but, as he is no doubt a good man, for his own. England will be more religious, too, as well as happier and more harmonious, let the clergy be well assured ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... great majority of our people, if not absolutely on a level with circumstances, being purely practical, are much nearer to this level, than the class termed the endoctrinated. The last are troublesome and delusive, rather than overwhelming." ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... soldiers were drawn up on the moor, about a mile distant. He sent some of his men to a point where they should be partly visible to the enemy over a hedge; these he caused to pass and repass, so as to give a delusive idea of numbers. When the night fell the Highland soldiers were drawn up along the wall on the road, and in the enclosures behind the hedges; Lord George and Cluny stood with drawn swords on the highway. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... a "heaven" a neglected soul may have, can be shown to be an ignorant and delusive dream. How is the soul to escape to heaven if it has neglected for a lifetime the means of escape from the world and self? And where is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not developed on earth? Where, indeed, is even the smallest spiritual ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... so accurately detected by the subtle penetration of this extraordinary Queen. And presently she said, as if to console me for my confusion, with unutterable sweetness in her voice: Come, do not allow delusive imagination to run away with thee, but curb him, and rein him up, and stop him, and be wise. For I belong, body and soul, to Narasinha. And yet, for all that, I am my own mistress, and act exactly as I choose. And I see anyone I please, and at my own time, and go, like a wild ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... out Hopeless and delusive, Still I'd rave and shout, Using terms abusive. Truth and sense might perish, Still thy cause I'd cherish, Hallow'd by thy gold,—then give that ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... best of a commercial contract of property and slavery by subjecting it to some religious restraint and elevating it by some touch of poetry. But the actual result is that when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. And though of course nobody expects them to do anything so impossible and so ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... empire, during which the Christians of Philadelphia would be spared. This may have been the fact; but whether it was or not, we have no means of information. When we come to consider the symbols of chapter 9, in which the delusive error of Mohammedanism is set forth, we will see what a period of sore trial this delusion was to the Eastern churches. It is also a fact that, in the midst of this abounding heresy, the church of Philadelphia was ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... in vain they perceived that a reputation so lightly established, was still more weakly sustained: the prejudice remained: the Countess of Castlemaine, a woman lively and discerning followed the delusive shadow; and though undeceived in a reputation which promised so much, and performed so little, she nevertheless continued in her infatuation: she even persisted in it, until she was upon the point of embroiling herself with the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... upwards, thus producing images similar to those produced by water. I have seen the image of a rock called Mont Tombeline distinctly reflected from the heated air of the strand of Normandy near Avranches; and by such delusive appearances the thirsty soldiers of the French army in Egypt were ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... never going back, you may assure yourself of having seen the worst, and the positive improvements, if trifles separately, must soon gather into a sensible magnitude.' This may be true in a case of short standing, but as a general rule it is perilously delusive. On the contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometrical construction, would describe an ascending path upon the whole, but with frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, compared ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... broken out unexpectedly, and in a different manner from what the conspirators proposed to themselves?—If so, his meeting with his plighted bride, after so many years' absence, was but a delusive preface to their separating for ever. Or had the crusaders, a race of men upon whose motions it was difficult to calculate, suddenly taken arms and returned from the opposite shore to surprise the city? This might very possibly be the case; so numerous had been the different causes of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... human frailty. The man erred; and his error terminates in itself. But an error of principle does not terminate in itself; it is a fountain; it is self-diffusive; and it has a life of its own. The faults of a great man are in any case contagious; they are dazzling and delusive by means of the great man's general example. But his false principles have a worse contagion. They operate not only through the general haze and halo which invests a shining example; but even if transplanted where that example is unknown, they propagate themselves ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... virgin land, and cheap negroes gave the several families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, and among the oldest, richest, and most influential. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... them by art is, that in every instance in which we see a human mind developing itself, or acting upon other things, we see it surrounded and obscured by an indefinite multitude of unascertainable circumstances, rendering the use of the common experimental methods almost delusive. We may conceive to what extent this is true, if we consider, among other things, that whenever Nature produces a human mind, she produces, in close connection with it, a body; that is, a vast complication of physical facts, in no two cases perhaps ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... imagery often recalled those of the seventeenth-century metaphysicals, such as Crashaw, too readily perhaps asserted a bond between his thought and theirs. Like them, it is true, he turned his back on the delusive splendours of the world; he accepted and expressed in song the divine ordinance of the universe. But he was afflicted with the pain of modern doubt; fear and speculative curiosity struggled with his faith; sometimes the sheer beauty ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the matter at once, dear aunt," she said, in a gentle, but firm tone. "Believe me, the reality of misfortune is not as painful as its apprehension. You cannot bear the shocks of sorrow, and delusive hopes of happiness, much longer. Do you know what anxiety of mind has done to you? Have you looked in the mirror during the last ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... at ev'ry glance on human kind; How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare, Search ev'ry state, and canvass ev'ry pray'r: Unnumber'd suppliants crowd Preferment's gate, A thirst for wealth, and burning to be great; Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman's door Pours in the morning worshipper no more; For growing ...
— English Satires • Various
... what further to say. She half believed that Sir Thomas did labour under some delusion; but then she half believed also that he had upon his mind a sorrow, terribly real, which was in no sort delusive. Under such circumstances, how could she advise her son? Instead of advising ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... quality, a power of divination in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment the original estimate is adjusted to the unmistakable evidence ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... neglect. We regard directness a rudeness, when in reality it is the greatest kindness imaginable. Instead of being positive and direct in our dealings with each other, we constantly exercise a passive cruelty, in other words, the cruelty of refinement. We are evasive, delusive, subdued, falsified. But we deceive with dignity, tell falsehoods fluently, use words and cold behavior ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... eternal." But this pregnant utterance conveyed nothing more to him than a belief of a material heaven to follow his exit from a world of matter. It had never occurred to him that the world of matter might be the product of those same delusive physical senses, through which he believed he gained his knowledge of it. It is true that while in the seminary, and before, he had insisted upon a more spiritual interpretation of the mission of Jesus—had insisted that Christian priests should obey the Master's injunction, and heal the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... tranquillity be restored? We have not forgotten—nor can we be so easily made to forget—that this very agitator himself has declared, that slavery is "a wrong so transcendent" that no truce is to be allowed to it so long as it occupies a single foot of ground in the United States. Is it not, then, a delusive prospect of peace which is offered to us in exchange for the law ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... claimed again that females should have the ballot as a protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband is brutal, arbitrary or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to conform to his wishes in other respects would ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... trusting that Francesco might be won to prize the simple enjoyments of which fortune could not despoil him, and to find his dearest happiness in an approving conscience, the light hearted girl indulged in delusive hopes of future felicity. But these expectations were soon damped; as Francesco's health returned he became restless and melancholy; he saw no prospect of arriving at distinction by his talents, or by his sword; peace reigned throughout the Tuscan states, and the jealousy of the government ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... narrowly inquired into, it was found that the ingenious tradesman had no less than five qualities—"Best," "Better than Best," "Better than better than Best," "Best of All," and the "Real Best." Such language is a little delusive, and when I read the epithets of praise which are sometimes lavished, not by the same persons, on Breton and Watson, I ask myself what we are to say of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they needed in Chicago; if not, they could ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Desponsamuste,Mare,insignumveriperpetuiquedominii. The result of the combats at Chioggia, though fatal to it in the long-run, did not at once destroy the naval importance of Genoa. A remarkable characteristic of sea-power is the delusive manner in which it appears to revive after a great defeat. The Persian navy occasionally made a brave show afterwards; but in reality it had received at Salamis a mortal wound. Athens seemed strong enough on the sea after the catastrophe of Syracuse; but, as already stated, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... mode of speaking on the subject of profits; but it has only the semblance, not the reality, of an explanation. The "productive power of capital," though a common, and, for some purposes, a convenient expression, is a delusive one. Capital, strictly speaking, has no productive power. The only productive power is that of labour; assisted, no doubt, by tools, and acting upon materials. That portion of capital which consists of tools and materials, ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... after day went by, and, for the delusive sake of Madame de Marignan's bright eyes, I neglected my studies, spent my money, wasted my time, and incurred the displeasure of Dr. Cheron. Led on from folly to folly, I was perpetually buoyed up by coquetries which meant nothing, and as perpetually ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... resign his power as to all important affairs into the hands of his Secretary of State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some sentimental demonstration against European ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... fires are not confined to these regions, knave," rejoined Wolsey. "Mankind are often lured, by delusive gleams of glory and power, into quagmires deep and pitfalls. Holy ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... inclose has put an end to those fond delusive hopes: I must return immediately to England; did not my own heart dictate this step, I know too well the goodness of yours, to expect the continuance of your esteem, were I capable of purchasing happiness, even the happiness of calling you mine, at the expence of ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... us in its grip, Would raise the prisoning paw, And Nature, like a mouse set free, Enjoyed delusive liberty, While every water-pipe must drip To greet the passing thaw. Then rudely dashed from eager lip The cup of joy would be, And fingers numbed, and chattering jaw, Owned unexpelled the winter's flaw, And on the steps the goodmen slip, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... onward, like a phantom he disappears there on the border of the forest. Was it only a delusive appearance, a fata morgana ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and early Glistening fair through dew-drops pearly, Burst a bud that promised fairly Through the length of future days. Ah! it charmed my passion'd dreaming, Bathed in beauty's brightness, beaming Fadeless still, and deathless seeming In fond Hope's delusive haze. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... lamp cast a tint of life on her face, and the dark circles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine was almost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope that was half anguish stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping the hand ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... French trawlers burn to each other at night around the Goodwins, set both the lightships and lifeboats all astray; and the coxswains of the lifeboats, both at Ramsgate and Deal, have to be on their guard against these delusive agencies. As the coxswains in both of these places are men of exceptional shrewdness and ability, mistakes are few and far between. The coxswain of a lifeboat ought to have the eye of a hawk and the heart of a lion, and, I will add, the tenderness ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... not a perfect method,—it blacked too many other things besides shoes, and provided an undesirable plaything for baby,—but it was a step forward. There was a refinement, a je ne sais quoi, an 'easier way,' about this sponge in a bottle; and, perhaps more than all, a delusive promise that the stuff would dry shiny without friction, which ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might behold some islet of clearing amid the ocean ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. Tenant-right is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is invariably used to the landlord's advantage. Here we have an election in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think or act for himself. What right any one man has to demand the surrender of another's vote I never could see. It is an act of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... deceived. I was guided too much by appearances, and they were very delusive. I am beyond measure glad I came here to-day. I called at your house and learnt that you were here; and as I was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, I settled then to come this way. What a happy idea it was! To think of you now—and I ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... back view of any temptation to which we yield—all radiant and beautiful on the hither side, and when we get past it and look back at it, all hideous. Like some of those painted canvases upon the theatre-stage: seen from this side, with the delusive brilliancy of the footlights thrown upon them, they look beautiful works of art; seen at the back, dirty and cobwebbed canvas, all splashes and spots and uglinesses. Let us be thankful if memory can show us the reverse side of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... would have been but for the spite and gall Of this vile age, mean and illiberal, That cannot even let a donkey be. For mounted on an ass (excuse the word), By Rocinante's side this gentle squire Was wont his wandering master to attend. Delusive hopes that lure the common herd With promises of ease, the heart's desire, In shadows, dreams, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... single island selected for a fantastic display of creative power, merely to excite a childlike and unreasoning admiration? Is all this appearance of gradual modification by the action of natural causes—a modification the successive steps of which we can almost trace—all delusive? Is this harmony between the most diverse groups, all presenting analogous phenomena, and indicating a dependence upon physical changes of which we have independent evidence, all false testimony? If I could think so, the ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... then all switch together to another enemy Battery, and so on, all coming back together on to the first enemy Battery after an interval sufficient to lull the human elements forming part of the target into a delusive sense of security and a return to slumber without their masks, or, alternatively, to make them wear their masks continously for prolonged hours of expectation, thus subjecting them to much discomfort, depriving ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... obscured the piercing sight of reason) how I could, previously to the deciding outrage, have considered myself as everlastingly united to vice and folly? 'Had an evil genius cast a spell at my birth; or a demon stalked out of chaos, to perplex my understanding, and enchain my will, with delusive prejudices?' ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... understanding. Both pronounced upon her the self-inflicted verdict of eternal widowhood. How long this sentence would have been respected, had Michael never interfered to argue its repeal, it is impossible to say; as a general remark it may be stated, that nothing is so delusive as the heroic declarations we make in seasons of excitement—no resolution is in such danger of becoming forfeited as that which Nature never sanctioned and which depends for its existence only upon a state of feeling which every passing hour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... festooned by flowery garlands; Costly robes for him get ready; Then invite the loveliest damsels Rome can boast of, to come hither To the feasts and to the dances. Bring musicians, and in fine Let it be proclaimed that any Woman of illustrious blood Who from his delusive passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... they can obtain, and that white men will give them, more for the productions of their soil than for the hands which can produce these—and the work is done. All other steps are futile, can only be mischievous and delusive, and terminate in disappointment and defeat. To eradicate the slave trade will not eradicate the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... sense became intolerable to his eyes. He called the sun an ignis fatuus; and exhorted all who would listen to his friendly voice, which were about as many as called 'God save King Richard,' to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... that our heads had crowned with laurels green, By priestly staff whose verdure had decayed, Robbed me of Hope's sweet solaces, and e'en The last delusive comfort caused to fade; Yet thus was nourished in my soul serene An inward trust, by which my faith was stayed; And if to this trust I prove ever true The withered staff shall ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... will not be endangered by revolutionary proceedings in the dominions of the Czar, nor will any oppression exercised over his subjects be thought to justify foreign intervention. Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and equally vain remonstrances. In these days, not Warsaw, but St. Petersburg, is the centre of disaffection, and the ramifications extend inland, their action stimulated, it may be, to some extent from external sources, but incapable of sending back any impulse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... But however delusive the indignation and the hopes of the Fenians must be accounted, the sad fact remains that old misgovernment and oppression have left behind a train of evil feelings, whose existence is only too real, however fantastic may be the shapes they assume. While three or four centuries sufficed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... details which go to the making up of beauty. So the sense of beauty, the feeling for it, the desire to bring it into his work, grows up in his heart; and a new kind of fidelity—fidelity to feeling rather than to fact (if I may speak for the moment in the delusive language of dualism)—begins to weave itself into his ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... potent would be his influence on the weltering chaos of German and Italian States, if these much-divided peoples learnt to look on him as the successor to the glories of Charlemagne! And this honour he was now to claim. However delusive was the parallel between the old semi-tribal polity and modern States where the peoples were awakening to a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a position to clear the way for his great experiment. He had two charms wherewith to work, material ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the horrors of total abstinence, and, now that he was no longer under the observation of his family, he again tried to satisfy his conscience by promising himself that he would gradually reduce the amount used until he could discontinue it utterly—delusive hope, that has mocked thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even then the habit had become ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... offer the flattest of all possible contradictions to what Magdalen had just said of her. "There is some remote nervous mischief which doesn't express itself externally. You would think my wife the picture of health if you looked at her, and yet, so delusive are appearances, I am obliged to forbid her all excitement. She sees no society—our medical attendant, I regret to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... there be for this situation, but in a change of the system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation authorized in every well-ordered constitution ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... know whereof the bale-fires tell, The beacons, kindled with transmitted flame; Whether, as well I deem, their tale is true. Or whether like some dream delusive came The welcome blaze but to befool our soul. For lo! I see a herald from the shore Draw hither, shadowed with the olive-wreath— And thirsty dust, twin-brother of the clay, Speaks plain of travel far and truthful news— No dumb surmise, nor tongue of flame in smoke, Fitfully kindled from ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... the most successful exponent of such a policy. In domestic affairs his influence was small and almost entirely indirect. He himself confessed his unfitness for dealing with questions of finance. The commercial prosperity that was produced by his war policy was in a great part delusive, as prosperity so produced must always be, though it had permanent effects of the highest moment in the rise of such centres of industry as Glasgow. This, however, was a remote result which he could have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... dear, delusive, distant shore, By dreams of futile fancy gilt! The riverside we never saw, The palm ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... French government rendered that nation no more fit to be treated with now, than it had been at any period of the revolution. The addresses, however, were carried in both houses by large majorities; and thus a delusive hope was held out to the people that the war was about to be terminated. Yet, had they reflected upon the temper of parliament, they could scarcely have entertained such a hope; for motions made by opposition for addresses requesting the king ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the common trials of life, to mar our happiness in our family- like institution (February 23d) was the listless waywardness of some of our dear students, in a determined purpose to attend a dancing party under the guise of an oyster supper. How many delusive snares are laid to entrap and turn aside the youth into divergent paths. We found it necessary to suspend eight of our students for the remainder of the term. It is a painful duty of the surgeon to amputate a limb, yet it may be an imperative duty, in order to save the ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... different from that which we should naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a motive. Again, consciousness of the possession of any power may easily be delusive; we can properly judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished; we know what we have done, and we may infer from having done it, that our power was equal to what it achieved; but it ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... steps forward for the better protection of the rest of us. It was the burning of the St. George Flats, and more recently of the Manhattan Bank, in which a dozen men were disabled, that stamped the average fire-proof construction as faulty and largely delusive. One might even go further, and say that the fireman's risk increases in the ratio of our progress or convenience. The water-tanks came with the very high buildings, which in themselves offer problems to the fire-fighters that have not yet been solved. The very air-shafts that ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... a short time that luck might be glancing towards her. A young man of foreign title and of Bohemian tastes met her at a studio dance, and, misled by the smartness of her dress and her always carefully carried air of careless prosperity, began to pay a delusive court to her. For a few weeks all her freshest frocks were worn assiduously and credit was strained to buy new ones. The flat was adorned with fresh flowers and several new yellow and pale blue cushions appeared at the little teas, which began to assume a more festive ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... right to believe that there has been any discontinuity in natural processes. There is no trace of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or sudden destructions of a whole fauna or flora. The appearances which were formerly interpreted in that way have all been shown to be delusive, as our knowledge has increased and as the blanks which formerly appeared to exist between the different formations have been filled up. That there is no absolute break between formation and formation, that there has been no sudden disappearance ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... experience he saw his mistakes. From his present depth he looked up, and saw the inestimable vantage ground which he once possessed. In his deep despondency he feared he never would regain it, and that his hopes of literary success would prove delusive. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brother who, by his advice and example, had hitherto exercised a great influence on the direction of my thoughts. He approved the motives which determined me to quit Europe; a secret voice assured us that we should meet again; and that hope, which did not prove delusive, assuaged the pain of a long separation. I left Paris with the intention of embarking for Algiers and Egypt; but by one of those vicissitudes which sway the affairs of this life, I returned to my brother ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the only thing, indeed, it has to offer ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... clearly not of routine? If Agamemnon is really full of confidence, inspired by the Dream, why does he determine, not to do what is customary, call the men to arms, but as Jeanne d'Arc said to the Dauphin, to "hold such long and weary councils"? Mr. Jevons speaks of Agamemnon's "confidence in the delusive dream" as at variance with his proceedings, and would excise II. 35-41, "the only lines which represent Agamemnon as confidently believing in the Dream." [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. vii. pp. 306, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... stool, a dusty ledger, and sandwich lunches, had no attraction for me. I had always had a turn for mechanics, but was never allowed to adopt engineering as a profession, my father's one idea being that I should follow in his footsteps—a delusive hope entertained by many a ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... emigration. If there are more workers than there is work for them to do, why not remove those who are not wanted, and put them where there is work to do? The thing sounds very simple, but the simplicity is somewhat delusive. The old laissez faire political economist would ask, "Why, since labour is always moving towards the place where it can be most profitably employed, is it necessary to do anything but let it flow? ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... all titled, all unknown at the embassies, with the exception of those who are spies. All talk of their honor without the slightest occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you about their lives, braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false cards they have up their sleeves, as delusive as their names—in short, the aristocracy ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... inimitable personage, and his equally inimitable wife, together with David's old schoolfellow, Tradelles, on a banquet of boiled leg of mutton, very red inside and very pale outside, as well as upon a delusive pigeon-pie, the crust of which was like a disappointing phrenological head, "full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath," David afforded us the opportunity of realising, within a very brief interval, something at least of the abundant humour associated with Mrs. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Fortunately for this delusive hopefulness there was no weird and boding Cassandra to pierce the veil of the future for us, and reveal the length and the ghastly horror of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through which we must pass for hundreds of sad days, stretching out into long months of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... passed through much the same phases. Vandal and others have told us of the Utopia which was created in the minds of the French when the old regime crashed to the ground. Sydney Smith caricatured the delusive hopes excited by the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, when he said that all the unmarried young women thought that they would at once get husbands, and that all the schoolboys expected a heavy fall in the price of jam ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... ——-, the owner of estates in South Uist and Barra, in the highlands of Scotland, has sent off over 1100 destitute tenants and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to Upper Canada, where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. Seventy-one ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Amid the many delusive and impracticable schemes were two important projects which have conferred great benefits on the English people. The first of these was the New River Company, the conception of Sir Hugh Middleton; the second was the corporation of the Bank of England. Nature and the great nations of antiquity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... family attachment is delusive if it prevents the devotee from seeking the Giver of all boons, including the one of loving relatives, not to mention life itself. Jesus similarly taught: "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?" ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... becoming attached to him, but that for some reason she determined that no one should notice this, and that matters should only go so far. Poor Dennis could not know that he was only her unconscious instructor in painting, paid solely in the coin of false smiles and delusive hopes. At times, though, she would torture him dreadfully. Selecting one of her many admirers, she would seem to smile upon his suit, and poor Dennis would writhe in all the agonies of jealousy, for he was very human, and had all the normal feeling of a strong man. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... project seemed to him delusive, and his sense of dignity rose against it—Harvey had begun with unwonted decision, but he was soon uncomfortably self-conscious and self-critical; he spoke with effort, vainly struggling against that peculiar force of Alma's personality which ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and joy Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 640 To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. So glister'd the dire Snake and into fraud Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree Of prohibition, root of all our woe; Which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... which Englishmen had made to claim North America for their own, had soon proved a failure. The introduction of tobacco and the potato into Europe dates from his voyage of discovery, but the energy of his colonists was distracted by the delusive dream of gold, the hostility of the native tribes drove them from the coast, and it is through the gratitude of later times for what he strove to do, rather than for what he did, that Raleigh, the capital of North ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... secret arts continued to be practised by them, and the name "Chaldean" became a by-word, a synonym for "a wise man of the East,"—astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious, often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling has ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... warily shapes his course so as to avoid any limestone-quarries or turf-pits. He points out a jack-o'-lantern dancing merrily on the surface of a dangerous morass, and tells a dismal tale of a traveller lured into it by the delusive light, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dissipate this delusive cloud that interposes itself betwixt us. Meanwhile, accept my hand, in token that, however changed ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... knowledge of the world and society; resolute, also, in attaining his desired ends. His attentions to Marian have been unmistakable for some months, and he believes that he has received encouragement. In truth, he has been the recipient of the delusive regard that she is in the habit of bestowing. He is one whom she could scarcely fail to admire and like, so entertaining is he in conversation, and endowed with such vitality and feeling that his ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? We are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... happy because you have sold a poem, probably for more than it is worth. But why do you praise spring? What do you fellows do it for? You know perfectly well that it is the most capricious, the most treacherous, the most delusive, deadly, slatternly, down-at-heels, milkmaid-handed season of the year, without decision of character or fixed principles, and with only the vaguest raw-girlish ideals, a red nose between crazy smiles ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the Wise man, and is the nature of the gods. Desire is a mixed state, and comprehends body and mind. Much stress is laid on the moderate and tranquil pleasures; the intense pleasures, coveted by mankind, belong to a distempered rather than a healthy state; they are false and delusive. Pleasure is, by its nature, a change or transition, and cannot be a supreme end. The mixture of Pleasure and Intelligence is to be adjusted by the all-important principle of Measure or Proportion, which connects the Good with ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... lawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there would be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality of school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... imaginary. iglesia f. church. igual adj. equal; me es —— it is all the same to me; por —— equally. igualar equal, consider equal. iluminar illumine, enlighten, illuminate, light. ilusin f. illusion, fancy, self-deception, mockery. ilusorio, -a illusory, delusive, deceptive. ilustre adj. illustrious, noble, celebrated, distinguished. imagen f. image, statue, likeness, picture, conception, fancy, appearance. imaginacin f. imagination, fancy, mind. imaginar imagine, fancy, believe, conceive. impaciente adj. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... but become a teacher and benefactor of his kindred races; and become an agent in carrying civilization and Christianity to a benighted continent. That any one will be turned aside from so noble a mission by the delusive dream of conquest and empire in the Western Hemisphere is an absurdity too monstrous and mischievous to be believed. Yet 'the Committee's Report' was accepted, and adopted, and endorsed by a 'National Convention;' and is published and sent forth ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... spectator of the delusive character of all that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression of that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... tears did not bring him comfort, for they were tears of anguish and despair. Ten times a day he would proceed to her chamber, or follow her to the garden where she loved to walk, always in the delusive hope that he might catch some spark of returning reason from those calm-looking but meaningless eyes, after which he would weep like a child. With respect to his daughter, every thing was done for her that wealth and human means could accomplish, but to no purpose; the malady ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... understand this man and his character in any other way? To be sure this word itself does not help us to understand it. O young man, young man, do you not feel now how thoroughly right I was? I trusted this man unlimitedly, because he was not girt round with any delusive deceitful show; because nothing in my heart sallied forth to meet him, and I did not lie to myself in his behalf for the sake of pampering my own vanity. Ay, my friend, now everything is detected and noised abroad; he is going ... and in this will he gives me back ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... was no delusive one; he sank gradually during the following week, and died—his last word, "Remember!" being addressed, with all the strong beseeching of a dying ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... he might "lick it into shape," and "advise generally" preparatory to its "being laid before counsel," was Mr. Traverse, a young pleader, whom Messrs. Quirk and Gammon were disposed to take by the hand. He wrote a very showy, but superficial and delusive opinion; and put the intended protege of his clients, as it were by a kind of hop, step, and jump, into possession of the Yatton estates. Quirk was quite delighted on reading it; but Gammon shook his head with a somewhat sarcastic smile, and said he would at once prepare a case for the opinion ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... this incident a delusive hope was held out to me that I might be able to return to civilisation. News was brought one day that the tracks of some strange and hitherto unknown animals had been found to the north, and, accompanied by Yamba, I went off to inspect them. I found that they were camel ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage, talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead .... If we cannot gain their support of the just measures needful for the work of safe reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger. They are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and the experience and the education to enable them to understand... the present situation. They have the courage as well as ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... with such masterly talents so luminously explained. In short, the sublime Newton himself becomes an infant when he quits physics, when he lays aside demonstration, to lose himself in the devious sinuosities, in the inextricable labyrinths, in the delusive regions of theology. This is the manner in which he speaks ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... youthful soul rightly feel her freedom, and, therefore, feels it doubly; the soul struggles for activity, she comprehends her individuality; it has been proved and not found too light; she is still in possession of the dreams of childhood, which have not yet proved delusive. Not even the joy of love, not the enthusiasm for art and science, so thrills through all the nerves as the words, "Now am ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... resolute diarist! What I was not prepared for was the very considerable body of aristocratic feeling that lurks beneath this republican simplicity. I have on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic but delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire City,—a slang name for New York. I was assured in many quarters that that locality, at least, is ripe for a monarchy, and if one of the Queen's sons would come and talk it over, he would meet with the highest encouragement. ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... to rejoice that a higher tone of moral and religious feeling was making its way into schools, without giving occasion of jealousy to the one-sided views of any denomination. But all these auguries were delusive. In an evil hour the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... totally different process, not merely in degree, but in kind, from anything that takes place as a result of the invasion of the body by an infectious germ or parasite of any sort. There is a certain delusive similarity between the cancer process and an infection. But the more closely and carefully this similarity is examined the more superficial and unreal does it become. The invading germ may multiply chiefly at one point or focus, like cancer, and from this spread throughout ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... his fall, Croesus is said by Herodotus to have reproached the Pythian with those treacherous oracles that conduced to the loss of his throne, and to have demanded if the gods of Greece were usually delusive and ungrateful. True to that dark article of Grecian faith which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythian replied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the crimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master;—that, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes searched my face, and it came disagreeably into my head that he was playing some part; that his talk was delusive, his anger feigned; that, perhaps, he still suspected me of being a Separationist. He went on talking about the failure of the boat attack. All Jamaica had been talking of it, speculating about it, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... circulation almost at will, and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of steam in a boiler, which is an admirable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of extension, in particular, is a conception resulting from the association of my visual Presentment with my power of active exertion, and the delusive tendency to regard this quality as in some sense primarily and fundamentally real is due to the unconscious recognition of the fact that it is in virtue of my power, or association as an agent with the energetic system, that I derive a suggestion of the real world beyond the phenomena ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... highest and best. For another man, through amiability, selfishness, or disdain, to prefer to flatter people is only another phase of life; there is nothing in it to make us laugh. You may even combine these two men into one, and arrange that the individual waver between offensive frankness and delusive politeness, this duel between two opposing feelings will not even then be comic, rather it will appear the essence of seriousness if these two feelings through their very distinctness complete each other, develop side by side, and make up between them ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... of these babbling, lawless productions, albeit countenanced by the patronage, and in some degree the example of Lorenzo himself, otherwise a friend to true learning, as a sign that the glorious hopes of this century are to be quenched in gloom; nay, that they have been the delusive prologue to an age worse than that of iron—the age of tinsel and gossamer, in which no thought has substance enough to be moulded into consistent ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... which the world could then advance. This was true for Alexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true, conspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up of the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading all who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the time of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and reactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and nations ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... furious. Even the moderate Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a second civil war. But 'death cut the inextricable knot.' His deadly disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom. His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the sight. It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of his office. He asked to be recalled; but the authorities at {96} home, knowing of his malady, had anticipated his desire. The ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... her thoughts, and even her sympathies, were with Lord Vincent in his prison cell. Why should she think of him? Why should she pity him? She had never loved him, never even fancied that she loved him, even in the delusive days of courtship; or in the early days of marriage; and she had despised and shunned him in the miserable days of their estranged life at Castle Cragg. Why, then, as she lay there in the darkness, silence, and solitude ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... becoming painfully vivid in the shades darkening apace. We could see nothing of the channel but a steel-grey streak, like a Damascus blade, in a sable sheathing of tall mangrove avenue; in places, however, tree-clumps suggested delusive hopes that we were approaching a region where man can live. On our return we found many signs of population which had escaped our sight during the fast-growing obscurity. The first two reaches were long and bulging; the next became shorter, and Prince Paul assured us that, after ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... urgent on them "to maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive gypsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors," prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which he shows us is merely the outward and natural, as opposed to the inner or ideal. His answer would probably be either that the ideal, in any sense in which it can be opposed to the natural, must be false and delusive; or that it is merely an accident of novel-writing, as hitherto practised, and not anything essential to this species of composition, which has prevented it from exhibiting the highest aspect of things; or, finally, that admitting the view which the novel presents to be ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... devoted deed, the true saving of her husband, has lived on as a mere delusive tradition, weakly credited by the romantic, while the credit of his recovery has been retained by the Knight-Templars' leech. Not a sound was uttered by the Prince while under those hands; but ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glitter brief— Short-lived as the western sunbeam dying from the cedar leaf. Here we linger, lonely-hearted, musing over visions fled, While the sickly twilight withers from the arches overhead. Semblance of a bliss delusive are those dull, receding rays; Semblance of the faint reflection left to us of other days; Days of vernal hope and gladness, hours when the blossoms sprung Round the feet of blithesome ramblers by the shores ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of that which the heart is set upon. The one that knows the Lord, will pray until the other is brought to him; neither will be guilty of casting the slightest hindrance in the way of the other, etc., etc., but how often have these pretty delusive devices been cast to the winds, or broken to atoms like glass toys in after life, and their framers made to pay the bitter penalties of disappointment, regret, and even backsliding for their early transgressions? The selection of a husband or wife ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... place all at once, nor without much disputing. John Callendar opposed every one of them step by step till opposition was useless. David only submitted to them in order to purchase for himself a delusive peace during the few hours he could afford to be in his fine home; for his increased expenditure was not a thing he could bear lightly. Every extra hundred pounds involved extra planning and work and risks. He gradually lost all the cheerful buoyancy of manner and the brightness ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the entire territory. As usual, and through the vanity of authorship, M. Thouret, the last president of the Constituent Assembly, had, in his final report, hidden disagreeable truth underneath pompous and delusive phrases; but it was only necessary to look over the monthly record to see whether, as guaranteed by him, "the decrees were faithfully executed in all parts of the empire."—" Where is this faithful execution to be found?" inquires Mallet du Pan.[2301] "Is it at Toulon, in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... appearance of the tall trees, which stood partly enrobed in shadowy darkness, and partly glowing in serene and chastened splendor; the gentle murmuring of the sportive breeze—all tended to lead her senses into a delusive, but pleasing reverie. She listened, and thought she heard his voice. She looked tremblingly as if in the expectation of the appearance of her lover. The thicket of myrtle rustles and shakes, and flings on the air its load of fragrance, when ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... beauties of mansions which have sprung out of the profits or artifices of trade. The multiplication of these dormitories of avarice is considered by too many as the sign of public prosperity. Fallacious, delusive, and mischievous notion! Was the world made for the many, or the few? Can any one become rich from domestic trade without making others poor; or can another bring wealth from foreign countries except by adding to the circulating medium, and thereby diminishing the value ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker's portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink—then my debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Martyr, in particular, whose situation, as Prince John's preceptor, afforded him the best opportunities of observation, is unbounded in commendations of his royal pupil, whose extraordinary promise of intellectual and moral excellence had furnished him with the happiest, alas! delusive auguries, for the future ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... from the family at the ranch with a light-hearted promise to stop again on their way down the river. When they would return they were gayly uncertain,—it might be ten days, it might be two weeks. It was a promise that nestled with delusive sweetness in Ruth Mary's thoughts, as she went silently about her work. She was helpful in all ways, and very gentle with the children, but she lingered more hours dreaming by the river, and often at twilight ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... ideal thing to do. "Let me only get there," he had said with the fatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, "and the rest is but a matter of time and energy." It would have been far better for him in every way if he had never come within sight and sound of the delusive precincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in true perspective. Well, all that was clear to him amounted to this, that the whole scheme had burst up, like ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... adenoids, and snored. His peculiarities included a faculty for breaking his bones, at frequent and inconvenient occasions, an insatiable curiosity about matters with which he had no concern, and a most engaging and delusive silkiness of manner. "Gentleman Russell," a title bestowed by his elders, had an irritating effect on an elder brother conscious of being condemned by the contrast, and when quoted downstairs brought an unfailing echo of thumps in ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... chivalric and adventurous "the danger's self were lure alone." The quiet and stillness which reigned around, even when the enemy were lurking nearest and in greater numbers, inspired many too, with the delusive hope of exemption from risk, not unfrequently the harbinger of fatal consequences. It seemed indeed, impracticable at first to realize the existence of a danger, which could not be perceived. And not until taught by reiterated suffering did they properly ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... good deal at Marie during dinner in the delusive light of the shaded candles, and at last ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... inveterate enemy against their shores, had been subdued and made a useful servant; the land was to prove their destruction. A long and fierce strife had been maintained with an enemy more cruel than the sea,—the Spanish kingdom; the successful ending, with its delusive promise of rest and peace, but sounded the knell of the Dutch Republic. So long as the power of Spain remained unimpaired, or at least great enough to keep up the terror that she had long inspired, it was to the interest of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... prowess, gigantic as it is, appears as dust in the balance compared with the powers of his mind. To think and to judge rightly under some of the most appalling circumstances that ever surrounded mortal man, to reject the delusive for the arduous, to resolve and to execute, form such a combination of the best and rarest attributes of our nature, that where are we to look for them in the same man? Brock at the time of this disastrous affair was thirty-one years of age, a fine, stout, athletic ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the people into believing that the present campaign, which is but a single episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an independent event which began in August 1914 and may end this year or the next. These same leaders are busily inculcating the delusive notion that the diplomatic instrument which will one day close hostilities will be a treaty of peace. And they are seemingly prepared to negotiate its ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... any people display, within the limits prescribed by law, so generous a fervour, or so steadfast a determination, as that very people whose apparent languor had just before inspired the enemies of Reform with a delusive hope. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brewer of porter or ale; others perform the same office to the wine and spirit merchant; and others again to the grocer and the oilman. The operators carry on their processes chiefly in secresy, and under some delusive firm, with the ostensible denotements of a ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... attention, got us by degrees to recover our composure, and chased from our thoughts the cruel recollections which afflicted us. We recovered our tranquillity, and dared at last to cherish the hope of seeing more fortunate days. That hope was not delusive. Our benefactor, M. Dard, since then having become my husband, gathered together the wrecks of our wretched family, and has proved himself worthy of being a father to us. My sister Caroline afterwards married M. Richard, agricultural botanist, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... glance on human kind; How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare, Search ev'ry state, and canvass ev'ry pray'r: Unnumber'd suppliants crowd Preferment's gate, A thirst for wealth, and burning to be great; Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman's door Pours in the morning worshipper no more; ...
— English Satires • Various
... produce them by art is, that in every instance in which we see a human mind developing itself, or acting upon other things, we see it surrounded and obscured by an indefinite multitude of unascertainable circumstances, rendering the use of the common experimental methods almost delusive. We may conceive to what extent this is true, if we consider, among other things, that whenever Nature produces a human mind, she produces, in close connection with it, a body; that is, a vast complication of physical facts, in no two cases perhaps exactly similar, and most of which (except the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... those delusive sounds which the anxious mind sometimes conjures up, or did an answer really come to ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... MY DEAR BELL—How delusive are the flatteries of fortune! The wealth that has been showered upon us, beyond all our hopes, has brought no pleasure to my heart, and I pour my unavailing sighs for your absence, when I would communicate the cause of my unhappiness. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... reflected upwards, thus producing images similar to those produced by water. I have seen the image of a rock called Mont Tombeline distinctly reflected from the heated air of the strand of Normandy near Avranches; and by such delusive appearances the thirsty soldiers of the French army in Egypt ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Devil to seek in new Measures; for tho' he could not give out his delusive Trash as he did before, in Pomp and State, with the Solemnity of a Temple and a Set of Enthusiasts call'd Priests, who plaid a thousand Tricks to amuse the World, he then had Recourse to his old ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... fondly imagined that after reaching Natchez my difficulties would have been over; but I very soon discovered that this was a delusive hope. I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours. Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi, more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed whether I should be able to ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... and not a fox Stretch'd on the earth, with fine delusive sleights, Mocking a gaping crow? ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... outward associations. Is this the limit? Would to Heaven in some instances it were so, that the end be thus. What a hollow mockery does it impart to the heart of Lady Rosamond, whose cause of misery remains as yet half told. Life—a troubled dream, a waking reality, yet we cling to it with fond delusive hopes. What astute reasoner will solve, the intricacies of this problem? Can one who has suffered? The muffled throes of crushed hearts are the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... persuasions, he spoke as if every thing pertaining to human weal and woe, present and future, rested on conditions within the choice of men. Say, "'There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet,' and heaven shall be your portion; but cling to your delusive errors, and you shall be companions of the infernal fire." Practically speaking, the essence of propagandist Islam was a sentiment like this. All men who do not follow Mohammed are accursed misbelievers. We are God's chosen avengers, the commissioned instruments for reducing his foes to submission. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Mr. Trist as commissioner of the United States, of which Congress was informed in my annual message, was dictated by a belief that his continued presence with the Army could be productive of no good, but might do much harm by encouraging the delusive hopes and false impressions of the Mexicans, and that his recall would satisfy Mexico that the United States had no terms of peace more favorable to offer. Directions were given that any propositions for peace which Mexico might make should be received and transmitted by the commanding general of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the monument of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin of ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... Backhouse, and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had more share than she knew in determining her own mood that day. The world seemed such dross, the pretences of personal happiness so hollow and delusive, after such a sight! The girl lay dying fast, with a look of extraordinary attentiveness in her face, hearing every noise, every footfall, and, as it seemed to Catherine, in a mood of inward joy. She took, moreover, some notice ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appanaged with Brandenburg alone, and wedded to his first love, not a king's daughter, might have done tolerably well there; better than Wenzel, with the empire and Bohemia, did. But delusive Fortune threw her golden apple at Sigismund too; and he, in the wide high world, had to play strange pranks. His father-in-law died in Hungary, Sigismund's first wife his only child. Father-in-law bequeathed Hungary to Sigismund, who plunged into a strange ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... rights; and are made to respect the just pretensions of mankind; in proportion as they are willing to sustain, in their own persons, the burden of government, and of national defence; and are willing to prefer the engagements of a liberal mind to the enjoyment of sloth, or the delusive hopes of a safety purchased ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... thoroughly fatigued, and worn out with the horrors which the approaching fate of the poor wretch, who lay under a sentence which he had iniquitously brought upon him, had suggested, sleep promised him relief; but this promise was, alas! delusive. This certain friend to the tired body is often the severest enemy to the oppressed mind. So at least it proved to Wild, adding visionary to real horrors, and tormenting his imagination with phantoms too dreadful to be described. At length, starting from these visions, he no sooner ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... button in the horn?" I inquired of the youngster afterwards, quite in a pleasant tone, and with a smile on which I had learned to depend for a particularly delusive effect; at the same time I put up my glasses to impress him with a sense ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... silent listener to the conversation. She knew that they were discussing the pros and cons of the advantages for a bachelor of club life over home life. She knew that Louis was making some brilliantly cynical remarks,—asserting that the apparent privacy of the latter was delusive, and that the reputed publicity of the former was deceptive, as it was even more isolated than the latter. All of which the doctor laughed ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... desponding spirit with music's gentlest sound. Fondly trusting that Francesco might be won to prize the simple enjoyments of which fortune could not despoil him, and to find his dearest happiness in an approving conscience, the light hearted girl indulged in delusive hopes of future felicity. But these expectations were soon damped; as Francesco's health returned he became restless and melancholy; he saw no prospect of arriving at distinction by his talents, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... studious life. In each revolution, the breath, the nod, of the sovereign had been accepted by a submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was always prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall, of the holy, or the execrable, Photius. [9] By a delusive promise of succor or reward, the popes were tempted to countenance these various proceedings; and the synods of Constantinople were ratified by their epistles or legates. But the court and the people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally adverse to their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the undergrowth: and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three minutes' work to reach the next ridge. I followed then, confidently enough—and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican macchia by plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... waking hours are answered in sleep, so in response to his nervous craving for life he had delusive assurances of health through the special bounty of Providence. He was therefore presently able to announce he "had very great discoveries of the Lord to him in his sickness, and hath some certainty of being restored;" as Fleetwood, his son-in-law, wrote on the 24th of August in ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Emily now began to fear, that her visit to the chamber had been observed, since the door had been closed, so immediately after her departure; and dreaded lest this should draw upon her the vengeance of Montoni. Her anxiety, also, was excited to know whence, and for what purpose, the delusive report, which had been imposed upon Annette, had originated, since Montoni could only have wished for silence and secrecy; but she felt, that the subject was too terrible for this lonely hour, and she compelled herself to leave it, to converse with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past. To be at home with both his girls, and resting—for his holiday would not be over for ten days—was like old times. Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again; now Cyril Morland was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all—but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too emphatically insisted that without a personal God religion simply ceases to be. It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part, and that of a good many people, that "the religious emotions" will survive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men will remain "deeply religious" even when it is recognised that ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... own fashion, and not after mine; for, however strange the nourishment she preferred might seem, it must at least be of the kind she could best assimilate. My care should be to give her her gruel as good as I might, and her beef-tea strong, with chicken-broth instead of barley-water and delusive jelly. But much opportunity of ministration was not afforded me; for her husband, whose business in life she seemed to regard as the care of her,—for which, in truth, she was gently and lovingly grateful,—and who not merely accepted her view of the matter, but, I was pretty sure, had had a ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... people who have been reared in the lap of luxury, and tenderly nurtured; but neither of these half-clad Kan-kiang navigators was born with the traditional silver spoon. From infancy they have had to thrive the best way they could on rice, turnip-tops, peanuts, and delusive expectations of pork and fish; their assumption of the delicacies above mentioned betrays the possession of bumps of assurance bigger than goose-eggs. It is equivalent to a moneyless New York guttersnipe sailing airily into Delmonico's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... comparative wealth and previous habits might well have entitled him to aspire. He gave his son such an education as his own resources and those of the infant colony of Massachusetts afforded, and, by a sort of delusive piety, into whose merits we have no desire to look, he thought he had also furnished a commendable evidence of his own desperate resignation to the will of Providence, in causing him to be publicly christened by the name of Content. His own baptismal appellation was Mark; as indeed had been that ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... saw how his language and his imagery often recalled those of the seventeenth-century metaphysicals, such as Crashaw, too readily perhaps asserted a bond between his thought and theirs. Like them, it is true, he turned his back on the delusive splendours of the world; he accepted and expressed in song the divine ordinance of the universe. But he was afflicted with the pain of modern doubt; fear and speculative curiosity struggled with his faith; sometimes the sheer beauty of the external ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... palaeontology, when in any way sufficient, has rarely been upset by subsequent investigations. Should we find strata containing plants of the Coal-measures apparently resting upon other strata with Ammonites and Belemnites, we may be sure that the physical evidence is delusive; and though the above is an extreme case, the presumption in all such instances is rather that the physical succession has been misunderstood or misconstrued, than that there has been a subversion of the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... they began to shine out upon the general blackness in obvious distinction. At first, the howling multitude, eager for filthy lucre, took no particular notice of them beyond an occasional hurried poke or pat, but this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the first fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying babies, the appetite of the hundred-headed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... distant coast,[82] Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape[cx] The fascination of thy magic gaze? A Cherub-Hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste thy dear delusive shape. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... us new employment, Rupert and myself being kept quite half the time bailing. No occupation, notwithstanding the danger, could prevent me from looking about the cauldron of angry waters, in quest of the ship. Fifty times did I fancy I saw her, and as often did the delusive idea end in disappointment. The waste of dark waters, relieved by the gleaming of the combing seas, alone met the senses. The wind blew directly down the estuary, and, in crossing its mouth, we found too much swell to receive it on our beam, and were soon compelled, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... again that females should have the ballot as a protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband is brutal, arbitrary or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to conform to his wishes in other respects would also compel her to use the ballot, if ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... therein justified. The manager's vocation is not to write plays, nor (let us hope) to act in them, nor to direct the rehearsals of them, and even his knowledge of the vagaries of his own box-office has often proved to be pitiably delusive. The manager's true and only vocation is to refrain from producing plays. Despite all this, however, the manager has already collaborated in the play. The dramatist sees it differently now. All sorts of new considerations have been presented to him. Not a word has been altered; but it ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... chamber. Then she remembered, but too vividly, the slow, but sure progress he had been making towards intemperance, during the past two or three years, and her heart sunk trembling in her bosom with a new and awful fear. It seemed as if she had suddenly awakened from a delusive dream of happiness and security, to find herself standing at the brink of a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... second place, the years 1851-53, so full of profitless successes in pure science, and delusive hopes held out by the Government, were marked by an equally unsuccessful series of attempts to obtain a professorship. If a chair of Natural History had been established, as he hoped, in the projected ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... beauteous wraiths or frescoes in the flat. That screen is emblematic of their real exclusion from the higher government which their social participation in parliamentary elections, and the men's habit of talking politics with them, flatter them into a delusive sense of sharing. A woman may be the queen of England, but she may not be one of its legislators. That must be because women like being queens and do not really care for ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
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