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Chimera   Listen
noun
Chimera  n.  (pl. chimeras)  
1.
(Myth.) A monster represented as vomiting flames, and as having the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. "Dire chimeras and enchanted isles."
2.
A vain, foolish, or incongruous fancy, or creature of the imagination; as, the chimera of an author.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chimera" Quotes from Famous Books



... hours now has the world-bedlam roared: call it the world-chimera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... Saleh, I have always hitherto thought you a prince of great wisdom, and prudence; but what you say convinces me I was mistaken. Tell me, I beseech you, where was your wit or discretion, when you formed to yourself such a chimera as you have proposed to me? Could you conceive a thought of aspiring in marriage to a princess, the daughter of so powerful a monarch as myself? You ought to have considered the great distance between us, and not run the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... him as it did upon all over whom the spirit of the murdered Concho brooded,—upon all whom avarice alternately flattered and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers, regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered; through ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... two diplomatists was not, however, a sufficient warning to Madame des Ursins. Ever in pursuit of a position, which had become nothing more than a chimera after having served as a lure on the part of the English, she relied for success upon the persistent and obstinate will of Philip V., who made it a question of amour propre for himself as much as ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... over almost the identical pathway once followed by the overland stage-coach, the pony express, and the slowly plodding ox caravans in the days when the possibility of a transcontinental trail of steel was regarded as a chimera. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... purpose of exposing the person of one or both of them to injury, tramples upon every principle of reason and equity. Duelling is the vilest of all egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an unintelligible chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my exclusive attention. I am unable to cope with you: what then? Can that circumstance dishonour me? No; I can only be dishonoured by perpetrating an unjust action. My honour ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... the war temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... we willing to split on the same rock on which we have seen them shipwrecked? Are we willing to give our enemies such a triumph as to fulfil their prophecy and convince the world that self-government is impracticable—a mere chimera—and that man is fit only to be a slave to his fellow man? Are we willing to teach the nations of the earth to despair, and resign themselves at once to the power that crushes them? Shall we forfeit all the bright honors that we have hitherto won by our ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt

... black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... hallucinations of his. The general held that Jake and the others were accessory phantasms of his own dream, and Watts and the colonel, being of more poetical temperament, held that the whole outfit was a chimera in some larger consciousness, whose entity it is not given us to know. As for Oscar, he claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to prove it, when it was thought best to shift and modify the discussion; ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... no longer time; the explosion resounded, the earth gaped, the smoke which rushed through the large fissures obscured the sky; the sea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from the grotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried the bark out twenty toises; the rocks cracked to their base, and separated like blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault was carried up toward heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-colored and green fire of the sulphur, the black lava of the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... saved? Where is the standard? If a man's character, in order to be saved by it, must be the best he can make it, no one has even that character,—no one's character is the best he could have made it. Hence, salvation by character is a chimera. ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... of hunger and despair for the chimera of nobility, which has no reality to-day unless it has the lustre ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... I tell you!" roared Rockamore. "Whoever stuffed you with such idiotic rot as that is making gammon of you! That conversation is a chimera of some disordered mind, if it isn't merely part of a deliberate conspiracy of yours against me! You'll suffer for this, my man! I'll break you if it is the last act of my life! Such a conference never took place, and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... leave the rest of them alone and devote whatever sense I might possess to persuading her in particular that the entire thing was and could be nothing but pure myth. He confessed frankly that to him it was still a mystery. He could easily regard it as chimera, but for one slight incident. He would not for a long while say what that was, but there is such a thing as perseverance, and in the end I dragged it out of him. This ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome

... let his head sink forward on his breast, wearied by the oft-repeated endeavor to solve that which was fast becoming a riddle, a chimera to him, and he probably would have fallen asleep had he not been startled suddenly into a consciousness of his surroundings by a low whinny; soft and plaintive as a child's voice. Looking up, he saw Starlight standing before him with ears erect and pointed ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... point of view in which we regard the dogma of the soul's immortality, we are compelled to consider it as a chimera invented by men who have realized their wishes, or who have not been able to justify Providence from the transitory injustices of this world. This dogma was received with avidity, because it flattered the desires, and especially the vanity of man, who arrogated to himself a superiority above ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... peace treated with more compassion than the hard-working and honest labourer. But that reader will have jumped to his conclusion from his preconceived prejudices. The reformation of the criminal is no chimera, it has been undertaken for thirty years and every year has seen better results. The results for 1903 (86 per cent. of reforms) ought to convince the most sceptic that the reformation of the criminal is the true aim for ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... then proved that two kinds of meal cannot come out of one sack, and that the work furnished by the Government was done at the expense of labour, paid for by the tax-payer. This was the death of the right to labour, which showed itself as much a chimera as an injustice. And yet, the right to profit, which is only an exaggeration of the right to labour, ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... years it has been our nursery bugbear, to apprehend a Russian invasion on the Indus. This, by testimony from every quarter (the last being that of Sir Roderick Murchison, who had travelled over most of the ground), is an infinitely impossible chimera; or at least until the Russians have colonized Khiva and Bokhara. Meantime, to those who have suffered anxiety from such an anticipation, let me suggest one consolation at least amongst the many horrors of the present scenes in Bengal—namely, that this perfidy ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... appreciate his concurrence or hostility. He was, I admit, a troublesome ally; for he aspired to all things, and complained of all. On a level with the rarest spirits and most exalted imaginations, it was his chimera to fancy himself equal to the greatest masters in the art of government, and to feel bitterly hurt if he were not looked upon as the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton. Prudent men did not lend themselves to this complaisant ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... out of his mind, invented this mad story of Trevanion's illness, frightened Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his own chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the other. I, having heard from Trevanion, and knowing he could not have been ill when the servant left him, set off, as was natural in so old a friend of the family, saved her from the freaks of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 415. "There is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against common sense, and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle was right in opposing it. But such a theory is only a chimera which Aristotle created for the purpose of combating it."—"The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... that this fancied discovery of mine was of the least value? I had never had a chance of making experiment of it, and no doubt it was an idle chimera of my brain, when it was overwrought by anxiety for my mother's sake. I had not hitherto thought enough of it to ask the opinion of any of my medical friends and colleagues. Why should I attach any importance ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... been made, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mystic phraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet more noble acquisitions. The Philosopher's Stone itself has seemed no visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the present century has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature" (article "Alchem"), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modern chemists as to the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "Chimera," said Esther. She sat with downcast eyes for a moment, then suddenly she began to cry. Perhaps in her heart she felt in some mysterious way that June was right, that this girl, with her odd instinct, had put her hand right on the heart ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... the individual, as an alien being distinguished from the real individual, which is the chimera, the dream, and the postulate of Christianity, is under democracy sensual reality, the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... European nations. Unfitted for scientific work and full of ardour, Mr. Carlyle found his mission in rushing with all his might to the annihilation of this terrible poet, who, like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had fully as much daring as Byron; his writing at its best, if without the many-eyed minuteness and sustained pulsing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... my pleasant secret for a long time, but at last I let it slip, and committed myself fortunately, to but one person, and that my daughter; and, even so, I hardly think she understood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque and infernal chimera that haunts me." ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... power, almost without the hope of power. I—but you know not my new dignity—I, in the Cabinet of England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest station not too high for my reasonable ambition! You, wedding yourself to some grand chimera of an object, aimless when it eludes your grasp. I, swinging, squirrel-like, from scheme to scheme; no matter if one breaks, another is at hand! Some men would have cut their throats in despair, an hour ago, in losing the object of a seven years' ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "In truth," he exclaimed, "you amaze me. You talk about these mysterious matters with such a careless security, as I have never yet met with; and it perplexes me the more since my reason tells me that your pursuit is a mere chimera, and the discovery of such an ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... shall never do," retorted Hermon irritably, "so long as it is a changing chimera which presents itself differently to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... apparent the relative simplicity of the task of classifying natural objects differentiated by fixed natural laws as compared with the task of classifying the products of the creative and imaginative faculties as applied to the useful arts. The chimera and other animal monsters occur only as figments of the mind. Zoological classification does not have to classify combinations of birds, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, nor does it deal in the way of classification with the parts of animals, nor is the question of absolute numbers of instances ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office

... cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might, be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might I not come ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... marks the race of the Dennises. With a half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider themselves as original ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... world, was longing for a sacred King, for a Prince of Peace, who should come from the East and bring to the people some higher and truer happiness than that deceiving chimera of political bigness. Well, Christ should be this universal, sacred King, this Prince of Peace, and Messenger of a durable happiness. It is not true that Christ had His prophets among the people of Israel only. His prophets existed in every race and every religion and philosophy ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... operate upon this chimera,' I thought. I frowned at her and sat down, worn out with ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... temporary Parisian abode, addressing them in speech and in print, and seemingly blind in the heat of the struggle to the enormous danger of playing with the unmanageable, unreasoning instincts of the crowd. She still cherished the chimera dear to her imagination—the prospective vision of the French people assembling itself in large masses, and deliberately and pacifically giving ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... after darkness successively before their smitten eyes, the floors seeming to heave and the walls to crack, thunders bellowing through the mighty dome; now yawning revealed beneath them the ghostly chimera of Tartarus, with all the shrieking and horrid ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... originality, charmed him with simplicity, amazed him later with talent and now had disarmed him with trust in his integrity. If at any moment the idea had entered Peter's head that here was a wild-flower waiting to be gathered and worn in his hat, she had quickly disabused his mind of that chimera. Curious. He found it as difficult to conceive of making free with Beth as with the person of the Metropolitan of Moscow, or with that of the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. She had her dignity. It was undeniable. He imagined the surprise in her large blue eyes ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... of national credit, supported by public funds and secured by Parliament, be a chimera or impossible thing? And if not, what would follow from the supposal ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... he, with energy, "I was bewitched, I was infatuated! common sense was estranged by the seduction of a chimera; my understanding was in a ferment from the ebullition of my imagination! But when this new way of life lost its novelty,—novelty! that short- liv'd, but exquisite bliss! no sooner caught than it vanishes, no sooner tasted than it is gone! which charms but to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... fact that was impossible. Those which have failed seem to us only fanciful; those which have been more fortunate appear sublime. When in search of that which really existed, he has sometimes found it; when he devoted himself to the pursuit of a chimera, he could not but fail, but even then he unfolded the same qualities, and that obstinate perseverance that must triumph over all difficulties but those which are insurmountable." Berry, in his "Short History of Astronomy," says "as one reads chapter after chapter without a lucid, still ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... to do so. She had accustomed herself to the idea that a woman is not necessarily condemned to love no more because she has encountered a coward who has abused her love. She was in an atmosphere of illusion and chimera; what was passing about her did not even seem to exist. Her maids dressed her, and placed upon her dark hair the bridal veil: she half closed her ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand, And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... little. A spark of pride glowed in his cool eyes as he bent them upon the smiling face of his friend. Yet his tone was mocking as he said, "Then it is the fountain of youth? One is never too old to find that chimera." ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... journey's end. An eager glance he gave me as he touched My hand to help me from the carriage. He Has told me since that I returned the look With one which, if not actually scorn, Was next of kin to scorn, and much resembling:— All the chimera of his ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... may become more intelligent; that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "Annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... off. But a great sorrow overtook me before I had completed this agreeable task. It is true, I met on all sides with indications of sympathetic interest in the completion of my great lyric work, although most of my acquaintances regarded the whole thing as a chimera, or possibly a bold caprice. The only one who entered into it with any heartiness or real enthusiasm was Herwegh, with whom I frequently discussed it, and to whom I generally read aloud such portions as were completed. Sulzer was much annoyed at the remodelling of Siegfrieds Tod, as he regarded ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... Journal, "I know that I know next to nothing." A very unusual, but a very promising frame of mind for a young man. "It is not certain that God exists, but that He does not is a most bewildering and improbable Chimera." ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet—of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his career has given ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... such or such places of the Ethique, it is everywhere.' "(16) In this impatient judgment, Father Malebranche uttered more truth than he could very well perceive; the paralogism is truly everywhere, because this whole edifice of words, "this frightful chimera," is really assumed in the arbitrary definition of the term substance. We might say with equal truth, that the fallacy of Malebranche's scheme is also everywhere; for although it stops short of the consequences so sternly deduced by Spinoza, it sets out ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... works of art and those of chance do consequently, though but implicitly, suppose that the combinations of atoms were not infinite—which supposition is very just. This infinite succession of combinations of atoms is, as I showed before, a more absurd chimera than all the absurdities some men would explain by that false principle. No number, either successive or continual, can be infinite; from whence it follows that the number of atoms cannot be infinite, that the succession of their ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... tell. Sometimes I find that I forgot what I was about; But when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer.' It is this brain, turned inward upon itself, and darting out on every side in purely random excursions, that was responsible, I cannot doubt, for all the contradictions of a career in which the inner logic ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... all his Vandalish followers, treats this hypothesis, both as regards the power itself of looking into the future and as regards the supposed source of that power, in the light of a contemptible chimera. They discuss it scarcely with gravity: indeed, the very frontispiece to Van Dale's book already announces the repulsive spirit of scoffing and mockery in which he means to dismiss it; men are there represented in ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... is unwilling to sacrifice to me this chimera of virtue," exclaimed Napoleon, "although she has already disregarded it by loving me. She is not courageous enough to give up the semblance after having already parted with the substance. Like all women she is timid, and incapable of a great resolution! How many letters have I not written ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... sketch of the different views and opinions of the gold-makers, Rosicrucians, manufacturers of astralian salts, drops of life, and tinctures of gold, hunters after the philosopher's stone, and other equally absurd chimera. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... might not furnish them some means of reviving the languishing manufactures of Leyden; and that after a consideration well matured, they flatter themselves with the hope (a hope which unprejudiced men will not regard as a vain chimera) that in fact, by the present circumstances, there opens in their favour an issue for ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... evidently went for political purposes, and with offers of his aid, through the foreknowledge and spiritual intercourse by which he thought himself favoured, yet he still cherished the hope of promotion by such visionary follies. That chimera of the imagination, the invention of the philosopher's stone, still haunted him, and he did not yet despair of one day becoming a ruler among princes, the supreme arbiter and depositary of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... to my last has occupied my thoughts all the morning. I do not know what to think. Do you mean to say that you are seriously half in love with a woman whom you have never seen—with a shadow, a chimera? for what else can Miss Daw to be you? I do not understand it at all. I understand neither you nor her. You are a couple of ethereal beings moving in finer air than I can breathe with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of sentiment is something that I admire without comprehending. ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... plan of life is adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain—in other words, by taking measures of precaution against want, sickness, and distress in all its forms, the aim is a real one, and something may be achieved which will be great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving after the chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with the opinion expressed by Goethe in the Elective Affinities, and there put into the mouth of Mittler—the man who is always trying to make other people happy: To desire to get rid of ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... deities who performed special services to the greater gods, like the Horae; and monsters, offspring of gods, like the gorgons, chimera, the dragon of the Hesperides, the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the centaurs, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... the soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one human heart shall find sympathy in another, so none ever interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our nearest and our dearest ties, forbear with us in mercy! When we are dead and repentance comes too late, both friend and foe may wonder ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... implanting in the individual a certain illusion by which something which is in reality advantageous to the species alone seems to be advantageous to himself; consequently he serves the latter while he imagines he is serving himself. In this process he is carried away by a mere chimera, which floats before him and vanishes again immediately, and as a motive takes the place of reality. This illusion is instinct. In most instances instinct may be regarded as the sense of the species which presents to the will whatever ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... followed by the surrender of the Sikhs to the British under Lord Gough and the disbandment of the Sikh army. And, lo, the Khalsa was as a tale that is told, its clang and clash of warlike achievements a thing that could be no more, its Holy War transformed by failure into a foolish chimera, and the only thing that lived was a memory lingering in quiet souls of the truths that ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... have been written to determine whether or no a republic of Atheists could exist. I maintain that every other republic is a chimera. If you once admit the existence of a heavenly Sovereign, you introduce the wooden horse within your walls!—What you adore by day will be your destruction ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... assaulted by wandering bodies of mutinous sepoys. The order-book each evening, reminding us of the danger, inculcated strict vigilance on picket and on guard. So long did this last without any attack being made that the shadowy expectation of what never occurred became our bugbear, a chimera which haunted ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... Noah's ark, and almost persuaded me I beheld that extraordinary vessel. The representation one sees of it in Scheutzer's "Physica Sacra" seems to be formed upon this very model, and for several moments I indulged the chimera of imagining myself confined within its precincts. How willingly, could I but choose my companions, would I encounter a deluge, to float whole years instead of months upon ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot: and why might I not come that way from the boat, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... see in the result, in the reformation of morals which appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which seemed to be irretrievably lost, something more than could be produced by a mere chimera of the slumbering fancy, something more than could arise from the capricious images of a terrified imagination; but once presented, we behold in all these things, and in their tremendous and mysterious results, the operation of the hand of God. And ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... at Tours was held in September of the same year. The anarchists were out in their full strength, prepared to make reprisals on the socialists. It was after declaring: "The conquest of political power is a chimera,"[4] that Guerard launched forth in his fiery argument for the revolutionary general strike: "The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... magistrate may come to his aid. It would be unwise in the highest degree, that the colonists should be disgusted with either France or us; for it might then be made to depend on the moderation of another power, whether what appears a chimera may not become a reality. I have thought it necessary to go thus fully into this transaction, and particularly as to the sentiments I have expressed to them, that you may be enabled to place our proceedings in their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... not deceive yourself thus!" she replied; "do not see in me a deified delusion of your own heart; I should have to suffer too much when the chimera vanished. View me as I am; as a poor woman, who is dying in despondency and solitude, and who will take with her from earth no feeling more divine than that of pity. You will understand this, when I tell you who I am," added she; "but ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... honeycombed the clifts, or yet, again, taking a hand at the nets! Sometimes he grew very lonely; for without a woman, either of one's blood or of one's choice, life holds little. Ah, that woman in the mask, that chimera of a night, that ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... them by a low thorn-bush, I stood in silent stupefaction as they passed by. That it was no chimera of the imagination was proved by the fact that their footsteps sounded upon the path, and just as they had passed I heard Courtenay address his wife by name. The transformation of her countenance from the ineffable picture of grief and sorrow to the calm, sweet expression ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... we need not say of intoxication, but of insobriety. Thus also a man walks in a strong sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial meditations. And whether he be really so clever or so strong as he supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera while it lasts. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow ...
— The Republic • Plato

... to every individual shareholder in the Company. I find the responsibility on my shoulders so great that I say the thing must be stopped. Damme, Mr Montague, it must be stopped. We mustn't ruin widows and children, Mr Montague. We mustn't let those shares run down 20 below par for a mere chimera. I've known a fine property blasted, Mr Montague, sent straight to the dogs,—annihilated, sir;—so that it all vanished into thin air, and widows and children past counting were sent out to starve about the streets,—just because one director sat in another ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... aiming at her object by other means. The French wars, however traditionally popular, were fertile only in glory. The rivalry of the two countries was a splendid folly, wasting the best blood of both countries for an impracticable chimera; and though there was impatience of ecclesiastical misrule, though there was jealousy of foreign interference, and general irritation with the state of the church, yet the mass of the people hated protestantism even worse than they hated the pope, the clergy, and the consistory courts. They believed—and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... hearing from the shrewd man of business. And though he himself was increasingly confident that the treasure had been hidden out of spite, and not really made away with, and that some day it would be found, he knew that this opinion would be regarded by the world at large as a chimera of ardent youth, and that Martin Holt for one would bid him lay aside all such vain and idle dreams, and strive by steady perseverance in business to win for himself a modest independence. Only to the young, the ardent, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... thank God, and take heart again, and try to revive those notions of human dignity and common human sense which this story sets at nought, and see if we cannot heal that great jar in our abused natures which this chimera of the nineteenth century makes in it—this night-mare of modern criticism which lies with its dead weight on all our higher art and learning—this creature that came in on us unawares, when the interpretation ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... anticipations which had elevated Columbus above all mercenary interests; which had made him regardless of hardships and perils, and given an heroic character to the early part of this voyage. It is true, he had been in pursuit of a mere chimera, but it was the chimera of a splendid imagination, and a penetrating judgment. If he was disappointed in his expectation of finding a strait through the Isthmus of Darien, it was because nature herself had been disappointed, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... the prospect of the interior state of the country, to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How is this disorder ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... infallible Thrust, which a great many People think that Masters reserve for dangerous Occasions, or to sell it at a dear Rate. This wonderful Thing, is called the secret Thrust. I don't know whether this Error proceeded from those who have not learned, or from the Chimera of some self-conceited Masters, who have sold to ignorant Scholars, some Thrusts as infallible, of their own Contrivance, as ridiculous and dangerous as the Simplicity of the Scholar and the Knavery of the Master ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat

... great trouble in modifying or arranging the association of ideas which arise spontaneously in the soul, he will suffer himself to be ruled by them, in place of exercising rational domination over them; he will pursue every chimera; he will trust every impulse; he will but dream, even when he tries to think; and will be of a weak and fickle, but obstinate and self-opinionated, intellect. His whole exhaustive logic will consist in clothing in exact and reiterated assertions the heterogeneous order ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... him in utter bewilderment; above him only the boundless dome of heaven, around him only endless mountain ranges! Dazed by the strangeness, the isolation of the scene, he began for an instant to doubt his sanity; was this a reality or a chimera of his own imagination? But only for an instant, for with his first movement a large collie had bounded to his side and now began licking his hands and face with the most joyful demonstrations. There was something soothing and reassuring in the companionship ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... demoralisation of the prince committed to his care. Inspired by the genius of vice, he divined and encouraged the vices of others, and above all of his master. He taught him to believe that virtue is but a mask worn by hypocrisy, a chimera on which no one can rely in the business of life; that religion is a political invention, of use only to the lower people; that all men are cheats and deceivers, and pretended rectitude a mere cover for intended villany. Madame, the mother of the Regent, early discovered the character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... "this Hebrew is right, I have lost three valuable years. I have had fever, and my eyes have been clouded; but, Heaven be praised! The charm is broken, the illusion fled, I am cured—saved! Farewell, my chimera, I am no longer thy dupe! Many thanks, my dear friend: I return to you your gun; do with it as it seemeth ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... strength of all these branches of Zion for the great work which the Master has set before us in calling on us to evangelize the world. In expecting to obtain this union, will it be said that we are looking for a chimera? It ought to be so, ought it not? Then it is no chimera. It may take time for the Churches to come up to this standard, but within a few years we have seen tendencies to union among different branches of the Presbyterian family in ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... and the disappointments of the past. I was then calm and rational. It would be madness in me, I felt, to aspire to the hand of a young, wealthy, and much admired widow. To venture to see Ellen again was to incur the risk of seeing my reason once more wrecked, and the fatal chimera which had been the source of all my misery start into life again. If we are to believe what poets say, love ennobles man and exalts him into a demigod. It may be so, but it turns him likewise into a fool and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... dazzling to the eye, which youth can see, and never sees again when Reality, the hideous hag, appears with witnesses accompanied by the mayor. To live the very poetry of love and not to see the lover—ah, what sweet intoxication! what visionary rapture! a chimera with flowing man ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... political serfdom, and deliverance from even the suggestion of thraldom—all of which his enfranchisement contemplates; or that these would assure, in greater degree, his national weal, would be to indulge a wild chimera, which could but superinduce the purest visionary picture of his condition under the operation of the gift. Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... blame for thus thinking? The Christian has no mercy on the superstition of the Heathen; and should scorn to complain when the bitter chalice is returned to his own lips. Atheists believe the God of Bishop Watson a supernatural chimera, and to its worshippers have a perfect right to say, 'not one of you reflects that you ought to know your Gods before you worship them.' These remarkable words, originally addressed to the Heathen, lose none of their force when directed ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... I looked over was Fantasque, dressed like a Venetian scaramouch. He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt very much in distortions and grimaces. He would sometimes affright himself with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil. In short, the most elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream: ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... palpable that not a single politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was assured by Canning in reply that the support of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... leave this angel," thought he, "to lose the brightest and noblest jewel of my life, and drive myself out of paradise. And wherefore all this? Perhaps to chase a phantom that will never become a reality, to follow a chimera which may be only a meteor that dances before me and dissolves into mist when I think to reach it? No, no, the world is not worth so much that one should sell himself and his soul's happiness for its splendor ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... of sensitive temperament, with a bright intellect that matches your own, you lay yourself open to be the mournful sharer of her griefs, doubts, and regrets, and her depression reacts upon you; her sorrow makes your melancholy return. Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... himself to the utmost and summoning all the skill he could command in order to state his case convincingly. Hilda could not have put the idea that possessed him to a more cruel test than this. It began to dawn even upon himself that he was in pursuit of a chimera, and the necessity for the enormous self-sacrifice, upon which he insisted, was breaking down in the face of such a determined opposition on the part of those who were more interested than himself. Doggedly and persistently he continued, nevertheless, fighting his love as though it had ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... solitudes into the thick of such a scene, it was no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally subsided amid the astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the bewildered simpleton now regarded his dream as the merest chimera. Hastily escaping from the thoroughfare, he sought out some wretched place of repose suited to his wretched condition, and there mooned himself asleep, in self-accusations at the thought of poor Nance at home, and in utter despair ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... Her ruff is downright odious; and the liberal exposure of her neck and bosom anything but alluring. With all her pearls about her, she looks like a pawnbroker's lady bedizened for an Easter ball, with all the unredeemed pledges from her husband's shop. She seems to have patronized that chimera in the ideal or allegorical portrait, at which Reubens and Sir Joshua were so often doomed to toil. She would not allow a shadow in her picture, arguing, like a Chinese, or a chop-logic, that shade is only an accident, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... Louis had ceased to feel the spur to glory; he had, in a way, had an abstract enjoyment of fame; and having opened it, as the ancient priests of sacrifice sought to read the future in the hearts of men, he had found nothing in the entrails of his chimera. Scorning a sentiment so wholly personal: "Glory," said ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... man's happiness. The instantaneous effort may be painful: but it is the price which we have to pay for a cure of deep-seated complaints. The infidel's reply is substantially this: I may destroy your hopes; but I do not destroy your power of hoping. I bid you no longer fix your mind on a chimera but on tangible and realizable prospects. I warn you that efforts to soar above the atmosphere can only lead to disappointment, and that time spent in squaring the circle is simply time spent. Apply your strength and your intellect on matters which lie at hand and on problems which admit of ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... geographer smiling. "But for a month that has been our usual bill of fare, and when we dined we stretched ourselves full length on the ground, unless we sat astride on the trees. Consequently, the meal you have just announced seemed to me like a dream, or fiction, or chimera." ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... the praises that shall be paid his memory in future ages, with so much ecstasy as to neglect his present life, nay court and covet death, if he but imagines that it will add to the glory he had acquired before.' But the most notable institution of pride is the love of honour. Honour is a 'chimera,' having no reality in nature, but a mere invention of moralists and politicians, to keep men close to their engagements, whatever they be. In some families it is hereditary, like the gout; but, luckily, the vulgar are destitute ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... all barons living in beautiful castles and receiving the tribute of the Goyim. One may reason and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their own Scriptures, that their Talmud is filled with palpable falsehoods, and that their hope is a chimera; but they turn a deaf ear to argument and entreaty, and turn upon you with fierce resentment at your efforts to show them the truth. Although they know that their habits of grasping and hoarding wealth, driving hard and unfair bargains, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... matters by what name we call them; men of talent and education will exert a certain influence over the minds of their fellow-men, which will always be felt and acknowledged in the world if mankind were equalized to-morrow. Perfect, unadulterated republicanism, is a beautiful but fallacious chimera which never has existed upon the earth, and which, if the Bible be true, (and we have no doubts on the subject,) we are told never will exist in heaven. Still we consider that it would be true wisdom and policy in those who possess a large share of the good things of this world, to make labour ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... "that is the Chian's vessel. I recognize the vine tree and the image of the Bromian god; and surely that other one is the Chimera under Uliades, the Samian. They come hither, the Ionian with them, to harangue against obedience to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... tiny sphinx brought in—a sphinx carved from black marble and resting in the classic pose with outstretched paws and erect head. He also purchased a chimera of polychrome clay; it brandished its mane of hair, and its sides resembled a pair of bellows. These two images he placed in a corner of the room. Then he extinguished the lamps, permitting the glowing embers to throw a dim light ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of these ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... Unsuffering may bear; but, daughter, listen! I am not guilty! if the human mind May keep account with its own issuings forth To act and do; if thought deceive us not, And reason live in man. I am not guilty, if The blind chimera of an earth-crown'd king Be less than God's truth—not, if it be well To love this people; to have drawn the sword For mercy's sake alone. I am not guilty! (O God! call back her eyes' fast fading light, Lest she die judging me.) I am not guilty! Except in loving thee too well. My lips Shall ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... his employment, and permanently throwing us upon the mercy of foreign nations for our daily supply of corn, it is impossible to over-estimate the evil. If, on the contrary, nothing of this should take place—if it should be demonstrated by experience that the one party has been grasping at a chimera, and the other battling for the retention of an imaginary bulwark, then—though we may rejoice that the delusion has been dispelled—we may well be pardoned some regret that the experiment was not left to other hands. Our proposition is simply this, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... his wife come up on future Sundays to dine with the Squire and his lady. I have long since made up my mind that when afternoon service is over, we ought to go up and be made much of at the Privets; and you're putting all this off till I'm an old woman—for a chimera. It's about our Sunday dinners that I'm angry. Flo, my darling, what a face you have got. Do come and sit still for a few minutes, or you'll be in a fever." While Mrs. Fenwick was wiping her girl's brow, and smoothing her ringlets, Mary walked off to the orchard by herself. There was a broad green ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... all, by preventing misery, and promoting happiness, we shall indeed have gained the prize of having united the agreeable with the useful. Perhaps, when every folly is exhausted, there will come a time, in which men will be so far enlightened as to prefer the real pleasures of nature to vanity and chimera." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... fusion can only be a cerebral one, that actually mingling sculpture, architecture, music, drama, acting, colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of unity. Synthesis is not thus to be attained. It must be in the idea of the arts rather than their material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet one that has piqued the world of art in almost every century. It was the half-crazy E.T.W. Hoffmann, composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stage manager, and a dozen other professions, including that of genius and drunkard, who set off a train of ideas which buzzed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from our little ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... kiss, one touch of these snow-coloured hands. When I saw, or thought I saw, that you loved me, I was God. I said on reading your sweet letter, 'My life shall not pass without kissing at least once the lips of my chimera.'" ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... themselves, have to lament and say: Alas, we were not wise enough! We took transient superficial Semblance for everlasting central Substance; we have departed far away from the Laws of this Universe, and behold now lawless Chaos and inane Chimera is ready to devour us!—'Nature in late centuries,' says Sauerteig, 'was universally supposed to be dead; an old eight-day clock, made many thousand years ago, and still ticking, but dead as brass,—which the Maker, at most, sat looking at, in a distant, singular and indeed ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it. It will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in Cromwell's life. It is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny misses fire. All of Cromwell is at stake in the comedy being played ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... practical effect upon his ear, of any beauty attained? By no means; all the difference, sensibly perceived, lay in the occasional constraints and affectations to which the writer had been driven by his self-imposed necessities. The same chimera exists in Germany; and so much further is it carried, that one great puritan in this heresy (Wolf) has published a vast dictionary, the rival of Adelung's, for the purpose of expelling every word of foreign origin ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... "mechanical cause, stimulus, and motive," denotes only distinctions in the mode of action, not in the necessity of action. Man's actions follow as inevitably from his character and the motives which influence him as a clock strikes the hours; the freedom of the will is a chimera. Finally, the ratio cognoscendi determines that a judgment must have a sufficient ground in order to be true. Judgment or the connection of concepts is the chief activity of the reason, which, as the faculty of abstract thought ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... intimidated. The public offices were filled with the most violent agitators, who believed that the time had come to revenge the Gracchi, and carry out the democratic revolution, to establish the ideal Republic, and the direct rule of the citizen assembly. This, too, was a chimera. If the Roman Senate could not govern, far less could the Roman mob govern. Marius stood aside, and let the voices rage. He could not be expected to support a system which had brought the country ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... Friedrich, not fled to Merseburg at all; but mounted there on the Janus Hill, as on his saddle-horse, with face quite the other way;—and for holster-pistol, has plucked out twenty-two cannon. Clad verily in fire; Chimera-like, RIDING the Janus Hill, in that manner; left leg (or wing) of him spurning us into the abysses, right one ready ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... artist, was at that time the eccentric and elegant lion of society in Baltimore. "Jack Randolph" had recently sat to him for his portrait. "By the bye [the letter continues] that little 'hydra and chimera dire,' Jarvis, is in prodigious circulation at Baltimore. The gentlemen have all voted him a rare wag and most brilliant wit; and the ladies pronounce him one of the queerest, ugliest, most agreeable little ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... tyrants." This indeed is one of the most striking and important instances that can be adduced, of what has been called final causes, the determinate choice of an end, and the skilful adaptation of means to the accomplishment of it. A nation of women, we may confidently say, is as much a chimera, as a nation of two-headed men; and that individual has little acquaintance with herself that knows not, there is an insuperable objection to so anomalous an occurrence. With whatever abuses of authority, therefore, the other sex may be chargeable, it is not to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... Ware in your Country, and carry your Money back to our own; By which Means we inrich our own Country, and impoverish yours: Of all the Treasures that come into Spain, you enjoy only the Name; for while you are busy in Chimera's, our Industry drains all the Treasure from you; and take this with you, that all Projects must end like the Searches for the Philosopher's Stone, that is, in Smoke, where the Interest is paid out of the Principal Stock, and is not supported ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... them was the following, under the title of "General Observations": "In choosing among the men who were members of the Constituent Assembly it is necessary to be on guard against the Orleans' party, which is not altogether a chimera, and may one day or ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... possible to combine several principles in the same government, so as at the same time to maintain freedom, and really to oppose them to one another. The form of government which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me to be a mere chimera. Accurately speaking there is no such thing as a mixed government (with the meaning usually given to that word), because in all communities some one principle of action may be discovered which preponderates over the others. England in the last century, which has been more especially ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... selfish ends, from the routine of work or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some who asked what was all this to them? What were the 'extraneous Austrian Emperor,' or the 'old chimera of a Pope' (Carlyle's designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who were deeply attached still to the 'Great Hinge on which Europe depended,' and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples, about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... his wise men told him of the terrible chimera that was in the west of his kingdom. This strange creature had the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a crocodile. Its breath was flames of fire, so the peasants said. Nobody dared ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... invoking Westray's aid. The architect, on the other hand, was by nature inclined to archaeologic and genealogic studies, and would not have been displeased if Mr Sharnall had handed over to him the perusal of these papers entirely. He was curious to trace the origin of that chimera which had wasted a whole life—to discover what had led Martin originally to believe that he had a claim to the Blandamer peerage. He found, perhaps, an additional incentive in an interest which he was beginning unconsciously to take in Anastasia Joliffe, whose fortunes might be supposed ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... paved the way for Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prs, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a third, something ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of policy. And, without considering how near the quick our instruments may ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... substituting Cibber; but as he would not lose what he had already written, this change disturbed the whole decorum of the satiric fiction. Things of opposite natures, joined into one, became the poetical chimera of Horace. The hero of the Dunciad is neither Theobald nor Cibber; Pope forced a dunce to appear as Cibber; but this was not making Cibber a dunce. This error in Pope emboldened Cibber in the contest, for he still insisted that the satire did not apply to him;[213] and humorously compared the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... into execution; but knowing that such an undertaking was fit only for some sovereign prince or state, he made the proposal, in the first place, to the republic of Genoa, where it was looked upon as a chimera. He then communicated his design to John II. of Portugal, who gave him a favourable hearing, but was so much occupied with the discoveries along the western coast of Africa, that he was unwilling to engage in another enterprize of so much importance. King John, however, referred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... It is woman's work all over the world, far more so than a hundred other occupations they now eagerly seek. Their repugnance to the position itself is the sticking point. This repugnance is based upon a chimera. They are, in any position in which they labor for wages, 'servants' in as complete a sense as if they labored for wages in household employments. Far be it from me to say a word to lower that just and honorable pride which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is no figure of a lizard, dragon, or chimera, whichever it is, under the horse's feet, as represented in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... agree with Bax that compensation for property acquired would be inadvisable and impracticable. "In a pamphlet called 'Collectivism and Revolution' M. Jules Guesde said, 'Expropriation with indemnity is a chimera. And whatever regret one may feel, however difficult may appear to peaceful natures the last method, we have no other way than to retake violently that which belongs to all, by—let us say the word—the Revolution.' He added, 'Capital which it is necessary to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... do believe, Murray, that God will work a modern miracle in favor of America! My dear friend, I wish you would abandon this vain chimera of your imagination, and let common sense and reason convince you of the folly of this ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... me; I was fond of it, because it encourages our manufactures: without magnificence there is no industry. I abolished at Lyons all that parchment nobility; it was never sensible of what it owed me: it was I that exalted it, by making counts and barons of my best generals. Nobility is a chimera; men are too enlightened to believe, that some among them are noble, others not: they all spring from the same stock; the only distinction is that of talents, and of services rendered the state: our ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... our thinking faculties, and it is the defect of all religions that they require us to occupy ourselves with matters that lie beyond this limit, that never can be revealed to us, since we are denied the understanding of them; a revelation is at all events a chimera. For either that which is to be revealed lies beyond our senses and ideas,—and then it cannot be revealed to us,—or it lies on this side, and then it need not be revealed to us. (This is ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion—as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people.' Ib p. 431. In 1770 he wrote:—'Our government has become a chimera, and is too perfect, in point of liberty, for so rude a beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of licentiousness.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... petty atheistic fanaticism of the Directory. France had secured enlightened legislation which was not enforced, religious liberty which could not be practised because of ill will in the government, civil liberty which was a mere sham because of internal violence, political liberty which was a chimera before hostile foreigners. Hence it seemed to the administration that one evil must cure another. Intestine disturbances, they naively believed, could be kept under some measure of control only by an aggressive foreign policy which should ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... of death. Almost all of his works unveil a murder, suicide, or madness. Moreover, the author, who shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... festivals. Groups of archers surrounded its base, their bows stretched, in the admirable attitudes of those painted by Raphael aiming their arrows at Hermes in the fresco of that room in the Borghese decorated by John of Bologna. They were in pursuit of a great Chimera, which emerged over the edge of the bowl in guise of a handle, while on the opposite side bounded the youthful Bellerophon, his bow at full stretch against the monster. The ornaments of the base and the edge were of rare elegance. The inside was gilded, the metal sonorous ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... deprived of his last hope of royal or imperial assistance, the neediest and loneliest of adventurers, lived a hand-to-mouth existence with the faithful domestic who had followed him since the day he had departed from Gruyere. Nursing always the same chimera of some day returning triumphant to his lost province, he pursued his peregrinations, finding a final refuge in the Burgundian chateau of Thalemy, belonging to his cousin Francois de Vergy, where he died at last in March of the year 1576. On a day in May a messenger from Burgundy announced ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... that entered into the composition of the rock. I had seen large mountains that presented a similar appearance. More than one such exist in the great American Saara, in whose glittering cliffs, viewed from afar, may be found the origin of that wild chimera, the mountain of gold. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Chimera" :   imaging, imagination, Greek mythology, mental imagery, mythical monster, chimeral, chimerical, mythical creature



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