"Delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is a common delusion among Americans that every Englishman drops his "h's," and is to ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... shore or when trying to get ashore. Nothing which had happened since had furnished any reason for altering that view. No battleship depending upon flat trajectory guns could ever play a role of paramount importance during fighting ashore, except in quite abnormal circumstances. The whole thing was a delusion. Ships of war, and particularly such a vessel as the Queen Elizabeth, did undoubtedly provide moral support to an army operating on land close to the coast, and their aid was by no means to be despised; but their potentialities under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated, and ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... at home, the return of Louis XVIII. would afford her the best prospect of restoring a regular government within, peace without, and the reassumption of her proper rank in Europe. In public life, duty and reason equally dictate to us to encourage no self-delusion as to what produces evil; but to adopt the remedy firmly, however bitter it may be, and at whatever sacrifice it may demand. I had taken no active part in the first Restoration; but I concurred, without hesitation, in the attempts of my friends to establish the second under the most favourable ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... place himself in the power of a maniac. The rain was now falling in thick drops, and he decided at any rate to remain a while longer. He knew that it would not be well to dispute the old man, and resolved to humor his delusion. ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... republican Dutch, but that they had secured, in addition, the unfaltering allegiance of the larger Dutch population which remained behind in the Cape Colony. Grey assured the Home Government that in both respects it was the victim of a delusion bred of its complete ignorance of South African conditions. The Boer Republics would give trouble. Apart from the bad draftsmanship of the conventions—a fertile source of disagreement—these small states would be centres of intrigue and "internal commotions," while ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the ultimate triumph and dignity of labor. 'We shall one day,' he says, 'supersede Politics by Education.' Pause well here, you who grope forward into the dark future with misgiving and faithless hearts. This is not the chimerical delusion of a transcendental philosophy, this death-knell to the Slavery of Ignorance and Vice. Recognize in it the wide generosity that says with Leczinsky, 'Je ne connais d'avarice permise que celle du temps.' Here is wealth for want, industry for indolence, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was a delusion, and that he must soon wake and find relief; but when he did, the relief did not come for the horrors of the dream were continued in the reality, and his lips parted to utter a wild cry; but lips, tongue, and throat ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... This deplorable madness was in New England a mere transitory panic, from which the people quickly recovered; but while it lasted it almost silenced opposition, and it required genuine heroism to lift a voice against it. No country of Europe was free from the delusion during that century, and some of its wisest men were carried away by it. The eminent judge, Sir William Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," published in 1765, used ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... is a unity in special contradistinction to the Trinity of the Christians, and the doctrine of a divine generation. Our Saviour is never called the Son of God, but always the son of Mary. Throughout there is a perpetual acceptance of the delusion of the human destiny of the universe. As to man, Mohammed is diffuse enough respecting a future state, speaking with clearness of a resurrection, the judgment-day, Paradise, the torment of hell, the worm that never dies, the pains that never end; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... occupied directly or indirectly about the Orphans. 3, Am I not undertaking too much for my bodily strength and mental powers, by thinking about another Orphan-House? 4, Am I not going beyond the measure of my faith in thinking about enlarging the work so as to double or treble it? 5, Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me go beyond my measure? 6, Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, by attempting to ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... his idol. It may be that the scorn of the world had opened his eyes to behold of what mean materials was shapen the divinity he had so honored. It may be that the glitter of the gems he had heaped around it had perpetuated the delusion which had first charmed him, and he had thus been saved the last, worst pang of wasted idolatry. It matters not. He died—as all such men must die—in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... believers, as having themselves been visited by the inhabitants of the other world, was opposed by his own experience; for although he had frequently thought he had been so honored, yet upon investigating the cause, he had invariably found it to be a mere delusion. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... lying in the middle of the street. I don't say he is intentionally prevaricating. Of course he thinks he saw all that he says he did. I grew up in the firm conviction that I had known Judas Iscariot. I was ten years old before I could be persuaded that it was only a sweet delusion,—a dazzling dream of childhood, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... woman. About 2,000 years ago, there lived a man who was intelligent enough to understand what the trouble was. He said that there were not any evils, or devils, and that God, or the Creative Principle, was good only, and that evil was a lie, or delusion, and proved His words by His works. This enraged the wise men of His time very much, for they had been teaching the people that evil was real, and that in many instances God put evil upon His children to make them good. These wise men ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... from a form of the same delusion. When talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering Gaul listens to it all with incredible patience and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... all that could be expected in that way. What more could he want? Colebrook was the place, and there was no need to ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good sense, and he was soothed by the part she took in his hope, which had become his delusion; in that idea which blinded his mind to truth and probability, just as the other old man in the other cottage had been made blind, by another disease, to the light and beauty ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible—dreamlike. Is it real, or is it only a great delusion?" ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... and Jesus must go there as one in authority, cost what it might. We believe him to have gone there in a spirit of grand and careless bravery, yet seriously and soberly, and under the influence of no fanatical delusion. He knew the risks, but deliberately chose to incur them, that the will ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... letter was a great surprise and a great pain to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at once, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Notwithstanding all the lessons I had received in childhood, I was pretty nearly in the situation of one who had never heard the name of the Saviour mentioned. The extent of my reflections on such subjects, was the self-delusion of believing that I was to save myself—I had done no great harm, according to the notions of sailors; had not robbed; had not murdered; and had observed the mariner's code of morals, so far as I understood them; and this gave me a sort of claim ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... this time the House of the Medici, with all their followers, having been hunted out of Florence, came to Bologna and were lodged in the House of the Rossi. Thus the vision of Cardiere, whether a delusion of the devil, a divine warning, or a strong imagination that had taken hold of him, was verified; a thing so truly remarkable that it is worthy of being recorded. I have narrated it just as I heard it from ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... age in matters of religion, it produced considerable effect among the fanatic sectaries that swarm through the kingdom of England. The leaders of those blind enthusiasts, either actuated by the spirit of delusion, or desirous of recommending themselves to the protection of the higher powers, immediately seized the hint, expatiating vehemently on the danger that impended over God's people; and exerting all their faculties to impress the belief of a religious war, which never fails to exasperate and impel ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sufficiently evident that Tyson had got it from his wife. The odd thing was that Tyson was unaware of this. He seemed to have no doubt whatever that his marriage with the perfect woman had been arranged for in heaven, though somehow it had failed to come off on earth. A delusion not uncommon with men of ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... these dissectors is probably the German Professor, Kirchhoff, some of whose opinions we shall cite in this appendix. His psychological tendency is that of analysis, separation, division; the very idea of unity seems a bugbear to him, a mighty delusion which he must demolish or die. Specially is his wrath directed against Book First, probably because it contains the three unities above mentioned, all of which he assails and rends to shreds in his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... assertion of radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect was scouted as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day of my yet spared life, more and more grateful that my mind is capable of imaginative vision, and liable to the noble dangers of delusion which separate the speculative intellect of humanity from the dreamless instinct of brutes: but I have been able, during all active work, to use or refuse my power of contemplative imagination, with as easy command of it as a physicist's of his telescope: ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... from the demonetization of silver, their relief lay in bimetallism. It was easy to argue that the best form of bimetallism was the free coinage of gold and silver, and after the panic of 1893 this delusion grew, but the strength of it was hardly appreciated by optimistic men in the East until the Democrats made it the chief plank in the platform on which they fought the presidential campaign of 1896. Nominating an ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... be a companion to your children, and just where the idea came in which developed into the English boarding-school delusion, that children should be sent away among hirelings— separated from their parents—in order to be educated, I do not know. It surely was not complimentary to the parents. Old Jacopo didn't try very hard to discipline his boys—he loved them, which is better if you are forced to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... in the court of the palace, the inexorable dates would not permit me to rest in the delusion that the head of Marin Falier had once bloodily stained them as it rolled to the ground—at the end of Lord Byron's tragedy. Nor could I keep unimpaired my vision of the Chief of the Ten brandishing the sword of justice, as he proclaimed ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... they confusedly pictured their misery. They are crammed with a curse which strives to find a way out and to come to light in words, a curse which makes them to groan and wail. It is as if they toiled to emerge from the delusion and ignorance which soil them as the mud soils them; as if they will at last know ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... this was followed several years later by a somewhat similar work, On Force, its Mental and Moral Correlates. His philosophy was summarized in a volume published in 1871, which was entitled A Manual of Anthropology. He also wrote pamphlets on "Illusion and Delusion," "The Reign of Law," "Toleration," and "Christianity." In his work on necessity he promulgated very many of those ideas which have formed so prominent a part of the philosophy of George Eliot. The dominion of law, the reign of necessity, experience ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... no way of lying but straight on your back; unless, to be sure, one's limb went round and round in the ankle, like a swivel. Upon getting into a sort of doze, it was no wonder this uneasy posture gave me the nightmare. Under the delusion that I was about some gymnastics or other, I gave my unfortunate member such a twitch that I started up with the idea that someone ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... she was here—that she was the nurse the boys praise so much. But that was a delusion," he said, and without a thought of the result, Katy asked, impetuously: "If she were here would you ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... descended. So vividly did this phantasm present itself to Leonard, that, almost convinced of its reality, he placed his hands before his eyes for a few moments, and, on withdrawing them, was glad to find that the delusion was occasioned by a black cloud over the cathedral, which his distempered fancy had converted into the colossal ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... interrogating himself, a new sound disturbs the tranquillity of the forest—the same, which the assassin at first fancied was the voice of one wailing for his victim. The coon-hunter has no such delusion. Soon as hearing, he recognises the tongue of a stag-hound, knowing it to be Clancy's. He is only astray about its peculiar tone, now quite changed. The animal is neither barking nor baying; nor yet does it yelp as if suffering chastisement. The soft tremulous whine, that comes pealing ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and then he is ready to put the whole weight of his nature to deceiving others. This letter ran so smoothly, so plausibly, that it produced on the writer of it the effect of a work of fiction, which we know to be unreal, but feel to be true. Long habits of this kind of self-delusion in time produce a paralysis in the vital nerves of truth, so that one becomes habitually unable to see things in their verity, and realizes the awful words of Scripture,—"He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Ingram slowly. "I have heard a good many people called impostors. Did it ever occur to you that the blame of the imposture might possibly lie with the person imposed on? I have heard of people falling into the delusion that a certain modest and simple-minded man was a great politician or a great wit, although he had never claimed to be anything of the kind; and then, when they found out that in truth he was just what he had pretended to be, they called out against him as an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... military operations and foreign negotiations, to deal with the Indians, and to regulate national finances. The immediate effect of the Declaration of Independence was that it obliged every American to take sides for or against the Revolution. No one could any longer entertain the delusion that he could remain loyal to Great Britain while making war upon her. It was, therefore, a great encouragement to the patriots, who speedily succeeded, in most colonies, in driving out or silencing the loyalists. There is a tradition that another ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... founts of its wisdom present us Each morning with gems of this kind, Such matters must strike as momentous The news-editorial mind; 'Tis time this delusion was done with, High time that some voice made it clear We don't want those fountains to run with Such very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... please— Beauty dancin' all around me, music ringin' everywhere, Like a weddin' celebration. Why, I've plumb fergot my care An' the tasks I should be doin' fer the rainy days to be, While I'm huggin' the delusion that God made ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... field, as if on the track of game. Ever nearer and nearer he circles, and in his wake, as it appears to Faust, trails a flickering phosphorescent gleam. But Wagner ridicules the idea as an optical delusion. He sees nothing but an ordinary black poodle. 'Call him,' he says, 'and he'll come fawning on you, or sit up and do his tricks, or jump into the water after sticks.' The poodle follows them—and makes himself at home by the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... of being able to appreciate Shakespeare more in reading him than in seeing him acted used to be a common method of affecting special intellectuality. I hope this delusion—a gross and pitiful one to most of us—has almost absolutely died out. It certainly conferred a very cheap badge of superiority on those who entertained it. It seemed to each of them an inexpensive opportunity ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... brief reference to George Burnet, who, in this epidemic delusion, had given his sanction to, and embarked all his prospects in life on this Pantisocratical scheme. He was a young man, about the age of twenty; the son of a respectable Somersetshire farmer, who had bestowed on him his portion, by giving him an University education as ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... 1572, as the illustrious Danish astronomer, Tycho, was walking through the fields, he was astonished to observe a new star in the constellation Cassiopea, beaming with a radiance quite unwonted in that part of the heavens. Suspecting some delusion about his eyes, he went to a group of peasants, to ascertain if they saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment as himself. He went to his instrument, and fixed its place, from which it never after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased in brightness—greatly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... what has kept me long; a fear that I am under a delusion; but the conviction remains firm under all circumstances, in all frames of mind. And this most serious feeling is growing on me; viz. that the reasons for which I believe as much as our system teaches, must lead me ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Laws; the power of entering into Bonds, Covenants, Leagues and Treaties; the power of raising Armes, keeping of Strengths and Forts are Essential parts, and inseparable privileges of the Royal Authoritie and Prerogative of the Kings of this Kingdom: Yet, such hath been the madness and delusion of these times, that even Religion itself, which holds the Right of Kings to be Sacred and Inviolable, hath been pretended unto, for warrand of these injurious Violations and Incroachments, so publickly done and owned, upon and against His Majesties just Power, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... and to the influence of which it now succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which the way has already been paved by its transference to the recent material. Thus far it is in the way of becoming something resembling an obsession, delusion, or the like, i.e. a thought reinforced by a transference and distorted in expression by the censor. But its further progress is now checked through the dormant state of the foreconscious; this ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Esther delicately, with an air of regret and several other picturesque emotions mingled carefully, "my aunt has one delusion. It is connected with this necklace, which she certainly did possess at one time. She imagines things about it, queer things, where it went and where it is now. But you mustn't let her tell you about it, and if she insists you mustn't allow it to get into ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... engagement, perhaps expecting your early return. I believe your pursuit of her can only end in failure and disappointment; and although I am ready to assist you in any manner you wish, I warn you against sacrificing your life to a delusion." ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... clothed and haughty strangers may, by recalling his sensations, realize Henry's feelings as he stood alone and unfriended there, exposed for the first time in his life in evening dress to the vulgar gaze. Several minutes passed before Henry could conquer the delusion that everybody was staring at him in amused curiosity. Having conquered it, he sank sternly into a chair, and surreptitiously felt the sovereigns ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... what her mother was "driving at," as she would have expressed it. And the whole reality of her relations to Evan and his relations to her stood in colours as distinct as those of the red and green maple leaves, and unsoftened by the least haze of self-delusion. In the dash of the rain and the roar of the wind, in the familiar swirl of the elm branches, she read as it were her sentence of death. Before this she had not been dead, only stunned; now she was wakened up to die. Nature herself, which ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... does not derive any increase of authority from being misnamed: its truth is not supreme over, but depends upon, experience. If our so-called consciousness is not borne out by experience, it is a delusion. It has no title to credence, but as an interpretation of experience; and if it is a false interpretation, it must ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... their arms like strong swimmers—when I saw that. boisterous human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from the opening to the end of the play, it suggested to me something besides the trustworthiness of an English crowd, and the delusion under which those labour who are apt to disparage and malign it: it suggested to me that in meeting here to-night we undertook to represent something of the all-pervading feeling of that crowd, through all its intermediate degrees, from the full-dressed lady, with her ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... costly table of Lazarus, and purchased "curios"—Indian silks, Javanese; knives, Birmingham metal-work, and what not—as mementoes of their explorations. In particular, Miss Paterson had invested in a heavy bronze image— apparently Japanese—concerning which she entertained the thrilling delusion that it was an object of local worship. It was a grotesque thing, massive and bulky, weighing not much less than ten or twelve pounds. Hence it was confided to the careful porterage of Dawson, an assiduous and favored courtier of Miss Paterson; and he, having lunched, was fated to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the legislature; we have our part to perform, without at all overstepping the modesty of private life: and it is the constant influence of public opinion, and the active interest taken by the country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of occasional delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to us the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And so, if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing which tended to its ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... a dream presented to our view, Those airy forms appear so like the true; Nor heaven nor hell the fancy'd visions sends, But every breast its own delusion lends: For when soft sleep the body wraps in ease, And from th' unactive mass our fancy frees, Whatever 'tis in which we take delight, And think of most by day, we dream at night. Thus he, the now sackt city justly ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... after which it is delivered to the proprietor, and declared by the old men and jugglers to be a security against arrows; and provided the feast has been satisfactory, against even the bullets of their enemies. Such is the delusion, that many of the Indians implicitly believe that this ceremony has given to the shield supernatural powers, and that they have no longer to fear ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... which has worked perversely. Elsa, you are under a spell, poor woman; you do not know the truth. I gave you the philtre in your drinking water, and Foy, the traitor Foy, has reaped its fruits. Dear girl, shake yourself free from this delusion, it is I whom you really love, not that base thief of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... It is a favorite delusion with the British parent that marriage will work a miracle, and steady their children for life, by casting forth the lutins who beset them. A thousand failures have not convinced the good speculative matrons of the hazard of the experiment, nor will as many more do so; they ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... among the Allies, that Englishman who more than any other single man speaks for the whole English-speaking and Western-thinking community, President Wilson, has said definitely that this is his meaning. America, with him as her spokesman, is under no delusion; she is fighting consciously for a German Revolution as the essential War Aim. We in Europe do not seem to be so lucid. I think myself we have been, and are still, fatally and disastrously not lucid. It is high time, and over, that we cleared ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Because Through the Arrangements of the Government the Moral Responsibility for such Deeds is Divided among a Great Number of Participants in it, and Everyone Throws the Responsibility on Someone Else—Moreover, the Sense of Moral Responsibility is Lost through the Delusion of Inequality, and the Consequent Intoxication of Power on the Part of Superiors, and Servility on the Part of Inferiors—The Condition of these Men, Acting against the Dictates of their Conscience, is Like that of Hypnotized Subjects Acting by Suggestion—The ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... gradient in the direction in which we were travelling; occasionally it would almost seem as though we were descending a fairly steep hill, had not the unrelaxed efforts of our teams suggested the optical delusion which, as long ago as 1828, was observed by Erman the explorer, who wrote: "I am disposed to think that this phenomenon was connected with the glistening and distortion of distant objects which I remarked not only in this part of the valley, but frequently also on the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... "A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and growing richer by leaps and bounds. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Miss Todd's party. Assist me, my muse. Come down from heaven, O, Calliope my queen! and aid me to spin with my pen a long discourse. Hark! do you hear? or does some fond delusion mock me? I seem to hear, and to be already wandering through those sacred recesses—the drawing-rooms, namely, at Littlebath—which are pervious only to the streams and breezes ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the way delusion comes,—a glass of old Madeira, A pair of visual diaphragms revolved by Jane or Sarah, And down go vows and promises without the slightest question If eating words won't compromise ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you labor under the delusion that all pirates are bad and cruel men. I confess, sir, there are many of our people who treat their prisoners with unnecessary severity, and frequently inflict death when the occasion does not demand it. But, my dear sir, this is the abuse ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... seems to be disturbed. If the second figure is presented to any one without sufficient science to understand this delusion, the impression is created that these lines converge to the right and diverge to the left. The vision is deceived in its mental factor and judges wrongly ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... very spring, he had asked her to pledge herself to him. Fortunately—oh, how very fortunately!—she had refused, and he had been left free. Now he knew that his fancied love for her had been merely a passing whim, a delusion of the moment. This—THIS which he was now experiencing was the grand passion of his life. He wrote a poem with the title, "The Greater Love"—and sold it, too, to a sensational periodical which circulated largely among sentimental shopgirls. It is but truthful to state that the editor ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... yet every human being believing that he is master of his actions, at the very moment that he might be conscious that his belief is only a part of the great law of necessity. Then it seemed as if this delusion in which men indulge, and are forced to indulge, was an element of the farce introduced into the play, so as to relieve the mind from the heavy burden of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... step nearer him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the delusion. If I'd been a woman with—with more claim, let us say, to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... different History for Germany and the rest of us. Fancy it! But for many reasons, change of religion, had there been no other, it was an impossible notion. "May be," thinks Hotham, "that the Court of Vienna throws out this bait to continue the King's delusion,"—or a snuffle from Seckendorf, without the Court, may have given it currency in so inane an element ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him:—It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained shut up there ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Water!" He began making passes over his patient—"The stage has passed. O'Hana no longer is possessed by O'Iwa. The wronged lady leaves O'Hana to peace. O'Hana is completely herself again. O'Iwa is all delusion. O'Hana believes this. She believes firmly. The Daiho[u]-in tells her to believe. O'Iwa does not haunt O'Hana. O'Iwa has no ill will against O'Hana." He looked fixedly and with command into the eyes of O'Hana. His voice rang clear and authoritative. Then he began gently to stroke the back of her ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... he assured her; "I have been deeply interested and concerned in all you have said. I think you are laboring under a great delusion, and I have tried my best to convince you of it; but I have never heard you speak more intelligibly or, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... always looked upon me as a benefactor. The claim, on my part, certainly rested on a very small foundation originally; it was strengthened afterwards by a less questionable act of patronage. Like many other under-graduates of every man's acquaintance, Hurst laboured under the delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the proctor, was an opus operatum of the highest possible merit. To do him justice, he laboured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... slant that made him doubt what others accepted so easily as facts. Martin knew he was bound to things of substance but he followed the lure of property and accumulation as he might have followed some other game had he learned it, knowing all along that it was a delusion and at the same time acknowledging that for him there was nothing ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... captains. Already in my state-room my senses had suspected a chill; but I had refused to believe my senses. I knew and had known all my life that American trains were too hot, and I had put down the supposed chill to a psychological delusion. It was, however, no delusion. As we swept through a snowy landscape the apologetic captains announced sadly that the engine was not sparing enough steam to heat the whole of the train. We put on overcoats ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... affairs—there he is clear-sighted, critical and acute, and accordingly he discusses the matter philosophically and logically, and concludes without fear of sinning against the church, that the whole is delusion. When, on the other hand, he has to deal with cases of demoniacal possession, in countries under the rule of the Roman hierarchy, he contents himself with the decisions of the scholastic divines and the opinions of the fathers, and makes frequent references to the decrees of various ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... have thought about them at all, it has been my opinion that spiritists are either fools or frauds. But I am endeavouring to give a faithful account of my feelings and sensations at the time of which I am writing, and the incident of the voice cannot be ignored. Perhaps it was all a delusion—an hallucination, if you will, due to the gradual breaking down of my body and mind. As to that, the reader can form his own conclusions. Certain it is, that from this time on, when I needed help and encouragement the most, I felt a vague assurance that my wife was by my side; and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... insensate delusion and folly, the critical reader will immediately counterplead that England all this time was conducting a war which involved the organization of several millions of fighting men and of the workers ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... be a sweet dream, a beautiful delusion, a spirit-spell that moves the soul with pictures of love and enchantment, and from which some stern reality would soon awake him and dispel the charm? No, it was reality, appealing more forcibly to all that was true and kindly in his nature, and ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... goodness of God with the moral turpitude of man, much more would it be hard to do so if his very angels are depraved. Therefore, if the reasonable question which I originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," the goodness of God must simply be pronounced a delusion. For the question which I originally put was no mere flimsy question of a stupidly unreal description. My own moral depravity is a matter of painful certainty to me, and I want to know why, if there is a God ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Schopenhauer's cynical contention concerning the economy of Nature, who invests youth with just enough transient beauty to ensure the perpetuation of the race, making men and women serve her purpose under the delusion that they are free agents and ministers to their own pleasure. Here were no pomp and circumstance to interpose their false colours before the sordid vista of the future. It lay glaringly before the imagination ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... unpainted pine table with four straight legs. It was a table of dark polished wood, and it stood on a single post with feet. There was nothing there that you said was there. Everything was a sham and a delusion; every word you spoke was untrue. And yet everybody in that theatre, excepting you and me, saw all the things that you said were on the stage. I know they saw them all, for I was with the people, and ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... are largely interested here, and have invested two or three millions, which will pay large interest to their grandchildren. Their long avenue is loyally named "Victoria." A thrifty Canadian crazed by the "boom," the queerest mental epidemic or delusion that ever took hold of sensible people, bought some stony land just under Rubidoux Mountain for $4000. It was possibly worth $100, but in those delirious days many did much worse. It is amazing to see what hard work and water and good taste will do for ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... white bones representing the burnouses of the men. A small white stone, not ten inches high, appeared to be several feet in height, at the distance of a quarter of an hour's ride. And so of the few other discernible objects on this wide expanse of optical delusion. Mirage was seen at times, but nothing pretty. We encamped late, midway through the vast plateau, when shadowy night began to establish her sable throne, in "rayless majesty," over this silent, sombre ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fully understood the polluted stock from which they had all sprung, and the terrible pit of heathenish wickedness from which they had been rescued, not by him (the humbled mutineer had long since escaped from that delusion), but by the Word ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... round and round they went, now seeming to sink into the ground, now leaping into the air, and often turning head over heels. All the time not a sound proceeded from the phantom-looking dancers. The Gilpins could scarcely help fancying themselves under some delusion. They ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... at this wonderful story which her daughter told her. She could only imagine that Pearl had in some way or another been bewitched, and was under a fatal delusion that she was in love with some hero of romance, to whom she believed she was betrothed. Still, her daughter had always been most loving and devoted to her, and had shown more brightness and ability than Chinese ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... had to do was to follow the river. It was simple enough in theory, but in practice it was a tough job, as they had to struggle every foot of the way, squirming and crawling. When they heard Compton's hail they had come to the conclusion that the forest was a trap, its mysteries a delusion, and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the impossibility of a fruition of love that slowly and surely removed her. On the other hand, the image of her sweet face, of her form, of her beauty, of her movements—every recall of these physical things enhanced her charm, and his love. He had cherished a delusion that it was Mel Iden's spirit alone, the wonderful soul of her, that had stormed his heart and won it. But he found to his consternation that however he revered her soul, it was the woman also who now allured him. That moment of revelation ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... spirit, its very essence; without which the heart cannot be right, let the tongue proclaim what delusion ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... his heart he turned to Nell to dispel her delusion, when unexpectedly an incident occurred which drew the attention ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... survive him, and there is a remarkable story of the commencement of his last illness. He dreamt that the spirit of Robert Grosteste had appeared, and given him a severe beating. The delusion hung about him, and he finally died in the belief that he was killed by the blows of the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... band cut to pieces. It is said that Triunnis himself was saved by his mother, and thenceforth dwelt with her in the lake. "But, indeed," adds the truth-loving Walter, "I think it is a lie, because a delusion of this kind is so likely to account for his body not having ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... long as there were unpaid bills at the doctor's and the grocer's. All of which was, of course, perfectly reasonable, and like other women who have had a narrow experience of life, she cherished the delusion that a man's love, as well as his philosophy, is necessarily rooted ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... it was a lady? Just like a woman making up a romance out of nothing. Yes, there's the delusion, which is bad. Keep his mind off it as much as possible, and tell him some of your own in your best brogue. I'll come and examine ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... and we felt almost certain, by the shouts and cries we heard, that the patriots had forced an entrance into the town. We thought, indeed it was no delusion, that we heard a voice proclaiming liberty to the Netherlands, and the cry of "Long live the Prince of Orange! long live our noble Stadtholder!" Again loud noises reached our ears, and thundering blows echoed through the building. There could be little doubt that the jail was being forced. Then came ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... right judgment in all things, that he sometimes gave undue prominence to the facts which supported his theory. It was only fair and reasonable that critics should draw attention to this characteristic of Froude as an historian. That he deliberately falsified history is a baseless delusion. A sterner moralist, a more strenuous worker, it would have been difficult to find. An artist he could not help being, for it was in the blood. Once his fingers grasped the pen, they began instinctively to draw a picture. He was not, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... ambition, thirst for power, restless eagerness to meddle in what did not concern her, blind longing to escape from the torture of watching other women with full lives and satisfied instincts, while her own life was hungry and sad. For a time she had actually, unconscious as she was of the delusion, hugged a hope that a new field of usefulness was open to her; that great opportunities for doing good were to supply the aching emptiness of that good which had been taken away; and that here at last ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... while tales no less flattering were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were restoring a ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... me. Of course, it was pure self-delusion; but, if I am going to begin that sort of folly, it is high time to come away. Indeed, the folly of it. Besides, I suppose I ought to feel ashamed. I am sure he knows now quite well that I love him, and perhaps that is why he looked strangely at me when ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... warm, the nurse covers it in her lap with a shawl, and, under this blind, surreptitiously inserts a finger between the parched lips, which possibly moan for drink; and, under this inhuman cheat and delusion, the infant is pacified, till Nature, balked of its desires, drops into a troubled sleep. These are two of our reasons for impressing upon mothers the early, the immediate necessity of putting themselves sympathetically in communication with their child, by ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Franklin discarded all idea of the Atonement, he of course could not express any gratitude for that which is, to the Christian, the crowning act even of divine love. This Saviour, to millions who cannot be counted, has proved, even if the comfort be a delusion, in temptation, disappointment, and death, more precious than it is in the power of words ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... continue, and animated to do it thoroughly, by the old man's expression of face, which was that of one who says, 'I give you rope,' and I dealt him a liberal amount of stock irony not worth repeating; things that any cultivated man in anger can drill and sting the Boeotian with, under the delusion that he has not lost a particle of his self-command because of his coolness. I spoke very deliberately, and therefore supposed that the words of composure were those of prudent sense. The error was manifest. The women saw it. One who has indulged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in hospital, during convalescence (but while mentally affected) I ran away to the Van As's. It was a case of mental delusion. The whole issue of the war depended upon me—could I be kept in hospital, then the English would win; was I allowed to ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... rumor afloat that Tardif was about to marry the girl you had been attending, and that everybody in the island regretted it. She said it would be a mesalliance for him, Tardif! What then would it be for you, a Dobree? No; it is a delusion, an infatuation, which will quickly pass away. I cannot believe you are so weak as to be taken in by mere prettiness without character; and this person—I do not say so harshly, Martin—has no ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... as if I were the victim of some hoax, some miserable delusion," he said to himself. "Not till I see her, not till I clasp her by the hand, shall I believe that she is ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... years in early youth she may have money in plenty, and then slowly she begins to sink. Her health becomes sapped. Often loathsome disease makes her a victim. As the shadows begin to gather she will often turn to drink that for an hour she may recover the delusion of well-being. Slowly but certainly the morass drags her down. Often she does not reach thirty. If she lives it is to face a state in which, toothless, wrinkled, and obscene, she is seen only by those who visit the murkiest parts of our cities. She dies ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... in their constitutions, and indeed expressly denied in the Constitution of the United States, which provides the mode in which amendments shall be made—but appearing plainly enough in every word of self-gratulation which comes from them. Political finality has ever proved a delusion—as has the idea of finality in all human institutions. I do not doubt but that the republican form of government will remain and make progress in North America, but such prolonged existence and progress must be based on an acknowledgment of the necessity for change, and must much depend ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... cheeks were wreathed in smiles while she slept; how happy and unconscious was the beautiful slave. And now she seems to hear the song of her native valley falling upon her ear as Aphiz used to sing it. Hark! is that delusion, or do those sounds actually fall upon her waking ear? Now she rouses, and like a startled fawn listens to hear from whence come those magic notes, and by whom could they be uttered. She stood electrified ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... you have what Mr. Dooley calls 'the stage delusion'. It is a delightful quality to feel the reality of the drama and not remember there is any 'behind the scenes'. I fancy at this minute Louise, who got a little husky in that duet with Julien, when she promised to leave her mother ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... replied, "what object can I have with regard to you? What a delusion! You look very far ahead; but of course the sudden surprise or turn of chance ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Med Service," the beaming man observed zestfully. "Of the Interstellar Medical Service, to which all problems of public health may be referred! But here we have a real problem for you! A contagious madness! A transmissible delusion! An epidemic of insanity! A plague of ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... follow the dictum of the Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a matter of mental delusion." ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron's "record" before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron—diagnosed with the assistance of ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... offering of fruit or flowers, she found him unusually bright, his cheeks flushed, his eyes brilliant, and his state of mind exceedingly cheerful. He talked of his recovery and future plans in life with hopefulness almost amounting to certainty. This made her somewhat sad, for she regarded it as a delusion of his flattering disease, a flaring up of the life-candle before it sank in the socket. She thus reported the case, when she returned home. In the afternoon she was sewing as usual, surrounded by her mother ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of the Barcoo was the last feather in the cap of the Surveyor-General. He was doomed to learn soon that it was not the river of his dreams, but only the head waters of that central stream discovered by Sturt, Cooper's Creek; but meanwhile the delusion must have been ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... dreams, years when the moonlight had grown duller in the areaway and the youth had faded out of Olive's face, but as a glorious and triumphant climb over obstacles which he had determinedly surmounted by unconquerable will-power. The optimistic self-delusion that had kept him from misery was seen now in the golden garments of stern resolution. Half a dozen times he had taken steps to leave the Moonlight Quill and soar upward, but through sheer faintheartedness he had stayed on. Strangely enough he now ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... yet with an uneasy feeling that it not only was possible, but that she herself had contributed something to the delusion. "But how do they account for my friendship with YOU—you, who are supposed to be a correspondent—an ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... dependencies of Russia, before she had herself an existence either in name or fact! If the originator of the term frontier demonstrations would take the trouble to study the map, he would not be able to cherish the delusion that his intelligent readers could believe that battles fought near Kowno, Oszmiana, Upita, Poniewiez, Lida, Ihumen, Dubno, Pinsk, Mscislaw, etc., were really ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which will never die! The idea of home, with its sweet repose and calm blessedness, was only a delusion after all!" ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... you will think me scarcely less under the influence of a similar delusion when I tell you, that I have been somehow or other drawn also into an association, not indeed so public or potent as that of the Saints, but equally persevering in the objects for which it has been formed. The drift of the Saints, as far as I can comprehend the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... "All had been delusion, trick, and fallacy: a new scheme of commercial arrangement is proposed to the Irish as a boon; and the surrender of their Constitution is tacked to it as a mercantile regulation. Ireland, newly escaped from harsh trammels and severe discipline, is treated like a high-mettled ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... answer," he said, "to those that sent you. I will neither hear nor consider such words any more. If I yield in this matter, and say one word to the King or to any other, by which any may understand that my message was a delusion, or that I spoke of myself and not from our Lord, then I pray that our Lord may blot my name out of the ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... many a time," he answered her, lying awake at night among the long grass of the Andes, or under the palms of the desert. It was a strange delusion to build shrines to the honour of God while there are still his own—the forests ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the plums and left nothing but the bread and milk and corn-starch, or whatever the horrible concoction is?—I had it to-day for dinner. Pleasure, at least, I imagine—pleasure pure and simple, pleasure crude, brutal and vulgar—this poor flimsy delusion has lost all its charm. I shall never again care for certain things—and indeed for certain persons. Of such things, of such persons, I firmly maintain, however, that I was never an enthusiastic votary. It would be more to my credit, I suppose, if I had been. More would be forgiven me if I had ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... lain on the Balkan lands was healed, the fog dispelled. Even the prestige of military despotism was gone like a pricked bubble. The tyranny that rested on delusion and not on power was vanished like an empty nightmare that fades when the sleeper wakes. The establishment of Europe's freedom was fulfilled; the final step taken. A great and notable nation had obtained recognition through ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.—George Eliot. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... and his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a delusion. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... with England by surprise naval attack was no doubt an element in German plans; but in 1914 this was negatived by the forewarning of events on the Continent, by Germany's persistent delusion that England would stay neutral, and by the timely mobilization of the British fleet. This had been announced the winter before as a practical exercise, was carried out according to schedule from July 16 to ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... myself. Although miserably deficient in education—for I had been well beaten but never taught—yet I was looked upon as a prodigy of knowledge; and I can assure the reader that I took very good care not to dispel that agreeable delusion. Indeed, at this time, I was as great a young literary coxcomb as ever lived, my vanity being high and inflated exactly in proportion to my ignorance, which was also of the purest water. This vanity, however, resulted as much from my position and circumstances as ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... corner of her bed in the next room, and the fading light fell on something white which pushed aside the black brocade bed-curtain—a large yellow-white hand holding a small gleaming knife. The Duchess, still with the dread of insanity upon her, told herself that it was an hallucination, a delusion, the frenzied working of her overwrought brain. She gathered her courage and fixed her eyes on the mirror, which showed her what she conceived to be a phantom. The hand was large, with hair growing hideously over ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and will be "summer girls" when their time comes, and "winter girls" as well, clad in cloth and velvet and furs. They will dance Germans instead of the bewildering Spanish dance she had that first night with her lover. Even children have changed in half a century. Beauty is no longer considered a delusion and a snare. Physical culture gives strength and ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... suffered for the Popish plot, was tried and executed in 1680. It appears, that his life was foully sworn away by Dugdale and Turberville. The manly and patient deportment of the noble sufferer went far to remove the woful delusion which then pervaded the people. It would seem that Hunt ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... rather than to Arthur; and I had no intention of pleading by innuendo. When I did speak, I meant to speak directly, and there was but one thing I had to say. If that failed, I was ready to admit that I had been suffering under a delusion. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... which rages horridly around him. Nay, so blinded is the fool that he does not perceive how it is merely this ocean of universal misery that fills him with horror; but he rather cherishes the sad delusion that his dread will become less if but the abyss below be deeper and farther removed from his giddy seat above. And let it not be supposed that by this superstitious dread of hunger merely the foolishness of individuals ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... their statements were exaggerated by the reporters. Yet enough remains, after every deduction, to render witches' confessions a very curious mental problem. Was it vision, or monomania, or nervous delusion, all influenced by foregone conclusion? or was it, as the mesmerists seem to hold, an instance of clairvoyance in a high degree? The case of Gaufridi is of this puzzling nature. Gaufridi was a French priest of licentious character, who succeeded ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... I thought that I should smother. I told them so, as well as my choked voice would allow; but one of them said, in a soft, meek tone, as I writhed in distress, "Hush, Gustavus, lie still; you are certainly laboring under a delusion." This was all the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a literal sense, while I knew that they had reference to my views with regard to freedom, in the word "delusion." What sustained me in those moments, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... darkness deceive me as to the meaning of this mute response? Was I the victim of a fresh delusion? I fancied that Jeanne looked sad, that perhaps she was thinking of the oaths sworn only to be broken by her former lover, but that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the influence of that fancy. That fatal summer, at the time of his infatuation for that heartless girl, insensibly a chilling hardness crept over my feelings. I struggled against my awakening; and if Lucien had displayed any emotion before his departure, I might still have kept up the happy delusion. But in vain, it disappeared, and with it all the beauty of life, which increased in weariness from that moment. I sought for some object of interest—I married; but, though my husband has been devoted and kind, I weary of existence. Life has no interest for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... invited to the table and conversation of the grand master, or grand prior; he was then intoxicated with hashish and carried into the garden, which on awaking he believed to be Paradise; everything around him, the houris in particular, contributing to confirm the delusion. After he had experienced as much of the pleasures of Paradise, which the Prophet has promised to the faithful, as his strength would admit; after quaffing enervating delight from the eyes of the houris and intoxicating ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which it was left to the discretion of individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The mystery surrounding the subject constituted the most attractive charm of the religion, both to the initiated and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... their conversation was interrupted by the Sacristan, who, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger, accused the Bohemian of having practised the most abominable arts of delusion among the younger brethren. He had added to their nightly meal cups of a heady and intoxicating cordial, of ten times the strength of the most powerful wine, under which several of the fraternity had succumbed, and indeed, although the Sacristan had been ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Kenneth," she said in a regal, kindly voice. She was mad, he knew, but her delusion was nicely kept within bounds. All of her bright world hinged on the single fact that she was unshakably certain of her royalty. As long as the FBI catered to that notion— which included a Royal dwelling for ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the first turning. "But he's mad!" he protested. "Mad, poor fellow! Merciful heavens, Mr. Hewitt, his whole tale must have been a delusion! A mere madman's fancy! Poor fellow! We must go back, Mr. Hewitt—we really must! We can't leave that poor girl there ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... victim of some sweet hallucination, and was almost afraid to speak of the fancies that floated from time to time before his eyes, lest he should be told that his mind was wandering, and that he was the victim of delusion. ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... out upon the whole Creation; but what a rough unsightly Sketch of Nature should we be entertained with, did all her Colouring disappear, and the several Distinctions of Light and Shade vanish? In short, our Souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing Delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted Hero of a Romance, who sees beautiful Castles, Woods and Meadows; and at the same time hears the warbling of Birds, and the purling of Streams; but upon the finishing of some secret Spell, the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
