"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves, and certainly before the people discovered that somebody was really being married at last. This, however, was not at all surprising, for the real wedding was very much the same as all the make-believe ones, except that it took a little longer because the King and Queen were not so used to being married as the ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... was a quiet fellow enough in ordinary; but now nobody was more ready for all the life of the play. He threw himself back into an attitude of irresolution and perplexity, with the letter in his hand which had brought the fatal news; that is, it was the make-believe letter, though it was in reality only the New York Evening Post. And Daisy thought his attitude was very absurd; but they all declared it was admirable and exactly copied from the engraving. He threw himself ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... feet in a slow jig, hands in pockets. When a late comer joined them it was considered au fait to welcome him by assuming a fistic attitude, after the style of the pugilists pictured in the barber-shop magazines, and spar a good-natured and make-believe round with him, with much agile dancing about in a circle, head held stiffly, body crouching, while working ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the harm in that? How does he know what's in your heart? He doesn't need to understand that your action is make-believe, and not sincere. You'll see, after such actions, he'll believe in you so much that even though you made love before his very ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... happened. Jack the Giant Killer suddenly uttered a cry of triumph. "Fool that you are!" he exclaimed, "to confess that you are helpless! Do you suppose we are deceived by your make-believe friendliness? Prepare to die!" And he lowered his sword with ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... beginning of the world, are as eager as children for a story, and like children they will embrace the man who will tell them a story, with abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance that it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to brood over an incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... soothed by the knowledge that her dearest companion is going through life with a mask on, quietly playing a part, uttering untrue professions, doing his best to cheat her and the rest of the world by a monstrous spiritual make-believe. One would suppose that instead of having her religious feeling gratified by conformity on these terms, nothing could wound it so bitterly nor outrage it so unpardonably. To know that her sensibility is destroying the entireness ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... are strange and attractive stories of "myths," imaginary forms or persons, like fairies, gods, and goddesses. When you are older you will study about these ancient, make-believe beings, and the study will be called myth-ology, telling curious, ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... Since I was last here a bronze equestrian statue has been set up in the Grand Plaza. It is a bronze woman, sitting quietly and easily upon a furious bronze horse. The horse is in a terrible state of excitement, but the woman is not alarmed in the least; for she seems to be well aware that it is only make-believe passion, badly executed in bronze. Who could this woman be but Malinche, or Marianna, the Indian mistress of Cortez—a fit patroness of the women of Puebla. She was the first convert that Cortez ever made to Christianity; and her sort of Christianity is not unusual in Mexico. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... greatly changed the aspect of the town by daylight, it had not altered the topography of that part which Philip had to traverse, and the darkness that served as his shield was to him no impediment. Many a time, in the old days, we had chased and fled through those streets and alleys, in make-believe deer-hunts or mimic Indian warfare. So, without a collision or a stumble, he made his way swiftly to the mouth of a street that gave upon the water-front, by the Faringfield warehouse where so many busy days of his boyhood and youth had ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... coat," laughed Amy. "And I do think you were awfully smart to think of using your radio in that way. Lots of people, do you know, don't believe it can be so. They think it is make-believe." ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... her make-believe so amazingly that for an instant she is dazed and can hardly tell reality from romance, but then she gathers herself and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... weighty, whence the general public suck, or claim to suck, no small advantage. Is it more useful to them than Bradshaw? I doubt. But here, in this Opera Nova so furthered, are sixty-three little snatches of Luigi Pulci's, eight lines to the stave, about the idlest of make-believe love affairs, full of such Petrarchisms as "Gl' occhi tuoi belli son li crudel ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... who would play at make-believe. It is almost a pity that he could not persuade the lady that he meant even a tithe of what he wrote to her. Listen to him again: "For my part, I hate a great many women for your sake, and undervalue all the rest. 'Tis you who ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... light, and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her, however, to be there on such good authority, we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother, when we were unexpectedly relieved, by finding it was only a bit of make-believe; for it was now divulged, che questa madre che piangea il suo figlio, was not in fact his personal mother, but "Italy" dressed up like his mother, and gone to Paris on purpose to weep and put garlands on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... good people are in bed. The very worldly minded and the young are on deck reluctantly finishing the last dance under a canopy of make-believe cherry blossoms and wistaria. I am on the deck between, closing this letter to you which I will mail in Yokohama ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... chins. She was young, so young that he felt himself struggling in an immeasurable gulf of years as he watched her. Apparently such sophistication as she possessed was in the things of the world of wonder, the happy land of make-believe. ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... at home in the world of "make-believe," and delights in the stories and the many charming songs to which this imaginative use of the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to love un as I would; an' yet I caan't quite help it when I sees his whole-hearted ferment to put money into my pocket; or when I hears him talk of nitrates an' the ways o' the world; or watches un playin' make-believe wi' the childer—himself the biggest cheel as ever laughed at fulishness or wanted spankin' an' putting in ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... represented the marching units of United States troops. The columns of bluish-grey that passed them with shorter, quicker steps, were companies of those tireless Frenchmen, who after almost three years of the front line real thing, now played at a mimic war of make-believe, with taller and ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... then he went back to the trucking business, because he wasn't born an artist and the whole thing seemed silly to him. He couldn't stand the make-believe any longer, because he had no imagination, no art—nothing but the stupid ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... that glad to see you, laddies, I feel just like squeezing for another hour. I suppose, noo, that I'm no' just dreaming? You're no' by chance just twa o' them muckle moths that's come into my dream in a make-believe?" ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... on Margery Marshall. And these visits were rather pleasant than otherwise. Margery was going through the paper doll fever. Lydia always brought Florence Dombey with her and the two girls carried on an elaborate game of make-believe, the intricacies of which were entirely too much for Elviry ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that the word realism cannot be applied to them. Even in his portraits his signature or an inscription is often added in such a manner as insists that this is a painting, a panel;—not a view through a window, or an attempt to deceive the eye with a make-believe reality. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... have rolled down from the precipices among the Brahan woods far below, and stand up, like the ruins of cottages, amid the trees, are of singular beauty,—worth all the imitation-ruins ever erected, and obnoxious to none of the disparaging associations which the mere show and make-believe of the artificial ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... his direction they had often rushed forward to the footlights, pouring into the helpless mass before them repeated volleys of explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe, and, in the opinion of Signor G——, at least, very much inferior to it. Instead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feathered and looped, these irregulars wore huge sombreros, much the worse for time and weather, flapped over their faces. For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... scene before me which was not Tolstoi's scene, a foolish, sentimental conversation in which I recognised hardly more than a sentence of Tolstoi (and this brought in in the wrong place), and, in short, the old make-believe of all the hack-writers for the stage, dished up again, and put before us, with a simplicity of audacity at which one can only marvel ("a thing imagination boggles at"), as an "adaptation" from Tolstoi. Tolstoi has been hardly treated by some translators and ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... one now and then, but they're peaceable. Most of 'em have gone with the buffalos—farther west. We have make-believe Indians—some reckless white boys who come whooping into the village, half crazy with drink, once in a while. They're not so bad as they seem to be. We'll have to do a little missionary work with them. The Indians have ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... make-believe life of a little girl and her doll, told in twelve verselets by Mrs. Clara Doty Bates, and twelve pictures by Hassam. Printed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... exclaimed Babe, as soon as she could control her laughter, "that rock didn't tetch ole Blue. He's sech a make-believe, I'm a great mind to hit him a clip jest to show you ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... remember how we used to go into raptures of pious indignation over the make-believe sentiment of the summer man and the summer girl? I recollect your saying once that it was wicked; a desecration of things which ought to be held sacred. It isn't so very long ago, but I think we were both very young that summer—years younger than we ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... in criticism, more or less skilful. There must be a struggle for existence among opinions, as among all other things, and the egoist is content to send the children of his thought into the thick of the fray, confident that the fittest will survive. Only he is not so childish as to make-believe that an impersonal dignified something-not-himself that makes for the ink-pot is speaking—and not he himself, he "with his little I." The affectation of modesty is perhaps the most ludicrous of all human shams. I am reminded of the two Jews who quarrelled in synagogue, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... sin!" his spiritual adviser gave him the answer, "You long to be without sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means of grace which the ancient Church prescribed—in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... in a pitiable state of suppressed excitement before the ordeal was concluded. The solemnity and impressiveness of the vows she was taking disturbed the serenity with which she had schooled herself to regard the marriage as "make-believe." She was frightened at her own daring. A dread that the tie she was so lightly assuming might be harder to undo than she had contemplated was fluttering her heart and almost paralyzing her limbs. But Curtis was unemotional as an icicle; or, at any rate, he looked ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... jungle pools, and the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast, radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory, climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself, and almost always impress his brother, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm—don't be offended—I'm your creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified. Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... human stage than the figure of poor puppy in his beach suit and his tuxedo jacket seeking in vain to amuse himself for ever. A leisure class no sooner arises than the melancholy monotony of amusement forces it into mimic work and make-believe activities. It dare not face ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Poc considered it was not to be borne any longer, so having counted the women and their asses, he cleared a space in preparation for a mock sale at which they were all to be put up, and having got us in front as make-believe purchasers, proceeded with the business, which ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... series. But the point that I wish to make is this: your true craftsman in education never stops to ask himself such questions. There are some men to whom schoolcraft is a mistress. They love it, and their devotion is no make-believe, fashioned out of sentiment, and donned for the purpose of hiding inefficiency or native indolence. They love it as some men love Art, and others Business, and others War. They do not stop to ask the reason why, to count the cost, or to ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Greg always showed the highest conception of the functions and the obligations of the writer who addresses the public, in however ephemeral a form, on topics of social importance. No article of his ever showed a trace either of slipshod writing or of make-believe and perfunctory thinking. To compose between four and five hundred pages like these, on a variety of grave subjects, all needing to be carefully prepared and systematically thought out, was no inconsiderable piece of work for a single pen. The strain was severe, for there was insufficient stimulus ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... clean. The Indian woman then asked him to go and draw some water from a spring about a hundred yards from the hut; and off he went, led by the children of our hostess. His young guides, completely naked, and their heads shaved, rode on bamboo-canes as make-believe horses, and pranced along ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... a thousand times again in the same cause. You are wilful and obstinate; but I thank God I am more wilful and obstinate than you. I am sick of this fencing and diplomacy and irony. You know what I am—I am not at all the fine gentleman that leaned his head on the chimney-breast—that was make-believe and foolishness. I am a bully and a brute—you have ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... story about all the wonderful creatures that live in the ocean? The part of it that tells how they live and grow, and get their food will be all true, and I think Eleanor will find it more marvelous than the make-believe part, which will tell about the adventures, and the conversations that our hero had with the strange creatures that he met with in ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... what they were called," said Annie; "will they cook our dinner for us? But now, John, I am in such trouble. All this talk is make-believe." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... crowds making way for my funeral to pass, my flesh crept, not because I was about to be buried, but because the people crossed themselves. But our procession stopped outside the church, because we did not dare to carry even our make-believe across that accursed threshold. Besides, none of us had ever been inside,—God forbid!—so we did not ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... water? And does he have to pay an extra price for sunlight? And must he herd in a filthy slum full of awful plumbing and crowded by more awful neighbours? Does he have to put up with municipal neglect and corruption, and worry along on make-believe milk and doctored bread and adulterated medicines, and endure long hours in unsanitary places under a tyrannical foreman and in constant dread ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... altogether more lovely than they really are, the idealization not only of each other but of the whole earth which they regard but as a theater for their noble exploits, the unworldly ambitions, the romantic hopes, the make-believe world in which they live, if properly utilized, what might they not do to make our sordid cities more beautiful, more companionable? And yet at the present moment every city is full of young people who are utterly bewildered and uninstructed in regard to the basic experience which must inevitably ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... adventure, keenly. He had no objections to fighting on the side of rascals, or against rascals. He objected to them only in the calmer moments of private life; and as he was of course ignorant that the expedition was only a make-believe, he felt a certain respect for his fellow-conspirators as men who were willing to stake their lives for a chance of better fortune. But that their bravery was of the kind which would make them hesitate to rob and deceive a helpless ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... please, I have no part whatever, attracts me more than I could have thought possible. No one in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me. I have cut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors' meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years. I go to concerts and theatres; I look at the people in the streets; I even begin to take an outsider's interest in social questions, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been erected with greater eye to internal convenience than those crannied places of defence to which the name strictly appertains. It was a castellated mansion as regular as a chessboard on its ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented chimneys. On still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour, when ghostly house-maids stalk the corridors, and thin streaks of light through the shutter-chinks lend startling ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the ocean swallows up a river.—What is my love to you? What is any one's love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too often a make-believe.—I do not offer you love. But surely you will not refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a being ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the political situation in the North, during that momentous year, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs who, seeing that their own party was lost but refusing to be sidetracked by the make-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were now hesitating what to do. Though the ordinary politicians among the Republicans doubtless wished to conciliate these unattached Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... make no concessions to the fact that he is to have two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending, make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of course, and the bottom well ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... happy, make-believe days too soon came to an end. The swinging cane of the great John Thomas Corlett, and the rod of a yet more relentless tyrant, darkened the sunshine of both the children. Pete was banished from school, and Catherine's father ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... anxious to do well, but acts as if unable to rouse herself to any great effort. She is quite inaccurate in arithmetic, and only fair in other school studies. Emotions normal. In many ways appears normally childish. Her interest in fairy tales and in the type of make-believe plays in which she engages with her younger sisters seems mixed with her wonderment in regard to sex life. There is a distinct ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Celleni, his brute face filled with semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression did not mirror her thought. Only once she spoke, as she was folding ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... who constantly played the part of an old man. The verses relate that he acted the part so naturally that the fates mistook him for an old man and cut off his thread of life in his tender years. Now you, Elsie dear, concerned with make-believe—fiction—as you will constantly be in your study for the stage, eager, of course, to use every moment and occasion, with one subject dominating your thoughts, will need to be very, very careful with regard to your separate, personal life. In other words, in good old-fashioned ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... you worship images, and take off and put on garments at your prayers, and kneel down in a make-believe, profane way: and don't you ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hear, if we lay awake in the night, are caused by mice running about and playing behind the wainscot: and what reasonable person would suffer themselves to be alarmed by such little creatures as those? But it is time I should return to the history of my little make-believe companion, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... dream? Reasonable as it undoubtedly was, this view left certain doubts still lingering in my mind. The child's instinct soon discovered that her mother and I were playfellows who felt no genuine enjoyment of the game. She dismissed her make-believe guests without ceremony, and went back with her doll to the favorite play-ground on which I had met her—the landing outside the door. No persuasion on her mother's part or on mine succeeded in luring her back to us. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... from the number of marriages that have taken place among the members. This amusement does pave the way for courtship, for in no other are the conventionalities so completely set aside for the time being. Those who have thus been brought together in make-believe are not always anxious to resume formal relations. Acting ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... determined to do as his mother told him and be a real king. He doesn't look as though he'd exactly know how. You should have heard him laugh over a little silly joke, when one of the actors sat in a chair on a make-believe baby and a ventriloquist squalled just like a baby. But they says he's obstinate and the colonies can't make ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... me fiercely. "You have no doubt heard, sir, the gossip about my father, which is on the lips of every fool in Europe. Let us have done with this pitiful make-believe. My father is a sot. Nay, I do not blame him. I blame his enemies and his miserable destiny. But there is the fact. Were he not old, he would still be unfit to grasp a crown and rule over a turbulent people. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... as by those to which they are lawfully entitled. Half the cowboys and hunters of my acquaintance are known by names entirely unconnected with those they inherited or received when they were christened. Occasionally some would-be desperado or make-believe mighty hunter tries to adopt what he deems a title suitable to his prowess; but such an effort is never attempted in really wild places, where it would be greeted with huge derision; for all of these names that are genuine are bestowed by outsiders, with small regard ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... that so long as it mightn't prevent his seeing at least where he was. He seemed still to see where he was even at the minute that followed her final break-off, clearly intended to be resolute, from make-believe talk. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page! And the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... inevitable. Another element of comfort was the children's love, for they turned to her as flowers to the sun, drawing confidently on her fund of stories, serene in the conviction that there was no limit to Rebecca's power of make-believe. In this, and in yet greater things, little as she realized it, the law of compensation was working in her behalf, for in those anxious days mother and daughter found and knew each other as never before. A new sense was born ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a Christmas party the tree is the source of interest, and often a make-believe Santa Claus adds to the merriment of the occasion. The refreshments should be simple but fanciful. Make the table bright as possible—snowballs, cornucopias, lady-fingers, assorted cakes, love-knots, sandwiches (fancy), crystalized fruits, tarts, sliced tongue, pressed veal, thin ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... shacks," he considered approvingly. "And never a line fence to cut your way through. It's near paradise, this land, wherever it isn't just fair hell. No half way business; no maudlin make-believe." But all of a sudden his face darkened. "Poor little kid," he said. "If Bruce could only loan me half a dozen ready-mixed, rough and ready, border cowboys; Californians, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... other boys do. The subject was talked over in whispers, so that Paul should not hear, during the remainder of the evening, with the result that that very night at least six boys told other boys or their own parents, in the strictest confidence, of course, that there was more truth than make-believe about Paul Grayson as an Indian. And the parents told the same story to other parents, the boys told it to other boys, and within twenty-four hours Paul Grayson was a far more interesting ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... go back this morning to the waterfall," he said, "and tell it that it's all come right. And now, we'll bow to those crazy people out there, those make-believe dream-people, who don't know that there is nothing real in this world but just you and me, and that we love ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... so far as he knew, and as he studied the situation over he could not blame the girl. In the light of her convincing wrath he comprehended that the sharp things she had said to him in the past were not make-believe-not love taps, but real blows. She had not been coquetting. with him; she had tried to keep him away. She considered herself too good for a hired man. Well, maybe she' was. Anyhow, she had gone out ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was a summer palace of the present fashion, but there was one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believe balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were spacious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was, in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring to the force-chains and board ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... you think I don't know that our republican friend there spoke what is every thoughtful man's verdict upon me? (They are silent.) But how could I possibly undertake my task, as long as I believed everything to be make-believe and falsehood, without exception? Now I know the root of the falsehood! It is in our institutions; he was quite right. And one kind of falsehood begets another. You cannot imagine how ludicrous it appeared to me—who up till then had led such a sinful, ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... or monkeys seize each other and wrestle, fall, and roll over and over, indefinitely. They make great pretenses of biting each other, but it is all make-believe. My favorite orang-utan pet in Borneo loved to play at biting me, but whenever the pressure became too strong I would say chidingly, "Ah! Ah!" and his jaws would instantly relax. He loved to butt me in the chest with his ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... slip from her finger into the pool. It had lodged endwise between two pebbles, and she had taken some minutes to find it. "As for these," she said, "the flowers are all done, but I like the leaves better. In summer our housekeeping might have been make-believe; now, with the frosts upon us, we shall have hard work, and a fire ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Georgian and myself in place of our names in all mutual correspondence, and on the leaves of our school-books and at the end of our exercises. It meant nothing, but the boys and girls we associated with thought it did and envied us the free-masonry it was supposed to cover. A ridiculous make-believe which I rate at its full folly now, but one which cannot fail to arouse a hundred memories in Georgian. We will scrawl it on her door, or rather you shall, and according to the way she conducts herself on seeing it, we shall know in one instant what you with your patience ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... hardly conscious of what he did. His mind had ranged far beyond this scene to the large issues which these symbols represented. Was it one universal self-deception? Was this "religion" the pathetic, the soul-breaking make-believe of mortality? So he smiled—at himself, at his own soul, which seemed alone in this play, the skeleton in armour, the thing that did not belong. His own words written that fateful day before he died at the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... borrowing their own phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication more than food, and so they try to pass themselves off as an intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman has no need for any make-believe." ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... straight reach of road beyond Old Borth; the steeple-chases in the fields which border it. At the prize-giving, the "champion" was hoisted as usual, and carried round the hotel, instead of along the via sacra of the Uppingham triumph, with the proper tumultuary rites. For the make-believe of paper-chases we had the realities of hare-hunting, of which we will speak again in its season. Grounds for football were found when the autumn came; the best was a meadow just below Old Borth, of excellent turf, which ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... safety. Very often dreams would break up about them in this fashion, and they would be separated, to endure awful adventures alone. But the most amusing times were when he and she had a clear understanding that it was all make-believe, and walked through mile-wide roaring rivers without even taking off their shoes, or set light to populous cities to see how they would burn, and were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their rambles. Later in the night they were sure to suffer for this, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Chaos;—a very ghastly business indeed! On the whole, it is better to hold one's peace about it. I flung myself down on sofas here,—for my little Wife had trimmed up our little dwelling-place into quite glorious order in my absence, and I had only to lie down: there, in reading books, and other make-believe employments, I could at least keep silence, which was an infinite relief. Nay, gradually, as indeed I anticipated, the black vortexes and deluges have subsided; and now that it is past, I begin to feel myself better for my travels ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unconsciously accepted and responded to by his class. He leads the way in interest and enthusiasm. Nor will any sham or pretense serve. The interest must be real and deep. Even young children quickly sense any make-believe enthusiasm or vivacity on the part of the teacher, and their ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... Robert. She even gave him a quick, friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at her. And yet the moment after he knew that it was all make-believe. His anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile and afraid of pain. Now that she had gone out of the barren little room she had taken with her the sense of a secret, gracious intimacy which had been its warmth and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... seized Madame Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or in any other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and that is the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these little dishes, which are a mere make-believe, is brought in a wooden bowl, bound with copper,—an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water. Chrysantheme fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice, sometimes three times), darkens its snowy whiteness ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousness this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettiedness, we call THE WORLD; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove but a lying and treacherous ally—and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... in spite of himself, to watch, to admire, feeling a power within him to merit the like; finds his way back at last, still light of heart, to his own poor fare, able to do without what he would enjoy so much. As, grateful for his scanty part in things—for the make-believe of a feast in the little white loaves she too has managed to come by, sipping the thin white wine, he touches her dearly, the mother is shocked with a sense of something unearthly in his contentment, while ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... own motion to shape some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may in large measure be overborne by the more immediately constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress reform, in proficiency at dress, cards, yachting, golf, and ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... said Mr Boffin; 'and yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn't abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg'lar brown one. Couldn't abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly in danger ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets!—where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust. Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... afternoon they lived in a fairy world of freedom, of dreams and make-believe. They talked of great hunters and discussed the best methods of attacking all ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... make-believe. I was the real thing—a real thief. No, let me go on; it's easier if you don't interrupt. Yes, I'll tell you my name, but it won't mean anything. I'm nobody. I'm Sarah Manvers. I'm a shop-girl out ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... flapping bows; thus you behold him. Idle and incapable, he hated Rabourdin,—naturally enough, for Rabourdin had no vice to flatter, and no bad or weak side on which Dutocq could make himself useful. Far too noble to injure a clerk, the chief was also too clear-sighted to be deceived by any make-believe. Dutocq kept his place therefore solely through Rabourdin's generosity, and was very certain that he could never be promoted if the latter succeeded La Billardiere. Though he knew himself incapable of important work, Dutocq was well aware that in ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... she cried. "Just grand! OH! it's too splendid to believe and yet there ain't any make-believe in it. Lordy! Excuse me, ma'am, I forgot. I won't say it again. I'll wait and see what you say and then I'll say that. And now," briskly, "I guess you think it's time I was gettin' to work. All right, I can work if I ain't got no other accomplishments. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was Chimp's persistent thought during the next few days, but he kept up the game of make-believe like a hero. As a matter of fact, it was sound amusement to explore the island and plunge on sudden impulses into a score of high-spirited enterprises, although the presence of the old man panting ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... her make-believe stronger than we have. She play-acts his existence very well. But suppose someone asks her what he eats, or where he gets his exercise, or some other personal question. She hasn't the command of logic ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... traveler take a beer. "I took the beer," says Mr. Hazard. A dollar in gold means just four hundred dollars in Haytian paper: a cocktail cost the traveler "thirty dollars," and other things in proportion. These beginnings of make-believe pomposity are followed up by the strangest revelations wherever the adventurer sets his foot. Going from Cape Haytien to the citadel and "Sans-Souci" palace of Christophe, the traveler is charged "two thousand dollars" by the drunken negro guide, and "a dollar" by the sable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the town, as you turn off towards the Rope-walk. The firemen, of course, wear an appropriate uniform, with brazen helmets and shoulder-straps and a neat axe apiece, suspended in a leathern case from the waistband. But the spirit of make-believe has of necessity animated all their public exercise, if I except the 13th of April, 1879, when a fire broke out in the back premises of Mr. Tippett, carpenter. His shop was (and is) situated in the middle of the town, and in those days a narrow gatehouse gave, or rather ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pretending that the reptile was crushing him, fighting his way free of the folds, picking up his club and attacking it in turn, beating the make-believe head with his club, and finally indulging in a war-dance as he jumped round, dragging the imaginary serpent after him, pretending all the while that it was very heavy, before stooping down to smell it, making a grimace, and then throwing down the rope, which ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... longer needed. Already poor Richard was very humble, his make-believe spirit all snuffed out. He observed at last how pale and set was his sister's face, and he realized something of the sacrifice she had made. Never in all his life was Richard so near to lapsing from the love of himself; never so near to forgetting his own interests, and preferring those ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... settlement. But with Billy at his side and Cole Campbell as a witness, every detail of their agreement could be proved on the instant and the Willie Meena started off right. So Wunpost smiled back when he beheld the make-believe boy who had come to his aid on her mule; and as they rode off down the canyon, driving four burros, two packed with water, ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... valour merely, but "noble patriotism" as well; "a true English heart breathes, calm and strong through the whole business ... this man (Shakespeare) too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that." I find no valour in it, deathless or otherwise; but the make-believe of valour, the completest proof that valour was absent. Here are ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... 1914 had been marked by the utmost caution and self-containment. Contemplated from a distance by certain of the Allies whose attention was absorbed by the political aspect of the matter, this method of cool calculation seemed to smack of hollow make-believe. Why, it was asked, should Italy hold back or weigh the certain losses against the probable gains, seeing that she would have as allies the two most puissant States of Europe, and the enormous advantage of sea ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... I suppose so," replied Billie. "We always call him Prince to his face, and his daughter as the Princess Lucia. Of course, it is all make-believe, but it is one way of keeping ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... ought to have seen that monkey's face when he bit on those make-believe cherries on Flossie's hat!" and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... the ambitious sons of the old stock moving away, and their places being filled at the bottom of the social ladder by foreigners, and by immigration of residents and "summer boarders" of the "world's people." Above all, the powerful ideal of Quakerism was shattered. The community had lost the "make-believe" at which it had played for a century in perfect unity. With it went the moral and social authority of the Meeting. Two Meetings mutually contradicting could never express the ideal of Quakerism, ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... proof; And one fine day there rose a clamour, such As cheated mobs will make, when cunning puts A veto on their claim. For this mob found that, in her stolen guise Of softer beams, they had adored a cheat; A make-believe; a lie. Immense their rage! One aim inspired them all— To punish. But while they swayed and tossed In wrathful argument on just desert, Fair Truth indeed appeared, clad in her robes Of glorious majesty. "Desist, my friends," ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... longer anything between Josephine and me," he said. "To-night she told me everything. I have seen the baby. Her secret she has given to me freely—and it has made no difference. I love her. Tomorrow I shall ask her to end all this make-believe, and my heart tells me that she will. We can be married secretly. No one will ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... a small fire in the dining-room, so I took this opportunity of inquiring how Jim Clay had managed to capture her. This sort of thing interested me; I liked life in the actuality where there was no counterfeit or make-believe to offend the sense of just proportions. Not that I do not love books and pictures, but they have to be so very very good before they can in any way appease one, while the meanest life is absorbingly interesting, invested as it must ever be ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... mother both acted their parts very well. He rushed to the arms of the old woman for protection, and screeched small, while the widow shouted "millia murther!" at the top of her voice, and did not give up her hold of the make-believe young woman until her cap was torn half off, and her hair streamed about her face. She called on all the saints in the calendar, as she knelt in the middle of the floor and rocked to and fro, with her clasped hands raised to heaven, calling down curses on the "villains and robbers" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... that religion works by suggestion is only to say that it works through the imagination. There is good make-believe as well as bad; and one must necessarily imagine and make-believe in order to will. The more or less inarticulate and intuitional forces of the mind, however, need to be supplemented by the power of articulate reasoning, if the will is to make good its twofold ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... laid upon him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked discussion for ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... a conductor can move them from one seat to another with the strength of his little finger. Needless to add, these screens would serve to obscure neither sound, sight, nor smell of drunken rowdies who sat behind them! In summer cars black and white passengers may be separated not even by a make-believe screen; they are simply required, respectively, to occupy certain seats in the front or the back ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... he have had his way, to live so for the rest of his life; but they would not let him have his way, and coaxed him on a ship to go to the New World to meet his uncle. He was not a real uncle, but only a make-believe one, to satisfy those who objected to assisted immigrants, and who wished to be assured against having to support Guido, and others like him. But they were not half so anxious to keep Guido at home as he himself was ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... sang with warmth. The three Rhine maidens on dry land were shrill and out of tune. But for the life of me I couldn't become interested in the sorrow and ecstasy, chiefly metaphysical, of this pair. The scheme is too remote from our days and ways. These young persons were make-believe, after all, and while they sonorously declaimed their passion—hers for a speedy death, his for the new life—under a canopy with mother-of-pearl lining (Reinhardt, too, can be very Teutonic), I didn't believe in them, and, I fear, neither ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... inn on the way, however, Nicholas met a man who caused him to change all his plans. This man was a Mr. Vincent Crummles. When Nicholas first saw him in the inn he was teaching his two sons to make-believe fight with swords. They were practising for a play, for Mr. Crummles was manager of a theater in Portsmouth, and he proposed that Nicholas join the company and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... were of two main kinds; fights between men and beasts—occasionally between two kinds of wild beast—and fights between men and men. There was no make-believe about these combats; they meant at least serious wounds, even when they did not mean death. Those who fought with beasts might in some cases be volunteers; in general they were captives or condemned criminals, and it perhaps hardly needs pointing out that, when St. Paul says he had "fought ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... spend the remainder of the evening there, over a good dinner. Except in a certain mood, Murray's does not appeal to me; the pseudo-Grecian temple in the corner, with water cascading down its steps, the make-believe clouds which float across the ceiling, the tables of glass lighted from beneath—all this, ordinarily, seems trivial and banal; but occasionally, in an esoteric mood, I like Murray's, and can even find something picturesque and romantic in bright gowns, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child. Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of make- believe raised to the nth power. He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... is, there is no suggestion of make-believe in Fiesco's courting of Julia. When he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies no god', one is justified in assuming that chivalrous devotion to his wife is not among his virtues. It is to be supposed, apparently, that he makes love to Julia in order to be seen of men; ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade—that is, an evening song; auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays, terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... set my Sawdust Doll over in this chair where she can see us," said Dorothy. "My Doll can eat make-believe things when I have a play party, but we won't pretend that now. We'll ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... this head. But in by far the greater number of cases, we have to do, not with the general culture of the people with the utterances of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and fashionable make-believe. For with many, antiquity was only a fashion, even among ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... frightened men, Dawson," said the Chief. "That is the matter with the Government. They have been brought up to slobber over the public and try to cheat it out of votes. They can't tell the truth. When hard deadly reality breaks through their web of make-believe, they cower together in corners and howl. I doubt if you will get a free hand, Dawson. What ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... had white camellias instead of buttons on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his red- and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white, round arm, revealed ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... such a question! Why, you must do nothing at all, but think how you'd poise 'em if you had 'em. You middle men, that are armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of course use 'em as if they were the real thing. Now then, cock fawlocks! Present! Fire! (Pretend to, I mean, and the same time throw yer imagination into the field o' battle.) Very good—very good indeed; except that some of you were a little ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... stories are not good for children, because they are not true, because there are no witches, nor talking beasts, and because people are killed in them, especially wicked giants. But probably you who read the tales know very well how much is true and how much is only make-believe, and I never yet heard of a child who killed a very tall man merely because Jack killed the giants, or who was unkind to his stepmother, if he had one, because, in fairy tales, the stepmother is often disagreeable. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... my audience that Paderewski himself might have envied. I wound up with a lively trill in the high notes and took my whistle from my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole thing had been downright good fun, the playing itself, the make-believe which went with it, the surprise and interest in the children's faces, the slow-breaking smile of the little ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... sort of make-believe wedding," replied Mrs. Clifford; "that is all. And since you are to be bridesmaid, Dotty, I wonder if I cannot find a pair of white slippers for you. I remember Grace had a pair some years ago, which she ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... same time," she went on, "the same neighbor receives the minister of the Mexican republic, and sends one in turn. But no matter. The marionettes of empire can dance, so long as Napoleon holds the strings. Was the princely homage a make-believe, too?" ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... it was all make-believe, so I half closed my eyes and did not move. The chattering stopped. The little fellow looked about curiously, drew his mouth up into a pucker, whistled once or twice to make sure I was not awake, and reached out his bony arm for a few crumbs of cake ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Maggie and say, "Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the conviction which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... cap tilted, her hand upraised, her trimness and her beauty silhouetted against the opalesque sky, dreaming,—and with a bit of heartache in it. For this sort of thing had been his hope in younger, fairer days. This sort of a being had been his make-believe companion of a Castle in Spain. This sort of a joking, whimsical girl had been the one who had come to him in the smoke wreaths and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... of it again. Islington, where is that? you must say if Islington should happen in the conversation, which is not likely. I always told you that you'd have to throw your family over. We want you, not your family. Chaperons nowadays are a make-believe. Lady Duckle will suit you very well; she'll feel ill when you don't want her, when you do she'll be all there. She's an honest old thing, and will do all that's required of her for the money you pay her. Thirty pounds a month, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... been assumed—as Plato does, and as Bacon in the New Atlantis probably intended to do (More gave his Utopians bondsmen sans phrase for their most disagreeable toil); or there is—as in Morris and the outright Return-to-Nature Utopians—a bold make-believe that all toil may be made a joy, and with that a levelling down of all society to an equal participation in labour. But indeed this is against all the observed behaviour of mankind. It needed the Olympian unworldliness of an irresponsible rich man of the shareholding type, a Ruskin or a Morris ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Mr. Motley, in a make-believe whisper, "when Middleton first came up, that he had been taking a glass too much, but now I see that he took just half ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of a minor character, but I think it is fairly representative of Remington's later attitude. "But of all the damned things that ever were damned," says the plain-spoken Britten, "your damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest." As a commentary, I find this exaggerated; and although it is in the mouth of one who is not presented as a spokesman for Mr Wells' own opinions, I feel that it comes very near to being a text for ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... To this little make-believe speech Clara did not think it necessary to return any answer. She was thinking how she would begin to say that for saying which there was so strong a necessity, and she could not take a part in small false badinage on a subject which ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... him much so long as his chief stood back of him. The unsupported word of the old man would not stand in court, and if he became obstreperous they could always have him locked up as a lunatic. The very pose of the old miner—the make-believe pretension that he was half a fool—would lend ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... would indeed sir. I shant never do myself justice at soljering, sir: I cant bring myself to think of it as proper work for a man with an active mind, as you might say, sir. Arf of its only ousemaidin; and the other arf is dress-up and make-believe. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no; for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts; Flower-gathering nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition. Rose Pogonias He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature; Asking for Roses nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe. Waiting—Afield at Dusk He arrives at the turn of the year. In a Vale Out of old longings he fashions a story. A Dream Pang He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him. In Neglect He is scornful of folk ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... sick once, and she had to lie quietly for some days on the lounge; then was the time she had become so familiar with everything in the room, and she had been allowed to have the shell to play with all the time. She had had her toast brought to her in there, with make-believe tea. It was one of her pleasant memories of her childhood; it was the first time she had been of any importance ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... buildings. They are very friendly. Their tired faces smile, or at least look somewhat amused and interested. They are interested in the fog and in the fact that one cannot see three feet ahead. And their faces say to each other, "Here we are, all alike. The city is only a make-believe. It can go away but we still remain. We are much more important ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... better. I occupied a seat in his 'eligible pew' last Sunday. The lath and plaster walls pretended to be Caen stone. The cheap deal was all 'make-believe' oak. The brick pillars were 'blocked off,' and unblushingly claimed to be granite. As I entered, I observed that the pulpit stood under the arch of a recess, roofed with carved stone, with clustered ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... with these make-believe dudes," he shouted. "That's the kid old Skin Flint Crawford took out of an orphan asylum. He's a kid that old Crawford took up with because he was too mean t' have t' Lord bless him with one o' his own. That's straight, fellers. I was Crawford's ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... now in the full tide of make-believe, "if you are a King's man, he will be of the other side, he hates you so. I cannot think how you have earned his hatred, unless, indeed—" and she broke off suddenly and looked aside. Halfman would have given a shilling for a lonely place ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of mind, Russ was constantly building new things—make-believe houses, engines, automobiles, steamboats, and the like—usually with a merry whistle on his lips, too. He was a cheerful boy and almost always considered the safety and pleasure of his brothers and ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... were under a cloud—not that he was ever very civil to me. I tell you, so far from rewarding him for being of the true sort, you do nothing but snub him, that I can see. He looks to me as good for work as any man I know; but you'll give your livings to any kind of wretched make-believe before you'll give them to Frank. I am aware," said the heir of the Wentworths, with a momentary flush, "that I have never been considered much of a credit to the family; but if I were to announce my intention of marrying and settling, there is not one of the name that would not lend a hand to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... pantomime was life, a pouring of blood, a grappling with shadows, a digging of graves. "Empty, empty," his intelligence whispered in its depths, "a make-believe of lusts. What else? Nothing, nothing. Laws, ambitions, conventions—froth in an empty glass. Tragedies, comedies—all a swarm of nothings. Dreams in the hearts of men—thin fever outlines to which they clung in hope. Nothing ... nothing...." His intelligence continued a murmur as he read—a ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... thought that was only a make-believe of yours. And that you were sitting here grieving because you had found out a family feast was being kept secret; because your husband and his children live a life of remembrances in which you ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... her, and the thing that has set me writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others it is a painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows it as willingly or unwillingly as you or I follow our respective callings. At the moment, for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... you," said Mr. Jones, sharply and emphatically. "What do you mean by hangin' fire so? Do you s'pose this is child's play and make-believe? Don't ye know that when quiet, peaceable neighbors git riled up to our pitch, they mean what they say? Sw'ar, as I said, and be mighty sudden ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe |
