"Chimerical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... labor. Slaves will then be without employment, and, of course, without the means of comfortable subsistence, which will reduce their numbers, and finally extirpate them. This is the argument as I understand it," says Mr. Sergeant; and, certainly, one more chimerical or more inhuman could ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the scholastic garb. It describes an imaginary commonwealth, the chief feature of which is a community of property, on an imaginary island, from which the book takes its name. The epithet "Utopian" is still used as descriptive of chimerical schemes. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... far otherwise as respected relations between McCulloch and the Missouri leaders. McCulloch had little or no tolerance for the rough-and-ready methods of men like Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price. He regarded their plans as impractical, chimerical, and their warfare as after the guerrilla order, too ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... understand, these ideas, as applied to the present state of the country, are absolutely chimerical. The Pretender is no more remembered in the Highlands than if the poor gentleman were gathered to his hundred and eight fathers, whose portraits adorn the ancient walls of Holyrood; the broadswords have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... reserved for America, the land of daring schemes and audacious plans, to formulate the most chimerical project of all. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... brilliant but undisciplined mind, strongly independent, impetuous, fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... should benefit ourselves, without injuring them, as their population must always so far exceed any black population which can ever exist in that country, as to render the idea of danger from that source chimerical." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... Catholics and Protestants, Coligny pressed the king to put himself at the head of an essentially Protestant coalition, and make it triumphant in Europe. This was, in the sixteenth century, a policy wholly chimerical, however patriotic its intention may have been; and the French Protestant hero who recommended it to Charles IX. did not know that Protestantism was on the eve of the greatest disaster it would have to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... much boasted (supposing them real) could not give him joy, but only in proportion as they should be made subservient to an advantageous peace: he then undertook to prove, that the mighty exploits, on which they insisted so much, were wholly chimerical and imaginary. "I have cut to pieces," says he (continuing Mago's speech,) "the Roman armies: send me some troops.—What more could you ask had you been conquered? I have twice seized upon the enemy's camp, full (no doubt) of provisions of every ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... social strata and showed the poet that this step would raise him many rungs higher in the ladder. Seizing the moment, she persuaded Lucien to forswear the chimerical notions of '89 as to equality; she roused a thirst for social distinction allayed by David's cool commonsense; she pointed out fashionable society as the goal and the only stage for such a talent as his. The rabid Liberal became a Monarchist ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the ancient world, which do not concern us. And yet I believe that, if the mother has not some ideal, in the name of which she can sacrifice the animal feeling, and if this force finds no employment, she will transfer it to chimerical attempts to physically preserve her child, aided in this task by the doctor, and she will suffer as ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... Carried away by his own eloquence, the salaried orator was ignorant that words, though all-powerful to excite, are yet impotent to appease; they urge nations forward, but nothing but the bayonet can arrest them. M. de Bouille, a veteran soldier, smiled at these chimerical projects of the citizen orator; but he did not, however, discourage him in his plans, and promised him his assistance: he wrote to the king to repay largely the desertion of Mirabeau; "A clever scoundrel," said he, "who ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the animal? 'Well, well,' said I, 'if they did, what matters, they found their match; yes, yes,' said I, 'but I am in their power, perhaps'—but I instantly dismissed the apprehension which came into my mind, with a pooh, nonsense! in a little time, however, a far more foolish and chimerical idea began to disturb me—the idea of being flung from my horse? was I not disgraced for ever as a horseman by being flung from my horse? Assuredly, I thought; and the idea of being disgraced as a horseman, operating ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... we have stepped from one end of the intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the systematic order or severe method that distinguish the work of the scholar of Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as chimerical as those of magic, but they are deduced with an amount of logic, entirely wanting in works of sorcery, that compels reasoning intellects to accept them. Recipes borrowed from medicine and popular superstition, primitive practices rejected or abandoned ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... perfect systems of methodical and simultaneous observations,—it wishes its influence and its power to be omnipotent over the globe, so that it may be able to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere at every point on its surface. Let it not be supposed that this is a chimerical imagination, the vain dream of a few philosophical enthusiasts. It is co-operation which we now come forward to request, in full confidence, that if our efforts are met with a zeal worthy of the cause, our associates will be astonished, individually, by the result of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... own especial art. The day of individual financial venture was gone. The tapestry masters of other times had both to work and to worry. They had to be artists and at the same time commercial men, a chimerical combination. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... parliament for consideration. In making this motion, the Duke of Grafton asserted that both France and Spain were arming, and that two French gentlemen had already been to America, and had had conferences with Washington and with congress. These assertions, however, were treated by ministers as chimerical, and Lord Weymouth, secretary for foreign affairs, assured the house that there never was a time when Great Britain had less to fear from foreign powers, and that every courier brought assurances of the pacific intentions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... went back into the consulting-room, to compose himself upon the couch for his evening sleep, which he took according to custom, and from which he awoke refreshed and ready to work for hours, late into the night, at his wearisome chimerical task, with which he grew more infatuated the more his reason suggested that his ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Disorders which are said to arise from its immoderate Use, we shall bring in the Sequel so many Facts directly contrary to these Chimerical Fears, that all Persons of good Sense will be disabused, and convinced of the salutary and wonderful Properties of this Fruit; which shall be the Subject of ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... is true, absolutely, and which, instead of confining itself to the explanation of transitory phenomena, invests them with all the dignity of principles. We shall endeavor to avoid the peril pointed out by Mallebranche. "Learned men study rather to acquire a chimerical greatness in the imagination of other men, than to acquire greater breadth and strength of mind themselves. They make their heads a kind of store-room, into which they gather, without order or discrimination, everything which has a look of erudition,—I mean to say everything which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... from the romantic to the realistic, from the chimerical to the actual, from the child's poetic interpretation of life to life's practical version of itself, is too gradual to be noticed while the process is going on. It is only in the retrospect we see the change. There is still, for yet another stage, the same and even greater ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... and the more a man busies himself with natural causes (e.g. in scientific research) the greater does this slavery to custom become, till at last he seems positively unable to perceive the real state of the case—regarding any rational thinking thereon as chimerical, so that the term 'meta-physical,' even in its etymological sense as super-sensuous or beyond physical causation, becomes a term of rational reproach. Obviously such a man has written himself down, ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... they will about reforms which Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual custom, they ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... thousand other Circumstances create so great a difference betwixt the several Palates of Men, and their Judgments upon ingenious Composures, that nothing can be more chimerical and foolish in an Author than the Ambition of ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... (1861) and gained the good-will of Russia; but he speedily forfeited this by his wholly ineffective efforts on behalf of the Poles in 1863. His great mistakes, however, were committed in and after the year 1863, when he plunged into Mexican politics with the chimerical aim of founding a Roman Catholic Empire in Central America, and favoured the rise of Prussia in connection with the Schleswig-Holstein question. By the former of these he locked up no small part of his army ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... it said, that the man who originated this road has since become insane. More likely he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild and chimerical, so evidently impossible of fulfilment. Projected it was, however, not only in fancy, but in fact, to our great content; and so, tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's base, and wind through the lovely, lively woods, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... World. Then will come the real clashing of interests, and the Eastern States must be content to succumb and resign their present power, or the Western will throw them off, as an useless appendage to her might. This may at present appear chimerical to some, and would be considered by many others as too far distant; but be it remembered, that ten years in America, is as a century; and even allowing the prosperity of the United States to be checked, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... M. de Marigny did the same, though without appearing at all affected by what had been said. "You heard De La Riviere," said he,—"but don't be alarmed, the conversations that pass at the Doctor's are never repeated; these are honourable men, though rather chimerical. They know not where to stop. I think, however, they are in the right way; only, unfortunately, they go too far." ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... date long anterior to the epoch when man made that greatest of human discoveries—the discovery, namely, of the power of permanently recording words, thoughts, and acts, in symbolical and alphabetic writing. To some minds it has seemed almost chimerical for the archaeologist to expect to regain to any extent a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of man, and of the different nations of men, before human cunning had learned to collect and inscribe them on stone or brass, or had fashioned them into written or traditional records capable ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... emphasize the fact of her return to complete health by the unusual effort of coming down to breakfast. She was in high feather, and her cheery conversation lifted, to some extent, the gloom which had settled on her young friends. While exhorting to patience she was full of hope, and dismissed as chimerical all the darker explanations which the disconsolate lovers invented to account for the silence their communications had met with. Under her influence the breakfast-table became positively cheerful, and at last ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... civil and criminal codes, not prescribed by old times, nor by conquering kings, but by the voice of nature, by the clamor of justice and by the genius of wisdom." ... "Humankind cries against the thoughtless and blind legislators who have thought that they might with impunity try chimerical institutions. All the peoples of the world have attempted to gain freedom, some by deeds of arms, others by laws passing alternately from anarchy to despotism, from despotism to anarchy. Very few have contented themselves with moderate ambitions ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... academic service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical hope,—played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... retrospective Franchise of seven years being substituted for mere naturalisation, and of an increase in the number of seats. Such a proposition on the part of the Government of Pretoria shows plainly that it wished to evade enquiry into a law so fettered with formalities that its working was chimerical. And when Sir Alfred Milner referred to his proposal at Bloemfontein, the State Attorney decreased to five years the term of retrospective registration, gave eight seats to the Rand, and two to ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... salary, as well as his wife, who was to be the housekeeper at Bellevue. Dalhousie was a needy man. His fortunes were on the descending scale. Born in France, he had emigrated to this country, with the chimerical hope of speedily making a fortune. He could not build up the coveted temple stone by stone, but wished it to rise like a fairy castle. With such views, he had wandered about the country with his ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... man and beast, heaven and earth; if this be beyond me, 'tis not possible.—What consequence then follows? or can there be any other than this—if I seek an interest of my own, detached from that of others; I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of influence declared the conditions published by the directors of the railway chimerical in the extreme. One gentleman of some eminence in Liverpool, Mr. P. Ewart, who afterward filled the office of Government Inspector of Post-office Steam Packets, declared that only a parcel of charlatans ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... conviction which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and I confidently hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest of enterprises. Of this I speak with confidence, of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... suppress his name. He was of a class now annually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks be to God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human nature, that, amongst the many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at least, never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows more intellectual, the power of managing him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals to his mere animal instincts of pain, must go on pari passu. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... France to his side he held an interview with Napoleon III at Biarritz in October, 1865. The cunning diplomat offered the emperor an alliance with a view to the extension of Prussia and Italy, by means of which France would take Belgium. Napoleon saw very clearly that the offer was chimerical, but he believed that Prussia if fighting alone would be rapidly crushed, and that the alliance of Italy would aid him in protracting the war, thus enabling him to intervene as a peacemaker and to impose a vast rearrangement of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... made special search for indications of prostitutes having taken up residence in the city at large, and am absolutely convinced that your experience has proven this bugaboo to be wholly chimerical. This conclusion has been amply verified by interviews I have had with representative business and professional men, whose homes are in the residential districts of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... for not expelling the evil on the ground that they did not know how to do so. At Peoria he said: "If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution." He contributed some suggestions which certainly were nothing better than chimerical. Deportation to Africa was his favorite scheme; he also proposed that it would be "best for all concerned to have the colored population in a State by themselves." But he did not abuse men who declined to adopt his methods. Though he was dealing with a question which was arousing personal ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... equally grieved and obdurate. "I will not give Father a third chance to ridicule my chimerical plans for Kashmir. Come; the rest of us will ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... for these romantic extravagances naturally fostered a corresponding taste for the perusal of tales of chivalry. Indeed, they acted reciprocally on each other. These chimerical legends had once, also, beguiled the long evenings of our Norman ancestors, but, in the progress of civilization, had gradually given way to other and more natural forms of composition. They still maintained their ground in Italy, whither they had passed later, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... literal narrative will see how little he has been seduced from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject. The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... consequences of the forfeiture of their constitutional engagements? It is impossible. The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on the wisdom of Congress, and, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... State are really identical, the Church being merely the State in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. If Thomas Arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was to be expected ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... "Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were, the shock of Death, and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... From that moment to the time of her death her conversion continued steadily, and her penitence augmented. She had first to get rid of the secret fondness she still entertained for the Court, even of the hopes which, however chimerical, had always flattered her. She was persuaded that nothing but the fear of the devil had forced the King to separate himself from her, that it was nothing but this fear that had raised Madame de Maintenon to the height she had attained; that age and ill-health, which she was pleased to imagine, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... estimated that at the rate the population of the United States is increasing, and the rate walnut consumption is increasing, by the time every available acre in Oregon is in full bearing the supply will still fall far short of the demand. Judging by past experience in California this is no chimerical conception. Since 1896 the walnut crop in that state has steadily increased, and in like proportion has the price advanced, from seven cents in 1896 to ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... Territories of the extreme West had no definite outline, but were measured from the crest of the Rocky Mountains,—the audacity of the proposition might justly have inspired suspicions of the sanity of its author. But if Dr. Carver was chimerical, he was at least courageous in his persistence. Ten years later, this lineal descendant of old John Carver transferred the question from the arena of newspaper discussion, and boldly memorialized Congress. Here he found a rival advocate in Asa ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... to have them introduced to his majesty. Sir John C——, the late mayor of Windsor, assisted me very effectually, and the upshot of the matter is, that the king expressed his desire to see the Indian chiefs, although every body treated this as a most chimerical idea. They wore, for the first time, the brilliant clothes which Mr. Butterworth had had made for them, and you cannot conceive how ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... dragons spring from anyway? Eggs, like snakes? Dragons were reptiles werent they? Or werent they? Give up the metaphor? I set my teeth with determination and began again. "Not unlike a fierce and belligerently furious dragon or some other ferocious, blustery and furious chimerical creature, a menacing and comminatory debacle is burning fierily in the heart of our fair and increasingly populous city. As one with an innocent yet cardinal part in the unleashing of this dire menace, I want to describe how the exposure of this threatening menace affected ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Chimerical as it may sound even to suppose such a thing, there seems no valid reason why it might not have been. No people admittedly are more intensely loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their failings no less than their virtues they are extraordinarily susceptible ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... am in some doubt, whether the political spreaders of those chimerical invasions, made a judicious choice in fixing the northern parts of Ireland for that romantic enterprize. Nor, can I well understand the wisdom of the Presbyterians in countenancing and confirming those reports. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... generations traded with Asia by the overland journey, and ought therefore to have been glad to learn of this new alternative route, since the Turks were now playing havoc with the other; but no, they told Columbus that his idea was chimerical! Next he applied to the court of France. "Ridiculous!" was the reply, accompanied with a polite sneer. Next Columbus sent his scheme to Henry VII of England, a prince full of projects, but miserly. "Too expensive!" was the Tudor's reply, though presently, after the Spanish success, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... and, judging by appearances, might soon be expected to be decidedly thin. In excessive lowness of spirit, Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. Yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed. Public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling- off being only an accident of the season. Her novelties had been hailed with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... another side, with gates piercing the towers of sharply peaked roofs, permitting you to see above it the turrets, the domes, the belfries and the spires of the churches and convents it encloses. On another side, strange as the architecture of dreamland, stands the chimerical and impossible church of Vassili-Blagennoi, which makes your reason doubt the testimony of your eyes. Although it appears real enough, you ask yourself if it is not a fantastic mirage, a building made of clouds curiously coloured by the sunlight, and which the quivering air will change or cause to ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... "There is no limit to what can be done. The idea of our present trip would have seemed more chimerical to people a hundred years ago than this ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... for evident reasons which he explained very well, Germany having every interest in crushing us and in hastening that moment for which M. de Bismarck had been waiting eighteen years; while Olivier Bertin proved by irrefutable argument that these fears were chimerical, it being impossible for Germany to be foolish enough to risk her conquest in an always doubtful venture, or for the Chancelor to be imprudent enough to risk, in the latter years of his life, his achievements and his glory at a ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... time was therefore evidently ripe for the adoption of such a machine as that of Koenig. Attempts had been made by many inventors, but every one of them had failed. Printers generally regarded the steam-press as altogether chimerical. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggle of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful when he told Mr. Northcote he had decided on the character and disposition of a man from his ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... in their power to accomplish the tasks they undertook. The race would have been centuries behind what it is to-day had it not been for their grit, their determination, their persistence in finding and making real the thing they believed in and which the world often denounced as chimerical or impossible. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... profession. As an argument this is nothing short of picturesque, and can be traced to those unique and professedly scientific mentalities that solve all vocal problems by a mathematical formula. As an example of the chimerical, impossible and altogether undesirable, it commands admiration. If it is impossible to establish a standard tone for pianos where the problem is mechanical, what may we expect to do with voice where the problem ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... see or hear more. I had already descried what a peaceful family life—upright, pure, and devoted—my friend Meurtrier hid under his chimerical gasconades. But the spectacle with which chance had favored me was at once so droll and so touching that I could not resist the temptation to watch for some moments longer. That indiscretion sufficed to show me ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... number of such auxiliaries. (Garibay, Compendio Historial de las Chronicas de Espana, (Barcelona, 1628,) lib. 12, cap. 33.) The crusades in Spain were as rational enterprises, as those in the East were vain and chimerical. Pope Pascal II. acted like a man of sense, when he sent back certain Spanish adventurers, who had embarked in the wars of Palestine, telling them that "the cause of religion could be much better served by them ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... revolutionary champions might cross the Atlantic, and desolate the hitherto safe and peaceful dwellings of the American people, was an apprehension not so entirely unsupported by appearances as to be pronounced chimerical. With a blind infatuation, which treated reason as a criminal, immense numbers applauded a furious despotism, trampling on every right, and sporting with life as the essence of liberty; and the few who conceived freedom to be a plant which did not flourish the better for being nourished ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and the treatment which he received, are very justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: "The whole day," says he, "has been employed in various people's filling my head with their foolish chimerical systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every different person's way of thinking; hurried from one wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... sleep on deck, and advised all who complained of their quarters to follow my example. I dare say a dozen of others agreed to do so, and I thought we should have been quite a party. Yet, when I brought up my rug about seven bells, there was no one to be seen but the watch. That chimerical terror of good night-air, which makes men close their windows, list their doors, and seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhalations, had sent all these healthy workmen down below. One would think we had been brought up in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I still stick to Paris, so does my wife, so does my eldest daughter. You did no more than to throw out the general idea, but I feel quite confident this occurred in Paris. I confess I thought the notion evidently chimerical, and as such spoke of it in my family. I always set you down as a sober-minded, common-sense sort of a fellow, and thought it a high flight for a painter to make to go off on the wings of the lightning. We may be mistaken, but you will remember that the priority of the invention ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... island, with its two thousand miles of coast line and nearly one hundred accessible harbors, is certainly very poorly prepared to resist an invading enemy. Cuba's boasted military or defensive strength is chimerical. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... existed no motive to prompt men to subject it to a closer critical investigation; and in the absence of such an investigation its influence upon the nature and extent of demand could not be discovered. The old economists were therefore compelled to believe it chimerical to think of demand as falling short of production; for they said, quite correctly, that man produces only to consume. Here, with them, the question of demand was done with, and every possibility of the discovery of the true connection cut off. Their successors, on the other hand, who have ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... unanswered question before us: What caused the explosions? The idea of a world blowing up is too Titanic to be shocking; it rather amuses the imagination than seriously impresses it; in a word, it seems essentially chimerical. We can by no appeal to experience form a mental picture of such an occurrence. Even the moon did not blow up when it was wrecked by volcanoes. The explosive nebul and new stars are far away in space, and suggest no connection with such a catastrophe ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... of the undivided apocalyptic portrayal rendered as emblem, the rest accepted as absolute verity? If the blood red warrior on his white horse followed by the shining cavalry of heaven, the horrible vials of wrath, the chimerical angels and beasts, the sky and globe converted into terror struck fugitives, the bridal city descending from God with its incredible walls and its impossible gates and its magic tree of life yielding twelve kinds of fruit, are imagery; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... intellect, have causes by which they are preconceived, as our actions are accomplished in our minds before they are reproduced by the outer man; presentiments or predictions are the perception of these causes"—I think we may deplore in him a genius equal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical notions about angels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in trying to make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry? At the same time, Lambert, at a later period, studied comparative anatomy, physics, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this country can surely never be brought to it but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Chapter of Longinus will find, that 'tis impossible for a Tory to succeed in Eloquence, and that if they cannot impose so far on Men's Understandings, as to make Fustian pass for Oratory, their Project of an Academy, will be as Chimerical as if they shou'd flatter us with a Trade and Settlements in the Moon. The Reader will not be displeas'd, to see what the Ancients thought of the Capacity of Men of such Principles in Matters of Eloquence, ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... ascribe this translation to Thomas Wilcox, a certain 'very painful minister of God's word,' I am not sure. The mistake has, however, been constantly repeated, and led Underhill, in his able monograph on Spanish Literature in England, to give a detailed account of Wilcox and his wholly chimerical connexion with the spread of Spanish influence in this country. The translation is preserved in the British Museum, Addit. MS. 18,638, and contains the translator's name perfectly clearly written, both on the title-page and at the end of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... did not agree with all of it, I was forced to admit the truth of a large part. He certainly seemed to have come nearer to solving the problem than I had even been able to. Yet it appeared to my conservative mind shockingly socialistic and chimerical. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 1746, Prince Charles brought with him a head full of indigested romance, a heart rich in chimerical expectations. He now prided himself on being a plain hardy mountaineer. He took a line of his own; he concealed his measures from the spy-ridden Court of his father in Rome; he quarrelled with his brother, the Duke of York, when the Duke accepted a cardinal's hat. He broke violently with the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... the coincidence, but denied that the wishes or expectations of the letter-writer were to be regarded as proofs of a charge otherwise chimerical. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days sufficed, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable We could ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... deeply unsatisfying. Well, the former class, who naturally figure prominently in the public press, because the press is the more or less flattering mirror of the prevailing doctrines of the day, think that Mr. Mill's views of a better social future are chimerical, utopian, and sentimental. The latter class compensate themselves for the pinchedness of the real world about them by certain rapturous ideals, centring in God, a future life, and the long companionship of the blessed. The ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... thousand mules and send them to him, to make a depot for rations and forage at Abingdon sufficient to support the column on its journey through the mountains, to furnish a train to carry it,—all this seemed evidently chimerical to those to whom he proposed it. [Footnote: Id., p. 760.] The Confederacy had all it could do to feed its existing armies where they were, and was living from ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Whig, a bottomless Whig as they all are now,' was his description apparently of Burke. Order, in fact, is a vital necessity; what particular form it may take matters comparatively little; and therefore all revolutionary dogmas were chimerical as an attack upon the inevitable conditions of life, and mischievous so far as productive of useless discontent. We need not ask what mixture of truth and falsehood there may be in these principles. Of course, a Radical, or even a respectable Whig, like Macaulay, who believed in the magical ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... true that there is no fancy so vain and so chimerical that may not be a more real and true medicine for an enthusiastic heart than any herb, mineral, oil, or other sort ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... intend with one word to banish from your minds the chimerical apprehensions which the suspicions of Marcel may have engendered ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... hangs his watch upon it, at the head of his bed, with the infatuated notion that thereby, through some "most fine spirit of sense," the tick of a death-watch will disturb the political dreams of our Massachusetts rulers, we hereby declare that this is most chimerical and visionary, and that the great party of freedom in Massachusetts need not feel the slightest apprehension that our rulers have the least misgivings as to the morality of their conduct in the removal of said officer, nor that they fear political retribution ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... justice diminishing the weight of taxes; every barrier to improvement cast down; and in all this his interest runs parallel with an enlightened public interest. He may push his secret desires to an absurd and chimerical height, but never can they cease to be humanizing in their tendency. He may desire that food and clothing, house and hearth, instruction and morality, security and peace, strength and health, should come to us without ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... appears to us altogether chimerical. Family affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes. The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eager enthusiasm with which they thronged about any one who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lent sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had little enough light to give. However chimerical the aspirations of the laboring classes might be deemed, the devotion with which they supported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon, and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... staggering obstacle to a soldier, whose capital is seldom any thing more than his sword. Full of that buoyant hope, however, which belongs to the sanguine temperament, he repaired to New-York, the great focus of American enterprise, where there are always funds ready for any scheme, however chimerical or romantic. Here he had the good fortune to meet with a gentleman of high respectability and influence, who had been his associate in boyhood, and who cherished a schoolfellow friendship for him. He took a general interest in ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... plebeian in using the term citizen, while it is no longer disputed that the plebeian was not a burgess and consequently had no civic rights save those granted to him by the ruling class. His idea of goods must have, at least, become chimerical at a very early date, as this equality was so little suspected by the ancients that Plutarch,[21] after having spoken of the efforts of Lycurgus to overturn the inequality of wealth among the Spartans, accuses Numa of having ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... to soil the "Nibelungen" with Jewish calculations, so as to keep them, if possible, quite clean in this respect also—if you, finally, go through my general, but I think accurate and by no means chimerical, calculations, you will perhaps find my demand fair enough and—now I am coming ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Besides: Lilian! Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the march ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Not at all. I prefer rather success—station, rank, power, money, for myself, if you please. With us—a million dollars for the founding of our new country. With him—for the undertaking of yonder impracticable and chimerical expedition, twenty-five hundred dollars! Which enterprise, ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... too obvious to be specified. He claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly systematic theory. If he had ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... transactions and modifications which do not harmonize with the idea of a natural right; that, in practice, governments, tribunals, and laws do not respect it; and finally that everybody, spontaneously and with one voice, regards it as chimerical. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... only for parade. The same with three lieutenants-general, each one "receiving in his turn, every three years, a gratuity of 30,000 livres, for services rendered in the said province. These are vain and chimerical, they are not specified" because none of them reside there, and, if they are paid, it is to secure their support at the court. "Thus the Comte de Caraman, who has more than 600,000 livres income as proprietor of the Languedoc canal, receives ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the choice of merit without intrigue,—in short, in all that the narrow limits of one arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,—his only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of his life,—last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate of Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might have enforced his rights and recovered the property ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... managers of the late Government are acting with great dexterity, and I begin to think that Rice's expectation of being able to hold together the whole of those who are not with the new Government is not so chimerical as I at first imagined. Although there is a little feeling for the ex-Ministry and no excitement in the country, there is a calm which is quite as alarming to the hopes of one party as it is represented to be expressive with regard to the power of the other, for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... murdered Alice Webster, with gory temple, long, damp tresses clinging to her form, in striking pose, advancing and receding, mutely gesticulating such fearful prophetic menace, was too real for chimerical conjecture or mere coincidence. How came that door closed just after the tableau? That declamation! Such pertinent lines and ghostly utterances, so exactly imitating ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... generous sensibility. In reading these rigorous maxims one might be tempted to believe that this legislator of morality is a man without a heart, and, if we were not touched by the original sincerity of the language, one would only see in this lapidary style the conventional precepts of a chimerical system or the aspirations of an impossible perfection." The Discourses are more illustrative, more argumentative, more diffuse, more human. In reading them one feels oneself face to face with a human being, not with the marble statue of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... strange indeed that an invitation to court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honorable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight. Not such are the raptures ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... suspicious that somebody is trying to influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace it can, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combination of the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, is chimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree with each other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views of any topic or event as the ingenious rival journals are certain to discover. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... siege of Sebastopol, though Kinglake does not mention the circumstance. In 1846 Wise drew up and laid before the American War Office an elaborate scheme for the reduction of Vera Cruz. This will be discussed in its due place, though it will be doubtless considered as chimerical. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... who without any such advantages, on the contrary with positive disadvantages, poor, sickly, and a slave perhaps, or even in prison or on the rack, should nevertheless retain unimpaired the dignity of manhood and the freedom of his own soul—, such a conception if it is not chimerical, is at any rate so remote from common experience, that it is not capable of serving as a really practical ideal for ordinary life. But an ideal so remote that its realisation is despaired of, is as good as none. And the conception of the Stoics, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the noes, in both Assembly and Senate, came from Clinton's opponents, including the Tammany delegation and their friends. From the outset Tammany, by solemn resolutions, had denounced the canal project as impractical and chimerical, declaring it fit only for a ditch in which to bury Clinton. At Albany its representatives greeted the measure for its construction with a burst of mockery; and, by placing one obstacle after another in its way, nearly defeated it in the Senate. It ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... She ruled imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems probable, however, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... and she now determined to make it legally, in a manner not to be reversed. M. Cossard endeavored to dissuade his niece from such an absurdity, as it appeared to him, but his eloquence and reasoning were useless, and the property was deeded away. He next tried to convince her that her vocation was chimerical, and the result of a sort of religous enthusiasm, which would die a natural death. And lest his rhetoric should not produce the desired effect, he started back to Troyes, where she was universally known and esteemed, to tell ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... the first edition to be suspended. Fenelon has sometimes been regarded as a forerunner of the Revolutionary movement; but he would rather, by ideas in which, as events proved, there may have been something chimerical, have rendered revolution impossible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden |
