"Imaginary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Ryder's voice that stirred the hearts of those who sat around him. It suggested more than mere sympathy with an imaginary situation; it seemed rather in the nature of a personal appeal. It was observed, too, that his look rested more especially upon Mrs. Dixon, with a mingled expression of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and, old as I am, I should be none the worse for a little breather." He strutted in his stately fashion over to where a rapier and dagger hung upon the wall, and began to make passes at the door, darting in and out, warding off imaginary blows with his poniard, and stamping his feet with little cries of "Punto! reverso! stoccata! dritta! mandritta!" and all the jargon of the fencing schools. Finally he rejoined them, breathing heavily and with ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked up at her companion with a smile and an expression of curiosity as to how he would take the announcement. Lawrence gazed blankly at her for a moment, and then he broke into a laugh. "You don't mean to say," he exclaimed, "that Mr Null is an imaginary being?" ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... that necessarily the guards were far apart. Now and then I could hear Randolph, as if relieved by the sound of a voice in the darkness, calling out to the sergeant of the guard, to direct his attention to some imaginary alarm. But they stood it out, and took their turn ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... so deft to arrange his covers and pillows; no voice was so gently modulated yet so invariably cheerful—no step so quick and light; and, though the querulous invalid often frowned upon her, and chided her sharply for imaginary remissness, she never wavered ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... state of things about nine o'clock this evening, for one real attempt to enter the house, invariably gives rise to a thousand imaginary attacks and fanciful alarms.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... has a design by this conduct (sometimes complaining of my shyness, at others exalting in my imaginary favours) to induce me at one time to acquiesce with his compliments; at another to be more complaisant for his complaints; and if the contradiction be not the effect of his inattention and giddiness; I shall think him ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... school, seemed dull work indeed to a boy who was longing to stand sword in hand on a blood-stained deck, in a gory uniform trimmed with skulls and cross-bones, and order his enemies to be thrown one by one into the sea. "The shark awaits your car-casses!" spouted the imaginary desperado with a vicious snap of his teeth; and when Aunt Greg interrupted by asking him to bring in an armful of kindling, he glared at her like the Red Rover himself. Poor Aunt Greg! how little she guessed what was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... too, in a way, may well come within the scope of the passion of any lover of material things which have at one time or another been a part and parcel of the lives of great men. And so, coupled with literary associations, we have the more or less imaginary "Bell" at Edmonton to remind us of Cowper, of many houses and scenes identified with Carlyle, at Chelsea; of the poet Thompson, of Gainsborough, and a round score of celebrities who have been closely identified with Richmond,—and yet others as great, reminiscent of Pepys, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the night, presented her with terrific images and obscure circumstances, concerning her affection and her future life. She now endeavoured to chase away the impressions they had left on her fancy; but from imaginary evils she awoke to the consciousness of real ones. Recollecting that she had parted with Valancourt, perhaps for ever, her heart sickened as memory revived. But she tried to dismiss the dismal forebodings that crowded on her mind, and to restrain the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Hell, and live luxuriously on the folly of their hearers: those who suffer under this insanity, are generally most innocent and harmless people, who are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes; and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe. Where this intellectual cowardice is great, the voice of reason is ineffectual; but that of ridicule ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the lines of the exclusive fisheries from the common fisheries will give certainty and security as to the area of their legitimate field. The headland theory of imaginary lines is abandoned by Great Britain, and the specification in the treaty of certain named bays especially provided for gives satisfaction to the inhabitants of the shores, without subtracting materially from the value or convenience of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... is said, he hath purged our sins by himself, so it was by himself at once—'For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified' (10:14). Now by this word 'at once,' or by 'one offering,' is cut off all those imaginary sufferings of Christ which foolish men conceive of; as that he in all ages hath suffered or suffereth for sin in us.[30] No; he did this work but once. 'Nor yet that he should offer himself often, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this work do not concern the imaginary "Dickens-Land" of Mr. Whipple, but refer to the actual country in which the imaginary characters played their parts, and to that still more interesting actual country in which Dickens lived long and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... "historical novel." HUGH WYNNE exactly fits it. But SILAS LAPHAM is a novel as perfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it pictures an era and personifies a type. It matters not that in the one we find George Washington and in the other none save imaginary figures; else THE SCARLET LETTER were not historical. Nor does it matter that Dr. Mitchell did not live in the time of which he wrote, while Mr. Howells saw many Silas Laphams with his own eyes; else UNCLE TOM'S CABIN were not historical. Any narrative ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... world, in which the equilibrium is established on real factors of power. We must endeavour to obtain in this system our merited position at the head of a federation of Central European States, and thus reduce the imaginary European equilibrium, in one way or the other, to its true value, and correspondingly ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... are under sentence of death we are all of us pathetic of course; but stretched upon the debateable couch of sickness we are not so touching as the coloured coat: it has the distinction belonging to colour. It smites a deeper nerve, or more than one; and this, too, where there is no imaginary subjection to the charms of military glory, in minds to which the game of war is lurid as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... imagine it impossible ever to think so unpleasantly of himself! But he has only to let things go, and he will make it the real, right, natural way to think of himself. True, all I have been saying is imaginary; but our imagination is made to mirror truth; all the things that appear in it are more or less after the model of things that are; I suspect it is the region whence issues prophecy; and when we are true it will mirror nothing but truth. I deal here with the same light and darkness ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... smiled, "this island is here, very small. This one is here, very large." Again the imaginary ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... law—made itself felt by the most barbarous excesses. Many of the houses of the Israelites were attacked by the mob, plundered, razed to the ground, and the owner tortured to death, to extort confession of imaginary wealth. Not to sell what was demanded was a crime; to sell it was a crime also. These miserable outcasts fled to whatever secret places the vaults of their houses or the caverns in the hills within the city could yet afford them, cursing their fate, and almost longing ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and whipping his father's walking-stick, as if he were mounted upon a real horse? There we have a proof of "imagination" in the child! What pleasure it gives to children to construct a splendid coach with chairs and armchairs; and while some recline inside, looking out with delight at an imaginary landscape, or bowing to an applauding crowd, other children, perched on the backs of chairs, beat the air as if they were whipping fiery horses. Here ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... believing as man believed at first. ["In the childhood of the world," according to the first (French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is: "Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being; but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they prefer."—Editor.] Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a full, independent, generous—a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly, such—bear witness—is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; "for the time present"—I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law—"hereof let this little taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... planning what to do next. Some of our soldiers, misunderstanding the order, "Fix bayonets," were actually charging with them, dashing off into the dim woods, with nothing to charge at but the vanishing tail of an imaginary horse,—for we could really see nothing. This zeal I noted with pleasure, and also with anxiety, as our greatest danger was from confusion and scattering; and for infantry to pursue cavalry would be a novel enterprise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... they enter like pieces of quartz-stone, and the pain they occasion is always felt. Another sorcerer, however, can draw them out, and the pieces of stone pretended to be thus obtained are kept as great curiosities. Perhaps the clearest ideas of the imaginary powers of these sorcerers, and of the dread in which they are held, will be found from the following account, obtained from a native with the utmost difficulty, (for the subject is never willingly mentioned,) and reported ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... prize was estimated worth two hundred thousand pounds, and immediate application was made by France to the court of Spain for restitution, while the proprietors of the Anti-gallican were squandering in mirth, festivity, and riot, the imaginary wealth so easily and unexpectedly acquired. Such were the remonstrances made to his catholic majesty with respect to the illegality of the prize, which the French East India company asserted was taken ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... my travelling companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having some one with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... princes, descendants of ancient lineage, acted in these weird and ghastly comedies. The ladies, with hair bound high over their heads, would kneel before the inverted chairs, and place the snowwhite necks beneath this imaginary guillotine. Speeches were delivered to a mock populace, whilst a mock Santerre ordered a mock roll of drums to drown the last flow of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... real heroes there would have been created imaginary ones, for men cannot live without them. The hero is just as necessary as the farmer, the sailor, the carpenter and the doctor; society could not get on without him. There have been a great many different kinds of heroes, for in every age and among every people the hero has stood for the qualities ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Pitt, both as a good man and a great statesman. As a poet exclusively, he had been amused with the Eclogue; as a poet he recited it; and in a spirit which made it evident that he would have read and repeated it with the same pleasure had his own name been 30 attached to the imaginary object or agent. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ridiculous talk about that imaginary horse, a formal request was made for the daughter's hand, and finally the bride herself appeared, solemnly led ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... arises, What interpretation are we to put on these chaste yet glowing sentences? It seems hardly possible to believe that they were not penned out of some real experience. Pascal was not the man to busy himself in writing an imaginary essay on such a subject. Nothing can be conceived less like the sketch of a mere moral analyst standing outside the passion he describes. There may be a tendency here and there to over-analysis, and to the balancing of antitheses now on one side and now on the other; but there is the breath of true ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... creature's eyes flashed, and the tragic air with which she struck at an imaginary "mean white," are among the most vivid things in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... plunged his hands in his pockets and stared at Fullaway; Mrs. Marlow began to trace imaginary patterns on the surface of the table; Van Koon produced a penknife and began to scrape the edges of his filbert nails ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... composed the allegory of "Real and Imaginary Time," first published in the Sibylline Leaves, having been accidentally ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... difficulty in getting his brother, Comte Guillaume, a poor officer of the marine troops, to accept the post of husband. In the marriage-contract, signed on 23d July, 1768, she was described as "the daughter of Anne Becu and of an imaginary first husband, Sieur Jean Jacques Gomard de Vaubernier," and three years were taken off her age. The marriage-contract was so drawn as to leave Madame du Barry entirely free from all control by her husband. The marriage ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... my own temporary blindness; the whole action from the moment when the balloon left the earth, moved so rapidly, that we were flustered, and hardly knew what it was that we were really seeing. It was not till two or three years later that I found the scene presenting itself to my soul's imaginary sight in the full splendour which was no doubt witnessed, but not apprehended, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... observed ironically, as he closed the book. "I'm afraid, however, that the 'garden of happy hours' is a purely imaginary one for most ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... its heavy barrel and polished walnut stock he rubbed a piece of greased linen with loving care, drew back the flint-lock and greased carefully every nook and turn of its mechanism, lifted the gun finally to his shoulder and drew an imaginary bead on the head of a turkey gobbler two hundred yards away. A glowing coal of hickory wood in the fire ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... crises were rising and passing; strikes and panics, wars and the rumors of wars, swept from continent to continent; a plague crept through India; a filibuster with five hundred men at his back crossed an imaginary line and stirred the world from Cape Town to London; Emperors were crowned; the good Queen celebrated the longest reign; and a captain of artillery imprisoned in a swampy island in the South Atlantic caused two hemispheres to clamor for his rescue, and lit a race ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... small effect unless it is to be seen in your disposition, in your ordinary life, in your loving consideration for other people, or in your patient endurance of injury, real or imaginary. Without that your profession of Holiness is mere ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... forest-line that surrounded us, doubled by reflection in the water, presented a broad, unbroken belt of utter blackness. The effect was quite startling, like some huge conjurer's trick. It seemed as if we had crossed the boundary-line between the real and the imaginary, and this was indeed the land of shadows and of spectres. What magic oar was that the guide wielded that it could transport me to such a realm! Indeed, had I not committed some fatal mistake, and left that trusty servant behind, and had not some ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... abduction." The author sketches it all graphically with a convincing fidelity of caricature. The "Sisters of Misery" triumphed. They retained the baby. Then after attempting to sanctify the baby—a ceremony wholly imaginary and described with a smutch of revolting coarseness—the sisters send the baby packing back to the Protestant ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... little significance, I believe, as clews to the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to be that he had arrived home, worn-out ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... tyranny was all imaginary—I saw that. I could think of no act on your part that wasn't kind, or for my good. I came back to find you ill, sick unto death. It seemed it was some punishment on my head.... Oh, everything changed in those few days. If you had died I think I should ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Rome in countries beyond the ocean compensation for what she had lost in Europe through the Protestant reformation. Even when English churchmen passed beyond the seas, they carried with them their creed, but not their ecclesiastical organization. Prejudice and real or imaginary legal obstacles stood in the way of the erection of episcopal sees in the colonies; and though in the 17th century Archbishop Laud had attempted to obtain a bishop for Virginia, up to the time of the American revolution ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... their cruelty is recorded of a bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... brought to a hospital in order to watch his disease. Rumors of this reaching the newspapers, the reporters thought it a good opportunity to make a story about leprosy, giving the number and street of an imaginary laundry in the heart of the city. Instantly the patronage of the Chinese laundries stopped. My Chinese friend was in the greatest distress about it, and particularly about me, lest I should think he had brought the contagious disease to my house. I could hardly persuade him to ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... registering its effects chiefly by functional disturbance and organic lesions, causing its very defenders as a food to stultify themselves when in fealty to facts they are compelled to disclose its destructions, and to find the only defense in that line of demarcation, more imaginary than the equator, more delusive than the ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the cold substance of that monstrous water-lily that Reason has planted in the hearts of our cities; I beg of you, if by some chance this obscure book falls into your hands, do not smile with noble disdain, do not shrug your shoulders; do not be too sure that I complain of an imaginary evil; do not be too sure that human reason is the most beautiful of faculties, that there is nothing real here below but quotations on the Bourse, gambling in the salon, wine on the table, a healthy body, indifference toward ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... silver lining of hope and comfort. This was a period of great activity for Mikail; never before had he found such congenial employment. After making a series of one-sided investigations, in which he interrogated principally those who had real or imaginary cause for complaint against the Hebrews, the priest embodied his conclusions in a book, entitled "The Annihilation of the Jews." Unquenchable hatred breathed in every page. With a cunning hand, he subverted facts to suit his fancy. He drew a vivid picture of the great dissatisfaction ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... ... and then she was fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue. She stared at it for a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews' brown leather couch, and that the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary dialogues she found herself carrying on with the psychiatrist, day and ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... nothing, fearing nothing. That was the genius of America when I myself was young. I believe it still to be the spirit of a triumphant democracy, knowing its own, taking its own, holding its own. They travel yet, the dauntless figures of that earlier day. Let them not despair. No imaginary line will ever hold them back, no mandate of any monarch ever can ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... same scale, which he laid over the first, and moved about, trying to make the one fit the other, and in each of these the part which was blank in the one underneath was filled in according to different imaginary plans. Lastly, he had a large transparent sheet on which were accurately laid out the walls and doors of the ground floor of the palace at the north-west corner, and in this there was marked a square piece of masonry, shaded as if to ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... was rung by all the churches; everyone armed themselves with whatever they could lay hands upon; a National Guard was organised; the country turned into an armed camp while it waited for these imaginary "Brigands" who, in every commune, were said to be in the one next door. Nothing ever appeared, but the effect remained: France found herself in arms and had shown that she was prepared to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... not born a Highlander (which may be an apology for much bad Gaelic), to reside during my childhood and youth among persons of the above description; and now, for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes, and ascribed to fictitious characters, a part of the incidents which I then received from those who were actors in them. Indeed, the most romantic parts of this narrative are precisely those which have ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Oh, Alberoni! oh, imaginary! It beats any of the wildest poets. In justice it must be recorded, that this great scheme of mediation was dancing before Mr. Seward's imagination at the epoch when he was sure that, once Secretary of State, his speeches would be current ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... show he'd produced, laid in space on an imaginary voyage. The script-writer had had one of the characters say that no constellation would be visible at a hundred light-years from the solar system. It would be rather like a canary trying to locate the window he'd escaped ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... is a variation in daily worries at the Lanier room. Paul is missing. In fearful suspense the startled father waits all the first day and night. Doubtless Paul has made some bad break. Perhaps this insane boy has committed an assault on some real or imaginary foe. Possibly he is in ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... an appeal is may be gathered from the proceedings at Westminster, less fit for the Mother than the Mummy of Parliaments, where "doleful questionists" exhume imaginary grievances or display their "nerve" by claiming the increase in pay recently granted to fighting men for conscientious objectors in the Non-Combatant Corps. The interest taken by one of this group in Army Dentistry ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... In the car, the doctor, completely overwhelmed, sat with his arms folded on his breast, gazing with idiotic fixedness upon some imaginary point in space. Kennedy was frightful to behold. He was rolling his head from right to left like a wild beast in ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... is located on the banks of the Eden, a pleasant river in Cumberland. It is founded on facts, but the names and some other immaterial points are imaginary. ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... Louis reply, "you would not surely give much credence to the imaginary evils of a dream. You know nothing can happen to us except by the arrangement of God; not even a hair can fall to the ground without his permission. I remember in college I was very much delighted with a thesis one of the fathers gave us on the Providence ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... open." To Mrs. Blackwell's dismay, he raised one of the dining-room windows, admitting a pungent frostiness of October evening. But she was game, and presently called for a palm-leaf fan. When Belinda was in the room they talked pointedly of the heat, and Mr. Blackwell quoted imaginary Weather Bureau notes ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... times since those memorable days spent on the old Shore Road; that memory of them gave for a moment a pleasure more real than any we had experienced while strolling at will along that scenic highway. Sometimes seemingly imaginary delights are far from being imaginary. We can see the lovely stretches of beach this moment and hear the breakers booming among the granite boulders—yes, and the grating of the pebbles that are being ground to shifting sand ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives. She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict of guilty on every ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... hard to desist de attraction ob Miss Rosa and youself, and I will do myself de honor to wait on you. Sorry, howebber to disappoint Missa Tracy." Primus had now embarked on the full tide of his garrulity, and casting out of mind his regret for not being able to accept the imaginary invitation to Mr. Tracy's, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... wracking-masters were appointed and paid by the board of underwriters in New York. Old Captain Brown was general agent on this beach. They took the coast in charge, as you might say, long before this government service was started. It was managed—like this," resorting again to his finger and the imaginary lines on the table. "A vessel came ashore on the bar. The first man who saw it gave warning to the wracking-master, who took command of the men ashore and the cargo in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... that Wonder of Nature. He did not know why—except that the name seemed curiously familiar to him. It was familiar to Grandpa, too, in a dim way, for he had visited "the Falls" on his wedding trip. And every repetition of the imaginary journey ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... was from the head of a great commercial house in Spain in which I had taken some shares, and whose interests had been temporarily deranged by the throes of the people in their efforts to obtain redress for real or imaginary wrongs. My correspondent showed a proper indignation on the occasion, and was not sparing in his language whenever he was called to speak of popular tumults. "What do the wretches wish?" he asked with much point—"Our lives as well as our property? Ah! my dear sir, this bitter ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exception. He was a genuine crack-brained enthusiast, sane and even shrewd enough in many things, but quite crazy upon certain points. Convinced, to begin with, that it was the duty of every Irishman to hate the English, he had imaginary private wrongs of his own to avenge. On the top of all that, he had become a thorough Mohammedan in his sympathetic feelings and habits, and quite sincere in his adoption of the cause of the Mahdi. The appearance ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... artist evidently enjoyed the work. But it is better worth looking at, for all that, than the monument on the other side of the church, where the recumbent form of Sir Arthur Onslow is apparently giving vague directions to an imaginary audience. Wrapped in a Roman toga, he waves a sleeveless right arm; his left is propped by a set of Journals of the House of Commons. It is a relief to pass beyond such tawdry pomposities into the solemn little chapel, sacred to one of the great regiments ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... were in danger of dying. There was a half-witted boy in the family called Jake; and always afterward when they had greens the old man would say, "Now, afore we risk these greens, let's try 'em on Jake. If he stands 'em we're all right." Just so with me. As long as this imaginary assassin continues to exercise himself on others, I ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... 1810). He put the case of a young man struggling against difficulties to obtain admission to a legal career and convicted of having supported himself for a time by reporting. Then he informed the House that this was no imaginary picture, but the case of 'the humble individual who now addresses you.' Immense applause followed; Croker and Sheridan expressed equal enthusiasm for Stephen's manly avowal, and the benchers' representatives hastened to promise that the obnoxious rule should be withdrawn. When the allied ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... language. And what we then said was in this wise: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of the earth and air and waters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self transcend self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every sign, and whatever exists only in transition—if these should all be hushed, having only roused our ears to Him that made them, and He speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Union terminated in a drawn battle, in which both sides gained and lost. The slave system obtained in esse an additional slave State and two others in posse, out of the Louisiana territory, while free industrialism secured the erection of an imaginary fence through this land, to the north of which its slave rival was never to settle. Maine was also admitted to preserve the status quo and balance of political forces between the sections. Alas! however, for the foresight of statesmen ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... London, poor, studying under difficulties, was a man with tastes in some respects like those of De Morgan. For one thing, he was a lover of books, and he had a good deal of interest in the theory of probabilities to which De Morgan also gave much thought. His introduction of imaginary quantities into trigonometry was an event of importance in the history of mathematics, and the theorem that bears his name, (cos [phi] i sin [phi])^{n} cos n[phi] i sin n[phi], is one of the most important ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... us a league and a half of terrestrial crust. The weight of it seemed to be crushing down upon my shoulders. I felt weighed down, and I exhausted myself with imaginary violent exertions to turn round upon my ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of romance—glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The poet may be an inspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... terms with; and then Norton, who was the rich man he had come to see and who wanted the land, coaxed him so skilfully, and ordered all sorts of good things to be brought to him, when he found he had come a good way and was hungry; and the imaginary banquet was very funny, David making inquiries and comments over the dishes he did not know and Norton supplying him with others, till he was satisfied. Then, in soothed good humour, David was easy to deal ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... living protoplasm which has died in their making. Thus without going beyond the boundaries of the individual body, these substances have passed from the sphere of life, and are dead. The apparent gap on the other side between the lifeless and living world is equally imaginary, for our living substance is continually replenished and rebuilt from the elements of our dead foods. So, as Huxley says, a living organism is like a flame or a whirlpool, which is an ever changing though ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... from providing for them suitable governments? These institutions existed at the adoption of the Constitution, but the obstacles which they interposed were overcome by that spirit of compromise which is now invoked. In a conflict of opinions or of interests, real or imaginary, between different sections of our country, neither can justly demand all which it might desire to obtain. Each, in the true spirit of our institutions, should concede ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... is he? He is the imaginary lover, the handsome young man whom she has met in the street, he who turned round to look at her, or the one who was so charming at the last ball, or again the one who has just ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the state of India at ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... steadily, but sorrowfully, and, immediately afterward, we would hear him dancing down the corridor singing, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." If he had given heed to one-half we said to him, he would have been safer in our hands than in those of his imaginary protector. He turned out a thief, an unmitigated liar, a dancing dervish, and, through all our experiences of six weeks with him, his chief reading was his Bible and Sunday-school books. The experience, however, was not lost on Theodore—he has never suggested a boy since, and a faithful daughter ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Mrs. Schuyler Van Rennselaer in an article in the "Century Magazine" many years ago, "that I dreamily remember a canvas hippodrome where the Fifth Avenue Hotel stands? Kids curvetting in idiotic pride over imaginary mountain peaks on the rough ground of what is Madison Square? Can it be true that when we looked from our nursery windows towards Sixteenth Street we saw, on a lot foolishly called vacant, the most interesting ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... formation. They cherish the tradition that their ancestors came to Orissa from Jadupur, but this appears to be nothing more than the name of the Jadavas or Yadavas, the mythical progenitors of the Goala caste transformed into the name of an imaginary town." ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... the hospital. I had travelled most all of the day without any water and began to be very thirsty, when I heard the sound of running water, as it were down a fall of rocks. I had heard it a considerable time and at last began to suspect it was nothing, but imaginary, as many other noises I had before thought to have heard. I however went on as fast as I could, and at length discovered a brook. On approaching it I was not a little surprised and rejoiced by the sight ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... duty and honour. Instead of that, we have seen titles take the reward of knowledge, repose of experience, and protection of merit. Men proud of thirty years of obscurity, make them figure on the lists, as passed under imaginary colours, and this service of a novel description establishes for them the right of seniority. These men, decorated with ribbons of all colours, who counted very well the number of their ancestors, but of whom ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... navigation is not an experiment; that all the locks in the proposed canal are duplicated, thereby minimizing such dangers as are inherent in any canal project, and he adds that experience shows that with proper plans and regulations the dangers are much more imaginary than real. He goes into the facts of the proposed great dam to be constructed at Gatun and points out that such construction is not experimental, but sustained by large American experience, which is larger, perhaps, than that of any other country in the world. He gives ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... chapter she tells us that "though there were nothing else to delight the sight in heaven but the great beauty of the glorified bodies, that would be an excessive bliss, particularly the vision of the Humanity of Jesus Christ our Lord...." "This vision," she continues, "though imaginary, I did never see with my bodily eyes, nor, indeed, any other, but only with the eyes of the soul." And thus it is that in heaven the soul does not see God only, but everything in God, or rather it sees that everything ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... form. Suddenly I uttered a scream; the friend had been changed into a wolf that rushed toward me, and fixing his eyes on mine, tore my breast and fed upon my heart. Oh, I was in horrible pain—not imaginary but real—for I screamed so loudly that Constant, my valet de chambre, hastened from the adjoining room and awakened me. Even now that I think of it I tremble, and sadness fills my soul." He bent his head on his breast, and, folding his hands behind ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... upon various points of the hand is all that is necessary in spelling a sentence. The left hand is the one upon which the imaginary alphabet is formed, merely to leave the right hand free to operate without change of position when two persons only are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... tell you," said Bryce, who had no intention of informing her that one person was himself and the other imaginary. "But I can assure you that I am certain—absolutely certain!—that their story is true. The ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... My imaginary peer would have been especially edified by the speech of Lord MILNER, whom a small but noisy section of the Press persists in describing as more Prussian than the Prussians. Not under-estimating the difficulties ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... something being done. What I said about nerves, related to what you had told me of your mother's suffering and what you had fancied of the relation of it to your own, and not that I could be thinking about imaginary complaints—I wish I could. Not (either) that I believe in the relation ... because such things are not hereditary, are they? and the bare coincidence is improbable. Well, but, I wanted particularly to say this—Don't bring the 'Duchess' with you on Wednesday. I shall not expect anything, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... must, my darling. Whether their cause is mental or physical, real or imaginary, I must trouble myself about your tears," answered Lyon Berners, with ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... motionless, with closed eyes like one of those iron figures which ornamented the castles of the savage Goths. Young D'Ossuna, with drooping head, stood propped against a marble pillar, whilst King Philip strode impatiently about the apartment, only stopping at intervals to listen to some imaginary noise. According to the superstitious custom of the age, the King knelt for a few moments at the foot of a figure of the Virgin placed upon a porphyry pedestal to pray the Madonna to pardon him the deed of blood which was about to take place. Silence reigned, for no one, whatever ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in which the workshops were, for it was one low structure eighteen or twenty feet wide and open on the west side—ran the length of the yard, and with the short extension at the southerly end formed the letter L. There were no partitions, an imaginary line separating the different gangs of workers. A person standing at the head of the building could make himself heard more or less distinctly in ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the office table, by which with his foot, unseen, he could make the instruments above click as though worked from another office, he had called his father to the wire, and posing as the despatcher, had severely reprimanded him for some imaginary mistake in a train order. It had been "all kinds of a lark," until, unfortunately, the connections became disarranged, tying up the entire eastern end of the line for half ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... find material to fill it. We hear much of the warfare between capital and labor, and strikes frequently paralyze the channels of legitimate trade, but the cause of the difficulty lies not in any real or imaginary conflict between capital and labor. The solution lies in the fact that every branch of legitimate labor is burdened with incompetent workmen, men who are in wrong occupations, who were never intended by nature for ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... and then with mysterious swiftness, hitting one, two, quick as thought, as if in the face of an adversary; now his left hand went up, as if guarding his own head, now his immense right fist dreadfully flapped the air, as if punishing his imaginary opponent's miserable ribs. The conversation lasted for some ten minutes, about which time gown-boys' dinner was over, and we saw these youths, in their black horned-button jackets and knee-breeches, issuing from ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unfailing efficacy[50]. Charms, however, against spiritual enemies, were yet more common than those intended to cure corporeal complaints. This is not surprising, as a fantastic remedy well suited an imaginary disease. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... a painter had made the old russet farmhouse his summer lodging; and one was sketching now where the water had dried in its pebbly bed, and the adventurous little bare feet of Jack and Willie Carnegie were tempting an imaginary peril in quest of the lily which still whitened the stream under ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... grievances, under the same administration? Have not they repeatedly petitioned and remonstrated to the throne, and "pointed out the hardships of certain measures," to the King himself? And has not his Majesty been advised by his ministers, to treat them as imaginary grievances only? And yet after all, against repeated facts, and common experience to the contrary, we are told, that "much might be done for the public interest, by way of hunible and dutiful representation!" If there were even now, any hopes that the King would hear ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... changes I made have vastly strengthened the whole team," he said, as he and Frank came together during a period of rest, after a fierce foray, in which every player worked systematically, and really clever passes and runs were made around imaginary hostile forces. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... possible to lay down universal or eternal laws, and limits himself to the exploration of the phenomena appearing in a certain stage of historical development. We are not to have another abstract economic man with a world of abstractions all his own; lone, shipwrecked mariners upon barren islands, imaginary communities nicely adapted for demonstration purposes in college class rooms, and all the other stage properties of the political economists, are to be entirely discarded. Our author does not propose to give us a set of principles by which we shall be able to understand and explain the phenomena ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... well as feared. A tired and sleepy youngster, almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily, "Steady, man—a friend!" as the half-roused ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... national destiny. This slow and painful work of the recovery of their national individuality was rendered easier by the attitude of the peoples, who eliminated them from among themselves as a foreign element, and put stress, without consideration or courtesy, on the real and imaginary contrasts, or at least differences, between ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... miseries and cruelties which make the world a place of torture for so many, so long as men are encouraged in the name of religion to look for a remedy, not in fighting against surrounding evils, but in cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies with our fellow men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds with ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... any just idea of this efficacy, we must produce some instance, wherein the efficacy is plainly discoverable to the mind, and its operations obvious to our consciousness or sensation. By the refusal of this, we acknowledge, that the idea is impossible and imaginary, since the principle of innate ideas, which alone can save us from this dilemma, has been already refuted, and is now almost universally rejected in the learned world. Our present business, then, must be to find some natural production, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... out, with a lofty air, for the recital of his imaginary deeds had already set him up again ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... home. She had gone to convey a message to one of Thomasin Tregenza's friends at Paul. And when the girl left him, with a promise to come at all costs upon the next sunny morning, Barron began to think about money again. He found that the larger the imaginary figures, the smaller shadow of discomfort clouded his thoughts. So he decided upon an act of princely generosity, as the result of which resolve peace returned and an unruffled mind. For the musty conventionality of his conclusion, it merely served as a peg upon which to hang thoughts not ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... girl he called Mary, and said a few gentle words to her; then off again into the wildest flights. While Mr. Hawes and his myrmidons were laughing at him, he suddenly fixed his eyes on some imaginary figure on the opposite wall and began to cry out loudly, "Take him down. Don't you see you are killing him? The collar is choking him! See how White he is! His eyes stare! The boy will die! Murder! murder! murder! ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the floor plan of an imaginary house or apartment to be built in your locality for a family of four, and list ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... up at the tube overhead, which represented the axial passageway down the hub of the wheel. Thirteen feet from the imaginary center of that tube, and in ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... not—as, alas, had too often been the case—as though it were a new barrier set up between them and their fellow—creatures. (Here Miss Trix blushed slightly, and had recourse to her smelling-bottle.) "You," said the curate, waxing rhetorical as he addressed an imaginary, but bloated, capitalist, "have no more right to your money than I have. It is intrusted to you to be shared with me." At this point I heard Lady Queenborough sniff, and Algy Stanton snigger. I stole a glance at Trix and detected ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you cannot put it into print. So I can only show you the initial letter, and you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... such cases, it is possible to understand how the power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may, through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt—and not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries prosecute in the courts—to spread terror among those who feel the political or economic ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... excellent work the Retrospective Review, contributed "The Conversations of Lord Byron." Mr. Walter Savage Landor, that very original and eccentric thinker, published in the extraordinary magazine one of his admirable "Imaginary Conversations." Mr. Julius (afterwards Archdeacon) Hare reviewed the robust works of Landor. Mr. Elton contributed graceful translations from Catullus, Propertius, &c. Even among the lesser contributors there were very eminent writers, not forgetting ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the light of his imaginary future, he seemed to forget everything else—his crime, his work, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... the matter; and, if she had few thoughts on a subject, she made but few words. I don't think she did much by way of revising or recasting after her thought was once committed to paper. I think she wrote it as she would have said it, always with an imaginary child before her, to whose intelligence and sympathy it was addressed. Her habit of mind was to complete a thought before any attempt to convey it to others. This made her a very helpful and clear teacher and leader. She seemed always to have considered carefully anything she talked about, ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... fashion knew at what cost some of their imaginary wants are gratified, it is possible that they might be disposed to forego the gratification: it is possible, also, that they might not. On the one hand they are not wanting in benevolence to the young and beautiful; the juster charge against them being, that their benevolence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... thousand flaming guardians of freedom,[227] he escapes with perfect impunity! Is he not a most marvelous proper rogue? But perhaps the reason the abolitionists do not lay hands on him is that he is an imaginary being, who, though intangible and invisible, will yet serve just as well to create an alarm and keep up a great excitement as if he ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... distinguished place which it holds among the fictions of that class; but he says that its authorship was unknown or uncertain. An account of another fictitious voyage to the Terra Australis, with a description of an imaginary people, published in 1692, may be seen in Bayle's Dict., art. SADEUR, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... because pity is a weakness which disturbs his sapient calm! Well might the eloquent Bossuet exclaim, as he read of these chimerical perfections, "It is to take a tone too lofty for feeble and mortal men. But, O maxims truly pompous! O affected insensibility! O false and imaginary wisdom! which fancies itself strong because it is hard, and generous because it is puffed up! How are these principles opposed to the modest simplicity of the Saviour of souls, who, in our Gospel contemplating His ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
