"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conventional or traditional character, so that the word realism cannot be applied to them. Even in his portraits his signature or an inscription is often added in such a manner as insists that this is a painting, a panel;—not a view through a window, or an attempt to deceive the eye with a make-believe reality. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... selfish," she faltered ahead, "that she preferred a make-believe husband to a real husband, because—because so she thought she would be ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to have two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending, make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of course, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... lived in a fairy world of freedom, of dreams and make-believe. They talked of great hunters and discussed the best methods of attacking ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... hunters at the temporary camp were aroused to a high pitch of excitement. Some turned their buffalo robes and put them on in such a way as to convert themselves into make-believe bison, and began to tread the snow, while others were singing the buffalo song, that their spirits might be charmed and allured within the circle of the camp-fires. The scout, too, was singing his buffalo bull song in a guttural, ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... moment of terror acknowledges that her dignified reserve was the cloak of passion, and Eve acknowledges that her profession of love was transferred to the wrong man; both ladies recover their self-possession and resume their make-believe decorums, and Adam, like a gallant gentleman, will not see through what is transparent. These are harmless jests at the ironies of life. Browning's best gifts in this volume, that looks pale beside its predecessors, are one or two short ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... were a well-known connoisseur," I faltered, "with the pride of one who has handled the best gems? He would know that the deception would be soon discovered and that it would not do for him to fail to recognize it for what it was, when the make-believe was in ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... ordered Cunningham and there was a thoroughly well acted make-believe of fear, while every eye watched "Cunnigan-bahadur," and the horses, spurred and reined at once, pranced at their bits for just so long as a good man needs to make his mind up. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and mopped up, and then squeezed make-believe water out into his make-believe pail, as grave as any judge that ever sat ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... then: you would indeed sir. I shant never do myself justice at soljering, sir: I cant bring myself to think of it as proper work for a man with an active mind, as you might say, sir. Arf of its only ousemaidin; and the other arf is dress-up and make-believe. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... thing happened. Jack the Giant Killer suddenly uttered a cry of triumph. "Fool that you are!" he exclaimed, "to confess that you are helpless! Do you suppose we are deceived by your make-believe friendliness? Prepare to die!" And he lowered his sword with ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... chiefly distinguished the immortal works from the transient was sincerity, single-heartedness, reality of intention and love of the work for the work's sake. That was only a partial view of the truth. It is right in a measure, since that sincerity, that absence of make-believe, in the literary creation is a prime necessity; but it is not sufficient. It is, indeed, a prime necessity, because it means that the superlative writer must write at first hand of things genuinely conceived and realized by his ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... wheels and things that go around!" laughed Bunny. "That's ma-chinery, Sue, and scenery is what we saw in the Opera House—make-believe trees, and the ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... back to the make-belief work at which he was posing." There is a picture of interviewing! Everything so prepared, so studied, so well described to impress the subscribers of the enterprising journal. The photographer with a wide angle lens took in all that was in my studio—to "make-believe," as the camera invariably does, that the apartment was six times larger than it really is. But the artist, who should idealise if the photographer could not, who so sadly interfered with my enjoying my tea, who was sent to make the most of me to raise the enthusiasm of the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... most of all by what we call "our faith," and fruitless struggles to work out a faith which is but a make-believe and a desperate trying to trust God, which must ever come short of His vast and glorious promises. The truth is that the only faith that is equal to the stupendous promises of God and the measureless ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... 'cept what he done his own self, and dat was pow'ful little. In hot weather chillun played on de crick and de best game of all was to play lak it was big meetin' time. White chillun loved to play dar too wid de little slave chillun. Us would have make-believe preachin' and baptizin' and de way us would sing was a sight. One of dem songs us chillun loved ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the older boy. "But maybe, if Flossie wants it, we could put a make-believe chimney on ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... a generous make-believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him. I hope you like ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... make-believe stronger than we have. She play-acts his existence very well. But suppose someone asks her what he eats, or where he gets his exercise, or some other personal question. She hasn't the command of logic to ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Seminole Indians of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children's games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also "sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of grass into the ground, name it a 'corn-field,'" and "the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the ribs, remembering those four feverish days, with a facetious, "Ah! vieux polisson de Sisteron, va! Nous autres, nous n'avons pas fait des farces a Paris dans notre jeunesse!" to M. Sisteron's unbounded delight. It was in the genuine spirit of Tartarin de Tarascon, with all the mutual make-believe on both sides. His wife, Mme. Sisteron, was fond of assuring her friends that she owed her excellent health to the fact that she invariably took a bath twice a year, whether she ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... so, I'll try to be worthy of my soldier and not disgrace you, dear," she said fondly, bravely. "Let's try to forget it for a while and not let it spoil our last hours together. Let's 'make-believe,' as the children say. Let's pretend that this is all a hideous nightmare, that our lives and our love ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... step near the front, and of course there were wheels. Somehow, Mun Bun scrambled up, and the horse, luckily for him, did not move while the boy was climbing. Right up on the seat got Mun Bun. He picked up the real reins, as he had seen Russ do with the make-believe ones on Alexis, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... fall as a rule under two main heads. First, there are those who object to any stimulation of the fanciful in children, and who would have us confine ourselves to what they call realities. They would eliminate as far as possible all the imaginings of children. The make-believe world so dear to infancy has no place in their creed. Second, there are those who doubt the moral tendency of all fairy tales. They observe that many of these tales come to us from a cruder and coarser social state than our own, that they contain elements ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... time," she began, with a touch of weariness in her voice. "For after all you can't make them real. I play school with them. I read them stories. I dress them and take them out riding, but I have to do the talking for them and sometimes it gets so dull. There's too much make-believe. I shall be glad when summer comes and there won't be any bad boys next door. What do you suppose God did with them? They couldn't like heaven, you know, for there they have to be good all the time. And there ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... secret once, but now I may tell without breaking faith. Boggley and the Bird were prosaic people, caring more for bird-nesting and Red Indian hunting than games of make-believe, so they never knew. It was part of the sunny old garden, our Kingdom, and was called Nontland because it was ruled by one Nont. He had once been a common ninepin, but having had a hole bored through his middle with ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... our common lot, the common garb we wore, and the common dependence we felt on one another, made our make-believe little family into something very like a real one. When the day's work was done, and the candle was lit and the log thrown on the fire, it was hard not to forget that I was after all only a poor serving-man to these two ladies. They were ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... a real Christian, too," said Fred soberly. "But I guess it's hard work to be the real thing. Maude must be a make-believe one," he added. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... conviction which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... moreover, cruel that a man, because he has been a poet or genius or artist, must needs have every weakness (real or conjectured) in his life served up and grinned at and chatted over, as if he forsooth were a clergyman or some kind of make-believe saint. However, the more vulgar a nature is the more it will gloat on gossip; and herein the most pretentious of the higher classes show themselves no ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... make-believe speech Clara did not think it necessary to return any answer. She was thinking how she would begin to say that for saying which there was so strong a necessity, and she could not take a part in small false badinage on a subject which was so near ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of the circle was a tray with little dishes, and Emma held a tiny cup in her hand, for the children were just finishing a make-believe dinner party that had water and two ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... 'Mein Gott!' for he thought he had broken his ankle. Now of course that would have been a catastrophe indeed, but so was that slip into the German tongue. A kindly Providence saw to it that an alert Tommy had heard, and in a trice those six make-believe English soldiers had been rounded up and were on their way to headquarters. Next morning there was a sunrise party, for those Germans must be taught it isn't ever healthy for them ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... she said briskly. "What a splendid idea! Of course the President will know where he is and will send it to him. Let me think—we learned all that in school and had to address make-believe letters to him—" Taking a sheet of paper she ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... disgusting to look at, much more to eat; so that it will be necessary to have recourse to some artifice to cure me; and this can be easily effected if only thou wilt make a beginning, even though it be in a lukewarm and make-believe fashion, to pay court to Camilla, who will not be so yielding that her virtue will give way at the first attack: with this mere attempt I shall rest satisfied, and thou wilt have done what our friendship binds thee to do, not only in giving me life, but in persuading me not to discard my ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the hill above the town, as you turn off towards the Rope-walk. The firemen, of course, wear an appropriate uniform, with brazen helmets and shoulder-straps and a neat axe apiece, suspended in a leathern case from the waistband. But the spirit of make-believe has of necessity animated all their public exercise, if I except the 13th of April, 1879, when a fire broke out in the back premises of Mr. Tippett, carpenter. His shop was (and is) situated in the middle of the town, and in those days a narrow gatehouse gave, or rather prevented, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... marched about and were completely in their element. In the shadow of night their artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and their darkened eyelids became as charming and suggestive as if the inmates of a make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been sent forth into the open street. Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with an occasional "dirty ass!" hurled after ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... isolation we now enjoy is, to a certain extent, reassuring. Here we need no longer whisper. One may listen carefully. One may weigh well what is said. Sooner or later we must come to the crucial point. This, if you like, is a game of make-believe. Then, in make-believe, Germany has offered to restore Alsace and Lorraine, has offered to hold all French territory as sacred, provided France allows her to occupy Calais for one year. What is your object, Herr Selingman? Do you indeed wish ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... evening, I tell you, all those heads in the reek of the light, the foolery of those people enjoying life and profiting by peace! It was like a ballet at the theater or the make-believe of a magic lantern. There were—there were—there are a hundred thousand more of them," Volpatte ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... shoulder of the oldest veteran, and pronounced her "well and truly adopted," and the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on the stage, because stage things are make-believe, but this was real and the ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... comforting and he, too, fell adreaming. Most of us foiled humans learn to play the game of make-believe and to find such consolation as we may therein. Often and often in his lonely hours Dick Carson had summoned Tony Holiday to his side, a Tony as bright and beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... every pain and mortification, to become acquainted with every grief, and then to perish miserably?" Old questions these, which the sprightly critic justly condemns as morbid and futile, and not to be dangled before a merry world of make-believe. Perhaps he is right. It is better to play at marbles on a sepulchre than to lift the lid and peep inside. But, for all that, they will arise when we sit alone at even in our individual wildernesses, surrounded, perhaps, by mementoes of our broken hopes and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... was make-believe? How much was genuine? The Searcher of hearts alone knows. Sowing by all waters, I am willing to leave ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... he got; and this so exasperated Tom that he was about to fling a volley of abuse to the enemy, but Harry checked him. Harry was always the first to look at a thing from more points than one, and now he said in an undertone, "I expect it is only some nonsensical make-believe. Yaspard is a baby in some ways, I am told; and he never exchanges a word with gentlemen's sons—lives horribly alone, you know. Let's humour him a bit, and see ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Brahan woods far below, and stand up, like the ruins of cottages, amid the trees, are of singular beauty,—worth all the imitation-ruins ever erected, and obnoxious to none of the disparaging associations which the mere show and make-believe of the artificial are sure always ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... part of a palace, historic and picturesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall be to ourselves, with a cook, don't you know?—with servants, frescoes, tapestries, antiquities, the thorough make-believe of a settlement." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... play at make-believe. It is almost a pity that he could not persuade the lady that he meant even a tithe of what he wrote to her. Listen to him again: "For my part, I hate a great many women for your sake, and undervalue all the rest. 'Tis you who are to blame, and may God revenge it upon ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... to me, In pretty make-believe of revelry, So the night long said Death With his magniloquent breath; (And that remembered laughter Which in our daily uses followed after, Was all untuned to pity and to awe): "A cup of chocolate, One farthing is the rate, You drink it ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... please you, sup. If you and the lady whom you escort will do me the honour of sharing my table we can arrange other matters at our leisure. I have always understood that encounters before ladies are make-believe; but your experience should inform you how far that is true. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,—a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that hung opposite the Founder's—the portrait of the Old Senior Surgeon. "I had to," she said at last. "When a person is born with absolutely nothing—nothing of the human things a human baby is entitled to—she has to evolve something to live in; a sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all over it to keep prodding away life as it really is. If she didn't the things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp—just skin ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... its owner gave a ceremonious little bow such as is always used in make-believe introductions, and the newcomer bowed gravely to each in acknowledgment. Then she turned again ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... Kenyon's on the 12th—and yes—my brother and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me, I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May—it can't be May after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but for a few hours—the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... that month, Croyden had come to like Hampton immensely. The absence, in its society, of all attempts at show, to make-believe, to impress, to hoodwink, was refreshingly novel to him, who, hitherto, had known it only as a great sham, a huge affectation, with every one striving to outdo everyone else, and all as hollow ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... joining readily in the make-believe, "we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in the breaks of the Missouri. Not ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... what an invisible and impenetrable—film separates those two worlds: the one, that of the visible, audible, and tangible, the world of chatter and laughter, of convention, often of make-believe; and the other, the world of deep and voiceless emotions, of the feelings which know not how to give themselves utterance, of affections which crave so much and are so impotent to say or to seek what they crave! ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... we see the winsome face of the child. Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of make-believe raised to the nth power. He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... my own room, enlivening my work by humming gay airs, just to make-believe to myself that I was very merry at the prospect of my visit to London. The door opened quickly, and Rachel came in, walking on tiptoe, with her hand to her lips in trepidation. Her face was as pale as snow, and large ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... Paul should not hear, during the remainder of the evening, with the result that that very night at least six boys told other boys or their own parents, in the strictest confidence, of course, that there was more truth than make-believe about Paul Grayson as an Indian. And the parents told the same story to other parents, the boys told it to other boys, and within twenty-four hours Paul Grayson was a far more interesting mystery ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... our hostess leads us through an open French window into the drawing-room, and we follow her, with a pleased and yet bashful sense of expectancy. Into the drawing-room, mark you! and a real drawing-room, too; not a visible make-believe, like the library in our shanty. This is a large room, furnished as people do furnish their best reception-chamber in civilized lands. Pictures hang on the varnished walls; books and book-cases stand here and there; tables loaded with knick-knacks, vases of flowers, workboxes, albums, and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... a question! Why, you must do nothing at all, but think how you'd poise 'em if you had 'em. You middle men, that are armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of course use 'em as if they were the real thing. Now then, cock fawlocks! Present! Fire! (Pretend to, I mean, and the same time throw yer imagination into the field o' battle.) Very good—very good indeed; except that some of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... thing differently; they exhibit the same spirit of enterprise that in a lesser degree characterized certain promoters of rubberneck tours who some years ago fitted up make-believe opium dens in New York's Chinatown for the awed delectation of out-of-town spectators. Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of Apaching round, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... liking was exceedingly strong on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to use her influence for him in society in ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Murray's, deciding to spend the remainder of the evening there, over a good dinner. Except in a certain mood, Murray's does not appeal to me; the pseudo-Grecian temple in the corner, with water cascading down its steps, the make-believe clouds which float across the ceiling, the tables of glass lighted from beneath—all this, ordinarily, seems trivial and banal; but occasionally, in an esoteric mood, I like Murray's, and can even find ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... he wished it well, I wis; The place was sadly swollen; And then he took a willing kiss, And made believe 't was stolen; Then made another make-believe, Till thefts grew past concealing, For when love once begins to thieve There grows no end ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... and draw some water from a spring about a hundred yards from the hut; and off he went, led by the children of our hostess. His young guides, completely naked, and their heads shaved, rode on bamboo-canes as make-believe horses, and pranced along in ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... frequently without what is called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousness this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettiedness, we call THE WORLD; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. [Of] such soul-sight and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the glory of the world of legend, would not lightly accept its judgment upon religious and moral questions, and above all would not, in that region, play at make-believe. He would not elude the horror of this story by simply not mentioning it, like Homer, or by pretending that an evil act was a good one, like Sophocles. He faces the horror; realises it; and tries to surmount ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... stop to answer the question. Indeed it would take a great deal of time to reply to the questions Vi asked, and no one ever stopped to answer them all, any more than they tried to answer all the riddles—real and make-believe—that ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... Matrimonial Club from the number of marriages that have taken place among the members. This amusement does pave the way for courtship, for in no other are the conventionalities so completely set aside for the time being. Those who have thus been brought together in make-believe are not always anxious to resume formal relations. ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... lodged in the cramped and dingy elms and horse-chestnuts which a former agent had planted along the streets, and the English sparrows squabbled over them in eaves-corners and made warm, untidy great nests that would have contented an Arctic explorer. Somehow the Corporation homes looked like make-believe houses or huge stage-properties, they had so little individuality or likeness to the old-fashioned buildings that made homes for people out on the farms. There was more homelikeness in the sparrows' nests, or even the toylike railroad station at the end of the main street, for that was warmed by ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... artists' dreams, ideals, allegories; they are symbols of something beyond themselves. They are Gods of half-rejected tradition, of unconscious make-believe, of aspiration. They are gods to whom doubtful philosophers can pray, with all a philosopher's due caution, as to so many radiant and heart-searching hypotheses. They are not gods in whom any one believes as a ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... disability which his temperament laid upon him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... which I unluckily called the WILL to Believe. All the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The "will to deceive," the "will to make-believe," were wittily proposed ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... waited for her tried his soul. The Governor was the one man who had ever roused in him a deep affection, and the dread of finding that under his flippancy, his half-earnest, half-boyish make-believe devotion to the folk of the underworld, he was really an irredeemable rogue, tortured him. These were disloyal thoughts; he hated himself for his doubts. It was impossible that a man of the Governor's blood, his vigor of mind and oddly manifested ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that great ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the land. More longed to make people see that things were wrong; he longed to set the wrong right. So to teach men how to do this he invented a land of Nowhere in which there was no evil or injustice, in which every one was happy and good. He wrote so well about that make-believe land that from then till now every one who read Utopia sees the beauty of More's idea. But every one, too, thinks that this land where everything is right is an impossible land. Thus More gave a new word to our language, and when we think some idea ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... ardent churchmen, for there was no finer material for a fetching robe of state in all the world, and no altar cloth or priestly robe could possess excelling beauty and not owe a debt to Spain. Someone has said that women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe, daughters of Sham and Hem, and, without questioning the truth of the statement, the same remark might be applied to both the clergy and the women of this period at least, if "fine-sewing" be substituted for "plain-sewing" in ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... troubles and little make-believe worries, just enough of them to make me realize I have them licked, and to remind me I must not let up on my ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... young, in perfect preservation or a ruin. For she seemed to him penetratingly human, simply and absolutely herself as God had made her. And what a rare joy that was, to meet in London a woman of the great world totally devoid of the smallest shred of make-believe! Craven felt that if she appeared before her Maker she would be exactly as she was when she said how ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him, while ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the same cause. You are wilful and obstinate; but I thank God I am more wilful and obstinate than you. I am sick of this fencing and diplomacy and irony. You know what I am—I am not at all the fine gentleman that leaned his head on the chimney-breast—that was make-believe and foolishness. I am a bully and a ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... is always waiting for children to get out of bed backwards. And when they do, she catches them by the heels and turns everything topsy-turvy all day long; but when you get out of bed toes first, I'll be there to start you on a pleasant day and Witchy Crosspatch will have to return to Make-Believe Land and hide her head!" "Sure enough, I did crawl out of bed backwards this morning!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... knows the secret of the new journalism," said Cairns to Desmond. "It is not truth, or even a make-believe truth; it is to arouse your readers' interest. Tickle them with humour; stuff them with the sensational; let everything be brand-new. We will make the old 'Observer' gallop ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... London, in which, unless I please, I have no part whatever, attracts me more than I could have thought possible. No one in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me. I have cut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors' meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years. I go to concerts and theatres; I look at the people in the streets; I even begin to take an outsider's interest in social ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was only a make-believe of yours. And that you were sitting here grieving because you had found out a family feast was being kept secret; because your husband and his children live a life of remembrances in ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... you back to a summer day fifteen years ago, when I was a boy of thirteen and Mark a young man of twenty-five. His whole life was make-believe, and just now he was pretending to be a philanthropist. He sat in our little drawing-room, flicking his gloves against the back of his left hand, and my mother, good soul, thought what a noble young gentleman he was, and Philip and I, hastily washed and crammed into collars, ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... those days, the last of romanticism, the make-believe 'Orientales'; 'Odes' and 'Ballads', by the dozen; 'Comes d'Espagne et d'Italie', with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the church, "near ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cottage was a summer palace of the present fashion, but there was one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believe balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were spacious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was, in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a little gal once—long years ago," he said softly, "an' she used to be great on make-believe games. Is this takin' of them papers a make ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... swab, as how the Singapore mail steamer was nearly as possible plundered by a whole gang o' them gettin' aboard of her as make-believe passengers and then setting fire to her and plundering the cargo, and that this ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a magic lantern without a light, and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her, however, to be there on such good authority, we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother, when we were unexpectedly relieved, by finding it was only a bit of make-believe; for it was now divulged, che questa madre che piangea il suo figlio, was not in fact his personal mother, but "Italy" dressed up like his mother, and gone to Paris on purpose to weep and put garlands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and smoothing down her purple skirt, "to think o' my bein' kissed by so many men, in my old days!—but why not?—it may be my last chance, as Joe Fairthorn says, and laugh if you please, I've got the best of it; and I don't belie my natur', for twistin' your head away and screechin' is only make-believe, and the more some screeches the more they want to be kissed; but fair and square, say I,—if you want it take it, and that's just what ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... told you," said Mr. Jones, sharply and emphatically. "What do you mean by hangin' fire so? Do you s'pose this is child's play and make-believe? Don't ye know that when quiet, peaceable neighbors git riled up to our pitch, they mean what they say? Sw'ar, as I said, and be mighty sudden ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... she would have suited him. He had new ones enough—was surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn't have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... knew that Argensola had come third-class from Madrid with twenty francs in his pocket, in order to "capture glory," to use his own words. Upon observing that the Spaniard was painting with as much difficulty as himself, with the same wooden and childish strokes, which are so characteristic of the make-believe artists and pot-boilers, the routine workers concerned themselves with color and other rank fads. Argensola was a psychological artist, a painter of souls. And his disciple, felt astonished and almost displeased ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "Of course our make-believe engagement expires automatically now, and I hope you'll soon find the one woman meant to make you happy. I am glad to think that I've helped you a little when you came to a hard place, for the most that any one of us may do for another ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... blown like a white incense to the skies. That is the real North. How tame he will look to you, when you go back in August and find a few hard apples, a few tough plums, and some sour little things which are apologies for grapes! He looks sneaky enough then, with his make-believe summer, and all his furs off. No, then is the time for the South. All is simmering outside, and the locust saws and shrills till he seems to heat the air. You stay in the house at noon, and know what a virtue there is in thick walls which keep out the fierce heats, in gaping windows and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... his standard was not, to an excessive degree, a standard of subtlety rather than of creative imagination—at least, in his later period. And undoubtedly his subtlety was to some extent a matter of make-believe. He loved to take a simple conversation, and, by introducing a few subtle changes, to convert it into a sort of hieroglyphics that need an interpreter. He grew more and more to believe that it was not possible to tell the simple truth except in an involved way. He would ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... was Chimp's persistent thought during the next few days, but he kept up the game of make-believe like a hero. As a matter of fact, it was sound amusement to explore the island and plunge on sudden impulses into a score of high-spirited enterprises, although the presence of the old man panting at his side touched him rather sadly now and then. The Hermit, however, endured ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... where is the old-fashioned boy? Has the old-fashioned boy with his old-fashioned ways, Been crowded aside by the Lord Fauntleroy,— The cheap tinselled make-believe, full of alloy Without the pure gold of the rollicking joy Of the old-fashioned boy in ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... but acts as if unable to rouse herself to any great effort. She is quite inaccurate in arithmetic, and only fair in other school studies. Emotions normal. In many ways appears normally childish. Her interest in fairy tales and in the type of make-believe plays in which she engages with her younger sisters seems mixed with her wonderment in regard to sex life. There is ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... rotting apple pile, the heap of rags which had been her only clothes. She was leaving the world, and this was all she had won from it. Sheer misery forced a sigh which seemed to rend her frail body, and her eyes filled with tears. She had been a dreamer, an adept at make-believe, but the poor coverings she had wrought for a dingy reality were now too threadbare to ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... lightly playing around with ideas about how she'd found a home and a protector, knowing she was kidding herself, that it was the most gimcracky feminine make-believe, but enjoying it ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... in endless ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, is never too hotly pressed to dally with an engaging simile or choose the most agreeable words for depicting her tribulation. Why indeed should she hurry? It is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and Remond, and get their breath again for the next figure. As for the finish of the tale, there is no finish. The narrator will stop when he is tired; just then and no sooner. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stockings, and nothing prettier or more full of meaning than a Christmas-tree. But for some of you who may like to make a novelty in these time-honored ways, we will just mention that it is good fun to make a "Christmas-pie" in an enormous tin dish-pan, with a make-believe crust of yellow cartridge paper, ornamented with twirls and flourishes of the same, held down with pins, and have it served on Christmas Eve, full of pretty things and sugar-plums, jokes and jolly little rhymes fastened to the parcels. The cutting should be done beforehand, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... Alaire had been sent abroad, and there she remained while "Young Ed" attended an Eastern college. For any child the experience would have been a lonesome one, and through it the motherless Texas girl had grown into an imaginative, sentimental person, living in a make-believe world, peopled, for the most part, with the best-remembered figures of romance and fiction. There were, of course, some few flesh-and-blood heroes among the rest, and of these the finest and the noblest had been ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... away and moved nearer to her, holding out his hand with an odd combination of "make-believe" and real ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... had a mole in the same place, to which she opposed but a feeble resistance. I was prevented by my unfortunate condition from immolating the victim on the altar of love, so we confined ourselves to a make-believe combat which only lasted a minute; however, our eyes took in it, and our excited feelings were by no means appeased. When we had done she said, laughing, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... criticism, more or less skilful. There must be a struggle for existence among opinions, as among all other things, and the egoist is content to send the children of his thought into the thick of the fray, confident that the fittest will survive. Only he is not so childish as to make-believe that an impersonal dignified something-not-himself that makes for the ink-pot is speaking—and not he himself, he "with his little I." The affectation of modesty is perhaps the most ludicrous of all human shams. I am reminded of the two Jews ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... his straightened sentences and his difficult manner, knowing how little significant they were. With his eyes upon her and his words offered to her intelligence, she found herself treating his shy formality as the convention it was, a kind of make-believe which she would politely and kindly play up to until he should happily forget it and they could enter upon simpler relations. She had to play up to it for a long time, but her love made her wonderfully clever and patient; and of course the day came when she had her reward. Knowing him ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... that As'vagho@sa was a learned Brahmin scholar in his early life, it is easy to guess that there was much Upani@sad influence in this interpretation of Buddhism, which compares so favourably with the Vedanta as interpreted by S'a@nkara. The La@nkavatara admitted a reality only as a make-believe to attract the Tairthikas (heretics) who had a prejudice in favour of an unchangeable self (atman). But As'vagho@sa plainly admitted an unspeakable reality as the ultimate truth. Nagarjuna's Madhyamika doctrines which ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... romantic play of no real significance. There are several murders and a good deal of artificial horror. But it is all a very nice and romantic piece of make-believe, like ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... explode. What can we do that will be real genuine fun? It will do you good, too, or you'll become a dull boy with nothing but work, work, work. You needn't tell me the world was only made to work in. If it was, I've no business here. You must think up something spicy, and no make-believe. I want to go somewhere where I can laugh with my whole heart. I can't go on much longer at this old humdrum, monotonous jog, any more than your colts up at the farm could go around like the plow-horses, and I know it isn't right to expect it of me. And yet what has been the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... stoppers for heads, with faces marked on the sides, the rest, only wads of paper or cloth fastened on the ends of sticks that reached down into the bodies. A strip of cloth tied around each neck, below the bulge, served as make-believe arms, suitable for all ordinary purposes, and, with a little assistance, capable of saluting an officer or ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... be professionally required of him in the presence of a man of Knight's proclivities—were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it—took in the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must continue to be, the real "King of Instruments," there is a good deal of make-believe. A long note—or two notes tied in a certain method—is intended to be played as a continued sound, like the note of an organ; whereas there is no piano in existence which will produce anything even approximately approaching to that effect. The characteristic of the piano ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... way, however, Nicholas met a man who caused him to change all his plans. This man was a Mr. Vincent Crummles. When Nicholas first saw him in the inn he was teaching his two sons to make-believe fight with swords. They were practising for a play, for Mr. Crummles was manager of a theater in Portsmouth, and he proposed that Nicholas join the company ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... opportunity, Philip's acquaintance with the journalist increased. Thorpe Athelny was a good talker. He did not say brilliant things, but he talked inspiringly, with an eager vividness which fired the imagination; Philip, living so much in a world of make-believe, found his fancy teeming with new pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He knew much more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave him a certain superiority; ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with her was not a Mexican. No one but a white man—and a range man, she added to herself—would say, "Uh course I knowed yore voice." And he had not really had a cold. Mary V's ears were sharper than her dad's, for she had caught the make-believe in the hoarseness. She knew perfectly well that Johnny Jewel might be hoarse as a crow and never talk that way. Johnny never said "Uh course I knowed," and Johnny would choke before he'd ever call her sweetheart. He wouldn't have let that man do it, either, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street. Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for most of us means trials and sorrows ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... vehicle, quite another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove but a lying and treacherous ally—and for more ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
