"Chimerical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peace. On he came with powerful martial strides, a brilliant green cloak flapping gently behind him and the jewels in his brazen armor glinting like so many tiny colored eyes. The stranger was indeed handsome, Nelson noticed—and then he received perhaps the greatest shock of the whole chimerical adventure. The gold bearded man halted some twenty feet away, smiled and spoke in a curiously inflected but perfectly ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and taking them prisoners on their coming to see the captains of their real king and sovereign, as in the case of one who was captured as he came to the pinnace of Antonio Ronbo da Costa, and prevented from speaking with me. As for the chimerical charges which his grace makes against me concerning the letter of Antonio Lopez de Segueira, and the words of the soldiers of Antonio Rumbo, in what manner could he have formed an opinion from a letter written by an individual captain who had been ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... benefit ourselves, without injuring them, as their population must always so far exceed any black population which can ever exist in that country, as to render the idea of danger from that source chimerical." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... so on. It is true, the excellence of the Iliad does not depend upon his merit or dignity; but I wish, nevertheless, that Homer had chosen a hero somewhat less pettish and less fantastic: a perfect hero is chimerical and unnatural, and consequently uninstructive; but it is also true, that while the epic hero ought to be drawn with the infirmities that are the lot of humanity, he ought never to be represented as extremely absurd. But it becomes me ill to play ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... heroes of pantomime. The other characters are the laughing children of mere modern humour. Each of these chimerical personages, like so many county members, come from different provinces in the gesticulating land of pantomime; in little principalities the rival inhabitants present a contrast in manners and characters which opens a wider field for ridicule and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... but the means of intercommunication are still far behind the wants of the people. When it was proposed a year ago to place a steamer upon the line from Halifax to Boston, to carry freight and passengers, the idea was scouted as chimerical, and certain to fail. The Eastern State, a Philadelphia-built propeller of 330 tons, was purchased and commenced to ply fortnightly; she has accommodations for fifty passengers, and two hundred tons of freight. She has seldom had less than fifty ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... making this motion, the Duke of Grafton asserted that both France and Spain were arming, and that two French gentlemen had already been to America, and had had conferences with Washington and with congress. These assertions, however, were treated by ministers as chimerical, and Lord Weymouth, secretary for foreign affairs, assured the house that there never was a time when Great Britain had less to fear from foreign powers, and that every courier brought assurances of the pacific intentions and friendly feelings from all the courts of Europe. After a long debate, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... shall call upon Horace as my chief witness, and the Epistle itself, as my principal voucher. Should their testimonies prove adverse, my system must be abandoned, like many that have preceded it, as vain and chimerical: and if it should even, by their support, be acknowledged and received, it will, I think, like the egg of Columbus, appear so plain, easy, and obvious, that it will seem almost wonderful, that the Epistle has never been considered in the same light, till now. I do not wish to dazzle with the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... to profit their deformities, you manufacture literature out of your own deformities and those of your public. Lovingly do you cultivate the diseases of your people, their fear of effort, their love of pleasure, their sensual minds, their chimerical humanitarianism, everything in them that drugs the will, everything in them that saps their power for action. You deaden their minds with the fumes of opium. Behind it all is death: you know it: but you will not admit it. Well, I tell you: Where ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the Japanese. Much of his information is, of course, mere hearsay, and a great deal of it, by the light of what we now know, is not only misleading but nonsensical. A considerable amount of space is devoted by Kaemfer to chimerical animals, and he dilates upon the awful sanctity that surrounds the person of the Emperor. "There is," he remarks, "such a Holiness ascribed to all the parts of his Body that he dares not cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he should grow too dirty, they ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... PERMIT NO OCCULT STUDY OR TALENT TO INTERRUPT OR BEFOG YOUR PRACTICAL LIFE. All things are his who steadfastly remembers that "life is real, life is earnest." Magnetism is sanity at work. It is unalterably opposed to runaway fads, chimerical visions, unstrung nerves, mental aberration, psychic gourmandism. Magnetism is practical cooperation with level-headed people who are bent on making the best of self and the world ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... liquorice-plant, with Dulce meum terra tegit (The earth covers my sweet), was pronounced faulty, because the liquorice-plant could not be readily distinguished from other shrubs, the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix; consequently, a device representing a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... with politics," answered the Prince, "is very—Chimerical," he added after a pause, pleased to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... may counteract a policy so unfriendly to our prosperity in a variety of ways. By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people—increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so—to any manufacturing nation; and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the several states. The fact that the several states of our Union, though each a distinct sovereignty, yet agree in this arrangement, is held up as an instance of its practicability. These ideas are not to be considered entirely chimerical, if we reflect that commerce and trade are as essentially opposed to war as is Christianity. War is the death of commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the fine arts. Its evil results are always certain and definite, its good results scattered and accidental. The ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... to the optimistic doctrines of Lord Shaftesbury, that human nature is good and all is for the best in this harmonious world. "The ideas he had formed," wrote Mandeville, "of the goodness and excellency of our nature were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never be reconciled together, innocence of manners and ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... themselves to save their country, and did not lose the hope of retaking Quebec, though without artillery and warlike stores. All minds were occupied during the winter in forming projects of capturing that town, which were entirely chimerical, void of common sense, and nowise practicable. No country ever hatched a greater number—never projects more ridiculous and extravagant; everybody meddled. The contagion spread even to my Lord Bishop and his seminary of priests, who gave their ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... salvation. They were too earnest for the Paris wits. Voltaire always sneered at them till he came to know Turgot. Grimm calls them "the pietists of philosophy," and Hume, bantering Morellet, wonders how a man like Turgot could herd with such cattle, "the most chimerical and the most arrogant that now exist since the annihilation of the Sorbonne." But they were grappling with living problems, and seeing into the real situation so much further than their contemporaries, that an historian ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... received, and with a little wit you ought to be able to make good use of the letter. He himself will give you the cue, and you will see that he who listens obtains. Try to invent some useful plan for the royal exchequer; don't let it be complicated or chimerical, and if you don't write it out at too great length I will give you my opinion ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... consist. Mrs. Jameson's "Diary of an Ennuyee," which I now read for the first time, added to this desire for isolation and independence such a passionate longing to go to Italy, that my brain was literally filled with chimerical projects of settling in the south of Europe, and there leading a solitary life of literary labor, which, together with the fame I hoped to achieve by it, seemed to me the only worthy purpose of existence. While ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... and that nobleman, besides conciliating the favor of James, represented all his own adversaries as enemies to that prince's succession, and as men entirely devoted to the interests of Spain, and partisans of the chimerical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... little ornament of the relief repeating the two dates. Mantle clasps of solid silver ornamented with precious stones, and known in the Middle Ages as fermillets, are pretty presents, and these ornaments can be also enriched with gold and enamel without losing their silver character. Chimerical animals and floral ornaments are often ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... that moment to the time of her death her conversion continued steadily, and her penitence augmented. She had first to get rid of the secret fondness she still entertained for the Court, even of the hopes which, however chimerical, had always flattered her. She was persuaded that nothing but the fear of the devil had forced the King to separate himself from her, that it was nothing but this fear that had raised Madame de Maintenon to the height she had attained; that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... obvious to be specified. He claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly systematic theory. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... This denunciation agitated the assembly, and more especially those who supported the committees, or who wished that divisions might cease in the republic. "If the crimes Lecointre reproaches us with were proved," said Billaud-Varennes—"if they were as real as they are absurd and chimerical, there is, doubtless, not one of us but would deserve to lose his head on the scaffold. But I defy Lecointre to prove, by documents or any evidence worthy of belief, any of the facts he has charged us with." He repelled the charges brought against ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... academic service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical hope,—played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan, which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect." Not only was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes,—he was the founder of their ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... deprecates any interference with slave property; it discourages the improvement of the colored population, except they are removed to the shores of Africa; it is lulling the country into a fatal sleep, pretending to be something when it is nothing; it is utterly chimerical, as well as intolerant, in its design; it serves to increase the value of the slaves, and to make brisk the foreign and domestic slave trade; it nourishes and justifies the most cruel prejudices against color; it sneers at those who advocate the bestowal of equal rights upon our colored countrymen; ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... understand, these ideas, as applied to the present state of the country, are absolutely chimerical. The Pretender is no more remembered in the Highlands than if the poor gentleman were gathered to his hundred and eight fathers, whose portraits adorn the ancient walls of Holyrood; the broadswords have passed into other hands; the targets are used to cover the butter churns; and the race has sunk, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... spectator who is at all interested in ecclesiastical architecture will examine with much delight the elaborate mouldings and the strangely-suggestive forms of men, beasts, birds, shapes fantastic and chimerical, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... philosophers and Christians, to reason and faith. Amongst the great men of his class, Napoleon was by far the most necessary for the times. None but himself could have so quickly and effectually substituted order in place of anarchy; but no one was so chimerical as to the future, for after having been master of France and Europe, he suffered Europe to drive him even from France. His name is greater and more enduring than his actions, the most brilliant of which, his conquests, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject. The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Utopia," cries his lordship; "the chimerical system of Plato's commonwealth, with which we amused ourselves at the university; politics which are inconsistent with ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... treated his counsel as chimerical, but when she repeated it to her husband, she thought better of it, since, alas! it had become her great object to part those two loving brothers. Mr. Kendal first asked where the 25th Lancers were, then spoke of expense, and inquired what ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vain multitude.] The Siennese. See Hell, Canto XXIX. 117. "Their acquisition of Telamone, a seaport on the confines of the Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of becoming a naval power: but this scheme will prove as chimerical as their former plan for the discovery of a subterraneous stream under their city." Why they gave the appellation of Diana to the imagined stream, Venturi says he leaves it to the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... project was rejected. Des Groseilliers then went to France in hopes of a more favorable hearing at Court; but after presenting several memorials and spending a great deal of time and money, he was answered as he had been at Quebec, and the project looked upon as chimerical." [Footnote: Oldmixon, Vol. I. p. 548.] This voyage to Hudson's Straits proved unremunerative. "Wee had knowledge and conversation with the people of those parts, but wee did see and know that there was nothing to be done unlesse wee went ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... after him, scarcely able to believe his ears. If Theo had arrived at damning the Regiment, Frank's fear might not prove to be chimerical after all; and yet the flash of temper, the renewed energy of speech and movement ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... I am in some doubt, whether the political spreaders of those chimerical invasions, made a judicious choice in fixing the northern parts of Ireland for that romantic enterprize. Nor, can I well understand the wisdom of the Presbyterians in countenancing and confirming those reports. Because it seems to cast a most infamous reflection ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... really identical, the Church being merely the State in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. If Thomas Arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... so delighted with the beauty and fertility of the island that he imagined he could find there the fountain of perpetual youth for which he so long sought in vain. In this chimerical idea, however, as in Florida, he was ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... knowledge has been successfully imparted to their children. If by knowledge were meant a correct attitude of mind, the teacher would realise that the idea of testing it in any way which would satisfy the average parent was chimerical; and his clients, if they continued to ask for a guarantee of successful teaching, would require something widely different from that which has hitherto contented them. But when information is regarded as the equivalent of knowledge, the testing ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... holds equally true in common life; those who aim at perfection will come infinitely nearer it than those desponding or indolent spirits, who foolishly say to themselves: Nobody is perfect; perfection is unattainable; to attempt it is chimerical; I shall do as well as others; why then should I give myself trouble to be what I never can, and what, according to the common course of things, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... greatly rejoice; Cabarus Balls gyrate: the well-nigh insoluble problem Republic without Anarchy, have we not solved it?—Law of Fraternity or Death is gone: chimerical Obtain-who-need has become practical Hold-who-have. To anarchic Republic of the Poverties there has succeeded orderly Republic of the Luxuries; which will continue ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... are not chimerical; I know something of the situation and state of things in America; and from some little occurrences or instances that have already really happened, I can very easily figure to myself what may, and, in short, what will certainly happen, if ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... navigable passage across the Isthmus of Panama, the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is remarkable that this magnificent undertaking, pregnant with consequences so important to mankind, and about which so little is known in this country, is so far from being a romantic or chimerical project, that, it is not only practicable but easy. The River Chagres, which falls into the Atlantic at the town of the same name, about 18 leagues to the westward of Porto Bello is navigable as far as Cruces, within five leagues of Panama; but though the formation of a Canal from this place ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... has always some darling object of chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east Passage among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the devout, that these ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Plays, as very much surprized to hear one say that breaking of Windows was not Humour;[2] and I question not but several English Readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving incoherent Pieces, which are often spread among us, under odd Chimerical Titles, are rather the Offsprings of a Distempered Brain, than Works ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... into her religious life which as we have seen was marked by fears and doubts. "No one will deny that fear is the type of asthenic manifestations. Yet is it not the mother of phantoms of numberless superstitions, of altogether irrational and chimerical religious practices."[14] The strength and character of her beliefs as well as the religious teachings and influences to which she had been subjected from her earliest years, all tended to develop ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... looking-glass, wherein the images of all the neighbouring bodies imprint themselves. Now what being was able to stamp within us the image of the infinite, if the infinite never existed? Who can put in a looking-glass the image of a chimerical object which is not in being, and which was never placed against the glass? This image of the infinite is not a confused collection of finite objects, which the mind may mistake for a true infinite. It is the true infinite of which we have the thought and idea. We know it so well, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... is nevertheless a natural selection which is open to no other objection than this, and which, when its metaphorical character is borne well in mind, may be used without serious risk of error, whereas natural selection from variations that are mainly fortuitous is chimerical as well as metaphorical. Both writers speak of natural selection as though there could not possibly be any selection in the course of nature, or natural survival, of any but accidental variations. Thus Mr. Romanes says: {66a} "The swamping effect of free inter-crossing upon an individual variation ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... occasions, as at Bayreuth, where people went with the sole object of hearing music, and with no other business oppressing them for the moment. But at a time when the struggle for existence is so severe as now it was chimerical on Wagner's part to hope that such a plan could be permanently realized. Few musical people can afford to journey to Bayreuth merely to gratify their taste for opera. Hence the Bayreuth festivals, although most delightful from an artistic point of view, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... was so full of these chimerical visions, that he acted with his foot as if she had been really before him, and unfortunately gave such a push to his basket and glasses, that they were thrown down, and broken into ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to treat of subjects of gallantry in the article from hence, and no one point of nature is more proper to be considered by the company who frequent this place, than that of duels, it is worth our consideration to examine into this chimerical groundless humour, and to lay every other thought aside, till we have stripped it of all its false pretences to credit and reputation amongst men. But I must confess, when I consider what I am going about, and run over ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... human spirit, to replace individual competition by collective action, the relation of master and slave by free co-operation. This hope has helped the best of the Communists to bear the harsh years through which Russia has been passing, and has become an inspiration to the world. The hope is not chimerical, but it can only be realized through a more patient labour, a more objective study of facts, and above all a longer propaganda, to make the necessity of the transition obvious to the great majority of wage-earners. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... imagined, may, by the nature of the obstacles which oppose it, by the difference of the genius and character of the people, by the force of those laws they have adopted, and by long custom, which, as it were, stamps a seal upon them, become alike chimerical and impracticable. Time only and long experience can bring remedies to defects in the customs of a state whose form is already determined; and this ought always to be attempted with a view to the plan of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... territorial readjustment of Europe, Prussia, though momentarily checked, was already pivotal; but the first efforts of French diplomacy at Berlin resulted in a flat refusal to go farther than the peace already made, or entertain the chimerical proposals now made. Turning then to Austria, the Directory concluded the armistice of February first, 1796, but at Vienna the offer of Munich and two thirds of Bavaria, of an outlet to the Adriatic and of an alliance against Russia for the restoration of Poland—of course without ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to this remark. He was already deep in thought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize a suggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turn it into an accomplished Fact. "I believe you've hit it, Hugh," he said. "We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll put into this bill ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... determined to sleep on deck, and advised all who complained of their quarters to follow my example. I dare say a dozen of others agreed to do so, and I thought we should have been quite a party. Yet, when I brought up my rug about seven bells, there was no one to be seen but the watch. That chimerical terror of good night-air, which makes men close their windows, list their doors, and seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhalations, had sent all these healthy workmen down below. One would think we had been brought up in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the man who originated this road has since become insane. More likely he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild and chimerical, so evidently impossible of fulfilment. Projected it was, however, not only in fancy, but in fact, to our great content; and so, tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... endeavored to dissuade his niece from such an absurdity, as it appeared to him, but his eloquence and reasoning were useless, and the property was deeded away. He next tried to convince her that her vocation was chimerical, and the result of a sort of religous enthusiasm, which would die a natural death. And lest his rhetoric should not produce the desired effect, he started back to Troyes, where she was universally known and esteemed, to tell the news, and call to his aid the sympathies of her friends. ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... absurd attire and bound upon his ambiguous errand, he was all out of the picture—horribly suggestive of an addled sparrow who had stayed up all night on purpose to cheat some legitimately early bird out of a chimerical first worm.... ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... were made to attract French colonists to the country, the colonization of Algeria appearing as a means towards the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. This point of view suggested numerous projects, as chimerical as they were generous; two millions sterling (50 million francs) were expended with a view to installing Parisian unemployed workmen as colonists, but this attempt failed miserably. The most remarkable military ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be seen that the common ideal conception of "Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were, the shock of Death, and instead of dying, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Chimerical hard Slavery) is not very laborious; their greatest Hardship consisting in that they and their Posterity are not at their own Liberty or Disposal, but are the Property of their Owners; and when they are free, they know not how to provide so well for themselves generally; neither ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... open below, and it was certain, that the British would seize the first moment of its being practicable, to relieve this important place. Amidst these unpromising circumstances, the hopes of taking Quebec appeared to General Thomas to be chimerical, and a longer continuance before the town both useless and dangerous. It was apparent that the first reinforcements which should arrive would deprive him entirely of the use of the river, and consequently would embarrass the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... had broken. Often, when considering the possibility of such a catastrophe, he had asked himself how he should avert it? He had formed and rejected many plans: he had deluded himself, like all men of imagination, with innumerable chimerical projects, and now he found himself ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... for supplies; and that he might be sure not to meet with opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory barons; but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous cheat imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on such chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their brethren, they refused to take the king's demands into consideration [z]. In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both their temporal and spiritual sovereign concurred in loading them, they were ill able to defend themselves ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... yes, yes," said I, "but I am in their power, perhaps"—but I instantly dismissed the apprehension which came into my mind, with a pooh, nonsense! In a little time, however, a far more foolish and chimerical idea began to disturb me—the idea of being flung from my horse; was I not disgraced for ever as a horseman by being flung from my horse? Assuredly, I thought; and the idea of being disgraced as a horseman, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... sake of what they can never, except by suggestion, express. Thus an artificiality, even, in the use of words—that seeming artificiality which comes from using words as if they had never been used before, that chimerical search after the virginity of language—is but the paradoxical outward sign of an extreme discontent with even the best of their service. Writers who use words fluently, seeming to disregard their importance, do so from an unconscious confidence ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... seemed to many contemporaries; chimerical it has seemed to historians, and to us who have passed through the World War. Yet in the World War it was the possession of food stuffs and raw materials by the United States which gave her a dominating position ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon about my ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was at that time regarded as but the dream of a chimerical projector. It stood before the public friendless, struggling hard to gain a footing, scarcely daring to lift itself into notice for fear of ridicule. The civil engineers generally rejected the notion of a Locomotive Railway; and when no leading man of the day could be found ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... of the house of Breen & Co., and the possibility of so small a tail as himself being able to wag so large a dog as his uncle and his partners, that seemed now to be so chimerical an undertaking that he laughed when he thought ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... substituting a new and superior motive-power for steam will no doubt strike many minds as extravagant, if not chimerical. We have been so accustomed to regard steam-power as the ne plus ultra of attainment in subjecting the modified forces of nature to the service of man, that a discovery which promises to supersede this agency will have to contend with the most formidable preconceptions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... avenge the loss of his dominions, the envenomed rhetoric of the Jesuits and the active zeal of the Bavarian minister, represented this dreaded alliance between the Huguenots and the Swedes as an undoubted fact, and filled the timid mind of Louis with the most alarming fears. Not merely chimerical politicians, but many of the best informed Roman Catholics, fully believed that the king was on the point of breaking into the heart of France, to make common cause with the Huguenots, and to overturn the Catholic religion within the kingdom. Fanatical zealots already saw ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... something. quehacer m. business, duty. queja lament. quejar vr. to complain. quemar to burn. querellante plaintiff. querer to wish, love. quien, quien who, whom, which. quijotesco Quixotic. quimerico chimerical, extravagant. quince fifteen. quinientos, -as five hundred. quinta conscription. quinto conscript. quitar to take away, remove. quiza, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... prefer rather success—station, rank, power, money, for myself, if you please. With us—a million dollars for the founding of our new country. With him—for the undertaking of yonder impracticable and chimerical expedition, twenty-five hundred dollars! Which enterprise, think ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... of a class now annually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks be to God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human nature, that, amongst the many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at least, never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows more intellectual, the power of managing him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals to his mere animal instincts of pain, must go on pari ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... She does not know how she could bear it, but for the security of Ferdinand's strength; and they will not let her see him—say she must give him up or them—Mrs. Underwood's violence inconceivable, and all because of a chimerical fancy.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... money for a work which he had finished, and this enabled him to commence his researches. He spent the whole of his money, however, without meeting with any success, and he was now poorer than ever. Yet it was in vain that his wife and friends besought him to relinquish what they deemed his chimerical and ruinous project. He borrowed more money, with which he repeated his experiments; and, when he had no more fuel wherewith to feed his furnaces, he cut down his chairs and tables for that purpose. Still his success was inconsiderable. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... institutions. The only probable result of such an attempt would be the collapse of the new social order, because it would have insufficient foundations in individual character upon which to rest. The idea of ushering in the social millennium through some vast social revolution is therefore chimerical. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... us altogether chimerical. Family affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes. The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than those of consanguinity or affinity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days sufficed, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable We could no longer apply ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... influence declared the conditions published by the directors of the railway chimerical in the extreme. One gentleman of some eminence in Liverpool, Mr. P. Ewart, who afterward filled the office of Government Inspector of Post-office Steam Packets, declared that only a parcel of charlatans would ever have issued such a set of conditions; that it had been proved ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... know how to do so. At Peoria he said: "If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution." He contributed some suggestions which certainly were nothing better than chimerical. Deportation to Africa was his favorite scheme; he also proposed that it would be "best for all concerned to have the colored population in a State by themselves." But he did not abuse men who declined to adopt his methods. Though he was dealing with a question which was arousing personal antagonisms ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... remarkable through certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark. That nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poesy of their history, these Thirteen men have remained to this day unknown; though all have realized the most chimerical ideas that the fantastic power falsely attributed to the Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can suggest to the imagination. To-day, they are broken up, or, at least, dispersed; they have peaceably put their necks once more under the yoke of civil law, just as Morgan, that Achilles among ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... satisfy the rapidly increasing demand for newspapers. The time was therefore evidently ripe for the adoption of such a machine as that of Koenig. Attempts had been made by many inventors, but every one of them had failed. Printers generally regarded the steam-press as altogether chimerical. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... individual, who from station, distempered mind, or the encouragement of chimerical ideas of glory, quits the theatre of life with at least the appearance of pleasure in his triumphs. If such there be in reality, if this rapture of departing glory be anything more than the deception of a distempered excitement, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... railroad freight agent, on the contrary, is disposed to think that shippers ought to be satisfied with any rate lower than those charged fifty years ago for carting or other crude methods of transportation. He regards their views and suggestions as chimerical and not worthy of any notice, and does not even hesitate to inform them that rate-making is a branch of the railroad business wholly beyond their comprehension, and ought not to be meddled with or even inquired into by the public. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... with forming the mind and the heart of the young princes destined to govern the nations. What enlightenment can teachers of this stamp give? Filled themselves with prejudices, they will hold up to their pupil superstition as the most important and the most sacred thing, its chimerical duties as the most holy obligations, intolerance, and the spirit of persecution, as the true foundations of his future authority; they will try to make him a chief of party, a turbulent fanatic, and a tyrant; they will suppress at an early period ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the systematic order or severe method that distinguish the work of the scholar of Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as chimerical as those of magic, but they are deduced with an amount of logic, entirely wanting in works of sorcery, that compels reasoning intellects to accept them. Recipes borrowed from medicine and popular superstition, primitive practices rejected or abandoned by the sacerdotal ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... necessity of going to prison. The state in which he passed his time, and the treatment which he received, are very justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: "The whole day," says he, "has been employed in various people's filling my head with their foolish chimerical systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every different person's way of thinking; hurried from one wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, and nothing done—promised—disappointed—ordered to send, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was playing. Further yet, columns upheld a ceiling so lofty that it was lost. On the adjacent wall was a frieze of curious and chimerical beasts. Belshazzar was looking at them. In their dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion amused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach his lips, it fell ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... created Earl of Kent, and intrusted with a great share of power during his whole reign, had amassed immense riches; and agreeably to the usual progress of human wishes, he began to regard his present acquisitions but as a step to farther grandeur. He had formed the chimerical project of buying the papacy; and though Gregory, the reigning pope, was not of advanced years, the prelate had confided so much in the predictions of an astrologer, that he reckoned upon the pontiff's death, and upon ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... rotate with sufficient rapidity on its axis to split, and we should have two suns instead of one." "Bravo!" said Bearwarden. "There is no limit to what can be done. The idea of our present trip would have seemed more chimerical to people a hundred years ago than this new scheme appears now." Thus they sat and talked, or studied maps and star- charts, or the stars themselves, while the hours quickly passed and they shot through space. They had now a straight stretch of over three hundred ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... speculators, because many profit, or expect to profit, by established and widening abuses. Speculations toward evil lose their name by adoption; speculations towards good are for ever speculations, and he who hath proposed them is a chimerical and silly creature. Among the matters under this denomination I never find a cruel project, I never find an oppressive or unjust one: ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of its bed through its limpid waters. Through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... understood why he should have exiled himself, and it was reported that he intended to lead the Cherokees into Texas, conquer the country and set up a government of his own. President Jackson wrote to him, protesting against "any such chimerical, visionary scheme," which, needless to say, Houston had never entertained. These rumors grew so annoying, that he issued a proclamation offering a prize "To the Author of the Most Elegant, Refined, and Ingenious ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... what I then did seems for the present to be overlooked and forgotten. I am confident, however, as much as I can be of anything, that notwithstanding the almost universal reception of the new theory, which is the cause of it, it is purely chimerical, and cannot keep its ground after a sufficient scrutiny, which may be deferred, but which must take place in time. I am glad to find that Mr. Cruikshank in England, as well as chemists in France, begin ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... only be the Queen of the West, but Queen of the Western World. Then will come the real clashing of interests, and the Eastern States must be content to succumb and resign their present power, or the Western will throw them off, as an useless appendage to her might. This may at present appear chimerical to some, and would be considered by many others as too far distant; but be it remembered, that ten years in America, is as a century; and even allowing the prosperity of the United States to be checked, as very probably ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) |
