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Hallucination   Listen
noun
Hallucination  n.  
1.
The act of hallucinating; a wandering of the mind; error; mistake; a blunder. "This must have been the hallucination of the transcriber."
2.
(Med.) The perception of objects which have no reality, or of sensations which have no corresponding external cause, arising from disorder of the nervous system, as in delirium tremens; delusion. "Hallucinations are always evidence of cerebral derangement and are common phenomena of insanity."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hallucination" Quotes from Famous Books



... other's outburst. Vanamee's swarthy face was pale, the sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes were marked with great black shadows. The priest no longer recognised him. The face, that face of the ascetic, lean, framed in its long black hair and pointed beard, was quivering with the excitement of hallucination. It was the face of the inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, living close to nature, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, solitary, imaginative, believing in the Vision, having strange delusions, gifted with strange powers. In a brief second of thought, Sarria understood. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... our earth, and distinctly embarrassing to a stranger in a strange land. Small birds in that quaint atmospheric haze looked like condors, butterflies like giant fowl, and the simplest objects of the forest like the imaginations of a disordered dream. Behind that gauzy hallucination a fine white mist came up, and the sun spread out flat and red in the sky, while the pent-in heat became ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... physiology, and during my college course conducted a series of experiments in hypnotism, and made some interesting discoveries regarding the exaltation of the senses, and especially in relation to illusion and hallucination by the aid of ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... infatuated old gentleman! He had never seen me do anything of the kind. He hardly knew me by sight. He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... affairs, unless to be "agin the Government" is a policy. And lastly, if some of its economic demands are justifiable, and have in several respects been satisfied by modern legislation, its fundamental doctrine, the basis of the entire edifice, is a wild hallucination, sickening to common sense, and completely out of harmony with the progressive economic development of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... authorities, the Senator proceeded to say: "A grave hallucination in this day is to claim all power; and a minor error is that every thing which passion, or interest, or party power, or any selfish claims may represent to the judgment or imagination of gentlemen who belong to strong parties, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... temporarily lost the power to feel. Here was Sylvia, a self-confessed wanton—and yet here was Sylvia as deeply intrenched in his heart as ever. This was a monstrous contradiction. One of these things must be a fact, the other a fantastic hallucination. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... fact, Gentlemen, no such thing as 'mere literature.' Pedants have coined that contemptuous term to express a figmentary concept of their own imagination or—to be more accurate, an hallucination of wrath—having about as much likeness to a vera causa as had the doll which (if you remember) Maggie Tulliver used to beat in the garret whenever, poor child, the world went wrong with her somehow. The thoughts, actions and passions of men became literature by the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... consumes you." The notary did not hear his accomplice, who foresaw a new hallucination. In effect, Ferrand resumed, with a burst of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... to the existence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... reported to be busy sawing trees. Some declare that his energy is due to an hallucination that they are German generals. Others say the whole story is a clumsy attempt to discredit him with ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... Christ's contemporaries did not hesitate to call Him 'this deceiver.' We have got beyond that; but we still are met by explanations of the power of the Gospel and of Christ, its subject and Author, which trace these to ignoble elements, and do not shrink from asserting that a blunder or a hallucination ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... I repeat what I no longer know?" said he. "An angel floated by me in the air, and, by a glance alone, she whispered words which my enraptured lips uttered as in a wild hallucination." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... not mention me?" I remarked weakly. I hardly knew what to say, for it seemed to me that either Evie must be the victim of some extraordinary hallucination, or else that ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... was a theme of frequent discussion. The Abbey and its monastic environs being haunted ground, it was natural that a mysterious visitant of the kind, and one supposed to be under the influence of mental hallucination, should inspire awe in a person unaccustomed to the place. As Colonel Wildman's sister was one day walking along abroad terrace of the garden, she suddenly beheld the Little White Lady coming toward her, and, in the surprise and agitation of the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... mental depression, then active delirium with great restlessness, talking, muttering, hallucination of sight and hearing. He thinks he sees objects in the room such as rats, mice, or snakes, and fancies that they are crawling over his body, has them in his boots, etc. The terror inspired by these imaginary objects ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... above statement Mr. Stead appends Mr. Kendall's reasons for believing that what James Durham experienced was objective psychic phenomena, and neither produced during sleep nor by hallucination. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... to be insane was not wholly lost, and it was natural that she should listen to such unwonted sounds. For some time she could hear the voice at intervals, but the words were indistinct and confused. Her aunt was probably very ill, or under the influence of some hallucination which kept her awake. Hermione crept stealthily near the door, and listened intently. Madame Patoff continued to walk regularly up and down. At last she heard clear ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... began to spread and gain credence that Christ had risen from the dead; when Peter and John stood up and affirmed that He was living at the right hand of God; if it had been a mere surmise, the fond delusion of loyal and faithful hearts, an hallucination of two or three hysterical women—would it not have been easy for the enemies of Christianity to go forthwith to the grave in the garden of Joseph, and produce the body of the Crucified, with the marks of the nails in hands and feet? Why did they not do it? If it be said that it could not ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... objects are seen, but depends also upon very complex and peculiar conditions of sympathy which we call genius. Hence we find one man remembering a multitude of details, with a memory so vivid that it almost amounts at times to hallucination, yet without any artistic power; and we may find men—Blake was one—with an imagination of unusual activity, who are nevertheless incapable, from deficient sympathy, of seizing upon those symbols which will ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... turf, from the bogs of Allen, in Ireland. A sight which was quite exhilarating, and reminded me so strongly of the fine odour which exhales from the products of illicit distillation, that guagers and potteen, like the phantoms of hallucination, were presenting themselves continually to my imagination for ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... in her direction and uttered a cry, a cry almost of terror. Was she demented? Had her longing, her aching longing for a sight of him called up this vision of Stafford? Unless she were out of her mind, the victim of a strange hallucination, it was he himself who stood there, his face, pale and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... their palms and moulded them as they would. While Amber had desired to mould his own life. The theme of love that runs a golden thread through the drab fabric of existence had to him been an illusion—a hallucination to which others were subject, from which he was happily, if unaccountably, exempt. But that had ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... world, Pascal had an accident. As he drove round a corner on the Seine side to cross the bridge at Neuilly, the horses were precipitated down the bank into the water. Pascal escaped, but with a nervous shock, a certain hallucination, from which he never recovered. As he walked or sat he was apt to perceive a yawning depth beside him; would set stick or chair there to reassure himself. We are now told, indeed, that that circumstance has been greatly exaggerated. But how ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... on the trigger. The report rang out, shattering the night; the bullet whined away high over the treetops, and the great bull, springing at one bound far back into the thickets, vanished like an hallucination. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... past, present, and future—sending him a message calculated to smooth his ruffled feelings, with her pretty thanks for his youthful adoration; comfort his sorrow with the thought that it must have been a hallucination, that some day he would find his true ideal which he had only thought he had found in her; and send him on his way rejoicing with her blessings and good wishes for a happy life. As for Mary Ann, for once she received her meed of Marcia's love, for homesick Marcia felt more tenderness for her than ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement—these could at worst suspect, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... topic should so fill men's minds and monopolize their sympathies as to entirely exclude other questions of greater importance, and bearing more directly upon our present and vital interests. Yet so it is, and so it has been in all ages of the world, though, happily, the hallucination does not last for any very extended period; for there is a compensation in human as well as in inanimate nature, which, in its own good time, brings mind to its proper balance by the harsh remedy of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... trace. If children come, they find but a stepmother's cold welcome from her; and if her husband thinks that he has married anything that is to belong to him—a tacens et placens uxor pledged to make him happy—the sooner he wakes from his hallucination and understands that he has simply married some one who will condescend to spend his money on herself, and who will shelter her indiscretions behind the shield of his name, the less severe will be his disappointment. She has married his house, his carriage, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... face. Doctor Dexter looked keenly for an instant in the fast gathering twilight, then whipped up his horse, and was swiftly out of sight. Against his better judgment, he was shaken in mind and body. Could he have seen a ghost? Nonsense! He was tired, he had overworked, he had had an hallucination. His cool, calm, professional sense fought with the insistent idea. It was well that Ralph was coming to relieve his old father of ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... as old as the first conception of the balloon, before hydrogen gas was discovered. In an earlier chapter some account is given of early experiments with wings. No progress was made along this line until the hallucination that man could make any headway whatsoever against gravity by flapping artificial wings was definitely abandoned. There was more promise in the experiments made by Sir George Cayley, and he was followed in the first half of the nineteenth ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... prizes of human affairs, it is, I believe, admitted on all hands, that these generally fall to second-rate men. Civilized nations have found it convenient entirely to give up the hallucination that the monarch is the greatest, wisest, and best man in his dominions. Nobody supposes that. And in the case of hereditary dynasties, such an end is not even aimed at. But it is curious to find how with elective sovereignties it is just the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... show the hallucination was early developed. We should probably find that even then you were much attracted by the armoury,' said Brotherton, with a judicial air, as if I were a culprit ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... refutation of the hallucination and mythical theories of Strauss and his followers is most admirable, and all should read it who desire to know exactly what excuses men make for their incredulity. The work also contains many beautiful passages on the discomfort ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... superior officers arrested after the second return of the king, was in danger of passing before the Special Commission. Living all his spare moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers a day in advance of reality, as it were, and in a state of bestarred hallucination, it required nothing less than the name of his perpetual antagonist pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's generals away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. He looked round. The strangers wore civilian clothes. Lean and weather-beaten, ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... said, and one gentleman who had consented to the ordeal of darkness had been half crazed by it, and when the guide, who had withdrawn and concealed himself, with his light, returned, the traveller tried first to run away into the darkness, and then, under some strange hallucination, fired his pistol ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... said Georgie, "I begin to think it's all a hallucination, and that there really isn't any Kate Ferris. It's strange, of course, but not any stranger than some of those cases you read ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... is urgent, and I could not allow your neighbours or your household to disturb the few minutes' conversation which I am obliged to have with you. My friend Paul Mole," he went on, after a slight pause, "is in grave danger of his life owing to a hallucination on the part of our mutual friend citizen Chauvelin; and I feel confident that you yourself are too deeply enamoured of your own neck to risk it wilfully by sending an innocent and honest ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... Hilaire; we admit Mr. Wilson's incapacity to decipher foreign names or words, even when they stand before him in the clearest print,—an incapacity of which his book affords numerous examples,—and that this incapacity, and not any mental hallucination, has been the cause of the blunder which we have corrected. But we must add that he does evidently labor under an hallucination when he calls this letter of M. St. Hilaire a "flattering notice." He has been misled by his inability to comprehend the employment of courteous language between persons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... drowsy state I reflect upon the nature of the judgments that are transsubjectively ( for all men) valid. All at once the thread of the abstract thought is broken and autosymbolically in the place of it is presented the following hypnagogic hallucination: ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... Knowing their habit in worship, I was somewhat annoyed with the thought that I was muzzling their feelings and the sooner I got through the gladder they would be. That class of people have a way of calling the minister "Cold water preacher," if he does not preach them into something like a spell of hallucination. Their composure led me to believe that I would earn the title. Still I endured, and endeavored to give the plain truth plainly and earnestly; having a strong feeling that as I was in authority I must command in the right way. After dismission, many said to me, "You gave us the pure word ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various

... painful pictures. And when he opened them again it was darker, and the moon made misty shadows through the trees, and out of them he seemed to see Halcyone's face quite close to him. It was tender and pitiful and full of love. The hallucination was so startlingly vivid that he almost fancied her lips moved, and she whispered: "Courage, beloved." Then he knew that he was dreaming, and that he was ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... I was out in Concarneau for a visit, the music and voices were heard again, just as when my revered aunt was in the flesh. The house was perfectly empty, as I tell you, so it is quite possible that the good people were enjoying an hallucination." ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... she had some sort of hallucination that she had seen a man killed at Rock City, when she was wandering around in that storm," Warfield went on in a careless, gossipy tone. "Just what was that about, Lone? You're the one who found her and took her in to the ranch, I believe. She somehow mixed her delusion ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... the last degree, fractious, so that as assistant doctor in one of the hospitals he soon became impossible. They were almost beggars. But he kept still his great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in a complete hallucination, where he himself figured vivid and lordly. He guarded his wife jealously against the ignominy of her position, rushed round her like a brandished weapon, an amazing sight to the English eye, had her in his power, as if he hypnotized ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... him by his brilliant sallies. Champagne was flowing freely; and he drank four or five glasses in quick succession. Was he really conscious of what he was doing and saying? He subsequently declared that he was not, that he acted under the influence of a sort of hallucination similar to that produced by the inhalation of ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... half believing herself under the influence of some feverish hallucination; "what are ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... been merged in this struggle which had only conquered her overwrought heart and brain when she had felt that the Madonna had deserted her and delivered her to the wrath of Venice, so now, in her hallucination,—since the Madonna had brought her to Rome,—her faith and power of speech suddenly returned, and she rallied all her ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... have seen Burley hard-beset "by the coinage of his heat-oppressed brain," who would have asked whether he was a handsome man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the determined way in which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets sceptics and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites such interest ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... permanent value to the waking or external life, and an equally fictitious one to the interior or dreaming life. But what if the dream life became more or less permanent to the exclusion of all other memories and sensations? We should then get a case of insanity in which hallucination would be symptomic. (The dream state is more or less permanent with certain poetical temperaments, and if there is any insanity attaching to it at all, it consists in the inability to react.) Imagination, deep thought and grief are as much anaesthetic as chloroform. But the closing of the ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... was wrong was something greater than a hallucination or a hangover. He was in some kind of trap. His first thought was to rush home and see if Helen was there. There was a great sense of relief when he thought of her. Helen, with her grave blue eyes and understanding manner, would listen to ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner

... in the first hours of this misfortune, which with such annihilating force fell upon her, the empress, as if in a state of hallucination, gazed into the future, and, with prophetic voice, exclaimed: "Now I am lost! Now is ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... anywhere, out of Carlingford, out of duty and practice and responsibility, and all those galling restraints of life which the noonday light and everyday sounds about brought in with so entire a discord to break up this momentary hallucination. For half a minute only the doctor lingered on the borders of that fairyland where time and duty are not, but only one ineffable moment always passing, never past. Then with a long sigh, the breath ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... little verses on the page, the French verbs swam together and sank under the clear-floating images of home-sickness. Mamma's face, Roddy's, Dan's face. Tall trees, the Essex fields, flat as water, falling away behind them. Little feathery trees, flying low on the sky-line. Outside the hallucination the soiled ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... to himself, aloud; "indeed you are absolutely in error. If I have seemed—but I repeat, you are deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing you—I do it even in play painfully—entirely out of the way, unthought ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first movement of Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself that the key of his rooms was there. But he checked the impulse with a disdainful curve of his lips. He understood. His thought, concentrated intensely on the figure ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... passes and the fixing of the eyes, silence and languor come over the subject. The second period, usually produced by constant repetition of the experiment, is characterized chiefly by sensibility to hallucination and suggestion. The third period has as its principal characteristics supersensibility of the muscles and lack of sensation. Yet let it be noticed that these divisions were not expressed in their present clearness until 1880; while in the years between 1872 and 1880, from an entirely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... If I delight aesthetically in a cluster of grapes, I do not want to eat them, but only to enjoy their image, and my feeling of pleasure, as aesthetic, would not be changed if before me were only a mirage, an hallucination, or a picture. It is just the pleasure in perception that appeals to me,— therein both schools agree,—and the only matter at issue is the question of what this disinterested pleasure of perception includes. Is ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... Mark, warmly. "Are you to be driven off to Alaska at your age to hunt for this herb—which is perhaps only the hallucination of a madman?" "Mark's hit the nail on the head, Professor!" declared Jack. "I believe this Todd must certainly be ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... been fabled to be, when they carved out of a mountain of ore the instrument yclept type, to completely exhaust the possibilities of which is of late announced as the sum of human destiny. They lived under the hallucination of dawning literature, when printed books implied sacred and classical perfection; and they could by no means have foreseen the royal folios of the "New York Herald" and "Tribune," or the marvellous inanities about the past, present, and future, which figure in an indescribable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... interest in her affairs. Her school, funny incidents occurring there, her basket work with the children—all were talked about, until Amanda in dazed fashion brushed her hand across her eyes and wondered whether Isabel and her wiles was all an hallucination. ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... beyond his capacity; and the person who had witnessed the apparition, or, more properly, whose excited state had been the means of raising it, had only to return into the apartment, and tell his young friend under what a striking hallucination he had for a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... high regard for my sterling worth and symmetrical escutcheon—a testimonial more suggestive of earnest admiration and warm personal friendship than of great intrinsic value, etc., etc., etc., that I hope he will not construct it on the modern plan of mental hallucination and morbid delirium ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... the Blue John Gap, and have even penetrated some short distance, but my bicycle lantern is so small and weak that I dare not trust myself very far. I shall do the thing more systematically. I have heard no sound at all, and could almost believe that I had been the victim of some hallucination, suggested, perhaps, by Armitage's conversation. Of course, the whole idea is absurd, and yet I must confess that those bushes at the entrance of the cave do present an appearance as if some heavy creature had forced its way through ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... tried again, threatened, pleaded, and cajoled, and Mrs. Haddon used all her motherly artifices; but not one word came from the boy's locked lips. Dick was possessed by a vivid hallucination; he seemed to be standing in the centre of a whirlwind. Downy and his mother were dim figures beyond, seen through the dust; and like shreds of paper whirled in the vortex, visions of Miss Chris's face, netted in fair hair, passed swiftly before his ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... friendly way imaginable. Not a trace of eccentricity was perceptible in her manner. She was merely a handsome girl, with a strong vein of originality. I began to doubt the evidence of my senses. Surely I must have been labouring under some hallucination the previous night. It was almost easier to believe that I had been the dupe of a portentous nightmare than that this charming girl should have enacted such ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... and the hitherto unsuspected fact that Mr. Dodan had observed my physical danger, and now was planning to interrupt his daughter's intimacy and hallucination for a poor, failing man, struggling with an impossible problem, and a mortal malady, seemed suddenly understood by me. I turned to her a face of questioning concern. Her eyes were still fixed upon the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... tell what follows to a Priest, and might have done so had not the Man of the World in me whispered that from professional Believers I should get little sympathy, and probably less credence still. For to have my experience disbelieved, or attributed to hallucination, would be intolerable to me. Psychical investigators, I am told, prefer a Medium who takes no cash recompense for his performance, a Healer who gives of his strange powers without reward. There are, however, natural-born priests who ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... first for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and smooth—it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision. And even as my attention was thus irresistibly dragged from ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... conclusion that we can come to. Only on the night when his father and mother came here, before this marvellous change in his memory took place, he said something similar to this, and—and of course we can only regard it as the hallucination of an unbalanced mind. Let us hope after a few months' quiet, things will be ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... point of view. Like Hoffmann, Chamisso takes his reader into the midst of current life, but, unlike Hoffmann, his moods are not the dissolving views which leave the reader in doubt as to whether the whole is a phantasmagoria and a hallucination. Schlemihl is genuinely and consistently realistic. It is a story in the first person and has a rigidly logical arrangement of episodes leading up to its climax. It does not make ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... that he would have seen the mermaid again that afternoon, when he had made such elaborate arrangements to meet her, if Fate had destined them to meet again at all. No; he must give her up. He must forget the hallucination that had worked so madly ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... the merest trick of his imagination. Certainly he had always dreaded the place, but never a word of that sort had he said to her. Yet there was a shadow of possible comfort in the thought—for, what if the whole thing should prove an hallucination! But whether real or not, she ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... consider him as convalescent, and certainly he does seem rational on every other point; but is this one altogether an hallucination?' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... caused men to despair of themselves and gravely to misrepresent God. It is no wonder if in the age of rationalism this dogma was largely done away with. The religious sense of sin was declared to be an hallucination. Nothing is more evident in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin. This alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and inadequacy of that theology. Kant's doctrine of radical evil testifies to his deep sense that the rationalists were wrong. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... which she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before—a fountain of friendship towards men—a man can make a friend of her. Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her. I wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man? Ladislaw?—there was certainly an unusual feeling between them. And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well—her love might help a man more ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... hallucination To grudge our hymns their halcyon harmonies, When in just homage our rapt voices rise To celebrate our heroes in meet fashion; Whose hosts each heritage and habitation, Within these realms of hospitable joy, Protect securely 'gainst humiliation, When hostile foes, like harpies, would annoy. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... mental hallucination poor Goody Billings, who had five children and a husband of her own, continued to give food and shelter to little Tom for a period of no less than seven years; and though it must be acknowledged that the young gentleman did not in the slightest ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... trousers, who used to reach out the window for the top twigs, that blossomed earliest, so as to be the first to carry 'yellow bells' to school for a teacher that I used to think was Venus and Minerva rolled in one. I saw her in Boston the other day, and the Venus hallucination is shattered, but the yellow bells look just the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... over his shoulder. A good three miles distant, bounding and leaping toward Singhalut, were twenty desperate figures. They all wore space-suits. This man here ... A sjambak? A wizard? A hallucination? ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance

... awake in his bed, watching for the dawn, which seemed to him longer than usual in appearing; till at last his own restlessness and impatience made him fancy that the Christinos were coming to surprise him. A distant noise which he heard, and which resembled the trot of horses, confirmed the hallucination. He sprang from his bed, and, nearly naked as he was, descended the stairs, opened the door of the house, and tried to snatch away the musket of the sentinel posted there, in order to defend himself against the approaching enemy. The sentry, at once recognising him, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... he said slowly, "that I believe I was on that occasion the victim of an hallucination. But I will explain to you what I saw. A superb figure, like, and yet unlike, a man, but of a much larger and grander form, appeared to me, as I thought, and spoke. 'Zara is mine,' it said—'mine ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... artful hallucination I've ever experienced," I granted. "This snake has weight, a cold feel and a scratchy scaliness. This new witch of yours really knows her stuff. I just would have thought..." I dribbled off, raising ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the people with whom he must now commune. The Great Seal indeed! It was the wild excitement of despair, the frenzied hope that blends inevitably with absolute ruin, that could alone have inspired such a hallucination! His unstrung heart deserted him. His energies could rally no more. He gave orders that he was at home to no one; and in his morning gown and slippers, with his feet resting on the fireplace, the once high-souled and noble-hearted Coningsby ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... forehead, sundry knobs, My ideas slightly wandering, But, as I went, much pondering Upon my night with Dobbs; Brown thinks it, dear old sinner, A case of "after dinner," And won't believe a word, Talks of "hallucination," "Laws of association," And calls my ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... store for this country in the immediate future. And, in every point of view, this explanation shows itself to be untenable. The supposition that a real Present is spoken of in ver. 14 saddles upon the Prophet an absurd hallucination; and nothing analogous to it can be referred to in the whole of the Old Testament. According to statements of the Prophet in other passages, he sees yet many things intervening between the Messianic time and his own; according to chap. vi. 11-13, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... he put to himself as he turned away. "Is this the message, or is it only the ugly hallucination of my nerves?" With an effort he sought to shake the image from him, but in spite of his closed mind it still seemed to him that he saw Connie's future looking back at him from the woman's terrible eyes. "And yet what have ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... actions; it scarcely ever knows what it is saying; and occasionally, without the least warning or premeditation, it leaps out of bed at an early hour of the morning and rushes frantically in pursuit of its last hallucination. The main difference is, that whereas a man in a fever has a nurse, society ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... the hand that grew tighter and tighter. Pons seemed to think that he was slipping over the edge of a precipice and must catch at something to save himself. But, as many know, the dying are haunted by an hallucination that leads them to snatch at things about them, like men eager to save their most precious possessions from a fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at the bed-clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself with a hasty, covetous movement significant ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... No one met him; but, as he stepped out of the carriage, he suddenly became aware of two strangely glowing eyes fixed upon him from among the crowd that met the train. On endeavouring to re-discover the eyes, and see to whom they belonged, he could find nothing to guide him. It must have been a hallucination. But the disagreeable impression remained, and without this, the prince was sad and thoughtful already, and seemed to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... nevertheless rendered necessary because of the enormous amount of misunderstanding which exists in connection with these phenomena, and of the general methods and objects of psychic research. The papers that have already been published on the question of hallucination in relation to the physical phenomena should do much to clear away many of these misconceptions, for in them we find (i) a willingness to treat the phenomena seriously; (ii) an admission that the witnesses described what ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... arrested Billy's attention. It was swinging back and forth rather violently. This could not be a hallucination. The room might seem to be rising and falling, but that lamp could not seem to be swinging around in any such manner if it were not really and truly swinging. He couldn't account for it. Again he shut his eyes for a moment. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... dear sir," said Captain Truck, taking the other by a button, as if he pitied his hallucination, "you don't breed such men in London. I came from the river, which never had a subject in it, or any other majesty, than that of the Saybrook Platform. I begin to understand you, at last: you are one of those well-meaning men who fancy the earth ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination. His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac

... be! There was not a sign; there was not a sound; and what should he be doing to be alone here, blind watcher of such a finality? It was not real. It was an hallucination. He was not really here. The morning—and days and weeks and years—would come, and he would know that this ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... character simply, they realize it, objectify it. It is not like a hallucination, of which one witnesses the images unfolding before him, as a spectator would. He is rather like an actor who is seized with passion, imagines that the drama he plays is a reality, not a fiction, and that he has been transformed, body and soul, into the personality that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... in Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians was immitigable and ingrained. They had secured from the British parliament in 1774 special immunities and privileges as the result of Sir Guy Carleton's hallucination that given these the French-Canadian habitant would assist the British authorities in chastising the rebellious American colonists into submission. These privileges, continued and embodied in the act of confederation, were enjoyed by the French-Canadians—as they believed—by ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... them we were here?" I asked, so perfectly incredulous that I was not at all surprised to hear him protest, by all the saints, that he never did—never would do. Never. Never.... But why should he? Was he the prey of some strange hallucination? Rocking himself, he struck his breast with his clenched hand, then suddenly caught at his hair and remained perfectly motionless. Minutes passed; this despairing stillness inspired in me a feeling of awe at last—the awe of something inconceivable. My head buzzed ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... abundance of external good of any kind and happy hearts. We all know that the man who is rich is not happier than the poor man. And I, for my part, believe that the raw material of happiness is very equally distributed through the world, and that it is altogether a hallucination by which a poor man thinks, 'If I were wealthy like that other man, how different my life would be.' No, it would not; you would be the same man. The rich man that fancies that because he is rich he is 'better ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... boatmen plied, the turban worn by the captain, the water-jars and culinary implements, became in themselves so inexpressibly absurd and comical, that I was provoked into a long fit of laughter. The hallucination died away as gradually as it came, leaving me overcome with a soft and pleasant drowsiness, from which I sank into a deep, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... Mr. Townsend is crazy. He is over seventy years of age and may be laboring under a hallucination. His story does appear incredible; there are elements of romance stranger than any I ever read about. Had the money been deposited with him for a few months, or even years, it would have been different, but a deposit to cover twenty years seems ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... in his mind, he had gone with the expectation of disappointment. But now, an hour afterwards, the wheels of the train sang her songs, and in the inward ear he could recapture, with the vividness of an hallucination, the timbre of that wonderful voice and also the sweet harmonies of the pianist ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... his handsome face, but Jeanne, choking with a sudden emotion, and on the verge of fainting, began to tremble so violently that her teeth chattered. The dream that had haunted her for some time was suddenly beginning, as if in a kind of hallucination, to take the appearance of reality. They had spoken of a wedding, a priest was present, blessing them; men in surplices were singing psalms; was it not she whom ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... company, and the evening passed in music and conversation. The shadow did not entirely leave the face of Gertrude, and she watched me continually. For myself, I had no thought whatever on the subject, except sorrow for her painful hallucination. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... conjuring powers could bring about such a hallucination, Miss Faith.—What a day it has been! Look at that sunlight and think of the city that hath ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... in this hallucination, which carried him to the ultimate mysteries of the Infinite. But his daughter Gerande, standing on the threshold of the door, had heard all. She rushed into her father's arms, and he pressed her convulsively ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... conceived it by way of pandering to the after-dinner humour of the high gods. As I sat down I rubbed my eyes. Was this brown-whiskered, bald-headed clerical gentleman real? The rubbing of my eyes dispelled no hallucination. He was flesh and blood and still regarded me urbanely. It was horrible. The desertion of the scoundrelly husband, who I thought was lost somewhere in the cesspool of Europe, was the basis, the sanction of the relations between Judith ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... more dreadful thought flashed into his mind. All those men, of the whaling company and the sanitarium, thought him a little crazy. And, since lunatics are always convinced of the reality of their visions, what if the sealmen—his adventure amidst them—had been but a dream, a nightmare, an hallucination? What if he were in truth crazy? The fear grew rapidly. What if he were? God! He, hunting for the Peary, when all those planes and men had failed! He, expecting to achieve what those searchers, with far greater resources, had not been able ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter

... there would be a large body of witnesses in accord with me. If the inference of a disembodied intelligence, as the source of such phenomena, is difficult of acceptation, that of fraud and collusion is inadmissible, and that of hallucination more difficult than that of the spiritual origin. Of the different hypotheses, then, I take that which seems the most satisfactory one in view of the ascertained facts. But "seeing is believing," and I can fully appreciate the incredulity of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... had avowed she would ride him. There was no alternative, and her misgivings only made matters worse. Nevertheless, once in the saddle, she imagined she had the hallucination that to ride off so, with the long open miles ahead, was really thrilling. This remarkable state of mind lasted until Spillbeans began to trot, and then another day of misery beckoned to Carley with gray ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... foaming wash creaming against the gate-posts. He had taken thirty grains of quinine, and the drug was buzzing in his ears like a nest of hornets, making his hands and knees tremble, and causing a sickening palpitation of the stomach. Once, opening his eyes, he saw what he took to be an hallucination. Not far out, and coming in across the Jessie's anchorage, he saw a whale-boat's nose thrust skyward on a smoky crest and disappear naturally, as an actual whale-boat's nose should disappear, as it slid down the back ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... subsided once more into his chair, "this must be a hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... then what could it be? Perhaps the man was English and a spy of the English government, for was there not disaffection in some of the parishes? Perhaps it was a plan of robbery. To such a state of hallucination did his weakened mind come, that he forgot the kindly feeling he had had for this stranger who had worked for him without pay. Suspicion, the bane of sick old age, was hot on him. He remembered that M'sieu' had put an arm through his when they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... hallucination continued I have no means of knowing. From it, by a great effort, I suddenly aroused myself, and returned to my proper senses. Where I was, and all the extraordinary events of the last few days, were clear in my recollection. But I was weighed down with weakness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... believer in ghosts, but I had to hit on some theory there and then. My nerves had been out of order for a month or two, and the long railway journey must have played havoc with them. The whole thing was a hallucination. So I told myself while pulling the coverings off the skylights, but somehow got mighty little comfort out of it; and I will not deny that I fumbled a bit with the padlock on the main hatchway, or that I looked down a second time before setting ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... examining with a degree of astonishment that all my reasoning power failed to lessen, obtruded itself on my attention though quite motionless. The persistence and fixity of the phenomenon excluded any idea of hallucination. I am totally exempt from all nervous disorders capable of influencing the sense of sight. The cause of such visual disturbance is, I think, generally due to stomach trouble; and, thank God! I have an excellent stomach. Moreover, visual illusions are accompanied with special abnormal ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... done all in his power to meet the demands of this incessant country that more in sorrow than in anger he will grant you, was misgoverned in the past. That was its misfortune, never his fault. This is a steadily recurring phase of the fixed hallucination in his blood. Ireland never is, but only always has been cursed by English rule. He himself, the Englishman of the day, is always a simple, bluff, good-hearted fellow. His father if you like, his ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... greeting. He merely paused and stared—deliberately stood and stared as if stupefied by the apparition. In fact, he was so startled by her sudden appearance that for a moment he felt the terror of a drunkard's first hallucination. The thought was momentary. He knew better. He was not drunk. The girl was there all right—the real thing—living, beautiful flesh and blood. For one second's anguish the love of her strangled him. The desire to take her in his arms was all but resistless in its fierce ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... season he was afforded an "evidence of his salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other feeling than that of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... finger was on the trigger of his piece, but he did not fire, though he carefully covered the figure before him, and watched attentively to make sure that it was no hallucination. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... that what he says cannot always be relied upon. Again, it seems next to an impossibility that if any passenger were saved we should not have heard of it. Altogether we feel inclined to judge that the man, though evidently believing he spoke truth, was but labouring under an hallucination." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... Singing is connected in too extrinsic and accidental a manner with hearing to bear out such an hypothesis. I can hear and imagine tones far beyond the range of my own voice. In listening to an orchestral performance with all the parts, or in having an hallucination of such a performance, it is impossible for me to think that my understanding of this broad and complicated sound-fabric has been effected by my one larynx, which is, moreover, no very practised singer. I consider the sensations which in listening to ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... several thousand cases of it at his finger-tips—he had measured its reaction-times and calculated its cephalic index, and analyzed its secretions and tested it for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, auto-suggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and hysteria and ecstasy; and over the head of any disputatious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-load ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... on the whole business of liquor license as an unspeakable madness. Regarded simply as a question of dollars and cents, they look on it as a horrible nightmare—a hallucination fallen on men nearly allied to that form of mental abberration which carries men to mad-houses and insane asylums, a strange and mysterious perversion of the human faculties. Regarded in its economical aspects, they hold that it would ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... of the ship riding along beside me, out there in the hype. Where nothing material could possibly exist. Where not even light could reflect back, or any other wave propagation." Lance shook his head, recalling the experience. "What could have caused a hallucination like that?" ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke

... curtain hung up by a curtain-rod over the entrance was all that separated it from the room of his father and mother. The thick air stifled him. His brother, who slept in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and he was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little troubles of the day reappeared infinitely magnified. In this state of nervous tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The creaking of a plank terrified him. His father's ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... the absence of which a man's exit would be most miserable, though for a time he had observed righteousness purely and piously? Nay, says Calvin (Instit. iii. 2), unless this your faith foretells you your perseverance assuredly, without possibility of hallucination, it must be cast aside as vain and feeble. I recognise the disciple of Luther. A Christian, said Luther (De captivitate Babylonis), cannot lose his salvation, even if he wanted, except ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... coherent thought was that his speculation concerning the reality of this experience was at last resolved. This could not possibly be an hallucination; at least this particular sequence of events was not. And he was still hazily considering that when a hand fell on his shoulder, fingers ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... Nor does this reflect on his honesty. Doubtless he believed, as he represented, that he had actually had a conversation with the dead Marteville, and had learned from him the whereabouts of the missing receipt. In the form his dissociation took he could no more escape such a hallucination than can the twentieth-century medium avoid the belief that he is a veritable intermediary between the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... But the night of the funeral, after the girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of the bed, looking at her! Of course she was overwrought nervously. Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the woman comes every night. She knows it's hallucination, optical delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do. They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried auto-suggestion—no use. She's all right through the day, but at night, in ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... begged. "Leave me one bean only? I promise not to eat it, not to dissect it, not to subject it to experiments of any sort. Let me just have it to look at, to be sure that what you have told me is not an hallucination." ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned to this earth. This poetical monomaniac ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... Reuben, after his enthusiasm of the summer had vanished, he felt a prodigious mortification in reflecting that Adele had been so closely the witness of his short-lived hallucination. It humiliated him bitterly to think that all his religious zeal had proved in her regard but the empty crackling of a fire of thorns. No matter what may be a youth's sentiment for girlhood, he never likes it to be witness of anything disparaging ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... to the idea of the cosmic me,—than immediately our reflection begins to demolish him under the pretext of perfecting him. To perfect the idea of God, to purify the theological dogma, was the second hallucination of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... heart gave a great throb. Could it be, or was the moon weaving some hallucination in his troubled brain? If it was a phantom, it was that of Lady Clementina: if but modeled of the filmy vapors of the moonlight, and the artist his own brain, the phantom was welcome as joy. His spirit seemed to soar aloft in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... on, looking gravely into his face. "I do not believe that your story was false, Mr. Smith, but it seems to me that you must suspect now that your visions and the gold plates were hallucination, not reality." She paused, eager question in tone and look, but the question was of the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... brush, at first merely wishing to give a simple touch, and then had been carried on from correction to correction, until at last, with the candle in his hand, he painted there like a man in a state of hallucination, amid the pale light which darted hither and thither as he gesticulated. His powerless creative rage had seized hold of him again, he was wearing himself out, oblivious of the hour, oblivious of the world; he wished to infuse life into his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... eyes—eyes, remember, which are mere fictions of my imagination—when I look into her face, when I see her move so statelily into my presence, I recognize there that portion of her which she has inherited from the Aphrodite of other days; and this I know is beauty. It is not the beauty of an hallucination, the halo which a heart diseased casts about the head of its idol. It is the beauty which is seen by a sober second thought, a beauty which does not so much dazzle as it delights; a beauty which does not fade with the passing ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of her lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the propriety of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover from his present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental fondness, kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the chamber, gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and had a high opinion of the submissive temper of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... to me; so she feigned sleep and I lay by her side till morning, when I awoke and found her gone.' 'O my lord Kemerezzeman,' rejoined the Vizier, 'surely thou sawest this in thy sleep; it must have been a delusion of dreams or a hallucination caused by eating various kinds of food or a suggestion of the accursed devils.' 'O pestilent old man,' cried the prince, 'wilt thou too make a mock of me and tell me this was an illusion of dreams, when this eunuch confessed to the young lady, saying, "I will return to thee forthwith and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... glimpse of her little pupils, could discover nothing but a group of persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some titanic race. Not one among them but seemed to have reached the high-water mark of six feet. Was it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the wonderful starlight? Or were they as huge as they seemed? The young men looked giants, the girls as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all had ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... revival of the perception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfillment. We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic apparatus in which this road is really followed, i.e. where the wishing merges into an hallucination, This first psychic activity therefore aims at an identity of perception, i.e. it aims at a repetition of that perception which is connected with the fulfillment of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... himself irrational. He becomes the puppet of passions which the sane man cannot so much as picture to his fancy, the victim of desire, ever recurring and ever destined to remain unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lunacy than the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul thirstier than it was before, the paroxysm of unnatural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... like to substitute for it, "Be thou a subjective hallucination arising from an uprush of inhibited emotional disturbance from the subliminal consciousness, or the objectivisation of a telepathic communication from the extra-corporeal sphere of being, or, finally, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... voice had said, she was unable to tell, yet averred that the words were perfectly distinct. In a moment the entire family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice was believed to be an hallucination caused by the mother's great anxiety and her disordered nerves. But for months afterward, at irregular intervals of a few days, the voice was heard by the several members of the family, and by others. All declared it unmistakably the voice of Charles Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed to come from ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... in the next room, and the fading light fell on something white which pushed aside the black brocade bed-curtain—a large yellow-white hand holding a small gleaming knife. The Duchess, still with the dread of insanity upon her, told herself that it was an hallucination, a delusion, the frenzied working of her overwrought brain. She gathered her courage and fixed her eyes on the mirror, which showed her what she conceived to be a phantom. The hand was large, with hair growing hideously ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... (there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation,) I continued to urge till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which relate to the emotions and rites of the inner temple; Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers—Mrs. Browning, for instance—to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart's holy of holies that one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... believe it. He took it to be the hallucination of a man weak with thirst. But one thing was settled in his mind: if the cave were empty, he wouldn't waste any more time here. Danger was increasing with every minute. He pawed his way into the rear of the cave and had not gone ten feet before he stumbled over ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... George," he said, "I am answered. I wish I could drive out of your mind that extraordinary hallucination relative to my supposed knowledge of your young English friend. It is impossible! Very good! I shall look forward to a time, Sir George, when we may ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the nervous exhaustion caused by these constant assaults, the irritation of this painful continence, began to disturb Germinie's faculties. She fancied that she could see her temptations: a ghastly hallucination brought the realization of her dreams near to her senses. It happened that at certain moments the things she saw in her room, the candlesticks, the legs of the chairs, everything about her assumed impure appearances and shapes. Obscenity arose from everything ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... was half disposed to believe himself the victim of some sweet hallucination, and was almost afraid to speak of the fancies that floated from time to time before his eyes, lest he should be told that his mind was wandering, and that he was ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... envy of your wealth had driven me mad; it was fear lest you should go off and leave me behind, and should get to Guiana and to El Dorado first. I couldn't shake off my hallucination however much I tried—which wasn't much; always and everywhere I could see you dead. You know that the Klondike with its few hours of winter daylight, its interminable nights, its pale-green moon which seems to shine forever in a steely cloudless sky, and its ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... hope of rousing him from this strange hallucination, many persons, without regard to his prayers and cries, threw themselves upon him and embraced him, bidding him observe that he was not broken for all that. But all they gained by this was to see the poor creature sink to the earth, uttering lamentable moans, and instantly ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... reluctantly refer, but which I dare not, like Bishop Burnet, pass over unnoticed—I mean the famous trial before him, at Bury St. Edmunds, for witchcraft. I fostered a hope that I should have been able, by strict inquiry, to contradict, or mitigate, the hallucination under which he is generally supposed to have then laboured, and which has clouded his fame—even in some degree impairing the usefulness of that bright example of Christian piety which he has left for the edification of mankind. But I ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... couldn't help that the tears came to his eyes. He had believed in the beginning, that that which he saw was nothing but an hallucination, but this he had already forgotten. He only thought about how pretty everything was. He felt a genuine, deep sorrow because the city ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... seemed to flutter and fly around me like those motes of mingled light and darkness which float in the air around the head when the blood is rushing upwards with undue violence. I was a prey to a kind of hallucination; I was stifling; I wanted air. Unconsciously I fanned myself with the bit of paper, the back and front of which successively came before my eyes. What was my surprise when, in one of those rapid revolutions, at the moment when the back was turned to me I thought I caught sight of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... I saw him almost as plainly as I see you two now. Then he was gone; gone so quickly I could not conceive the possibility of it. The whole affair appeared imaginary, a matter of nerves. It was an hallucination; out of my own brain, it seemed, I had conjured up that crouching figure. I had overheard your roll-call, and realized no trooper could have been there. I even convinced myself that it was all a fantasy. I was so certain of it that I stole ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... same cause, i.e., a malicious agency. Neither can one dismiss the testimony of those who swore they were actual eye-witnesses of metamorphoses, on the mere assumption that all such witnesses were liable to hallucination or hysteria, or ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... and got the thing, not until he touched it quite persuaded he was not the victim of an optical hallucination. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... glare of the most ardent imagination the world has ever known. By a rare combination this philosopher was also a man, like the story-tellers of the Orient, to whom solitude and the over-excitement of night-work had communicated a brilliant and unbroken hallucination. He was able to impart this fever to his readers, and to plunge them into a sort of Arabian Nights country, where all the passions, all the desires of real life appear, but expanded to the point of fantasy, like the dreams brought on by laudanum or hasheesh. Why, then, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... investigation; that it will not pass the ordeal of comparison; that it is in its hues a perfect chamelion; that consequently it can never do more than lead to the most absurd deductions: that the most ingenious systems, when they have their foundations in hallucination, crumble like dust under the rude band of the assayer; that the most sublimated doctrines, when they lack the substantive quality of rectitude, evaporate under the scrutiny of the sturdy examiner, who tries them in the crucible; that it is not by levelling abusive language against ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... it was only an hallucination, after all. One of these strange pranks that the over-strained intellect sometimes plays with us. Perhaps I have been thinking too much lately. And now I really think I had better follow Niti's advice, and take my night-cap and go ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... Bluecher's strange hallucination, which, though ludicrous, is very sad. He fancies himself with child by a Frenchman; and deplores that such an event should have happened to him in his old age! He does not so much mind being with ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... been with the hallucination, that he had not thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... the good of such charity and considered it a form of self-hallucination, all the more harmful because people thereby acquire a sort of moral right to continue that idle, aristocratic life and get to go on increasing ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... relation in all its mysterious vitality. So strong were their impressions that each morning I expected to receive some token from him which would prove that they were not lies. As my expectation grew cold and faint, the sense of a double hallucination tormented me—the past and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt



Words linked to "Hallucination" :   hallucinate, freak out, misconception, auditory hallucination, trip, psychotic belief



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