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Reality   /rˌiˈælətˌi/   Listen
Reality

noun
(pl. realities)
1.
All of your experiences that determine how things appear to you.  Synonym: world.  "We live in different worlds" , "For them demons were as much a part of reality as trees were"
2.
The state of being actual or real.  Synonyms: realism, realness.
3.
The state of the world as it really is rather than as you might want it to be.
4.
The quality possessed by something that is real.



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"Reality" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the distance; Debono's ivory porters arriving, for whom I have waited. My men rushed madly to my boat, with the report that two white men were with them who had come from the SEA! Could they be Speke and Grant? Off I ran, and soon met them in reality. Hurrah for old England! they had come from the Victoria N'yanza, from which the Nile springs .... The mystery of ages solved. With my pleasure of meeting them is the one disappointment, that I had not met them farther on the road in ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... side and the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement which is followed, but with considerable modification, in Ouwater's unique picture of the same subject now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. This approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character which, as Kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher ecclesiastical style. It is worth noting, however, that the early Netherlandish school—as we shall see in a later chapter—developed this characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... my way back to him, but up to this time I have heard absolutely nothing. The few white days in my life are, however, when I get a cheering, comforting letter from him. How I should once have laughed their phraseology to scorn, but then I did not know what reality meant, and they are the only balm of my life now, except mother's little book, and what they have led ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... if he is supposed to be governing himself. But owing to the strange trend of recent society, these enormous earthquakes he has to pass over and treat as private trivialities. In theory the building of a villa is as incidental as the buying of a hat. In reality it is as if all Lancashire were laid waste for deer forests; or as if all Belgium were flooded by the sea. In theory the sale of a squire's land to a moneylender is a minor and exceptional necessity. In reality it is a thing like a German invasion. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... Ada in the hall, asked to accompany her home. Ada's pride for a moment hesitated, and then she answered in the affirmative. When St. Leon had seated her in his sleigh he turned back, on pretext of looking for something, but in reality to ask Anna Graham where Ada lived, as he did not wish to question her on ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... was kept busy getting different views of the big scene. Sometimes there would be shown the raging fire sweeping onward, the black clouds of smoke rolling upward, and the red tongues of flame leaping out. In reality the fire was only a small one, but by cleverly manipulating the camera, and taking close views, it was made to appear as if ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope

... looked up, and there was Denys of Burgundy, but sadly changed; his beard stained with grey, and his clothes worn and ragged; he had a cuirass still, and gauntlets, but a staff instead of an arbalest, To the company he appeared to be bragging and boasting, but in reality he was giving a true relation of Edward the Fourth's invasion of an armed kingdom with 2000 men, and his march through the country with armies capable of swallowing him looking on, his battles at Tewkesbury ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... to be borne in mind about agricultural Japan are that the population is as thick on the ground as the population of the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of Japan is mountain and waste)—ten times thicker than the population of the United States[97]—that Japan is primarily an agricultural country, while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading country, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... furnished objects of pursuit to men, which have wasted and dissipated their energies. Especially the alternations of observation and deduction have been traversed by vanity and superstition which have introduced delusions. As a consequence, men have turned their backs on welfare and reality, in order to pursue beauty, glory, poetry, and dithyrambic rhetoric, pleasure, fame, adventure, and phantasms. Every group, in every age, has had its "ideals" for which it has striven, as if men had blown bubbles into the air, and then, entranced by their beautiful colors, had leaped to catch ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... may be objected that one affirmation does not seem to contain more reality than another; that is to say, it does not appear that we need a greater power for affirming a thing to be true which is true than for affirming a thing to be true which is false. Nevertheless, we observe that one idea contains more reality or perfection than ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality, and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the destiny of man in ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... the immortality of man. It is singular that Dr. Priestley should suggest, as the probable fact, so sheer and baseless a hypothesis as he does in his notes upon the Book of Genesis. He says, "Enoch was probably a prophet authorized to announce the reality of another life after this; and he might be removed into it without dying, as an evidence of the truth of his doctrine." The gross materialism of this supposition, and the failure of God's design which it implies, are a sufficient refutation of it. And, besides the utter unlikelihood of the thought, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... signify that it must not be spoken. It is thus often very difficult to find out the names of particular natives, and strangers would make many mistakes, imagining that they were putting down the name, when in reality they were marking some phrase, signifying that his name could not be mentioned by the one applied to. They have no objection to meet each other after the ceremony, nor do they decline speaking, but ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... "fading" martial immortality, I mean, that every age and every year, And almost every day, in sad reality, Some sucking hero is compelled to rear, Who, when we come to sum up the totality Of deeds to human happiness most dear, Turns out to be a butcher in great business, Afflicting young folks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... fervor of his imagination, its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until his last breath he entertained the idea that he had merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had discovered ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality.... In a rude state of society, men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... an obviously common-sense proceeding should not be universal, is it not? I do not claim to be the discoverer of this method of internal purification, for it is in reality of ancient origin, as we have it on good authority that it was practised by the ancient Egyptians, who, it is believed, acquired their knowledge from observing a bird called the Ibis, a species of Egyptian snipe. The food of this bird, gathered on the banks of the Nile, was of a very constipating ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... and fitting incidents, put together and presented as a picture is; and I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a piece of nature. I have attempted to beguile my readers into something like a sense of reality; to make them fancy that they were reading the unskillful chronicle of things that really occurred, rather than some invented story as interesting as I knew how ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... of adventures, yet he knew that life in reality had just begun. The time would come when he would want to fight the great arrogant bull for the leadership of the herd. He was tired of fighting the young bulls of his own age. He always won, and to an elephant constant winning is almost as dull as ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... now, means in reality to shut yourself up for ten or twelve hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain chained to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... of hiding away in an island of such small size; but it must be borne in mind that the miniature valleys and hills of the interior were, in many places, very rugged and densely clothed with jungle, so that it was, in reality, about as difficult to catch an agile native among them as to catch a rabbit in ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. His intellectual method may be wrong or incomplete, but it in some way enables him to reach the substance of Christian life and light and love and joy. There are passages in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... girl had no shadows. The parting which was before her was not near enough to harm as yet, and she was still able to think, in her ignorance of the world, that even parting was much more in appearance than in reality, and that she would always be running home, always going upon long visits brightening everything, instead of saddening. But even had she been going to the end of the world with her husband next week, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... accomplished; yet she had not learned to substitute the gloss of politeness for the reality ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... had shaken hands with Arizona, then turned and leaped into the saddle. The ropes were loosed. Rickety crouched a moment to feel out the reality of his freedom, then burst away with head close to the ground and ragged mane fluttering. There was no leaning back in this rider. He sat arrowy-straight save that his left shoulder worked back in convulsive jerks as he strove to get the head of Rickety up. But the piebald had ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... of accusing him of the same sin and ordering him to a like fate. In the eyes of the haughty ecclesiastic such a betrayal of cloister secrets would be looked upon as treachery to his vows, whilst in reality it was his very love for his vows, and his horror at their violation, which had inspired the pen that had poured forth burning words of denunciation and scorn. To die openly for the cause would have been one thing—a martyr ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... entertained about a woman's life in hospital service that I am tempted to transcribe a page from my own experience, in order that a glimpse may be had of its reality. Imagine me, then, in a small attic room, carpeted with a government blanket, and furnished with bed, bureau, table, two chairs, and, best of all, a little stove, for the morning is cold, and the lustrous stars still keep their quiet watch in the blue heavens. A glow of warmth and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes; they were those deep and glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconscious of reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move his feet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you and hold ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of skirmishing with the French cavalry, of pursuit, of flight, was very fascinating to a high-spirited lad of seventeen, and after indulging in these fancies for some time, he sighed, as he thought how small was the chance of their becoming reality. ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... society, every Christian soldier was now busily at work. The battles had made a great impression on the men. The war had only just begun, and they knew there were other terrible fights in store. The sight of the dead and dying was something to which they had not yet become accustomed. The stern reality of war was upon them, and, as Mr. Lowry wrote, 'There are no scoffers left in Lord Methuen's camp.' Take one instance out ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... with the Most High—"All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father." In the words of the late Professor G.W. Knox, "Jesus set forth communion with God as the most certain fact of man's experience, and in simple reality made it ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of St. Patrick', written in the twelfth century, supplies all the incidents of St. Patrick's early life recorded by Montalvan and Calderon. He is also frequently referred to by Messingham. But further reflection convinces me that the writer alluded to was in reality the celebrated Latin author of the third century already ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... the public as an object of pity, his wrist tied up and his head elaborately bandaged. A great idea flashed on him. He allowed it to be understood that he was on the track of a most dangerous rebel—a young man who had hanged a yeoman in Dunseveric and nearly murdered a dragoon in Belfast. In reality he was too busy just then with more important matters to make any real search for Neal Ward. But a week later he offered a reward of fifty pounds for such information as ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... many murmurings, many heart frettings. Could it be realized, she would be the happiest of women. Then she had decided to give it all up, to put the golden dream quite out of her life and, behold! she had scarcely done so before it had come true, the dream was a reality, the riches lay at her feet. In no way through her interference had this come about. Yes, but in the moment of her victory the woman who had so longed for money was very miserable; like Dead Sea apples was the taste of this eagerly desired fruit. She was enriched through another's anguish ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... resulting in a terrible loss of Union troops, was in reality a severe disappointment to the rebel leaders. They fully expected, with their overwhelming force to annihilate Grant's army, cross the Tennessee river and administer the same punishment to Buell, and then march on through Tennessee, Kentucky and into Ohio. They ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... into the car and drawing his sword declared his determination to ascend with Blanchard. He was ultimately removed by force. It has sometimes been incorrectly stated that he was Napoleon Bonaparte; his name in reality was Dupont de Chambon. In their Channel crossing Blanchard and his companion, who started from Dover, when about one-third across found themselves descending, and threw out every available thing from the boat or car. When about three- quarters across they were descending again, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... quickly recurring intervals that the work is executed as if there was continuous contact. In no case is there the popular conception of the sending of several messages actually simultaneously over one wire. Each signal in reality has its own time assigned it, divided into short periods of high frequency, and only utilizes the line when ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... Rashleigh, forming his own inference while he adopted my words; "I incline to think with you, that the circumstance must in reality have been mentioned, but so slightly that it failed to attract your attention. And then, as to Campbell's interest with Morris, I incline to suppose that it must have been gained by playing upon his fears. This chicken-hearted fellow, Morris, is bound, I understand, for Scotland, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Gethin Owens always. There's the dear old place!" he cried suddenly; "there's the elder tree over the kitchen door! Well, indeed! I have thought of it many times in distant lands and stormy seas, and here it is now in reality! God bless the old home!" and he took off his cap and waved it round his head as he shouted, "Hoi! hoi!" to Ann, who, already apprised of his coming, was running through the farmyard to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... convince us that we were about the most futile lot of "rookies" that it had ever been their misfortune to encounter. It was not until we were unceremoniously dumped amidst the peaceful inhabitants of a city that slumbers in the shadow of an ancient cathedral that I felt I was in reality ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... faut des emotions" said Blanche. Pen had never seen her or known so much about her in all the years of their intimacy as he saw and knew now: though he saw more than existed in reality. For this young lady was not able to carry out any emotion to the full; but had a sham enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham grief, each of which flared and shone very vehemently for an instant, but subsided and gave place ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... every link of relationship, claiming the fiftieth cousin. Relationship, in fact, never does die out; and though it may become an abstract during busy seasons of ploughing and sowing, it becomes a strong reality at wakes and festivals. Thus, at Kappler's, on this scapulary afternoon, Barthel's brother-in-law's cousin drank with "Cousin Barthel," and Seppl's sister-in-law's niece was treated by "Onkel Seppl." There was one square-built, good-humored old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... The reality then of the Intermediate State is confirmed by our Lord in this narrative. Now observe the weight of this testimony. If the Jews were wrong in believing that the spirits of the just passed into Paradise or into Abraham's bosom our Lord would ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... before that her mother was very ill, and sometimes she had been afraid as she thought of the future; but she had never before heard that dreadful fear put into words; she had never before known that it was not merely a fear, but a terrible reality. 'In about a week's time you will have no mother;' that was what her ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... came—how unwillingly let the proud and sensitive judge. For Penn, though belonging to the meekest of sects, was of a soul by nature aspiring and proud. He had the good sense to know that the outrage committed on him was in reality no disgrace, except to those guilty of perpetrating it. Yet no one likes to appear ridiculous. And the man of elevated spirit instinctively shrinks from making known his misfortunes even to his best friends; he is ashamed of that for which he is in no sense ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... Harrisson, dreamed by Algernon Fenwick, that big hairy man at the wine-merchant's in Bishopsgate, who has a beautiful wife and a daughter who swims like a fish. One of the many might-have-beens that were not! But a decision against its reality demanded time, and his revival of memory was only forty-eight hours ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... the Captain; "you are worse than the reality. I shall go ashore, and take my chance of ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... being told in the middle of some pretty speech to "Shut up!" or to " Keep out!" by some soured and inelegant operator on the line, to whom the romance of telegraphy had long ago given place to the monotonous, poorly-paid, everyday reality. ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past—of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion or scorn, of what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit, and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely province-house, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... amounts deposited by settlers should be partly applied in payment for the lands thus surveyed. Together, these two laws made the grasping of land on an extensive scale a simple process. The "settler" (which so often meant, in reality, the capitalist) could secure the collusion of the Land Office, and have fraudulent surveys made. Under these surveys he could lay claim to immense tracts of the most valuable land and have them reported as "swamp" or "desert" lands; he could have the boundaries of original claims vastly ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... Information Office in Cheapside, the young gentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, waxed moustache, and diamond tie-pin had made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of his client, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an early opportunity of doing. The reality had not corresponded with the glowing picture. The employer had failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not appeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with a trooper of the Cape Mounted ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... whom she did not know, the idiot began to utter deafening howls, crouching herself against the wall. Morel appeared careless to all that was passing around him; the blow was so frightful, so unexpected, the consequences of this arrest appeared so terrible, that he could scarcely believe in its reality. Already weakened by privations of every description, his strength failed him; he remained pale and haggard, seated on his stool, as though incapable of speech or motion, his head drooping on his breast, and his arms ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... spontaneous battles of their civil rights revolution. Under the direction of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and its charismatic founder, Martin Luther King, Jr., the strategy of massive civil disobedience, broached in 1948 by A. Philip Randolph, became a reality. Other organizations quickly joined the battle, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also organized by Dr. King but soon destined to break away into more radical paths, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an older organization, now expanded and under its new ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... in mere idleness. Then he seated himself with his back to the piano, dragging a newspaper under his elbow, and thrusting his hand through his hair, as if he had been attracted by some bit of local news in the "Laceham Courier." He was in reality looking at Maggie who had not taken the slightest notice of his approach. She had always additional strength of resistance when Philip was present, just as we can restrain our speech better in a spot that we feel ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... national dances of the country, and more particularly the national dance, the 'Hora,' of which some account will be given hereafter. Behind the monastery a small valley penetrates into the mountains. This valley is, in reality, an extensive wood, containing some magnificent forest trees and replete with ferns and wild flowers, whilst through the centre of it a river rushes headlong, forming, as it descends, three beautiful cascades, the last or highest being surmounted by a towering rock, to ascend which, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... "Here they are in reality!" he said to himself and, not knowing where to hide his gold pieces, he put them in his mouth precisely ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... there had been a chance for him to have such a home, and live in it—not alone. That chance had gone—had never really existed, he knew now. For sooner or later he must have awakened from the pleasant dreams of self-persuasion to the reality of his relentless responsibility. No, there had never been such a chance; and he thanked God that he had learned before it was too late that for him there could be no earthly paradise, no fireside a deux, no home, no hope ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... faint yawn. She was, in reality, far too interested to be really sleepy. Suddenly she dropped into a sitting position on the floor. "You have me," she said, "in the hollow of your hand. Do you mean to crush me? What have I done that you ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... predestination; it ends with glorification. It began with sovereign grace in a by-past eternity, and no link will be awanting till the ransomed spirit be presented faultless before the throne! Grace and glory! If the earnest be sweet, what must be the reality? If the wilderness table contain such rich provision, what must be the glories of the eternal banqueting house? Oh! my soul, make sure of thine interest in the one, as the blessed prelude to the other. "Having access by faith ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff

... imaginative and adventurous vein, I always know that I am in for a late night and an extra large gas bill. Like the British soldier Mr. CHAMBERS does not carry the word "impossible" in his vocabulary. Why should he, since he can give the semblance of reality to the utterly unbelievable? Then one mutters, "What utter rubbish!" and sends round to the bookseller to enquire if by any chance there is a sequel coming out. In The Slayer of Souls (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) Mr. CHAMBERS ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... Antoinette," said she. "With such sensibility as yours, you are likely to suffer from the faults and misconceptions of the world; for magnanimity is so rare that it is often misunderstood. You would share your sister's danger, while believing in its reality. No, no, darling, I cannot accept your generous sacrifice. It would be useless, for Josepha's terror will shorten her prayers. Before you could reach the chapel, she ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... violence of her feelings. She thought: "This must be love. This is love!" And yet her conscience inarticulately accused her of obliquity. But she did not care, and she would not reflect. She thought that she wilfully, perversely, refused to reflect; but in reality she was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... cast upon the bleak New England coast, and the fervor of that devotion which led them into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of reproducing the institutions of God's chosen people, a picture of which they believed was divinely preserved for their guidance in the Bible. What they did in reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to their priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and blood the spirit of free thought was bred; the impulse which had goaded them to reject the Roman dogmas was quick within them still, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... The reality was different. He was in Great Falls, but he had not ridden vaingloriously down Central Avenue surrounded by the Happy Family, and watched by the gaping populace. Instead, he had chosen a side street and he had ridden alone, and no one ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... of Friar's Park had been wide of the reality—and there was no sign of occupancy about this strange-looking mansion, which might have hidden forgotten for centuries in the horse-shoe of the hills. The stillness of the place was of that sort which almost seems to be palpable; that can be seen and felt. A humid chill arose apparently from ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... against my treachery, as she called it; while I, by the most solemn vows, pleaded my own equal fright, and the reality of the danger that had alarmed ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... in the open air, the Jinnee "towered" like a pheasant shot through the breast, and Horace closed his eyes with a combined swing-switchback-and-Channel-passage sensation during a flight which apparently continued for hours, although in reality it probably did not occupy more than a very few seconds. His uneasiness was still further increased by his inability to guess where he was being taken to—for he felt instinctively that they were not travelling ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... revelation, is meant a grand profound insight, an inspired vision of truth, so deep and so living as to make it a reality like that of the outward world, then we see no better explanation of the monotheism of the Hebrews than this conviction transmitted from Abraham through father and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... our genial humorist came near the serious reality of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia Editor. The essay was a source of amusement to all its readers except ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... doubt to be easily explained. The upper window where I saw the light on the night of November 4, with the shadow of a large head and shoulder upon the blind, is one of the windows in the square room under the roof. In reality it has no blind ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... anguish of it hath taken hold of me, And I am gripped by Nature. O, it comes Upon me, this too natural remorse. I faint! I flinch from the raw agony! I cannot face this common human throe! Ah! Ah! the crude stab of reality! I am a son, and I have killed my mother! Why! I am now no more than him who tills Or reaps: and I am seized by primal pangs. Mother! [He drinks. The thunder crieth motherless. Ah! how this sword of lightning thrusts at me! O, all the artist in my soul ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... vomiting, and upon her heart as almost to arrest its motion and induce fainting, can we believe that it will have no effect upon her womb and the fragile being contained within it? Facts and reason then, alike demonstrate the reality of the influence, and much practical advantage would result to both parent and child, were the conditions and extent ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... of vessels for sale; my own experience, hitherto, had been that it was the exception, rather than the rule, for I had found that if indeed the advertisement did not contain some gross mis-statement, it was almost always so cunningly worded as to convey an impression totally at variance with the reality. In this case, however, I was somewhat more hopeful, for these Natal clippers were not wholly strange to me. The ship to which I had lately belonged had loaded her outward cargo in the same dock with one or another of them on more ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... obey both of you." Niafer throughout this while said nothing at all. But she had her private thoughts, to the effect that neither of these high-and-mighty trollops was in reality the person whom henceforward Dom ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... understands it, it seems to me better to follow the practical truth of things rather than an imaginary view of them. For many Republics and Princedoms have been imagined that were never seen or known to exist in reality. And the manner in which we live and in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder that he who suits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself.' Nothing that Machiavelli wrote is more sincere, analytic, positive and ruthless. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... characteristics. Hitherto, Buchanan and Professor Denton have been the most remarkable psychometrists; the experiments related in their works have been made before witnesses and permit of no doubt whatever as to the reality of this ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... a small bust of Leonardo da Vinci, for it was near here he died. His remains are laid in the beautiful chapel at the corner of the castle court, and the romantic story of his last moments at Fontainebleau becomes the sad reality of a tombstone covering ashes mostly unknown and certainly indistinguishable; "among which" as the epitaph painfully records, "are supposed to be the remains of Leonardo da Vinci." He had been brought to Paris a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... possibly without foundation. To such an expression of mere gratuitous malignity, as it happened to be supported by no one argument except a remark, apparently absurd, but certainly false, I did not condescend to answer. In reality, the possibility had never occurred to me that any person of judgment would seriously suspect me of taking liberties with that part of the work, since, though no one of the parties concerned but myself stood in so central a position to the circumstances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... minutes dragged themselves very slowly away. It seemed two hours, though it was in reality but ten minutes before conqueror and conquered heard the roll of returning wheels, the sound of voices calling for Vivian, the approach of hurrying footsteps. Mr. Crusoe stirred uneasily. He would have willingly saved Vivian from the ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... are you! (In deep tones to PHIL.) And now sir, you explain. (Exits with Mrs. Schuyler.) (PHIL stands in terror, thinking a powerful foe stands behind him. In reality, it is the midget husband. PHIL tries to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed Peshtigo, Menekaune, Williamsonville, etc., but all that has been said can give the stranger but a faint conception of the reality. The heat has been compared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on an object by a blow-pipe; but even that would not account for some of the phenomena. For instance, we have in our possession a copper cent taken from the pocket ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... In reality, Jones was shrewd, keen, able to obtain information without creating suspicion. He had been one of Strong's best men and the latter felt he could count ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood

... that flashed at Agadir now burst into flame. The Great War broke and half the world saw red. What Lloyd George believed impossible now became bitter and wrathful reality. Though he did not know it at the moment, the supreme opportunity of his life lay on the lap of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... nurse in charge promising to warn them if any change should take place. The last pains had so thoroughly exhausted her that she had fallen into a doze. But she could hear the chatter of the nurses so clearly that she did not believe herself asleep. And in this film of sleep reality was distorted, and the unsuccessful operation which the nurses were discussing Esther understood to be a conspiracy against her life. She awoke, listened, and gradually sense of the truth returned to her. She was in the hospital.... The nurses were talking of some one who had died last week.... That ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... the use of the inner senses, having conquered the desires of the outer senses, having conquered the desires of the individual soul, and having obtained knowledge, prepare now, O disciple, to enter upon the way in reality. The path is found: make yourself ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... log for a long time, Clara got up and walked under the trees. The imaginary man, suggested to her mind by her father's words, became every moment more and more a reality. Before her eyes danced the laughing eyes of the young man who for a moment had lingered beside her while Kate Chanceller talked to his companion that evening when they had been challenged on the streets of Columbus. She remembered the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... the underlying meaning of this struggle; to you who know yourselves akin to those who have preceded and to those who will follow; to you who are daily making this ideal a reality, this Call ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... world is encircled in the coils of a vast serpent. The ancient name for it was the Midgard serpent, and doubtless, for the old myth-maker, it had another significance. Today, however, the symbol may still hold good of a certain terrible and hideous reality. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... incident is sufficient to prevent its having occurred in reality or to more than one inventive imagination. It must therefore have been brought to Europe from the East and adapted to local conditions at Dort and Swaffham. Prof. Cowell suggests that it was possibly adapted at the latter place to account for the effigy ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... the night. Emily retired within her chamber, while they passed the casement. When she returned to it, all was again quiet. It was now very late, she was wearied with watching, and began to doubt the reality of what she had seen on the preceding night; but she still lingered at the window, for her mind was too perturbed to admit of sleep. The moon shone with a clear lustre, that afforded her a complete view of the terrace; but she saw only a solitary centinel, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... expected they would do their duty and behave themselves. Nol Grampus had charge of one watch with one of the seamen and Mr Scuttle under him, and I took the other with the other seaman, Tom Rockets and the boy. Tom had not got over his innocent country look, though he was sharp enough in reality, and did his duty as a seaman very fairly. Old Grampus, who had taken a fancy to him, was always teaching him something or other likely to prove useful. "Now, Tom, you may be no wiser nor a young gull as has never ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... later life, Benjamin Franklin referred to this event, and spoke of himself as having received retribution for his influence over Collins. For, when they were so intimate in Boston, Benjamin corrupted his religious opinions by advocating doubts about the reality of religion, until Collins became a thorough sceptic. Until that time he was industrious, temperate, and honest. But having lost his respect for religion, he was left without restraint, and went rapidly to ruin. Benjamin was the greatest sufferer ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... left this "pleasure dome," which, although less stately than that "in Xanadu of Kubla Kahn," held all the fairy charms of a bright Eutopia; and with the vain regrets which all must feel who leave some fancy realm for the cold regions of reality, we took the stage route for Weaversville, forty miles farther up the mountain heights, whose crests were now white with snow, and the road in many places running within six inches of the ragged chasms, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves—some officer or priest, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... was the mysterious ringer? The bell rope had long ago rotted away. The walls had once been plastered and were still too smooth to offer a foothold to the most expert climber. How then to account for the regular nightly tolling? The mystery had in reality deepened instead of lightened. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... spoke. He was an imposing figure with his great head-dress of eagles' feathers, and clad in a suit of red flannel on which was wrought a rich mosaic of coloured beadwork. White ermine tails dangled from his shoulders, arms, and breast. He was in reality cruel and vindictive, but his cunning and worldly wisdom made him a master in expediency. He had intelligence above the average, but lacked the good qualities of such as the loyal Crowfoot, the Chief of the Blackfoot nation, who also had the benefit ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... him while she gazed toward the ship, that he was barely conscious of the little tremor of amusement that went through him for the triteness of her speech. Such triteness was beautiful when it expressed such reality. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... of the Black Hole; and though at that time I had no intention of writing a story for boys, I hope that the impressions of Indian life, character and scenery then gained have helped to create an atmosphere and to give reality to my picture. History is more than a mere record of events; and I shall be satisfied if the reader gets from these pages an idea, however imperfect, of the conditions of life under which all empire builders labored in India a hundred and fifty ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... seem like a formidable and revolutionary doctrine, but, in reality, it is based on every-day acts of the public representatives, with which every one is familiar. Suppose it is conceived to be for the public interest that a certain railway shall be built. To do this it is necessary to cross many ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... contrast! In the dead of night, in a desolate Highland glen, scaling a stone fence in a pitiless storm of wind and rain, and climbing up a dead tree to break off a few branches to serve as fuel for a most obstinate fire—such was the reality; and then picture, instead of this, sitting before a good fire in a comfortable inn, with a good supper, and snug apartments with every accommodation—these had been our fond anticipations for the week-end! We certainly ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... reality of the situation as above portrayed warrants him in publishing the present volume. Whether his criticism of poultry literature is founded on fact or fancy may, five years after the copyright date of this book, be told by any ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... subject of our investigation. We shall also, on the other hand, show that without them a drama becomes altogether prosaic and empirical, that is to say, patched together by the understanding out of the observations it has gathered from literal reality. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... "Whittington and his Cat," merely transferring the scene from London to Dublin; and, as he hears your county is highly celebrated for the peculiar breed, sending to Ireland for one of the esteemed "Kilkenny species," which would give a greater reality to the dramatis personae and feline adjunct. This is a mere suggestion, as any other subject you may prefer—such as the Rebellion of '98, Donnybrook Fair, the Interior of the Irish Mansion House, or the House of Commons, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... bordered with a hedgerow and wide-spreading fields; but now on this dark night, nothing of all this was seen, and Arthur wondered what kind of a place they were passing through. When he had made little pictures in his mind of their arrival at Oldbridge, they had not been at all what the reality was. He had imagined a drive through a busy town, where they would pass through street after street, and that the bright gas would light the way, and show him the place and the things ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... of gold in quartz to the Colonial Secretary. Sir C. A. Fitzroy evinced little sympathy with the discovery, and in a despatch to Lord Grey upon the subject, expressed his opinion that "any investigation that the Government might institute with the view of ascertaining whether gold did in reality exist to any extent or value in that part of the colony where it was supposed from its geological formation that metal would be found, would only tend to agitate the public ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... but the monotony was not relieved by any change in the face of things and so they determined that it was rather stupid to stand there. Nettie brought down her two dolls and they played with these for a while, but keeping house in a make believe way was not so exciting when there was the reality close at hand, and they decided that paper dolls ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... life had eaten as much fruit as he desired. I think I never talked to you as much as I desired. You once told me that you would show me your novel. [Footnote: I began two, but they were not at all clever and have long since disappeared.] Is it a reality or a myth? I should be interested to see it if you like to send me that or any ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... romance and realism is that in romance the heroines weep from the eyelashes out; in realism, some of the tears get into the nostrils. In real life it is reality that moves our hearts, and Dyckman was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... do not definitely set our minds to assimilate the ideas of Jesus, we shall make too little of the heart of God. With Jesus this is the central and crucial reality. He emphasizes the generosity of God. God makes his sun rise on the good and on the bad; he sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). God's flowers are just as beautiful in the bad man's garden. God knows what his child needs, and gives it, whether it is a very good child or a very ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... breath which spoke them turned the balances in which the whole subsequent history of civilization hung. It was the Yes and No which applied the brakes to the Juggernaut of usurpation, whose ponderous wheels had been crushing through the centuries. It was the Yes and No which evidenced the reality of a power above all popes and empires. It was the Yes and No which spoke the supreme obligation of the human soul to obey God and conscience, and started once more the pulsations of liberty in the arteries of man. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... letters, likenesses, and locks of hair; he strove to soothe his self-esteem by showing what passions he had inspired, at the risk of having his fair listener, with a secret smile, imagine exaggeration where, in reality, ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... astronomical geography of those countries has scarcely made any progress during the space of thirty years. If the American limits recently fixed between France and Portugal should one day cease to be mere diplomatic illusions and acquire reality in being traced on the territory by means of astronomical observations (as was projected in 1817), this undertaking would lead geographical engineers to that unknown region which, at 3 1/2 degrees west of Cayenne, divides the waters between ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... then, at present, becomes a dyke around the invision from within. And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being built up, girder by girder, around the vague spirit. Space, the physical space of savage shyness, is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... maintaining itself in tranquillity and in a just judgment of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgment may say to the thing which falls under its observation: This thou art in substance [reality], though in men's opinion thou mayest appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand: Thou art the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... some way of saving me? I was a child. You were a man. Could you not have obtained some one who was not a priest, so that such a mockery of a marriage might have remained a mockery, and not have become a reality? It would have been easy to do that. My father's last hours would then have been lightened all the same, while you and I would not have been joined in that irrevocable vow. I tell you, Lord Chetwynde, that, in the years that followed, this thought was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... scientists beyond the stress of financial worry is not a bad one. Such persons are benefactors of the race and should be endowed that they may work more freely. That is practically what the kings and emperors of the past did for some of our great writers, artists, and inventors. That is in reality what King Louis did for the newly-born china-industry. When between 1740 and 1750 a company was formed at Vincennes to make pate tendre, the King himself contributed to the venture ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... owners, for we had neither time or the means to convey (p. 086) surplus equipment along with us. It was the kind of day that one reads about in "Field Artillery Training" or even endeavours to imitate while manoeuvring out in rest, but for the first time we were doing it in reality. The battery dropped into action on innumerable occasions during the course of the day, and had only time to fire a few rounds before the enemy had decamped out of range. Then we would limber up with all speed, the teams waiting the orthodox two hundred yards in rear and to the flank, and gallop ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... proceedings in bankruptcy had been filed against the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company. These proceedings had revealed the fact that Frank L. Sharpe, supposed to have left the city on business for the company, had in reality disappeared with the entire cash balance of the Consolidated. This disappearance had immediately thrust the Middle West Construction Company into bankruptcy. By Stone's own acts the Stone enterprises had crumpled and fallen, and all his adherents ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... Turnhill was very large for the size of the town. The diminutive town hall, which in reality was nothing but a watch-house, seemed to be a mere incident on its irregular expanse, to which the two-storey shops and dwellings made a low border. Behind this crimson, blue-slated border rose the loftier forms of a ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... the train, one just after the other. The engineman is keenly alert on the instant; and, with one hand on the brake lever, the other on the throttle, he peers steadily ahead. The head-light, that seems so dazzling, and to cast its radiance so far, to those approaching it, in reality illumines but a short space to him who sits behind it, and the engineman sees no evidence of danger. There is no red beacon to stop him, nor any train on the track ahead. He is beginning to think the alarm a false ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... is so great a variation from anything required in the mercantile world that it would be difficult to produce a paper at all similar without an ulterior purpose being at once apparent. For this reason the silk thread interspersion is in reality a very effective medium in preventing counterfeiting, not only on account of its peculiar appearance but also because of the elaborate methods necessary in ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... toward him was so conspicuously, though so irregularly, manifested: a fear of recognition. And this reason adjusted itself in a striking manner to the queer notion that had come into his mind that the Marquis was an ideal creation whose reality was Jeaune d'Antimoine. The thought was absurd, irrational, but it grew stronger and stronger within him—and became an assured conviction when, shortly after the promenade of the Marquis had ended, Jaune came ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... field, by themselves, direct to Heaven, without other interpreter between them, must have made a deep impression on the boys. Its very informality must have added to its solemnity; making it appear, and indeed making it in reality, so much more the genuine, spontaneous, heart-spoken expression of each individual, than the mere customary attendance on a prescribed form can admit. A field of six and a half acres is now rented, at the annual gross cost of L.80, the middle of which is kept for the cricket-ground, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... straw hat. Having for so great a length of time scarcely ever set our eyes upon a female, except the heads of some at a distance, peeping from behind the mud walls that surround the houses, or labouring in the grounds of Kiang-see, the ferry girls, though in reality very plain and coarse-featured, were considered as the most beautiful objects that had occurred in the whole journey. To the occupation of ferrying passengers over the river it seemed they added another, not quite so honourable, for which, however, they had not only the consent and approbation ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... the phonos or mere sound is the natural, unwrought material, which corresponds with the Reality of Nature; and the Meaning or Minding which acts on, articulates and organizes the Sound into Speech, and which measures the sound quantitatively, as in Music, is the Scientific Attribute corresponding with Knowledge. The result of these two in combination is the Art of Speech, generally, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... (or at least is supposed to be) immutable; and the received theory is that no power has the right of changing any part of it. In England, the parliament has an acknowledged right to modify the constitution: as, therefore, the constitution may undergo perpetual changes, it does not in reality exist; the parliament is at once a legislative and a constituent assembly. The political theories of America are more simple and more rational. An American constitution is not supposed to be immutable as in France; nor is it susceptible of modification ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... how better could he bring himself to his senses than by facing this dream, this possession of the night, and crushing it down, putting it out of existence? So he sat still, and gazed at the dream, and felt its reality in every fibre of his being; and poor good Abby sat and talked for all three, and wondered what to goodness was coming ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... son Custis, started to-day for Raleigh, N. C., where our youngest daughter is at school. But it is in reality another flight from the enemy. No one, scarcely, supposes that Richmond will be defended. But ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... strength to undertake to spend the evening with her aunt. All the evening, alone, she questioned herself. Her trouble was terrible; but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagant sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the worst that was possible actually come to pass? Mrs. Penniman, with a degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the line of leaving her alone. The truth is, that her suspicions having been aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... little harbor to the southward where a handful of fishermen had just salvaged two chests of good French gold from a wreck. He told the whole story of the wreck and of the subsequent fight in which his companion had been killed. To add reality to his tale he described several of the ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... JONATHAN may be almost any age,—in reality about thirty five. His head is that of the thinker, high above the eyes. His face bears evidence in its lines of years of labour and service, as well as of a triumphant struggle against ill health. In his eyes is a thoughtful yet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... patient first acquired the faculty of sight, all objects appeared to him so near that he was sometimes afraid of coming in contact with them, though they were in reality at a great distance from him. He saw everything much larger than he had supposed from the idea obtained by his sense of touch. Moving and especially living objects, such as men, horses, etc., appeared ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... of—what about Johnny Simms? Speaking as a psychiatrist, what effect will that business of being in the dark all night and nearly being pecked to death—what will it do to him? Are psychopaths the way they are because they can't face reality, or because they've ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them still in active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China," especially Vol. IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of Egyptian ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... unconsciously dragging the clothing with her. The door of the room is in that direction—can she reach it? Has she power to walk?—can she withdraw her eyes from the face of the intruder, and so break the hideous charm? God of Heaven! is it real, or some dream so like reality as to nearly overturn the judgment ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... were in agitation, many reasons of suspicion were carried to the queen; and she sent Robert Sacville, son of the treasurer, to Essex House, on pretence of a visit, but, in reality, with a view of discovering whether there were in that place any unusual concourse of people, or any extraordinary preparations which might threaten an insurrection. Soon after, Essex received a summons to attend the council, which met at the treasurer's house; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... in Stephen's camp grew stronger as the days passed by. He told no one, not even Nellie, what was in his mind. It was a sacred thing to him, and he dreamed over it, as a mother over her unborn child. Not until the dream had become a reality, a living deed, must the world ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... last, "you deceitful little hussy, you have been deceiving me all these years by passing yourself off as a man, when in reality you are a girl." ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... safely tucked the still weeping and collapsed Diana into her berth, she thought it advisable to make an excursion herself to the den of the tigress, ostensibly to fetch Diana's night-things; in reality to let her know where Diana was spending the night, and that the girl had one woman friend at least to stand by her. Even as she expected, Mrs. Stanislaw was awake and lying in wait, ready to spring. It must have been a disagreeable surprise to see April instead of the victim. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... morning paper. It had never occurred to us, not even when we camped beneath wayside shade around our sandwiches and ale or in some stiff and dim inn-parlor and listened to the reading of the "News," that in reality the town of M——, and not the brickhood of Ethel, was thus the centre of all our ambulatory circumferences. It had never before dawned upon us that we thus added three uncounted miles to our fourteen diurnally counted ones. What astonishment at our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ka might be written kah, similarly to the German word "sah," where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a. In like manner mu and fi are written in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... of pride when it enters into the heart of a cobbler; tho in reality it is altogether as ridiculous and unreasonable, wherever it takes possession of a human creature. There is no temptation to it from the reflection upon our being in general, or upon any comparative perfection, whereby one man may excel ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... spectral delicacy of its colours—so lovely the forms of its hills blending with the forms of its clouds—so lovely, above all, those long trailings and bandings of mists which make its altitudes appear to hang in air. A land where sky and earth so strangely intermingle that what is reality may not be distinguished from what is illusion—that all seems a mirage, about to vanish. For me, alas! it is about to vanish ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... conducted her guests to the snug apartments blazing with cheerful fires. Then the young ladies came and knocked at Mrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to be useful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contents of her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, were of the newest London fashion. And they told her how much the Hall was changed for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and how Pitt was taking his station in the county, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... many a one, whose sympathy I had experienced, would have helped me to the utmost of their means. A false shame prevented me from confessing what I endured. Still happiness filled my heart. I read then for the first time the works of Walter Scott. A new world was opened to me: I forgot the reality, and gave to the circulating library that which should have provided ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... being told there was nothing they could do, strolled out into the neighbouring pasture, and pretended to look among the weeds and stones, at the end of the fence farthest away from the stock-waterer for botanical and geological specimens; but, in reality, they were ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... soft feather-bed is very often estimated as nothing; or, in other words, the same provision of blankets is considered indispensable, whether we lie upon a hard mattress or immersed in down. The mother, looking only to the covering laid over the child, forgets those on which it lies, although in reality the latter may be the warmer of the two. An infant deposited in a downy bed has at least two-thirds of its body in contact with the feathers, and may thus be perspiring at every pore, when, from its having only a single covering thrown ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... and wondering at the enormous number of representatives of many of them, we cannot but inquire into the cause of such triumphal conquest of a continent by a single genus. Much is explained simply in the statement that golden-rods belong to the vast order of Compositae, flowers in reality made up sometimes of hundreds of minute florets united into a far-advanced socialistic community having for its motto, "In union there is strength." In the first place, such an association of florets makes a far more conspicuous advertisement ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... laughed louder than any of them, Then, when the spinster aunt got 'matrimony,' the young ladies laughed afresh, and the Spinster aunt seemed disposed to be pettish; till, feeling Mr. Tupman squeezing her hand under the table, she brightened up too, and looked rather knowing, as if matrimony in reality were not quite so far off as some people thought for; whereupon everybody laughed again, and especially old Mr. Wardle, who enjoyed a joke as much as the youngest. As to Mr. Snodgrass, he did nothing but whisper poetical sentiments into his partner's ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... in ode, there is this difference from other kinds of poetry; that, there, the imagination, like a very beautiful mistress, is indulged in the appearance of domineering; though the judgment, like an artful lover, in reality carries its point; and the less it is suspected of it, it shows the more masterly conduct, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... pleasure in the world," he said suavely. "Show me a revel, and I'll revel with the best. I like revels. What I do not like is to stodge at home eating an indigestible meal, and pretending that I'm full of glee, when in reality I'm bored to death. If you could suggest ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality of the power, which is in every way ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... the buggy as it disappeared in the dusk, and then turned back into the cabin, once more to face the harsh reality of ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... "Mistletoe Bough." She had been one of the "guests," who had sung "Oh, the Mistletoe Bough!" and had looked up at it, and she had seen at the side-scenes how the bride had laughingly stepped into the trunk. But the trunk then was only a make-believe of some boards in front of a sofa, and this was a stern reality. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... his threats should really be carried out; but the situation—to one of Lord Talgarth's temperament—demanded that the threats should be made, and that Frank should pretend to be crushed by them. That the boy should have behaved like this brought a reality of passion into the affair—disconcerting and infuriating—as if an actor should find his enemy on the stage was armed with a real sword. There was but one possibility left—which Lord Talgarth instinctively rather than consciously grasped at—namely, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... 24, CDH 8 Ecolo 4, other 2 note: as a result of the 1993 constitutional revision that furthered devolution into a federal state, there are now three levels of government (federal, regional, and linguistic community) with a complex division of responsibilities; this reality leaves six governments each with its own legislative assembly; for other acronyms of the listed parties see the Political parties and leaders entry elections: Senate and Chamber of Deputies - last held 18 May 2003 (next to be held no ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... have thought that Khubushna might be an error for Khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war on the eastern frontier of Assyria: in reality the context shows that the place under discussion is a district in Asia Minor, identified with Kamisene by Gelzcr, but left unidentified by most authorities. Jensen has shown that the name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of Tiglath- pileser III., where we should read Khubishna, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... of a Blenheim spaniel to the purity of his breed. A true Irish setter will obtain a higher price than either an English or Scotch one. Fifty guineas constituted no unusual price for a brace of them, and even two hundred guineas have been given. It is nevertheless, doubtful whether they do in reality so much exceed the other breeds, and whether, although stout and hard-working dogs, and with excellent scent, they are not somewhat too headstrong ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... that "'Henry V.' must certainly be regarded as Shakespeare's ideal of manhood in the sphere of practical achievement." Without an exception they have all buttered this drama with extravagant praise as one of Shakespeare's masterpieces, though in reality it is one of the worst pieces of work he ever did, almost as bad as "Titus Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... been argued that customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... "Outlines of the History of Medicine," says: "It corresponds to the reality in both the actual and chronological point of view to consider the books of Moses as the foundation of sanitary science. The more we have learned about sanitation in the prophylaxis of disease and in the prevention of contagion in the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... reddened. He turned; his eyes sought the table and the cards; he stood irresolute. The temptation came at an unfortunate moment; a moment when the excitement of play had given way to depression, and he saw nothing outside the door, on the latch of which his hand was laid, but the bleak reality of ruin. The temptation to return, the thought that by a single hand he might set himself right with the world, was too much for him. Slowly—he came back to the table. "Confound you!" he said passionately. "I think you are the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... she would; and she aches to, because she always fears the audience may not grasp the point. Lord Eglantine was a reflection of his tim the polished mirror of his age. Until he blew the reflection into smithereens, he had no soul, no reality. A wig, a box of patches, snuff, silk, lace, a clouded cane, a neat sense for words, that was Eglantine, and now he has become, in all humility, a man. Back ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute which in fact belongs exclusively to this Banner species. The Kite, according to Dr. FRANKLIN, draws the lightning from the clouds, but this, in reality, is the proud prerogative of the Great American Eagle, the noblest of the falcon tribe, which may often be seen with a sheaf of flashes in its talons, rushing through the skies as a lightning express. It feeds on all the inferior birds, but its principal food is the American Bunting, which it bears ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... was little aware of the pleasures in store for me), I had already seen enough to prove that the life of a private pupil was not exactly "all my fancy painted it"; and, as the misery of leaving those I loved proved in its "sad reality" a much more serious affair than I had imagined, the result of my cogitations was, that I was a very unhappy boy (I did not feel the smallest inclination to boast myself man at that moment), and that, if something very much to my advantage did not turn up in the course ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... right arm dead by his side. He sat down in a chair confronting them, his empty right hand depending near to the floor, and a thin stream of blood already trickling down his knuckles, his face smiling, and shining whitely with the damp of anguish, and the cold low 'ha, ha, ha!' mocking the reality of the scene. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu



Words linked to "Reality" :   unreal, materiality, experience, unreality, real world, actuality, real, physicalness, historicalness, corporality, existent, real life, fact



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