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illusory
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  • But even the most complaisant of his notable friends pitied his illusory passion.†   (source)
  • But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory.†   (source)
  • Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.†   (source)
  • We, or at any rate I, had built such elaborate fantasies about him and the illusory mother that seeing him in the flesh shredded my inventions like a hard yank on a paper chain.†   (source)
  • We have just circumcised them in a ritual that promises them manhood, but I am here to tell you that it is an empty, illusory promise, a promise than can never be fulfilled.†   (source)
  • It was a love that had nothing to do with Joe Camber's day-to-day behavior toward him or his mother; it was a brute, biological thing that he would never be free of, a phenomenon with many illusory referents of the sort which haunt for a lifetime: the smell of cigar-smoke, the look of a double-edged razor reflected in a mirror, pants hung over a chair, certain curse words.†   (source)
  • Without the illusory balconies and colonnades, there was nothing but a heap of rubble on a barren hilltop.†   (source)
  • People liked to imagine they were free to choose their own lives, but Beth had learned that choice was sometimes illusory.†   (source)
  • If he could take a rest (a permanent rest) from the hospital operating table, then why not from theworld operating table, the one where his imaginary scalpel opened the strongbox women use to hide their illusory one-millionth part dissimilarity?†   (source)
  • The old king watched with thoughtful eyes, moved as he'd have been by the Shaper's music, except that it was different: not visions of glorious things that might be or sly revisions of the bloody past but present beauty that made time's flow seem illusory, some lower law that now had been suspended.†   (source)
  • They went in silence, her witchlight lighting the way, a silence Clary felt almost afraid to break, as if she would be shattering the illusory calm of a dream or a spell.†   (source)
  • The sun, that great magic lantern, casts its illusory light, catching my father's face in such a way that I see no lines, no pallor, no sadness.†   (source)
  • Stepping past Max, he stooped to examine his illusory double, which continued to shuffle and deal as though nothing had happened.†   (source)
  • There is a need for the belief—even if illusory—that despite the ever-obvious evidence of familial messiness and complication, one's child will always hold the most unconditional regard for her parent, the same one no doubt that Mary Burns felt her heart spill over with when she was handed her newborn daughter, and which I am sure washes over me whenever Thomas tugs my hand.†   (source)
  • Drizzt spun back on the mirror, grasping at the demon's illusory weapon.†   (source)
  • Seymour once said to me—in a crosstown bus, of all places—that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.†   (source)
  • Or at most, the nature of the guilt of all of these was technical if not illusory.†   (source)
  • Each lash of disappointment leaving Maman more damaged, more derailed, and happiness more illusory.†   (source)
  • There is something oddly illusory about Pari Wahdati, sitting in my car, mere inches from me.†   (source)
  • Allie, he thought Allie at least had been into the world in her own self-illusory way.†   (source)
  • But Parmenides' disciple, Zeno, proved through a series of paradoxes that any perception of motion and change is illusory.†   (source)
  • Then, overcome by nostalgia, she dared to recall for the first time the illusory days of that unreal love.†   (source)
  • After his mind had calmed down a bit, he again had the thought that Three Body was deliberately pretending to be merely illusory, while in fact possessing some deep reality.†   (source)
  • In addition to highlighting the negative effects of progress, we'll also attempt to use a series of 'miracles' to construct an illusory universe that cannot be explained by the logic of science.†   (source)
  • That was how the telegraphic correspondence with Florentino Ariza stopped being a concerto of intentions and illusory promises and became methodical and practical and more intense than ever.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza sat in the park where he was sure he would be seen, and then he did not have recourse to his feigned reading but sat with the book open and his eyes fixed on the illusory maiden, who did not even respond with a charitable glance.†   (source)
  • The moment is brief, barely enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow.†   (source)
  • This gratifying certainty increased Florentino Ariza's eagerness, for at the height of pleasure he had experienced a revelation that he could not believe, that he even refused to admit, which was that his illusory love for Fermina Daza could be replaced by an earthly passion.†   (source)
  • Perhaps he would not have been as enthusiastic if he had even suspected how far Fermina Daza was from those illusory calculations, at a time when she was just beginning to perceive the horizon of a world in which everything was foreseen except adversity.†   (source)
  • One of the things he'd always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic.†   (source)
  • Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgot my destiny of one pursued.†   (source)
  • The problem seemed one that he could solve merely by entering at the nearest door and exploring through gallery and corridor until the truth were his; but he knew that such freedom was illusory, and that in fact his movements were watched.†   (source)
  • …Kate into Nan, the mad poet was quite wrong, for anybody can change Kate into Nan, or if indeed the Prince couldn't change Kate into Nan it was only because Kate and Nan were exactly alike to begin with and were, in fact, the same with only the illusory difference of name, which meant nothing, for names meant nothing and all the words we speak meant nothing, and there was only the pulse in the blood and the twitch of the nerve, like a dead frog's leg in the experiment when the electric…†   (source)
  • In this section the following have been equated: The Void — The World; Eternity — Time; Nirvana — Samsara; Truth — Illusoriness; Enlightenment — Compassion; The God — The Goddess; The Enemy — The Friend; Death — Birth; The Thunderbolt — The Bell; The Jewel — The Lotus; Subject — Object; Yab — Yum; Yang — Yin; Tao, Supreme Buddha, Bodhisattva, Divan Mukta, The Word Made Flesh.†   (source)
  • Which only lie on you illusory in the sunshine, in the usual relation of your feet or fingers or the knot of your shoestrings and are without power.†   (source)
  • " ' "The Emptiness o fAll Things" (Sanskrit: funputd, "voidness") refers, on the one hand, to the illusory nature of the phenomenal world and on the other, to the impropriety of attributing such qualities we may know from our experience of the pl, . nornenal world to the imperishable.†   (source)
  • The thunderbolt (vajra) is one of the major symbols in Buddhist iconography, signifying the spiritual power of Buddhahood (indestructible enlightenment) which shatters the illusory realities of the world Fhe Absolute, or Adi Buddha, is represented in the images of Tibet as Vajra-Dhara 'Tibetan: Dorje-Chang, "Holder of the Adamantine Bolt.†   (source)
  • The following Tibetan verses, for example, from two hymns of the poet-saint Milarepa, were composed about the time that Pope Urban II was preaching the First Crusade: Amid the City of Illusoriness of the Six World-Planes The chieffactor is the sin and obscuration born of evil works; Therein the being followeth dictates of likes and dislikes, And findeth ne'er the time to know Equality: Avoid, 0 my son, likes and dislikes.†   (source)
  • Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.†   (source)
  • But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take.†   (source)
  • It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage.†   (source)
  • If the really impressive books and other art-works of the world were produced by ordinary men, they would express more fear of women's pursuit than love of their illusory beauty.†   (source)
  • You had said you knew so well "that kind of thing," its illusory satisfaction, its unavoidable deception.†   (source)
  • For in Lycurgus among the younger members of those smarter families whose children had been to the Snedeker School, existed a rather illusory and casual dinner and dance club called the "Now and Then."†   (source)
  • They seemed nothing more now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures of my temperament.†   (source)
  • The vibrations produced amazing effects near their source, but like all ghostly things, quickly languished with distance, grew feeble, their powers merely illusory.†   (source)
  • Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers for her.†   (source)
  • And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself.†   (source)
  • This is accomplished by diminishment—and we use this term to describe an illusory, or, to be quite explicit, diseased element, that is obviously pertinent here: diminishment occurs to some extent whenever a narrative makes use of hermetic magic and a temporal hyperperspective reminiscent of certain anomalous experiences of reality that imply that the senses have been transcended.†   (source)
  • These older, these autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's strength, for a while, in that obscure task of reparation which gives one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence, or after an operation.†   (source)
  • She had only time to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was clear and determined—her answer.†   (source)
  • A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into chaos.†   (source)
  • By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.†   (source)
  • Their hair is long, unkempt, and strangely white; they make us shrink and shudder with an indefinable repulsion, though the effect may be from an illusory glozing of the light glimmering dismally through the unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of hunger and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant, the convict, was taken away—that is, since yesterday.†   (source)
  • The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach,—impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.†   (source)
  • On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation of cold potatoes or barley.†   (source)
  • Those manners threw a pleasing illusory charm over human nature; and though the picture was often a false one, it could not be viewed without a noble satisfaction.†   (source)
  • Her impression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurels of authorship.†   (source)
  • Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings of gossip had given him hints of, might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother felt sure that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any notion of Lydgate's having resources or friends in the background must be quite illusory.†   (source)
  • He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire.†   (source)
  • …took an early opportunity of suggesting that, now they were rested after their walk, they might go and play out of doors; and aunt Pullet gave permission, only enjoining them not to go off the paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed, to view them from a distance on the horse-block; a restriction which had been imposed ever since Tom had been found guilty of running after the peacock, with an illusory idea that fright would make one of its feathers drop off.†   (source)
  • That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence.†   (source)
  • I had no hopes to give her, nor treasures to offer her, for mine are given to Dulcinea, and the treasures of knights-errant are like those of the fairies,' illusory and deceptive; all I can give her is the place in my memory I keep for her, without prejudice, however, to that which I hold devoted to Dulcinea, whom thou art wronging by thy remissness in whipping thyself and scourging that flesh—would that I saw it eaten by wolves—which would rather keep itself for the worms than for the…†   (source)
  • The experiment has, however, demonstrated that this expectation was ill-founded and illusory; and the observations, made under the last head, will, I imagine, have sufficed to convince the impartial and discerning, that there is an absolute necessity for an entire change in the first principles of the system; that if we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration, we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities; we must…†   (source)
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