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Make-believe   Listen
adjective
Make-believe  adj.  
1.
Feigned; insincere. "Make-believe reverence."
2.
Imaginary; as, the child had a make-believe friend to whom he often talked.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books



... towards the Rope-walk. The firemen, of course, wear an appropriate uniform, with brazen helmets and shoulder-straps and a neat axe apiece, suspended in a leathern case from the waistband. But the spirit of make-believe has of necessity animated all their public exercise, if I except the 13th of April, 1879, when a fire broke out in the back premises of Mr. Tippett, carpenter. His shop was (and is) situated in the middle of the town, and in those days a narrow gatehouse ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... been much courteous make-believe of amiable and upright solicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomatic intercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is a matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of course, that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be allowed ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... a terrible row. You see Mr Walters couldn't forget that he had been an officer, and Jarette couldn't forget he had been a fore-mast man, and feel jealous of Mr Walters, who used to make-believe amongst the men that he was the real captain of the ship, and that everything depended upon him. So at last there was a terrible row about something in the navigation, and Mr Walters told Jarette that he didn't know anything about it. Then the Frenchman hit him, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... tempests crossed, Yet never a soul on board was lost! Though the boat be a sieve, I do not grieve, They sail on the ocean of "Make-believe." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... to give a purer oracle." "It's as you throw a picture on a screen: The meaning of it all is out of you; The voices give you what you wish to hear." "Strangely, it's anything they wish to give." "Then I don't know. It must be strange enough. I wonder if it's not your make-believe. What do you think you're like to hear to-day?" "From the sense of our having been together— But why take time for what I'm like to hear? I'll tell you what the voices really say. You will do very well right where you are A little longer. I mustn't feel too hurried, Or I can't give ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost

... gwine to 'low no beatin' on his Niggers 'cept what he done his own self, and dat was pow'ful little. In hot weather chillun played on de crick and de best game of all was to play lak it was big meetin' time. White chillun loved to play dar too wid de little slave chillun. Us would have make-believe preachin' and baptizin' and de way us would sing was a sight. One of dem songs us chillun loved ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... which his temperament laid upon him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... divine impulse of creation. They could exist quite comfortably on three meals a day without ever suspecting the terrible emptiness that there was inside of them. They could even wring a stale satisfaction out of this imitation existence—this play of make-believe being alive. And around them all the time there was the wonder and the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... spends more than he makes. A good deal of it looked to me like make-believe. There's no doubt about the claret, but the champagne was execrable. A man is a criminal to have such stuff handed round to his guests. And there isn't the ring of ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... company and conversation, and made obsolete by the human mind outgrowing the childishness that delights in the tales told by grownup children such as novelists and their like! An end to the silly confusion, under the one name of Art, of the tomfoolery and make-believe of our play-hours with the higher methods of teaching men to know themselves! Every artist an amateur, and a consequent return to the healthy old disposition to look on every man who makes art a means of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... have, to be sure. We won't get half through to-day, but that's no reason for thy leaving us. We are all one family under this roof, thank God, and I'm going to thank Him to-day in good old style and no make-believe;" and he kept her hand as ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... were going home from school one night, we stopped to take some of our make-believe slides. Not far from our house, near the river-bank, were two sloping mounds, between which a brook had once run. These little mounds were soft and green, and dotted with white innocence flowers; and what fun it was to start at the top ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May

... she cried. "Just grand! OH! it's too splendid to believe and yet there ain't any make-believe in it. Lordy! Excuse me, ma'am, I forgot. I won't say it again. I'll wait and see what you say and then I'll say that. And now," briskly, "I guess you think it's time I was gettin' to work. All right, I can work if I ain't got no other accomplishments. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things which look to me suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we have several such among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting when they cannot have the real thing,—"flirting," as it used to be practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and more questionable recreation which has reached us from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... be as well to let them take their time about it," remarked Captain Link. "These Moros always get very much worked up in their war-dances, and occasionally they forget that it is all make-believe and send a spear into a spectator. It's safer to leave ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... women alone, who seem left out of the procession. They impress me as having no big interests of their own, so they are compelled to playtend with make-believe interests. They race like mad in the social squirrel-cage, or drug themselves with bridge and golf and the country club, or take to culture with a capital C and read papers culled from the Encyclopedias; or spend their husbands' money on year-old Paris gowns and make ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... who would play at make-believe. It is almost a pity that he could not persuade the lady that he meant even a tithe of what he wrote to her. Listen to him again: "For my part, I hate a great many women for your sake, and undervalue ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... other boys do. The subject was talked over in whispers, so that Paul should not hear, during the remainder of the evening, with the result that that very night at least six boys told other boys or their own parents, in the strictest confidence, of course, that there was more truth than make-believe about Paul Grayson as an Indian. And the parents told the same story to other parents, the boys told it to other boys, and within twenty-four hours Paul Grayson was a far more ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... buildings. They are very friendly. Their tired faces smile, or at least look somewhat amused and interested. They are interested in the fog and in the fact that one cannot see three feet ahead. And their faces say to each other, "Here we are, all alike. The city is only a make-believe. It can go away but we still remain. We are much more important than ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Maggie and say, "Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do come ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... year," murmured Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "We can have a make-believe county fair and ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... even in their clothes, pretend to be King's mistresses. Of course, if this pretence were put into words and so presented to their consciousness, they would be indignant. It has for them no connexion with conduct; it is purely aesthetic, but art means to them make-believe, the make-believe that they live an entirely frivolous life of pleasure provided for them by masculine ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... tooth-brushes and tooth-sharpeners) by way of diversion and excitement. Their play was not at all unlike that of human children. They loved to dig holes in the ground; to hide behind tree-trunks and spring out upon one another with terrifying cries and pretended fierceness; all kinds of make-believe appealed to them greatly, and to none of them more keenly than to Finn, who liked to come galloping down from the other end of the orchard to the old oak tree, flying exaggerated danger signals, and making believe that he was pursued by a savage and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was willing to do that so long as it mightn't prevent his seeing at least where he was. He seemed still to see where he was even at the minute that followed her final break-off, clearly intended to be resolute, from make-believe talk. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... that the traveler take a beer. "I took the beer," says Mr. Hazard. A dollar in gold means just four hundred dollars in Haytian paper: a cocktail cost the traveler "thirty dollars," and other things in proportion. These beginnings of make-believe pomposity are followed up by the strangest revelations wherever the adventurer sets his foot. Going from Cape Haytien to the citadel and "Sans-Souci" palace of Christophe, the traveler is charged "two thousand dollars" by the drunken negro guide, and "a dollar" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... to Robert. She even gave him a quick, friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at her. And yet the moment after he knew that it was all make-believe. His anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile and afraid of pain. Now that she had gone out of the barren little room she had taken with her the sense of a secret, gracious intimacy which had been its warmth and colour. He saw that the sunlight had shrunk to a pale gold ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... the start an absorption of attention from my audience that Paderewski himself might have envied. I wound up with a lively trill in the high notes and took my whistle from my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole thing had been downright good fun, the playing itself, the make-believe which went with it, the surprise and interest in the children's faces, the slow-breaking smile of the little ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... arranged his affairs for a two weeks' trip to New York and Boston. They took an afternoon train for New York, which required five hours to reach. When they were finally alone in the Astor House, New York, after hours of make-believe and public pretense of indifference, he gathered her ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... situation in the North, during that momentous year, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs who, seeing that their own party was lost but refusing to be sidetracked by the make-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were now hesitating what to do. Though the ordinary politicians among the Republicans doubtless wished to conciliate these unattached Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders was too great to allow them to succumb to ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... more years and has paid some more pounds. It is given, as a matter of course, to every one who has taken the degree of bachelor—never mind after how many plucks—and has reached the standing which is required of a master. The bestowing of two degrees is a mere make-believe; the higher degree proves nothing, beyond mere lapse of time, which is not equally proved by ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... the make-believe remained in Cynthia's memory. Sandy had had his pretty story down there, away from Lost Hollow! Now he had come back; had left it all behind him! She saw it quite clearly. Perhaps when he was on that recent visit he had looked upon all the dear playthings as she used ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... answer, "You long to be without sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... is only pretended or make-believe. There was something of the roar of the lioness in her last words. Did you notice how ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg

... the mother both acted their parts very well. He rushed to the arms of the old woman for protection, and screeched small, while the widow shouted "millia murther!" at the top of her voice, and did not give up her hold of the make-believe young woman until her cap was torn half off, and her hair streamed about her face. She called on all the saints in the calendar, as she knelt in the middle of the floor and rocked to and fro, with her clasped hands raised to heaven, calling down curses on the "villains and robbers" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... pulled off her hair-ribbon, and as Marjorie felt in the humor, this began one of their favorite games of make-believe. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells

... water? And does he have to pay an extra price for sunlight? And must he herd in a filthy slum full of awful plumbing and crowded by more awful neighbours? Does he have to put up with municipal neglect and corruption, and worry along on make-believe milk and doctored bread and adulterated medicines, and endure long hours in unsanitary places under a tyrannical foreman and in constant dread ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... had come to like Hampton immensely. The absence, in its society, of all attempts at show, to make-believe, to impress, to hoodwink, was refreshingly novel to him, who, hitherto, had known it only as a great sham, a huge affectation, with every one striving to outdo everyone else, and all as hollow as ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... heavy rooster and the pan was not very firm. Down tumbled the pan and Red Chief together. The make-believe cream and milk went all over him. Such a wet, cross, disgusted rooster you never saw! "Too-ok, too-ok, too-ok," he croaked, as he shook the soapsuds from his feathers. Then away he marched, scolding to himself about little ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams

... lightly playing around with ideas about how she'd found a home and a protector, knowing she was kidding herself, that it was the most gimcracky feminine make-believe, but enjoying ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... Wiggily hopped down, and waved both ears backward and forward, and made a low bow to a make-believe crowd of people, only, of course, ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... birds, and that the world in general thinks more or less of them according to the dress they wear. Therefore, in order that they may impose upon their neighbours by their outward appearance, and, as children say, make-believe that they are richer than they really are, they dress beyond their means, and, at the cost of much privation of even the necessaries of life, make a display which they are not warranted in making. We have known those who have pinched themselves ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... could circumvent the angel of judgment with the sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation permanent on their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were in. You even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that the Neverland was all make-believe. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... I unluckily called the WILL to Believe. All the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The "will to deceive," the "will to make-believe," were wittily proposed as substitutes ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... fasting. Moreover, I apprehend a bale of carpets on my back at every moment. We will, so please you, sup. If you and the lady whom you escort will do me the honour of sharing my table we can arrange other matters at our leisure. I have always understood that encounters before ladies are make-believe; but your experience should inform you how far that is true. By leave, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... is a Christmas party the tree is the source of interest, and often a make-believe Santa Claus adds to the merriment of the occasion. The refreshments should be simple but fanciful. Make the table bright as possible—snowballs, cornucopias, lady-fingers, assorted cakes, love-knots, sandwiches (fancy), crystalized fruits, tarts, sliced tongue, pressed veal, thin bread and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... which followed need not be dwelt upon; but imagine the summer-evening come, and Daniel and the French officer stealing down to the rocky beach. The young sailor showed a deal of doubtful feeling as he saw the tearful energy with which little Bertha parted with her make-believe husband; and when little Doome, who had been let into all the secrets, except the one that Daniel kept to himself—namely, that he was Daniel,—when little Doome crept up to condole with him on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... called the children's "black-and-white" artist of the "sixties" (taking the date broadly as comprising the earlier "seventies" also), even as Walter Crane is their "limner in colours." His work is evidently conceived with the serious make-believe that is the very essence of a child's imagination. He seems to put down on paper the very spirit of fancy. Whether as an artist he is fully entitled to the rank some of his admirers (of whom I am one) would claim, is a question not worth raising here—the future will ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... little gal once—long years ago," he said softly, "an' she used to be great on make-believe games. Is this takin' of them papers a ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... another part of this record alluded, at that time doing his baccalaureat on the other side of the Seine and coming over to our world at scraps of moments (for I recall my awe of the tremendous nature, as I supposed it, of his toil), as to quite a make-believe and gingerbread place, the lightest of substitutes for the "Europe" in which he had been from the first so technically plunged. His mother and sister, also on an earlier page referred to, had, from their distance, committed him to the great city to be "finished," educationally, to the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... with these make-believe dudes," he shouted. "That's the kid old Skin Flint Crawford took out of an orphan asylum. He's a kid that old Crawford took up with because he was too mean t' have t' Lord bless him with one o' his own. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... savors of decay; Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown Question us now from star and stone; Too little or too much we know, And sight is swift and faith is slow; The power is lost to self-deceive With shallow forms of make-believe. W e walk at high noon, and the bells Call to a thousand oracles, But the sound deafens, and the light Is stronger than our dazzled sight; The letters of the sacred Book Glimmer and swim beneath our look; Still struggles in the Age's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the hardy listener who had spoken before inquired, was not make-believe the right method for the author, if it was the right method for the scientist and the publisher? Why should not the novelist hypothesize cases hitherto unknown to experience, and then go on by persistent study to find them true? It seemed ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... whole phenomena of so-called male superiority bears a certain stamp of spuriousness and sham. It is to natural history what chivalry was to human history; ... a sort of make-believe, play, or sport of nature of an airy unsubstantial character. The male side of nature shot up and blossomed out in an unnatural, fantastic way, cutting loose from the real business of life, and attracting a share of attention wholly disproportionate ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... a man? Was he a real man, or only a make-believe, such as was sometimes seen at shows and fairs? Darby knew about dwarfs, certainly, although he had never seen one, and at last he concluded that this must be a dwarf—this small creature not much taller than Joan, yet with a huge, broad-shouldered body, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... endure the absurdities of a made-up theology and a make-believe religion: and the Utopia designed by Comte was as impracticable and unattractive as Utopias generally are. But the critical and destructive part of the case was sound enough. Here was a man who challenged the existing ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... away from them only long enough to rejoice that somehow—he didn't know how—he was going to be her most intimate friend, because they were both Americans in a strange land and because they both could make-believe. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... wish you were here to climb the hills with me. I am missing you dreadfully, Jervie dear, but it's a happy kind of missing; we'll be together soon. We belong to each other now really and truly, no make-believe. Doesn't it seem queer for me to belong to someone at last? It ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn't abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg'lar brown one. Couldn't abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... the few things in which the make-believe is superior to the genuine," said Ronnie, "it lasts longer, and you get more fun out of it, and it's easier to replace when ...
— When William Came • Saki

... the most gifted letisimulants in the entire animal kingdom are to be observed in the great snake family. The so-called "black viper" of the middle United States is the most accomplished death-feigner that I have ever seen; its make-believe death struggles, in which it writhes and twists in seeming agony and finally turns upon its back and assumes rigor mortis, cannot be surpassed by any actor "on the boards" ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... replied Toby, quickly; "but you see that was a real one, an' this of ours is only a little make-believe for three cents. We want to get you to let us have the lot between the barn an' the road to put our tent on, an' then lend us old Whitey. We're goin' to have Jack Douglass's hoss that's blind, an' we've got a three-legged cat, an' one without any tail, ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... are having lots of rain, which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, to ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... Sarah,—You say truly that I have sent you too many make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve you so again, if I can help it. I have been very ill for some days past with the toothache. Yesterday, I had it drawn; and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from easy, for my head and my jaws still ache; and, being unable to do any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... that struck me most about her, and the thing that has set me writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others it is a painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows it as willingly or unwillingly as you or I follow our respective callings. At the moment, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... undertone of idealism and hope and sturdy aspiration will make you restless as you follow your common round. Perhaps you will go back. Perhaps you will keep it as a rainbow memory, a visualisation of the make-believe country where anything is possible. But in any ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... outsider the opportunities for illicit gain afforded by the service made an irresistible appeal. Sham gangs and make-believe press-masters abounded, thriving exceedingly upon the fears and credulity of the people until capture put a term to their activities and sent them to the pillory, the prison or the fleet ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... against his wife for more than a week after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order that he might ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... of Knight's proclivities—were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it—took in the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the face of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... Phil!" cried Joel Jackman, showing signs of growing excitement. "Nothing make-believe about that alarm, let me tell you. There's a genuine fire broken ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... your Polish nobles, Whose presence their country somehow troubles, And so our cities receive them; Nor one of your make-believe Spanish grandees, Who ply our daughters with lies and candies Until the poor girls believe them. No, he was no such charlatan— Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-pan, Full of gasconade and bravado— But a regular, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... poetry, we peep over the wild mask of revolutionary metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child. Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of make- believe raised to the nth power. He is still at play, save only that his play is such as ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... believed I'd get the chance to see any whale-spearing," he said. "Whaling with a cannon is only a make-believe. Now, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... her own case, and will even stoop down anxiously to peer at the dial, just as she has seen her mother and nurse do on the weekly weighing night. But at a very early age children appreciate the difference between the real and the make-believe. They desire above all things to do acts of real service. At the age of two a child should know where every article for the nursery table is kept. He will fetch the tablecloth and help to put it in place, spoons and cups and saucers will be carried carefully to the ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... their own motion to shape some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may in large measure be overborne by the more immediately constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress reform, in proficiency at dress, cards, yachting, golf, and various sports. But the fact that it may under stress ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... pointed fingers all over it. It is witty, but does not bite. If you bite you are serious, if you bite you are in love; but that is elegant make-believe. He will take himself off next minute, and encountering a ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... "Goodness me, there's that tiresome old bachelor again." But she treats him just as polite as she does anybody; and when he brings her candy, she says, "Oh, Mr. Martin, you are too good." There's a great deal of make-believe about girls, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... far from perfect, and no one knew this better than its owner. For Captain Trevor's beautifully swift gun-boat had three funnels amidships, and powerful engines, while the Skipper's model, though it had sails that sent it swiftly through the water when there was a breeze, had a great deal of make-believe about it, the funnels being only pieces of zinc pipe tacked to the deck, the engines, the works of an old clock that would not go, placed in a cigar-box; the boiler, which was just under the funnels, ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... "You were just make-believe. I was the real thing—a real thief. No, let me go on; it's easier if you don't interrupt. Yes, I'll tell you my name, but it won't mean anything. I'm nobody. I'm Sarah Manvers. I'm a shop-girl ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... bride of a millionaire and adoring duke; the peerless Berengaria wrought havoc with the peace of Lord Arthur, and had more suitors than she could count on the fingers of both hands. It was a fascinating make-believe; but, as Ruth plaintively remarked, it did come with somewhat of a shock to be dragged ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... day was a reanimation of external Venice. But there was a thunderbolt in it; for about an hour before sunset, when the ladies were superintending and trying not to criticize the ingenious efforts to produce a make-believe of comfort on board for them, word was brought down to the boat by the count's valet that the Marquis de Rouaillout had arrived. Renee turned her face to her brother superciliously. Roland shrugged. 'Note this, my sister,' he said; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... no suggestion of make-believe in Fiesco's courting of Julia. When he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies no god', one is justified in assuming that chivalrous devotion to his wife is not among his virtues. It is to be supposed, apparently, that he makes ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... the secret of the new journalism," said Cairns to Desmond. "It is not truth, or even a make-believe truth; it is to arouse your readers' interest. Tickle them with humour; stuff them with the sensational; let everything be brand-new. We will make the old 'Observer' gallop to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... the imagination is most uncontrolled and spontaneous in childhood, which is often characteristically defined as the period of make-believe or fancy. It is this capacity which enables the child to use chairs as locomotives, sticks as rifles, and wheelbarrows as automobiles. As we grow older we tend to discipline this vagrant dreaming, and to draw only those ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... little ceremony of my salutation was over I handed her to a seat, still holding her finger-tips, bowing low just as her own cavaliers used to do in the days when she had half the County at her feet. I love these make-believe ceremonies when I am with her—and then again I truly think she would not be so happy without them. This over I took my place opposite so I could watch her face and the smiles playing across it—that face which the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "And then he went back to the trucking business, because he wasn't born an artist and the whole thing seemed silly to him. He couldn't stand the make-believe any longer, because he had no imagination, no art—nothing but the stupid ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... ever such a question! Why, you must do nothing at all, but think how you'd poise 'em if you had 'em. You middle men, that are armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of course use 'em as if they were the real thing. Now then, cock fawlocks! Present! Fire! (Pretend to, I mean, and the same time throw yer imagination into the field o' battle.) Very good—very good indeed; ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... Cross went twice a week, As if "to wet a widows' cheek," And soothe his grave with sorrow's gravy— 'Twas nothing but a make-believe, She might as well have hoped to grieve Enough of brine to float a navy; And yet she often seemed to raise A cambric kerchief to her eye— A duster ought to be the phrase, Its work was all so very dry. The springs were locked that ought to flow— In England or in widow-woman— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets!—where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust. Why, there isn't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... out of the question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the bride and solemnly implored ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... startling, nothing dramatic, just simple, natural, like her! I gave her hand back, I put it on her breast myself, and crossed the other on it. She looked as if she were sleeping, with that faint color hovering in her face, which was not wasted, but I did not make-believe about it; I accepted the fact of her death. In your 'Quests of the Occult,'" Alderling broke off, with a kind of superiority that was of almost the quality of contempt, "I believe you don't allow yourself to be daunted by a diametrical difference of opinion among the witnesses of an occurrence, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... my dear. I've said nothing at all; I haven't even told you what I saw. But an actress is different. Think of it, my dear! She will live among us and we shall have to meet her. Think of the actors who have kissed her in their make-believe love affairs! It is so horribly common. I have heard a good many things about her. She has romped in studios in male attire and smokes cigarettes. I should not want any son of mine to be seen with her. I'm not saying a single word ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... the stem of each make-believe apple was untied, the red crepe paper opened out, disclosing, in wrappings of soft cotton, a variety of gifts for the ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt

... adventure, keenly. He had no objections to fighting on the side of rascals, or against rascals. He objected to them only in the calmer moments of private life; and as he was of course ignorant that the expedition was only a make-believe, he felt a certain respect for his fellow-conspirators as men who were willing to stake their lives for a chance of better fortune. But that their bravery was of the kind which would make them hesitate ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... the last piece of violence before both red and white threw aside make-believe and settled down to the ghastly struggle for supremacy. Hunters bound for Kentucky had suffered none from the Indians except as they had a brush with small raiding-parties. But when Daniel Boone undertook to convey his wife and children and the families of his friends into the wonderland ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... coming; they had hardly thought of this before and were not at all prepared for it. But it was still warm, for the June afternoon lingers long and far into the evening. Then they fell to eating strawberries again, for make-believe tea where everything is water and sand is not very satisfactory. After the strawberrying they came back to the shore again, and little Bo, now quite disheartened began to make a noise which sounded a little like crying, it was a whimper; but Yulee was brave and kept her courage up, ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... place, you can't want to marry your little niecelet, the funny little 'kiddo,' that used to burn her fingers and the beefsteak over that old studio gas stove. We had such lovely kinds of make-believe together. That's what our association always ought to mean to us,—just chumship, and wonderful and preposterous pretends. I couldn't think of myself being married to you any more than I could Jack the giant killer, or Robinson Crusoe. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... delusions, so they give them full measure by borrowing their own phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication more than food, and so they try to pass themselves off as an intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman has no need for any make-believe." ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page! And the mercury ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... liked, could he have had his way, to live so for the rest of his life; but they would not let him have his way, and coaxed him on a ship to go to the New World to meet his uncle. He was not a real uncle, but only a make-believe one, to satisfy those who objected to assisted immigrants, and who wished to be assured against having to support Guido, and others like him. But they were not half so anxious to keep Guido at home as he himself ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... strangely blind to proper aims and methods. Any education is bad which leads to the formation of habits of idleness, carelessness, failure, instead of habits of industry, thoroughness and success. Any religious or social institution is bad which leads to habits of pious make-believe, insincerity, slavish regard for authority and disregard for evidence, instead of habits of sincerity, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... The daily make-believe life of a little girl and her doll, told in twelve verselets by Mrs. Clara Doty Bates, and twelve pictures by Hassam. Printed in colors. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... through the mill," until the softness is pretty well ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood. He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won't stand it is pretense, make-believe. But show yourself worthy of him and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the best, readiest, bravest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... think I don't know that our republican friend there spoke what is every thoughtful man's verdict upon me? (They are silent.) But how could I possibly undertake my task, as long as I believed everything to be make-believe and falsehood, without exception? Now I know the root of the falsehood! It is in our institutions; he was quite right. And one kind of falsehood begets another. You cannot imagine how ludicrous it appeared to me—who up till then had led such a ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... you thought them so, and I always said to myself, 'If he knew, he would be sorry for me.' At last I said, 'He is sorry for me; there is the sea, and he cannot come, but he knows, and is sorry.' It was make-believe,—for you thought that I was happy, did you not?—but it helped me very much. I was only a child, you know, and I was so very lonely. I could not think of mother and Molly, for when I did I saw them as—as I had seen them last. The dark scared me, until I found that ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Do you delude yourself with that, nor think that because this time I fired over your heads I dare not fire into your ranks. I give you my word that if I have to command my men to fire a second time it shall not be mere make-believe, and I also give you my word that if at the end of a minute I have not your reply and you are not moving out of this—every rogue of you shall have a very bitter knowledge of how much ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... his pocket, in order to "capture glory," to use his own words. Upon observing that the Spaniard was painting with as much difficulty as himself, with the same wooden and childish strokes, which are so characteristic of the make-believe artists and pot-boilers, the routine workers concerned themselves with color and other rank fads. Argensola was a psychological artist, a painter of souls. And his disciple, felt astonished and almost displeased on learning what a comparatively simple ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... up the James in your houseboat (You haven't one? Well, a make-believe one will do just as well, and in some ways better), do not pass Eppes Creek, as everybody does, and go to the Shirley pier; but, instead, enter the creek and tie up at Leaning ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time—because you know it's all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It's always safe, always just in the ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... really happened. Farmer Green had come up the brook to catch trout. On the end of his fish-line he had tied a make-believe fly, with a hook hidden under its red and yellow wings. He had stolen along the brook very quietly, so that he wouldn't frighten the fish. And he had made so little noise that Fatty Coon never heard him at all. Farmer Green had not seen Fatty, crouched as he was among the ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey

... as the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring to the force-chains and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Juliet like a make-believe sister of her own, and talked of her at last as a living child. What long moral conversations took place between Juliet and her mother, what admirable remarks did that excellent mother make, referring to sundry small sins ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... guest and read in his eyes a defiant dislike and a repressed ferocity, but he chose to ignore it. The long-fostered urbanity of his make-believe must last a little longer. But at that moment Stuart's eyes met those of Conscience and he acknowledged ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... her hands in a rapture of delight; for she found herself in a beautiful wood—not a make-believe affair like the toy-farm, but a real wood with soft grass and pads of dark-green moss growing underfoot, and with ferns and forest flowers springing up on all sides. The wind was rustling pleasantly in the trees, and the sunlight, shining ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... Neal paid his compliments, displaying unmistakable malice, to John E. Hall. "Hall had the misfortune, some years ago, to fall acquainted with Mr. Thomas Moore, the poet, while Mr. Moore was 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... In time he returned to France and resumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuart prince who styled himself James III., and still kept up the appearance of a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting of these make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocent companion ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... children to get out of bed backwards. And when they do, she catches them by the heels and turns everything topsy-turvy all day long; but when you get out of bed toes first, I'll be there to start you on a pleasant day and Witchy Crosspatch will have to return to Make-Believe Land and hide her head!" "Sure enough, I did crawl out of bed ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... there; his fear was sweet to her, beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and buttered rolls and talk and laughter that were no talk and laughter at all with her; his fear was in his jesting postponing perverting voice; it was just in this make-believe way he had brought her out to imitate the old London playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a relation that she had with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, the day ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... quality which chiefly distinguished the immortal works from the transient was sincerity, single-heartedness, reality of intention and love of the work for the work's sake. That was only a partial view of the truth. It is right in a measure, since that sincerity, that absence of make-believe, in the literary creation is a prime necessity; but it is not sufficient. It is, indeed, a prime necessity, because it means that the superlative writer must write at first hand of things genuinely conceived and realized by his very self. It is, indeed, a prime necessity, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... that's the way to talk to 'em!" cried Dr. Rollinson, who had overheard the whole of this conversation, and who now appeared with his broad figure, his gouty legs, and his gruff chuckle. "Books are very well for make-believe, but when it comes to downright earnest, use a tongue of your own—eh?" and he clapped the boy kindly on the shoulder. "Yes, yes, she'll marry you fast enough when she sees you making eyes at some other pretty girl! ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... however, she made one slight investigation of those realms that govern professional theatrical engagements. It was a most disturbing experience. The mere color and odor of the stuffy offices, the gauche, material attendants, the impossible aspirants and participants in this make-believe world! The crudeness! The effrontery! The materiality! The sensuality! It came to her as a sickening breath and for the moment frightened her. What would become of refinement there? What of delicacy? How could one rise and sustain an individual ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... see old missis,' he says. 'She yabber that one make-believe constable bin there. Gammon-like it surveyor, and bimeby old man Ben gon' alonga hut, and that one pleeceman fire at him and all about, and him break back ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... regardless of expense. Under his direction they had often rushed forward to the footlights, pouring into the helpless mass before them repeated volleys of explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe, and, in the opinion of Signor G——, at least, very much inferior to it. Instead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feathered and looped, these irregulars wore huge sombreros, much the worse for time and weather, flapped over their faces. For the velvet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mother was astounded. It required only a little make-believe on her part to indicate that this was some strange boy whom she had never seen before. The surprising change in him had impressed her so disagreeably that she had been in no mood to speak of it. Even as she had taken off the wide-brimmed sailor hat, when David reached the house in ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... If I were ready to go in with them and start the Social Union on his basis, by helping do house-work—scullion-work—for it, and eating and living with them, I might try; but I know from experience I'm not. I haven't the need, and to pretend that I have, to forego my comforts and luxuries in a make-believe that I haven't them, would be too ghastly ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... pools, and the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast, radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory, climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself, and almost always impress his brother, with his ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... this morning to the waterfall," he said, "and tell it that it's all come right. And now, we'll bow to those crazy people out there, those make-believe dream-people, who don't know that there is nothing real in this world but just you and me, and ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... footlights' glare Down in the pit 'mid the common mob,— Your throat is burning, and brown, and bare, You lean, and listen, and pulse, and throb; The viols are dreaming between us two, And my gilded crown is no make-believe, I am more than an actor, dear, to you, For you called me your king but yester eve, And your heart is my golden ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... interviewing! Everything so prepared, so studied, so well described to impress the subscribers of the enterprising journal. The photographer with a wide angle lens took in all that was in my studio—to "make-believe," as the camera invariably does, that the apartment was six times larger than it really is. But the artist, who should idealise if the photographer could not, who so sadly interfered with my enjoying my tea, who was sent to make the most of me to raise the enthusiasm of the readers and to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... absolutely childish devices. It might be that he would buy toy pistols and paper caps for himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed would be for that one day a gang of make-believe banditti; in another, they would constitute themselves a fife-and-drum corps—with barreltops for the drums—and would march through the streets, where scandalized adults stood in their tracks to watch them go by, they all the while ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... world of Prince Charmings, the real realm of the "Faery Queen," quite different in enchantment from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with its pale allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical, and its make-believe allegorical ogres and giants. This is the real Fairyland, this of Boiardo: no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real, playfully cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as paladins and Amazons, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... is a telephone line exactly like Z{2} except that it doesn't go anywhere at all because it is all shut up in a little box. We'll call Z{1} an artificial telephone line. We ought to call it, as little children would say, a "make-believe" telephone line. It doesn't fool us but it does fool the electrons for they can't tell the difference between the real line Z{2} and the artificial line Z{1}. We can make a very good artificial line by using a condenser and a resistance. The ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... account, dear No. 6," exclaimed Aunt Judy. "I like make-believe Cook Stories much better than ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... childlike simplicity and directness than hers. He ran on, as though it was all quite right. "Anyhow, don't run away from us to Kingdom Come just yet a while, Granny, and see if I don't come to see you and your sister—real eyesight, you know; not this make-believe! ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... 'Ora pro nobis' to a Mary whose biography he believes to be purely mythical. At any rate, he can tell his consultants with a good conscience that if they pray to Mary for grace they will receive it. But what is the good of this make-believe? And, if it is part of a transaction in which the worshipper pays money for assistance which he believes to be miraculous and only obtainable through the good offices of the Church, is it even morally honest? The worshipper may ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... minus those animals and much-debated vehicle, quite another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove but a lying and treacherous ally—and for ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no; for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no matter, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... we have to do, not with the general culture of the people with the utterances of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and fashionable make-believe. For with many, antiquity was only a fashion, even ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousness this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettiedness, we call THE WORLD; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. [Of] such soul-sight and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... music exactly as it was written. A sustained piano note is, indeed, the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must continue to be, the real "King of Instruments," there is a good deal of make-believe. A long note—or two notes tied in a certain method—is intended to be played as a continued sound, like the note of an organ; whereas there is no piano in existence which will produce anything even approximately approaching to that effect. The characteristic of the piano as an instrument ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... continued to explain, "I must do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm—don't be offended—I'm your creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified. Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to have two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending, make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... to believe them. Even where the knowing part of the mind doesn't grant belief, the imagining part—and through it the feeling part—does; and, as conduct and mood are governed by feeling, the effect of a self-imposed make-believe on one's behavior and disposition—on one's life, in short—may be much the same as that of actuality. All depends on the completeness and constancy with which the make-believe ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the boat for a while, talking make-believe out-on-the-ocean talk, hauling sails and working the helm. Turly was captain, and Terry had to be the entire crew. At last ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland

... thing differently; they exhibit the same spirit of enterprise that in a lesser degree characterized certain promoters of rubberneck tours who some years ago fitted up make-believe opium dens in New York's Chinatown for the awed delectation of out-of-town spectators. Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... the Rolling Elephant. "Santa Claus and the workmen are coming in and they must not see us at our make-believe play. Quick! To your shelves, all ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope

... fully realizing the make-believe of it, yet taking pleasure in at least the mention ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... we often hear of hobgoblins and dragons and like fearful beings, and we think of them as make-believe creatures, and sometimes are afraid of them, even though if we are questioned we say we know they do not really exist. But in Raphael's day, dragons were by no means unreal things to people. Some thought they had seen them, ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... Debby affectionately. "I have often wished to myself, only a make-believe wish, you know, not a real wish, if you understand what I mean, for of course I know it's impossible. I sometimes sit at that window before going to bed and look at the moon as it silvers the swaying clothes-props, and I can easily ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street. Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for most of us means trials and sorrows ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... and sat down. She was thinking fast and hard. Life had not been make-believe to Patricia; she had builded whatever towers had been hers ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... like a fairy tale," Rod exclaimed. "But, no, it isn't, either," he mused. "A fairy tale is only a make-believe, while this is really true. It's better than a fairy tale. Isn't it great!" and his eyes sparkled. "But, say, do grandad and grandma know ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to the make-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear for you! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotel room, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for just throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's because I'm ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... brave the very Gods themselves when their blood was up. A few centuries pass away, and under the influence of civilization the descendants of these men are "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"—frank pessimists, or, at best, make-believe optimists. The courage of the warlike stock may be as hardly tried as before, perhaps more hardly, but the enemy is self. The hero has become a monk. The man of action is replaced by the quietist, whose highest aspiration is to be the passive ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... "take care how you go knocking your head against rocks, for you might happen to come up against so ungracious a rock that it would put an end to the penance altogether. If the knocks on the head are necessary, I should content yourself, seeing that this madness is all make-believe, with striking your head on some softer thing, and leave the rest to me, for I will tell your lady that I saw you strike your head on the point of a rock that was ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... bronze equestrian statue has been set up in the Grand Plaza. It is a bronze woman, sitting quietly and easily upon a furious bronze horse. The horse is in a terrible state of excitement, but the woman is not alarmed in the least; for she seems to be well aware that it is only make-believe passion, badly executed in bronze. Who could this woman be but Malinche, or Marianna, the Indian mistress of Cortez—a fit patroness of the women of Puebla. She was the first convert that Cortez ever made to Christianity; and her sort of Christianity is not unusual in Mexico. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... of ten or twelve years of age have passed the "make-believe" stage of play; they want the "real," but of their own kind and age. After little children have made and played with toys and foreshadowed the needs of the actual home, the time has come for the youth to have his demands, which are not yet the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards



Words linked to "Make-believe" :   simulation, make believe, pretence, pretense, imaging, pretend, imagination, pretending, unreal, feigning, mental imagery, imagery



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