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Visionary   /vˈɪʒənˌɛri/   Listen
Visionary

noun
(pl. visionaries)
1.
A person given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible.
2.
A person with unusual powers of foresight.  Synonyms: illusionist, seer.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Visionary" Quotes from Famous Books



... Uther's elfin-tale, And roved through many a necromantic vale, Portraying chiefs who knew to tame The goblin's ire, the dragon's flame, To pierce the dark, enchanted hall Where Virtue sat in lonely thrall. From fabling Fancy's inmost store A rich, romantic robe he bore, A veil with visionary trappings hung, And o'er his Virgin Queen the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... this form of entertainment; the variety and rapid movement delight her—as I admit they do my dull self—and she deeply enjoys the blatant crudity of cinematic drama. "It is so entirely unlike life that it transports one to another world," says she. "Here in this strange visionary world of the pictures one lives in a maelstrom of emotions. Boys and girls meet, embrace, and marry all within the space of a few minutes upon the screen and of an hour or two of dramatic action. Children are conceived and born by some lightning process which it would be a happiness for the human ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... First a troubled suspicion, then a dire certainty. Not the transparent, light-hearted, humble girl, whom a safe, prosperous country home, an honourable position, a kindly regard, left more than satisfied—happy: but the visionary, enthusiastic woman, confiding, but claiming confidence for confidence; tender and true, but demanding like sincerity, constancy, purity, and power of devotion. Had he but known her the first! But a man's fate lies in one ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... often the ridicule and contempt of the world has crushed truth in the embryo or stifled it in the cradle, which makes me so eager to examine and support those opinions which mankind generally condemn as visionary and irrational.' In later times these interests became a bond between W. R. Greg and Miss Martineau. He finally let the subject drop, with the conviction that years of practice had brought it no farther on ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley

... startled at the proposition; it seemed a wild and visionary scheme: but by degrees I began to dwell with pleasure on the subject. I had few ties beyond my native village; the income arising from my curacy was too small to make it any great obstacle: like ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... these days of imminent dismay, my thoughts flew out as to a fair protecting saint; until the inspiration of her visionary presence wrought in my fancy with such a dramaturgic power, that I seemed to walk daily with her, and to know all those delicate and sweet propinquities by which liking passes into affection and affection is glorified into love. So far did these happy day-dreams carry me, that ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that, as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... south of Mason and Dixon's line; and the Northern people have been slow in arriving at the conclusion that treasonable talk would lead to treasonable action, because they could not conceive that anybody should be so foolish as to think of rearing an independent frame of government on so visionary a basis. Moreover, the so often recurring necessity, incident to our system, of obtaining a favorable verdict from the people, has fostered in our public men the talents and habits of jury-lawyers at the expense of statesmanlike qualities; and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... principle carried it against policy, there being for my amendment I think 60, and only 3 for the householder plan. Thus then, my friends, whether I was right or whether I was wrong, I not only was the first to propose the adoption of the wild and visionary scheme of universal suffrage at a great public meeting, but I also stood firm to the cause, when those who have since so ably advocated the principle, were (in evil hour) from policy about to abandon it. Let, therefore, all the blame ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... that neither grief nor amatory passion (dominating the association of our ideas as they do) beget many phantasms. Our business, however, is with the false perceptions of persons trustworthy, as far as we know, sane, healthy, not usually visionary, and in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... be disposed to regard the above statements concerning the "planes of being" as somewhat visionary, theoretical, or imaginary, we would say: "Go to modern science, and verify this statement." The following quotation from a writer on the subject will serve to illustrate this fact, viz.: "We are apt to think that we are familiar with ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... interests in existing banks, many of which pay their stockholders 15 per cent. or more. It can relieve the stagnation and make profitable investment by an active campaign for public and private contracts and for sound and fair concessions, not visionary or ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... universe appeared to swim in the same watery uncertainty in which I floated. I began to doubt everything, to distrust the stars, the line of low bushes for which I was wearily striving, the very land on which they grew, if such visionary tiring could be rooted anywhere. Doubts trembled in my mind like the weltering water, and that awful sensation of having one's feet unsupported, which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart, seemed to clutch at mine, though not yet to enter it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... contrary to all the rules of good breeding, Somnus had allowed me to call upon him repeatedly in vain) was disturbed by all sorts and kinds of visions. Lawlesses innumerable, attended by shoals of top-booted shrimps—the visionary shrimp being a sort of compromise between the boy so called and the real article—drove impossible dog-carts drawn by quadrupeds whose heads and necks bore a striking resemblance to the waltz-loving ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... opium did not move me to seek solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self- involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary; but I regard that little. I must desire my reader to bear in mind that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my time; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as other people. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... effort to prevent her downward drop from beginning again she searched all the occupations open to her. She could not find one that would not have meant only the most visionary prospect of some slight remote advancement, and the certain and speedy destruction of what she now realized was her chief asset and hope—her personal appearance. And she resolved that she would not even endanger it ever again. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... himself entangled in the musty mechanism of a worn-out and rancid-smelling engine, that dragged the State as a broken-winded horse might have done. Then, little by little, weariness and disgust had penetrated the heart of this visionary who desired to live, to assert himself in putting an end to so many abuses, and whom his colleagues, his chiefs of division, his chief of service, the chief of the State himself cautiously advised: "Make no innovations! Let things go! That has gone ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... constantly employed in canvassing the qualities of the unseen Antonio. Her friend had furnished her with a catalogue of his perfections in gross, which her active thoughts were busily arranging into form and substance. But little practised in the world or its disappoinments {sic}, the visionary girl had already figured to herself a person to suit these qualities, and the animal was no less pleasing, than the moral being of her fancy. What principally delighted Julia in these contemplations on the acquaintance ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... "solidarity" of all human interests, it is not likely to grow weaker; a young man will break a blood-vessel for the honor of a boat-club; a savage will allow himself to be tortured to death for the credit of his tribe; why should it be called visionary to believe that a civilized human being will make personal sacrifices for the benefit of men whom he has perhaps not seen, but whose intimate dependence upon himself he realizes at every moment of his life? May not such a ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... letters may con o'er, And dream on faces seen no more, The buried treasure of the years, Too visionary now for tears; Open old cupboards and explore Sometimes, for an old sweetheart's sake, A delicate romantic ache, Sometimes a swifter pang of pain To read old tenderness again, As though the ink were scarce yet dry, And She ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... with its mountains and its woods and its deep mysterious valleys—and I want to love it, too. And I will love it! I'll find his mine if it takes me all the rest of my life. And I'll show the people back home that he was right, that he did know that the gold was here, and that he wasn't just a visionary ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... times, was simple nonsense. Roosevelt hoped he had been of some assistance in moving our people along the line Mr. Rhodes mentioned; that is, along the line of a sane, moderate purpose to supervise the business use of wealth and to curb its excesses, while keeping as far aloof from the policy of the visionary and demagogue as from the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... And then it occurred to me suddenly that my parents could not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... visionary forms knelt every Sunday afternoon on the chancel-step, but not the real. Her shop had, as it were, eaten itself hollow. In the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief she had ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... thing must come; it is as logical as one, two, three. There are some, perhaps, who remember the roars of derision which went up when the first automobile garage was established in their town. Such a thing was visionary-there would never be enough ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... daily growing less popular, and he saw that it must go down in the near future. He had prospered in his shipping business, and seeing here a grand opportunity he began to study up on banking preparatory to taking the bank. Reader, think of this kind of enterprise. His friends might think such a thing visionary; the best financier might pass the opportunity by, but this man knew that the United States Bank had a vast patronage, and he also knew that the man who stepped into its business would have every reason to expect success. He at once set ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... Both the labor interests and the "special interests" resent excessively the recent tendency of intelligent judges to look at precedent and history. Mr. Debs will tell you that such matters are aristocratic and reactionary; Mr. Rockefeller, or his lawyer, that they are both visionary and obsolete. Yet a statute may only represent the sudden will of a small body of mediocre intelligence on a new subject (or an old one) which they have never studied. It is true that if they make a mistake they can amend it to-morrow; ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... father died of apoplexy when patient was nine. The mother had diabetes. A paternal uncle was queer, visionary. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... history, wherein one may set forth joys and sorrows which in a real history must walk shadowed under the veil of modesty; for the soul, still less than the body, will consent to be revealed to all eyes. Hence, although most of my books have seemed true to some, they have all seemed visionary ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... abject pauperism,' put in Herbert blandly; 'a reductio ad absurdum of all your visionary Schurzian philosophy, my dear Ernest. Look at it another way, now, and just consider. Which really and truly matters most to you and me, a great work of art or a highly respectable horny-handed son ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... far into the subsoil to bring plant nutrients back up, making them nature's nutrient recycler. Because they greatly increase soil fertility, J. Russell Smith called trees "great engines of production." Anyone who has not read his visionary book, Tree Crops, should. Though written in 1929, this classic book ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... wounds. Curio was kind, but could only hold out the vaguest hopes that, for the present at least, anything would compel the consul-elect to consent to his niece's marriage with a mortal enemy. Flaccus took the same position. The hard-headed man of money thought that Drusus was a visionary, to be so distraught over the loss of a wife—as if the possession of a fortune of thirty odd millions did not make up for every possible calamity. Antonius was still less happy in his efforts at consolation. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... comfortably dispense. I had nearly forgotten to warn you against the capricious works of BEUGHEM; a man, nevertheless, of wonderful mental elasticity; but for ever planning schemes too vast and too visionary for the human ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Pearce, Master of Jesus, and afterwards Dean of Ely, did all he could, records a friend of a somewhat later date, "to keep him within bounds; but his repeated efforts to reclaim him were to no purpose, and upon one occasion, after a long discussion on the visionary and ruinous tendency of his later schemes, Coleridge cut short the argument by bluntly assuring him, his friend and master, that he mistook the matter altogether. He was neither Jacobin, [8] he said, nor Democrat, but a Pantisocrat." And, leaving the good doctor to digest ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... disquisition, and the boldness of Pindaric daring. I have three strong champions to defend me against the attacks of Criticism: the Novelty, the Difficulty, and the Utility of the work. I may justly plume myself that I first have drawn the nymph Mathesis from the visionary caves of abstracted idea, and caused her to unite with Harmony. The first-born of this Union I now present to you; with interested motives indeed—as I expect to receive in return the more valuable offspring of your Muse. Thine ever, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... imaginative faculty more in politics than he did, except Disraeli, and here, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain had the advantage. Disraeli was apt to let his imagination run so wild as to become vulgar, pompous, and ostentatious, whereas Mr. Chamberlain always kept his visionary schemes within the due bounds of seriousness and reason. Though I think he placed no limits to the capacity of the English people to meet and to overcome dangers and difficulties in the world of politics, and always held them, as, indeed, do I, capable to be of heroic mould, he never inflated ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange as to forget the darker truths of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... dear Maria, do you never retrace in your memory the time we passed here when together? to mine it recurs for ever! And yet I think I rather recollect a dream, or some visionary fancy, than a reality.-That I should ever have been known to Lord Orville,-that I should have spoken to-have danced with him,-seems now a romantic illusion: and that elegant politeness, that flattering attention, that ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary. Ay! but being visionary is something. It shows a soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for others, if ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... political. I have had report of him. He is a visionary. There is no sedition in him. He ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... to those he has appointed to govern them? These high flown Whims of yours, are just as practicable, as Archimedes his moving the Earth out of its Place, and it provokes me to hear such impossible Projects declaim'd on by such a Visionary, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... the way of marquetry, cabinets adorned with precious stones, jewels of all sorts, mathematical instruments, antient arms and military machines, that the imagination is bewildered, and a stranger of a visionary turn, would be apt to fancy himself in a palace of the fairies, raised and adorned by the power ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... brandy, which destroyed their souls and reduced them to the level of beasts. The traders retorted that the savages would not go without drink. If they were denied it by the French they would take their furs to Albany, and there imbibe not only bad rum but soul-destroying heresy. Why be visionary and suffer one's rivals to secure an advantage which would open up to them the heart of ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... not at an earthly call Will not depart when mortal voices bid; Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid, Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall! Dion. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... cobblin', elder, and let me prophesy! That boy just takes after his father, and he will never amount to anything in this world or any other. His mother what is dead was a good woman—an awful good woman; but she was sort o' visionary. They say that she used to see things at camp-meetin's, and lose her strength, and have far-away visions. She might have seen fairies. But she was an awful good woman—good to everybody, and everybody loved her; and we were all ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... power of expression. It is the everlasting preserver of the world from blank materialism. It forever puts matter in the wrong, and compels it to show its title to existence. Wordsworth tells us that in his youth he was sometimes obliged to touch the walls to find if they were visionary or no, and such experiences are not uncommon with persons who converse much with their own thoughts. Dr. Johnson said that to kick one's foot against a stone was a sufficient confutation of Berkeley, and poor old Pyrrho has passed into a proverb because, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... in a poor, marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was now haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue was too extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we alighted on a barren heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us under the shelter of some thorns, supped like beggars on bread and a piece of cold bacon, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... when he was informed that I held the variation at London to be still increasing; which he and the other philosophers, his pupils, thought to be then stationary, and on the point of regression, he declared that he believed my system visionary. I did not much murmur to be for a time overborne by that mighty name, even when I believed that the name only was against me: and I have lived till I am able to produce, in my favour, the testimony of time, the inflexible enemy of false hypotheses; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... principles; Burke held that "political problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that which is productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the visionary's right to decide before the result what was "likely to produce evil," Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the French Republic which might have developed itself peacefully, while Paine was striving for an international Congress in Europe in the interest ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... to meet his visitor, it gleamed for a moment upon his white, haggard face, worn and stricken, yet retaining all that quiet force and delicacy of expression which seemed like the index of his inward life. It was the face of a poet, of a dreamer, a visionary perhaps—but a criminal! the ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the Doctor in an intense desire to explore the wonders of the canyon, to shoot in the patches of forest, to fish in the river, and find he knew not what in those wondrous solitudes where man had probably never yet trod, he heard a call, and, brought back to himself from his visionary expedition, he ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... gave of his voyage, while Columbus enjoyed the satisfaction of being able to prove the solidity of his schemes to those very persons who had with disgraceful ignorance rejected them as the projects of a visionary adventurer. ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... the room alone. Now he was confused again. Had he been right or was he just another visionary? Certainly, he hadn't explained himself ...
— Watchbird • Robert Sheckley

... grey eyes glowing with the light of a visionary, Winchester stepped forward, and Lyveden got upon his feet. For a moment the two men looked one another in the face. Then Winchester shivered suddenly, put a hand to his ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... his visionary habits and absorbing experiments would permit him to remember my arrival at all, and I was accordingly relieved to hear from the solitary porter that the "professor" had sent a "veeckle" to meet me, and that I was thus ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... word was more eloquent than all the rest of his words put together. This fellow is no visionary. His scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but—he knows very well what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... movement of the eye is as adequate as a slight motion of the cranium to an equine quadruped devoid of its visionary capacities." ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... methodical than a guess, while a supposition is still slower and more settled; a conjecture, like a guess, is preliminary and tentative; a supposition is more nearly final; a surmise is more floating and visionary, and often sinister; as, a surmise that a stranger may be a pickpocket. Theory is used of the mental coordination of facts and principles, that may or may not prove correct; a machine may be perfect in theory, but useless in fact. Scheme may be used as nearly ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit. The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... painfully clear evidence beneath the direct light falling from the glass roof. The drawn face, the scanty beard of the young man, to whom the bright colour of his eyes, the narrow height of his forehead, his long and fair hair thrown backward gave the air of a visionary, everything was accentuated in the crude light; and also the resolute will in that clear glance which settled upon Jenkins coldly, and in advance to all his reasonings, to all his ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... dishes. When it came to the black coffee, and then to the 'petits verres' of cognac, with lumps of sugar set fire to atop, it was something that so far transcended my home-kept experience that it began to seem altogether visionary. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... directed and finally tested. It can thus be given a true educational value. It must not be ignored that a startling proportion of our great business men are what are termed self-educated. So will it be in the future; but it is far from visionary to believe that university extension will open paths whereby the solitary student need no longer employ an expensive tutor nor waste his time, groping in the labyrinth paths of knowledge, without a thread, at least, to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... the journey ends is more openly fanciful, down-right visionary in tone, but the manner is very emphatically not that of Sterne, though in the midst the Sterne motif of nettle-plucking is introduced. This sentimental episode took hold of German imagination with peculiar force. The hobby-horse idea also was sure ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... given to the Neophyte. Mystics have always been sneered at, and seers disbelieved; those who have had the added power of intellect have left for posterity their written record, which to most men appears unmeaning and visionary, even when the authors have the advantage of speaking from a far-off past. The disciple who undertakes the task, secretly hoping for fame or success, to appear as a teacher and apostle before the world, fails even before his task is attempted, and his hidden hypocrisy poisons ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... Robert Owen purchased New Harmony, Rapp's village in Indiana and its thirty thousand appurtenant acres. When Owen came to America he was already famous. Great throngs flocked to hear this practical man utter the most visionary sentiments. At Washington, for instance, he lectured to an auditory that included great senators and famous representatives, members of the Supreme Court and of the Cabinet, President Monroe and Adams, the President-elect. ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... benevolent compassion. You will find in his pages the humours of starving workers of the soil, the vision among the mountains of an exulting mad spirit in a mighty body, and many other visions worthy of attention. And they are exact visions, for this idealist is no visionary. He is in sympathy with suffering mankind, and has a grasp on real human affairs. I mean the great and pitiful affairs concerned with bread, love, and the obscure, unexpressed needs which drive great crowds to prayer in the holy places of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... came to Kitty's side. As he approached her his eyes fastened on the loveliness of her attitude, her fair head. In his own expression there was a visionary, fantastic joy; it was the look of the dreamer who, for once, finds in circumstance and the real, poetry adequate ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? 'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gored, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die? Why bade ye else, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... library of the British Museum is a very comprehensive and instructive volume. It is a triumphant refutation of the opinions of those who, to the vast injury of literature, and serious inconvenience of men of letters, slight common sense and real utility in favour of visionary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various

... visionary dream, like those in which, with fatal pertinacity, you have so oft indulged; and, on recollection, the rent of his tenement is in arrears; 'twill offer favourable opportunity for my calling and sounding him; the contract ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... shall finally be led into a contempt of the institutions as well as of the rulers of his native land, through a father's teaching, and so grow up an embryo traitor, ready at the first signal to embark in any revolutionary scheme or wild enterprise of visionary reform, such as have been and are still the disturbers of our national prosperity. For an example of such a result in our day we have but to look at the youth of the Southern States, whose fiery treason, far exceeding that of their elders, is nothing more than the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... access to the system were "coagulated" and deposited in the joints and various other parts of the body. Thus the deposits in the kidneys and tartar on the teeth were formed; and the stony deposits of gout were particularly familiar examples of this. All this is visionary enough, yet it shows at least a groping after rational explanations of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... convulsively, as he seemed to be revolving some terrible idea; but at last growing calmer he exclaimed: "Down, down, ye cruel thoughts, ye horrible conceptions; hence, busiest suggestions of the fiend; be silent at my ears, ye visionary lips; ye perilous and importunate prompters, peace!" But scarcely had he uttered these words, when a report of firearms sounded amongst the trees, and a shot rattled through the boughs, scattering the leaves upon his head; and the replicated echoes had hardly ceased, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... tone of such absolute finality, that for a space of several seconds I was rendered literally speechless with amazement. The colossal impudence and audacity of the proposal took my breath away. But I soon collected my scattered faculties, and forthwith proceeded vigorously to remonstrate with the visionary enthusiast who, I instantly recognised, must be the originator ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes—Moses, Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar and ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is—who can doubt?—the only possible ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... convent of St.——. She had to disappear after it became known that she was with child, and M. de Frulai, my predecessor, went mad, and died shortly after. J. J. Rousseau told me that he died of poison, but he is a visionary who sees the black side of everything. For my part, I believe that he died of grief at not being able to do anything for the unfortunate woman, who afterwards procured a dispensation from her vows from the Pope, and having got married is now living ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... saw for the first time Bienville the man, Bienville the visionary, Bienville the enthusiast, the dreamer of dreams and the builder of castles. I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... in the Stafford House manifesto, and the received impression, which no force of fact can alter, is, that slave-owners are divided into but two classes—brutalised depraved "Legrees," or enthusiastic, visionary "St. Clairs"—the former, of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... told with some confusion and Dismay, the usual consequence of dreams Of the unpleasant kind, with none at hand To expound their vain and visionary gleams. I 've known some odd ones which seem'd really plann'd Prophetically, or that which one deems A 'strange coincidence,' to use a phrase By which such ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... it would, under the conditions by which it was then held, that is, in very large areas. The then short experience of residents of the western country were conditions of drought, and I must admit that I thought his ideas were visionary. I have, however, lived to see the success of the grazing farm system and the great improvements effected by underground water supplies. In 1881, these were practically undreamt of. It is likely that McIlwraith could see farther into the future and dream ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... annually on our coasts which might be saved; and I feel assured that if the British public will continue their earnest support to our great National Institution, this death-roll must continue to be diminished. My friends sometimes tell me that I am a visionary—that many of my opinions are ridiculous. Is it ridiculous that I should regard the annual loss of nearly 600 lives, and above two millions of money, as being worthy of the serious attention of ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... produced showing that the prisoner at the bar was guilty as charged in the indictment; that he had a letter that he desired to read to them, which had been sent to Lieut.-Gov. Clark, written by Gen. Oglethorpe ("the visionary Lycurgus of Georgia"), bearing date of the 16th of May. The following is a choice passage from the letter ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... connected with the primary demands of nature, they carry the greater likelihood of originality, because those demands must have been administered to from a period coeval with the existence of the people themselves. Or if complete originality be regarded as a visionary idea, engendered from ignorance and the obscurity of remote events, such arts must be allowed to have the fairest claim to antiquity at least. Arts of accommodation, and more especially of luxury, are commonly the effect of imitation, and suggested by the improvements of other nations ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... before. Nearby were the same booths and from within them came the same laughter and chatter and suppressed song. Opposite the tiny table the same man with the broad, good-natured face was making critical, smiling observation, as of yore. As ever, the look recalled the visionary to the present. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Money Island, Ocean Beach, the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and elsewhere has caused reckless expenditure of actual wealth in recovering doubloons and guineas that disappointed backers of these enterprises are beginning to look upon—no, not to look upon, but to think about—as visionary. A hope of getting something for nothing has been the impetus to these industries, and interest in the subject is now and then revived by reports of the discovery—usually by a farmer ploughing near the shore—of an iron kettle with a handful of gold and silver coins in it, the same having doubtless ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... sermon!" So, indeed, it proved to be; for he presently withdrew to his bed, and summoned his friends around to take a solemn farewell. He died very gradually after about a fortnight, his last words being, not in distress or anguish, but as it would seem in visionary rapture: "I were miserable if I might not die." All this fortnight and to the moment of his death, the terrible life-sized portrait of himself in his winding-sheet stood near his bedside, where it could ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... Blennerhasset stood in the front rank of Irish society. Educated for the bar, he distinguished himself on many occasions, and he was the assistant counsel, with Curran, in the celebrated trial of Hamilton Rowan. But his disposition was restless, his mind visionary, and, doubtless, he felt sincerely for the degraded state of his country. Notwithstanding his close relationship to the aristocracy of Ireland, and the glaring unfitness of his character for scenes of daring and of danger, he connected himself with the leading yeomen of that day, and became the ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without farther instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now); but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... reaching out my hand and shaking it in the air with my visionary friend—"thanks. I've studied these things with some care, and I've tried to find a reason for everything in life as I know it. I have always regarded Henry as a moral man—as is natural, since in spite of all you can say he is the real head of the English ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... know not yourself, nor me. It is a woman, mild, gentle, and dependent as yourself, that my very nature loves; deceive not yourself with visionary ideas of generosity, which ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... preconceived ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... guide-book, I find there mentioned, as a "visionary," one of the men I should think of as able to be a truly valuable settler in a new and great country—Morris Birkbeck, of England. Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois. I see nothing promised there that will ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... felt by all the Procter family lingered for days after father's Saturday afternoon at home. And then ordinary hours intruded and filled the small lives with their duties and their pleasures. Still shadowy, deeply hidden, the influence of the visionary father lay. Even small Maizie awoke to tiny dreams, her literalness for ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... and anxieties which Friedrich has upon him in those Seven Weeks, while waiting at Schlettau, reading the omens. Never hitherto was the augury of any Campaign more indecipherable to him, or so continually fluctuating with wild hopes, which proved visionary, and with huge practical fears, of what he knew to be the real likelihood. "Peace coming?" It is strange how long Friedrich clings to that fond hope: "My Edelsheim is in the Bastille, or packed home in disgrace: but will not the English and Choiseul ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... on the state railways of Hungary by M. Barosz, the Hungarian Minister of Commerce, on the 1st of August, 1889. The adoption of the new tariff was ridiculed and condemned as visionary by road experts, who even went so far as to prove to the satisfaction of practical railroad men that the innovation was destined to be a failure. For a month or two it almost seemed as if their prediction might be fulfilled, the number of passengers ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms, 65 (Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, Only consenting at the branch's end They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face, The Praiser's, in the center: who with eyes Sightless, so bend they back to light inside 70 His brain where visionary forms throng up, Sings, minding not that palpitating arch Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off, Violet and parsley crowns to trample on— 75 Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... on the shelf, And now did penance; him the fall half roused From dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped, Then straightway snored again. No other sound Within the dream-enchanted house was heard, Save that the mastiff, lying at the gate With visionary bone, snarled in his sleep. Secret as ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... intelligence of the country. Nor is there any sign of lack of practical sense in the admirable organization which not only insured the success of the revolution (in spite of certain cross accidents) but secured its absolutely peaceful acceptance throughout the country. There are no doubt visionary and fantastic spirits in the Republican ranks, and ridiculous proposals have already been mooted. For instance, it has been gravely suggested that all streets bearing the names of saints—and there are hundreds of them—should be renamed in commemoration of Republican heroes, dates, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... the same direction. This could not last long without having a bad effect on the body. I had an illness, which, although I was racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it compelled me to live in the present suffering, and not in the visionary researches I had been continually making before. My kind uncle came to nurse me; and after the immediate danger was over, my life seemed to slip away in delicious languor for two or three months. I did not ask—so much did I dread falling into the old channel of thought—whether any reply had been ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... faith in the ineffable, used to listen to her with a certain amazement, as if the plump, strong woman had been a visionary incapable ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... vision have included Ted Nelson's Xanadau, Alan Kay's Dynabook, and Lancaster's "paperless library," with the most recent incarnation being the "Knowledge Navigator" described by John Scully of Apple. But the reality of library service has been less visionary and the leap to the electronic library has eluded universities, publishers, and ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... he engaged in this Visionary Dissection, told us, that there was nothing in his Art more difficult than to lay open the Heart of a Coquet, by reason of the many Labyrinths and Recesses which are to be found in it, and which do not appear in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... give us something of a clue to his character: a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament; unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation, and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct, he was clean, but coarse; honest, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... escape further bloodshed; it was guarded by the Royalist Cossack clans, as lawless as they are brave. The Ufa Directorate derived its authority from the moderate Social Revolutionary party composed of the "Intelligenzia"—republican, visionary, and impractical. Kerensky was, from all accounts, a perfect representative of this class, verbose and useless so far as practical reconstructive work was concerned. This class blamed the unswerving loyalty of the Cossacks and ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... delightful novelty upon Northern ears, Mr. White conceived the idea of taking a company of the students on a concert-tour over the country, in order to thus obtain sufficient funds to build a college. This was a bold idea, seemingly visionary; but the sequel proved that it ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... promoted him to more honour and to a greater enjoyment of his confidence. But against the monks he again raged above measure, declaring that this was of their teaching, that men should abstain from the pleasures of life, and rock themselves in visionary hopes. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... to suppose that Peter Cartwright was a mere visionary or dreamer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He was abundantly possessed with what, in Western parlance, is known as "horse sense." He was a student of men, and kept in close touch with the affairs of this world. His shrewdness, no less than his courage, was a proverb in ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes until we fell off into a state of visionary stupor known as "kiff;" we paid our respects to the Kadi, exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down cross-legged on mats as if we were the three tailors of Tooley Street; we almost consented to have ourselves bled by a Moorish barber—Mahomet ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... shapes at all were there. 'Twas his sick mind Which turned the herds that lowed and barking hounds That followed, to some visionary sounds Of Furies. For ourselves, we did but sit And watch in silence, wondering if the fit Would leave him dead. When suddenly out shone His sword, and like a lion he leaped upon Our herds, to fight his Furies! Flank and side He stabbed and smote them, till the foam was dyed Red at the waves' edge. ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... sure that I care for this intimate association with Mr. Edwardes," he curtly announced. "I am not enamored of the vaporings of visionary and self-ordained preachers." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... or Love, almost invariably attracts opposites, and for their own good. A visionary, idealistic woman is drawn to a practical man, where, kick and fuss and despise each other as they will, she is bound to become more practical and he more idealistic. They exchange qualities in spite of themselves; each is an unconscious ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne

... is reason, which labours to perfect all things that he judges to be good, and to transform all evil. Ultimate results are out of sight for all human faculties except the early-waking eyes of long-chastened hope; but reason loves this visionary mood, though she prefer that it be sung, and find that less lyrical speech brings on it something of ridicule; for such a rendering betrays, as a rule, faint desire or small power to serve her in those ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is traveling westward; and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that destined moment when America is to give the law to the rest ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... demands of England and Spain were met, and they withdrew their forces. It became clear, however, that Louis Napoleon, who refused to recognize Juarez, had an ulterior design to overthrow the Mexican government, and to establish an empire in its place. It was a part of a visionary scheme to establish the domination of "the Latin race." He expected to check the progress of the United States, and ventured on this aggressive enterprise on account of the opportunity offered by the civil war in America. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal, republican country of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." He had been and still was favoring delay and conciliation, in the visionary hope that the seceders would follow the scriptural precedent of the prodigal son. On April 9 the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Mr. Phillips said:[132] "Here are a series of States, girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... needed the hope of the dawn. Trial is good for any one, but hopeless suffering for none. Philip had not been without hope, but it was a visionary indulgence, against all evidence. It was the hope of youth, not of reason. He stuck to his business doggedly, he stuck to his writing doggedly, but over all his mind was a cloud, an oppression not favorable to creative effort—that is, creative ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... other hand the Romantic school has also broadened the realm of poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by giving to the symbolical ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... mortification and humiliation. Her director rebuked her for indulging silly fancies; the Mother Superior asserted that if God granted her request, it would be only as a punishment for her presumption; others, whose judgment she equally deferred to, pronounced the project visionary and delusive, yet her great courage never failed, for it was founded on a perfect confidence that in His own time, God would do His own work, using her as his instrument, all unworthy though she was. In two letters, she fully explained her position to her ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... to- day. But let us have one thing or the other—a Christ who was what He claimed to be, the Incarnate Word of God, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification; or a Galilean peasant who was either a visionary or an impostor, like Judas of Galilee ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... mother. She had no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George. Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged descent from Prince ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... antagonism to the logic and the materialistic views of the times. It set itself firmly against tradition of whatsoever sort. The body of man had not been considered with care until anatomy began to be studied in the period of the Italian renaissance. The visionary notions of the world which the people had accepted for a long time began gradually to give way to careful consideration of the exact facts. Patience and loving admiration in the study of man and nature yielded immense returns ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... became a Necessarian, and adopted strenuously the dogma of the invariable and inevitable action of fixed laws. We may be allowed, perhaps, to think of this singular woman as yearning and aspiring after a lofty ideal throughout a sensitive and timorous childhood; and in wayward musings and visionary reflections finding that consolation which should have been, but was not, provided by maternal love. As she grew older, and grew stronger both in mind and body, she grew bolder; aspiration gave way to self-satisfied ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... their transactions. Southern zeal quite outdoes us, in our literary efforts here of late. The truth is, men have speculated so wildly, they have no money to devote to historical or literary plans. A correspondent writes me (Feb. 12th) on these visionary ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... a keen anxiety as to the result of that conversation. I was very impulsive by nature, and I had fallen in love with Mrs. Morton. The worn look on the beautiful young face had touched me somehow. One of my queer visionary ideas came over me as I recalled her expression. I thought that if I were an artist, and that my subject was the "Massacre of the Innocents," that the mother's face in the foreground should be Mrs. Morton's. "Rachel ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... are turned aside from the career they might have accomplished, by a visionary and impracticable fastidiousness. They can find nothing that possesses all the requisites that should fix their choice, nothing so good that should authorise them to present it to public observation, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... general way he attacks the democratic movement, a movement, as P. Bourget says, which is "anti-physical" and contrary to the natural laws of progress; though it has been inspired "by the dreams of that most visionary of all centuries, the eighteenth." (V. de Lapouge, "Les Selections sociales", page 259, Paris, 1896.) The "Equality" which levels down and mixes (justly condemned, he holds, by the Comte de Gobineau), prevents the aristocracy of the blond dolichocephales ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... wrote you a note. Amid the exquisite pleasure and pain of which lurked a hope—without which it would not have been written, but which I now see to have been very visionary. It is possible that circumstances may be so that the note may have been read by you; in that case Mrs. Caxton will give you this; but at the distance of space and time that intervenes now, and with cooler thoughts and better knowledge, I feel it to be scarcely ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... they had travelled very close in the world of their hopes and sorrows and desires. Perhaps, as they rode along the foothill trail, they were still journeying together down the long, strange trails of the future; dim, visionary, exquisite trails; rough, hard, cruel trails hidden in the merciful mirage ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... you become my wife, and help me as only you can in those inevitable years I have mapped out; and not so much for myself as for Russia. My enemies have sought to persuade three sovereigns that I am a visionary, but I have already accomplished much that met with resentment and ridicule when I broached it. And I know my powers! I tingle with the knowledge of my ability to carry to a conclusion every plan I ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... conditions that are admittedly pathological, but I believe it would be possible to prove the same of all normal frames of mind and emotional states. Any human quality may be enlisted in the service of religion, but there are none that are specifically religious. It is a pure assumption that the religious visionary possesses qualities that are either absent or rudimentary in other persons. Human faculty is everywhere identical although the form in which it is expressed differs according to education, the presence of certain dominating ideas, and the general influence ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... early period of its history, the most visionary ideas were formed by the company and the public of the immense riches of the eastern coast of South America. Everybody had heard of the gold and silver mines of Peru and Mexico; every one believed them to be inexhaustible, and that it was only necessary to send the manufactures of England ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... answered him, a grunt from the cook, and a moan from Neddie. Our spirits were too low to be stirred even by Blodgett's visionary tales. It was hard to believe that the moon above the mountains was the same that had shone down upon us long before off the coast ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... his own death, called at his sister Nancy's, told her that he should live but a few days, and wept bitterly at the near approach of his dissolution. Nancy endeavored to persuade him that his trouble was imaginary, and that he ought not to be affected by a fancy which was visionary. Her arguments were ineffectual, and afforded no alleviation to his mental sufferings. From his sister's, he went to his own house, where he stayed only two nights, and then went to Squawky Hill to procure money, with which to purchase flour ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... the visionary regions of fancy, let us pursue the thought a stage farther; and consider Birmingham as one great family, possessed of a capital of Eight Millions. Her annual returns in trade as above, from which we will deduct for ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... you work, to begin life again, as you say—how sweet and terrible and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I know you! I am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am not foolish, I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that visionary world where you and I could live and work and wander, and be content with all that would be given us—joy, seeing, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... comparative freedom of commercial principles in the old regime of France allied with political despotism, was, however, ruthlessly condemned to the guillotine, along with the head of the Capets, never to be replaced by the ferocious spirit of democracy, revelling in the realization of all other visionary abstractions of perfect liberty, equality, levelling of distinctions and monopolies. With the reign of the rights of man was established, in the body politic, that of prohibition and restriction over the body industrial—gradually sobered down, as we find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... taken by most of those who come in his way either for Dry- as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are, doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... legal profession, both professionally and socially, for some years past has convinced me that the average lawyer still looks upon the ideas concerning crime and the criminal expressed by physicians of a forensic bent as totally unpractical and visionary. It would take only a brief visit to a criminal department of any modern, well-conducted hospital for the insane to convince any fair-minded individual that the physician handles the problem of the criminal not only in a more scientific and rational ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... was to establish His title to such high offices. [189:5] Though they "looked for redemption," and "waited for the kingdom of God," [189:6] there was much that was vague, as well as much that was visionary, in their notions of the Redemption and the Kingdom. We may well suppose that the views of the multitude were still less correct and perspicuous. Some, perhaps, expected that Christ, as a prophet, would decide the ecclesiastical controversies of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... with the Philosophical Radicals, in the hope of organising them for active service in the cause. But this group soon broke up, and Mr. Stephen ascribes their failure in part to their name, observing that the word '"Philosophical" in English is synonymous with visionary, unpractical, and perhaps simply foolish.' There would be less satire, and possibly more justice, in saying that the word gives a chill to the energetic hot-gospeller of active Radicalism, who pushes past the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... pianist; told him that this blow was intended as a lesson in self-control; that he must not be downcast, but turn to his music as a consolation; and a whole string of such platitudes. When he left me I asked myself if Ellenora was not right, after all. Could she have reached that visionary rim of finer issues—of which she always prated—with this man, talented though he was, yet a slender reed shaken by the wind of her will? Besides, his chin was ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... degrading to a man of civilization, when shown towards an ignorant, tyrannical, and despotic tyrant. Any attempt to force a channel of commerce, beyond the territories of these savage chiefs, without having first, either by presents or other means, obtained their co-operation, is too visionary a scheme for even the most enterprising adventurer to dare to undertake. King Jacket and King Boy, with the king of Eboe, may be said to be in the command of the estuary of the Niger, and, therefore, any attempt ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... I go to church," said Udell thoughtfully; "Well, Mr. Wicks, I'll tell you why I don't go to church. Just because I've got too much to do. I make my own way in the world and it takes all the business sense I have to do it. The dreamy, visionary, speculative sort of things I hear at meeting may be all right for a fellow's soul, but they don't help him much in taking care of his body, and I can't afford to fill my mind with such stuff. I am living this side of the grave. Of course ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... visionary a hope, for Nat's designs grew prettier and prettier, and the agent bought all I carried him. One week I remember he paid me thirty dollars; and as he handed it to me, seeing how pleased ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... "What a queer, visionary child! One would not look for it in these wilds. The ladies over yonder talk of them because it is a fashion, but when they ride through the parks and woods they want a train of admirers. And with you it is pure love. Could you love any one as you do nature? Was any ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... he was visionary, when Lake explained, as he did in his effort to enlist capital with which to build his first submarine boat, that he could safely submerge his invention and steer it about on the bed of the ocean as readily as a man can steer an automobile about the streets of a city, that while submerged ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... terribly mangled, his clothes torn into ribbons, and his back and shoulders one mass of lacerated wounds. His reason had already become unseated. In his native language he would call out to his now visionary foe, "If you are a brave man, come on." Although the most delicate care and assistance was rendered to Sanchez, it was many weeks before he was able to resume his occupation; and, even then, he owed his life to the wonderful recuperative powers of his healthy and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters



Words linked to "Visionary" :   mortal, forecaster, somebody, person, dreamer, fantast, utopian, idealist, individual, impractical, seer, prognosticator, intellectual, diviner, soul, predictor, anticipator, someone, intellect, vision, soothsayer, anticipant, futurist



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