creation of the brain

Love was regarded by him, if regarded at all, as an idle creation of the brain; and whether from such an opinion of the tender passion, a consciousness of his own unworthiness of being loved, or, from a feeling of shame to meet the pure and lovely being to whom he had paid his addresses; yet, he had forsaken her—her, recently his polar star—the object of his thoughts by day and of his dreams by night!

To me the Maid of Athens was almost an imaginary being, something fanciful, a creation of the brain, and not a corporeal substance, to have a little urchin of a boy.

The Idea, a name common to every creation of the brain, constituted the act by which man uses his mind.

To actually dispute all kinship between gentiles after the manner of Grote and Niebuhr, who thus transform the gens into a purely hypothetical and fictitious creation of the brain, is indeed worthy of "ideal" scientists, that is book worms.

A. Indeed I am not so exorbitant in my demands upon your good-nature; but observe, I may get up four or five chapters already with the hints you have given me, but I do not know how to move such a creation of the brain—so ethereal, that I fear he will melt away; and so fragile, that I am in terror lest he fall to pieces.