Literary notes about Scheme (AI summary)
In literature the word "scheme" carries a remarkably versatile load of meanings. At times it denotes a carefully drawn personal plan or ambition, as seen when characters devise secret or whimsical strategies ([1], [2], [3]) or when a character’s marital or financial tactics are called into question ([4], [5]). In other cases, it is applied to grand, systematic designs—whether laying out political ideologies, architectural combinations, or philosophical arrangements—as in discussions of societal blueprints and statecraft ([6], [7], [8]). Moreover, the term often hints at both creativity and complicity, suggesting plans with an undercurrent of ingenuity or deceit in narratives ranging from the whimsical misadventures of P. G. Wodehouse’s characters to the more purposeful designs in political treatises ([9], [10], [11]).
- I am very uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I have too little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I have too much.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot - After he had worked for three weeks, Juan became discouraged, gave up his scheme of winning the princess, and returned home.
— from Filipino Popular Tales - ‘But I have another scheme in my head, mamma, and have had long, only I did not like to mention it.’
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë - It is my husband's scheme, your connexion's, and mine.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage—forget it.”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - Controversy about "the facts" has been mainly as to what position they occupy in the total scheme of reality.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of scheme or plan of the book.
— from The Republic by Plato - Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous and also consistent with our entire polity.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - “It’s confidential, old boy,” he said, “a little scheme we have hatched up.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner - And when I came downstairs an hour or so later, I knew how right I had been to formulate this scheme for Gussie's bucking up.
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - “What brought all his wicked scheme to wreck was your discovery of this man Heidegger’s dead body.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
