"Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reprisal for the thwarting of their plans. But when even one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading, could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of clear moral virtue—how should it be expected that the parties chiefly interested should take a stricter view of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... entertained against this body, and the memory of it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being representative and popular—not in its constitution, but in its object.—With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You, Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are unconstitutional.—If you heard this asserted ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... in view that prosperity depended on the weakening of the Magyar influence, the Archduke was in favour of a strong preference for the different nationalities living in Hungary, the Roumanians in particular. Not until my return to Bucharest and following on my reports did the Archduke conceive the plan of ceding Transylvania to Roumania and thus adding Greater Roumania ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... who forms a clear idea of this huge college, with its monastic buildings in the heart of a little town, and the four plots in which we were distributed as by a monastic rule, will easily conceive of the excitement that we felt at the arrival of a new boy, a passenger suddenly embarked on the ship. No young duchess, on her first appearance at Court, was ever more spitefully criticised than the new boy by the youths in his division. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in Italy it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... complaint is a proper object for investigation. Some of its species, it is to be feared, must forever remain beyond the reach of art; for it is difficult to conceive of any natural agent sufficiently powerful to produce absorption of the thickened parietes of the heart, and at the same time diminish its cavities; but we may indulge better hopes of the possibility of absorbing ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... result of my attempt to gain over the proselyte of this man of crime; I could not conceive that he would dare put me to death.—Yet I was in his hands; the path of his ambition had ever been dark and cruel; his power was founded upon fear; the one word which might cause me to die, unheard, unseen, in the obscurity of my dungeon, might be easier ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... afraid I shall have to give in," cried Stephen, as the enduring camels went jogging on for twelve hours together without stopping. "What they and their masters are made of I cannot conceive, for the Arabs have eaten but a few dates each day since we started; for my part I feel ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... upon his knee when that horrid blow came! How very odd that he should have been like that, without any friends. What a terrible nuisance to you! I think you were quite wise to come away. I am sure I should have done so. I can't conceive what right Sir John Purefoy can have had to say anything, for after all it was his doing. Do you remember when you talked of my riding Jemima? When I think of it I can hardly ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the most, might conceive doubts: Ganimard, whose arrival is hourly expected; Holmlock Shears, who is about to cross the Channel; and I, who am on the spot. This constitutes a threefold danger. He removes it. He kidnaps Ganimard. He kidnaps Holmlock Shears. He ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... I am mistaken future consequences must determine; but while I continue in my present sentiment, I shall consider myself embarked in a cause which must, in its consequences, extricate this country from anarchy and licentiousness. I cannot conceive that the Scottish emigrants, to whom I imagine you allude, can be under greater obligations to this country than to the King, under whose gracious and merciful government they alone could have been enabled ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... political situation. It has been essentially similar any time within living memory. The people approve in politics what they feel, instinctively, to be the profitable or the decent and reasonable necessary next thing to do. Which signifies that those controversialists are probably wrong who conceive that a result of the war, if it be a win for the Allies, will cause any great formal change in Canada's political ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... However, they did not understand this, and Mrs. Heth, for her part, was the last person in the world to moralize upon the non-essential. Returning homeward through the night, rolling eclat beneath her tongue, she frankly reflected that it was worth the money. The envious would hardly be able to conceive that people who gave so magnificently to charity could have done anything really deserving of censure; no, no. Or, if such people imaginably had, then certainly the only thing to do was to forget all about ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ruinous. I think I have had very good opportunities of judging of the effect of the system upon the people, being intimately acquainted with them, and having received the statements in private of a great many of them; and I cannot conceive any system which could be more ruinous in a moral point of view, apart altogether from its effect upon them in a pecuniary way. In my opinion, the independence of the people is wholly destroyed. There is scarcely a man I know, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... pride ourselves on what We feel, and not what we achieve; The world may call our children fools, Enough for us that we conceive. A little wren that loves the grass Can be as proud as any lark That tumbles in a cloudless sky, Up near the sun, till he becomes The apple of that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... or of a peach is clearly not a physical quality. Nor do we in attributing beauty to some particular quality in an object, say colour, conceive of it as a phase of this quality, like depth or brilliance of colour, which, again, is known by a special modification of the sensations of colour. Hence we must say that beauty, though undoubtedly referred to a physical object, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... slave, he knoweth neither her rank nor her lineage and thus he cannot tell if she be of simple origin that he may abstain from her, or of gentle strain that he may be intimate in her companionship. So, if he have commerce with her, haply she will conceive by him and her son be a hypocrite, a man of wrath and a shedder of blood. Indeed the like of such woman may be instanced by a salt and marshy soil, which if one till for ever it yieldeth only worthless growth and no endurance ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... definite questions, and the answers she received were unsatisfactory, alarming. The correspondence became a distinct source of trouble. Not merely on Cecily's account; she was led by it to think of the world beyond her horizon, and to conceive dissatisfactions such as had never ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... thou art she, but oh how fallen, how changed, what an Apostate! how lost to all that's gay and agreeable! To be married I find is to be buried alive; I cant conceive it more dismal to be shut up in a Vault to converse with the Shades of my Ancestors, than to be carried down to an old Manor-House in the Country, and confined to the Conversation of a sober Husband and an awkward Chamber-maid. For Variety I suppose you may entertain yourself with Madam in her Grogram ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... than marry the West Indian cousin. She thought now of his very words, and suggested to herself that perhaps he would never say them again. Nay;—might it not be possible that he would say the very reverse, that he would declare his wish to marry the West Indian cousin. Clary could not conceive but that he might have her should he so wish. Young ladies, when they are in love, are prone to regard their lovers as being prizes so valuable as to be coveted ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to conceive of a property owner driven from one position to another, in order to satisfy this new requirement of the social conscience, without ever finding peace. Miss Addams put the money withdrawn from those ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... departed to his bed, but not to sleep. He could not conceive how Railsford first, and then these three prefects, should have discovered his deeply hidden secret. Not a word about it had escaped his own lips. Branscombe was away, and Clipstone scarcely anyone in Railsford's house ever saw. But the secret was out, and what kept Hunger awake that night was ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... always counted on it and never found it to fail,—and that was the good will of every fellow-creature in whose presence he could find an opportunity to describe his aims. His belief in these was so intense and unqualified that he could not conceive of others not feeling the furtherance of them to be a duty binding also upon them. Velle non discitur, as Seneca says:—Strength of desire must be born with a man, it can't be taught. And Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm glowing in ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... not, I conceive, any other mountainous country in the world that can boast of possessing so favoured a spot. Throughout its whole length and breadth, not a stone is to be found: it is well watered; its temperature is delightful, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... raced. Your lover is ever optimistic, and he could conceive of no errand that could have brought this man to his cottage unless he was charged with the delivery of a note from Maud. He spared a moment from his happiness to congratulate himself on having picked such an admirable go-between. Here evidently, was one ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... people, deep in sleep after the vigil of the storm, were dragged from their beds before they were well awake. Men, women, and children fell victims to such ingenuity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could conceive. Children were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes; aged parents tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters; fathers held powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... lady, and she had told the truth; he could not conceive of her doing otherwise. He knew that she undoubtedly, quite as Anne had said, had made the call a pleasant one. But she had known that he was within a stone's throw of the house, and that he would be bitterly disappointed not to be summoned. She had ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... bodies, so with souls it is, The greater gives, the lesser doth conceive: That thou hast fathered Love, I tell thee this, And by my pangs beseech thee to believe. Look on his hope divine— Thy hope and mine— Pity his outstretched hands, tenderly ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... felt when they came to tell me that the child was missing, when I ordered scouts in all directions, when I gasped and trembled at every one's approach, no tongue can tell or mind of man conceive. I buried him that night. When I parted the boughs and looked into the dark thicket, there was a glow-worm shining like the visible spirit of God upon the murdered child. I glanced down into his grave ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... in regard to all others whom she did not love; and the habits of her life were as far as possible at variance with this proposed meeting, in its familiar and social religious character. She could not conceive how people should wish to speak of their intimate feelings before other people. Her own shrank from exposure as morbid flesh shrinks from the touch. However, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... got my coat. I'm not at all worried about myself—nor about you, neither." She could not conceive of a man ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... by wagon and by boat, commerce was slow and expensive; each community was compelled to be largely self-dependent, and life was isolated to an extent that it is difficult for us to conceive. Anderson has well stated the situation ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Horace did not always conceive of his inspiration as purely ethereal, neither did he always dream of the path to immortality as leading through the spacious reaches of the upper air. At forty-four, he is already aware of a more pedestrian ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... that the King grew more sensitive about his position as time went on; and this conclusion is corroborated by his extraordinary conduct in reference to the works of David Paraeus, the learned Protestant Professor of Divinity at Heidelberg. One can conceive no mortal soul ever reading those three vast folios of closely printed Latin in which Paraeus commented on the Old and New Testament; but in those days people must have read everything. At all events, it was discovered ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives. This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive." It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player. This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that when, upon his first appearance upon the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the poet's vernacular. French, Spanish, Italian, with a variety of barbarous patois, and mongrel Latin, are all brought into play at the same time, and all comprehended, apparently with equal facility, by each one of the dramatis personae. But it is difficult to conceive how such a jargon could have been comprehended, far more relished, by an Italian ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... beginning of this century! They tried almost everywhere to depress the high mountains into hilly country, and they furnish a lanscape commentary to Gessner's Idyls rather than to the gigantic scenery of the Alps as we conceive it at present. Nature, however, has remained the same, and also the outer eye of man; it is the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... ideas properly in a certain order. Democracy and nationhood may, as in the case of Italy, be acquired by a people at the same moment; but without the realisation of the national idea it is hardly possible to conceive of democratic government for any country. The national idea, therefore, precedes the social idea, as Mazzini rightly insists. Still more must it precede the international idea. By this it is not meant that every nation in the world must have grown to self-consciousness and have possessed itself ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... should, perhaps, except Marryatt's novels and Tom Cringle's Log. But of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is as ignorant as a child unborn. He holds all landsmen but ship-builders, owners, and riggers, in supreme contempt, and can hardly conceive of the existence of happiness, in places so far inland that the sea breeze does not blow. A severe and exacting officer is he, but yet a favorite with the men—for he is always first in any emergency or danger, his lion-like voice sounding loud above the roar of the elements, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... proven in a great variety of forms of paresis. I cannot, as an individual intelligence, directly move my hand any more than I can move a mountain. I conceive the object or act and set the will in motion. The impulse traverses the nerves, is transferred to the muscle, and then, when the circuit is complete, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... spectator beholding the sight in safety, it would have been a magnificent spectacle—the grandest, the most terrific, perhaps, it is possible to conceive—a ship on fire at night in the mid-ocean. The hull of the vessel lay flaming like an immense furnace on the surface of the deep; her masts, and the lower and topsail-yards, with fragments of the rigging hanging round them, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... will be still receiving an increase of perfection, and consequently an increase of happiness! The consciousness of such a being spreads a perpetual diffusion of joy through the soul of a virtuous man, and makes him look upon himself every moment as more happy than he knows how to conceive. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the denser the air the sooner it loses its motion. In a dense fluid like water, the motion is imparted quickly, and the sound is not a ring but a click. If we diminish the density of the air, the loss of motion is retarded; so that we might conceive it possible, provided the bell could be suspended in a perfect vacuum, without a mechanical tie, and there was no friction to overcome from the rigidity of its particles, that the bell would vibrate forever, although its sound could never reach the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... of Nether Stowey, a man of high intelligence and mark in his time; and it was in the course of his northern peregrinations in search of subscribers that he met with Charles Lloyd. This young man, the son of an eminent Birmingham banker, was so struck with Coleridge's genius and eloquence as to conceive an "ardent desire to domesticate himself permanently with a man whose conversation was to him as a revelation from heaven;" and shortly after the decease of the Watchman he obtained his parents' consent to ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... lips of the empire builder tightened as his eyes gleamed over the soft luxury of his daughter's boudoir. James would have been hard put to it to conceive any contrast greater than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous simile Farnum's brain ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... do you conceive it to be?" asked the man, depositing his long staff in a corner, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... 'Twere hard to conceive of an uglier thing Than this queer little dog from the island of Skye— Grotesque and uncouth, and ugly as sin— Yet bless'd with a mild ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... that have been long suppressed. One thing was plain enough; Tom thought there was somebody to hear, whether there were or not. In fact, St. Clare felt himself borne, on the tide of his faith and feeling, almost to the gates of that heaven he seemed so vividly to conceive. It seemed to bring ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Priaulx, Alexander.' Conceive my emotions, monsieur, when this fat, beastly cat is placed before me upon ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... believe the gout generally originates from a torpor of the liver, which instead of being succeeded by an inflammation of it, is succeeded by an inflammation of some of the joints; or by a pimpled face, which is another mode, by which the disease of the liver is terminated. I conceive, that the daily use of bitter medicine had in these patients prevented the removal of a gouty inflammation from the liver to the membranes of the joints of the extremities, or to the skin of the face, by preventing the necessary torpor of these parts previous to the inflammation ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his own responsibility. He sends the book to New York or to London, and from New York or London buys plates or sheets. This compels the Canadian book to have an Imperial or an American appeal. In literature, the modus operandi works; for the appeal is universal; but one might conceive of conditions demanding a purely national Canadian treatment, which New York or London publishers would not issue, when Canada would literally be damming the springs of her national literature. Canada ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... unscientifically to stop an immense moral engine, which, if left to its work, is quite powerful enough, without bloodshed, to gain for humanity, at no expense at all, its object. The individual who is, I conceive, to overthrow the Emperor of Russia—who is to direct his own legions against himself—who is to do what Napoleon had at the head of his great army failed to effect, is the little child, who, lighted by the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... happy then," said Ellen, her old confidence standing stronger than ever, "because I know you will if you say so; though how you will manage I cannot conceive. My father, and grandmother, and aunt cannot bear to hear me speak of America; I believe they would be glad if there wasn't such a place in the world. They would not even let me think of it if they could help it; I never dare mention your name, or say a word ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sprawling, and fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t'other day: "Je ne scais pas," dit il, "je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage." If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... easier to conceive than to describe the poor man's feelings at that moment, therefore we leave the reader to conceive them. The natural and desperate tendency to spring up and defend himself had to be combated by the certain knowledge that, encased as he was, he could not spring up, and had nothing ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... done with it!" Still he did not move. "I suppose there are young ladies who like this kind of thing, but I have become old enough to hate it. I have had very little experience of it, but it is odious to me. I can conceive nothing more disagreeable than to have to sit still and hear a gentleman declare that he wants to make me his wife, when I am quite sure that I do not intend to ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... can leave the book-room and go to other parts of the Museum. We can wander down corridors filled with beautiful statues or with mighty, enormous figures, far bigger than you can conceive until you have seen them—figures whose fist is bigger than your whole body, whose fingers are about the size of you, made by the ancient Egyptians, the wonderful people who held the Israelites ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... disrepect; In justice to the good, the bad neglect: For immortality, if hardships plead, It is not theirs who write, but ours who read. But, O! what wisdom can convince a fool, But that 'tis dulness to conceive him dull? 'Tis sad experience takes the censor's part, Conviction, not from reason, but from smart. a virgin author, recent from the press, The sheets yet wet, applauds his great success; Surveys them, reads them, takes their charms to bed, Those in his hand, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... well had the noble conduct of the band at Serampore deserved this vindication. 'I do not know,' he often said, 'a finer instance of the moral sublime, than that a poor cobbler working in his stall should conceive the idea of converting the Hindoos to Christianity; yet such was Dr. Carey. Why Milton's planning his Paradise Lost in his old age and blindness was nothing to it. And then when he had gone to India, and was appointed by Lord Wellesley to a lucrative ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... always is so, because he has no immediate interest to be otherwise. In the inferior employments, the sweets of labour consist altogether in the recompence of labour. They who are soonest in a condition to enjoy the sweets of it, are likely soonest to conceive a relish for it, and to acquire the early habit of industry. A young man naturally conceives an aversion to labour, when for a long time he receives no benefit from it. The boys who are put out apprentices from public charities are generally bound for more than the usual ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of souls that do conceive Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate And bound by circumstances, sit desolate, And long for ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be content with your reply, though I cannot say that I conceive it to be a very satisfactory one. My name is Bolton, a brother officer of Maguire's. Here is my card and address. I shall expect your friend." Saying this, the young man, with a pompous air, turned on his heel and walked out ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Platt, that you have brought a false charge against your fellow-pupil," said Mr. Smith, severely. "I can conceive of ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... stars, works of an Almighty Creator; their pale rays give but a feeble indication of the glorious brightness of worlds, many peopled by beings of a beauty, goodness, and power excelling all that human understanding can conceive. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... Foster and Whitney, to Congress, we find the following remark: "It is a matter of surprise, that so far as we know, none of our artists, have visited this region, and given to the world representations of scenery, so striking and so different from any which can be found elsewhere. We can hardly conceive of any thing more worthy of the artist's pencil, and if the tide of pleasure-travel should once be turned in this direction, it seems not unreasonable to suppose, that a fashionable hotel may yet be built under the shade of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... a superhuman and supernatural being, of a spiritual and personal nature, who controls the world or some part of it on the whole for good, and who is endowed with intellectual faculties, moral feelings, and active powers, which we can only conceive on the analogy of human faculties, feelings, and activities, though we are bound to suppose that in the divine nature they exist in higher degrees, perhaps in infinitely higher degrees, than the corresponding faculties, feelings, and activities of man. In short, by a God I mean ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... reached our ears it must have been a mile away. The sound drew nearer and nearer, and while it was still a quarter of a mile distant, I recognized the familiar noise of Mannering's car, a sound as dissimilar to the hum of the Pirate car as it was possible to conceive. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Prince RUPPRECHT of Bavaria, in an order to his troops last week, referred to the British in the following words:—"Here is the enemy which chiefly blocks the way in the direction of restoration of peace." Conceive a "contemptible little army" being able to do that! It makes one wonder whether the first epithet was ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... the name of history, or the meaning of metaphysics and ethics. He knows the essential relations between men and things, but nothing of the moral relations between man and man. He does not readily generalize or conceive of abstractions. He observes the qualities common to certain bodies without reasoning about the qualities themselves. With the aid of geometric figures and algebraic signs, he knows something of extension and quantity. Upon these ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the experience of Christian love. No wonder, then, that Henrich held already the first place in her heart and imagination, and was endowed by her lively fancy with every quality and every perfection, both of mind and body, that she could conceive to herself. ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for. The apostle has told us the character of heaven. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him"—which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of the heavenly ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... opened the door ahead. Jimmie Dale, at a sign from his conductor, moved forward and entered. Just what he had expected to find he could not have told; his brain was whirling, partly from his aching head, partly from his desperate effort to conceive some way of escape from the peril which, for all his nonchalance, he knew only too well was the gravest he had ever faced; but what he saw was simply a cozily furnished bedroom. There was nothing peculiar about it; nothing out of the way, except perhaps that ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hypothesis the atom may be considered as a mass of positively and negatively charged particles, all in rapid motion, their mutual forces holding them in equilibrium. In case of a very complex structure of this kind it is possible to conceive of certain particles acquiring sufficient kinetic energy to be projected from the system. Or the constraining forces may be neutralized momentarily, so that the particle is thrown off at the same velocity that it had ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... "Can you conceive of a man pretending to care for a girl and yet treating her so? I can't tell you the grief, the mortification, I have endured." She spoke with a half-sob in her throat, as if she was struggling not to cry, which made me wish I had never been born. "It's been all I could do to control ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... broken across, or torn up by the roots, and their trunks all lie one way. Much of the interest of a science such as geology must consist in the ability of making dead deposits represent living scenes; and from this hurricane I was enabled to conceive, pictorially, if I may so express myself, of the origin of those comparatively recent deposits of Scotland which, formed almost exclusively of vegetable matter, contain, with rude works of art, and occasionally ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and reason. The discovery of all that is implicit in the experience of the senses had led him to deny the possibility of knowledge beyond the matter of this experience. Yet the reason has an inevitable tendency to press beyond this limit, to seek all-embracing, absolute unities,—to conceive an unconditioned totality. Thus the reason presents us with the ideas—beyond all possibility of knowledge—of the Soul, the World, and God. In the words of Kant, the Ideas of Reason lead the understanding to the consideration ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Cave makes a majestic curve, and sweeping round the Great Bend or Acute-Angle, resumes its general course. Here the guide ignited a Bengal light. This vast amphitheatre became illuminated, and a scene of enchantment was exposed to our view. Poets may conceive, but no language can describe, the splendor and sublimity of the scene. The rapturous exclamations of our party might have been heard from afar, both up and down this place of wonders. Opposite to the Great Bend, is the entrance of the Sick Room Cave, so called from the fact of ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... with that Christian Charity which declare men to be Christ's Disciples. Indeed further declaring in that as Union in Christ is the sole ground of our Communion, each with other, So we are ready to accept of, Receive too and hold Communion with all such as by a judgment of Charity we conceive to be fellow-members with us in our head Christ Jesus tho Differing from us in Such Controversial Points as are not absolutely and essencially necessary to salvation. We also hope that though of ourselves we are altogether unworthy and unfit thus to offer ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... long years. And there were little black marks round her eyes, due to her tears and the fog and the fragment of lace. And those little black marks appeared to him to be the most delicious, enchanting, and wonderful little black marks that the mind of man could possibly conceive. And there was an exquisite, timid, confiding, surrendering look in her eyes, which said: 'I'm only a weak, foolish, fanciful woman, and you are a big, strong, wise, great man; my one merit is that I know how great, how chivalrous, you are!' ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... your highness, but I will not trust ye: My Robert shall have knowledge of this shift, For I conceive already your deep drift. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... country, of an anomalous race of beings, THE MOST DEBASED UPON EARTH, who neither enjoy the blessings of freedom, nor are yet in the bonds of slavery, is a great national evil, which every friend of his country most deeply deplores.... Tax your utmost powers of imagination, and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the conduct of a free black in this country. Let him toil from youth to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom—let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... scraps of Bible history into the legendary lore of this people.... On this fact hypothesis I remark that, if the shipwrecked foreigners were educated men, or only possessed of such Scriptural knowledge as was then imparted to the commonality of laymen, it is morally impossible to conceive that a Spaniard of the sixteenth century should confine his instruction to some of the leading events of the Old Testament, and be totally silent upon the Christian dispensation, and the cruciolatry, mariolatry, and hagiolatry of that day. And it is equally impossible to conceive that the ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... had slightly rekindled Archie's interest. "I could never deny," he began - "I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the life and spirit of the time and place, to conceive imaginatively the likings, the desires, the passions, the purposes, and the powers that shall be potent ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... Him we see man as he ought to be, man as he is meant to be. And because we instinctively judge that the highest human nature is divine, and because also we feel that GOD Himself would be most divine and worshipful if we could conceive of Him as entering in and sharing our human experience and revealing Himself as man, those who have reflected most deeply about the matter have commonly been led to believe that so indeed it is. They have felt that in Jesus Christ man, as the mirror ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... time, but various generals were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did not conceive public opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probable they would hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of his alleged failure. It would be ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... play without any knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgusting than an impotent, helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to fight, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... keep a civil tongue in your head, Mr. Leach—it will do you no harm!" he said quietly; "I have no wish to interfere with what you conceive to be your particular mode of duty, but I think that before you destroy what can never be replaced, you should consult the owner of the trees, Miss Vancourt, especially as her return is fixed ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... a labouring and servile class will make itself felt in every detail of the inn that will shelter us, of the bedrooms we shall occupy. You conceive my awakening to all these things on the morning after our arrival. I shall lie for a minute or so with my nose peeping over the coverlet, agreeably and gently coming awake, and with some vague nightmare of sitting ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... north-eastern sky. Small, isolated smoke-clouds rose above the stretches of forest, and an irregular-shaped tract of charred grass at the edge of the plain showed how far the flames had encroached upon it before they had been got under. One might well conceive with what almost superhuman exertions the beaters had at length accomplished their task. A large number of cattle had been driven by the fire on to the pasture beyond the home paddock—a pasture that had so far been carefully nursed in view of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... always been, but most particularly of late, strongly averse to all government placed in the hands of the members of the church of England; nine-tenths of the property, the landed property of the country I mean, is in the possession of the latter. You will readily conceive how much these circumstances must give persons of property in this kingdom a leaning towards government; how necessarily they must make them apprehensive for themselves, placed between such potent enemies; and how naturally ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... first assertion they cite the following passage from the Talmud: "The Bible is like water, the Mishna, like wine, the Gemara, spiced wine; the Law, like salt, the Mishna, pepper, the Gemara, balmy spice." But surely only a very shallow mind could conceive from these similitudes that the Rabbis rated the importance of the Bible as less than that of the Talmud; yet an English Church clergyman, in an article published in a popular periodical a few years since, reproduced this passage in proof of rabbinical presumption—evidently ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... "Biographia Britannica;" he never brought either to perfection! What then was this irresolution but the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded? He had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and he had precipitated himself into the dreariness of real life. None but a poet can conceive, for none but a poet can experience, the secret wounds inflicted on a mind of romantic fancy and tenderness of emotion, which has staked its happiness on its imagination; for such neglect is felt as ordinary men would feel the sensation of being let down into a sepulchre, and buried alive. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... conceive of creation as separate from pre-determined plan or end, and all because they cannot understand that Creative innate force, potentia, must have some result, or that the simplest Law once set agoing ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... as to the manner of this temptation, which remains equally real, whether we conceive that the tempter appeared in bodily form, and actually carried the body of our Lord from place to place, or whether we suppose that, during it all, Christ sat silent, and apparently alone in the wilderness. We only divert attention from the true importance of the incident by giving ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... pleased Messer Simone best if this spying creature of his had waited for Dante when he came from his meeting, and stabbed him as he passed. But he thought, as I believe, that what had not been done by the man might very well be done by the master, and with that, as I conceive, for his most immediate intention, he had Maleotti wait for him in the garden. There in a little while he joined him, and the two went together toward the part of the palace where Beatrice had her ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... eyes again upon the big Canadian Scotchman. He was talking with Mrs. Mallory, who was leaning back luxuriously in a steamer chair she had brought aboard at St. Michael's. It would have been hard to conceive a contrast greater than the one between this pampered heiress of the ages and the modern business berserk who looked down into her mocking eyes. He was the embodiment of the dominant male,—efficient to the last inch of his straight six feet. What he wanted he had always taken, ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... told us what no other historians have told.... The skill, the animation, the brightness, the force, and the charm with which he arrays the facts before us are such that we can hardly conceive of more interesting reading for an American citizen who cares to know the nature of those causes which have made not only him but his environment and the opportunities life has given him what ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... be stifled, for beneath the saddle-cloth there are nothing but air-holes, and he can endure it a good while. We must above all things be cautious and prepared for every thing. It would be a fine thing, would it not, if the officials who are on guard in the Temple should conceive the idea of making the rounds a second time for the purpose of inspection. He cannot be carried out before it strikes ten from Notre Dame. We will, however, give him a ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... reasonably described as a special feminine character; there is in it, in more than one of its manifestations, a femaleness as palpable as the femaleness of cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are strong. Men are brave in physical combat. Men have sentiment. Men are romantic, and love what they conceive to be virtue and beauty. Men incline to faith, hope and charity. Men know how to sweat and endure. Men are amiable and fond. But in so far as they show the true fundamentals of intelligence—in so far as they reveal a capacity for discovering the kernel of eternal verity in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... good He kept the laws of brotherhood: I, fierce and greedy, vengeful, base, Showed all the vices of our race. Ah me, dear friend, my brother's fate Lays on my soul a crushing weight: A sin no heart should e'er conceive, But at the thought each soul should grieve: Sin such as Indra's when his blow Laid heavenly Visvarupa(610) low. Yet earth, the waters of the seas, The race of women and the trees Were fain upon themselves to take The weight of sin for Indra's sake. But who ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of every color of kimono that the mind of girl could conceive. Their wearers were being comfortable on chairs and stools so far as they held out. The girls in excess of the number had curled themselves up, Turkish fashion, on cushions on ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... great and successful, though daring, art. The nag being represented in a rampant or rearing posture, the tail, which is prolonged till it touches the ground, appears to form a point d'appui, and gives the firmness of a tripod to the figure, without which it would be difficult to conceive, placed as the feet are, how the courser could maintain his ground without tumbling backwards. This bold conception has fortunately fallen into the custody of one by whom it is duly valued; for, when Dick, in his more advanced state of proficiency, became dubious of the propriety of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... existence when you were there," he said scornfully. But as he was holding me very tightly in his arms, the scorn did not hurt. "How you could believe her, when she told you that what I did for you was from duty, I can't conceive. If you were the heroine of one of Basil's novels there might be some excuse for you. Heroines of stories always believe any wild thing the villain or villainess chooses to tell them, but a real girl, with brains and eyes and at least ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... no doubt, but organized by whom? These two women only? Could either of them have struck the fatal blow? Hardly. Women have the wit to conceive, but neither courage nor brute force to execute. There was a man ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... recall to mind from the first chapter how many things of the highest importance War touches upon, we may conceive that a consideration of all requires ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... important occasion of all) Bacchylides alone was commissioned to do so; although in that year Pindar composed an ode (Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan victor at the same festival. Nor is it difficult to conceive that a despot such as Hiero, whose constitutional position was ill-defined, and who was perhaps all the more exigent of deference on that account, may have found the genial Ionian a more agreeable courtier than Pindar, an aristocrat of the Boeoto-Aeolic type, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Libra or Aquaries. Advicenne says, that when the menses are spent and the womb cleansed, which is commonly in five or seven days at most, if a man lie with his wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but from the fifth to the eighth a female; and from the eighth to the twelfth a male again: but after that perhaps neither distinctly, but both in an hermaphrodite. In a word, they that would be happy in the fruits of their labour, must observe to use copulation ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... whom she had made such exertions and incurred such dangers, and to whose interests she had surrendered and sacrificed every thing that could be dear to the heart of a woman—could believe such tales, and actually conceive the design of murdering his mother on the faith of them, was not to be endured. "Does not he know well," said she, in a voice almost inarticulate with excitement and indignation, "that, if by any means, Britannicus, or Plautus, or any other man were ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... ambition, struggling with agonized remorse; and the hapless but noble-minded Falkland at length falls a martyr to the persecution of that morbid and overpowering interest, of which his mingled virtues and vices have rendered him the object. We conceive no one ever began Caleb Williams that did not read it through: no one that ever read it could possibly forget it, or speak of it after any length of time, but with an impression as if the events and feelings had been personal to himself. This is the case also with the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... instrument into a divine virtue. He may, for instance, take up the duties of an officer's servant. Immediately he throws himself whole-heartedly into a new form of selfless generosity, which leads him to a thousand ways of care and forethought, that even the tenderest woman could hardly conceive. The man who receives this unwavering devotion can only accept it with the knowledge that no one can deserve it, and that it is greater gain to him who gives than to him ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... as I am in you. O how heartily I despise all my former pursuits, and headstrong appetites! What joys, what true joys, flow from virtuous love! joys which the narrow soul of the libertine cannot take in, nor his thoughts conceive! And which I myself, whilst a libertine, had not the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Percy, laughing; "but why you should go so far out of your way to make an unfortunate daughter of poor Caroline, and why you should picture to yourself, as Dr. Johnson would say, what would be probable in an impossible situation, I cannot conceive, except for the pleasure of exercising, as you do upon most occasions, a fine ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... one to another,' from 1 Pet. v. 5; 'Having your conversation unblamable among the Gentiles, that from your good works both ye may receive praise, and the Lord may not be evil spoken of in you,' from 1 Pet. ii. 12 (comp. iv. 14 in the received text). I am quite at a loss to conceive how any one can speak of these numerous and close coincidences as 'very insufficient grounds.' And though our author elsewhere, as, for instance, in the quotations from the Fourth Gospel in Tatian and in the Clementine Homilies [50:1], has resisted evidence which ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... youthful marquis, though he lived a life that would disgrace a heathen among heathens; and she could and did, in her own mind, condemn crowds of commonplace men and women to all eternal torments of which her imagination could conceive, because they listened to profane music in a park on Sunday. Yet she was a good woman. Out of her small means she gave much away. She owed no man anything. She strove to love her neighbours. She bore much pain with calm unspeaking endurance, and she lived in trust of a better ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... so many poor people labouring in so profitable a Manufactory, each Alms-house be provided with and allowed a publick Granary, for stocking themselves with Corn when it is cheapest, against the time of Dearth; a priviledge we conceive not to be so properly advisable for other Companies or Handicrafts (as some propose and desire) because that would always keep Corn too cheap, and consequently undo the Tenant, or Landlord, or both: For what makes Wheat as often at 4s. ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... keeps together in the House of Lords, and they are animated with vague hopes of being able to turn out the Ministry, more from a spirit of hatred and revenge than from any clear view of the practicability of their carrying on the Government. I conceive, however, that as soon as Parliament is up there will be a creation of Peers. In the House of Commons the Irish Tithe question has been the great subject of interest and discussion. O'Connell and the Irish members debate and adjourn just as they please, and Althorp is ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... such a capacity for wretchedness as that man has. I don't think you can conceive how desperately he might suffer. Be very careful, Margaret, and be very good to him, for you have the power to make him more unhappy than any human being ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... course of that painful labor by which it is established. That sort of intellectual freedom which equality may give ought, therefore, to be very carefully distinguished from the anarchy which revolution brings. Each of these two things must be severally considered, in order not to conceive exaggerated hopes or ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... institutes of education reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing ad nauseam what is known as 'average citizens.' This nation is already crawling with them; art, religion, letters, government, business, human ideals remain embryonic because the 'average citizen' can conceive nothing higher, can comprehend nothing loftier even when the few who have escaped the deadly levelling grind of modern methods of education attempt to teach the masses to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... she said, resolutely. Rawdon had ordered her not to part with them for a price less than that which she specified. Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money—and with all her love and regard for the Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph must conceive that poor people must live—nobody, in a word, could be more affectionate, but more firm about ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much interest I looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very doors of salvation to Alan and myself. The moon was not yet up when we came there; a few lights shone along the front of the fortress, and lower down a ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been done only with an eye to her approval; that she had been his inspiration no less than he had been hers; that he had fought his way back, not only to life, but to her. She thought of all he had suffered, of the hardships and privations beyond her imagination to conceive, that he had undergone. She tried to recall the infinite joy of that night when the news of his safe return had come to her; she thought of him at his very best—how he had always seemed to her the type of the perfect ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... present this to your view, which has received applause in action. The poet might conceive a complete satisfaction upon the stage's approbation; but the printer rests not there, knowing that that which was acted and approved upon the stage, might be no less acceptable in print. It is now communicated to you, ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. "You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. 'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc de Puysange spread ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... like sea-gulls on the broad waters of the bay. What so fresh and cool and clean and still and sparkling and in perfect contrast to the stern and stony and resounding streets! As you lean over the taffrail, looking down into the clear, gliding wave, you can readily conceive why the poor unfortunates to whom life has become a stern and stony street are so often tempted to bury their sorrows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... conscience, [forgive me, dearest young lady, I think I am now in the way of my duty;] and to be of more concern to you, than that hard pressure upon your modesty which I know the appearance against him in an open court must be of to such a lady as you; and which, I conceive, will be your great difficulty. But I know, Madam, that you have dignity enough to become the blushes of the most naked truth, when necessity, justice, and honour, exact it from you. Rakes and ravishers would meet with encouragement indeed, and most from those who had ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... of Hidimva by Bhimasena. Rakshasi women bring forth the very day they conceive, and their offspring attain to youth the very ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of people would burst out of the alley, most of them women, making a dreadful clamour, mixed or compounded of screeches, cryings, and calling one another, that we could not conceive what to make of it. Almost all the dead part of the night the dead-cart stood at the end of that alley, for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in but a little way. There, I say, it stood to receive dead ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... the hum of the factory-wheels, as he reads,—but that is all. It is not to be wondered at that foreigners fail to find our country interesting, and that the only good book of American travels is that of De Tocqueville, who deals chiefly with abstract ideas. It is possible to conceive minds so constituted that they may reach before long the end of their interest in the number of shoes, yards of cotton, and the like, which we produce in a year. The only immortal Greek shoemaker is he who had the good luck to be snubbed by Apelles, and Penelope is the only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... child of me. His mother was a vot'ress of my order: And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossip'd by my side; And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, Marking the embarked traders on the flood; When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive, And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,— Would imitate; and sail upon the land, To fetch me trifles, and return ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... difference between 400 and 360 millions of miles' distance is, of course, wholly unimportant; but the definition and enlargement were such that the image was perfect, and the details minute and distinct, beyond anything that Earthly observation had led me to conceive as possible. The satellites were no longer mere points or tiny discs, but distinct moons, with surfaces marked like that of our own satellite, though far less mountainous and broken, and, as it seemed to me, possessing ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... trap usually terminate at the surface (see Figure 596), and the water-worn pebbles of trap in the alluvium which covers the dike, prove incontestably that whatever was uppermost in these formations has been swept away. It is easy, therefore, to conceive that what is gone in regions of trap may have corresponded to what is now visible in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... suspected or accused of quibbling and intellectual dishonesty. Kingsley, whose healthy but somewhat rough English morality and common sense were revolted by Newman's whole attitude to life and conduct, was unable to conceive how any educated man could believe in winking Virgins and liquefying blood, and thought that Newman must be dishonest. More recently Dr. Abbott has accused him of being a philomythus. Judged by ordinary standards, Newman's criteria of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... It is hard to conceive of a greater responsibility than that of a mediaeval Inquisitor. The life or death of the heretic was practically at his disposal. The Church, therefore, required him to possess in a pre-eminent degree the qualities of an impartial judge. Bernard Gui, the most experienced Inquisitor ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... which so startled Antonio that he took to his heels and never stopped running till it was dark and the stars were shining in the heavens. He wandered on for some time, not knowing where to go, and at last he came to a cave, at the mouth of which sat an ogre, uglier than anything you can conceive. ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... "I could conceive of the impulse that carried one over those last two hundred yards—but as an impulse of a lifetime; to most of my friends this kind of thing was becoming their daily bread. The men I was with were mostly a new draft. I could see they were afraid, but they were brave. Word was passed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin |
