"Conventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friendly hearers. This evening he did so with exceptional fervour, abounded in reminiscences, rose at moments to enthusiasm. His companions were impressed; to Irene it was an unexpected revelation of character. She had imagined young Otway dry and rather conventional, perhaps conceited; she found him impassioned and an idealist, full of hero-worship, devoted to ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... crimes, and these are often considered self-exculpating inventions, inasmuch as people fear from their truth a disturbance or upsetting of the notions concerning adjudication and actionability. The mere recognition of that psychological fact alters the conventional judgment but little; the failure in these cases consists in not having prevented that automatic transition of images into actions, a transition essentially natural to our organism which ought, however, like so many other things, to be subjected to power of the will.'' Reflex ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of following in the footsteps of the classic poets, and of checking the outbursts of imagination by the rules of common sense, simply incapacitated the poets of the period from producing works of the highest order. And its insistence upon man as he appeared in the conventional, urban society of the day as the one true theme of poetry, its belief that the end of poetry was to instruct and improve either by positive teaching or by negative satire, still further limited its field. One must remember in ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... declared the publication of the letters to be not only justifiable but obligatory; and if the disinterestedness of Flamel's verdict might be questioned, Dresham's at least represented the impartial view of the man of letters. As to Alexa's words, they were simply the conventional utterance of the "nice" woman on a question already decided for her by other "nice" women. She had said the proper thing as mechanically as she would have put on the appropriate gown or written the correct form of dinner-invitation. Glennard had small ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... the newly created state centred in Denver. The city was alive with the throbbing energy of strife and speculation over mines, railway grants, and political power. Life was rapid, boisterous, and rough. Nothing had settled into the conventional grooves of habit. The whole community was fearless in its gayety. It had not learned to affect the sobriety and demureness of stupidity lest its frivolity should be likened to the crackling ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... hero is a man from a distant part of the country, who, having a petition to prefer, comes to the capital, where he is detained for a long while. His suit being at last successful, he communicates the joyful news to his servant, Tarokaja (the conventional name of the Leporello of these farces). The two congratulate one another. To while away his idle hours during his sojourn at the capital the master has entered into a flirtation with a certain young lady: master ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... through the three avenues of reason, feeling, and will; but as in the Masonic legend of the murder of Hiram Abif, the architect of Solomon's Temple, it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logic based on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level of conventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of a short-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is not until the true perception of the Principle of Life is resurrected within us, that the Temple can be completed according to the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... others off at Idlewild. He knew they'd expect him to and, since it would be the last conventional gesture he'd have to make, he might as well conform to their notions of ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... form: Islamic State of Afghanistan; note-the self-proclaimed Taliban government refers to the country as Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan conventional short form: Afghanistan local long form: Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan local short form: Afghanestan ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... them, are the frequent synonyms so characteristic of Old English poetry. These synonymous expressions are known as "kennings." They are not to be thought of as occasional metaphors employed at the whim of the poet; they had, in most cases, already received a conventional meaning. Thus the king was always spoken of as "ring giver," "protector of earls," or "bracelet bestower." The queen was the "weaver of peace"; the sea the "ship road," or ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... remark of her father's about "all that women are fit for," which he kept well watered from time to time with other conventional expressions of a contemptuous kind, was undoubtedly the seed of much more than a knowledge of the higher mathematics. It was that which set her mind off on a long and patient inquiry into the condition and capacity of women, and made her, in the end of the nineteenth century, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... But no, he wasn't the one. If Harry were apprehensive of anything at all it was only of being caught in too hot a crush. He saw no possibilities in the mob below except boredom. He saw no possibilities in the evening but his conventional duty; and Flora could read in his eye his intention of getting through that as comfortably as possible. His suggestion that they have a look at the pictures brought the two women's eyes together in a rare gleam of mutual mirth. They knew he suspected ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... disdained by medical schools and medical experts, just as its spiritual truth has been disdained by religious leaders, until it has grown to such strength that laymen are almost forced to question the sincerity and the efficacy of the conventional in religion as well as medicine. In May, 1907, the Emmanuel Church in Boston organized a clinic for the purpose of utilizing for neurasthenics particularly both the spiritual and the physical truths underlying religion and the various branches of medical ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... said: "A good conventional British ending. Why didn't he clap a pair of wings on the old reprobate and run him up on a wire, the way they used to do in translating little Eva in ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... force—something of that same comic view that one detects in Shakspere and Moliere and Cervantes. It means an open-eyed acceptance of life, a realization of its seriousness yet with the will to take it with a smile: a large tolerancy which forbids the view conventional or parochial or aristocratic—in brief, the view limited. There is this in the book, along with much psychology so superficial as to seem childish, and much interpretation that makes us feel that the higher possibilities of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... approachable, are all ready to stand to arms at a moment's notice." And so, he drifted back in his day dreams toward the Land of the Pagoda Tree, with Ouchy and Chillon. He studied the beautiful face of the lonely child from the school-girl photograph, and decided, in spite of hideous frocks and a lack of conventional war paint, that she was ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious specimens in the museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in obedience to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about her, and recalled the image ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... late autumn with us, remember, so the evenings close in early and, are very cold indeed. It was quite dark when we reached the house, and the blazing fires in every room were most welcome. The house is very unlike the conventional station pattern, being built of stone, large, very well arranged, and the perfection of comfort inside. There is no hostess at present; three bachelor brothers do the honours, and, as far as my experience goes, do them most efficiently. Our visit has ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... artists; known them intimately, and studied their lives. One and all, they date their success from some passionate experience. From a cold and conventional existence can come nothing but cold and conventional art. You left England, broke away from the common routine, from the artificial and the respectable. That was an indispensable first step, and I have told you how I applauded it. But you cannot stop at this. I begin to fear for you. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... on his arrival, so now he stepped out and walked briskly around the corner, swinging his cane jauntily and looking very unlike a fugitive. In the next block he passed a youth who stood earnestly examining the conventional ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... picture, he is portrayed standing outside a house while the lady, the subject of his passions, sits within. He is once again 'a false gallant,' his amorous intentions being shown by the orange, a conventional symbol for the breasts, poised lightly in his hand. As the lady turns to greet him, she puts a dot in the circle which she has just drawn on the wall—a gesture which once again contains a hint of sex. On the picture's reverse the poem records a ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... of southern latitude, he landed at a harbor which he called Porto Securo, and taking possession of the country for the crown of Portugal, dispatched a ship to Lisbon with the important tidings. [99] In this way did the Brazils come into the possession of Portugal, being to the eastward of the conventional line settled with Spain as the boundaries of their respective territories. Dr. Robertson, in recording this voyage of Cabral, concludes with one of his just and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... moral principles and practice which is to be found in the Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as taste is concerned, as unjust to judge a book written in the style and manner of one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules established in another, as to judge the dress of our ancestors by the fashions of the present day. And in respect of morality, it is as unfair to visit with the same measure of condemnation offences against ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... uncanny fire. As soon as the piece was finished, she turned to her father and asked him to take her home. Jordan was frightened. Those sitting next to him looked at the girl's pale face, sympathised with her, and made conventional remarks. Eleanore wanted to go home too, but Gertrude whispered to her in her imperious way and told her to stay. Familiar as she was with Gertrude's disposition, she thought that it was simply a passing attack of some kind, and regained ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... sitting upon the stone. The rest of the men were at work out of sight around a bend in the road. Everything would have gone well—except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment. He was of dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage. He pulled from his shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... a keen sportsman, and dearly loved a day with his gun. As a boy, on his own Highland hills, he had been addicted to sporting a good deal without the formality of a licence, and the absolute freedom from conventional trammels in the wild North was a source of much gratulation to him. Perhaps he enjoyed his outings all the more that he was a stern disciplinarian—so deeply impressed with a sense of duty that he would neither allow himself nor his men to indulge in sport of any kind until ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... after the Roman form had reached its highest development; and, on the other hand, some very beautiful and individual national variants were produced. The continual interchange of manuscripts among the nations on the continent of Europe probably explains the more conventional character and strong general resemblance of most of the early Continental work; but the scribes of insular England, less influenced by contemporary progress and examples, produced forms of greater ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... the vestal of a holy temple, or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine. There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any special development ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accustomed himself to regard romantic ideality, and susceptibility to sentimentality as a species of intellectual anaemia; holding himself always thoroughly in hand, when subjected to the softening influences that now and then invaded professional existence, and melted the conventional selfish crust over the hearts of his colleagues, as the warm lips and balmy breath of equatorial currents kiss away the jagged ledges of drifting icebergs. In his laborious life, that which is ordinarily ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... at the least know the distinctive styles and figures of different countries, and not confuse an entrechat with a pirouette, should be aware of the meaning of the terms arabesque and rond de jambe, and understand to some extent the conventional language and history of grand ballet. No one will deny that his study of history must be substantial and, to put the matter compendiously, he must have a good general education, which, however, will not carry him very far, since he must own a special ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... practised by the Greeks and Romans, both on the stage and in the tribune, induced by their habit of addressing large assemblies in the open air, where it would have been impossible for the majority to comprehend what was said without the assistance of some conventional signs, which enabled the speaker to address himself to the eye, as well as the ear of the audience. These were chiefly made by certain positions of the hands and fingers, the meaning of which was universally recognised and familiar to all classes, and the practice itself reduced ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a bough, allowing his bare feet to dangle over the dizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply. Mr. Hamlin's pride ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... said the king, modifying his last observation, "if women are not all eyes and ears! I neither heard nor saw all that. A little constraint—a natural blush to punctuate their talk—the meeting seemed conventional enough. 'Tis through your own romantic heart you ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... goes down to the park and rummages through Violet's wardrobe in a state of hapless bewilderment, calling finally upon Gertrude to make a proper selection. Denise attires her young mistress, who looks really pale after this enforced seclusion. Mr. Grandon carries her down-stairs; and if it is not a conventional parlor, the room still has some picturesque aspects of its own, and the two luxurious wolf-robes on the floor are grudged afterward, as Laura steps on them. There is a great jar full of autumn branches and berries in one corner that sends out a sort of sunset ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... exemplary punishment upon the slanderers. With these prefatory remarks he presented the petition. The famous document was then read aloud.—Its tone was sufficiently loyal, particularly in the preamble, which was filled with protestations of devotion to both King and Duchess. After this conventional introduction, however, the petitioners proceeded to state, very plainly, that the recent resolutions of his Majesty, with regard to the edict and the inquisition, were likely to produce a general rebellion. They had hoped, they said, that a movement would be made by the seigniors or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Henry, Denis grew unusually silent and the Tribes exceptionally voluble. Sir Joseph asked the conventional questions of his new guest, and on receiving the customary conventional replies, serenely continued his meal. Miss Mallowcoid, on the other hand, insisted on attending with scrupulous unselfishness to the latest arrival's wants, and encouraging him ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... for novelty as the veterans were impatient of it, had come upon the stage, that the requisite impulse was given. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Merimee, Alfred de Vigny, and other young men of genius, were just opening the assault on the citadel of classicisme. Conventional rules were set at defiance; the authorities that had so long held sway were summoned to abdicate; nature, truth, above all passion, were invoked as the sources of inspiration, the law-givers of the imagination, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his campaigns to Africa, and the traditional battle-fields there. He embarked for the land of Kush on the vessel of Ahmosi-si-Abina "for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers of Egypt." It was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign, conducted according to the strictest precedents of the XIIth dynasty. The Pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy, and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their lives dearly, but were unable to protect ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fan, as one who would say, "I know all this has to be gone through with, therefore I will be patient." But as the moments passed, and his tone remained unchanged, I could detect a slight gleam of impatience flash in the depths of her dark eyes, and a change come into the conventional smile that had hitherto lighted, without illuminating her countenance. Drawing still further back from the crowd that was not to be awed from pressing upon her, she looked around as if seeking a refuge. Her glance fell upon a certain window, ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... form: Union of Burma conventional short form: Burma local long form: Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw (translated by the US Government as Union of Myanma and by the Burmese as Union of Myanmar) local short form: Myanma Naingngandaw former: Socialist Republic of the ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sprightly talk and free participation in the good things of the table, formed a favorable contrast to the deep depression of Jules Favre at the same board the day before. "M. de Bismarck," he says, "is not at all like the conventional statesman. He is not solemn. He is very gay, and even when discussing the gravest questions often makes jokes, though under his playful ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... who, less distrustful, returned to the surface of the pond, winking their carbuncle eyes as they sat upon the water-cresses. The sweet and simple poetry of Nature permeated these two souls surfeited with the conventional things of life, and filled them with contemplative emotion. Suddenly Blondet shuddered. Turning ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and Engineer Melville, destined to bear a name great among Arctic men, together with two navy lieutenants, were assigned to her. The voyage planned was then unique among American Arctic expeditions, for instead of following the conventional route north through Baffin's Bay and Smith Sound, the "Jeannette" sailed from San Francisco and pushed northward through Bering Sea. In July, 1879, she weighed anchor. Two years after, no word having been heard of her meanwhile, the inevitable relief ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Kuwwet-el-Islam, the Might of Islam. To make room for it the Hindu temples, erected by the Rajput builders of the Red Fort, were torn down, and the half-effaced figures on the columns of the mosque, and many other conventional designs peculiar to Hindu architecture, betray clearly the origin of the materials used in its construction. But the general conception, and especially the grand lines of the screen of arches on the western side, are essentially and admirably Mahomedan. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... endured—was death! This, I believe, is common in cases of injury by fire. So it befell that Evan, meeting Rose the next morning was playfully asked by her what choice he had made between the white and the red; and he, dropping on her the shallow eyes of a conventional smile, replied, that unable to decide and form a choice, he had thrown both away; at which Miss Jocelyn gave him a look in the centre of his brows, let her head slightly droop, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... passions and the talents of the people in equal and wonderful saliency. We are accordingly struck with two classes of social facts, which do not often arrest the attention in old communities. We see, for example, the most singular combination of simplicity and sagacity in the same person; simplicity in conventional respects, and sagacity in all that affects the absolute and real in life, nature and the human sensibilities. The rude man, easily imposed upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in his conflicts with men, will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest consciousness of woman; ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Carstairs, but the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest {sic} the man's life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpected form, between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... provided with a very conventional aunt—the kind of woman you meet with everywhere; most frequently in church squabbles and hotel parlors, however. Mrs. Corwin was this lady's name, and she was to enact the role of chaperon to Miss Andrews. With Mrs. Corwin, by force of circumstances, came a ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... the conventional lion, and lion's head, which are about as much like the real things as the donkey is like the horse—just a family resemblance, nothing more. Having done all this, let him copy animals from nature; and if he lives in or near London, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... of these, published in 1852, was of a more subdued intensity than the Scarlet Letter, but equally original and, upon the whole, perhaps equally good. The Blithedale Romance, published in the same year, though not strikingly inferior to the others, adhered more to conventional patterns in its plot and in the sensational nature of its ending. The suicide of the heroine by drowning, and the terrible scene of the recovery of her body, were suggested to the author by an experience of his own on Concord River, the account of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,—NOT for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... time you had made able seamen of them," said Mr. Burdette, who was of a conventional turn of mind, "they'd all go back to their ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... no attempt among them at military uniform, officers in no wise being distinguished from men. The conventional dress of eighteenth-century borderers was an adaptation to local conditions, being in part borrowed from the Indians. Their feet were encased in moccasins. Perhaps the majority of the corps had loose, thin trousers of homespun or buckskin, with a fringe of leather thongs down each outer ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... can be said even in behalf of all this, we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of what is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite conformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest a science as ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... more iconoclastic than any of the Christian or the Mohammedan denominations in the sense that it opposes the acceptance of the petrified idea of Deity, so conventional and formal that it carries no inner conviction of the believers. Faith dies out whenever one comes to stick to one's fixed and immutable idea of Deity, and to deceive oneself, taking bigotry for genuine faith. Faith must be living and growing, and the living ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... evenings passed; how everyone enjoyed the charades and theatricals which were so excellently managed by the gifted Miss Keating, then a governess in the family; how, too, everyone was charmed with the original and convenient arrangement for supplying visitors with refreshments. Instead of the conventional "sit-down suppers" of those days, Captain Tindal had refreshment counters and occasional tables dotted here and there, so that his friends took what they pleased, at the time most convenient to themselves. One room ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... to the settee on the right—feeling in his breast-pocket] the announcement of the engagement, Philip—[seating himself and producing a pocket-book] Lady Filson and I drew it up this morning. [Hunting among some letters and papers.] I believe it is in the conventional form; but we so thoroughly sympathize with you and Ottoline in your dislike for anything that savours of pomp and flourish that we hesitate, without your sanction, to—[selecting a paper and handing it to PHILIP] ah! [To ROOPE, who has returned to the fireplace—over his shoulder.] I ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... equipped than he believed himself to be, better than he has ordinarily been credited with being. True, he had had no conventional college training, but he had by his own efforts attained the chief result of all preparatory study, the ability to take hold of a subject and assimilate it. The fact that in six weeks he had acquired enough of the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... have been awkward louts under the circumstances. But this was not true of Arden, for he had daily been holding converse in the books he dreamed over with women of finer clay than he could have found at Pushton. He would have been excessively awkward in a drawing-room or any place of conventional resort, or rather he would have been sullen and bearish, but the place and manner in which he had met Edith accorded with his romantic fancy, and the darkness shielded his rough ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the problem oppresses only a few exceptional people. Thoroughly conventional women married to thoroughly conventional men should not be conscious of any restriction: the chain not only leaves them free to do whatever they want to do, but greatly facilitates their doing it. To ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... marry him was in all probability to break with daughters just growing into womanhood, whom it was obviously her first duty to protect. The marriage, therefore, might be regarded as not merely a revolt against conventional morality, but as leading to a desertion of country, religion, and family. Her children, her husband's friends, and her whole circle were certain to look upon the match with feelings of the strongest disapproval, and she admitted to herself that the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... his return to London as the new millionaire,—young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... stage, and support a character totally foreign to her own. The loud knocks at the door, which announced the arrival of company, were signals that operated punctually upon her associations; and to this species of conventional necessity her most violent passions submitted with magical celerity. Fresh rouged, and beautifully dressed, she was performing her part to a brilliant audience in her drawing-room when Belinda entered. Belinda beheld her with much astonishment, but ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... of the family had developed with the child's promise, and at seventeen Florence was beautiful; not with a conventional prettiness, but with a vital feminine attraction. All that the mother had been, with her dark, oval face, her mass of walnut-brown hair, her great dark eyes, her uptilted chin, the daughter was now; but with added health and an augmented femininity that the mother ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... necessary in those days, his daughter suggests, and the year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all exemplary women. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... edge of a conviction like that cuts its way through the formalisms and traditionalisms and hearsay repetitions of conventional religion, then there comes what came to Gideon, the swift thought, 'And if this be true, if I really do touch, and am touched by, that living Person whose name is Jehovah, what is to become of me? Shall I not shrivel up when His fiery finger is laid ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... regard which carried with it a verdict of the most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment. "News sways people more than editorials," he continued. "That's why there's so much tinkering with it. I'd like to give you a definition of news, but there isn't any. News is conventional. It's anything that interests the community. It isn't the same in any two places. In Arizona a shower is news. In New Orleans the boll-weevil is news. In Worthington anything about your father is news: in Denver they don't care a hoot about your father; so, unless he elopes or dies, or buys ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... somewhat in excess of the requirements of conventional courtesy, struck Leigh with a sense of the ridiculous. He had not anticipated a scene, but he had looked for some coldness and restraint. The other visitors, with a curious glance in passing, spread out over the roof or entered the cabin, but ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the bosom of this heterogeneous and agitated mass that authors spring; and from the same source their profits and their fame are distributed. I can without difficulty understand that, under these circumstances, I must expect to meet in the literature of such a people with but few of those strict conventional rules which are admitted by readers and by writers in aristocratic ages. If it should happen that the men of some one period were agreed upon any such rules, that would prove nothing for the following period; for amongst ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... first, in the Brompton Road, he saw a man turning over the rubbish in the cheap box. Blinton stared at him, fancied he knew him, thought he didn't, and then became a prey to the glittering eye of the other. The Stranger, who wore the conventional cloak and slouched soft hat of Strangers, was apparently an accomplished mesmerist, or thought-reader, or adept, or esoteric Buddhist. He resembled Mr. Isaacs, Zanoni (in the novel of that name), Mendoza (in 'Codlingsby'), the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... through the New England States was attended with every demonstration of honor that love and confidence could devise. At Boston the president's well-known punctuality set aside all conventional rules, and asserted its superiority. A company of cavalry volunteered to escort him to Salem. The time appointed to start was 8 o'clock in the morning. When the Old South clock struck the hour, the escort ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... fleet—excepting one battleship and two cruisers in dry dock—were lying off the dockyard, while the Mikasa was easily distinguishable, even to a stranger, from the fact that she was flying the Admiral's flag. I noticed also that her stem-head was decorated with a gilded conventional representation of the open chrysanthemum, the Imperial crest. The Admiral was in his cabin, I was informed, when I got aboard, but I was kept waiting nearly an hour before I was admitted to his presence, for he was holding something very ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... he was besieged. In a military view, the crime was flagrant, subversive of discipline, and especially dangerous as a precedent in an army where promotion from the ranks continually placed between men, originally from the same class of society and long comrades and equals, the purely conventional barrier of the epaulet. The court-martial, taking into consideration the peculiar character of the offence, had avoided the infliction of an ignominious punishment. Oakley was not sentenced to the boulet, or to be herded with ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... is nothing either musical or natural in the ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or correspondence to the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Every other consideration is put on one side when the business of the shop has to be attended to. They are all tradesmen who have strayed into unlawful courses. They have nothing about them of the heroism of sin; their crimes are not the result of ungovernable passion, or even of antipathy to conventional restraints; circumstances and not any law-defying bias of disposition have made them criminals. How is it that the novelist contrives to make them so interesting? Is it because we are a nation of shopkeepers, and enjoy following lines of business which are a little ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Slafe, still solemnly recording the event, camera before him in the position of present arms, did not sober my intoxication, though circumspection caused me to act in a more conventional way. I freed him from his harness, for he was too busy taking views of the grass, the sky, the animals and me to perform ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... degradation. Common manliness cannot suffer indignities of this sort. Johnson at Oxford and Goldsmith in Dublin rebelled. The agonised sense of decent justice could not be stifled. In such contexts, only cowards can wish dishonour borne and indignation unrevealed. Oliver himself had none of those conventional prejudices that raise Universities to fetishes. Like the man he was, he would have been content ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments—these are what are wrong, these are ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the coming of death. Indeed, there were moments when he gave me the idea that he was looking forward to it with an awed curiosity. With the conventional notion of cheering him, I talked of staying till he was able to return with me to ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... and delicacy of Alice's form and features, there is nearly always something of Nature's own gentility in very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall a-giggling); it shames us men to see how much sooner they are polished into conventional shape than our rough, masculine angles. A vulgar boy requires Heaven knows what assiduity to make three steps—I do not say like a gentleman, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the least advantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred to ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him now as it has happened to many a man fed upon conventional religion and accustomed to walk an aisle in public and eminent godliness. In the moment that he overbalanced public approval his whole edifice crumbled and collapsed, leaving him no stay. He was down from his eminence—down with the wild beasts; and among ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... about 'old friendship'—'stranger in a strange land'—horrid rot—what an ass she must have thought me!—but that's the way it was. She didn't say any thing. She began to talk about something else in a conventional way—the weather, I think. I couldn't do any thing. I made a vague attempt at friendly remonstrance with her about her coolness; but she didn't notice it. She went on talking about the weather. She was convinced that it would snow. I, for my part, was convinced that there was going to be ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... a tall, exquisitely-gowned girl, of the conventional and much-admired type of beauty. Put her in any drawing-room in the world, and she would at once be recognised as a highborn Englishwoman. She has in her, in embryo, all those excellent qualities that go to make a great lady: the icy stare, the haughty movement of the shoulder, ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante which, referring all human action to the simple formula of purgatory, heaven and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... coquette, the cold formal prude, the flippant woman of fashion, the empty heads and hollow hearts wherewithal society is peopled. He had long been wearied out with shallow courtesies, frigid compliments, and other conventional hypocrisies, up and down the world; and wanted something better to love than mere surface beauty, mere elegant accomplishment—in a word, he yearned for Heart, and found the object of his ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... powerful resource against the love of change and metaphysical subtilties; but, it is certain, the French government have much depended on the spirit of party, and the zeal of their propagandistes. They talk of a British convention, of a conventional army, and, in short, all France seem prepared to see their neighbours involved in the same disastrous system with themselves. The people are not a little supported in this error by the extracts that are given them from ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... to agree pretty closely with the mathematical in its frequency. The boys and girls who, going beyond the mere conventional designs of children, draw what they see, not what they know to be the shape of things; who naturally sketch in perspective, because it is thus they see objects; who see, and represent in their sketches, the light and shade as well as the mere outlines of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of a large XVIIth century Linen Hanging embroidered with coloured wools.—In both design and execution this curtain is remarkably fine. The entire hanging is about eighteen feet in width by seven in height. It is embroidered with a conventional representation of a forest; in the branches of the trees lodge all kinds of birds and beasts. The type of design shown in this plate and in the last is derived from Eastern work; its introduction into England was due to the increase of trade with ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... it is true, conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... Manners we do not mean Etiquette. This is only a conventional set of rules adopted by what is called "good society;" and many of the rules of etiquette are of the essence of rudeness. Etiquette does not permit genteel people to recognize in the streets a man with a shabby coat though he be their brother. Etiquette ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the ground with colored earths, were used in the Apache healing ceremonies, but never to a great extent, and of late years they have been practically abandoned. These paintings, compared with the beautiful, conventional productions of the Navaho, are crude; in making them the Apache always attempt to picture the objects literally rather than to represent them conventionally ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... no other taxicab to be had. The street might have been a byway in old Pompeii for all the life that moved within it. Washington Square, facing him, was as empty as a graveyard generally is at this hour, and the semblance of a conventional graveyard in wintertime was helped out by a light snow—the first of the season—sifting down in large ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... habitual to men accustomed to vast solitudes. Even on such a tramp as I had undertaken, in which I frequently walked for miles without sight or sound of a human being, I began to realize how banal and aimless is conventional conversation. Under such conditions you feel yourself in sympathy with the man who says nothing unless he has something to say, and who, in turn, expects the same restriction of ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... have been concerned with the nature of the man who wore them. Henry's mind was oddly perverse; he had been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the north were wild and almost lawless places, abounding in desperate characters, ready to shoot on the slightest provocation. But here all was order, and it was little different from one of the many small conventional towns in Eastern Canada. There were several up-to-date stores, a large post office, bank, churches, and comfortable dwelling houses, though many of the latter were built of logs. The Royal Northwest Mounted Police had their large barracks at the rear of the town under the brow of a high ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... notion of space, which is applicable to physical objects, to states of consciousness, to which it is really inapplicable. Objects occupying space are marked out as external to one another, but this cannot be said of conscious states. Yet, in our ordinary speech and conventional view of things, we think of conscious states as separated from one another and as spread out like "things," in a fictitious, homogeneous medium to which we give the name Time. Bergson says, "At any rate, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... skirt. When she accepts a social invitation, which is very rare, she adorns her dress with a lace collar, but without other ornament. Her working dress is usually a long gray linen or blue flannel blouse, reaching nearly from head to foot. She has learned that the conventional tight dress of women is not conducive to great mental or physical power. She is small in stature, with dainty hands and feet, blue eyes, and a ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon "free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... Sunday-school book, and of such is the career of Lady Hester Stanhope, a Pitt on the mother's side, and more of a Pitt in temper and disposition than her grandfather, the great Commoner himself. Her story contains the useful but conventional lesson that pride goeth before a fall, and that all earthly glory is but vanity, together with a warning against the ambition that o'erleaps itself, and ends in failure and humiliation. That humanity will profit by such a lesson, whether true or invented for didactic purposes, is doubtful, but ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... constitutes the Find declared in the sub-title. The title itself is my own contrivance, (can't call it invention), and has the merit of veracity. We will be concerned with an inn here. As to the witches that's merely a conventional expression, and we must take our man's word for it that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... personal experience the dancer is allowed a freedom of invention not elsewhere permitted. Even in this case the dancer is obliged to follow certain conventional forms, as in the sign language; otherwise his ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... taste by its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of construction and detail, without any fear that we shall shoot ourselves in top-boots! We can feel ourselves elevated by the noble sentiments of "The Robbers," and our penetration sharpened as to the wholesale immorality of conventional cant and hypocrisy, without any danger of turning banditti and becoming cutthroats from the love of virtue. Providence, that has made the genius of the few in all times and countries the guide and prophet of the many, and appointed Literature as the sublime agent of Civilization, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
