"Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... radiance, but as a percolation of light, a gleam that was strained through matter after matter and was less than the very wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly, so sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing, and might conceive that its own memory was re-creating ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... completely engendered in the minds of the Ghadamsee merchants, that they cannot conceive how it can be wrong. A young man wrote me down the objects (very few) of exportation from Soudan, and in the following order, viz., "Cottons, elephants' teeth, bekhour (perfume), wax, slaves, bullocks' skins, red skins, feathers, (of the ostrich)." Human beings are just summed up with the rest ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... unfeeling ignorance of human nature, and, more especially, of fervid genius. It is, undoubtedly, highly dangerous to give the entire reins to imagination; the discipline of a constant exercise of reason is not only salutary, but necessary. But one can easily conceive how the indulgence of that state of mind which produced Collins's Odes could end in an entire overthrow of the intellect, when embittered by a defect of the principal objects of his worldly ambition. He is said to have been puffed up by a vanity which prompted ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... still in the dark. You speak of shuffling and dealing; pray for what end? And since you seem rather unwilling to die than otherwise, I must own that I cannot conceive what brings you ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consecrated herself to the lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious adjustment. The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of the golden bracelet filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was like to be led away by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... of absolute realities. Their imaginations turn the picture that is placed before them into real, throbbing life. They do not see the unreality of the art, the suggestive effects, the flimsy delusions; to them the play is real life, the stage is a real drawing room or a real wood, and they cannot conceive of the actors existing outside their parts. But the critic must look deeper; he must understand the machinery that produces the effects and he must weigh the success of the effects. He must get behind the play and see the actors outside the cast and the stage without ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... other people were there to dispute our afternoon's ownership. I count a peasant family, the women in black shawls and the men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as our guests than as strangers; and I am often there still with no sense of molestation. Even the reader who does not conceive of a garden being less flowers and shrubs than fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of box and walls of clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the Generalife or outstay ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... many apologies to offer for trespassing so long on your patience; but I felt a natural desire, if possible, to correct what I conceive to be a groundless imputation on the memory of my ancestor, before it shall come to be considered as a matter of History. That he was a man of violent passions and singular temper, I do not pretend to deny, as many traditions still current in this ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and mammals, but Em. Bourquelot and G. Bertrand have shown that certain fungi, the tissues of which, when exposed to the air by injury, become immediately coloured, do so owing to the action of tyrosinase upon one or more chromogenous substances present in the plant. We may conceive, then, that a pigmented animal owes its colour to the power that certain tissues of its body possess to secrete both tyrosinases and chromogenic substances. And the period at which this process is most active is at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... thumb-nail, on the fence and all over the house, roof, chimneys, and all; the sun comes out and shines on this spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest they be put out. It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the blindingest. A Bermuda house does not look like marble; it is a much intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, indefinable something else about its look that is not marble-like. We put in a great deal of solid talk and reflection over this matter of trying to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... totally unaccountable upon any reasonable theory," said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this is so very improbable ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... laughter as burst forth from the crowd was scarcely ever heard, and certainly such a blank countenance as old Darrow exhibited it would be hard to conceive. Seeing that he was most incontinently "done for," and perceiving that his neighbor Hough had helped to do it, he ran up to him in great anger, and shaking his fist ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... other, or camel route, of En-Nishka. I found, however, this "short-cut" a very long one, and dreadfully fatiguing. I recommend all travellers never to believe in the short-cuts of the Arabs, for they are sure to be deceived. These people have no ideas of distance or time. Only conceive a weak and exhausted traveller, like myself, climbing up and down groups of mountains for two weary hours. At length we descended into the valley where is the well of Ghotfa. We only remained an hour to rest, and drank a little water, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... in iniquity, And in sin did my mother conceive me. Yet thou desirest truth in the heart, In my inner soul thou wouldst teach me wisdom. Cleanse me with hyssop that I may be clean, Wash me whiter than snow. Fill me with joy and gladness, That the bones which thou hast broken may ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... "I can conceive of no simpler way to you than the knowledge of your name and address. I have drawn airy images of you, but they do not become incarnate, and I am not sure that I should recognize you in the brief ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... universities are sufficiently clever and orderly, but they are deficient in personal experience. From my friend, I can promise myself both knowledge and method, and hundreds of other circumstances I can easily conceive arising, affecting you as well as me, and from which I can foresee innumerable advantages. Thank you for so patiently listening to me. Now, do you say what you think, and say it out freely and fully; I will not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... this, as I conceive, seasonable reproof of certain "Lords Spiritual" I would not be understood to involve the whole of that reverend body. Some of them, I firmly believe, have remained at a distance from the combat, aged and infirm, like ELI, sitting by the wayside of Shiloh, and watching ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... at once, that this station is a subsidiary element in the enterprise and not the goal, for that is the flag at the top. These supply stations are useful in helping the youth to reach his goal. We may conceive of many of these stations, such as algebra, or history, or Greek, or Chinese. Whatever their names, they are all but means to an end and when that end has been attained the youth can afford to forget them, in large part, save only in gratitude ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... by making only money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the call of a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as a call to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of any piece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either great numbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need for leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack exist, in part, because we have forgot ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Aikenside, but she had never expected her life there to continue very long, and had often wished that when it ended she might devise some means of entering a seminary as other young ladies did. But she had never dreamed of being sent to school by Guy, nor could she conceive of his motive. He hardly knew himself, only he liked her, and wished to do something for her. This was his ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... a sense of his own dull powers of invention—for he found himself unable to conceive one, much less five such schemes—M. Duquesne came into the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... cardinal, "you have heard me? I fix on Boulogne because I presume that every town in France is indifferent to you; if you prefer another, name it; but you can easily conceive that, surrounded as I am by influences I can only muzzle by discretion, I desire your presence ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the framers of that Act for having failed not only to appreciate the immense importance of the theatre as a most powerful instrument for teaching the nation how and what to think and feel, but even to conceive that those who make their living by the theatre are normal human beings with the common rights of English citizens. In this extremity of inconsiderateness it is not surprising that they also did not trouble themselves to study the difference ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... evil. Free trade, as soon as possible and as complete as possible; protection, as little as possible and as short as possible. The speech was delivered in reply to Mr. Clay; and, viewed merely as a reply, it is difficult to conceive of one more triumphant. Mr. Webster was particularly happy in turning Mr. Clay's historical illustrations against him, especially those drawn from the history of the English silk manufacture, and the Spanish system of restriction and prohibition. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... she breaks in. "We have discussed all this before. And I've no doubt you think me simply a disagreeable, crotchety old person. Has it ever occurred to you, however, that you may have failed to get my point of view? Can you not conceive then that it might be somewhat humiliating to me to know that my maids suppress a smile as they announce—Mr. Torchy? Understand, I am not censuring you for being a nameless waif. No, do not interrupt. I realize that this is something ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... Critic) "though the figures of wild beasts, or of dead men, cannot be viewed as they naturally are without horror and reluctance; yet the Imitation of these in painting is highly agreeable, and our pleasure is augmented in proportion to that degree of resemblance which we conceive to subsist betwixt the Original and the Copy[5]." By Harmony he understands not the numbers or measures of poetry only, but that music of language, which when it is justly adapted to variety of sentiment or description, contributes most effectually to unite the pleasing with the instructive[6]. ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... conceive of anyone not forgiving Germaine, beneath whose firm and delicate beauty lies her warm heart, as golden ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which were connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious and priceless as they were, and operative causes of our redemption as they were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really human life, in the midst of a system of things that is all full of corruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, and wrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of His sufferings did not spring from the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and true. And so, my pretty one, as you will henceforth be an authority only on conjugal love, it seems to me my duty—in the interest, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... that every gray-eyed girl in the country, or any one of them, wished to marry him. No; he was fairly modest, as men go. He suspected that the chief emotions he inspired were curiosity and mischievousness. It was the thought of what those uncounted thousands of gray-eyed girls must conceive as his attitude towards them that hurt. Why, it was almost as though he had put a matrimonial advertisement in the newspapers. When he pictured himself looked upon as assuming to be a connoisseur of a certain type of femininity ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... I could not conceive how it happened that in these hot countries, without rain to refresh them, the trees all looked so healthy and beautiful. This fact, I found, was owing to the numerous channels cut through the gardens, which are thus artificially irrigated. The heavy dews and cool nights ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... circumstances, it was developed by the interpretation put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touch with certain deep-lying truths only half realized. The allegory was finally completed by Augustine, who penetrated deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as a systematic whole and supply its defects. Hence the Augustinian doctrine, confirmed by Luther, is the complete form of Christianity; and the Protestants of to-day, who take Revelation sensu proprio and confine it to a single individual, are in error in looking ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his alliance in all, and with money, by common rumour, as abundant as the imaginations of the needy chose to make it, was, in itself, fully sufficient, without any of the more elevated claims of his name, to attract towards him all thoughts. "It is easier to conceive," says Count Gamba, "than to relate the various means employed to engage him in one faction or the other: letters, messengers, intrigues, and recriminations,—nay, each faction had its agents exerting ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and swallowed uncritically, though it was no more permitted to interfere with the practical conduct of their lives than it is in the case of just that novel-reader, who puts untruth and unreality from him, when he lays his book aside.—Another and weightier reason was, their slower brains could not conceive the possibility of such extraordinarily detailed lying as that to which Laura now subjected them. Its very elaboration stood for ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... "Can't conceive why you want to go at all." Laura was silent. "If Lawrence must be met, why can't Miller go alone?" Miller was the chauffeur. "Undignified, I call it, the way you women run after a man nowadays. You think men ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... doesn't like work. Whether or not this dislike is incurable remains to be seen. Perhaps as he comes into contact with civilization he may conceive a liking for other things than rice, fish, a loin-cloth, and shade—plenty of shade—and proceed to put forth the effort necessary to get these other things. Already there seems to have been a definite ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... which the first calls for cash on the multitudinous shares were met argued the vast resources that had hitherto slumbered in the nation for want of promising investments suited to the variety of human likings and judgments. The mind can hardly conceive any species of earthly enterprise that was not fitted with a company, oftener with a dozen, and with fifty or sixty where the proposed road to metal was direct. Of these the mines of Mexico still kept the front rank, but not to the exclusion of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to this, he is: his general merits of good sense and ingenuity we all acknowledge; but for the office of a distinguisher, or any other which demands logic in the first place, it is impossible to conceive any person below him. To go on, however, with my instance:— this objection of Mr. Malthus' about "cost" and "value" was founded purely on a very great blunder of his own—so great, that (as I shall show in its proper place) ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Renaissance; with all verbal artists in any age, who have sought unduly to refine upon their material of language. In a word, Marino is not condemned by his so-called Marinism. His true stigma is the inadequacy to conceive of human nature except under a twofold mask of sensuous voluptuousness and sensuous ferocity. It is this narrow and ignoble range of imagination which constitutes his real inferiority, far more than any poetical extravagance in diction. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... majority of humans, fattening things and should therefore be eliminated from the diet of those wishful to lose their superfluous adipose tissue. Here, again, they disagree with their professional forebears. The experts of the preceding generations, being mainly Englishmen and Germans, could not conceive of living without drinking. Some advocated wines, some ales, some a mixture of both with an occasional measure of spirits added for the sake of digestion. But among the dependable dietetic authorities of the present day there appears to be no wide range of argument on this point. They pretty generally ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... President for eighteen years on a salary payable in Indian corn; and in answer to his earnest prayer for relief, alleging instant necessity, the sacrifice of personal property, and the custom of English universities, a committee of the General Court reported that "they conceive the country to have done honorably toward the petitioner, and that his parity with English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... to our method that I can conceive of are these. First, that we should choose out, or breed, a class of superior persons capable of judging on all matters without consulting the neighbours; that, in short, we should get for ourselves ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... decaying human flesh is plainly perceptible to the senses as one ascends the bank of Stony Creek for a half mile along the smouldering ruins of the wreck, and the most skeptical now conceive the worst and realize that hundreds—aye, perhaps thousands—of bodies lie charred and blackened beneath this great funeral pyre. Searchers wander wearily over this smoking mass, and as occasionally a sudden shout ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... suspended above narrow gorges, an entrance to a part of the country which had the aspect of northern regions. The sun, tearing open the curtain of blue mist, inundated with brightness one of the most beautiful landscapes it is possible to conceive. A handful of Dublin Fusiliers with quick-firing rifles concealed in the hollows of the heights might have stopped a whole army struggling up the hill-sides. But no one appeared to stop me, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... family!" gasped Louis, who until now had not suspected the danger that threatened him, but was beginning to conceive a vague fear. "The mother of a family!" he repeated in dismay, "and what matters it to me whether Mademoiselle Ramon is or is not fitted to become ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... connect two events so absolutely dissimilar is, that they take place at the same time.... This does not mean that we wish to reduce them to unity, or to join them together by the link of causality ... it is impossible to conceive any real connection, any internal relation between these two ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... actors, as far as possible, from needless suffering? That Keene's mind was disordered at least three of us suspected already. But to me alone was the nature and seat of the disorder known. How make the others understand it? They might easily conceive it to be something different from the fact, some actual lesion of the brain, an incurable insanity. But this it was not. As yet, at least, he was no patient for a mad-house: it would be unjust, probably it would be impossible to have him committed. But on the other hand ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and Ichthyosauri,—when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills of moving ice? And yet in those distant days, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... amounting to only a little more than $100,000,000, is directly charged with the redemption of $346,000,000 of United States notes. When it is proposed to inflate our silver currency it is a time for strengthening our gold reserve instead of depleting it. I can not conceive of a longer step toward silver monometallism than we take when we spend our gold to buy silver certificates for circulation, especially in view of the practical difficulties surrounding the replenishment of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... moment to say how fine he was in that embroidered coat. It is hard to conceive that Mr. Gilbert can have any adequate successor in his own parts. He created the standard, and when living memory can no longer measure the comparative excellence of other performances of them, they will be tested by the traditions of Gilbert. The plain good-breeding of ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... wings,' that imparted life and grace to her every movement; her decks tenantless and wave-swept; her hull full of water, and the relentless sea leaping at her with merciless persistency, as though eager to drag her down and overwhelm her! Can you conceive a more sorrowful picture?" ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were a rustler, she would shield him and save him, if that were possible. He would love her always—Billy Louise could not conceive of Ward transferring his affections to another less exacting woman—and he would be grateful for her friendship. She could build long, lovely scenes where friendliness was put to the front bravely, while love hid behind the mask and only peeped out through the eyes now ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Germantown, about 1693, the Mennonites built a log meetinghouse in 1709, the first of this sect in America, and their present stone church on Germantown Avenue, near Herman Street, in 1770, a modest one-story gable-roof structure of ledge stone. It would be impossible to conceive anything simpler than the tall, narrow, double doors with the little hood above a stone stoop with plain, iron handrail on one side. In the churchyard in front of it lie the remains of the man who shot and mortally wounded General Agnew during ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... incredible to you, were the fact less notorious and public, is, that a gang of hardened villains, who had escaped from prison when the wall fell, were busily employed in setting fire to those buildings, which stood some chance of escaping the general destruction. I cannot conceive what could have induced them to this hellish work, except to add to the horror and confusion, that they might, by this means, have the better opportunity of plundering with security. But there was no necessity for taking this trouble, as they might ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... ago? His wife and babies are to come up from Alexandria to see him, for he will not leave me for a day, on account of my constantly being so ailing and weak. I hope if I die away from you all, you will do something for Omar for my sake, I cannot conceive what I should do without his faithful and loving care. I don't know why he is so devotedly fond of me, but he certainly does love me as he says 'like his mother,' and moreover as a very affectionate son loves his other. How pleasant it would be if you could come—but please don't run any ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... were as guiding stars to these children in the wilderness. Twice in the early days, so their folklore told them, miraculous intervention had saved their city from the invader; and was she not impregnable still? And as he gazed happily across the uplands towards his Mecca, the habitant could conceive of no power which might prevail against her stony ramparts. To this day the emblems of their faith abound, scattered along the wayside; and here and there a little wooden cross, set on with two or three rough steps, invites the wayfarer to pause and pray. Bareheaded, the pilgrim ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... was darkened with Schumann's perverse harmonies as jasmine, lavender, and lime were sprayed over him. Music, surely, was the art nearest akin to odour. A superb and subtle chord floated about him; it was composed of vervain, opoponax, and frangipane. He could not conceive of a more unearthly triad. It was music from Parsifal. Through the mists that were gathering he savoured a fulminating bouquet of patchouli, musk, bergamot, and he recalled the music of Mascagni. Brahms strode stolidly on in company with new-mown ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... not that small affection for greatness which, strange to say, is often found in the very great. But his position was part of himself, so that he could no more imagine himself plain Don Leone Saracinesca, than he could conceive himself boasting of his ancient titles. And yet it was quite plain to him that he must either cease to be a prince altogether, or accept a new title as a charity from his sovereign. As for his fortune, it was ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... frequently assigned are the true ones we do not believe.... We humbly suggest our belief that the slavery that exists and which with gigantic strides is gaining ground among us, is, in truth, the great efficient cause of the multiplied evils we deplore. We cannot conceive that there is any other cause sufficiently operative to paralyze the energies of a people so magnanimous, to neutralize the blessings of Providence included in the gift of a land so happy in its soil, its climate, its minerals and its ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... lived more lightheartedly than any others that he knew, as indeed they did, he enquired of not a few folk as to their rank. And learning on all hands that they were poor men and painters, he could not conceive it possible that they should live thus contentedly in poverty, but made his mind up that, being, as he was informed, clever fellows, they must have some secret source from which they drew immense gains; for which reason he grew all agog to get ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... about her mother. Glancing at the worn face, with its vivid eyes, he could easily conceive that this ill-health had its cause in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Charlotte with jewels to the value of eighteen thousand livres, purchased from Messier, the jeweller of the Pont au Change; and you conceive what the charitable ladies of the Court had to say about it. At the first hint of scandal Monsieur de Conde put himself into a fine heat, and said things which pained and annoyed the King exceedingly. Henry had amassed a considerable ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... gods, I am not able to do; the more beast, I say; I was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these gentlemen can witness; but I would not, for the wealth of Athens, I had done it now. Commend me bountifully to his good lordship; and I hope his honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have no power to be kin: and tell him this from me, I count it one of my greatest afflictions say, that I cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. Good Servilius, will you befriend me so far as to use ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... confident. He told of Guacanagari's fidelity to the Admiral, and he appealed to every Christian there to be at least as faithful. We were few and far from Spain, and we had perhaps more than we could conceive in trust. "Far from Spain, but no farther than we will from the blessed saints and the true Christ. Let us put less distance there, being few in this land ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... greatly surprised them. A while afterwards my Sisters and several Ladies came also to congratulate me. I was much loved; and I felt more delighted at the proofs each gave me of that than at what occasioned them. In the evening I went to the Queen's: you may readily conceive her joy. On my first entrance, she called me 'her dear Princess of Wales;' and addressed Madam de Sonsfeld as 'Milady.' This latter took the liberty of hinting to her, that it would be better to keep ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... untangled, the horses meanwhile smelling and nosing about the top of his head. He said he expected at every moment to have it bitten off, for, he argued, if the horses found a stable edible, in these outlandish parts, they might easily conceive the idea of sampling the hostler.... I am interrupted at this moment by Simile at the door to ask a question. I wish I could take a photograph as he stands at the door, with the steady eyes of a capable man of affairs, but the dress of a houri; about his loins he has twisted a piece ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and most virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or would be thought) a code of Christian ethics; a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little sympathy as this inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this everlasting self-complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward on every occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of Mercedes's romantic benevolences. Mrs. Talcott is a sort of old pensioner; a distant family connection; the funniest old American woman you can conceive of. She has been with Mercedes since her childhood, and, like everybody else, she is so devotedly attached to her that she regards it as a matter of course that she should be taken care of by her for ever. The way Karen takes her advantages ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... alterations in the church; and had walked the same evening to a cottage at one or other extremity of his parish to deliver another sermon, still more extemporary, in an atmosphere impregnated with spring-flowers and perspiration. After all these labours you will easily conceive that he was considerably exhausted by half-past nine o'clock in the evening, and that a supper at a friendly parishioner's, with a glass, or even two glasses, of brandy-and-water after it, was a welcome reinforcement. Mr. Barton was not at all an ascetic; ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... repeated with a sneer; 'I venture to say, most positively, I can't conceive any sane reason for your refusing Dorcas's entreaty to live with us at Brandon, and leave this triste, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gained courage," Nan returned cheerfully, and took up the slow, tedious task again of steering her laboriously this way and that, Louie meanwhile clinging to her arm and uttering little panic-stricken shrieks that irritated Nan beyond measure. No one could conceive how hard it was for the girl not to desert her clinging companion. She knew in her heart that Louie would never master the knack unless she were made to rely upon herself. As long as she could depend on Nan's support she would not make any effort to use her own energy, nor ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... It is possible to conceive a force of circumstance strong enough to make any woman in the world marry against her will: no conceivable pressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once married to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... proven, for instance, that the human individuality can exist in a discarnate state, and that it reincarnates into the body of an infant, shortly after birth. But the Statisticalists cannot accept the idea of discarnate consciousness, since they conceive of consciousness purely as a function of the physical brain. So they postulate an unconscious discarnate personality, or, as you put it, one in a somnambulistic state. They have to concede memory to this discarnate personality, since it was by recovery of memories of previous reincarnations ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... intelligibly, Mrs. B. returns immediately, but I proceed, with all my laurels, to Worthing, on the Sussex coast; to which place you will address (to be left at the post office) your next epistle. By the enclosure of a second gingle of rhyme, you will probably conceive my muse to be vastly prolific; her inserted production was brought forth a few years ago, and found by accident on Thursday among some old papers. I have recopied it, and, adding the proper date, request it may be printed with the rest of the family. I thought your sentiments ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... from 1700 to 1870, none can dispute, but whose real life was extinct, and whose capacity of future expansion in its original sense was stopped at Sedan, or a few months later, at Versailles. Sybel conceives his history as a thoroughly well-trained functionary must conceive it; he is brought up in traditional conventionalities, and is rather even an official than a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... unfortunate, but they are certainly not unhappy. I say unhappy, but the word does not translate my thought, for if these people have not the comforts of temperate countries, they are formed for a rude climate, and find pleasures in it which we are not able to conceive." ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... not ask her. But it scarce needed explanation, Mr. Bower. I—I fear she suspected me of flirting. It was unjust; but I can well conceive that a woman who thinks her friend is robbing her of a man's affections does not wait to consider nice ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... has the remarkable peculiarity of being in the key of E major—a violent modulatory relation to that of the first movement. I should say that this fact indicated that Haydn did not conceive of the three movements of the sonata as constituting a single whole, because if he had he could not have followed a close in E-flat major with an opening in E major, exactly a semitone higher, without the slightest modulation. This proceeding is inexplicable to me, ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... dogs resign the unburied slain, Then to the vulture let each corse remain; Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw, Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain, Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe: Thus only may our sons conceive the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... powerful ally. [Footnote: The emperor's own words.—See. Gross-Hofflnger, iii., pp. 428, 429.] But having permitted Russia to take possession of the Crimea, the aspect of affairs is changed. I never shall suffer the Russians to establish themselves in Constantinople. The turban I conceive to be a safer neighbor for Austria than the bat. [Footnote: The emperor's own words.—See" Letters of Joseph ll.," p. 135.] At this present time Russia offers me the opportunity of retaking Belgrade, and avenging the humiliation sustained ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and then he would shoot with his bow, and run up and down with his people, making great sport for us. We often went five or six leagues into the interior, and found the country as pleasant as is possible to conceive, adapted to cultivation of every kind, whether of corn, wine or oil; there are open plains twenty- five or thirty leagues in extent, entirely free from trees or other hinderances, and of so great fertility, that whatever is sown ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to look things squarely in the face in my berth by myself, I began to see how utterly impossible it would be for me after all to go and stop with the Cheritons. How I could ever have dreamt it feasible I could hardly conceive. I ought to have refused at once. I ought to have been braver. I ought to have said outright, "I'll have nothing to do or say with anyone who is a friend or an acquaintance of Courtenay Ivor's." And yet, to have said so would have been to give up the game for lost. It would have been ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... expect nothing from the Government. But with executive boards the case is quite different. Their business is not to check, but to act. The very same things, therefore, which are the virtues of Parliaments may be vices in Cabinets. We can hardly conceive a greater curse to the country than an Administration, the members of which should be as perfectly independent of each other, and as little under the necessity of making mutual concessions, as the representatives of London and Devonshire in the House of Commons are and ought ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clear light on the true methods of the man in his work; for the play of childhood is prophetic of the work of maturity; it is the prelude in which all the great motives are distinctly audible. The man who gives his work completeness and charm must conceive of that work, not as a detached and isolated activity, but as part of the great order of life; a product of the vital forces as truly as the flower which has its roots in the earth. To the growth of the flower ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... believe that it was all true. The serpent seemed fully twenty feet long, with a large head, and a yellow body covered with black marks—a more hideous-looking creature it was scarcely possible to conceive. How I longed for my rifle, which stood up uselessly against the stem of the tree; I only hoped that the serpent would catch hold of it, and perhaps shoot himself! Perhaps he might think fit to swallow it, and then there was ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... mem'ry of the just shall not perish, because them things we see come so. Now, if after tellin' you all that, that's true, it axes you to believe when it says there is another life—a spiritual life, which we can't conceive of, an' there we shall live forever, can't you believe that, too, sence it ain't never lied about what you can see, by your own senses? Why ever' star that shines, an' ever' beam of sunlight fallin' on the earth, an' ever' beat of yo' own heart by some force that we know not ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... It is, then, a strange fact that we cannot define these things without obscuring them, while we speak of them with all assurance.] We assume that all conceive of them in the same way; but we assume it quite gratuitously, for we have no proof of it. I see, in truth, that the same words are applied on the same occasions, and that every time two men see a body change its place, they both express their view of this same fact by the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... 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 the matter ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grieve and astonish me! You surely must be jesting, in dishing up this long rigmarole, about Miss Houghton's accomplishments! After what I have told you, I cannot conceive how you can fail to understand, that I am not in a mood for jesting. As for the girl, I very much desire to meet her, that I may have an opportunity to express the regrets and apologies for my unfortunate ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... to think of it, she was not so very sure. There was another world, and saints and angels and eternity; yes, of course—but how on earth would all those baccarat people ever fit into it? Who could, by any stretch of imagination, conceive Madame Mila and Maurice des Gommeux in a spiritual existence ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... You can't conceive the effect of it. Brownie held out her arms to the Duke and he flung himself into them, the Queen leapt into the arms of the Lord Chamberlain, and the ladies of the court leapt into the arms of her gentlemen, for it is etiquette to follow her ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... wanderer we have to conceive of a man who has started out to learn the secret of the great work. He finds in the forest contradictory opinions. He has fallen deep into errors. The study, although difficult, holds him fast. He cannot turn back (Sec. 1). So he pursues his aim still further (Sec. 2) and thinks he has now found ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... none who knew that matron could conceive her as actively resisting this invasion that had turned her house upside down. But among the most exact observers it was seriously believed that she liked it. For she was one of those women who at bottom regard all men ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... hard for me to conceive you would purposely do me an unkindness unless under the pressure of a sense of public duty, or because you do not believe me sincere. I was in hopes, since my letter to you of the 31st of January, that you had concluded to pass over ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... When parents conceive the family in these terms and so organize the life of the home, the child becomes conscious of the fact, and at once the life of the family furnishes him with his first, his nearest, and most satisfactory ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... two weeks she had begun to look as if she were going to be ill again. It was bad enough for Norah and for all of them, but conceive what it must ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... "Conceive your position as my aunt (I say nothing of myself), if I had adopted the other alternative. Turned out of the Jockey Club, turned out of Tattersalls', turned out of the betting-ring; in short, posted publicly as ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Bacchylides celebrated Hiero's victories, in 468 (the most 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, not unmindful of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... this Spirit of adoption, I conceive to be threefold, beside that of intersession expressed in the verse. The first work of the Spirit of adoption, that wherein a father's affection seems to break first from under ground, is, the revealing to the heart the love and mercy of God to sinners. I do not ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... conceive that during these jokes which were intended chiefly to divert Athos from the scene which had just taken place, the servants, with the exception of Grimaud, were not silent. Suddenly Mousqueton uttered a cry of delight, taking from beneath one of the benches a bottle ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... care; he believed that there were regions beyond Highgate, and that the earth was habitable farther westward than Hyde Park corner; but he had never explored those remote districts. What was Hammersmith to him or he to Hammersmith? He knew of nothing, thought of nothing, and could conceive of nothing more honourable, more dignified, or more desirable than a good business properly attended to. He was proud of the close and personal attention that he paid to his shop,—somewhat censoriously proud; he might be called a mercantile ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, Though they as a trifle leave thee Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth are born; Let my life no longer be Than I am ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... conceive me, the intent of oaths is ever understood: Admit I should protest to such a friend, to see him at his Lodging to morrow: Divines would never hold me perjur'd if I were struck blind, or he hid him where my diligent search could not find him: so there were no cross act of mine own in't. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... deaths of Bering and Cook, trying to find that Passage, Drake's chronicler wrote: "The cause of this extreme cold we conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian and American continent, if they be not fully joined, yet seem they to come very neere, from whose high and snow-covered mountains, the north and north-west winds send abroad their frozen nimphes ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... forgive me," he said, when he had recovered his self-control. "But you don't know; you can't conceive the utter, childish absurdity of setting that child to recite the multiplication table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe me, if you could only guess, you would laugh with me. It's so funny, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... was the son of Hidimva by Bhimasena. Rakshasi women bring forth the very day they conceive, and their offspring attain to youth the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... eyes the Lights began to change in earnest. All the sky (I call it sky for clearness) above the mighty Gates became as it were alive with burning tongues of every colour that an artist can conceive. By degrees these fiery tongues or swords shaped themselves into a vast circle which drove back the walls of darkness, and through this circle, guided, guarded by the spirits of dead suns, with odours and with chantings, descended that crowned City of the ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... many months ago, I wrote to tell you of the hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask your opinion of her I loved, how did you answer me? With doubts, with depreciation, with covert and polished scorn, of the very woman whom, with a deliberate treachery, you afterwards wrested from my worshipping ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conceive why you should speak in this way to me. If you suppose I am not quite able to take care of myself, I assure you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... weather was very still, not very bright, but rather cloudy, and a dense haze of smoke was over everything, making the distances look ten times as far as they really were, and rendering the whole landscape as grey and melancholy as you can conceive. There was nothing much to be done, but to sit in the verandah, drinking claret-and-water, and watching and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... not till after the funeral that the will was read, and the reader can scarce conceive the astonishment and mortification that appeared, when the attorney pronounced aloud, the young squire sole heir of all his grandfather's estate, personal and real, and that there ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. |
