"Conceive of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... since long association with Stannard had forcibly impressed his views as to Rallston's character. Perhaps we were as reluctant to hear of his subsequent behavior and to believe in his contrition as Mrs. Whaling with all her meek and lowly piety was to conceive of Ray's innocence of the various charges laid at his door; but, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we simply place before the patient reader Nellie Ray Rallston's own statement: that her husband emerged from that trying illness a very different man, that he humbly begged Will's ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... incalculably vast their difference of area! Thousands of systems seemed but commensurate, to the eye, with a small district of earth fifty miles each way. But capacious as the human imagination has been deemed, can it conceive of an area of wider field? Mine cannot. My mind cannot take in more at a glance, if I may so speak, than is taken in by the eye. I cannot conceive of a wider area than that which the sight commands from the summit of a lofty eminence. I can pass in imagination through many such areas. I can ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... rather premature one! So you can't conceive of it, eh? Sed patet experientia and contra experientiam negantem, fusilibus est arguendum, do you understand? And can't you conceive, with your philosophical head, that one can be absent from the class ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... substance, ever present to our senses—our body. A man may deny point blank the existence of his soul—using the word in its ordinary acceptation—he cannot say, "I have not got a body." Even if he should conceive of that body as a mere bundle of ideas, an accumulation of sensations, yet there it is, making ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... foreground of Jean's was a pretty clump of fir-trees growing beside an old ruined stone wall, under which nestled a bunch of dry goldenrod. But the background! Did ever the maddest artist's brain conceive of such? Clear and distinct, where sky should have been, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... I know I have a body—by self-consciousness. There is no place in this world where men are not compelled by absolute necessity to recognize the act and the will of a soul within, which directs the act. I ask again, does God care for me? I say it reverently, brother, you cannot conceive of a God who could create a world like this, if He can feel one throb of pity for His children, unless you believe He has provided a remedy for sin, sorrow, and death. The coming of God into the family of man is an absolute necessity of the very being of God. The incarnation ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... death. It is only clever, conceited men, proud of their neat little minds, who think that because they cannot fathom the causes of the war, it might easily have been prevented. I confess I find it difficult to conceive of the war in terms of simple right and wrong. We must respect the tides, and their huge unintelligible force teaches ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... More than twenty men were killed instantly; and so great was the flame and the force of the explosion, that many of them were left with nothing on but the collars and wristbands of their shirts and the waistbands of their trousers. It is impossible to conceive of the horror ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... what strange feelings art thou made! Thou hast the beauty of the flower and the intellect of the leaf. To let that awful black-and-yellow fiend descend to the earth! To call up to a cruel death and ask it to come down-stairs and meet you on the lowest step! Skies! How can the mind of man conceive of it?' ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Imagination tries to conceive of any Englishman coming over here to merge Borden, Laurier and Crerar. Imagination fails. Not even Aitken could have done it. That he succeeded in England where he must have failed in ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Pierce was nominated on the forty-ninth ballot; and in his letter of acceptance he declared that "the principles it embraces command the approbation of my judgment, and with them I believe I can safely say that no word nor act of my life is in conflict." It is difficult to conceive of any words by which he could more completely have abdicated his manhood and self-respect, and sounded the knell of his own conscience. There was no lower deep, and he was evidently the right man in ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... widely diverging aims were all a part of the current of her life, the impulse to be what those she loved would like to have her. It was not that she was willing to give up her own individuality to gratify the impulse, but rather that she did not for an instant conceive of the necessity for such a sacrifice. It was part of her immense happiness that she had always loved to be what it pleased everyone to have her, and that, apparently, people wished to have her only what she wished to be. She was like a child guarded by her elders from any ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... handsomely furnished, to judge from the relics, for they are nothing more—rosewood tables, sideboards and washstands with marble tops, drawers and doors broken in and half gone, sofas that must have been of the best, nothing left but the frame; no one can conceive of the destruction who has not seen it. The rooms are twelve feet high, and the lower story is more than that from the ground. The air is delicious, and we shall find the blinds which are on the second story a luxury. I have my own little bed, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... "Can you really conceive of operation in two hours? Two hours," Arnold said. "Two days, maybe. More likely in ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... natural elements which aboriginal man instinctively wonders at or fears, the sun, the moon, the thunder, the lightning, and the wind; all, in short, that he sees, hears, and feels, yet cannot comprehend. He clothes his terrors with forms which resemble the human, because he can conceive of nothing else that could cause the unexpected. But the awful shapes he conjures up have naught in common with himself. They are far too fearful to be followed. Their way is the "highway of the gods," but no Jacob's ladder ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... "Can you conceive of a man pretending to care for a girl and yet treating her so? I can't tell you the grief, the mortification, I have endured." She spoke with a half-sob in her throat, as if she was struggling not to cry, which made me wish I had never been born. "It's been all I could do ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... constantly make, the greatest difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in Westminster Abbey during ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a role, tried to imagine the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious detail to trick us into a belief ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to conceive of the market-place at Athens as bearing any resemblance to the bare, undecorated spaces appropriated to business in our modern towns; but rather as a magnificent public square, closed in by grand historic buildings, of the highest style of architecture; planted with palm-trees ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... unable to conceive of a marriage without some merriment, brought some wine which they drank. The hours of night were passing on. Zbyszko having overcome his weakness, drew Danusia to him ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... it to a friend who has been connected with me here, Thomas Butler, of Chicago. He has solemnly promised to seek you out, and put the money into your hands. I think he will be true to his trust. Indeed I have no doubt on the subject, for I cannot conceive of any man being base enough to belie the confidence placed in him by a dying man, and despoil a widow and her fatherless children. No, I will not permit myself to doubt the integrity of my friend. If I should, it would make my last ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... to conceive of anything more light and airy than the step of these people. I shall never forget with what enchanted eyes I gazed upon one of them gliding along the side of the hill opposite Missouri Bar. One would fancy that nothing but a fly or a spirit could ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Telluride, a drive which in itself was worth a thousand-mile journey, an experience to be remembered all our lives. Such majesty of silent, sunny cliffs! Such exquisite tones, such balance of lights and shadows, such tracery of snow-laden boughs! It was impossible for my lowland bride to conceive of any mountain scene more gorgeous, more sumptuous, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... for certain purposes, to conceive of contact in terms of space. The contacts of persons and of groups may then be plotted in units of social distance. This permits graphic representation of relations of sequence and of coexistence in terms both of units of separation and of contact. This ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... footway; and huxters' shops are frequent, with their wonted array of articles more useful than ornamental. One would never guess, looking at this old street, that it was once the festive resort of the wealthy and refined. It needs an effort of imagination to conceive of it as having witnessed the gay throng of fashion and aristocracy; the vice-regal cortege; ladies, in hoops and feathers; and "white-gloved beaux," in bag, and sword, and chapeau; with scores of liveried footmen ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... vain regrets and needless worry, as we have seen, but nevertheless he could not keep his mind from the possible fate of himself and Jimmy, and think as he would he could conceive of no possible means of their escape, save in the possibility of the floe coming again in contact with land. Then his thoughts ran to Abel and Mrs. Abel, and before he was aware of it he ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... even if we acknowledged their competence as an examining board. Above all, we beg them to remember that America is not to us, as to them, a mere object of external interest to be discust and analyzed, but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them not suppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the graces and amenities of an older date than we, tho very much at home in a state of things not yet all it might be or should be, but which we mean to make so, and which we find both ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... about unselfish motives as the origin of warfare. It is safe to say that 99 per cent of all the slaughter wrought by civilization under the cloak of a desire to better bad conditions really has been evil. It is impossible to conceive of general betterment through general slaughter. There have been ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... then, to conceive of the amoral man as also the anti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence in the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... beyond its apparent importance. She could conceive of no possible reason for Julius interfering in Harry's life, and she had the feeling of a person facing a danger in the dark. Julius was also annoyed at her discovery. "It precipitates matters," he said to Sophia, "and is apparently ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of this: I heard the spectators ask for a blank verse. What we show is but a Christmas jest; Conceive of this, and guess of all the rest: Full like a scholar's hapless fortune's penn'd, Whose former griefs seldom have happy end. Frame as well we might with easy strain, With far more praise and with as little pain, Stories of love, where forne[29] the wond'ring bench The lisping gallant might enjoy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... why she stayed here, whereat he shook his head and replied, he supposed because of the "curse," since he could conceive of no other reason. He informed me also that her moods varied very much. Sometimes she was fierce and active and at others by comparison mild and low-spirited. Just now she was passing through one of the latter stages, perhaps because of the Rezu trouble, for she did not ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Valentinians conceive of three kinds of men: the pneumatic [or spiritual], the choic [or material],(45) and the psychic [or animal]; such were Cain, Abel, and Seth. These three natures are no longer in one person, but in the race. The material goes to destruction. The animal, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... order of things, of which pain and disease are the accidents, so to speak. Well, no doubt they find it harder than clergymen to believe that there can be any world or state from which this benevolent agency is wholly excluded. This may be very wrong; but it is not unnatural. They can hardly conceive of a permanent state of being in which cuts would never try to heal, nor habit render suffering endurable. This is one effect of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning—of an Infinite Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because you cannot annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal compass of your brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at His sovereign and commanding will? If ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... round her chicks. The streak of heroism that lay in her nature was not perhaps of patent order. Her feeling about her brother's situation however was sincere and not to be changed or comforted. She saw him in danger of being damaged in the only sense in which she could conceive of a man—as a husband and a father. It was this that went to her heart, though her piety proclaimed to her also the peril of his soul; for she shared the High Church view of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have received no word to the contrary from Johnson, I shall let him go, and bid him God speed. If, however, I should receive orders to continue to hold him, or even to deliver him over to his savage captors, which God forbid, I can conceive of no alternative save that ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... hat, with that ineffectual one-sidedness to which alone the best-regulated female mind can attain, in this difficult part of costuming. His sorrows increase as the day passes; the gymnasium alone can relieve them, but his soul shudders at the remedy; and he can conceive of nothing so absurd as a first gymnastic lesson, except a second one. But had he been wise enough to place himself under an experienced adviser at the very beginning, he would have been put through a few simple movements which would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... always and only of pleasure. It was her misfortune rather than her fault, that the idea never entered her mind that kings and queens had aught else to do than to indulge in luxury. It would be hardly possible to conceive of two characters less qualified to occupy the throne in stormy times than were Louis and Maria. The people were slowly, but with resistless power, rising against the abuses, enormous and hoary with age, of the aristocracy and the monarchy. Louis, a man of unblemished kindness, integrity, and purity, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... was naturalized, took service in the Argentine army, and married an Indian girl, who was then nursing twin babies six months old— two boys, be it understood, for the good wife of the Commandant would have never thought of presenting her husband with girls. Manuel could not conceive of any state but a military one, and he hoped in due time, with the help of God, to offer the republic a ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... is brought to him by selective screening. He rationalizes what his Universe presents him, and postulates that ALL reality is identical to what he can experience. He can NOT conceive of what is utterly beyond his range of experience and imagination—which is merely the re-arrangement of reality or of ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... for us to conceive of the speechless terrors which these poor wretches suffer from the screeching of owls, the shrieking of night-hawks, the rustling of the trees ... all of which are only channels of poison wherewith the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... think! He passed by my pictures in the Exhibition, and bought the canvas of my friend Greenleaf,—a man of genius, doubtless, but young, you understand, young. Can you conceive of the wickedness? I felt sure from that moment, that, if he were not totally depraved, he at least had a moral inability, as the preachers call it, that would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... conceive of a greater responsibility than that of a mediaeval Inquisitor. The life or death of the heretic was practically at his disposal. The Church, therefore, required him to possess in a pre-eminent degree the ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... a vivid idea of the metamorphoses it undergoes. Outward things are to him phantasms; the impressions they make on the mind are phantasms too. In this sense he receives the doctrine of transmigration, conceiving of it very much as we conceive of the accumulation of heat successively in different things. In one sense it may be the same heat which occupies such objects one after another, but in another, since heat is force and not matter, there can be no such individuality. Viewed, however, in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the fact that she didn't believe he would take the Sangraal that bothered him: it was the fact that she couldn't conceive of him taking it. She could be convinced that black was white, perhaps, and that white was black, and that fiends hung out in empty caves and castles; but she could never be convinced that a "knight" of the qualities she imputed to Mallory could ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... have said to Him about you! My heart would have broken years ago, had it not been for Him; because, though you did not know it, you often seemed unkind; you hurt me very often when you did not mean to. His love is so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive of life without it. It is the very ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wine, Richard's exhaustion assumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now his overmastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he made himself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course, when he himself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any one sleeping anywhere but in a bed. But Dick made short ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... depressing effect upon the nervous system of officers and men, while at Limasol the country is agreeable and the shady caroubs exist almost to the sea-shore, in numbers that would have sheltered an army of three times the force represented. I cannot conceive of more deliberate cruelty inflicted upon all grades than an unnecessary exposure to the burning summer sun of Cyprus in bell-tents, when shady trees existed in so convenient a locality as Limasol. If the root of the offence could be traced it would probably be discovered ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... than that of Ulster, because it challenged Redmond's leadership. It was that of the extremist group, which rapidly began to welcome German successes, not for any love to Germany but because it could not conceive of any hope for Ireland except in the weakening or Destruction of British power. These men, as been already seen, had acquired an influence in the Volunteer Force out of all proportion to their numbers, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... of dress. I have a passion for beauty and completeness in it; and as long as I am in the world and obliged to dress as the world does, it constantly haunts me, and tempts me to give more time, more thought, more money, to these things than I really think they are worth. But I can conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being much easier than regulating it to the precise point. I never read of a nun's taking the veil, without a certain thrill of sympathy. To cut off one's hair, to take off and cast from her, one by one, all one's trinkets and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... race will be poorer by the loss of one of those half-matured discoveries which have more than once in the world's history been on the point of raising the animal called man to a higher, stronger, finer development of brain and muscle than we can conceive of under existing circumstances. Who can tell? Perhaps the strange solitary bush may be found growing elsewhere—in some other continent across the ocean. The ways of Nature are past comprehension, and no man can say who sows the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... by the dawn, shining out upon the still dark sky. Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one of the sweetest flowers of all her life,—a pure love, such as a young girl dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to conceive of. The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she sacrificed love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to religion or to duty. Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as virtue. Read thus, this history is that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that you cannot yet conceive of the amount of treasure that will yet be poured in upon you, by all sorts of people, if you do not go about professing that you have all you want already. You know the story of the two school-girls on the Central Railroad. They were dead faint with hunger, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... force of this feeling which swept her away. She suddenly found herself passionately attached to a man, whom, down to the last moment, she had thought she could never marry, and now could no more imagine life without him than she could conceive of loving any one else. For the moment she thought that his profession was nothing to her; she could believe whatever he believed and do whatever he did; and if her love, backed by her will, were not strong ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... man indulged himself in emotional regret for her frustrated womanhood—she called it that to herself—it must in some way concern him. She had never in her life been troubled by a condition that she was not eager to ameliorate, and she could not conceive of an emotional interest in an individual disassociated from a certain responsibility for that individual's welfare. She took Collier Pratt's growing tenderness for her for granted, and dreamed exultant dreams of ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... this point, as you call it, simply is Flavia. Who could conceive of her without it? I don't know where it's all going to end, I'm sure, and I'm equally sure that, if it were not for Arthur, I shouldn't care," declared Miss ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of things that might take its place. Flower themes are just as beautiful in decoration as the shapes of men and women. I can conceive of the time when it will be considered uninteresting and commonplace to have human bodies used as a means of aesthetic display. The self-glorification in it alone becomes wearying. We are gradually learning that the best we can do in life is to forget ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... all this there are many essential elements in the cooperation of Negroes and whites for work and wealth that are too readily overlooked or not thoroughly understood. The average American can easily conceive of a rich land awaiting development and filled with black laborers. To him the Southern problem is simply that of making efficient workingmen out of this material, by giving them the requisite technical skill and the help of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... conceive of what the mere attention, even, of a man like Wagner must have meant to Nietzsche in his twenties, if we can form any idea of the intoxicating effect produced upon him when this attention developed into friendship, we almost ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to conceive of the enthusiasm which this new country awoke in the mind of the primitive explorer. To him it was a new world, more genial in climate, more beautiful in scenery, and more magnificent in extent than any he had ever beheld; and it is not surprising that the glowing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... "advertising department" takes all personality out of the missive and to that extent weakens the power of the message. But even in this we should be chary of following inflexible rules. We can conceive of circumstances where it would be advisable to have the letter come from a department rather ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... exist, unless God has created them? And how can He create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil material mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From me ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... fact. We can account for the fact only on the supposition that the doctrine is not believed. If it were really believed it would certainly be preached. If it is true it ought to be preached, morning, noon and night. One cannot conceive of believing in hell fire as the doom of sinners, and not warning men of it, even ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... often-repeated writings and declamations. The assertion is true. Christianity furnishes the true basis for raising up character; but the foundation must be laid in a very different manner from that which is commonly practiced. * * * We can, indeed, scarcely conceive of the purity, the self-denial, and the power that might be given to human character by ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail—the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member—oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description—it is impotent and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... God! think, Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too— So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying: "O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee!"— The madman saith He said ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... upon the adult voice are united. Leo Kofler, in "The Art of Breathing," p. 168, says: "I have met female trebles that used this means of forcing up the chest-tones as high as middle A, B, C, and (one can hardly conceive of the physical possibility of so doing) even as far as D and E flat. The reason why this practice is so dangerous lies in the unnatural way in which the larynx is held down in the throat, and in the force ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... I shall say to my family. They can never understand such a thing, never! Papa couldn't conceive of giving a promise and not keeping it, much less giving a promise just for the pleasure of breaking it. What shall I tell them, Brice? I can't bear to say that Godolphin is going to make your play over, unless I can say at the same time that you've absolutely forbidden ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... their subject, practically agree on one point—in the definition of the "self." They agree in saying: that the self of each man is continuous with and in a sense identical with the Self of the universe. Now that seems an extraordinary conclusion, and one which almost staggers the modern mind to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the thread which runs all through the 'Upanishads'—the identity of the self of each individual with the self of every other individual throughout mankind, and even with the selves of the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... without any mixture of fallacy, which when once he comprehends them he can never any more doubt, and which though thus absolute do not fetter his intellect but first give it the use of all its powers to the extent of those truths; so he can conceive of an Intelligence in which all truth is thus without taint of error. Not only is such an Intelligence conceivable, it is necessary to conceive it, in order to complete the scientific induction of "a sphere of thought from which all limits are withdrawn," forced upon us by the demonstrations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Buonaparte was any longer exclusively a Corsican. It is impossible to conceive of a lot more pitiful or a fate more obdurate than his so far had been. There was little hereditary morality in his nature, and none had been inculcated by training; he had nothing of what is called vital ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth. Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to Lochleven, and Murray had assumed the Regency. The city was still agitated by much ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... military interference by the officers or troops of the United States with the organization of the State legislature or any of its proceedings, or with any civil department of the Government, is repugnant to our ideas of government. I can conceive of no case, not involving rebellion or insurrection, where such interference by authority of the General Government ought to be permitted or can be justified. But there are circumstances connected with the late legislative imbroglio in Louisiana which seem to exempt the military ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... the gods of the old times, and how did the ancient Hawaiians conceive of them? As of beings having the form, the powers, and the passions of humanity, yet standing above and somewhat apart from men. One sees, as through a mist, darkly, a figure, standing, moving; in shape a plant, a tree or vine-clad stump, a bird, a taloned monster, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... direction of a tutor who ground out music from a wheezing hand-organ, and have been willing to undergo the penance of hearing the music of the master, for the sake of witnessing the genius of the pupil. I can conceive of nothing more excessively ludicrous than many of these exhibitions. But I must not detain the reader ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... notice of the passers-by, as did the other men who shouted so continually and vehemently at the hurrying crowds. He did not know what might happen if he failed to sell one of his statues; it was a possibility so awful that he did not dare conceive of its punishment. But he could do nothing, and so stood silent, dumbly presenting his tray to ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... she lives still,—scarce older to appearance than twenty years before,—prim, wiry, active,—proof against all ailments, it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems like amiability almost to hear such a one as she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and threw herself into her husband's arms. Was it for the first time such a thought had ever been presented to her mind? Life without her husband! She could not conceive of it. It seemed as if he had always been with her; as though he had become so much a part of herself that she could not live without him. For, though she wearied and annoyed him, teased, opposed, and vexed him, she loved him beyond all things, even her children. Beneath all her vanity, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... uplift humanity. You can't understand him because it isn't possible for you to conceive of a man whose first thought is always for ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... If we could conceive of a world a thousand times denser, heavier and duller than this world, we can clearly see that to its inmates it would seem much the same as this, since their strength and texture would be in proportion. If, however, these inmates came in contact with us, they would look upon us ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were entirely at sea at not reaching Nyoda at Ft. Wayne. They had counted so confidently upon her advice to help them out of the difficulty in which they found themselves. Being lost from her was the worst calamity they could conceive of. They were very much puzzled and a little hurt that she should have run away and left them as she did. It was so unlike Nyoda. On all other expeditions she had kept them under her eye every minute, like the careful Guardian she was. None of them slept much that night for worrying over the ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... and may thus conceive of the master-poet as necessarily blind. Milton's noble lines on blindness in Samson Agonistes have had much to do, undoubtedly, with the conceptions of later poets. Though blindness is seldom extended to other than actual poets, within the confines ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Speaker, I asked, "What sort of man is this Speaker of yours?" Mr. Hiscock answered, "As you know, he is one of the strongest of Democrats, and I am one of the strongest of Republicans; yet I will say this: that my imagination is not strong enough to conceive of his making an unfair ruling or doing an unfair thing against the party opposed to him ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... "I cannot conceive of a camp that does not have a big fire. Our city houses do not have it, not even a fireplace. The fireplace is one of the greatest schools the imagination has ever had or can ever have. It is moral, and it always has a tremendous stimulus to the imagination, and that is why stories ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... has prevented the celebration of the Country Dionysia for six years. How is it possible, under such circumstances, to conceive of Euripides as composing tragedies in the country? How could the general Lamachus be living out of the city in such a time of danger? Certainly the play itself gives us authority that this scene also is in Athens. At v. 241 Dicaeopolis would go forth with his procession to hold ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic. I can conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to furthering the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... life, even in the lowlands, was singularly uneven. It is not merely that some districts were the special homes of wealthier residents. We have also to conceive of some parts as densely peopled and of some as hardly inhabited. Portions of Kent, Sussex, and Somerset are set thick with country-houses and similar vestiges of Romano-British life. But other portions of the same counties, southern Kent, northern Sussex, western ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... that. He could imagine her as the mother of a child, beautiful mother of a child almost as beautiful; but he could not conceive of her as the "mater" of a ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... poor woman belonged to the far-off coasts of Tyre and Sidon. She was a poor Gentile, and they wanted to send her away. They thought she was not one of the elect; she did not belong to the house of Israel. So they said to the Master, "Send her away, for she crieth after us." Can you conceive of the loving Saviour sending away a poor troubled one who comes to Him? I challenge you to find a single instance of His doing such a thing, from the beginning to the end of His ministry. Send her away! I believe He would rather send an angel away than a poor suppliant ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... Zicci, passionately, "Nay: can you dare to solve them! Would you brave all that human heart can conceive of peril and of horror, so that you at last might stand separated from this visible universe side by side with me? When you can dare this, and when you are fit to dare it, I may give you my right hand and call ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought this a mistake, but he urged that full details were wanting in regard to his mental capacity as shown in other ways than in music. Macaulay replied that Mozart was the Raphael of music, and was both a composer and a wonderful performer at the age of six. "Now," said he, "we cannot conceive of any one being a great poet at the age of six: we hear nothing of Shakespeare or Milton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... thousands in a great variety of tribes. I have seen a few who might be called passable, but none at all to be compared to what one may meet among English servant-girls. Some beauties are said to be found among the Caffres, but among the people I have seen I cannot conceive of any European being captivated with them. The whole of my experience goes toward proving that civilization alone produces beauty, and exposure to the weather and other vicissitudes tend to the production ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... my dear," said Theobald, and so next time Dr Martin came Ellen was sent for. Dr Martin soon discovered what would probably have been apparent to Christina herself if she had been able to conceive of such an ailment in connection with a servant who lived under the same roof as Theobald and herself—the purity of whose married life should have preserved all unmarried people who came near them ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... difficult to conceive of a meaner case of extortion than this. As Morse says in a letter to Mr. Kendall, of August 3, 1860, after he had consented to a reference of the matter to three persons: "I have no apprehensions of the result except that I may be entrapped by some legal technicalities. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Chelles was that of the incorruptible but fearless American woman, who cannot even conceive of love outside of marriage, but is ready to give her devoted friendship to the man on whom, in happier circumstances, she might have bestowed her hand. This attitude was provocative of many scenes, during which her suitor's unfailing powers of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... what civilization is and what representative government is. The Batta of Sumatra may have their own alphabet, and the Fans of the West Coast may excel in iron work,[8] but even these fall short of the pre-requisites, not intellectually only, but morally also. We cannot conceive of them, seated around a camp-fire, discussing the merits of two chambers system, or defining the rights and duties of a citizen, while their vile lips are stained with the blood of their fellow-man, whose flesh they have just devoured. Not to expatiate further on this self-evident fact, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... society culminated the efforts of a whole series of German writers—Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller, Goethe—to appreciate the nurturing influence of the great collective institutional products of humanity. For those who learned the lesson of this movement, it was henceforth impossible to conceive of institutions or of culture as artificial. It destroyed completely—in idea, not in fact—the psychology that regarded "mind" as a ready-made possession of a naked individual by showing the significance of "objective mind"—language, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before him, that he may be worthy of the company of young men who, in turn, will be worthy of the company ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... ascribes to Davy Jones. But, at the moment of starting, they are there, clean-shaved, blue-coated, and ravenous for fees. I hastened on board. The Kamtschatka was one of my favourite ships. I say was, because she emphatically no longer is. I cannot conceive of any inducement which could entice me to make another voyage in her. Yes, I know what you are going to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft, she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower berths are most of them double. She has a lot ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... in fact, was the one now uppermost in the minds of the club members, having been the most recent of the series; and it had been prophesied by many men whose judgment was unassailable that no man, not even I, could ever conceive of anything that could surpass it. Disposed at first to question the accuracy of a prophecy to the effect that I was, like most others of my kind, possessed of limitations, I came finally to believe that perhaps, after all, these male Cassandras with whom I was thrown were ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... themselves. Their government was always represented as monarchical. A King, more frequently a Queen of Fairies, was acknowledged; and sometimes both held their court together. Their pageants and court entertainments comprehended all that the imagination could conceive of what was, by that age, accounted gallant and splendid. At their processions they paraded more beautiful steeds than those of mere earthly parentage—the hawks and hounds which they employed in their chase were of the first race. At their daily banquets, the board was set forth with a splendour ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... other alternative, and suppose an unconscious mental mechanism, we cannot legitimately conceive of the process going on in this as other than what prevails in all mental mechanism, namely, than as by way of idea and will. We are, therefore, compelled to imagine a causal connection between the consciously recognised motive and the will to do the instinctive action, through unconscious ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... who supplied that comfort were by to see how blessed it is. Believe me, you may all give and work in the earnest hope that you alleviate suffering, but none of you realize what you do; perhaps you can't conceive of it, unless you could see your gifts in ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... likely cause can we conceive of this condensation, unlesse there be such qualities there, as there are in our ayre, and then why may not the Planets have the like qualities, as our earth? and if so, then 'tis more probable that they are made by the ordinary way of nature, as they are with us, ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... He cannot be happy without it. If it would be possible for us to conceive of a world inhabited by but one human being, with all hope of society forever banished, if that human being could ever think at all, it would only be to wish himself dead. All our affections and thoughts are so intimately connected ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and it is a very important one: Do you know, or can you conceive of any motive which could have actuated this person to plot against you ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was all stained with earth and with moss upon one side from shoulder to hem. He stood in the shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for this woman seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature that mind could conceive of. Such had he imagined the angels, and such he had tried to paint them in the Beaulieu missals; but here there was something human, were it only in the battered hawk and discolored dress, which sent a tingle and thrill through his nerves such as no dream of radiant and stainless spirit had ever ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Abraham did of the goat when he was about to slay Isaac? Jack, I think, has a heavenly wit withal, and could adjust the little prayer light of his soul even to father's high altar mind. As for me, I cannot conceive of life alone without you one whole day longer. Indeed, so strong is my premonition of your approach, that even now I listen for the sound of your footsteps upon the ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... thinking, made in Germany, that had in the name of biblical and historical criticism been undermining the bases of Christianity. Their love of logic and of clarity had made German philosophy intolerable to them—it was wind, and it was fog. Finally their love of France had always made them conceive of Europe as centering in that country. For them there was one profound satisfaction even amid the horrors of war: that the issues ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the same thing follow from what we said just now, that God's conceptions of himself must be the only perfect conceptions of him? For if any being could see God as he is, the same would be able to conceive of him as he is: which ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... essential to him it seemed that all his conceptions should be visualized. The evidences of this are everywhere: all his gods were made tangible; he believed in the immortality of the soul, yet he could not conceive of such immortality except in association with an immortal body; he must mummify the body of the dead, else, as he firmly believed, the dissolution of the spirit would take place along with the dissolution of the body itself. His world was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to be the great man required by the country, the one ruler who could gather together in his grasp the reins of government and drive the State coach single-handed safe through its difficulties for the next half-dozen years. There are men who cannot conceive of themselves that anything should be difficult for them, and again others who cannot bring themselves so to trust themselves as to think that they can ever achieve anything great. Samples of each sort from time to time rise high in political life, carried thither apparently by Epicurean concourse of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,—we cannot conceive of their existence in a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... reason the hereditary monarch cannot separate his own welfare and that of his family from the welfare of his country; as, on the other hand, mostly happens when the monarch is elected, as, for instance, in the States of the Church.[1] The Chinese can conceive of a monarchical government only; what a republic is they utterly fail to understand. When a Dutch legation was in China in the year 1658, it was obliged to represent that the Prince of Orange was their ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... It is not to be wondered at that when the personality of an unique initiate appeared, the Jews could only conceive of him as being the Messiah. Indeed this circumstance throws light on the fact that what had been an individual matter in the Mysteries became an affair of the whole nation. The Jewish religion had from the beginning ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... never thought of disavowing his vengeance. It was still the main purpose of his life. He had no theme but that: when that work was done he could conceive of nothing further of interest on earth, nothing else worth living for. Not for an instant had he relented: except for that one kiss, on the occasion of her birthday, he had never broken his promise in regard to his relations with Beatrice. His first trait was steadfastness, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... from the distaff. Up and down this line the spooler must walk all day long, replenishing the iron grooves with fresh yarn and reknitting broken strands. This is all that there is of "spooling." It demands alertness, quickness and a certain amount of strength from the left arm, and that is all! To conceive of a woman of intelligence pursuing this task from the age of eight years to twenty-two on down through incredible hours is not salutary. You will say to me, that if she demands nothing more she is fit for nothing more. I cannot ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... already seen how marvelously the Christian communities founded by the apostles and their fellow-missionaries multiplied until, by the middle of the third century, writers like Cyprian came to conceive of a "Catholic," or all-embracing, Church. We have seen how Constantine first made Christianity legal, and how his successors worked in the interest of the new religion; how carefully the Theodosian Code safeguarded the Church and the Christian ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... this phenomenon and noted down his observations, but because his notes happen to be in form and colour, they do not therefore constitute a work of art. Wherein does his achievement differ in quality from a coloured map of a country? We can easily conceive of a relief map of Cadore or Giverny on so large a scale, and so elaborately coloured, that it will be an exact reproduction of the physical aspects of those regions, but never for a moment should we place it beside a landscape by Titian or Monet, and think of it as a ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson |
