"Receptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it has been without much method, just as fancy led, and study, memory and judgment have been little considered. Still, unsystematic reading is better than no reading, and, as someone has said, "a phrase may fructify if it falls on receptive soil." ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... not only a greater and more independent individual efficiency, but also a deeper and more lasting influence on the men; but this influence of the superiors must always remain limited if it cannot count on finding in the men a receptive and intelligent material. This fact is especially clear when we grasp the claims which modern war will make on the individual fighter. In order to meet these demands fully, the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... willing to let Him guide and lead. The trouble with many sceptics is their self-conceit. They know more than the Almighty! and they do not come in a teachable spirit. But the moment a man comes in a receptive spirit he is blessed; for "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... creation, save in flesh and blood, and no one knew any better than she, herself, the vanity to rout the faults and frailties inherited. She strove the harder to overthrow such imperfections by perfecting and cultivating the maid's receptive mood. She was ever fencing with her in words, working out in detail exchange of thought wherein Katherine might, if 'twere in her, make a clever reply. At times Mistress Penwick would pick up such threads of Janet's teaching as would bring her to a semblance of conscience ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... causes, whereas it is hindered from receiving them while occupied with sensible things. Hence Gregory says (Dial. iv, 26) that "the soul, at the approach of death, foresees certain future things, by reason of the subtlety of its nature," inasmuch as it is receptive even of slight impressions. Or again, it knows future things by a revelation of the angels; but not by its own power, because according to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 13), "if this were so, it would be able to foreknow the future whenever it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... worn with anxiety and on the verge of a collapse, dropped into a chair on her veranda, her faithful Major by her side. He had come to offer help and sympathy as soon as he heard of her distress, and, finding her in such a softened, dependent, and receptive mood, the Major had remained to try to cheer ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... of Garfield's Cabinet, was most directly affected by the catastrophe. He had stepped from the Senate into the State Department at Garfield's request. While he was a receptive candidate for the Presidency this post suited his needs and gratified his taste. He loved business and liked to associate with men. He had a diplomatic vision that led him to formulate a more constructive policy than most Secretaries ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... with these young men had upon his character, his political views, his personal fortunes, and the course of politics. That they kept him young in his interests and sympathies, that they kept his mind alert and receptive, comes out clearly in his letters to them, which are full of jest and raillery and enthusiasm. That he never developed into a Tory, as Catulus did, or became indifferent to political conditions, as Lucullus did, may have been due ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... I am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear Damaris, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... my child, that you will be happy here; the customs of the people differ from yours, but your nature is receptive to everything good and elevated, so that I am certain you will soon ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... extremely receptive condition, partly to the whisky you took in the smoking-room, but ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, sprang from Semitic soil. To this might be added the religion of Babylonia, which, was unquestionably the noblest of early antiquity. In general the Semitic mind is keen, alert, receptive, and intuitional rather than logical. Restless energy and the tendency to acquire have also tended to make them leaders in the widely different fields of commerce and religion. The patriarch Jacob is a remarkable example of these combined qualities and results. By ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... self-assertion. She would be less a woman, and he less a man, were any other result possible. Deep down in the very roots of the idea of sex we come on that prime antithesis,—the male, active and aggressive; the female, sedentary, passive, and receptive. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... interval? A tremendous thing had happened. Milton had come to desire a divorce from his wife, and had written and published a Tract on Divorce, partly in the interest of his own private case, but really also with a view to suggest to the mind of England, then likely to be receptive of new ideas, certain thoughts on the whole subject of the English law of Marriage which had resulted from reflection on his own experience. Here ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... shall rest, and for a few days, possibly weeks, it shall be passively receptive of just such influences as nature and circumstances chance to bring to it. Who knows but that I may gain a deeper insight into the hidden mysteries than if I were delving among the dusty tomes of a university library? For some reason ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we have a good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expected success or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compel ourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet and receptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake with new power for whatever task or pleasure may ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... Miss Bluestocking who charmed some people, irritated others, frightened a few, and caused many to sneer. Her chief friend among the males was a young man named Mr Weakeyes, who had a small opinion of himself and a very receptive mind. Miss Troolove, among the ladies, was her chief friend. The strange misnomers which one meets with in society were also found in the little world in that steamer—that Royal Mail steamer we should say—for, while we turn aside for a brief period to condescend upon these particulars, we would ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... expostulation in fluent Ogallalla. "It's no use, young man," interposed Bruce. "Your chum there has no buffalo tongues, and he knew it. Here's some hardtack for you," and he spread one liberally with sugar and handed it to the ever-receptive paw, outstretched to grasp it. A glance over the shoulder showed that Conroy was nearly at the edge. Then, quietly, Bruce, too, began to retire. He had not got ten paces, still facing his unwelcome visitor, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Nom. iv) that "all intelligible and intellectual substances subsist because of the rays of the divine goodness." But a ray is only multiplied according to the different things that receive it. Now it cannot be said that their matter is receptive of an intelligible ray, since intellectual substances are immaterial, as was shown above (A. 2). Therefore it seems that the multiplication of intellectual substances can only be according to the requirements of the first bodies—that is, of the heavenly ones, so ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... time, or at any later period, is to introduce an element unnecessary to explain the vogue of the relation. It passed simply as a story of adventure, and as such it fell upon a time when a wide public was receptive to the point of being easily duped. Wood asserts that the "Isle of Pines," when first published, "was look'd upon as a mere sham or piece of drollery; "{1} and there are few contemporary references to the relation of either Pine or Van Sloetten, and those few are of little moment ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the matter of music—ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught. To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never denying, defending or justifying what she ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of Byron that he never wrote a description whilst the scene was actually before him; and this fact points to an important psychological principle. The human mind, so long as it is compelled to strain the receptive faculties, cannot engage in that "poetic" activity—to use the term in its Greek sense—which is commonly called "original creation." And as with individuals, so with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture a nation inevitably condemns itself for a time to intellectual sterility. So long ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the mountains' gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr. White's mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's companion. She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age. Of so repellent, aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception. It would be hard to do justice in words to Mrs. White's capacity to be disagreeable when ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... was written on the fleshly tables of the heart. To Oxford men he seemed like an elder brother, brilliant, playful, lovable, yet profoundly wise; teaching us what to think, to admire, to avoid. His influence fell upon a thirsty and receptive soil. We drank it with delight; and it co-operated with all the best traditions of the place in making us lifelong lovers of romance, and truth, and beauty. One of the keenest minds produced by Oxford between 1870 and 1880 thus summarized his effect on us: "I think he was almost ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... man who, however great his vices, was always master of them. From his right cheek-bone to the corner of his mouth ran a scar, very well healed. Instead of detracting from the beauty of his face it added a peculiar fascination. And the American imagination, always receptive of the romantic, might readily and forgivably have pictured villas, maids in durance vile, and sword-thrusts under the moonlight. But the waiter, who had served his time in one or another of the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of uncommon ability and force, held no very high opinion of the average public-school methods and results, and was both eager to undertake the instruction of her son and ambitious for the future of a boy whom she knew from pedagogic experience to be receptive and thoughtful to a very unusual degree. With her he found study easy and pleasant. The quality of culture in that simple but refined home, as well as the intellectual character of this youth without schooling, may be inferred from the fact that before he had reached ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... some day," Bassett said cheerfully. "Some day when you are in a more receptive mood than you are now. The point at this moment seems to me to be, what does Melis know that you don't want me to know? I suppose you don't intend to ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... word, and cause the first heart-beat. Coronado believed that to make sure of winning the race he must take the lead at the start. Yes, he would offer himself now; he would begin by talking her into a receptive state of mind; that done, he would say with all his ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... into an attitude of receptivity towards that aspect of things which suggests representation in line. Their acquired sensitiveness in this respect is expressed in the learned character of their touch in drawing. Painters cultivate a similarly receptive attitude towards nature, but lay themselves open to receive a different impression of it. We might say of du Maurier that by the time he tried to apply himself to painting he had become constitutionally a black-and-white artist. Moreover, his impaired vision compromised ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... tire with his best ex-coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... been maintained to influence statesmen, a lobby comprising a corps of "persuaders" in the pay of business men? How do they influence them? The great fights waged to defeat certain measures are well known, and it is known that money was used. Certain congressmen have been notoriously receptive. I have seen the following story in print in many forms. I took the trouble to ask a well-known man if it was possible that it could be founded on fact; his reply was, "Certainly it is a fact." A briber entered the private room of a congressman. "Mr. ——, to come right to the point, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... potent in disclosure: but more potent still is frequent companionship, with full sympathy in taste and admirable qualities on both sides; especially where the one is in the position of teacher and the other is delightedly conscious of receptive ability which also gives the teacher delight. The situation is famous in history, and has no less charm now than it had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... their corps, and native vagabonds and disguised Boxers, who had hidden panic-stricken during the first hours after the relief, were now prowling about armed from head to foot. The vast city, which had been given over for weeks to mad disorders and insane Boxerism, was in a receptive condition for this final climax. There was no semblance of authority left; with troops of many rival nationalities always pouring in, and a nominal state of war still existing, with the possibility of a Chinese counter-advance taking place, how could there be?... There was nothing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... among the fog and the shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the value ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... thought was an intellectual conquest, not an exchange of ideas. On the north-western frontier there was some reciprocity, but otherwise the part played by India was consistently active and not receptive. The Far East counted for nothing in her internal history, doubtless because China was too distant and the other countries had no special culture of their own. Still it is remarkable that whereas ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what expression and manner the light allowed them to see was friendly and receptive, as though he listened to brilliant suggestions. He had a nice courtesy, and Miss Hinsdale felt continually that she was cleverer than usual this evening, and no one took his silence to be churlish, though they ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... "A great capacity for work." Capacity is receptive; ability, potential. A sponge has capacity for water; the hand, ability to ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness. For love is receptive of each and all things that are in harmony with it; it longs for them, seeks them, and drinks them in as it were spontaneously, for it desires unceasingly ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... days He addressed the Theosophical Society, the Esperanto Society, and many of the students, including representatives of almost all parts of the East. He also spoke to two or three other large meetings in the bleak but receptive 'northern Athens.' It is pleasant to add that here, as elsewhere, many seekers came and had private interviews with Him. It was a fruitful season, and He then returned ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... navy to the bottom in the course of a few weeks, would you not advocate opening negotiations for peace? And were I to show the Emperor of Germany that his great army could be destroyed in even less time, would he not be more receptive than we now understand him ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... reading had hurt the spring and elasticity of his mind. Doubtless we may carry our efforts to excess in this direction as well as any other, by calling into unduly vigorous and persistent action the merely receptive energies of the mind. Perhaps this was the case with Herder, as the range of his reading was truly immense; but if so, it argues with fatal effect against his claims to the highest order of intellect; if the weight of his body was too great for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great forests, the felling of the trees, the erection of the log houses and forts, the meeting of Puritans with the neighboring Indians, with their curious costumes, homes, customs and occupations, introduce other phases of life that put the child in a receptive mood for the reading of colonial history, Indian legends and stories ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... of the eternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution, and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh applications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in an expectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book with hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for what is bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the first duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... A receptive state of mind is supposed to be one of the peculiar merits of children. Indeed, they are so sympathetic with any view that the last presentation that they happen to hear in regard to a disputed matter is likely to be the one that they accept. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitude of body was one she had caught from Grom, when he was groping for a solution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught his attitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive and receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it had been whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone head firmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of the fire, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sixty-two ceiling lights shed down a tempered radiance from globes suggestive of inverted golden blossoms. The great bronze-framed windows, too, at the east and west make a greater part of the wall area as receptive of brightness as does a studio skylight—for the world's cleverest financiers must be cheered by brightness ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... carry far; they are equally improvident for the future and forgetful of the past. The mere Nature-man acts only as Nature and her necessities press upon him; thought and memory are with him the offspring of sensation; his brain is but the feminine spouse of his stomach and blood,—receptive and respondent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... (the main of a race in my opinion,) something of this kind has certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond of good eating and drinking—costly in costume as its purse can buy; and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... sets of F-proofs have been taken, the form is carried to the moulding or "battery" room of the electrotyping department, where it leaves its perfect impress in the receptive wax. Thence it will later be returned to the composing room and taken apart and the type distributed, soon to be again set up in new combinations of letters and words. The little types making a page of verse to-day may do duty to-morrow in a ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... receptive and eager audience stories full of deepest meaning, facts, parables, myths charged with truth? Why not people little memories with heroes, saints, kings, prophets, apostles? Why not give stories to story-loving ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... wait half an hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had thought to be prepared and receptive. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... time, but making the acquaintance of Fra Bartolommeo and Ghirlandajo, seeing the cartoons of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, and from that time displaying a marked improvement in drawing. Indeed nothing is more conspicuous in Raphael's genius in contra-distinction to Michael Angelo's, than the receptive character of Raphael's mind, his power of catching up an impression from without, and the candour and humility with which he availed himself unhesitatingly of the assistance lent ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... spoke again. They had been at the uttermost verge of exhaustion when they climbed into the canoe, and perhaps physical weakness had made their minds more receptive to the belief that they were in hands mightier than their own, but even as strength came back the conviction remained in all its primitive force. Warmth returned to their bodies, wrapped in the blankets, and they felt an immense ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Anthons. There were also a few of the more distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might be counted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in a superficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks' introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely during this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles than this in which the Carsons aspired to move, but he had not yet found them. Anything that had a retiring disposition ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... doubtless by this time well weary of this vulgar trash of the K.G.C., which is only not absolutely ridiculous, because so nearly connected with most sanguinary aims. Be it borne in mind that the Southern character has always been eminently receptive of the puerile and nonsensical, while the vast proportion of semi-savage, semi-sophomorical minds in Dixie, half-educated and altogether idle and debauched, has made their land a fertile field for quack Bickleys, brutal and arrogant Pikes, and other ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... promise, the Calvin lumber was not delivered on time. The Reverend gentleman called to ask why. His manner was anything but receptive so far as excuses ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Gentian," "Among the Trees," "The Fountain" and "A Rain Dream." To read such poems is to understand the fact, mentioned in our biography, that Bryant's poetry was a thing apart from his daily life. His friends all speak of him as a companionable man, receptive, responsive, abounding in cheerful anecdote, and with a certain "overflowing of strength" in mirth or kindly humor; but one finds absolutely nothing of this genial temper in his verse. There he seems to regard all such bubblings ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the knowledge in this case that furnishes the incentives. The interest that is awakened in a subject because of its innate attractiveness, leaves incentives which may ripen sooner or later into action. The higher kind of interest is direct, intrinsic, not simply receptive, but active and progressive. In the knowledge acquired it finds only incentives to further acquisition. It is life giving and is prompted by the objects themselves, just as the interest of boys is awakened by deeds ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... had, in some respects, a deeper insight, and a more adequate utterance of it, than any man of his generation. But it was a piece-meal insight and utterance; his imagination was feminine, not masculine, receptive, and not creative. His longer poems are Egyptian sand-wastes, with here and there an oasis of exquisite greenery, a grand image, Sphinx-like, half buried in drifting commonplaces, or the solitary Pompey's Pillar of some towering thought. But what is the fate of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... an exordium is to dispose the auditors to be favorable to us in the other parts of the discourse. This, as most authors agree, is accomplished by making them friendly, attentive, and receptive, tho due regard should be paid to these three particulars throughout the ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... that in the expression of her eyes. Her dress is of almost conventual simplicity; the colors rich, but sober; the style flowing and mediaeval. She has soft brown hair; soft, velvet-soft, brown eyes; features not salient, but rounded into the contours of the head; her whole expression receptive, yet radiant with sentiment. The complexion of a tender rose, equally diffused, gives an indescribable air of healthful delicacy to the face. The expression of the whole figure is that of one in a very dream of sentiment. Her twilight eyes see without effort into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... thrust to divert the aggregate mind of our race from a given course, nor is the effect of a new impulse immediately appreciable; that is why the masses of the people always lag a generation or two behind the advanced thinkers. A few receptive minds, cognizant of new observations that refute an old generalization, accept new laws, and, from the vantage-ground thus gained, reach out after yet other truths. But, for the most part, the new laws thus accepted by the leaders remain unknown to the people at large for at least one or two ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... and travelling through Swabia and Switzerland, he met Gassner and witnessed some of his cures. Mesmer claimed that they were performed by his newly discovered magnetism. He arrived in Paris in 1778 and found this city more receptive to his arts. He at first established himself in an humble quarter of the city and began to expound his theory. The following year he published a paper in which he summed up his claims in twenty-seven assertions to which he rigidly held through his life. His doctrines were well received, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... receptive Skin, Mapfarity seemed to sense Rastignac's emotions. He said, "You must not blame her too much, Jean-Jacques. Sea-changelings are conditioned from babyhood to love blood. And for a very definite purpose, too, unnatural ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... is, and how it works. Old acquaintance and intimacy are the heart of it. The mind is on the alert when we meet the stranger—quick and eager to master his outlook and his ways of thought, to see who and what he is—it is critical, self-protective, rather than receptive. But, as time goes on, we notice less, we study the man less as we see more of him. Yet, in this easier and more careless intercourse, when the mind is off guard, it is receiving a host of unnoticed impressions, which in the long run may have extraordinary influence. Pleasant and easy-going, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... his or another's heart. It may be in a time when we least look for it, or in the individual of whom we have least expectation. For the Spirit, as Christ says, breathes where he will, and touches hearts when and where he knows them to be receptive. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... hand was turned to the practical affairs of life. The men who stood highest socially, the Princes of the Captivity in Babylonia and the Patriarchs in Palestine, were not always those vested with the highest authority. Some of the Amoraim, again, were merely receptive, the medium through which tradition was handed on; others were creative as well. To put the same fact in Rabbinical metaphor, some were Sinais of learning, others tore up mountains, and ground them together in keen ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part. Body Senses. Muscles. Soul Feeling. Resolution. Intellect ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... need whole lungs. But what am I saying? I am bidding you bargain with Nature for a price, and that is wrong. You must love her, not for anything she can give you. What is more, you can never know what she will give you: she may even take away. When you see her you will love her as a bride. Be receptive to her beauty, be always Eager Heart. When any man receives her into himself there is born in his soul's house the baby Christ, the most wonderful and transfiguring spirit that man has yet ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... chessboard of his plot, until he felt that he and she, and those dear puppets of his own creations, were denizens together of some fairy and ethereal world, wandering through the fascinating maze of imaginative life. It was almost an intoxication, this wonderfully stimulating contact with a mind so receptive, so brilliant, so sympathetic. He forgot his garret, Cicely, the drear past, the passionate warnings of Drexley and Rice. As a weaver of stories he was in his first youth. He had peopled but few worlds with those wonderfully precious creations—the children of the ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... in this arch-juggler? Can it have been that from the painter's native Strasbourg had come to him unimpeachable accounts of Cagliostro's feats during his stay there, which had preceded his nefarious expedition to Paris? But the artist is ever excitable, receptive, impressible—the ready prey of the dealer in illusion and trickery. De Loutherbourg is soon at the feet of the quack Gamaliel; soon he is proclaiming himself an inspired physician, practising mesmerism. Cosway and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... will turn over an edition of Shaftsbury, and try to read it with the mind of this merry and receptive printer's boy, will perceive how entirely captivating it must have been to him. The raillery that was always the raillery of a gentleman; the irony so delicate as really to deceive some men who passed for acute; the fine urbanity ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... that the place was brilliantly illumined with electricity, while the silence was emphasised rather than disturbed by the monotonous, regular thud of an accumulator pumping the subtle fluid into a receptive dynamo situated in an ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... travel, Miss Salisbury thought she had ever seen. And she had been about the world a good bit; having utilized many of her vacations, and once or twice taking a year off from her school work, for that purpose. And being singularly receptive to information, she was the best of listeners, in an intelligent way, as Mr. Clemcy moved about from object to object explaining his collection. He seemed perfectly absorbed in it, and, as the girls began to notice, ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... marked, illustration of the divine method. "He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He hath exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The method of God is to work to His results through those who are spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more room there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is, the starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is within the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the allegiance ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... was a stout, portly old lady. She had twinkling good-humored eyes, a mouth which smiled whenever she looked at a child, and a constant habit of putting her hand into her pocket and taking out a lollipop. This lollipop found its way straight into the receptive mouth of any small creature of the human race ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... defy the best efforts of the chauffeur to coax into movement. The owner drank cider at the Spotted Woodpigeon and talked pleasantly with the villagers, who, on learning that he had never even heard of the Surrey cattle-maimings, were at great pains to pour information and theories into his receptive ear. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... we know it. Against this tyrannical influence, which may be in a vulgar and popular as in a scientific form, which may be the dull result of habit or the more specious effect of a sensitive and receptive imagination, but which in all cases is at bottom the same, Mr. Mozley ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... would do," he said, mischievously—"a pretty amourette?—just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra fashionable. Do you think ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive in it. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... became very agreeable. Godfrey was interested in everything, being of a quick and receptive mind, and Miss Ogilvy proved a fund of information. When they had exhausted the scenery they conversed on other topics. Soon she knew everything there was to know about him and Isobel, whom it was evident she could ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the kingdom, refreshing as cold waters to a thirsty soul, while the other, hearing the same words, perceived nothing in them but incoherent and tantalizing enigmas. For the right comprehension of the parables in particular, as of revealed truth in general, a receptive heart is a qualification even more peremptorily and essentially necessary than a penetrating understanding. "If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... harmonies ready to inflow, if we are but receptive and delicate enough to receive and appropriate them. Blest are they who recognize life's indications, its index-fingers which are pointing each hour to some new experience, which will deepen ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... artists and literary men, including especially several of those who have made themselves most prominent in these classes within the last twenty years; and this acquaintanceship shades naturally off, in a minor and moderate degree, into those circles of good social standing which are rather liberally receptive than productive of literature and art. The writer cannot profess or affect to be "behind the scenes" of political parties, or to have dived into the minds of the peerage over their wine or of artisans in their workshops. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... disposed, against the peace and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most ancient and indefeasible right to existence. They, with their ancestors and near relatives, constitute Literature,—without which the human race would be little better than savages. For the effect of pure literature upon a receptive mind is something more than can be definitely stated. Like sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. It demands from its disciple almost as much as it gives him, and is never revealed save to the disinterested ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the pedantic and sense-dimming style of charlatans and new theorists, which often demands either a translation or a tedious study, to make it at all intelligible to the ordinary reader. For example: "RULE XL Part 3. An intransitive or receptive asserter in the unlimited mode, depending on a word in the possessive case, may have, after it, a word in the subjective case, denoting the same thing: And, when it acts the part of an assertive name, depending on a relative, it may have after it a word in the subjective ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... considerably. But they had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men's adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably young—still beautifully unthinking—infinitely receptive. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... had found at Mrs. Rolfston's. At night he was stalking across the country again, to his couch on the dry clover; and he thought not even of the Hindoo king. Mrs. Rolfston's school of theology was not of the sort which worries one with puzzling things, and he had been in a receptive mood. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... proper land use are natural companions. Another ally and companion in this whole movement should be good walnut trees in every pasture, a few nut trees in every farm lot, in the fence row and corner of the farm. I am sure that our educational agencies would be very receptive to putting more emphasis on this sound and fundamental practice. Good pasture lands, clear streams, plenty of trees for shade are all important and real assets to any farm. Shade produced by a tree is incomparable ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... went out for a drive. They did not return home till nine o'clock, when they had a light supper. The conversation in no way turned upon ghosts, so there were not even those primary conditions of receptive expectation which so often precede the presentation of psychical phenomena. The subjects discussed, as I have since learned from Mr. Otis, were merely such as form the ordinary conversation of cultured Americans of the better class, such as the immense ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... dealings with individuals, especially when face to face, and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or antipathies to different individuals. They may appear as a half-realized ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... herself when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... to make a bust of me. What better legacy can I leave to the world than a bust of van Manderpootz, sculptured from life? Perhaps I shall present it to the city, perhaps to the university. I would have given it to the Royal Society if they had been a little more receptive, if they—if—if!" The ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... recovered, became quite companionably communicative, relating picturesque, racy stories of India, the Yukon, and other countries he had known. George, in receptive mood, listened in silent appreciation to one of the most fascinating raconteurs he had ever met in his young life. Incidentally he felt relieved as he noted his comrade now tactfully avoiding morbid egotism—dwelling but lightly upon the milestones that ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... male and female is, then, the foundation of all religions; the heaven marries the earth, as man marries woman, and that union is the first marriage. Saturn is the sky, the male, or active energy; Rhea is the earth, the female, or receptive; and these are the father and the mother of all. The Persians of old called the sky Jupiter, or Jupater, "Ju the Father." The sun is the agent of the generative power of the sky, and his beams fecundate the earth, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... of a successful camping-out trip are personal. One must have the receptive and acceptive spirit. No matter what comes it is for the best; an experience worth having. Nothing must be complained of. The "grouch" has no place on a camping-trip, and one who is a "grouch," a "sissy," a "faultfinder," a "worrier," a "quitter," or who cannot or will not enter fully into the spirit ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... with the imaginative literature of the Renaissance, so far as then translated, and a psychological training of great though little recognised importance to the dramatist. It seems obvious that the practice of acting, by a plastic and receptive temperament, capable of manifold appreciation, must have counted for much in developing the faculties at once of sympathy and expression. In this respect Shakspere stood apart from his rivals, with their merely literary training. And in ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... had not, in consequence, to pay the usury of lack of judgment; she seemed reflective, tender, and of a fine independence, tempered, however, by tradition and unerring taste. Above all, she seemed alive, receptive, like a woman with ten senses. And—above all again—she had charm. Finally, St. George could talk with her; he did not analyze why; he only knew that this woman understood what he said in precisely the way that he said it, which is, perhaps, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... regards the receptive function. Then there is another function in the intellectual life of a Nation, that of spontaneous flow, that going out of its life by which the world is enriched. When the Nation has lost this power, ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... by for an adviser. I would set forward as prince a man of a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; receptive, accommodating, seductive. I have been observing you since your first entrance. Well, sir, were I a subject of Grunewald I should pray heaven to set upon the seat of government just such another ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hopeful of salvation. And then, because of the panic, the frantic scurry to save things once valuable and now only valued, no one noticed when a betraying wind blew seeds beyond the town, over the river, to find receptive soil on the Wisconsin side. The seeds germinated, the clump flourished. It cut the highway and reached down the banks into the Mississippi, waiting. And while it waited it built up greater bulk for itself, behind and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... mental characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively in the work of philosophy,—the Italians, with their receptive temperament and so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development and progress in the transition period alone,—it will be seen that the Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and simplicity, the German to profundity of thought. France is the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... you." Then picture the prana as leaving your mind with each exhalation of rhythmic breath, and traveling across space instantaneously and reaching the patient and healing him. It is not necessary to fix certain hours for treatment, although you may do so if you wish. The receptive condition of the patient, as he is expecting and opening himself up to your psychic force, attunes him to receive your vibrations whenever you may send them. If you agree upon hours, let him place himself in a relaxed attitude and receptive condition. The above is the great underlying principle ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... He doubted that, whatever it was, it was going to make him laugh. But he kept his face a careful, receptive blank. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dialectic to astronomy, is studied from the same angle, and for the same object—ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Here, as elsewhere, the penetrating and assimilative genius of the Church moulded and informed a matter which was not, in its nature, easily receptive of a clerical impression. The whole accumulated store of the lay learning of the ages—geometry, astronomy, and natural science; grammar and rhetoric; logic and metaphysics—this was the matter to be moulded and the stuff to be permeated; and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... berth—which, by the way, I was often loth to do, owing to the confined air below, and the fresh glorious breezes on deck—the man who slept under me was a young banker, a clerk, going out to the Cape to make his fortune, and a fine capable-looking fellow he was, inclined rather to be receptive than communicative. He frequently bumped me with his head in getting up; I, not unfrequently, put a foot upon his nose, or ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... come to study it more closely I perceive that no feature of any importance had escaped me, even the smallest and finest details were perfectly familiar to me from that time. This at least is good evidence of my receptive faculties; but I believe that the credit is really due to the peculiar grandeur and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... self-unfruitful. On the other hand all walnut, pecan, and hickory species are self-fertile and cross-fertile, but may be self-unfruitful because of dichogamy, because they may shed their pollen either before or after the stigmas of the pistillate flowers are receptive to it. In all nut species cross-pollination is generally recommended so as to assure a set of nuts. With cross-pollination a better set of nuts is to be expected than with self-pollination, as well as better filling of the kernels. It has recently been found that when ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... upon it some pollen brought from an older flower, whose anthers are already matured. At this early stage of the flower's development its stamens lie curved over in the tube of the corolla; but presently, as the already fertilized style begins to wither, and its stigma is dry and no longer receptive to pollen, then, since there can be no longer any fear of self-pollination - the horror of so many flowers - the figwort uncurls and elevates its stamens. The insect visitor in search of nectar must get dusted with pollen from the late maturing ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... struggle which Byron experienced in himself or desired to depict in his mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else," not the influence of Faust on a receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh well-spring of the imagination. The motif of Manfred is remorse—eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for ever buoyed up with the hope that there is relief somewhere ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... no country in Europe can be richer than this Elche in fruits and vegetation, more beautiful in its surrounding aspects of plain and mountain, more blessed with constant, glorious sunlight; and the effect of these charms upon the quick, receptive spirit of our Molly was like a gentle May upon a nightingale, so that the days were all too short for her enjoyment, and she must need vent her happiness in song; but on us they made no more impression than on two owls in a tower, nay, if anything they did add to that weariness which arose ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... proceeds to treat of the three kinds of soul. The highest of these is the rational soul, which is in the horizon of the Intelligence and arises from its shadow. It is in virtue of this soul that man is a rational being, discriminating, receptive of wisdom, distinguishing between good and evil, between things desirable and undesirable, approaching the meritorious and departing from wrong. For this he receives reward and punishment, because he knows what he is doing and that ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... and receptive rather than an active and aggressive nature, Carrie accepted the situation. Her state seemed satisfactory enough. Once in a while they would go to a theatre together, occasionally in season to the beaches and different points about ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... If he asks us to look over his evidence, do so in a kindly spirit, and not open the denunciations of bar room vocabularies upon the presenter, simply because we don't see his point. In other words, we should all be receptive, but careful in our assimilation, remembering that some of the great operations in surgery, for example, came from laymen in low life, as the operation for stone, and even the operation of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... he may not love whimsicality with the same passion, nor inhale the aroma of a witticism with as keen a relish; but he likes fun whenever he sees it, and he sees it as often as most people. It may be that we find the Englishman more receptive to our bits of feminine nonsense just now, simply because this is the day of the American woman in London, and, having been assured that she is an entertaining personage, young John Bull is willing to take it for granted so long as she does not try to marry him, and ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... wound: great debts are like cannon, of loud noise, but little danger. You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the rest." "Sir," said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you won't go ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... education for the Negroes of West Virginia, Byrd Prillerman obtained from this official the promise to support a movement to supply this need. Superintendent Morgan furthermore directed Prillerman to Governor Fleming to take up with him the same proposal. The Governor was in a receptive mood and informed Prillerman, moreover, that this problem could be more easily solved than he had at first thought, for the reason that such an institution could be so established as to benefit by the Morrill Land Grant Act intended to subsidize, with funds from the proceeds of public lands, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... and it was more moving, more appalling, to the girl than by day. The fury of traffic on Broadway, the crowds of people, the endless strings of brilliantly lighted street-cars, the floods of 'busses, auto-cars, cabs, and carriages poured in upon the girl's receptive brain a tide of perceptions of the city's wealth, power, and complexity of social life which amazed while it exalted her. The idea that she might share in all this dazzled her. "We could live here," she thought; "the ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... which we might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, unfainting and unspent: there is the inexhaustible energy of faith which hold on and out amid the massed hostilities of all its foes. You cannot defeat spirits like these, you cannot crush and destroy ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... delighted with the English people and with English life. His was one of those receptive natures which enjoy whatever is wholesome and sunny. In spite of his bodily pain, he entertained a lively hope of coming out of it in the spring, and did not realize his true condition. He merely said, "I have overworked myself, and must lay by or I shall break down ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... law. You and I, dear brethren, have but one way by which we can walk in the midst of that fire, rejoicing and unconsumed, namely that we shall know and believe the love which God hath to us, love Him back again 'with pure hearts fervently,' and in the might of that receptive faith and productive love, become like Him in holiness, and ourselves be 'baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' Thus, fire-born and fiery, we shall dwell as in our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... her. And directly he paused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her sudden astonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was she in Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was eager—receptive. He took up his parable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at the farm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the past—into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginative gift, partly to his reading habit, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fact, notwithstanding much chicanery that is still to be found in connection with it, is undoubtedly to be explained through the fact that thoughts are forces. A positive mind through practice, at first with very simple beginnings, gives form to a thought that another mind open and receptive to it—and sufficiently attuned to the other mind—is ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine |
