"Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suppose, after something like the same analogy, should be [14] nights not of quite blank forgetfulness, but passed in continuous dreaming, only half veiled by sleep. Certainly the place was, in such case, true to its fanciful name in this, that you might very well conceive, in face of it, that dreaming even in the daytime ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kindness and goodness and tenderness on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to conceive a Being must be for our benefit and use; it would not be for our benefit and use if it were ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... is different in Freeland. With us no separate interest is antagonistic to or not in perfect harmony with the common interest. Producers, for example, who in Freeland conceive the idea of increasing their gains by laying an impost upon imports, must be idiotic. For, to compel the consumers to pay more for their manufactures would not help them, since the influx of labour would at once ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... And, by their grace, shall thou also obtain children.' Thus addressed, the girl (a little while after), seized with curiosity, summoned, during the period of her maiden-hood, the god Surya. And the lord of light thereupon made her conceive and begot on her a son who became the first of all wielders of weapons. From fear of relatives she brought forth in secrecy that child who had come out with ear-rings and coat of mail. And he was gifted with the beauty of a celestial infant, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been clearly stated and discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible by, every English reader,[5] it may be well that I should here set forth a very brief exposition of the matters of fact out of which the problem has arisen; and of some consequences, which, as I conceive, must be admitted if the facts ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... 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 of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... beautiful love of that kind; but she had in the highest degree that purer, better affection which we prize as our most sacred possession, and even attribute to the immortals, since our earthly finite minds cannot conceive any more beautiful bond uniting them. It was this flame in her heart which had kept her like one alone, apart and unsoiled in the midst of squalor and vice, which had made her girlhood so unspeakably sad. Her ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... trace the stream of English poetry. But whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the several streams that make the mighty river of poetry, or whether we seek to know them all, our governing thought should be the same. We should conceive of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... intelligence and mark in his time; and it was in the course of his northern peregrinations in search of subscribers that he met with Charles Lloyd. This young man, the son of an eminent Birmingham banker, was so struck with Coleridge's genius and eloquence as to conceive an "ardent desire to domesticate himself permanently with a man whose conversation was to him as a revelation from heaven;" and shortly after the decease of the Watchman he obtained his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the officer did not stop to read the body of the letter, but turned out the guard to honor travelers possessing such signal proofs of the King's favor. They had just gained the gates of Dresden when they found that the Prussian charge d'affaires resided in the city. "No one can conceive my agitation and alarm," said Mme. Mara, "when, in one of the first streets we entered, we encountered the said charge d'affaires, who rode directly up to us. He had been apprised of our arrival, and the chaise was ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... story of one such family, a family without whose privileges and public services it would be difficult to conceive modern England. Their wealth is rooted in the Fens; the growth of that wealth is parallel to the growth of every fortune by ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... conceive your correspondent's identification is totally erroneous. It is true he only puts an hypothesis on the subject; but this hypothesis has no solid foundation. In the first place, Henry, fifth Earl of Westmoreland, died in 1549; and all authorities seem to agree that his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... it began to depart from these principles, it converted the establishment into tyranny; it subverted its foundations from that very hour. Zealous as I am for the principle of an establishment, so just an abhorrence do I conceive against whatever may shake it. I know nothing but the supposed necessity of persecution that can make an establishment disgusting. I would have toleration a part of establishment, as a principle favorable to Christianity, and as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to Dr. Jackson's 'Later Theory,' Plato's Ideas, which were once regarded as the summa genera of all things, are now to be explained as Forms or Types of some things only,—that is to say, of natural objects: these we conceive imperfectly, but are always seeking in vain to have a more perfect notion of them. He says (J. of Philol.) that 'Plato hoped by the study of a series of hypothetical or provisional classifications to arrive at one in which nature's distribution of kinds ...
— Charmides • Plato
... of your age! Salute monsieur, your uncle, mesdemoiselles. You conceive, monsieur, that I also must be cautious when I speak to a man so distinguished in a public squar." And she cast down her great eyes and hid those radiant orbs from ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had ordered her not to part with them for a price less than that which she specified. Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money—and with all her love and regard for the Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph must conceive that poor people must live—nobody, in a word, could be more affectionate, but more firm ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lotze's works are with us to-day; and he has probably made more important contributions to philosophy and religion from the scientific side than any other writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century. But he seems to have been a man who was inclined to conceive of reality as something which had value only in so far as it was known, and left very largely out of account the inchoate stirrings and aspirations which are found at a deeper level within the human soul than the knowing level. Life is larger and deeper than logic, and is ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... then, beneath the royal oak, La Valliere said aloud, and innocently enough, 'I cannot conceive that when one has once seen the king, one can ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more particularly when viewed as the work of a private individual. As such it raised the deepest admiration in Francis the First, when he visited the spot, a few years after the cardinal's death. "Your Ximenes," said he, "has executed more than I should have dared to conceive; he has done, with his single hand, what in France it has cost a line of kings to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... proceeded across the balcony, I was astonished to observe a high-speed aerenoid lying close to the one I knew belonged to Almos. What could it mean! That a visitor would enter the observatory knowing Almos to be absent, I could not conceive, as I was well aware of the sanctity of a dwelling in the Martian mind, especially when that dwelling was the theatre of such experiments and observations as the observatory conducted ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... a shallow and insincere use of the materialistic view of the universe, or by the exalting of wanton feeling and whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, attempts the identification of man with the natural order, permits him to conceive of each desire, instinct, impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and valuable. Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws of civilization—those fixed points of a humane order—and to return in principle, and so far as he dares in action, to the unlimited and irresponsible individualism ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Portia, If you did know to whom I gave the ring, If you did know for whom I gave the ring, And would conceive for what I gave the ring, And how unwillingly I left the ring, When nought would be accepted but the ring, You would abate the strength ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... We have no clear conception of any position moral attribute in the Supreme Being, but what may be resolved up into goodness. And, if we consider a reasonable creature or moral agent, without regard to the particular relations and circumstances in which he is placed, we cannot conceive anything else to come in towards determining whether he is to be ranked in a higher or lower class of virtuous beings, but the higher or lower degree in which that principle, and what is manifestly connected ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... clear and sure, his knowledge to a certain point most definite and practical, his mastery of the sword delightful; but he had little imagination, he did not divine, he was merely a brilliant performer, he did not conceive. I saw that if I put him on the defensive I should have him at advantage, for he had not that art of the true swordsman, the prescient quality which foretells the opponents action and stands prepared. There I had him at fatal advantage—could, I felt, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intense and incredible interest. There was the far-famed beauty herself, to appear against her manly lover. The stir in the court, the expectation, the anxiety to see her, the stretching of necks, the pressure of one over another, the fervor of curiosity, was such as the reader may possibly conceive, but such certainly as we cannot attempt to describe. She advanced from a side door, deeply veiled; but the tall and majestic elegance of her figure not only struck all hearts with admiration, but prepared them for the inexpressible ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and sickens me with a load of useless personifications; else that ninth book is the finest in the volume,—an exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible. I have never read either, even in translation, but such I conceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. The tenth ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... monotonous labor, this being surrounded by hundreds of busy fellow-workmen, and not permitted to exchange a word with any of them, that makes the life of a prisoner to be so much dreaded. Young man, as you read these lines, it is impossible for you to conceive the misery that accompanies this ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... my secretaries could retire, indicated that this was indeed his errand; and for a few moments I listened to such statements from him and made such answers myself as became our several positions. Then, as he did not go, I began to conceive the notion that he had come with a further purpose; and his manner, which seemed on this occasion to lack ease, though he was well gifted with skill and address, confirmed the notion. I waited, therefore, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... "I humbly conceive, Captain Lawton, that neither Mrs. Elizabeth Flanagan, nor her cow, is an example to be emulated by Doctor Archibald Sitgreaves. It would be but a sorry compliment to science, to say that a doctor of medicine had fractured both his legs by injudiciously striking them ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... one Stacy, with an oath, assured my father that his word was as good as his bond, my parent said dryly that this equality left him free to choose, and he would prefer his bond. I saw no way to what was for me the mysterious security of a bond, but I did conceive of some need to stiffen the promise Dove had made before ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... archbishopric, and when I should have entered with great honor and reputation for virtue, especially among infidels. In the third place, he went before all the leaders of the religious orders, when everyone of them was free to conceive what opinion he would of me—and especially certain persons who, as they do not themselves live with becoming regularity, might conceive boldness, and not fear for their own faults because they saw the superior prelate brought before the public as guilty of similar ones. In the fifth [i.e., ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... prosecuted with a spirit, intelligence, and perseverance, that merited success. All the details that we have met with, prove him to be no ordinary man. He appears to have the mind to conceive, and the energy to execute extensive and striking plans. He had once more reared the American flag in the lost domains of Astoria; and had he been enabled to maintain the footing he had so gallantly effected, he might have regained for his country the opulent ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... anger nor sympathy; he neither censures, nor moralizes; for the self-satisfied Middle Ages cannot conceive the possibility of a different world. Brief, quick, he despises aims and methods, his only object is to entertain his auditors. Amusing and witty, he cares only for laughter ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... most awful object that the fancy of a madman could conceive. There were two great round, projecting eyes, encircled with what I suppose must have been phosphorescent organs, which spread around in the water a green light that was ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... religious who had passed through the house since she knew it—alas! she hated them all!—and did not know how she was to help hating them in the future. These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct, that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Christ. 'Be individual' is a counsel of perfection—that is the only drawback to it. If the great mass of people were only nearer perfection the rein could be given to individualism; as it is it's a dangerous horse to drive—it so often runs away with its driver. Conceive now of the immense advantage it would be if, instead of a criminal being tried by the clumsy machinery of the law, the judge were to investigate the case quietly and thoroughly himself, get to know the man, his belongings and environment, and then ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... extraordinary, that they took him for a sample of the reduced state of France! He, without getting angry, replied pleasantly, that if they would give him the time to send for his wife, they would, perhaps, conceive another opinion of the position of the realm. In effect, she was extremely fat, and of a very high colour. He was rather roughly dismissed, and hastened to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... reader that an immense number of persons, both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in the shabbiest street of a country town, all are regarded as leagued in one wide-spreading imposture. Pius IX., for instance, it is imagined, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... road has been made through this country, instead of going by Shawneetown, and those villains have posted themselves along the road under the name of tavernkeepers, watching for their prey whenever it may pass. Indeed, I conceive it impossible for any man who has cash enough to make him worth killing to travel this road alone. Called to see Gatewood, the first man on the list of cutthroats. He was from home. Saw his wife, a handsome, young dejected-looking woman, who appeared very uneasy at her husband's being inquired ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... the book to New York or to London, and from New York or London buys plates or sheets. This compels the Canadian book to have an Imperial or an American appeal. In literature, the modus operandi works; for the appeal is universal; but one might conceive of conditions demanding a purely national Canadian treatment, which New York or London publishers would not issue, when Canada would literally be damming the springs of her national literature. Canada considers her population too small to support a purely ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... and an explanation of some kind was forthcoming. If so, it must be looked for among the secret archives of the Foreign Office. It was at once suggested that the Emperor made the revelation expressly to weaken, if not destroy, the Entente. One can conceive Bismarck doing such a thing; but it is more in keeping with the Emperor's character, and with the indiscreet character of the entire interview, to suppose it to be a proof ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... that etiquette commanded, in the first carriage. It is done; I seat myself by her side; procession is made. The way to the convent of the White Sisters, senor, is a steep and rugged one; on either hand are savage passes, are mountains of precipitation. To conceive what happened, how is it possible? When we reached the convent gate, the second volante was empty. Assassinated with terror, I make demand of Pasquale; he admits that he may have slept during the long traject up the hill. He swears that he heard no sound, that no word was addressed to him. He ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... perfectly pure[7], not confined by any corporeal bond, neither existing in the heavens, nor in the earth, nor to be imaged by the most lovely form imagination can conceive; since these are all adventitious and mixed, and mere secondary beauties, proceeding from the beautiful itself. If, then, anyone should ever behold that which is the source of munificence to others, remaining in itself, while it communicates to ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... flashing eyes upon her: 'What did you say?' Maria looked at him, trembled, and, clasping her hands, murmured in a stifled voice, 'I will do it, papa;' and she executed the passage perfectly. She told me afterward that she could not conceive how she did it. 'Papa's glance,' added she, 'has such an influence upon me that I am sure it would make me fling myself from the roof into the street ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... ago, had persuaded him to translate them into Greek and Italian, as more suitable to the romantic career of an artist of the beautiful. I fancy the story arose from the fact that Mrs. Thompson was a woman who, it was felt, might imaginably conceive so ambitious a project. She was small, active, entertaining, clever, and "spunky," as the New-Englanders would have said; indeed, she had a rousing temper, on occasion. Her husband, on the other hand, had the mildest, wisely smiling, philosophic air, with a ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... says M. Dupotet, "to conceive the sensation which Mesmer's experiments created in Paris. No theological controversy, in the earlier ages of the Catholic Church, was ever conducted with greater bitterness." His adversaries denied the discovery; some calling him a quack, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... those who, like myself, detest explanations might have avoided this one. I am the more severe about this, because there can be no two opinions as to Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S success in achieving his purpose, which, obviously, was to conceive modern warfare as between two First-class Powers, fighting in the midst of civilisation, and to reduce it to terms of exact realism, showing the latest devices of destruction at work, but carefully excluding those improbable and impossible agencies which the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... whatever cause acts on that organ, it should equally affect both species of eggs. If on the contrary, one branch is occupied by the eggs of drones only, and the other contains none but common eggs, we may conceive how disease affects the one, while the other remains untouched. Though this conjecture is probable, it is confuted by observation. We lately dissected queens, which laid none but male eggs, and found both branches of the ovary ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the impression of the heart; as this also has two functions, one to receive the impressions from the eyes, the other to impress them. The eyes study the species and propose them to the heart; the heart desires them, and presents his desire to the eyes; these conceive the light, diffuse it, and kindle the fire in the heart, which heated and kindled, sends its waters (umore) to them, so that they may dispose of them[AA] (digeriscano). Thus, firstly, cognition moves the affection, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... housekeeping as I ever saw," interjected Mrs. Shelby, momentarily diverted from her husband's shortcomings. "I wish you might have seen what I have seen in out-of-the-way corners of this establishment. What the servants did for their wages I can't conceive. But, after all, those people had the right idea of upholding the dignity of the position. The ex-governor didn't decline an escort to the capitol when he took office. That puts me out of patience with Ross every time I think of it. Then, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the unstudied graces that spring as naturally from her beauty as the scent from the flower. Single-hearted himself, it seems impossible that she whom he adores should trifle with the most sacred sentiment he has ever known. Conscious of his own devotion, he cannot conceive that his wealth is poured forth in vain, and that he is but the plaything of her idle hours. Yet it is so. The boy's first love is almost always misplaced; seldom rated at its true value; hardly ever productive of anything ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... First—To conceive a broad and fundamentally correct method of distributing the current, satisfactory in a scientific sense and practical commercially in its efficiency and economy. This meant, ready made, a comprehensive plan analogous to illumination by gas, with a network of conductors all connected ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Sir Edward affirmed. "I cannot conceive, Inspector, what you have in your mind which could have led you for a moment ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your little Apemen finally does conceive a good idea, or part of one, after thirty years, more or less, of constant strain upon his mental faculties. So the progress of the world must be held in check for that length of time for an invention that could have been produced and put into useful operation by the combined efforts of many minds ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... Persia to the Frozen Sea. For these men, who travel night and day, with the rapidity of lightning there are neither seasons nor obstacles, fatigues nor danger; living projectiles, they must either be broken to pieces, or reach the intended mark. One may conceive the boldness, the vigor, and the resignation, of men ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... conceive why Brough was reading me this lecture about debt and my having bought the diamond-pin, as I knew that he had been asking about it already, and how I came by it—Abednego told me so. "Why, sir," says I, "Mr. Abednego told ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Conceive their grief, therefore, when he suddenly sickened and died. Now ensued an anxious time pending the appointment of his successor. Two names were foremost for consideration—that of Jean Mignon, chief canon of the Church of the Holy Cross, and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Miss G. F. Alsop are admirable stories. The selection represents a fair cross-section of the year's short stories, good, bad, and indifferent, but the two prizes seem to me to have been most wisely awarded, and I conceive this formal annual tribute to be the most significant and practical means of encouraging the American short story. Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... charades and theatricals for that purpose. Hawthorne had known him many years earlier, and had spoken very pleasantly of him in his first publication of "The Hall of Fantasy." He even said, "So calm and gentle was he, so quiet in the utterance of what his soul brooded upon, that one might readily conceive his Orphic Sayings to well up from a fountain in his breast, which communicated with the infinite abyss of thought,"—rather an optimistic view for Hawthorne. Alcott's philosophy had the decided merit, which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... be thought by some that the processes of development indicated above are insufficient and unsatisfactory. There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of symbol directly from the thing symbolized. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendition of the sweep and curl of the waves. It is more probable that ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... "there have been greater marvels than that. Our boldest fathers often died the meekest shavelings. An' I had ruled this realm as long as Henry,—nay, an' this same life I lead now were to continue two years, with its broil and fever,—I could well conceive the sweetness of the cloister and repose. How sets the wind? Against them still! against them still! ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his various occupations, found in the old church a constant source of interest and amusement. Taking that pride in it which men conceive for the wonders of their own little world, he had made its history his study; and many a summer day within its walls, and many a winter's night beside the parsonage fire, had found the bachelor still poring over, and adding to, his goodly ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... after her break with Cicero. They say that she married twice again after Sallust's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of Augustus, she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. Divorce at any rate did not kill her. But we cannot conceive but that so sudden a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to Cicero. We shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward, and then, too, divorcing her; but here we have only to deal with the torments Terentia inflicted on him. What those torments were we ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... was gone, but grace and character remained, imprinted also on the fragile body, the beautiful arms and hands. The only marring of the general impression came from an effect of restlessness and constraint. To live with Alice Puttenham was to conceive her as a creature subtly ill at ease, doing her best with a life which was, in some hidden way, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was asking herself if she was not the victim of an hallucination, and if really there was a man who had dared to conceive and execute the audacious project of coming thus under the eyes of her mother, of declaring his love, and of asking her in return a solemn engagement. But what stupefied her more still, what confused her, was that she had ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... rolled by, and still no word came. I was nearly distracted. What I suffered, no tongue can tell, no heart conceive. I have often wondered that I did not become insane but from this sad condition I was saved. Through all, my reason, though often trembling, did not once forsake me. It was on the tenth day from that upon which we had jarred so heavily as to be driven widely asunder, that ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... do not really and absolutely disbelieve in a God?—that the human nature is not capable of such a disbelief?—that your unbelief has been only indifference and irreverence—and that to a Being grander and nobler and fairer than human heart can conceive?" ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... before the Graduates of Yale College, "laid aside not very long before the beginning of the Revolutionary war, was still more characteristic of the times. It was a method of acting upon the aristocratic feelings of family; and we at this day can hardly conceive to what extent the social distinctions were then acknowledged and cherished. In the manuscript laws of the infant College, we find the following regulation, which was borrowed from an early ordinance of Harvard under President Dunster. 'Every student shall be called by his surname, except ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... confinement? And who who was going to engage Alvina Houghton, even if they were ready to stretch their purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as Miss Houghton, with a stress on the Miss, and they could not conceive of her as Nurse Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively indecent in technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They all preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of the unknown ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... accident which should result in the wholesale destruction of the entire orchestra, haunted his mind. Another great fire might wipe Chicago out of existence. The one thing which his imagination failed to conceive, was the possibility that he, Lewis Peckham, might be deterred from hearing the concert when once it should take place. In the interim he made repeated calculations of the number of hours that must be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper covered with such ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... looked as surprised as Prescott. One could imagine that they found it difficult to conceive of Cyril's financial success, but they offered him their congratulations, and soon afterward Curtis took his leave. Prescott stayed another hour, and when he went Muriel walked to the door ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... conceive you; were they once divided, And one of them made ours, that one would check The other's towering growth, and keep both low, As instruments, and not as lords of war. And this must be by secret coals of envy Blown in their breast; comparisons of worth; Great ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... subject, in its whole course, to his corrections, and what may be called his scholia, or collateral suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may as to other features of the Oxford, compared with the hostile system, here I conceive that there is no room for doubt or demur. An Oxford lecture imposes a real, bona fide task upon the student; it will not suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the energies of his understanding; it is a real drill, under the excitement, perhaps, of personal competition, and under ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... fearful of pursuit and his temperament asserted itself—the minimum of activity sufficed. Usually they camped just where the night overtook them; now and then they varied this by lodging at some tavern, for since there was money in his pocket, Yancy was disposed to spend it. He could not conceive that it ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... subject-matter. If the effect of this shall be to exclude all other petitions for the day, I cannot help it. Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of ...
— Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition, • Caleb Cushing
... as in ours—youth believes and trusts, and advancing years bring the consciousness of the trials of life; the necessity of enduring, and in some cases the power to overcome them. Who but she who suffers it, can conceive the Sioux woman's greatest trial—to feel that the love that is her right, is gone! to see another take the place by the household fire, that was hers; to be last ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... even of the more friendly spectators on the other side—to regard Cromwell as the embodiment of a mighty purifying force in which defects were to be ignored or even justified on account of the heaven-inspired dictates under which he was presumed to have acted. Just as little could Hyde conceive of Cromwell as the great precursor of modern ideas, demanding the obedient homage of every ardent partisan of popular rights. These were eccentricities reserved for later historians under impulses ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... rather lightly of the nebula rotating and throwing off planets; but we must not think of all this as having happened in a short time. It is almost as impossible for the human mind to conceive the ages required for such slow changes as to grasp the great gulfs of space that separate us from the stars. We can only do it by comparison. You know what a second is, and how the seconds race past without ceasing day and night. It makes one giddy to picture the seconds there ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... was bad enough—but there was no help, so I groaned and submitted. A fortnight or so after, another packet, of not less formidable bulk, arrived, and I was absent enough to break its seal, too, without examination. Conceive my horror when out jumped the same identical tragedy of The Cherokee Lovers, with a second epistle from the authoress, stating that, as the winds had been boisterous, she feared the vessel entrusted with her former communication might have foundered, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... from a polished metallic surface is very slight, but from a surface of porcelain, paper, or charcoal, heat is discharged profusely. Even many of the best non-conductors are powerful radiators, and throw off heat with a repellent energy difficult to conceive. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he will never get away from his hobby. "Excuse me," said he; "I ought never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you can't conceive what a disinherited man feels—and I live at the very door: his old trees, that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my little flower beds; the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on my cottage; his ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... heard that he had found his saddle-bags all right, but never recovered the horse. The next day toward night we approached the Mission of San Francisco, and the village of Yerba Buena, tired and weary—the wind as usual blowing a perfect hurricane, and a more desolate region it was impossible to conceive of. Leaving Barnes to work his way into the town as best he could with the tired animals, I took the freshest horse and rode forward. I fell in with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... to the elder of the two young men. The same small head, the same low brow, but with more breadth in both. No smile there on mouth or eyes; I could not conceive the wish to see him smile. Tall and lean like his brother, he had more bone and muscle; and while both young men had an appearance of athletic power, as if they could have leaped over the hearse, the elder gave you the further ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... consideration the changes which have occurred, to what a degree this has degenerated. The Polonaise is without rapid movements, without any true steps in the artistic sense of the word, intended rather for display than for the exhibition of seductive grace; so we may readily conceive it must lose all its haughty importance, its pompous self-sufficiency, when the dancers are deprived of the accessories necessary to enable them to animate its simple form by dignified, yet vivid gestures, by appropriate and expressive pantomime, and when the costume peculiarly fitted for ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... real. Where, then, did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it, Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... him plodding on behind, And plainly cursing in his mind, The fate that left his legs to lack, And glued his dwelling to his back. The snare was cut by Rongemail, (For so the rat they rightly hail). Conceive their joy yourself you may. Just then the hunter came that way, And, 'Who hath filch'd my prey?' Cried he, upon the spot Where now his prey was not.— A hole hid Rongemail; A tree the bird as well; The woods, the free gazelle. The hunter, well nigh mad, To find no inkling could be had, Espied the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Teutonism. Men whose ancestors had worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Club in New York. I still remember waiting with bated breath for Raffles to ask Maguire if he were not afraid of burglars, and Maguire replying that he had a trap to catch the cleverest cracksman alive, but flatly refusing to tell us what it was. I could not at the moment conceive a more terrible trap than the heavy-weight himself behind a curtain. Yet it was easy to see that Raffles had accepted the braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did he deny it later when I taxed him with his mad resolve; he merely refused to allow me to implicate myself in its execution. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... soldier of Seyd Majid, with whom Mabruki, who was of a quarrelsome disposition, had a feud, which culminated in the soldier inducing two or three of his comrades to assist him in punishing the malevolent Mabruki, and this was done in a manner that only the heart of an African could conceive. They tied the unfortunate fellow by his wrists to a branch of a tree, and after indulging their brutal appetite for revenge in torturing him, left him to hang in that position for two days. At the expiration of the second day, he was accidentally discovered ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... very closely, and if reprinted now would fill about thirty-five such volumes as are devised for an ordinary modern novel. Yet it brought the history of the world no lower down than the conquest of Macedon by Rome, and it is hard to conceive how soon, at this rate of production, Raleigh would have reached his own generation. He is said to have anticipated that his book would need to consist of not less than four such folios. In the opening lines he expresses some ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... on what We feel, and not what we achieve; The world may call our children fools, Enough for us that we conceive. A little wren that loves the grass Can be as proud as any lark That tumbles in a cloudless sky, Up near the sun, till he becomes The apple of that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... the selfsame hour, under yonder porch, nine thousand six hundred and thirty-eight persons, without reckoning women and children, trampled each other underfoot and perished miserably? An you met the same fate, I should never smile again. To see you is to love you, messire; to know you is to conceive a sudden and overmastering desire ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... Mr. Burke where he speaks to me upon the subject, I will openly confide to him how impossible it was that the queen should conceive the subserviency expected, unjustly and unwarrantably, by Mrs. Schwellenberg: to whom I ought only to have belonged officially, and at official hours, unless the desire of further intercourse had been reciprocal. The queen had imagined that a younger and more ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... having contrary forces exactly equal in amount in opposite directions'; but this definition, though much quoted and circulated, teaches us nothing regarding the current. An 'axis' here can only mean a direction; and what we want to be able to conceive of is, not the axis along which the power acts, but the nature and mode of action of the power itself. He objects to the vagueness of De la Rive; but the fact is, that both he and De la Rive labour under the same difficulty. Neither wishes to commit himself to the notion ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... this story may have upon the notice of the world, they will rest on no niceties of style or aptness of illustration. It is a plain tale, plainly told: nor, as I conceive, does its native horror need any ingenious embellishment. There are many books that I, though a man of no great erudition, can remember, which gain much of interest from the pertinent and appropriate comments with which the writer has seen fit to illustrate any striking situation. From such books ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the roofless walls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage where I had been directed to inquire my way again. I knocked, and then saw the outer conditions of an existence about as miserable as the mind of man can conceive. The door was opened by a youngish woman, having a thin, white face, and within the little house an elderly woman was breaking scraps of vegetables into a pot that swung from a hook above a handful of turf fire, which burned on the ground. They were the widow and daughter. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... halfe of mens houses and lands at y^e dividente; and that persons should be deprived of y^e 2. days in a weeke agreed upon, yea every momente of time for their owne perticuler; by reason wherof we cannot conceive why any should carie servants for their own help and comfort; for that we can require no more of them then all men one of another. This we have only by relation from M^r. Nash, & not from any writing of your owne, & therfore hope you ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... violence. Bergmann conveys the idea that circumcision was at one time the indestructible marking and the distinctive feature of the slave, the mind of the period not being able to emancipate itself from the idea that the genitals must in some manner be mutilated, not being able to conceive any other degrading mark of manhood which barbarians felt ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being—I had almost said to the very being—of the three kingdoms; for that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call Imperial politics, ought to have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... tutors, the girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in the resurrection," said Brian, "because I cannot doubt Jesus Christ. He is the most perfectly lovable and trustable being I know, or can conceive of knowing. He said He should rise again, I believe that He did rise. He was perfectly truthful, therefore He could not mislead; He KNEW, therefore He ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of God;" laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error: first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing His power; whereof the latter is a key unto the former: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures by the general notions of reason and rules of speech, but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon His works. Thus much therefore for divine testimony and ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... text, you will occasionally find brief explanatory footnotes. Conceive them as having been put there ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden red before my eyes. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... can better conceive of them with my mind, than speak of them with my tongue; but yet since you are desirous to know, I will read of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom—panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest—Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... of substance nor of spirit. Substance is that wherein we conceive qualities of matter to exist; spirit, that in which we conceive qualities of mind, as thinking, knowing, and doubting. The primary ideas of body are the cohesion of solid, and therefore separate parts, and ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... accounts for the last two days have been, I think, rather less favourable than that of Saturday, which I sent you. You can, however, hardly conceive the difficulty which we have, even at this small distance, to procure such information as can be in any degree depended on. All the private accounts are so strongly tinctured by the wishes of those who send them, that no reliance can be placed upon them; and the private letters of the physicians ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... clearly. Lempriere closed his eye, and struggled with it, his lips outpursed, his head sunk on his breast. Suddenly his eyes opened, he brought the bottle of canary down with a thud on the turf. "'Fore Michael and all angels, I have it, fool; I travel, I conceive. De Carteret of St. Ouen's must have gone to the block ere conceiving so. I must conceive thus of the argument. He who compasseth the Queen existeth ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... universe, as it were, thence to bring up his priceless pearls of harmony. According to the Kant-Schopenhauer philosophy, of which Wagner was a disciple, objects or things in themselves do not exist in space and time, which are mere forms under which the human mind beholds them. We cannot conceive anything except as existing either in space or in time. But there is one exception, according to Wagner, and that is harmony. Harmony exists not in time, for the time-element in music is melody; nor does it exist in ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see from the writing. What happened to the old pedestrian emigrants; what was the tedium suffered by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras. It is a strange vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man from Pennsylvania who has been in the Navy ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions. Sec. 51. And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness of possession ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... Harvy." The artillery that had been ordered to take part in the infantry's pursuit were just preparing to open fire upon the fleeing enemy, when by some unaccountable order, the pursuit was ordered to be abandoned. Had not this uncalled for order come at this juncture, it is not hard to conceive the results. The greater portion of the Federal Army would have been captured, for with the exception of General Sykes' Brigade of regulars and a battery of regular artillery, there was not an organization between our army and Washington City. All night long the roads through Centerville, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... interested every one in the village; for though Allan talked beautifully about "looking up" through nature unto nature's God, it was a new doctrine to the Fife fishers; who had always looked for God in their Bibles, and their consciences. Except in rare cases, it was impossible for them to conceive how painting might be a Gate ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... pointing out that the Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the Nationalists in the House of Commons. The student of history will, however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any tu quoque. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal taste and predilection ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... resembles a shower of rain. When a tree is shaken or struck, it is astonishing to see what a cloud of them will fly off. In their flight they yield to the current of the wind, which at this season of the year is always from the north-east. Should the wind shift, it is difficult to conceive where they could collect food, as the whole of their ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the subject of Bowles's Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend of mine, [2] who has now in the press a volume of Poetry. In the present Edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead; my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner,—a determination not to publish with my name any production, which was not entirely and exclusively ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Nay, he would not consent to live, unless he could win from her pardon for his deceit. And in all this he was now most absolutely in earnest, wondering only how he had not been as passionately enamoured of her from the first as he had feigned himself to be. For a man in love can never conceive himself out of it; nor he that is out of it, in it: for, if he can, he is halfway to the one or the other, however little he may ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... after property. Next he took to measuring the land. Here the major could give him no end of help; and having thus found a point of common interest, they began to be drawn a little together, and to conceive a mild liking for each other's company. Corney saw by degrees that the major knew much more than he; and the major discovered that ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... that we found steadily increasing depth. Between the land and the blocks of stranded ice on our lee there appeared to be a channel with rather deeper water and not so much ice aground in it. It seemed difficult to conceive that there should be undiscovered land here, where both Nordenskioeld and Edward Johansen, and possibly several Russians, had passed without seeing anything. Our observations, however, were incontestable, and we immediately named the land ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... subdue the affections of this young man!" The eyes of all were turned in that direction. Disregarding the amusements of the entertainment, they began to attend only to this strange spectacle. Some apart observed, "O friends, there is an antagonism between love and reason! what judgment cannot conceive, this cursed love will show. You must behold Laili with the eyes of Majnun. [152] All present exclaimed, "Very true, that is ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at last into the hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English language had marked me out for a certain employment. Though I cannot conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be held a prisoner of war. Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in the midst of that city ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of bliss would pass as if but pulse-beats. In the world of love the heart is the only true timepiece. On one or two occasions Lona had thought she had been followed when coming to meet me, and she began to conceive a strange dislike for a little cavelike recess in the rocks just back of the tree by which we sat. I tried on one occasion to reassure her by telling her it was so shallow that, with the moonlight streaming into it, I could see clear to the back wall, and ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... development, upon which depends so much of life's happiness—since accomplishment is measured so largely thereby—is the greatest physical asset of this type. With it he can accomplish almost anything of which his mind can conceive. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict |
