"Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time. This remark applies, without exception, to all the old writers on American subjects—whether English, Spanish, or French—the chroniclers of two-headed snakes, crocodiles twenty yards long, and was big enough to swallow both horse and rider! Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how these old authors gained credence for their incongruous stories; but it must be remembered that science was not then sufficiently ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such a ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... mind recognised no sin except the sin against love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should refuse to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... as a banqueting-hall, and possest four great full-length windows on either side looking up and down the stream, from which was seen—and is to-day—an outlook as magnificently idyllic as is possible to conceive. Jean Goujon had designed for the ceiling one of those wonder-works for which he was famous, but if the complete plan was ever carried out, it has disappeared, for only a tiny sketch of the whole ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... The tents of the Hungarians were of leather, their garments of fur; they shaved their hair, and scarified their faces: in speech they were slow, in action prompt, in treaty perfidious; and they shared the common reproach of Barbarians, too ignorant to conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny or palliate the breach of their most solemn engagements. Their simplicity has been praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known; whatever they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their sole industry was the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... me; and I am moved by the desire to give instruction which others truly are unable to give. I fear shame for having followed passion so ardently, as he may conceive who reads the afore-named Songs, and sees how greatly I was ruled by it; which shame ceases entirely by the present speech of myself, which proves that not passion but virtue may ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... forgotten, Claudia, that only a few minutes ago you said that you could not conceive of a diviner happiness than to be the beloved ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... delicately may, in the august presence of members of Parliament, how much we, the public, owe to the reporters if it were only for their skill in the two great sciences of condensation and rejection. Conceive what our sufferings, under an Imperial Parliament, however popularly constituted, under however glorious a constitution, would be if the reporters could not skip. Dr. Johnson, in one of his violent assertions, declared that "the man who was afraid ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Scythians of the country supposed that they were men, but they could learn nothing certain respecting them. Their language, their appearance, their manners, and their dress were totally new, and the inhabitants were utterly unable to conceive who they were, and from what place they could so ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and his breath came heavily. He wondered where Edward was—Edward could always find words that would hurt. At last, "We part, Mr. Rand," he said, with dignity. "In parting I have but to say that your conduct has been such as I might have expected, and that I conceive it to be my duty to protect my misguided niece from the consequences of her folly. I warn you neither to write to her nor to attempt to see her. If she writes to you otherwise than as I shall dictate; if she does not, when she has bethought herself, break with you once and forever,—all's ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... to conceive anything more terrible than these closing days, for no menace of catastrophe which we can picture could bear within it such a certainty of fulfilment. It appears, therefore, useless to speculate on the probable ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... animals, the presence during youth, and subsequent disappearance, of certain characters which occasionally are retained throughout life. Some naturalists look at all such abnormal structures as a return to the ideal state of the group to which the affected being belongs; but it is difficult to conceive what is meant to be conveyed by this expression. Other naturalists maintain, with greater probability and distinctness of view, that the common bond of connection between the several foregoing cases is an actual, though partial, return to the structure of the ancient ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... I conceive the brain of the average well-intentioned man as possessing the tricks and manners of one of those gentlemen-at-large who, having nothing very urgent to do, stroll along and offer their services gratis to some shorthanded ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... be satisfactory to your people, and I have therefore set them forth somewhat at length in order that you may understand what I conceive should be the ruling ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... possible for the well-educated classes among us to discriminate with fair accuracy between the middle and lowest orders, by the sense of sight. If my Spaceland Patrons have grasped this general conception, so far as to conceive the possibility of it and not to reject my account as altogether incredible—I shall have attained all I can reasonably expect. Were I to attempt further details I should only perplex. Yet for the sake of the young and inexperienced, who may perchance infer—from ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... salt-water over an extent of many acres, where the sea had for a season usurped a space previously gained from it by the river. Yet the dead reeds, in spite of this change, remained standing in the soft mud, enabling us to conceive how easily the larger Sigillariae, hollow as they were but supported by strong roots, may have resisted ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... dark, but in a less advanced stage of the malady the flesh will generally present a healthy appearance. Is it really so? That is the question which science has to determine. Going upon a broad principle, I can hardly conceive that so serious a disease as pleuro-pneumonia does not injuriously affect the quality of the flesh. It is no argument to say that thousands consume such flesh, and yet enjoy good health. Millions of people drink water and breathe air that are ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... in his "Astrological Practice of Physick," p. 89, observes that "the way which the witches usually take for to afflict man or beast in this kind is, as I conceive, done by image or model, made in the likeness of that man or beast they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked into that ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... other side of the partition, kneading and smoothing it all over, flattening the little lump of clay. It is a singular implement, which I should never have expected to see used for this purpose. It takes an insect to conceive such an original idea, to do mason's work with its behind! During this curious performance, the only function of the legs is to keep the worker steady by spreading out and clinging to ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... the window in the vestibule, unless he could pass through a grated window. The window of The Yellow Room is secured by iron bars, because it looks out upon the open country; the two windows of the laboratory have to be protected in like manner for the same reason. As the murderer got away, I conceive that he found a window that was not barred,—that of the vestibule, which opens on to the park,—that is to say, into the interior of the estate. There's not much magic in ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... must take a holiday,' he said; 'my nerves must be all out of order. I actually have a perfectly distinct impression that the little girl from the rooms below came in and gave me a coherent and graphic picture of life as I conceive it to have been in pre-dynastic Egypt. Strange what tricks the mind will play! I shall have to ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... so? Would you have the universal always supplemented by the shadow of the personal? If this view is accepted, and we doubt that it can be by the majority, Emerson's substance could well bear a supplement, perhaps an affinity. Something that will support that which some conceive he does not offer. Something that will help answer Alton Locke's question: "What has Emerson for the working-man?" and questions of others who look for the gang-plank before the ship comes in sight. Something that will ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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 ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... I ever saw caught came up through the ice in this way and I have even known the clumsy and stupid sucker to come out of the hole on the hook, making the fisherman think for a moment that he had hold of the one big pickerel of that particular pond. I cannot conceive of a sucker actually attempting to eat a shiner, even when impaled, impeded and wriggling, so such must have come by the hook in some other way, probably accidentally caught ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of five brothers, it is difficult to conceive how a member of a large family grew up developing such eccentricities as are usually ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... illustrate beautifully and to sell cheaply and vigorously everywhere, a series of reading books, and perhaps of teachers' companions to these reading books, that shall serve as the basis of instruction in Standard English throughout the whole world. These books, as I conceive them, would begin as reading primers, they would progress through a long series of subtly graded stories, passages and extracts until they had given the complete range of our tongue. They would be read from, recited from, quoted in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,[58-5] man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... given him subsidies, but in fact poor Feo stands more in need of it. She really is too poor; when one thinks that they have but L600 a year, and that large castles, etc., are to be kept up with it, one cannot conceive how they manage it. It was a very generous feeling which prompted you to see Mrs Norton, and I have been too much her friend to find fault with it. True it is that Norton was freely accepted by her, but she was very poor, and could therefore hardly venture to refuse him. Many people will flirt ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... merely as dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. As acting dramas, it is difficult to conceive anything less practically dramatic. I do not know what the pecuniary result of his theatrical productions may be in his own country—where, I believe, he doesn't reside—but, out of his own country (say, here in London), I should say that a one-night's performance, with a house ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... for a moment to say how fine he was in that embroidered coat. It is hard to conceive that Mr. Gilbert can have any adequate successor in his own parts. He created the standard, and when living memory can no longer measure the comparative excellence of other performances of them, they will be tested by the traditions of Gilbert. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... for what purpose I can hardly conceive," he said, frowning with vexation at the tragi-comedy into which he had been drawn. "Frenchmen, it is true, regard these things from a different standpoint. That which seems rational to you is little else than buffoonery to me. If that is your object in seeking an interview, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... attraction was, neither of her parents could conceive, for, although the sisterhood was of the High Church order, they observed no particular religious enthusiasm or ritualistic tendencies in their daughter. "Cecil's mystery" it was called in the family, for she never spoke of what she had been doing all day, though it was apparently satisfactory, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... so," answered Mr. Batts; "he thought it Truth; and Julian, I conceive, cannot be said to have deserted the Truth, because, in fact, he always was ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... was here on all sides? It could not be the cellar, as he went in one direction or the other toward the walls, and he stood at last resting, in the most utter bewilderment of mind and helplessness of body possible to conceive, while a curious feeling of awe began to ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... of Utrecht, begs me to ask you for your carte, and offers his in return. I grieve to bother you on such a subject. I am sick and tired of this carte correspondence. I cannot conceive what Humboldt's Pyrenean violet is: no such is mentioned in Webb, and no alpine one at all. I am sorry I forgot to mention the stronger African affinity of the eastern Canary Islands. Thank you for mentioning it. I cannot admit, without further analysis, that most of the peculiar Atlantic Islands ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cold, I knew them well: but to be frozen by panic, my God! I read, I say, I searched, I would not stop: but I read that night racked by terrors such as have never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive. My flesh moved and crawled like a lake which, here and there, the breeze ruffles. Sometimes for two, three, four minutes, the profound interest of what I read would fix my mind, and then I would peruse an entire ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of a Sinn Fein conspiracy with Germany in 1918, was advised to wait for the documents about to be published. To make things even, an ultra-Conservative Member, who urged the suspension of Mr. FISHER'S new Act, was informed that the PRIME MINISTER could conceive nothing more serious than that the nation should decide that it could not afford to give children a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... churches, and slaughtering our brethren. His pride, cherished by a band of villains who are constantly anxious to offer incense on his shrine, and tolerated by numberless victims who pine in his chains, has caused him to conceive the fantastical idea of proclaiming himself Lord and Ruler of the whole world. There is no atrocity which he does not commit to attain that end.... Shall these outrages, these iniquities, remain unpunished while Spaniards—and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing. Without a just apprehension of the laws to which we have alluded the merits and defects of Dryden can be but imperfectly understood. We will, therefore, state what we conceive them to be. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... character of Punch as an organ of satire is that it represents the times, scorning only what the English people scorn. This representative attitude is, I believe, quite puzzling to many editors of foreign publications, who seem to conceive the business of satire ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... Arabs should we again fall in with them, or what bribe we could offer to induce them to conduct us either to Magador in Morocco, the nearest place where we shall find an English consul, or else to Saint Louis, a French settlement in the south, which is, I conceive, considerably nearer. It is a pretty long march either way,—half the width of the great Desert of Sahara, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... wide gap between the flames and the habitations yet remaining unseized. This plan will necessarily involve great destruction of property, and may, notwithstanding all the care that can be adopted, be attended with some loss of life; but I conceive it will be effectual. Before ordering it, however, to be put into execution, I desire to learn your opinion of it. How say you, my lord mayor and gentlemen? Does the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the matter otherwise for understanding. Seeing that open vineyard, with a wall but two stones high, no man would think of plundering the crop of grapes. But surround that vineyard with a high, strong wall, and every son of Adam will conceive the project of ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... alive, with my quiver on my shoulder: then he put himself at the head of the rest, who followed him in troops, and carried me to a place where he laid me down on the ground, and retired with all his companions. Conceive, if you can, the condition I was in: I thought myself to be in a dream; at last, after having lain some time, and seeing the elephants gone, I got up, and found I was upon a long and broad hill, covered all over with the bones and teeth of elephants. I confess to you that this ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... de la Conference," e.g. T. i., pp. 106, 109, that the words which I have italicised were inserted in the article, deliberately and after considerable discussion, in order to render illegal any attack from the air upon undefended localities; among which I conceive that ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... hardly conceive how difficult it is to play at the same time two themes different in character and running in opposite directions. The student fully realizes this difficulty when he finds that it takes years to master ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... seed, he said, the duty was 20s. per cwt.: he proposed to reduce it to 5s. With reference to maize, or Indian corn, he proposed that the duty upon it should hereafter and immediately be nominal. By removing this duty he did not conceive that he was depriving agriculture of any protection. Maize was generally used in the United States, and partly for human food: and he believed that, though it was disregarded in this country, on parts of the Continent it was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Klea, "I saw yesterday in the temple of Serapis the meanest things done by his ministers, and it pained me and disgusted me, and I lost my hold on the divinity; but the extremest anguish and deepest love have led me to find it again. I can no longer conceive of the power that upholds the universe as without love nor of the love that makes men happy as other than divine. Any one who has once prayed for a being they love as I prayed for you in the desert can never again forget how ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cannot conceive why the mention of Sacramental Confession, or of Clerical Celibacy, had I made it, was inconsistent with the position of an Anglican Clergyman. For Sacramental Confession and Absolution actually form a portion of the Anglican Visitation of the Sick; and though the 32nd Article says that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... as having to kill me, thou grieve, Thou well mayst grieve, for reasons opposite; Nor hast thou cause to laugh, as I conceive, Nor hitherto has found me worst in fight. Whether thou wouldst defer the fray, or leave, Or prosecute by this or other light, Behold me prompt thy wishes to fulfil; Where and whenever it shall be ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... cannot conceive—' said Mr. Pickwick, when his friend returned—'I cannot conceive what has been the matter with that woman. I had merely announced to her my intention of keeping a man servant, when she fell into the extraordinary ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... obligation as such society to profess a religion; and that there could be unity of action in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would naturally follow, or be justifiable in an association where Mr. Gladstone's views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of the circumstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to countenance and maintain is that ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... who, pure and industrious, toiled for her daily bread. This Vicomte de Talizac abducted her with the assistance of his paid emissaries. The poor creature, driven to despair, committed suicide. This is what your son has done, Marquis! Can you conceive of a more cowardly ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... groves of tall trees covered with balls of wild cotton, as large as an orange, and, elsewhere, inextricable entanglements of gorgeously flowering creepers, such as the most vivid imagination would fail to invent or conceive. Behind one part of the scene the setting sun shone with intense light, turning all into dark forms, while in other parts the slanting rays fell upon masses of rich foliage, and ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... themselves of the supposed privilege of Leap Year, is a question that can only be answered by those who possibly prefer to keep silence. It is a questionable joke when a man says before his wife that "she married him"; but can any self-respecting woman conceive the humiliation of having such words, with the sting of truth in them, flung at her in the moment of passion or with the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... couldn't conceive what's going on on board your ship. It wouldn't enter your head for a moment. You are too good—too—too upright, Mr. Massy, to suspect anybody of such a . . . It's enough to make your ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... cataracts. Add to this—in summer—sweltering heat in the valleys and everlasting snow and ice on the mountain-tops, with sunlight all night as well as all day—and the description of Norway is complete. No arrangement of these materials is necessary. Conceive them arranged as you will, and no matter how wild your fancy, your conception will be a pretty fair idea of Norway. Toes these elements into some chamber of your brain; shake them well up,—don't be timid about it,—then look at the result, and ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... without opposition, and of Ireland by means of his Dutch troops. The matter is entirely changed, now. England has a strong army, against which a gathering, however strong, of undisciplined men could have but little chance. I conceive it possible that a Catholic Stuart might regain the throne of Ireland, if backed by a French army, and if the people were supplied with French arms and money. But that he would retain the throne, after the French were withdrawn, I regard ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... destroyed by the invasion of Eastern types after the union with East Australia. My idea is that these types worked round by the south, and altered rapidly as they proceeded westward, increasing in species. Nor can I conceive the Western Island, when surrounded by sea, harbouring a flora ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... memory with the girl, endeavoring to recall her exact words, the expression of her face. It was not in my heart to believe she had deceived me. There was no reason why she should, and it was easy to conceive how she had naturally become part of the gay pageant, herself an exile, and with both father and lover in the King's service. Her very fun-loving disposition would lead her to take interest in the affair, while beyond doubt her friendships would all influence her in that direction. ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... That luckless mountain roe. The tortoise, too, resolved to go. Behold 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... open-hearted old bachelor in the country. His imagination never could conceive the possibility of everybody not being glad to meet everybody, his house could never be too full, his dinner-parties of 'a few friends' overflowed the dining-room, and his 'nobody' meant always at least six bodies. Every season was fertile in occasions of gathering old and young ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ruth's mind. No woman, seeing a possible man, is without her sentimental speculation. She could not conceive of Dulac ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... no moral quality which we esteem higher than justice. Fairness, equity, straight dealing are attributes for which all men entertain a hearty and unfeigned respect. There is no flame of indignation which burns fiercer within us than when we conceive ourselves, or others, to be the victims of injustice. But what are we to say of a view of the Atonement which represents God Himself as being guilty of the most flagrant act of injustice that the mind of man has ever conceived, ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... and endless life after death indeed thinkable? How can we conceive the life of a disembodied spirit? How can we conceive such a spirit? How can we conceive a pure consciousness, without a corporal organism? Descartes divided the world into thought and extension, a dualism which was imposed ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... notion of power in manifestation, though 'the Face' has a wider range and may be explained as equivalent to that part of the divine Nature which is turned to men. The latter symbol will then be substantially parallel with 'the Name.' But there are traces of a tendency to conceive of 'the arm of the Lord' as personified, for instance, where we read (ch. lxiii. 12) that Jehovah 'caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses.' Moses was not the true leader, but was himself led ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... I cannot conceive that any circumstances can occur that would render such aid as I could offer of service to you, but be assured that should such an occasion arise, the queen may count upon me to render it to the extent of my life; and when I say the queen I, of course, ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... per annum forever. So that it is evident that the principal is by no means chargeable upon the industry of the present or of future years, but only the interest. And even if the said deficit were a debt to be paid it would still, as we conceive, be perfectly just and legitimate to issue stock for its amount to those members by whose labors it was made up. Because in that case we should merely, in consideration of such labor, bind the Association to the yearly payment of the interest aforesaid according ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Earth was formed, but in the womb as yet Of waters, embryon immature involved, Appeared not: over all the face of Earth Main ocean flowed, not idle; but, with warm Prolifick humour softening all her globe, Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture; when God said, Be gathered now ye waters under Heaven Into one place, and let dry land appear. Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky: So high as heaved ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... "class-strike." Let him consider the waste of time, the ill-temper, the censorious, invidious spirit engendered by this fermentation, the loss of faith in the conduct, and even the honesty, of the faculty. Can he conceive of anything more likely to frustrate all the aims of college study? Yet in nine-tenths of the cases of public disorder it will be safe to assume that the dormitory system lies at the base of the evil. Where it does not occasion the grievance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Portheris was too distant a relation to be gratified with such information in the publicity of the Eiffel Tower. But she merely looked at me with suspicion, and said it was much better that young people should discover their unsuitability to one another before marriage than after. "I can conceive nothing more shocking than divorce," said Mrs. Portheris, and her tone indicated that I had ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the national organizer, wrote: "It is very plain that the chief fight is now. We must compel endorsement, and I believe we can do it. How any man in his sane senses could think non-endorsement would give votes and sympathy, I can not conceive; or how the women can have a hope of winning without it, after all the experience of our campaigns." Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal and an ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Hindu power, and by the continuance of its sway during several ages. Of the period when this state of things existed we at present know nothing, and judging of their principles of action by what we witness in these days, we are at a loss to conceive under what circumstances they could have exerted an influence in distant countries of the nature here described. The spirit of foreign conquest does not appear to have distinguished their character and zeal, for the conversion of others to their ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... her with calm. She was his creation. He was giving her life. His mind was beginning to conceive her as a part of the phantoms that lived in him and that were his world. This illusion diverted him. His objective sense fast vanishing, he was gradually perceiving her as a tangible outline of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... from sas, to command, and commanding means impelling to action. But scriptural injunctions impel to action through giving rise to a certain conception (in the mind of the being addressed), and the non-sentient Pradhana cannot be made to conceive anything. Scripture therefore has a sense only, if we admit that none but the intelligent enjoyer of the fruit of the action is at the same time the agent. Thus the Purva Mimamsa declares 'the fruit of the injunction belongs to the agent' (III, 7, 18). The Purvapakshin ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... conceive anything more perfect. We heartily recommend this series to all who are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... hear anything so stupid as his turning Harry—the sweetest boy who ever lived—out of doors, and in a pouring rain, for doing what he would have done himself! Oh, this is too ridiculous—too farcical. Why, you can't conceive of the absurdity of it all—nobody can! Gilbert was there and told me every word of it. You would have thought he was a grand duke or a pasha punishing a slave—and the funniest thing about it is that he believes he is a pasha. Oh—I have no patience with such contemptible family ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... first made a kind of marriage between heaven and earth, in the composure of man, and joined together an immortal spirit in such a bond of amity with corruptible dust, hath found out the way to help this, and make it feasible. And truly, we may conceive the Lord was but making way for this greater mystery of the union of Christ with us, when he joined the breath of heaven with the dust of the earth. In this he gave some representation of another more mysterious conjunction. Now, the way that the wisdom and love of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... practised in his ceremonies; and there was no anxiety to dissipate the overpowering awe that lay on his soul. He felt at once natural and unreal; it was supremely natural that he should be here; he could not conceive being other than a priest; there was in him a sense of a relaxed rather than an intensified strain; and yet the whole matter was strange and intangible, as he felt the supernatural forces gathering round, and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... and then Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three weeks; I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and bathe in rivers {109} without being controlled by any one, to come home and work. I felt very little, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... why this instinct should be especially liable to be affected with perfectly tamed animals, except indeed indirectly through the reproductive system itself being disturbed. Moreover, numerous cases have been given of various animals which couple freely under confinement, but never conceive; or, if they conceive and produce young, these are fewer in number than is natural to the species. In the vegetable kingdom instinct of course can play no part; and we shall presently see that plants when removed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... form a fortnight's amusement for a lad than the iron-pipes, crooks, bends, elbows, syphons and boiler delivered by waggon from the nearest railway, it would be hard to conceive. But to Vane they were a source of endless delight, and it thoroughly puzzled him to find Bruff, the gardener, muttering and grumbling about ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... lay prostrate before three giants in armour, and her name passed into a synonym for failure. The Prussians, with their fine magnanimity, gave lectures on the hereditary maladies of the man they had murdered. They could not conceive of life in those limbs; and the time was far off when they should be undeceived. In that day five nations were to partake not of the body, but of the spirit of Poland; and the trumpet of the resurrection of the peoples should be blown from Warsaw to ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... competitors; he made at least three mistakes in distributing the prize-money (and nobody who has not committed the indiscretion of paying out a first prize to a crew which has actually come in third can conceive the difficulty of enforcing its surrender); finally, he provoked something like a free fight on deck by inadvertently crediting two boats each with the other's time on a close handicap. It was the more vexatious, because he had in committee meetings ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Christ's sake, I must protest (whether to any purpose or not) against the illiberal, and unjust mode of conduct resorted to by the publishers of the "Extracts," in selecting short and partial sentences, and thus, as I conceive, grossly misrepresenting some of the views of those Worthies long since removed from the world on which they walked as strangers and as pilgrims, and long since, I doubt not, permitted, through the mercy of their God and Saviour, to enter into that "better country," ...
— A Sermon Preached at the Quaker's Meeting House, in Gracechurch-Street, London, Eighth Month 12th, 1694. • William Penn
... applause of Field-marshal Laudon, procured him then a kind of reputation, which he has not since been able to support. Some theoretical knowledge of the art of war, and a great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the Emperor Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has long been proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the difference is immense between the speculator and the operator, and that the generals of Cabinets are often indifferent captains when in the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of an Italian city in the twelfth century was so unlike anything we are accustomed to in modern times that a strong effort of the imagination is needed to conceive it. Seen from a distance the walls enclosed, not houses, but a forest of tall square shafts, rising into the sky like the crowded chimney stacks in a manufacturing town but far more thickly set together. The city appeared, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... never but once attended an exhibition of that nature (which he mentioned with a blush and a sigh—it was on that day when he had accompanied Helen and her son to the play at Chatteris)—he could not conceive any thing more delicious, more celestial, he had almost said, than Miss Amory's music. She was a most gifted being: she had a precious soul: she had the most remarkable talents—to all outward seeming, the most heavenly disposition, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... done just now, John," remarked Tom McGregor, "but I cannot conceive of anything more likely to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... dogs killed an emu and a kangaroo, which came in very conveniently for some natives whom we fell in with on one of the river flats. They were, without exception, the worst featured of any I had ever seen. It is scarcely possible to conceive that human beings could be so hideous and loathsome. The old black, who was rather good-looking, told me they were the last we should see for some time, and I felt that if these were samples of the natives on the lowlands, I cared very little how few of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... over select; and it was often very difficult for an unprotected female to manage them, although I always did my best to put them in good humour. Among other comforts, I used to hire a black barber, for the rather large consideration of two pounds, to shave my male guests. You can scarcely conceive the pleasure and comfort an American feels in a clean chin; and I believe my barber attracted considerable custom to the British Hotel at Cruces. I had a little out-house erected for his especial convenience; and there, well provided with towels, and armed with plenty of razors, a brush of ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... would quickly find themselves wet through, and altogether the prospect was a pitiable one. Again and again did Max try to conceive of a better plan. He even went prowling around down below again, hoping to make some little discovery that would turn out to be of benefit to the three girls; but when he once more rejoined the others on the roof his face failed to ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... It is easy to conceive how Dona Leonor de Cisneros had been induced apparently to abandon the faith to which she had so long adhered. Falsehoods and devices of all sorts had been employed to induce her to make her peace with ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Lastly, they conceive that aspersions are cast upon their personal cleanliness—a most delicate matter with all boys. Ve-ry good. Observe how, in each case, the punishment fits the crime. A week after your house calls them 'stinkers,' King, your house is, not to put too fine a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... tremulous fingers the brittle texture of a woman's stocking for, retaining nothing of all he read save that which seemed to him an echo or a prophecy of his own state, it was only amid soft-worded phrases or within rose-soft stuffs that he dared to conceive of the soul or body of a woman moving ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... battlefields he has lost—men smashed to pulp, bruised by shells out of resemblance to anything human, the breeding place of flies and pestilence, no longer the homes of loyalties and affections. I cannot conceive what percentage of returns can be said to compensate for the agony expended on such indecent Golgothas. However, the Hun has assured us that it pays him; he flatters himself that he is ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... do not know how you can conceive that I should fall in love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the centre. He is short and ugly—Ah! I will allow that he is generous, but that is all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is all in all only to opera girls; ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... never. He would only have a wider scope to injure himself. A niggro has no grasp, sir. Now, a white man can conceive great operations, and carry ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... with a great fragment of common shell through his lungs run forward for several hundred yards vomiting blood, but still encouraging his men, who, truth to tell, were as eager as he. It is impossible to describe or even conceive the purposeful and aching desire to get to close quarters regardless of all losses and of all consequences. The Bulgarians, in committing those obscene atrocities, not only damned themselves forever in the eyes of humanity, but they doubled, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... of history and the records of Britain's earliest foes, burrow back to aboriginal man on Dartmoor. Then research and imagination rebuild the eternal rings of granite and, erecting upon them tall domes of thatch and skins on wattle ribs, conceive the early village like a cluster of gigantic mushrooms, whose cowls are uplifted in that rugged fastness through the night of time. We see Palaeolithic man sink into mother earth before the superior genius of his Neolithic successor; and we note the Damnonian shepherds ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... engaged in any duel of which the issue was mortal; but he had been so far engaged with more than one, that he could easily conceive what it would have been to have quelled an enemy in just defence. But unless the reader can himself discern, by his sympathies, that there is the resemblance I contend for, it is of no use to multiply instances. I shall, therefore, give but one other extract, which breathes the predominant spirit ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of the Sceptre, who is still alive, and who happened to be on shore at the time this terrible catastrophe occurred, declares, that nothing imagination could conceive ever equalled the horrors of that night. When the first signals of distress were made from the Sceptre, the whole population of Cape Town, with the officers and soldiers of the garrison, crowded down to ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," she cried out. "If I ain't done wrong, mebbe them that's come before me did, and when the Evil One and the Powers of Darkness is abroad I'm liable, I'm liable!" Then she laughed ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... of hangings for domestic purposes was common. Not a thread of these hand-worked hangings remain, but we have the immense and immediate use of tapestry, which first became a manufacture of England in the reign of Henry VIII. It is easy to conceive that English women would readily seize upon the idea supplied in tapestry and adapt its designs to that of embroidery. It is certain that hangings for the old four-post beds were embroidered, as in the inventory of Wolsey's great palace ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... to address your lordships, if their conduct were clearly and fairly impugned. And with regard to the annexation of the province, which has certainly very much filled the mouths of men of late, I can easily conceive that that would have been a subject for fair discussion in this House, and we should have heard, as we have heard to-night, though in a manner somewhat unexpected, from the nature of the resolution before us, from the noble lord who was recently ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of this in order that the young may be so guided that they conceive a liking for the married estate, and know that it is a blessed estate and pleasing to God. For in this way we might in the course of time bring it about that married life be restored to honor, and that there might be less of the filthy, dissolute, disorderly ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... Gallas, but, I believe, without foundation. Both alike are Christians of the greatest antiquity. It is true that, whilst the aboriginal Abyssinians in Abyssinia proper are more commonly agriculturists, the Gallas are chiefly a pastoral people; but I conceive that the two may have had the same relations with each other which I found the Wahuma kings and Wahuma herdsmen holding with the agricultural Wazinza in Uzinza, the Wanyambo in Karague, the Waganda in Uganda, and the Wanyoro ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth and young ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Then to the vulture let each corse remain; Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw, Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain, Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe: Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Conceive, if you please, of a man floating in the most ecstatic delight of heaven pulled suddenly thence down into the most filthy extremity of hell, and then you shall understand the motions of disgust and repugnance and loathing that ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... said after a long pause, during which she resumed her walk, "I give it up! I don't understand, and I never shall. I am hopelessly in the dark. I can conceive no motive—none strong enough to make his conduct right. I thought him mad; you say he is sane. I thought he did me a shameful, irreparable wrong; you say he has done right. I will think no more about it, since, if I thought to my dying day, I could come ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure. It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the gates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night at Secheron, a village at the distance of half a league ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... complainant, who looks scarce more than a child, repeated, despite the efforts of the magistrates' clerk to stop her, and without being in the least abashed, some of the worst language it was possible to conceive—conversation of the most gross description, alleged to have taken place between herself and the defendant. They appeared to have got from words to blows and, while trying to fasten the gate, the defendant hit her across the hand with a stick. She alleged that there ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... bright moonlight night, so bright that one might almost see to read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... week of September, 1580, we came to Plymouth Sound, and once more looked upon English land and English faces. And this we did with such thankfulness and rejoicing as you cannot conceive. As for Drake and his men, they had been away two years and some ten months, and in that time had taken their ships round the world. And because they were the first Englishmen that had ever done this, there was such ringing of bells, and lighting of bonfires, and setting ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... ain't required to test its taste. It is neither visible, nor tangible, nor portable, nor transferable. It is not a substance, nor a liquid, nor a vapour. It has neither colour nor form. Imagination can't conceive it. It can't be imitated or forged. It is confined to no clime or country, but is ubiquitous. It is disembodied when completed, but is instantly reproduced, and so is immortal. It is as old as the creation, and yet is as young and fresh as ever. It prexisted, still exists, and always ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... all about everything that happens, ideas deal with events that are out of sight and hard to grasp. Miss Sherwin of Gopher Prairie, [Footnote: See Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.] is aware that a war is raging in France and tries to conceive it. She has never been to France, and certainly she has never been along what is now ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Jesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away, and guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural to suppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most pathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at Bethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks, and his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but he lifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... lived has been merely by permission; and all who have died have died justly; for nothing but a perfect creature is entitled to life. For this reason the Prophet wrote: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me". (Psalm 51:5) St. Paul writing under inspiration, expressed the same thing, saying: "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... righteous; the assurance which alone will satisfy the awakened human spirit is that which tells us {20} that God is Love, and that His truest name is that of Father. How could such a culminating assurance come to us? We conceive that this end could only be achieved through a complete manifestation of the Divine character on a finite scale, i.e., through His indwelling in an unparalleled measure in a unique and ethically perfect being; and such an event, we hold, has actually taken place in what is known as the Incarnation. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... this kind where it is to be doubted if a dozen Americans outside of the girls' connections know that such women exist. The fall in rents and land values has made the French aristocracy poor; it is only by the greatest economy (and it never entered into an American mind to conceive of such economy as is practised among them) that they succeed in holding on to their historical chateaux or beautiful city residences; so that pride plays a large part in the isolation ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... "Do what you conceive to be your duty, gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, with marvellous dignity. "If I do not assert my innocence, it is because I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... we stayed on the wharf till she left, singing college songs, giving an impromptu athletic exhibition, etc., to the intense delight of about fifty small boys (I can't conceive where they all came from), and the two or three hundred servant girls going home to P.E.I. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... undesirable characteristics, being essentially obstinate and conceited, the possessor of a bad temper, and of a coarse and vulgar personality. His speech on February 22, in which he had invoked the wild passions of a mob, modified the opinions even of conservative men. "It is impossible to conceive of a more humiliating spectacle," said Sherman.[1052] "During the progress of events," wrote Weed, "the President was bereft of judgment and reason, and became the victim of passion and unreason."[1053] But up to this time the party had hoped to avoid ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... has lived in vain because the special lot of woman has been denied her. If not happiness, which comes from content and satisfaction, yet there is something higher, diviner still, arising from duty done and trials endured—blessedness. But such exceptions do not, I conceive, invalidate the general fact that marriage was intended to be the channel for the vast aggregate of human happiness and improvement. I speak of marriage as it should be, as it might be, as it will one day be, when men and women have acquainted themselves with the laws, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion; to fling myself in his way; to take him by the shoulders as if he were a child, and turn his craven face, perforce, towards the board, were with me the work ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... deafening and stupendous. If the reader will reflect on the wonderful hubbub that can be created even by a kitchen kettle when superheated, and on the exasperating shrieks of a steamboat's safety-valve in action, or the bellowing of a fog-horn, he may form some idea of the extent of his incapacity to conceive the thunderous roar of Krakatoa when it began ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... he sat as member for Cavan, and appears in Parliament to have got beyond his famous "I conceive—I conceive—I conceive"—(having, as the wag observed, "conceived three times and brought forth nothing"), and spoken sometimes, if not often—he did not feel himself at home. He must have loathed the licentious and corrupt Wharton, and felt besides ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... you, yes, I will admit it. I have altered certain ideas, Boots; I cannot, just now, conceive of any circumstances under which I should feel justified in marrying, but such circumstances might ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... engraved in a small silver locket that hung on his watch-chain, where he was accustomed to have important days in his life marked, such as the day he adopted his boy, his mother's death. It is preceded by the Greek letters [Greek: BP], which from a certain entry in his diary I conceive to be [Greek: baptisma pyros], "the baptism ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... conceive St. John's as the ideal pirate lair of a romance-maker of the Stevensonian tradition, and one can understand it appealing to the bold, freebooting instincts of the first daring settlers. A ring of rough, stratified hills grips the harbour water about, sheltering it from storms and land enemies, while ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the most heavenly wife. I shall of course feel miserable if I lose her, but your happiness will make amends for all. Do you know, dearest, that I cannot understand how you could fall in love with me after having known her, any more than I can conceive how she does not hate me ever since she has discovered that I have robbed her of your heart. My dear C—— C—— has truly something divine in her disposition. Do you know why she confided to you her barren loves with me? Because, as she told me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conceive that an insinuation has been made, derogatory to our honor. Mr. Goldworthy, your words indirectly imply a suspicion; I must request you, sir, to explain your words, and to state distinctly whether or no you suppose that any person ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... ocean. He understood the Indians to say that it was inhabited by people who had tails, and wore garments to conceal them. He recollected that Sir John Mandeville had recorded a story to the same effect as current among certain naked tribes, who could not conceive that people would wear clothes unless to conceal some defect. He flattered himself, therefore, that he should soon come to the rich province of Mangi and the long-robed inhabitants of the empire of Tartary. He therefore sailed on, animated by one of the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly." Browning's poem did not rush into drawing-rooms, but it stepped boldly into churches and conventicles and the lecture-rooms ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... for the human mind to conceive anything more dreadful than this. Youre a disgrace to ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... descanted with pleasure on the fortunate condition of Italy; but our fancy must not hastily conceive that the golden age of the poets, a race of men without vice or misery, was realized under the Gothic conquest. The fair prospect was sometimes overcast with clouds; the wisdom of Theodoric might be deceived, his power ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... or to Russia, in order to advance themselves, and now, having relinquished these advantageous prospects in order to join your enterprise, they will be extremely displeased if they are left behind. I am myself equally displeased, and I can not conceive what I have done to deserve such treatment. And I beg you to understand, my lord, that I can not be separated from my men; nor will they consent to be separated from each other. I am convinced that, if I dismiss any of them, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... summit-edges of the highest escarpments is several miles in width, and the five terraces on both sides are broadly developed: the highest cannot be less than six hundred feet above the bed of the river, which itself must, I conceive, be some hundred ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... of the event with respect to the railway embankment ? Is there a thinkable answer to this question of such a nature that the law of transmission of light in vacuo does not contradict the principle of relativity ? In other words : Can we conceive of a relation between place and time of the individual events relative to both reference-bodies, such that every ray of light possesses the velocity of transmission c relative to the embankment ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... extraordinary man; it has not entered into the heart of a stranger to conceive such a man: there was the stamp of immortality in all he said or did;—and now what is he? When we see such men pass away and be no more—men, who seem created to display what the Creator could ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Tiamat became mythical beings whose dominion preceded that of the gods. Further than this the questionings of the schoolmen did not go. They conceived of a time when neither the upper firmament nor the dry land existed and when the gods were not yet placed in control, but they could not conceive of a time when there was 'nothing' at all. This cosmological theory which we may deduce from the fragment of the first tablet of the creation series is confirmed by the accounts that have come down to us—chiefly through Damascius—of the treatment of ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... lasso, full fifty feet long, with an iron ring neatly whipped into the loop-end; and, on trying it with a pull, I saw it was in the best condition. Of course, I was not likely to leave such a prize behind me. I had grown, as you may all conceive, to have a very great regard for a rope, considering that one had just saved all our lives; so I resolved on bringing the lasso with me. In order to carry it the more conveniently, I coiled it, and then hung the coil across my shoulders like ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... believe in your unhappiness. I cannot conceive of greater misery than to be arrayed against your country. If I could have Hubert back, I would not have him at such a price—no, nor all my sons. 'Pro patri mori'—My boy, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blackness, seemed to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish. They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... by pointing out that, in the more modern conceptions of logic, it is recognised that there are no identically similar objective experiences; the disposition is to conceive all real objective being as individual and unique. This is not a singular eccentric idea of mine; it is one for which ample support is to be found in the writings of absolutely respectable contemporaries, who are quite untainted by association ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... plume, and yet fearing to wound the feelings of the duke by refusing the present. She, on the whole, however, concluded to retain it, and wore it once, that she might not seem to scorn the present, and then laid it aside. It is difficult to conceive how the queen could have conducted more discreetly in the affair. Such was the story of "The Heron's Plume." It was, however, maliciously reported through Paris that the queen was indecently receiving presents from gentlemen as her lovers. "The Heron's Plume" ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... I came to look things squarely in the face in my berth by myself, I began to see how utterly impossible it would be for me after all to go and stop with the Cheritons. How I could ever have dreamt it feasible I could hardly conceive. I ought to have refused at once. I ought to have been braver. I ought to have said outright, "I'll have nothing to do or say with anyone who is a friend or an acquaintance of Courtenay Ivor's." And yet, to have said so would have been to give up the game for lost. It would have been to proclaim ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... people, deep in sleep after the vigil of the storm, were dragged from their beds before they were well awake. Men, women, and children fell victims to such ingenuity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could conceive. Children were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes; aged parents tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters; fathers held powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut |
