"Receptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toast, Sengoun looked about him pleasantly, receptive, ready for any eventuality. And observing no symptoms of any eventuality whatever, he suggested ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Albert's promise, the Calvin lumber was not delivered on time. The Reverend gentleman called to ask why. His manner was anything but receptive so ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... girl leaves school she is hardly old enough to enter service, and too often in the year or so that elapses before she 'goes out' much mischief is done. She is then at an age when the mind is peculiarly receptive, and the ways of the young labourers with whom she is thrown into contact are not very refined. Her first essay at 'service' is often as day-nursemaid at some adjacent farmhouse, taking care of the younger children in the day, and returning ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... study of popular manners; the history of a young workman, sober and chaste, as handsome as a girl, with the mind of a virgin, a sensitive soul. He is a carver, and works well. At night, near his mother, whom he loves, he studies, he reads books. In his mind, simple and receptive, ideas lodge themselves like bullets in a wall. He has no desires. He has neither the passions nor the vices that attach us to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes conceited. He lives among miserable people. He sees suffering. He has devotion ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... verities, became more and more indistinct. The soothsayers of the long past had been forbidden by Nature to doubt that which was the lore of the camp. Was it that Nature re-asserted her influence—that the essences of the scene, subtle and pervasive, had recurred, creating a receptive spirit, so deep a religion of assent that shadow and substance intermingled to my bewilderment? I was permitted to be a sensitive percipient in the midst of the ashes of shiftless folk who had passed away, catching but ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the value of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... while Harris sought out new homestead land and Arthurs proceeded with the development of his farm. It was McCrae, whose interest in every member of the expedition was that of a father, that dropped the germ of this suggestion into Arthurs' receptive ear, and it was with paternal satisfaction he found the young couples speedily work out for themselves the arrangements which he had planned ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... was cunning. From hour to hour, growing more restive, it employed devices of craft and subtlety. As when Merton Gill, carefree to the best of his knowledge, strolling lightly to another point of interest, graciously receptive to the pleasant life about him, would suddenly discover that a part of his mind without superintendence had for some moments been composing a letter, something that ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... will cheat them of insight and poise; for minds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still, can seldom or never be hushed ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... turn over an edition of Shaftsbury, and try to read it with the mind of this merry and receptive printer's boy, will perceive how entirely captivating it must have been to him. The raillery that was always the raillery of a gentleman; the irony so delicate as really to deceive some men who passed for acute; the fine urbanity that pervades ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in the lips. His nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. He resembled his brother, Daniel, but stood three inches taller, and his brow was fuller and loftier. His expression in repose appeared frank and receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious. He was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different pattern but similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. He bore ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... be divided into four classes, each class marking an advance in receptive power on the part of the listener and poetic subtlety on that of the composer. We may liken the first stage to that of the savage Indians who depict their exploits in war and peace on the rocks, fragments of bone, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... ancient and indefeasible right to existence. They, with their ancestors and near relatives, constitute Literature,—without which the human race would be little better than savages. For the effect of pure literature upon a receptive mind is something more than can be definitely stated. Like sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. It demands from its disciple almost as much as it gives him, and is never revealed save to the disinterested and loving eye. In our best moments, it touches us most deeply; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... time we were in possession of such a thing as our own mind in India. It was living. It thought, it felt, it expressed itself. It was receptive as well as productive. That this mind could be of any use in the process, or in the end, of our education was overlooked by our modern educational dispensation. We are provided with buildings and books and other magnificent burdens calculated to suppress ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... wound: great debts are like cannon, of loud noise, but little danger. You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the rest." "Sir," said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... at school, and astonishes the world before he has reached his majority. The change in the author's position is, indeed, equally marked in a different way. The youthful heroes of Disraeli's early novels are creative; in his later they become chiefly receptive. Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming show their genius by insubordination; Coningsby and Tancred learn wisdom by sitting at the feet of Sidonia; and Lothair reduces himself so completely to a mere 'passive bucket' to be pumped ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... from these virtues or powers the Soul is produced more or less pure; and according to its purity there descends into it the virtue or power of the possible or passive intellect, as it is called, and as it has been spoken of. And if it happen that through the purity of the receptive Soul the intellectual power is indeed separate and absolute, free from all corporeal shadow, the Divine Goodness multiplies in it, as in a thing sufficient to receive that good gift; and then it multiplies in the Soul of this intelligent being, according as it can receive it; and this is that ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... in order to secure not only a greater and more independent individual efficiency, but also a deeper and more lasting influence on the men; but this influence of the superiors must always remain limited if it cannot count on finding in the men a receptive and intelligent material. This fact is especially clear when we grasp the claims which modern war will make on the individual fighter. In order to meet these demands fully, the people ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... with the English people and with English life. His was one of those receptive natures which enjoy whatever is wholesome and sunny. In spite of his bodily pain, he entertained a lively hope of coming out of it in the spring, and did not realize his true condition. He merely said, "I have overworked myself, and must lay by or I shall break down ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... great capacity for work." Capacity is receptive; ability, potential. A sponge has capacity for water; the hand, ability ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... that does not stand before God, now and here, in the ordinary daily life, does not even live at all, in any true sense. "I am come that ye might have life," said Jesus, "and have it more abundantly." It is only as one holds himself receptive to the divine currents that he has life, and it rests with himself to have it "more abundantly" every ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... sail that evening, her destination being Miami and the West Coast where Portlaw desired to do some tarpon fishing and Wayward had railroad interests. Malcourt, always in a receptive attitude, was quite ready to go anywhere when invited. Otherwise he preferred a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... stout, portly old lady. She had twinkling good-humored eyes, a mouth which smiled whenever she looked at a child, and a constant habit of putting her hand into her pocket and taking out a lollipop. This lollipop found its way straight into the receptive mouth of any small creature of the human race who ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... possible because the heavens and the earth are so visibly united in the fellowship of common life; the one pouring down a measureless and penetrating tide of vitality, the other eagerly, worshipfully receptive. Nature has no more inspiring truth for us than this constant and complete enfolding of our life by a higher and vaster life, this unbroken play of a diviner purpose and force through us. Nothing is lost, nothing really dies; all things are conserved ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... her. And directly he paused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her sudden astonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was she in Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was eager—receptive. He took up his parable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at the farm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the past—into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginative gift, partly to his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honestly believe so. We must ascend to a much earlier period to be able to judge their conduct accurately. It was when the claims of Jesus were first submitted to them that they went astray. He, being such as He was, could only have been welcomed and appreciated by expectant, receptive, holy minds. The ecclesiastical authorities of Judaea in that age were anything but expectant, receptive and holy. They were totally incapable of understanding Him, and saw no beauty that they should desire Him. As He often told them Himself, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... tranquillising, more beneficent, than even the mood of disinterested study. In the world to which sincerity would condemn him, only the worst elements of his character found nourishment and range; here he was humanised, made receptive of all gentle sympathies. Heroism might point him to an unending struggle with adverse conditions, but how was heroism possible without faith? Absolute faith he had none; he was essentially a negativist, guided by the mere relations ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... animate and inanimate life in all their forms, his knowledge of banks where wild thyme grew, his love of flowers and of natural beauty which remained with him all through his life, were evidently gained at that receptive period: ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... somewhat compromised the movement and has diminished its direct influence. However, business men have been stirred up. They have become accustomed to using the words "science" and "business" in the same sentence. They are in a receptive attitude for ideas. The indirect influence ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... fine, noble piano performance, and of a simple, pure, well-taught style of singing, and also understand the characteristics of the performer, much more quickly than they do. The sensibility and appreciation of beauty with the public is less prejudiced, less spurious, more receptive, and more artless. Its perceptions are not disturbed by theories, by a desire to criticise, and many other secondary matters. The public do not take a biassed or stilted view. The admiration for Jenny Lind is a striking proof of this, as is also the appreciation ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... matter that way, it was no good arguing with him. The idea crossed my mind, not for the first time, that poor old Poirot was growing old. Privately I thought it lucky that he had associated with him some one of a more receptive type ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to inform others that he was ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... a right eagerly to ask: On this strongly marked temperament, so delicately imaginative and so keenly logical, so receptive and so retentive, a type alike of the philosopher and the poet, the scholar and the musician—on such a contemplative genius, what were the effects of so great and so constant indulgence in a drug noted for its power of heightening and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had thought to be prepared and receptive. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... which is equal to the squares of those sides containing the right angle. The perpendicular (three) is the Male, Osiris, the originating principle ([Greek: arche]); the base (four) is the Female, Isis, the receptive principle ([Greek: hypodoche]); and the Hypotenuse (five) is the offspring of both, Horus, the product ([Greek: apotelesma])." The central feature of this triangle, upon which its property is based, is the Right Angle. The Greeks gave to this Right Angle the name of Gnomon (meaning ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... student on the throne, though I would have one near by for an adviser. I would set forward as prince a man of a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; receptive, accommodating, seductive. I have been observing you since your first entrance. Well, sir, were I a subject of Gruenewald I should pray Heaven to set upon the seat of government just ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that it will not fight for its life!" And Diogenes, seeing a lad drinking water out of the palm of his hand, threw away the cup which he kept in his wallet. So much does attention and assiduous practice make people perceptive and receptive of what contributes to virtue from any source. And this is the case still more with those who mix discourses with actions, who not only, to use the language of Thucydides,[270] "exercise themselves in the presence of danger," but also in regard to pleasures and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... matters of principle, to his virile self-assertion. She would be less a woman, and he less a man, were any other result possible. Deep down in the very roots of the idea of sex we come on that prime antithesis,—the male, active and aggressive; the female, sedentary, passive, and receptive. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... had all along had an ideal in her own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr. White's mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's companion. She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age. Of so repellent, aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception. It would be hard to do justice in words to Mrs. White's capacity to be disagreeable when she chose. She had gray eyes, which, though they had a very ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Calcutta. I have friendly relations with his family, and some one there will care for all letters that come to me from Europe. Dear friend, I hope to find you the same de Marsay on my return,—the man who scoffs at everything and yet is receptive of the feelings of others when they accord with the grandeur he is conscious of in himself. You stay in Paris, friend; but when you read these words, I shall be ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... inspires happy thought and desire, And the heart cannot fail to rejoice, As it makes the glad spirit receptive and quick ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... truer appreciation of that peculiar keeping of the churches which the stranger is apt to encounter in his approach. Be tender of the hapless mendicants at the door; they are not there for their pleasure, those blind and halt and old. Be modestly receptive of the good office of the whole tribe of cicerones, of custodians, of sacristans; they can save you time, which, though it is not quite the same as money, even in Rome is worth saving, and are the repository of many rejected fables waiting to be recognized as facts again. I, for instance, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Doctor shifted his pillow. "An extremely nice girl, I believe. Exceedingly sympathetic and attentive to all my wants, and receptive to a remarkable degree. She has been reading to me daily, and I find rather an unusual mind, undisciplined of course, but ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of 1918 there were assembled around his drafting-board an interested and receptive audience of four—Peters, an ensign attached to the "lighter-than-air" section; Madden, a pilot on his way up from Italy to the Northern Bombing Group; Erskine, a lieutenant in the Operations Division; and Matthews, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... as regards the receptive function. Then there is another function in the intellectual life of a Nation, that of spontaneous flow, that going out of its life by which the world is enriched. When the Nation has lost this power, when it merely receives, but cannot give out, then its ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... considerably. But they had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men's adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably young—still beautifully unthinking—infinitely receptive. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... but with none the less energy and persistence. Among other things, he visited Daniel Webster at Marshfield to urge him to accept the nomination for Vice President. The great statesman recalled Weed's similar errand in 1839, and the memory of Harrison's sudden death now softened him into a receptive mood; but the inopportune coming of Fletcher Webster, who reported that his father's cause was making tremendous progress, changed consent into disapproval, and for the second time in ten years Webster lost the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... admitted to Spenser the following afternoon, she faced him guiltily—for the thoughts Brent had set to bubbling and boiling in her. And her guilt showed in the tone of her greeting, in the reluctance and forced intensity of her kiss and embrace. She had compressed into the five most receptive years of a human being's life an experience that was, for one of her intelligence and education, equal to many times five years of ordinary life. And this experience had developed her instinct for concealing her deep feelings into a fixed habit. But it had not made her a liar—had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity, not passive or receptive, but ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... addition, broadened his mental outlook in a remarkable manner. Foreign travel, a wider acquaintance with differing types of humanity, and, above all, a newly-won acquaintance with the contemporary literature of other countries, made a deep impression upon Bjornson's vigorously receptive mind. He browsed voraciously upon the works of foreign writers. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Taine, Max-Mueller, formed a portion of his mental pabulum at this time—and the result was a significant alteration of mental ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... in really good spirits by the time Lord Rosebery ten minutes on his legs; Lord Selborne's unctuous dronings had disappeared into the irrevocable and vast distances; in short, the moribund Chamber was alive, vivacious, and receptive. And when he had got them to this point Lord Rosebery took the serious part of his work seriously in hand. Not that he attempted lofty appeal. On the contrary, rarely throughout the speech did he raise his voice above ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... agents work directly with Mexican fascist groups, and have undertaken to carry the brunt of spreading anti-democratic propaganda to turn popular sentiment against the "Colossus of the North," and to develop a receptive attitude toward ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after Pistol has been out-Pistol'd,[16] and the welkin rung for hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of mutual admiration. The outcry only serves ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Swabia and Switzerland, he met Gassner and witnessed some of his cures. Mesmer claimed that they were performed by his newly discovered magnetism. He arrived in Paris in 1778 and found this city more receptive to his arts. He at first established himself in an humble quarter of the city and began to expound his theory. The following year he published a paper in which he summed up his claims in twenty-seven assertions ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... The hour was propitious. They were all "worked up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke almost with emotion—a liqueur-glass ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... in my tenth year, the imitative faculty got the upper hand, and nothing seemed so attractive as to be what I was expected to be. If there was a doubt now, it lay in the other direction; it seemed hardly normal that so young a child should appear so receptive and so apt. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... thing is I thought I was going to broaden Jean, to show her what a narrow little Puritan she is, bound in the Old Testament thrall of her Great-aunt Alison—but not a bit of it. She is very receptive, delighted to be told about people and clothes, cities, theatres, pictures, but on what she calls 'serious things' she is an absolute rock. It is like finding a Roundhead delighting in Royalist sports and plays, or a Royalist chanting Roundhead ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... indeed a wonderful teacher! The player, however, must divine how to be receptive, how to enter into the master's thought, or it may go hard with him. If he does not understand, nor grasp the master's words he may suffer terribly during the ordeal of the lessons. I have witnessed such scenes! Those ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... good plan to strike while the iron is hot;' and as the people at Colant were in an interested and receptive state, I put off other things which had been appointed, and made arrangements to return to the battle-field as soon as possible. My people were much excited to hear what I was able to tell them of my three days' ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... poetic activity, he was to derive his inspiration from other sources. The most fruitful and important of these was unquestionably his intercourse with Wordsworth, from whom, although there was doubtless a reciprocation of influence between them, his much more receptive nature took a far deeper impression than it made. [1] At the time of their meeting he had already for some three years been acquainted with Wordsworth's works as a poet, and it speaks highly for his discrimination that he was able to discern the great ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... just lately had suffered so much from the disadvantage of not "following his own head, and so being much more correct in judgment than following the opinion of others," that his head was not at all in a receptive state; and like all who have doubted about being right, and found the doubt wrong, he was hardened into the merits of his own conclusion. "Why have I gone on a goose-chase?" he asked; "because I have twice ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the problem proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with her only the means of new acquisition. Meantime her mind was purely receptive. She had no ambition to propound a theory, or to write her own name on any book, or plant, or opinion. Her delight in books was not tainted by any wish to shine, or any appetite for praise or influence. She seldom and unwillingly used a pen, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... broad and blue, its breast swelling to the evening sun. The air blew sweet over field and cliff, add the music of the incoming tide was heard below the pine-fringed bank. Caius, however, was not in the receptive mind which appreciates outward things. His attention was not thoroughly aroused from himself till the sound of harsh voices struck ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the instructor was ignorant of the topography of the country, the temper of the people among whom he was to labor, and, more important still, when he was totally ignorant of the particular class upon whom he was to operate—ignorant of their temperament, receptive capacity and peculiar, aye, unique, idiosyncrasies. Thus thousands upon thousands of dollars were expended upon the erection and endowment of "colleges" in many localities where ordinary common schools were unknown. Each college was, therefore, necessarily ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... indeed, learn all this at that time; but she had her receptive mind opened to the first lessons of the glorious truth on than ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a woman of unusual intellect bordering upon genius. There were no means of higher education at that period, but her father, who was an eminent lawyer, and her grandfather, a judge, finding her so receptive, educated her with the care that was given to boys who were intended for a professional life. She was well versed in the literature of the time of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, and, with a retentive memory, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... are willing to let Him guide and lead. The trouble with many sceptics is their self-conceit. They know more than the Almighty! and they do not come in a teachable spirit. But the moment a man comes in a receptive spirit he is blessed; for "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... revealed to the impressive, penetrating, and commanding gaze of Leonardo, when the Senator Contarini resumed the speech which had been so strangely interrupted. The enthusiasm and determination of the morning had returned; the words fell upon a receptive and positive atmosphere. The opinions of the distinguished Senator carried great weight, so loyal and catholic was he known to be; and above the portal of the Contarini many times the Lion of ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... petals of light upon darkness. From Nature's brimming cup I drink a thousand scents; At noon the wizard sun stirs the hot soil under the pines. I take the top stone of the wall in my hands And the sun in my heart; I feel the rippling land extend to right and left, Bearing up a receptive surface to my uncertain feet; I clamber up the hill and beyond the grassy sweep; I encounter a chaos of tumbled rocks. Piles of shadow they seem, huddling close to the land. Here they are scattered like ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... of points possible, and is raising passivity to the highest exponent on the side of feeling; secondly, in procuring for the determining faculty the greatest possible amount of independence, in relation to the receptive power, and in raising activity to the highest degree on the side of reason. By the union of these two qualities man will associate the highest degree of self-spontaneity (autonomy) and of freedom with the fullest plenitude of existence, and instead of abandoning himself to the world so as to get ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... an amazingly self-satisfied toiler who had chanced to specialize on crime. And even as he became more and more assured of his personal ability, more and more entrenched in his tradition of greatness, he was becoming less and less elastic, less receptive, less adaptive. Much as he tried to blink the fact, he was compelled to depend more and more on the office behind him. His personal gallery, the gallery under his hat, showed a tendency to become both obsolete and inadequate. That endless catacomb of lost souls grew too intricate ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... his head lovingly on the sofa-cushion, and discussed the enjoyment of the day with his skilled appreciation of music. Geraldine's receptive power was not inferior to his own, though she had none of that of expression, nor of the science in which he was trained. He was like another being from the merry rattle he was at other times; and she had more glimpses than she ever had before of the high nature and deep ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pull. Livestock and proper land use are natural companions. Another ally and companion in this whole movement should be good walnut trees in every pasture, a few nut trees in every farm lot, in the fence row and corner of the farm. I am sure that our educational agencies would be very receptive to putting more emphasis on this sound and fundamental practice. Good pasture lands, clear streams, plenty of trees for shade are all important and real assets to any farm. Shade produced by a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... was frowning at him. Korvin did his best to look receptive. "Why did you land your ship on this planet?" the ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... intellectual faculties (perception and reflection) are mute upon the subject: they bear no testimony to facts; they show no proof. Even the instinctive sense of our kind is here dumb. We may believe what we are taught: we can know nothing. He would, therefore, cultivate that receptive mood which, marching under the shadow of mighty events, leads to the highest of goals,the development of Humanity. With him suspension of judgment ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... arch-juggler? Can it have been that from the painter's native Strasbourg had come to him unimpeachable accounts of Cagliostro's feats during his stay there, which had preceded his nefarious expedition to Paris? But the artist is ever excitable, receptive, impressible—the ready prey of the dealer in illusion and trickery. De Loutherbourg is soon at the feet of the quack Gamaliel; soon he is proclaiming himself an inspired physician, practising mesmerism. Cosway and his wife ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... views concerning the most probable cause of appendicitis, which I found myself able to do with some eloquence, reciting among other details that even though the metal dust might be of an almost microscopic fineness, it could still do a mischief to one's appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly for a photographic portrait of myself that I was unable to refuse him. The thing ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... hindered from receiving them while occupied with sensible things. Hence Gregory says (Dial. iv, 26) that "the soul, at the approach of death, foresees certain future things, by reason of the subtlety of its nature," inasmuch as it is receptive even of slight impressions. Or again, it knows future things by a revelation of the angels; but not by its own power, because according to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 13), "if this were so, it would be able to foreknow the future whenever it willed," which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... people who definitely set themselves to see something, but have no idea what the something will be, and no control over the sight after the visions have begun—psychic Micawbers, who put themselves into a receptive condition, and then simply wait for something to turn up. Many trance-mediums would come under this heading; they either in some way hypnotize themselves or are hypnotized by some "spirit-guide," and then they describe ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... public opinion by sensational writing of questionable veracity, cannot be too strongly condemned, it is none the less true that it requires not merely a touch of literary genius, but also a lively and receptive imagination to tell a perfectly truthful tale in such a manner as to arrest the attention, to excite the wayward imagination and to guide the thoughts of the vast majority of those who will scan the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... mission which the photoplay may have in our community is that of esthetic cultivation. No art reaches a larger audience daily, no esthetic influence finds spectators in a more receptive frame of mind. On the other hand no training demands a more persistent and planful arousing of the mind than the esthetic training, and never is progress more difficult than when the teacher adjusts himself to the mere liking ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... pointed no finger of scorn to my broken life. She uttered no reproaches. She took me as I was, and for three years our life together has been to me one long unbroken harmony. Our tastes were very similar. She was well read, receptive, a charming companion. Ennui was a word of which I have forgotten the meaning. And it seemed so with her, too, for she grew younger ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... He had come to it from the reading of his Bible instead of the reading of the morning paper, and from prayer instead of from thoughts of his business or a yawning stroll through his library. His mind was receptive of the best things in the service. He entered into it with the solemn feeling that it was ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... rather persuasive than just; and that though my "language" may be good, I am an unsafe guide in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such matters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth; it is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking receptive surface, and in every particular, upside down. For my "language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose, obscure, and more or less feeble; and still, though I have tried hard to mend it, the best I can do is inferior to much contemporary work. No description that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... it, it is absurd to expect a child to talk sensibly and rationally on the mental diet of 'moo-moos' and 'choo-choos' served out to them. Our Professor of Metaphysics and Ideology in our Child Study Course says that nothing is so receptive and plastic as the Mind of a Little Child, and that it is perfectly appalling how we fill it with trivial absurdities that haven't even the virtue of being accurate. So that's why we're trying to be so careful with Baby. You didn't mind my ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... somewhat rapidly-acquired and long-retained fancies concerning the clean and unclean, upon which Jews and Mussulmans lay such curious stress. It was the result of my happening to spend a year in the East, at an age when the brain is very receptive of new ideas, and when I happened to be much impressed by the nobler aspects of Mussulman civilisation, especially, I may say, with the manly conformity of their every-day practice to their creed, which contrasts sharply with what we see among most Europeans, who profess ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... were so arranged that each of the one hundred sections comprising the three thousand feet of receptive surface at the focus of the mirror formed a concentric circle of energy beams; each circle becoming progressively smaller in diameter, so that the energy combined into one hundred concentric circles, one within the other, as it left the rods; but these circles were capable of the necessary focusing ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... it. So, too, the denizens of the world of Astralism. In any of these named worlds there is a material presence—which must be created, if only for a single or periodic purpose. It matters not whether a material presence already created can be receptive of a disembodied soul, or a soul unattached can have a body built up for it or around it; or, again, whether the body of a dead person can be made seeming quick through some diabolic influence manifested in the present, or an inheritance ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... that he and she, and those dear puppets of his own creations, were denizens together of some fairy and ethereal world, wandering through the fascinating maze of imaginative life. It was almost an intoxication, this wonderfully stimulating contact with a mind so receptive, so brilliant, so sympathetic. He forgot his garret, Cicely, the drear past, the passionate warnings of Drexley and Rice. As a weaver of stories he was in his first youth. He had peopled but few worlds with those wonderfully precious creations—the children of the brain. They were ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... his book—a volume of pious meditations. Events had drawn him into a receptive attitude toward religion. He was surprised at ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... hours' sleep every night just robs himself of so much vitality. The loss may not be felt or noticed at present, but the process of sleeping is only Nature's banking system of principal and interest. A mind capable of the fulfilment of its highest duties should be not only receptive to ideas, but quick to comprehend a point. With a fresh mind and a clear brain, a young man has two of the greatest levers of success. These cannot be retained under social indulgences. The dissipation of a night ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... true of painting and poetry and sculpture. The feelings which inspire them and the feelings which they arouse in receptive souls are totally independent of ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the matter of music—ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught. To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never denying, defending or justifying what she might point out as a fault, but setting himself at once to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... is visible in his earliest published poems. The greater part of his vacations was spent in his native Lake-country, where his only sister, Dorothy, was the companion of his rambles. She was a woman of large natural endowments, chiefly of the receptive kind, and had much to do with the formation and tendency of the poet's mind. It was she who called forth the shyer sensibilities of his nature, and taught an originally harsh and austere imagination to surround itself with fancy and feeling, as the rock fringes itself with ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... to give his opinion on the future of the session now about to begin. To all such questions he replied with more or less extended observations, and sometimes he had the pleasure of finding himself the centre of a group respectfully receptive of his opinions. This success rendered him very inattentive to the telegraphy of his wife, who, watching his various evolutions, made him signs whenever she could catch his eye that she wished ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... teaching. It took all of Don's good nature at times to prevent an open break with Kirkwell. Once the latter accused Don of trying to "ball him up" so that he would play poorly and Don would get the position. The next day, though, he made an awkward apology for that accusation and was quite receptive to Don's criticisms and instructions. But Don's task was no easy one and it grew harder as the season progressed and the second team, especially as to its linemen, failed to develop the ability Mr. Boutelle looked for. ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... upon her, though the world seemed to frown. Flowers had looked shyly and sweetly into her face as if they saw nothing there to criticise. She had plucked a few and fastened them into her breast-pin, and their faint perfume was like a low, soothing voice. She was in a softened and receptive mood, and a kind word, even a kind glance, might have tuned the scale in favor of ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... in those spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the simple monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat mechanical routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on acquiring knowledge with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of studious boyhood as yet unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical life to which every one destined him would only be a continuation of the same, as indeed it had ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the gifts of invention and imagination, qualities proper to the child, become weak and passive. The home now is only a preparation for school. In it, young people growing up, are accustomed to receive services, without performing any on their part. They are trained to be always receptive instead of giving something in return. Then people are surprised at a youthful generation, selfish and unrestrained, pressing forward shamelessly on all occasions before their elders, crudely unresponsive in respect of those attentions, which in earlier generations were ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... collapse, dropped into a chair on her veranda, her faithful Major by her side. He had come to offer help and sympathy as soon as he heard of her distress, and, finding her in such a softened, dependent, and receptive mood, the Major had remained to ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... for which Merker was responsible was the utilization of the slabs and edgings in the construction of fruit trays and boxes. When he approached Welton on the subject, the lumberman was little inclined to be receptive to the idea. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... as the great masculine positive force, the soul as the feminine or receptive force, and the meeting of these two, the "mystic rapture" of the marriage of Divinity and Humanity, as the source ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... classic example of the confinement of a people within its political boundaries is the long isolation of Japan from 1624 to 1854. The pent-up forces there accumulated, in a population which had doubled itself in the interval and which by hard schooling was made receptive to every improved economic method, manifest themselves in the insistent demand for more land which has permeated all the recent policy of Japan. But the history of Japan is exceptional. The rule is that the growing people slowly but continually overflow ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... of nature for a receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch—one of the first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on for 150 miles through what was practically the enemy's country. Adair, owing to what he likes to term his "usual good fortune," reached the Choctaw country safely and by his adroitness and substantial presents won the friendship of the influential chief, Red Shoe, whom he found in a receptive mood, owing to a French agent's breach of hospitality involving Red Shoe's favorite wife. Adair thus created a large proEnglish faction among the Choctaws, and his success seriously impaired French prestige with all the southwestern tribes. ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... aim of the wise was to educate the receptive and all who came to them in the attitude of disciples. This aim corresponded very closely to that of the modern educator. Again the preface to the book of Proverbs clearly ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... that he did not want to speak of France, and wondered why. But Marvin, eager to talk of his favourite study, seized the suggestion in all innocence. He had gone to Paris as he had wandered through life, with the mind of a child, eager, receptive, open to impression. Such minds pass by much that is of value, but to one or two conclusions they bring a perceptive comprehension which is photographic in ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Mrs. Alexander Whyte's. In the course of these three days He addressed the Theosophical Society, the Esperanto Society, and many of the students, including representatives of almost all parts of the East. He also spoke to two or three other large meetings in the bleak but receptive 'northern Athens.' It is pleasant to add that here, as elsewhere, many seekers came and had private interviews with Him. It was a fruitful season, and He ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... day after dinner, as was their wont in the summer—he, on this occasion, under the influence of a good cigar, mellow in mind and moral in sentiment, but inclining to be didactic for the moment because the coffee was late; she in a receptive mood, ready to gather silently, and store with care, in her capacious memory any precept that might fall from his lips, to be taken out ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was to see how these two conditions, freedom of elections and liberty of the press, have been brought about. The pupils were thus placed in a receptive attitude to hear the story ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Old Testament, there are the most moving, tender, and simple stories in the New. To the uncorrupted mind, to the unjaded mind, which has not been forced to look on books as mere recitals of exciting adventures, the Acts of the Apostles are full of entrancing episodes. It is very easy for a receptive youth to acquire a taste for St. Paul, and I soon learned that St. Paul was not only one of the greatest of letter writers, but as a figure of history more interesting than Julius Caesar, and certainly more modern. Young people delight in human documents. They ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Art, Italy, Greece, Life, Music, Psyche, Color, Motion, Liberty! Put yourself into a receptive attitude now, and Beauty will speak to you!" And while a satellite ran rosy fingers down a lute, she moved the toe named Beauty to ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... but some one gave his secret away for he was met at the station at Buffalo Center by the entire troop. Chick-chick jumped up on the steps before the train stopped and at peril of life and limb pulled him off the train into the receptive arms of Apple and Matt. Big Tom Scoresby gave him grip for grip in a mighty scout handshake—the only scout who could match him. Goosey hung on to his elbow waiting for his turn. All affectation of reserve disappeared ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... is a gymnasium. Take which figure you choose. Because of this, good talk, following the principle of life, is always directed with a general desire for learning rather than teaching. No good talker is obtrusive, thrusting forward his observation on men and things. He is rather receptive, trying to get at other people's observations; and what he says himself falls from him, as it were, by accident, he unconscious that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... therefore, that strangers who come usually sit in front of me. I have a lively curiosity, and I like to look at them. In the winter there are no strangers, and my mind is, I fancy, at such times, more receptive ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... which artists need, the gods bestowed upon you a face which wins all hearts, even those of women, because it is a mirror of genuine, helpful, womanly kindness, a sincere disposition, and a healthy, receptive mind. To reproduce such a face, not exactly beautiful, and yet bewitching, is the hardest possible task, and Hermon, I repeat it, has succeeded. You are the only one of your noble sex who inspires the motherless man with respect, and for whom he feels more than a fleeting fancy. What does he not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that he is a form, which is capable of receiving in itself that which constitutes a man; and thus that he is not born a man, but that he is made a man; and that a man is born such a form as to be an organ receptive of life from God, to the end that he may be a subject into which God may introduce all good, and, by union with himself, may make him eternally blessed. We have perceived from your conversation, that wisdom at this day is so far extinguished or infatuated, that nothing at all is known concerning ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... uplifting. Some people I know employ this morning leisure in scrubbing their consciences clean, thus thriftily making room for the sins of the coming day. But Sarah Brown's conscience was dreadfully receptive, almost magnetic; little sins like smuts lay always deep upon it. There were a few regrettable seconds in every minute she lived, I think, though she never enjoyed the compensations attached to a really considerable sin. Anyway her conscience ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... to every earnest and sincere seeker throughout all the ages. If you will ask yourself, What are the main and abiding thoughts which are embodied in Nature? your conclusion, I think, need not be elaborate and confusing. The question, however, must be asked in a receptive and unprejudiced mood, and not merely by the matter-of-fact intellect. "Every inch of earth, of water, of fire, and of air contains the fundamental principles of the universe, and man is the connecting ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... on the stormy path of life, are only loosely connected; and yet the book achieves a unified effect, thanks to the wonderful musical atmosphere which is its element, and to the pivotal position in it of province and city: "Graz, city lost in the expanse of nature, so still, so receptive and yet fulfilled as no other is with soft impressiveness; the green-dreaming, tree-rustling, gentle-singing city of Graz, animate beyond all great cities with the soul of nature." The next novel, The Sons of Haindl (1908), a collection of similar types ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... strength; the other draws us by his alluring charm. Michael Angelo is in painting what Dante and Shakespeare are in poetry, and Beethoven in music; Raphael is like the gentle Spenser and the tender Mozart. Michael Angelo is thoroughly original; Raphael possessed a peculiarly receptive nature, that caught something from all with whom he came into close contact. Michael Angelo strove continually to grow; Raphael struggled for nothing. Michael Angelo's life was sternly lonely and sorrowful; Raphael's bright, happy, and placid. Michael Angelo lived long; Raphael ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light and heat ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... accidents, of course, in plenty. The Lord took Mrs. Eccles's own uncle from his half-filled basket to another world, for which, as a "tea and coffee totaller," he was no doubt well prepared. The too receptive organisms of unsuspecting infancy suffered in their turn. In short, it was a busy season ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... reflect how much the charm of a locality depends upon our own internal condition? Was she aware that any place, however tame and dull, becomes delightful through the presence of one who creates in us a state receptive ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... as much as their attire. Orde's worn and wrinkled around the eyes, and grizzled at the temples, was the harder and more square of the two, and it was with something like envy that the owner looked at the comfortable outlines of Pagett's blandly receptive countenance, the clear skin, the untroubled eye, and ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... in flesh and blood, and no one knew any better than she, herself, the vanity to rout the faults and frailties inherited. She strove the harder to overthrow such imperfections by perfecting and cultivating the maid's receptive mood. She was ever fencing with her in words, working out in detail exchange of thought wherein Katherine might, if 'twere in her, make a clever reply. At times Mistress Penwick would pick up such threads of Janet's teaching ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... infinitum, and which thus enables us to give out to any extent we please. But for wise and effective giving out a strong and enlightened will is an absolute necessity, and therefore we do well to cultivate the will, or the active side of our nature. But we must equally cultivate the receptive side also; and when we do this rightly by seeing in the Infinite Mind the one source of supply, our will-power becomes intensified by the knowledge that the whole power of the Infinite is present to back it up; and with this continual sense of Infinite Power behind us we can go calmly and steadily ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... rejection of self; and such a rejection seems like an extinguishment of the very life. But, if we reject this old, vain life, a new vitality, born of higher and more enduring principles, will at once begin. Remember that we are spiritually organized forms, receptive of life. If the life of selfish and perverted ends becomes inactive, a new, better, and truer life will begin. We must live; for life, inextinguishable life, is the inheritance received from the Creator, who is life eternal ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... or not she had attached herself to the sound Low Church School of his father; but she would probably be open to conviction on that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple faith; honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent, graceful to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and, in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... existence, and hence they remain as isolated bits of primeval wilderness, hedged about by farms and furrows. The water is the life-blood of the marsh,—drain it, and reed and rush, bird and batrachian, perish or disappear. The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation,—melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... on terra firma; in the water the man will be thinking of the ducking in sight and his mind will not be in receptive mood. It is also essential to make him understand a hold thoroughly before ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... dried-up gullies and canals became silver-streaked with the incoming spray, and it needed only a windmill to make the scene as Dutch as a Van Der Neer. Piloti was moody. Something worried him, but as I was not in a very receptive condition, I forbore questioning him. We walked over the closely cut grass until the water was reached. He stopped, tossed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... effect of moderate doses of alcohol on mental work much difference of opinion exists. Many students find that, instead of helping them in their work, it hinders them. It dulls their receptive faculties. Others, on the contrary, find real help in moderate quantities of wine. These differences of effect would seem to depend greatly on differences in constitutional temperament. It is certainly capable, for a time, of calling some of the mental faculties into increased ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... completely relaxed in body and mind. I am receptive to Nature's harmonious and invigorating vibrations—they dispel the discordant and destructive vibrations of hurry, worry, fear and anger. New life, new health, new strength are entering into me with every breath, pervading my ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... fitting prelude to unknown realms of enchantment. The dreamful calm of the two days' passage obliterates the memory of bygone difficulties and perturbations, the interval between past and future experiences falling like refreshing dew on the weary spirit, and increasing the receptive capacity required for the assimilation of new impressions. The vast extent of the Malay Archipelago, and the stupendous size of the principal islands, comes as a fresh revelation to travellers whose ideas have been limited by vague recollections of schoolroom geography. The seven hundred ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... walking soberly Along our street all dappled with rich sun, I please myself with words, and happily Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run; And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask, Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes And traitor hand that fails ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... before us, it can hardly be deemed surprising that Home should be able to play on the imagination of sitters so sympathetic and receptive as Lords Dunraven and Crawford unquestionably were. To tell the truth, Home's whole career, with its scintillating, melodramatic, and uniformly successful phases is altogether inexplicable unless it be assumed that he possessed the hypnotist's ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... are satisfied with believe and credible just because they keep aloof from each other. Good and well go better together than quick and quickly. The English vocabulary is a rich medley because each English word wants its own castle. Has English long been peculiarly receptive to foreign words because it craves the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or, conversely, has the mechanical imposition of a flood of French and Latin loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, skill which was progressive—in the other, skill which was at pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction—hungry for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... who, however great his vices, was always master of them. From his right cheek-bone to the corner of his mouth ran a scar, very well healed. Instead of detracting from the beauty of his face it added a peculiar fascination. And the American imagination, always receptive of the romantic, might readily and forgivably have pictured villas, maids in durance vile, and sword-thrusts under the moonlight. But the waiter, who had served his time in one or another of the foreign armies, knew that no foil or rapier could have made such a scar; more probably the saber. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... symposium of discussion were modeled on actual personages. He himself was personified under the dual form of Florestan and Eusebius, the "two souls in his breast"—the former, the fiery iconoclast, impulsive in his judgments and reckless in attacking prejudices; the latter, the mild, genial, receptive dreamer. Master Raro, who stood for Wieck, also typified the calm, speculative side of Schumann's nature. Chiara represented Clara Wieck, and personified the feminine side of art. So the various personages were all modeled after associates of Schumann, and, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... uniform was the life which we are now retracing, and at the same time so receptive of any noble influence which opportunity might bring, that a real epoch is marked in Wordsworth's poetical career by the mere re-reading of some Latin authors in 1814-16 with a view to preparing his ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Hoag is as well rendered as it is merited. The editorial note on amateur criticism is sound and kindly; the author voicing her protests in a manner which disarms them of malice, and putting us in a receptive attitude. Personally, the present critic is in complete agreement with the remarks on poetical elision and inversions; but we are confident that those of our board who hold different views, will accept the dicta in ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... have made themselves most prominent in these classes within the last twenty years; and this acquaintanceship shades naturally off, in a minor and moderate degree, into those circles of good social standing which are rather liberally receptive than productive of literature and art. The writer cannot profess or affect to be "behind the scenes" of political parties, or to have dived into the minds of the peerage over their wine or of artisans in their workshops. He has conversed freely with many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various |
