"Conceive of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think, Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too— So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying: "O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee!"— The madman saith He ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ballroom, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... contempt of all government which makes it necessary to oppose to a violent distemper remedies not less violent. This is, of course, the excuse of every overbearing authority, which, having aroused irritation by its own mismanagement, can conceive of no better way of allaying that irritation than the bayonet and the bullet. The Ministry and the advocates of the Ministry maintained that the unhappy disposition of the people was such that juries under the influence ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Judge Draper writes of the graded schools only. Could you conceive of a more stinging rebuke to an institution from a man who is making it his business to know its ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... him a high exultation and pride, in the past glory and future prospects of his country. With these prospects are associated—if we are only wise, true, and faithful, if we shun sectional dissension—all that man can conceive of the progression of the American people. And the only danger which threatens those high prospects is that miserable spirit which, disregarding the obligations of honor, makes war upon the Constitution; which induces men to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... here, in the same place, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said I, "unless war should break out meantime. At present we all seem to have a very good modus vivendi, and as I have no pressing engagements, I can conceive of nothing more charming than passing the winter here in your society." Saying which I bowed, and turning to Helena, "At ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... replied, "No." It is not that I do not think the subject an interesting one. I cannot myself conceive of any topic more likely to prove fascinating to the world as a whole, or at all events to the cultured portion of it. But I will not do it, on principle. It is inartistic, and it sets a bad example to the younger men. Other writers (a ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... cut through these legs, though the necessity of believing him to have merely great size does not disprove his existence here. I think it probable we shall find this is the work of some animal with incisors of such power as it is difficult for us to conceive of." "There is no indication here of teeth," said Bearwarden, "each foot being taken off with a clean cut. Besides, we are coming to believe that man existed on earth during the greater part, if not the whole, of our Carboniferous period." "We must reserve our decision pending further ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... for me, I nothing have, I nothing am. But One there is, who was and is all that the mind of saint or angel can conceive of glory and of happiness; and he is mine, and I am most blessed. Lengthen on, ye shadows, until all is shadow on these orbs of flesh. Then, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... It is difficult to conceive of the enthusiasm that Dr. Talmage aroused everywhere the immense crowds that gathered to see and hear him. During our stay in London this time, after a preaching service in a church in Piccadilly, the wheels of our carriage were seized and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... "For good will, dear esteem'd madam, and I hope your ladyship will so conceive of it: And will, in time, return from your disdain, And rue the suff'rance of our ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... December, 1807. "Do not seek for popularity at Lisbon, nor for the means of pleasing the nation; that would be failing in your aim, emboldening the people, and preparing misfortunes for yourself. The hope that you conceive of commerce and prosperity, is a chimera with which ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... were to dictate to their masters alterations in the traditional time-table, or to insist on a modified curriculum.... These worthy people [officials] confuse manly independence with disloyalty; they cannot conceive of natives except either as ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... like the child: that he is simply and altogether our friend, our father—our more than friend, father, and mother—our infinite love-perfect God. Grand and strong beyond all that human imagination can conceive of poet-thinking and kingly action, he is delicate beyond all that human tenderness can conceive of husband or wife, homely beyond all that human heart can conceive of father or mother. He has not two thoughts about us. With him all is simplicity of purpose and ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... were of course rare, but the nerve-fretting problems always existed. Industrial civilisation had given the growing and working generation a certain amount of leisure, and education enough to conceive of a choice in the use of that leisure; but had offered them no guidance ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... underwent great and incredible hunger. Those who inhabit and wander over it are a race of evil inclination and most cruel customs. The people of the fixt residences and those beyond regard silver and gold with indifference, nor can they conceive of any ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... strange that revealed religion, so-called, should have been grounded upon the miraculous; but the passage of the Red Sea, the raising of Lazarus and kindred wonders are not readily accepted in an enlightened era, and are utilized by scoffers to bring all religion into contempt. We can scarce conceive of God being reduced to the necessity of violating his own laws to demonstrate his presence and power. While it were presumption to ask any church to abate one jot or tittle of its dogma, it seems to me that all would gain by relying less upon the "evidential value of the miracles"; ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... desirable it would be to build a nest for this delicate dear bird, and take her to it, and live deliciously ever afterwards. This is what Osborn Kerr imagined while—like Rokeby—he watched her. He had never seen her other than pretty and dainty, than happy and gay; he could not conceive of her otherwise. He had not the faintest doubt of being able to keep her so, in that nest which he had built for two on the other side of town. Whenever it was possible, in the teacup passing, he tried to touch her hand; he longed for her to look at him; he wanted ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... him. Milton, with his sense of the grand style, could not understand the method of Shakespeare, any more than could Sir Joshua the method of Gainsborough. Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those that he has selected. Creation employs all its critical faculty within its own sphere. It may not use it in the sphere that ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the common enemy has prevented the celebration of the Country Dionysia for six years. How is it possible, under such circumstances, to conceive of Euripides as composing tragedies in the country? How could the general Lamachus be living out of the city in such a time of danger? Certainly the play itself gives us authority that this scene also is in Athens. At v. ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... practically agree on one point—in the definition of the "self." They agree in saying: that the self of each man is continuous with and in a sense identical with the Self of the universe. Now that seems an extraordinary conclusion, and one which almost staggers the modern mind to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the thread which runs all through the 'Upanishads'—the identity of the self of each individual with the self of every other individual throughout mankind, and even with the selves of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... but little blood shed. What is it, then, that has rendered these wars so famous in history? Sallust informs us in these words: "The actions of the Athenians doubtless were great; and yet I believe they were somewhat less than fame will have us conceive of them. But because Athens abounded in noble writers, the acts of that republic are celebrated throughout the whole world as most glorious; and the gallantry of those heroes who performed them, has had the good ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of Marathon and the defeat of AEgospotamos. In no other like interval of time, and in no other community of like dimensions, has so much work been accomplished of which we can say with truth that it is [Greek: ktaema es aei],—an eternal possession. It is impossible to conceive of a day so distant, or an era of culture so exalted, that the lessons taught by Athens shall cease to be of value, or that the writings of her great thinkers shall cease to be read with fresh profit and delight. We understand these ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... eyes, her hand still in mine, conscious that her cheeks were flushing. It was impossible for me to conceive of her performing ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... such a period is an ill occasion for searching into the broad problems of human destiny; the present is all-important and all-absorbing; and such a book as that of Job could have arisen only out of an isolation of mind, and life, and interest, which we cannot conceive of as possible under ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... without much difficulty to the constitution and law of the communis deorum et hominum civitas. The idea of God in any such sense as this was indeed new to him; but he could grasp it under the expression "universal law of right reason" when he would have utterly failed, for example, to conceive of it as "the Absolute." He can feel himself the citizen of a State whose maker and ruler is God, and whose law is the inevitable force of Reason; he can realise his relationship to God as a part of the same State, gifted with the same power of discerning its legal ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... delivered by the Governor-General at the opening of the session there was not the slightest reference to the present measure, which apparently had been brought in as an afterthought, and something must have occurred after the Governor-General's speech was delivered, otherwise one could not conceive of such an important Bill being omitted from the speech. As it was the Bill would simply hang things up until the Commission reported, and now the House would be legislating in the dark. The vast majority of Natives had declared themselves to be against ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... love, had known well many women of whom this suppliant was the virtual counterpart, fragile, complex, too sensitive, too ardent, the predestined prey of impulses and disabilities that none but themselves, their adorers, and specialists in neurasthenia, could conceive of. In the present woman he discerned the same lovely and neurotic countenance, the same traces of mingled fastidiousness and desperation, the same promises of exceptionally ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the slave of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... better case. With fuller knowledge they have sinned scarcely less. Strict justice will be meted out by God to all, the Jew coming first and then the Gentile. The Gentile will not escape, for the Gentiles, whom we conceive of as having no law, have a law in that moral sense which makes them instinctively put in practice the precepts of the Law, and their inward thoughts accuse or defend them (ii. 1-16). The Jew may boast of his Law and his knowledge of revelation, but he ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... refuse to accept the term "empire" as applied to a republic. Accustomed to link "empire" with "emperor," they conceive of a supreme hereditary ruler as an essential part of imperial life. A little reflection will show the inadequacy of such a concept. "The British Empire" is an official term, used by the British Government, although Great Britain is a limited ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... motives, will—things we could not see. To-day we think about a very objective substance, ever present to our senses—our body. A man may deny point blank the existence of his soul—using the word in its ordinary acceptation—he cannot say, "I have not got a body." Even if he should conceive of that body as a mere bundle of ideas, an accumulation of sensations, yet there it is, making itself ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... always the same game, and that it in any way resembled our game is not to be imagined. Base- ball in its mildest form is essentially a robust game, and it would require an elastic imagination to conceive of little girls possessed of physical powers such ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... all means to conceive of things as he pleases, provided he is an artist. Let us rise to poetic heights to judge an idealist, and then prove to him that his dream is commonplace, ordinary, not mad or magnificent enough. But if we judge a materialistic writer, let ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... young girl 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 ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... one must not conceive of piles of boulders or heaps of fragments, but of a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it: cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... transcendental idealism. The process has been gradual. It was only by degrees that they reached the idea of salvation in knowledge, the knowledge that is union with Brahma; and it was likewise only through slow stages that they were able to conceive of Brahma in itself. Many passages in the Upanishads are full of struggles to represent Brahma by symbols or forms perceptible to the sense, such as ether, breath, the sun, etc. Priests endeavoured to advance through ritual ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... narrow worldliness, could not even understand the principles and motives of her action. She was a true and dutiful wife, and presided over his household with elegance and refinement; but he regarded all this as a matter of course. He could not conceive of anything else in his wife. All his "subordinates" in their several spheres, "must" perform their duties with becoming propriety. Everything "must be regular and systematic" in his house, as truly as in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... by which all may profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of man. But there is something in the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... lips curved in a smile and his tones fell to a moderate volume. "Such," said he, "are the joys which our country shares with its King. Because they are his they are ours; because they are his they are hers. Hers and his are they till their lives' end; ours while our hearts are worthy to conceive of them." ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... their work differs essentially in character. In fact, it is scarcely possible to conceive of greater artistic contrasts. Gorky is plain, direct, broad, realistic, elemental. His art is native, not acquired. Civilization and what learning he obtained later through the reading of books have influenced, ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... profound, carelessly dressed (at Sandgate he commonly wore a little felt hat that belonged to his son) and himself, himself, indissoluble matter and spirit, down to the heels of his boots. I cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete immortality. If he lives, he lives as I knew him and clothed as I knew him and with his unalterable voice, in a heaven of daedal flowers or a hell of ineffectual flame; he lives, dreaming ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... have her both. These somewhat widely diverging aims were all a part of the current of her life, the impulse to be what those she loved would like to have her. It was not that she was willing to give up her own individuality to gratify the impulse, but rather that she did not for an instant conceive of the necessity for such a sacrifice. It was part of her immense happiness that she had always loved to be what it pleased everyone to have her, and that, apparently, people wished to have her only what she wished to be. She was like a child guarded by her elders from any knowledge of forbidden ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... most famous speeches, appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation. In other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even contemplate a really revolutionary change. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to control things unless I want to!" She stamped her foot. "Can't you conceive of me ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... scarcer day by day, and the human race will be poorer by the loss of one of those half-matured discoveries which have more than once in the world's history been on the point of raising the animal called man to a higher, stronger, finer development of brain and muscle than we can conceive of under existing circumstances. Who can tell? Perhaps the strange solitary bush may be found growing elsewhere—in some other continent across the ocean. The ways of Nature are past comprehension, and no man can say who sows the seed ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... serve him. Now, we must remember that duration extends ahead of us in the same limitless way in which it reaches back. Give, then, the race today all the time necessary, what cannot it accomplish? Apply it again either to an individual or to the race, in time, some would attain to what we conceive of as perfection, and the term by which such beings are known to us is God. I can see ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... fire to be condensed or thinned, If all the parts of fire did still preserve But fire's own nature, seen before in gross. The heat were keener with the parts compressed, Milder, again, when severed or dispersed— And more than this thou canst conceive of naught That from such causes could become; much less Might earth's variety of things be born From any fires soever, dense or rare. This too: if they suppose a void in things, Then fires can be condensed and still left rare; But since they see such opposites of thought Rising against them, and ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... animal, a sheep or an ox, but simply as animal, that it must sustain itself by food, by the process of assimilation. This, however, is merely a contingent truth, because it is in our power to conceive of organized beings whose substance shall not wear away, and consequently shall not need perpetual restoration. But what faculty of the mind is unemployed here that is engaged in perceiving the property of a triangle, that as triangle, it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... conceive of the market-place at Athens as bearing any resemblance to the bare, undecorated spaces appropriated to business in our modern towns; but rather as a magnificent public square, closed in by grand historic ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... specially when the Nile comes to their feet. More than three thousand years old, they look less eternal than the Sphinx. Like them, the Sphinx is waiting, but with a greater purpose. The Sphinx reduces man really to nothingness. The Colossi leave him some remnants of individuality. One can conceive of Strabo and AElius Gallus, of Hadrian and Sabina, of others who came over the sunlit land to hear the unearthly song in the dawn, being of some—not much, but still of some—importance here. Before the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age—"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (la plus forte tete de toute l'antiquite,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."—Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... with the Divine. So think angels and spirits. In thought withdrawn from space and time, divine omnipresence is comprehended, and divine omnipotence, also the Divine from eternity, but these are not at all grasped by thought to which an idea of space and time adheres. Plain it is, then, that one can conceive of God from eternity, but never of nature from eternity. So one can think of the creation of the world by God, but never of its creation from nature, for space and time are proper to nature, but the Divine is apart from them. That ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... I can conceive of no simpler way to you than the knowledge of your name and address. I have drawn airy images of you, but they do not become incarnate, and I am not sure that I should recognize you in the brief moment of passing. Your nature is not of those which are instantly legible. As an abstract ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... any human being in our class of society in England had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as inseparable; even by myself. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... does not breathe at all. But if more air is to enter there must be additional space provided; hence greater expansion of the lungs can only follow an enlargement of the chest cavity in one or in all directions. These are spoken of as diameters. It follows that it is possible to conceive of the chest being enlarged in three, and only three, directions; so that it may be increased in size in its vertical, its transverse, and its antero-posterior diameter, or diameter ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... devoted with all my heart and soul. I have never regretted the choice, and have spent my life there, except when in Washington, for considerably more than half a century. In that time Worcester has grown from a city of fifteen thousand to a city of one hundred and thirty thousand people. I can conceive of no life more delightful for a man of public spirit than to belong to a community like that which combines the youth and vigor and ambition of a western city with the refinement and conveniences, and the pride in a noble history, of an old ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... natty and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose! His prose had a natural grace of its own, And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone; But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, And is forced to forgive where one might have admired; 690 Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, It runs like a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... triumphantly, "isn't that as interesting as your Irish romances? Where would you find a landlord of England or Ireland who would make a free gift of three thousand dollars to a servant? They simply could not conceive of such generosity unless it were the gift of a king or a prince, and then it would be put down in their histories for ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... yet with all this there are many essential elements in the cooperation of Negroes and whites for work and wealth that are too readily overlooked or not thoroughly understood. The average American can easily conceive of a rich land awaiting development and filled with black laborers. To him the Southern problem is simply that of making efficient workingmen out of this material, by giving them the requisite technical skill and the help of invested capital. The problem, however, is by no means ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... could not conceive of any christianity outside of church-going, came and stood beside Miss Evans, and commenced ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... infidelity, though morally as reprehensible as that of the wife, does not entail quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow his name and affection upon them, and leave them his property. One can scarcely conceive of a more outrageous wrong than this; and it is in order to guard against such a possibility that society from remote ages has watched over the chastity of women far more jealously than over that of men. It is as a result ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... line which goes back of our very conception of a personal God, or which is inherent in that conception. We cannot conceive of God as God, unless we conceive of him as the true God, and the God of truth. If there be any falsity in him, he is not the true God. Truth is of God's very nature. To admit in our thought that a lie is of God, is to admit that falsity is in him, or, in other words, that he ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... this picture, and conceive of the land gathered in a compact mass around the poles, shutting out the water, but consider the equatorial region of the earth to be occupied by the waters of the ocean, we would manifestly have a very different scene. From the ocean moisture-laden ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... serious student of international law is likely either to overrate the authority which it most beneficially exercises, or to conceive of it as an unalterable ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... squadron everywhere, to give protection to the brave and to those who may have fallen in the cause of freedom! Your acquiescence in that sentiment indicates the profound sympathy of the people of the United States for the people of Hungary, manifested in the person of their great chief; and I can conceive of no duty that would be more acceptable to the gallant officers of the navy of the United States except one, and that is, to strike a blow for liberty themselves in a just cause, approved ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... affirmatively, not only that the defendant knowingly voted, but that she so voted knowing that she had no right to vote. That is, the term "knowingly," applies, not to the fact of voting, but to the fact of want of right. Any other interpretation of the language would be absurd. We cannot conceive of a case where a party could vote without knowledge of the fact of voting, and to apply the term "knowingly" to the more act of voting, would make nonsense of the statute. This word was inserted as defining the essence of the offence, and it limits the criminality ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... joys, not for the sake of his fellow-men, but for his own, is also unfitted for the obligations of Life. For he cannot instruct others in its use and abuse. Nor, being thus ignorant of earth, can he conceive of heaven." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... have been of a verbal and confidential nature. In my opinion, Floyd was fully capable of supplementing written orders to resist, by verbal orders to surrender without resistance. If he did so, I can conceive of nothing more treacherous, for his object must have been to make Anderson the scape-goat of whatever might occur. Buell, however, is not the man to be the bearer of any treacherous communication. Still, he did not appear to sympathize much with us, for he expressed his disapproval ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... writings. There is no trace of his ever being affected by the spectacular incidents of warfare nor by the grandeur of the natural scenes through which he passed. The reason may be that his intellect was absorbed in the contemplation of men and motives, of means and ends. We cannot conceive of his ever having been carried out of himself by the rapture of inspiration. Such clearness of mental perception is naturally accompanied by a certain coolness of temperament. A man of superlative greatness must live more or less alone among his fellows. With ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... daughter's suitor; and once his son-in-law, he could scarcely have prosecuted him for replacing two thousand pounds' worth of bank-notes in his strong-box by notes of another kind. Exasperated beyond all measure as Trevethick was, it did credit to his sagacity that even at such a moment he did not conceive of Richard Yorke as being a common thief. But he concluded him to be much worse, and deserving of far heavier punishment, as a man that would have obtained his daughter under false pretenses. He went down stairs, taking the box ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... said the prince with deliberation, "that in America you are familiar with the argument that, if your people understood only length and breadth and did not understand the Third Dimension—thickness—you could not then conceive of lifting, say, a square or a triangle and laying it down upon another square or triangle. In other words, you would not know anything ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... readily conceive of the amount of cigars consumed in this country, daily, to say little or nothing of the yearly smokers. The growing passion for the noxious weed is truly any thing but pleasantly contemplative. A boy commences smoking at ten or a dozen years old, and by the time he should be ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... told me he was going to Austria. He too belonged to the knights of death, as an Italian comrade had named a certain section of the Anarchists; and he was working out his inevitable destiny. I wondered now how I had ever allowed myself to conceive of him otherwise. I had always known it was impossible, and I felt that it was only an impulse of rebellion against fate which had led me ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... in luminous conjectures. Even with her present mind, Alma could not conceive of Mary Abbott as a wanton, of Harvey Rolfe as a shameless intriguer; but it stung her keenly to think that for years there had been this secret between them. Probably the matter was known to Mrs. Abbott's husband, and so, at his death, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... has not seen it can conceive of the intense passion the North American Indian has for ardent spirits. He seems to have no power of restraint whatever when the opportunity of indulging ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... impossible, in the cold light of the day after the passing excitement of battle, to conceive of troops successfully storming such intrenched positions But this is just what the Germans did, or thought they did, for their officers did not realize that the giving way of the French at this point was ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... to conceive of any Englishman coming over here to merge Borden, Laurier and Crerar. Imagination fails. Not even Aitken could have done it. That he succeeded in England where he must have failed in ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... metaphysician, but a rather premature one! So you can't conceive of it, eh? Sed patet experientia and contra experientiam negantem, fusilibus est arguendum, do you understand? And can't you conceive, with your philosophical head, that one can be absent from the class and not know the lesson at the same time? Is it a fact that absence necessarily implies ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the endless villas and gardens and terraces lining both banks of the Tiber, with trees and flowers and marble palaces, from Rome to Ostia and the sea, and both banks of the Anio, from Rome to Tivoli in the hills; conceive of the vast commerce, even of the mere business of supply to feed two millions of mouths; picture the great harbour with its thousand vessels—and some of those that brought grain from Egypt were four hundred feet long; remember its vast granaries and store-barns ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the sun. Who would care to live by the side of the purest stream or body of water, if it were not fringed with trees? Were it not for trees, would there be any beauty in mountain, hill, or valley,—for who can conceive of a beautiful landscape scene devoid ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... defending the other extreme, wrote: "Some of the difficulties that men whom we esteem have urged against the acceptance of all our Confessions are due to a misunderstanding of what is involved in a confessional subscription. They conceive of the Confessions as an external law that binds the conscience to a mechanical acceptance of all [doctrinal matter] that may be found in these documents. What is properly confessional in these documents is their ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... only imperative among animals and savages. Thus civilization tends to subordinate, if not to minimize, modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a fundamental social law of life. But an essential grace of life it still remains, and whatever delicate variations it may assume we can scarcely conceive of its disappearance. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... beautiful entrance to the harbor. A flood of light filled it as we entered, and it must have looked just as it did when it was first named the "Golden Gate." All along, for miles, the water throws itself up into the air, and falls in fountains on the rocky shore. I cannot conceive of a more beautiful harbor in the world; and, as we were two or three hours in coming from the sea up to the city, we had ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in "wandering ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... impressed that the Bible was not properly interpreted by the preachers, for I could not conceive of a God of wrath who was unjust enough to allow His little ones to suffer pain, misery, and death. I had hope, however, that some day the truth would be revealed to an awakening world, but little did I dream that ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... door was closed with great violence; it was Lady Randolph, who had left the room, and she wondered at the strange gleam of pleasure which lit up the livid face of her uncle. Unconsciously she shrunk from him as from something evil; but little indeed could that innocent mind conceive of the feeling which made him exalt in having thus drawn forth an indication of jealous anger from the wife who so long had crushed him with her cold contempt. Lilias remained with her uncle, and told him the brief history of her untroubled life; all things connected with her seemed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... experience, so much a child in some things, so much a woman in others; and Ruth in turn, it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes, wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would yield to the professional ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Now during this three-year voyage, the story is that he once lost his 'bearings' for a month; in fact, it is intimated that a hiatus of two months in his 'log' really did exist. This hiatus, however, could easily have been covered in the ship's log-book. We may conceive of reasons for which he might have preferred to keep a temporary silence concerning the discovery of a strange people, in those early, savage times. The little book said, that, when in the Pacific, after passing the strait, Sir Francis was ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... dazzling ivory—ha! no enemy ever saw this last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail—the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member—oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description—it is impotent ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ran up and down the ledge in a vain search for the spot where we had clawed our way to the top. Not that we thought the finding of the place would solve the problem of the descent. It was hard to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come, and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself upon a ledge that was ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... one can the delight which comes from success, while for another child in the same class one may need to minimize success on account of a spirit of arrogance which has been developed before school life began. It is possible to conceive of a situation in which some children need to be encouraged to fight, even to the extent of engaging in physical combat, in order to develop a kind of courage which will accept physical discomfort rather than give up a principle or ideal. In the same group there may be children for whom the teacher ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... no difficulty in believing in the existence of consciousness apart from material organism; though he could not readily conceive of pure mind, or pure spirit, apart from some kind of substantial envelope or substratum. Many of the views suggested in "Man's Place in the Universe" as to man's spiritual progress hereafter, the reason or ultimate purpose for which he was brought into ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... sense. (Compare the hypotheses and images of Rep.) It is true that it does not attain to the clearness of ideas. But like them it seems to remain, even if all the objects contained in it are supposed to have vanished away. Hence it was natural for Plato to conceive of it as eternal. We must remember further that in his attempt to realize either space or matter the two abstract ideas of weight and extension, which are familiar to us, had never passed ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... bacchantes, possessed by the god, drink milk and honey from the rivers, and cannot believe, till they recover their senses, that they have been drinking mere water. Empedocles said that "the mind could only conceive of fire by being fire." ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... competent for the construction of the famous 'Welcome Nugget,' an Australian find having weight equal to 152 lbs. avoirdupois. Such masses of pyrites are by no means uncommon in our drifts or the beds of our mountain streams. Thus we find that no straining of the imagination is required to conceive of this mode of formation for the huge masses of gold found in Australia in particular, such as the Welcome Nugget, 184 lbs. 9 oz.; the Welcome Stranger, a surface nugget, 190 lbs. after smelting; the Braidwood specimen nugget, 350 lbs., two-thirds gold; besides many other ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... purged our sins by himself, so it was by himself at once—'For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified' (10:14). Now by this word 'at once,' or by 'one offering,' is cut off all those imaginary sufferings of Christ which foolish men conceive of; as that he in all ages hath suffered or suffereth for sin in us.[30] No; he did this work but once. 'Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ever-present question on my mind has been, whether electricity has an actual and independent existence as a fluid or fluids, or was a mere power of matter, like what we conceive of the attraction of gravitation. If determined either way it would be an enormous advance in our knowledge; and as having the most direct and influential bearing on my notions, I have always sought for experiments ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... conceive of these great ice-beds of transformed snow as inert, immovable bodies. They think the snow lies upon the surface of the rocks or earth. The scientific observer knows better. By the very inertia of its ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... time: "You know I can't conceive of a sensitive man, be he musician or painter, or even writer of romance, who would put out his very best for an indiscriminate public to browse upon or trample over. He knows and feels the thing he has created to be a beautiful thing and an original thing, and he has been at much pains to ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... more than did the Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists of Pagan antiquity. Grecian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... visitor that he was a welcome guest. It was a dog-sleigh—a sort of conveyance much used by the fur-traders in winter travelling. In form, it was as like as possible to a tin slipper bath. It might also be compared to a shoe. If the reader will try to conceive of a shoe large enough to hold a man, sitting with his legs out before him, that will give him a good idea of the shape of a dog cariole. There is sometimes an ornamental curve in front. It is made of two thin hardwood planks curled up in front, with a light frame-work of ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly evinced extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the new life with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could not conceive of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang of intense repulsion. I won't enlarge on this fact or analyze it here, but confine myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the moment. All this may have arisen ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shadow, and that the line of low bushes on the long causeway could scarcely be relieved against them, yet I knew where they ought to be, and the more doubtful I felt about it, the more I put down my doubts, as if they were unreasonable children. One can scarcely conceive of the alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eye as low as the horizon, especially by night; to distinguish foreshortening is impossible, and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and more remote. Still I had the stars; and soon my eye, more practised, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... in state as the characters of history file by. I shall be able to call them all by name, to tell of the things they did and why they did them, and to connect their deeds with the world as it now is. I can't conceive of any picture-show equal to that, and all through my year with Shakespeare I shall be looking forward eagerly to my year with the historians. I plainly see that the neighbors will not need to bring in any playthings to amuse and entertain me, though, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and Ichthyosauri,—when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills of moving ice? And yet in those distant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... problem, or engaged in close thinking—an advantage which any one who has been a close student in later life, must appreciate—an advantage which I have recently heard young ladies in our university say, they could hardly conceive of before they went to the university from the high school where they fitted. This also led them almost every hour into the open air, and to take a little exercise, as the girls in our university and in some of our colleges are forced to do, effecting ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... point by a messenger from the palace who brought word that the Dor-ul-Otho was becoming impatient and if the priests from A-lur were not brought to him at once he would come himself to the temple and get them. Mo-sar shook his head. He could not conceive of such brazen courage in mortal breast and glad he was that the plan evolved for Tarzan's undoing did not necessitate his ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... present in all our material enjoyments. If you cannot think that He is with you, if you cannot conceive of His being there, that is no place for you. If you cannot feel that He approves, that is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... rum. Having made an end of eating and drinking, the bo'sun went over to where Job lay, to inquire how he felt, and found him lying very quiet, though his breathing had a heavy touch about it. However, we could conceive of nothing by which he might be bettered, and so left him, being more hopeful that Nature would bring him to health than any skill ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... posterity with its curse till all the stock died out, or fell into poverty and evil ways, as in the Pyncheon family of Hawthorne's romance. In the preface to the Marble Faun Hawthorne wrote: "No author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any thing but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." And yet ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... three gashes cut out of the head of the tool decrease the weight, and if these were omitted the tool would gain. Their only use that I can conceive of is that of a very poor substitute for pliers as a "groseing" tool, if one has forgotten one's pliers. But (as Serjeant Buzfuz might say) "who does ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... heart, cold as a sword-blade: "Come, come!" says Robert, striving to drag Isabella away, ... and that simple word was made frantic, breathless, by the accent accompanying it. No one who has not heard Delsarte utter the word rival can conceive of all the mysteries of hate and pain contained in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Conceive of Mrs. Ginx's reply, clothed in choice Westminster English: it asserted her readiness to cut off her right hand, her feet, to be hanged, drowned, burned, torn to pieces, in fact to withstand all the torments ascribed by vulgar tradition ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... "I am happy to be your servant. I can conceive of no greater pleasure than giving the service ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... to the last excess, and worthy of the god who chose to be honoured in such a manner. The spectators gave into the prevailing humour, and were seized with the same frantic spirit. Nothing was seen but dancing, drunkenness, debauchery, and all that the most abandoned licentiousness can conceive of gross and abominable. And this an entire people, reputed the wisest of all Greece, not only suffered, but admired and practised. I say an entire people; for Plato, speaking of the Bacchanalia, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the East in cases where the crop is not large, or in the West, and where the producer has large barns or sheds in which to store his fodder, it had doubtless best be cut and utilized in that way. But where no such facilities exist and the crop is large, as usual in the West, I can conceive of no better way to utilize the product than to feed it ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, "that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... are, as a rule, trustworthy. We should be foolish indeed not to follow the only guide we have through life. But, for all that, our highest and surest generalisations remain on the level of justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities. For my part, I am unable to conceive of an intelligence shaped on the model of that of men, however superior it might be, which could be any better off than our own in this respect; that is, which could possess logically justifiable grounds for certainty about ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... stress runs out, by what does that rod, in the bent portion, take shear? Could it be severed at the bend, and still perform its office? The writer can conceive of an inclined rod taking the shear of a beam if it were anchored at each end, or long enough somehow to have a grip in the concrete from the centroid of compression up and from the center of the steel down. This latter is a practical impossibility. A rod curved up from ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... what is man? Can one out of fifteen hundred millions of human beings living on one planet matter to God, when there are so many planets and stars, and there have been so many generations? Can he matter? It all depends on how we conceive of God. Here it is essential to give all the meaning to the term "God" that Jesus gave to it, to believe in God as Jesus believed in God, if we are to understand the fullness of Jesus' "good news." It all depends on God—on whether Jesus was right about God; and after all on Jesus himself. "A thing ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... "Conceive of a sublime creation, wherein the marvels of the visible universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness, swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to penetrate, and ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... wishful to lose their superfluous adipose tissue. Here, again, they disagree with their professional forebears. The experts of the preceding generations, being mainly Englishmen and Germans, could not conceive of living without drinking. Some advocated wines, some ales, some a mixture of both with an occasional measure of spirits added for the sake of digestion. But among the dependable dietetic authorities of the present ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... infantry saluted and rose. In the centre of an admiring and sympathetic crowd of Dienstmadchen sat the culprit, the least concerned of the party; a stripling—a boy—scarcely out of his teens! Indeed, it was impossible to conceive of a more innocent, bucolic, and almost angelic looking derelict. With a skin that had the peculiar white and rosiness of fresh pork, he had blue eyes, celestially wide open and staring, and the thick flocculent yellow curls of the sun god! He might have been an overgrown ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... revealing of Imbrie's worthy nature greatly perplexed Stonor. It had been so easy to believe that the two must have been parted as a result of something evil in Imbrie. He could not believe that it had been Clare's fault, however she might accuse herself. He was not yet experienced enough to conceive of a situation where two honest souls might come to a parting of the ways without either being especially ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... either rejected or at once converted into principles; with himself, they remained stored in the mind, serving rather as commentaries on life than as incentives to action. This perpetual accessibility to new impressions was a quality she could not understand, or could conceive of only as a weakness. Her own mind was like a garden in which nothing is ever transplanted. She allowed for no intermediate stages between error and dogma, for no shifting of the bounds of conviction; and this security gave her the singleness of purpose in which he found himself more and ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... He could conceive of no circumstances whereby Virginia and Harold would come to look for him short of another day and night. They did not expect him back until the end of the present day; they could not possible start forth to seek him until another daylight. And this man knew what the forest and the cold would do to ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... and wise as he is, has yet in certain directions a dwarfed understanding; certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody, or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage. "I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to himself. It is agreed that he shall have ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... with moss upon one side from shoulder to hem. He stood in the shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for this woman seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature that mind could conceive of. Such had he imagined the angels, and such he had tried to paint them in the Beaulieu missals; but here there was something human, were it only in the battered hawk and discolored dress, which sent a tingle and thrill through his nerves such as no dream of radiant and stainless spirit ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the first and last Days Engagement which does not appear natural, and agreeable enough to the Ideas most Readers would conceive of a Fight between two ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
