"Conception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secret inspiration of du Bousquier the idea of building a theatre had dawned on Alencon. The henchmen of the purveyor did not know their Mohammed; and they thought they were ardent in carrying out their own conception. Athanase Granson was one of the warmest partisans for the theatre; and of late he had urged at the mayor's office a cause which all the other young clerks had ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... alledging that he wanted ear for lyric numbers, and taste for the higher graces of POETRY:—but it is impossible so to believe, when we recollect that even his prose abounds with poetic efflorescence, metaphoric conception, and harmonious cadence, which in the highest degree adorn it, without diminishing its strength. We must look for the source of his injustice in the envy of his temper. When Garrick was named a Candidate for admission into the Literary Club, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... thrives, and where the land, well and uniformly watered, contributes in such a high degree to the well-being of man, is flat and monotonous when viewed from the train. We see herds with their mounted herdsmen, we see villages, roads and cottages, but these do not give us any very clear conception of the country. Therefore it is advisable to spend a few hours in the agricultural exhibition at Budapest, where we can see the most attractive models illustrating Hungarian rural life, from pastures and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... conception of the way in which, under the most adverse circumstances, Madame de Treymes would be likely to occupy her time, that Durham was conscious of a note of ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... down the long, beautiful distance, the glorious view bounded by the snowy sculptured heights of palaces—long, green, flower-gemmed avenues of beauty—with the blue waters a-shinin' calm behind towerin' statutes of marvellous conception, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Ottokar's political conception of the part which Bohemia should play in Central Europe is particularly interesting. By conquest, alliances and understandings with his neighbours he had acquired a preponderating influence in the councils of Europe. The power he had concentrated ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... to the detriment of an enterprise that it should be daring and call for considerable physical effort on the part of those who are engaged in it. On the contrary, the conception of such plans is one of the signs of a great military mind. But in the arranging of the details the same military mind should assiduously occupy itself in foreseeing and preventing every unnecessary thing ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... correspondence with her, and so to compromise her! All this, which her husband's mind had so easily conceived, was not only impossible to her, but so horrible that she could not refrain from disgust at her husband's conception. The letter had been left with him, but she remembered every word of it. She was sure that it was an honest letter, meaning no more than had been said,—simply intending to explain to her that he would not willingly have stood in the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... put it that way. He painted his picture with the touch of glamour; he spoke of a charge, of Vernon cheering his men on, of success. Into the peaceful drawing-room he introduced the atmosphere of glory—unwittingly, perhaps, he fell back on the popular conception of war. And the woman, who hung on every word, silent and tearless, thrilled with the pride of it. Her man, running at the head of others—charging—dying at the moment of victory. . . . It would be something to tell her two boys, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... from the Conception district of Panay saves life, and San Pascual Bailon cures barrenness. A Manila milkman who was punished for selling watered milk expressed surprise at the complaints of his customers, because no wrong had been committed, inasmuch as he had used nothing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of his Orbit and beyond his Ken, the same as Tatting or Biology. His conception of a keen and sporty game was Pin Pool or Jacks Only with ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... white historians are prone to confuse the two. A medicine man is a doctor or healer; a dreamer is an active war prophet who leads his war party according to his dream or prophecy. What is called by whites "making medicine" in war time is again a wrong conception. Every warrior carries a bag of sacred or lucky charms, supposed to protect the wearer alone, but it has nothing to do with the success or safety of the party as a whole. No one can make any "medicine" to affect the result of a battle, although it has ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... other hand, Mendel supposed that it always carried either one or the other of such a pair. As experimental work proceeded, {33} it soon became clear that there were cases which could not be expressed in terms of this conception. The nature of the difficulty and the way in which it was met will perhaps be best understood by considering a set of experiments in which it occurred. Many of the different breeds of poultry are characterised by a particular form of comb, and in certain cases the inheritance ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... if to herself. "Perhaps, after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool, to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He would not encroach where another had the prior claim. He considers Colden in the matter. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Thackeray understood this, and therefore Mr. Moore does not understand Thackeray. Now, one of these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition, and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride. Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy. The Christian tradition understands this; therefore Mr. Moore does not understand the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the next. Here the critic was more measured in his praise. The book he pronounced to be on the whole a good and very nearly a great one, a fine conception fairly worked out, but there was too strong a tendency in parts to a certain dreamy mysticism (here Mark began to regret that he had not been more careful over the proofs), while the general tone was a little too metaphysical, and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... examining, a glance at this other cause will not be without value or interest. It is indeed remarkable that in the Middle Ages woman should for the first time have attained her true rank, and that the highest conception of the female character which the world had yet known should have been developed in so rude and ferocious a time. The estimation in which women were held among Eastern nations was little lower than their position ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... not susceptible of strong or vehement emotions, he was, nevertheless, more suggestive of evil designs and their fulfilment than any man, perhaps, in his position of life that ever existed. Though utterly without spirit, or the slightest conception of what personal courage meant, the reader not be surprised that he was also vindictive, and consequently treacherous and implacable. He could project crime and outrage with a felecity of diabolical ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... sense in which it is natural for a stone to fall or fire to burn. He is doubtful, on the whole, whether this disability be natural at all; nay, when he is laying it down that a woman should not be a priest, he shows some elementary conception of what many of us now hold to be the truth of the matter. "The bringing-up of women," he says, "is commonly such" that they cannot have the necessary qualifications, "for they are not brought up in learning in schools, nor trained in disputation." And even so, he can ask, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... These senses and this intellect can apprehend only a part of all that which occult science unveils as the total human entity, and this part is the physical body. In order to throw light upon its conception of this physical body, occult science at first directs attention to a phenomenon which confronts all observers of life like a great riddle,—the phenomenon of death,—and in connection with it, points ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... was openly scornful. "Throgs have no conception of such art. You must have seen their metal plates—those are the beetle-heads' idea of beauty. Have those the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... of his voyage thus: "The day of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin; whom I had continually invoked, since I came to this country of the Ottawas, to obtain from God the favor of being enabled to visit the nations on the river Mississippi—this very day was precisely that on ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Lectures on Equity (Cambridge, 1909), and C. S. Kenny, Outlines of Criminal Law (New York, 1907). Maitland's article on English Law in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, IX., 600-607, is valuable for its brevity and its clearness. On the English conception of law and the effects thereof see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 61-62. The character and forms of the statute law are sketched to advantage in C. P. Ilbert, Legislative Methods and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... many good fights that on an independent ticket, much to his surprise, he had been lifted to the high position he now held. No more in his manner than in his appearance did Winthrop suggest the popular conception of his role. He was not professional, not mysterious. Instead, he was sane, cheerful, tolerant. It was his philosophy to believe that the world was innocent until ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... knows no parleying with reason. English ladies will declare abroad that there are no fogs in London, and Mr. Pembroke, though he would not go to this, was only restrained by the certainty of being found out. On this occasion he remarked that the Greeks lacked spiritual insight, and had a low conception ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Having no clear conception of what had led him to these scenes of litigation, Spargo went wandering aimlessly about in the great hall and the adjacent corridors until an official, who took him to be lost, asked him if there was any particular part of the building he wanted. For a moment ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... think it may justifiably be said that the dark wild youth of the Brontes in their dark wild Yorkshire home has been somewhat exaggerated as a necessary factor in their work and their conception. The emotions with which they dealt were universal emotions, emotions of the morning of existence, the springtide joy and the springtide terror. Every one of us as a boy or girl has had some midnight ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... a singular coincidence that the news of the diffusion of my opera through the German theatres should synchronise with my resolve to compose a work in the conception of which I had been so decidedly influenced by the necessity of being absolutely indifferent to our own theatres; yet this unexpected turn of events in no wise affected my treatment of my design. On the contrary, by keeping to my plan, I gained ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... that moment did Frederick grasp to its full extent the catastrophe that was occurring, a catastrophe beyond human conception. All those dark little crowding ants, helplessly running up and down, were tearing at one another, hitting about, beating, wrestling, forcing their way. Groups of men and women were united in struggling ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a Court of Justice. But what remotest conception can they attain of the purposes of such an edifice? How should the idea occur to them that human brethren, of like nature with themselves, and originally included in the same law of love which is their only rule of life, should ever need an outward enforcement of the true voice ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... La Vendee country, and also because the facts of the present time came more within the limits of my powers of story-telling than those of past years. But I read the book the other day, and am not ashamed of it. The conception as to the feeling of the people is, I think, true; the characters are distinct, and the tale is not dull. As far as I can remember, this morsel of criticism is the only one that was ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... a clear conception of a single Mongul family, you must imagine, first, a rather small, short, thick-set man, with long black hair, a flat face, and a dark olive complexion. His wife, if her face were not so flat and her nose so broad, would be quite a brilliant little beauty, her eyes are so black and sparkling. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... critical reflection begins, we have already been long engaged in action and science, by the training of individual life, as by hereditary and racial experience, our faculties of perception and conception, our senses and our understanding, have contracted habits, which are by this time unconscious and instinctive; we are haunted by all kinds of ideas and principles, so familiar today that they even pass unobserved. But what is ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... bade defiance to the waves, which broke over the ship and wetted me all over, as though to cool my feverish heat. I could now form a clear and vivid conception of a storm at sea. I saw the waves rush foaming on, and the ship now diving into an abyss, and anon rising with the speed of lightning to the peak of the highest wave. It was a thrilling, fearful sight;—absorbed in its contemplation, I soon ceased ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... ceased to eat, and was listening intently. The story sounded very strange to him; it did not fit at all with his conception ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... altogether! Nor am I in love with a future state in which there is so much dancing up and down lofty flights of stairs with terpsichorean energy, and manoeuvring in companies and circles with members of the softer sex. As a philosophical conception of disembodied existence, it is undeniably deficient in repose, though perhaps good enough for ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... employed in Classical Mechanics 07. The Apparent Incompatability of the Law of Propagation of Light with the Principle of Relativity 08. On the Idea of Time in Physics 09. The Relativity of Simultaneity 10. On the Relativity of the Conception of Distance 11. The Lorentz Transformation 12. The Behaviour of Measuring-Rods and Clocks in Motion 13. Theorem of the Addition of Velocities. The Experiment of Fizeau 14. The Hueristic Value of the Theory of Relativity 15. General Results of the Theory ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... two plays together, especially those passages which were identical, or nearly so, in both, and noted, in these cases, the minutest variations. The result was, that I satisfied myself that the original conception was invariably to be found in Shakspeare's play. I have confirmed this result in a variety of ways, which your space will not allow me to enter upon; therefore, reserving such circumstances for the present as require to be enforced ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... intense; they form together no more than a sort of background, or running accompaniment to the man's own reflections; and he falls naturally into a cool, curious, and smiling habit of mind, and builds himself up in a conception of life which expects to-morrow to be after the pattern of to-day and yesterday. He may be accustomed to the vagaries of his friends and acquaintances under the influence of love. He may sometimes look forward to it for himself with an incomprehensible expectation. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our interior, Captain," said a New York gentleman to me, "you will see plants, such as rhododendrons, magnolias, and hundreds of others, such as they have no conception of in your ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... element to nearness to existing plants is the spirit and understanding of the people. Vermont has the best spirit of industry but has not the fullest conception of industrial life and opportunity. It is this purpose of setting forth the principles of desirable industrial life that constitutes the ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... publication of this portion of what is in effect one complete narrative, but eventually decided not to depart from my original purpose. There is some reason to believe that the account of the work of the Grand Fleet gave the nation a fuller conception of the services which the officers and men of that force rendered in circumstances which were necessarily not easily appreciated ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... halfway to the bottom, there was an indescribable gray blur, and I knew that the larger snake had hit him. I have improved numerous chances to study the stroke of rattlesnake, which is the swiftest motion made by any living creature; but that particular case, better than any other, gave me a conception of its actual rapidity. From years of experience with the pneumatic shutter in photographing objects in rapid motion, I should say the snake's head traversed that twelve or fifteen inches in something like the three-hundredth part ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... forward. I do hope good for the world. If at my school we have all nationalities—French boys and German, Italian, Russian, Spaniard—without distinction of race and religion and station, and with English intermixing—English games, English sense of honour and conception of gentleman—we shall help to nationalize Europe. Emile Grenat, Adolf Fleischer, and an Italian, Vincentino Chiuse, are prepared to start with me: and they are men of attainments; they will throw up their positions; they will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with nature, called gardening, is one of the chief. When a garden is inherited, the traditions of the soil or reverence for those who planned and toiled in it may make one blind to certain defects in its conception, and beginning with a priori set by another one does ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... in rich green and brown; there were no effects of sunshine and shadow, but a generally quiet glow over the whole scene; and the clouds, though now rolling in irregular masses, and sometimes richly involved among the hills, were never varied in conception, or studied from nature. There were no changes of weather in them, no rain clouds or fair-weather clouds, nothing but various shapes of the cumulus or cirrus, introduced for the sake of light on the deep blue sky. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... high and fierce. Here we breakfasted in a low one—story building, our host being no smaller man than Major L——of the Fourth Regiment of the line. We got our chocolate, and eggs, and fricasseed fowl, and roasted yam, and in fact made, even according to friend Aaron's conception of matters, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... an elaborate criticism as well of the career as the works of the noble poet; for, indeed, as Venetia now learnt, they were inseparably blended. She gathered from these pages a faint and hasty yet not altogether unfaithful conception of the strange revolution that had occurred in the character, pursuits, and position of her former companion. In that mighty metropolis, whose wealth and luxury and power had that morning so vividly ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... year. He was interred with military honors. A simple service was held at Saint Sulpice and M. Charles Widor played once more, for the last time to the illustrious constructor, the grand organ which was the most beautiful conception of his life. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... arrived between five and six. A great dread filled her soul at the thought of meeting the young merchant again. It was merely the natural instinct of a lady shrinking from whatever is rough and coarse and antagonistic. She had no conception of the impending danger, or of what his coming might mean ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... merely the waiting transformed. Experience has not only deepened the conception of the meaning of God's name; it has added a new name. The cry of the suppliant was to God, his strength and defence; the song of the saved is to the God who is also the God of his mercy. The experiences of life have brought out more fully the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... almost lost his temper. This was no way for God to act, at least not in accordance with the conception Tarzan had ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... often criticized on the ground that a lamp could not cause any shadow on the floor if the bird sat above the door. Poe answered this charge by saying: "My conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as is often seen in English palaces, and even in some of the better houses ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... mock murder: proofs are supplied for the police inquiries. There is doubt about the crime, a crime, for that matter, not unexpected, a crime foretold by the accomplices, a crime perpetrated to revenge the chief's death. And, through this very fact—observe the marvelous ingenuity of the conception—through this very fact, the belief in this death ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... better execute than M. de Meusnier. Perhaps it may be curious to him to see how they strike an American mind at present. He shall, therefore, have the ideas of one, who was an enemy to the institution from the first moment of its conception, but who was always sensible, that the officers neither foresaw nor intended the injury they ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... August (being wt the Scots the 5 and observed by them in remembrance of Gourie conspiracie) came about to be observed feste de Nostre Dame, who hath 4 or 5 fests in the year, as the annuntiation, the conception, hir purification; and this was hir death and ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... his knees and talked. His young voice thrilled with the majesty of his conception. Here, he said, was the idea. Once upon a time there had been a race of wonderful swans, with plumage so white that when they rested in flocks on the river banks they made a blanket of snow. Their flight was a marvellous thing—they flew so high that the eye of man could not see them—but the ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... cutter to the sidewalk. He had temporarily forgotten the object of his visit to the lower East Side in the sudden conception of an idea, which was no less than the rehiring ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Spring alone. To the geologist such rivers are not mysteries. The lower strata of the limestone formation are hollowed out into vast cavernous channels and chambers, through which rolls for ever the hoarse murmur of multitudinous waters. It would require the conception of a Milton or the stern Florentine who pictured Malebolge to depict those hollow passages and lofty galleries, wrought into fantastic shapes by carbon chisels, and all pure snow-white, yet unrecognizable in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... they had given sufficient proofs of their quality in the past; the glory which they had won as champions of liberty could never fade; and now they merited the repose which we have learned to associate with our conception of the Dutch character. Their nature seems to partake of the scenic traits of their country; its picturesque, solid serenity, its unemotional levels, its flavor of the antique: and yet beneath that composure we feel the strength and steadfastness which can say to the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... troubled with the hindrances and petty restrictions of an ordinary woman's life, which she was tempted to despise, to which, if she yielded at all in her mother's house, it was with scarcely concealed reluctance and aversion. Very likely she had only the most one-sided conception of the life she would have chosen. Certainly her notions of Bohemianism were about as ingenuous as "little May's" might have been; to go where art called her, to do what art demanded of her, to be art's humble, diligent, faithful servant all her days, without ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... inlet into a fortified city—that of S. Giorgio, high on the Boboli hill by the fort. The S. Giorgio gate has a S. George killing a dragon, in stone, on its outside, and the saint painted within, Donatello's conception of him being followed by the artist. Parsing through, you are in the country. The fort and gardens are on one side and villas on the other; and a great hill-side is in front, covered with crops. Do not go on, but turn sharp to the left and follow the splendid city wall, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... that Judaism had not silently replaced him by a nobler Deity centuries ago. The truth is, however, that it is precisely in the Old Testament that is reached the highest ethical note ever yet sounded, not only by Judaism but by man, and that this mass of literature is so saturated with the conception of a people chosen not for its own but for universal salvation, that the more material prophecies—evoked moreover in the bitterness of exile, as Belgian poets are now moved to foretell restoration and glory—are practically swamped. At the worst, ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... These movements, accurate in conception, were probably in any case too developed for the Boer numbers, and were definitively foiled by the British grip upon Ladysmith and Kimberley. Advance was too hazardous, leaving in {p.010} the rear such forces, unchecked, upon the flank of the lines ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... of light upon deep truths, which may not prove unwelcome nor unuseful to the doubting minds of many. It is true that in this, as in most other human efforts, the realization of idea in concrete falls far short of its abstract conception in the mind: there, all was clear, quick, and easy; here, the necessity of words, and the constraints of an unwilling perseverance, clog alike the wings of fancy and the feet of sober argument: insomuch that the difference is felt to be quite humiliating between the thoughts as they ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Fleck agreed. "If the Prussians' character were only equal to their intelligence they would be the most wonderful people in the world, but they are rotten clear through. They have no conception of honor as we understand it. Only the other day I read of a Prussian officer who led his men in an attack on a chateau, guiding them by plans of the place he had made himself while being entertained in the chateau as ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... other novel of the author which is quite so psychological as this. It is in fact a sort of biography, a personal study, of the mighty fane at Toledo, as if the edifice were of human quality and could have its life expressed in human terms. There is nothing forced in the poetic conception, or mechanical in the execution. The Cathedral is not only a single life, it is a neighborhood, a city, a world in itself; and its complex character appears in the nature of the different souls which collectively animate it. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the book to enliven the study of history by giving the romantic details omitted in text-books, and to enable the readers to form a more vivid and lifelike conception of the great men with whom it deals and the turbulent and picturesque times ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... be supposed that the abstract, naked, and incommunicable conception possesses an innate sagacity to clothe itself with a verbal garb, at best of ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... physician, and that he might be told that the Lord took care of His own. The doctor admired the hand of Providence, and said to the religious: "My brethren, we do not sufficiently understand the holiness of this man; and even you who live with him, have no conception of the secret virtue with which ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... applause." He reflected that he, an ironmonger's son, was not born to save the world, and if the great Dr. Johnson could say what he did, with how little ought not a humble Cowfold tradesman to be satisfied! We all of us have too vast a conception of the duty which Providence has imposed upon us; and one great service which modern geology and astronomy have rendered is the abatement of the fever by which earnest people are so often consumed. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... very particular about his house. He's afraid I might ruin it, I suppose. He's just like an old maid, you know, only a hundred times worse." Herbert paused, as if suddenly gripped in a tremendous conception. "I have it!" he stated positively. "I have ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... utterance of five words in the second act, 'But she was mine vrow' without experiencing some moisture in the eyes." While the Galaxy, in a later year, for February, 1868, states: "His Rip Van Winkle is far nearer the ordinary conception of the good-for-nothing Dutchman than Mr. Jefferson's, whose performance is praised so much for its naturalness." The statement, by Oliver Bell Bunce, is followed by this stricture against Jefferson: "Jefferson, indeed, is a good example of our ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... did not intend to destroy the city. I was only trying to tear up the factory that builds these battleships; I only wanted to destroy their machines. I had no conception of the power of that ray. I was as horrified to see the city disappear as you were; I only wanted to protect my people." Torlos smiled bitterly. "I have lived among these treacherous people for many years, and I cannot say that I had no provocation to destroy their city and everyone in it. But I ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... handsome head; his straight brows and set mouth show the same determination of character. He stands for love which is determined to win, for love which conquers every obstacle, for love which is unerring in aim. It is a much nobler conception than the mere passing fancy of which the old myth speaks. Michelangelo was ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... possibilities of life. It wants all men to become as fine as he. Its enemy is not the rich man but the aggressive rich man, the usurer, the sweater, the giant plunderer, who are developing the latent evil of riches. It repudiates altogether the conception of a bitter class-war between those who Have and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... theatres they are in the minority; and moreover there is a neatness and tact in the performance of French actors, which, in the less prominent characters, at least, goes some way to atone for the absence of decided talent. A French comedian may be tame, he may be incorrect in the conception of his part; he is rarely vulgar or ridiculous. We refer, of course, to the actors allowed to figure on the boards of the half-score good theatres in Paris. There is no lack of inferior ones, where the laugh is more often at the performer than at the performance. But most even of these will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... after my return to Washington I remained in seclusion, so as to avoid any possibility of unpleasant incidents. Those Germans who live in the congenial surroundings of their homes can have little conception of the hostility with which we in America had to contend. We had many true friends, who right up to the final breach between the two countries never deserted us. To them I shall ever feel myself indebted, more particularly in view of their harsh treatment at the hands of their fellow-countrymen ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... mythology and Greek poetry, the other with the history of Greek sculpture and Greek architecture. But these two groups are not wholly distinct; they mutually illustrate one another, and serve to enforce Mr. Pater's conception of the essential [2] unity, in all its many-sidedness, of the Greek character. The god understood as the "spiritual form" of the things of nature is not only the key-note of the "Study of Dionysus"* and "The Myth of Demeter and Persephone,"* but reappears as contributing ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and degraded the many in the service of the few; the principle of right proclaimed democracy and consecrated the few to the service of the many. Thus in the realm of the individual and of the state the diviner conception has won its triumphs, and to-day force is tolerated only as it serves the cause of justice. But in the larger international sphere the advocates of might prolong the ancient cry for war; the disciples of right protest in a ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... hold on the people of this country.' His administration represented the triumph of a statesman's principle over every consideration of convenience, popularity, and even safety. Thanks to his firmness and his chivalrous conception of his office, government by the popular will became established beyond shadow of change. To estimate the value of his services to the commonwealth, {159} one has only to imagine a Sir Francis Bond Head in his place during the crisis of the Rebellion Losses ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent rough portrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his last years in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique, exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante's conception of Beatrice, which he believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes of speculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretation was fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his later writings, but whether the change were the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Vietri, and backed by the arid grey mountain peaks. If the garden of the Hotel Palumbo seems a fitting place wherein to idle or to dream, might not it also appeal to some historian, not tied to time nor to the hard necessity of money-making, as a suitable spot for the conception of a history of the origin, rise, decline and fall of the great maritime Republic, whose dominions, still smiling and populous, surround Ravello on all sides? Gibbon found the first suggestion for his Roman History whilst musing upon the ruins of the Capitol, and he finished ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... a very suggestive and important fact toward the comprehension of Beethoven's design in this work, that the conception of it had been floating before his mind and slowly assuming definite form during the space of four years, before he put hand to the composition. Six years passed from the date of its conception before it lay complete upon his table, with the single word "Bonaparte" in large letters at the top ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... stared for a minute and then drew closer together as if seeking protection from some unseen menace. They had some vague conception of what had taken place here in this lonely little cottage. The elderly and already nervous professor, reading the tragedy of his sons' death, all alone perhaps, with no one to comfort or restrain him, had lost his mind, temporarily at least, and had found an outlet ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... sufficient promptitude. I never saw a hungrier and bolder cat. It made one fancy that even the mice had been exiled from this solitude. And truly the rule of the monastic order, no less than the habit of Italian gentlemen, is frugal in the matter of the table, beyond the conception of northern folk. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... "It is an unusual and at moments a powerful book. The conception of a woman of the kind that would make so desperate a fight for her own happiness as Marion in this novel is well and boldly ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... or Dryad glancing through the shade,' or to 'hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' Meanwhile, that in which the Greeks most resembled us, 'the human heart by which we live,' for the very reason that it lies so near to us, is too apt to be lost from our conception of them. Another cause of this one-sided view is the illusion produced by the contemplation of statuary, together with the unapproachable perfection of form which every relic ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... eyes, and the girl sat studying his face in the dim light, graving it deep on her inner vision, seeking to formulate some conception of the strange being so still and placid before her. How had she ever thought him ridiculous and uncouth? How had she ever dared to insult him by distrust? What did it matter what other men, estimating him by their ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... vagaries of lines; which, we know not how, (nor is the artist himself at the time conscious of the operation,) discriminate innumerable niceties, each having its own effect, and yet tending to one whole. We rarely come at once, uno ictu, to a decision. The operation is progressive—from conception to conception, from feeling to feeling, from many shades of uncertainty to decision. The first fresh hand upon any work is obedient to the mind in this process; and hence it is that we so value, so admire, the sketches and drawings of the great masters. We see not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Japan have taken such a remarkable turn, that history, neither ancient nor modern, presents no parallel with it. That we may have a more adequate conception of the Japan of to-day, it is absolutely necessary that we make some acquaintance with ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... prisons, where the unfortunate inmates were left in a state of the utmost filth, or were chained and lashed at the caprice of savage keepers. The madhouse which Hogarth drew will aid us in forming a conception of an Italian asylum in the sixteenth century, which was much worse than anything known in our country. The other inmates of the hospital of St. Anne suffered much doubtless; but they were really mad, and were therefore unconscious of their misery. But that alleviation was wanting in the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... increasing neglect of what she called the obligations of their position in Millsburgh, were more and more puzzling. She had thought that with John's advancement to the general managership of the Mill his peculiar ideas would be modified. But his promotion seemed to have made no sign of a change in his conception of the relationship between employer and employee, or in his attitude toward the unions or toward the industrial ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide—a consummation than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and the virtuous Prince of Cleves and the penitent Adelaide in the Comte de Comminge do not disturb the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... our Lord was born, the stable being scarcely divided fron the rest of the house. For I felt that to open the inner eyes even of the brain, enabling people to SEE in some measure the reality of the old lovely story, to help them to have what the Scotch philosophers call a true CONCEPTION of the external conditions and circumstances of the events, might help to open the yet deeper spiritual eyes which alone can see the meaning and truth dwelling in and giving shape to the outward facts. And the extract was listened to with all the attention I could wish, except, at first, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... preaching with regularity, due wholly, however, to his interest in watching the tortured countenance of poor Bill Bull. It was his purpose when first he began to draw to caricature the vanquished wretch. In the end he attempted a moving portrayal of "The Atheist's Stricken State," a large conception. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... these two she pronounced without emphasis or solemnity, lest the sense in which she used them might be mistaken for a piece of religiosity. Of the joy and gladness of religion the poor lady had no conception. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of the conditions and accompaniments of that long-looked-for reign. Instead of dilating on the material glory of the Messianic period, far surpassing the magnificent splendour of Solomon, he insisted on the fulfilment of certain necessary preliminary requirements, which lifted the whole conception of the anticipated reign to a new level, in which the inward and spiritual took precedence of the outward and material. It was the old lesson, which in every age requires repetition, that unless a man is born again, and from above, he cannot ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Norfolk cannot form the remotest conception of the grand appearance of Norfolk from a balloon. The city looks almost surrounded by water, and the various tributaries to the Elizabeth River appear magnificently beautiful, looking like streams of silver. Floating ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... revealer of a new truth, a new conception of man. Indeed, the Messiah. He came as the revealer of the only truth that could lead his people out of their trials and troubles—out of their bondage. They were looking for their Deliverer to come in the person of a worldly king and to set up his rule as such. He came in the person of ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... momentous. He knew he would always remember it, and that the memory would hereafter assert itself in unexpected moments. He admitted being influenced by the bishop and yet felt equipped for all that he had to do without any such influence. But there crept over him the slow conception that life might unexpectedly change, and that under hitherto unimagined conditions he might turn to these hours for the comfort ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... was made by the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1865-66 and 67, to build an overland line to Europe via Alaska, Bering Strait, and Siberia, was in some respects the most remarkable undertaking of the nineteenth century. Bold in its conception, and important in the ends at which it aimed, it attracted at one time the attention of the whole civilised world, and was regarded as the greatest telegraphic enterprise which had ever engaged American capital. Like all unsuccessful ventures, however, in this progressive age, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... wait for an answer, and I stood expecting some other remark to be made to me, but he did not deign to address me again. While looking about and wondering at the strange appearance of the frigate's deck, of which I had no previous conception, I saw a broad-shouldered man, with large whiskers and a sunburnt countenance, in the uniform of a master's mate, appear from below, and approach. He touched his cap to the lieutenant, without looking at me, and asked for what ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... distinction in any path of life he should select, made a hasty, ill-advised marriage with a Miss Ethel Ross, a New York belle of surpassing beauty and acumen. A woman whose sole thought was pleasure, whose highest conception of the good of life was a constantly varied menu of social excitement, and whose noblest reading of the word duty was compassed in having a well ordered house, sumptuous entertainments, and irreproachable toilets. A wife to satisfy any man who was unemotional, unexacting, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... we not rather say the unfortunate?—man who has made up his mind to produce a journal of his own can have the very faintest conception of the work and worry, the pains and penalties, the hopes and fears, the anxiety and exasperation, involved in the process. I have gone through it all, and perhaps something more than all by comparison with other people in the same peculiar predicament. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... have read sets forth another view of God's purpose. God seeks our praise. The glory of God is the end of all the divine actions. Now, that is a statement which no doubt is irrefragable, and a plain deduction from the very conception of an infinite Being. But it may be held in such connections, and spoken with such erroneous application, and so divorced from other truths, that instead of being what it is in the Bible, good news, it shall become a curse and a lie. It may be so understood ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... could not have maintained one division where all the winter long Massena found sustenance for sixty thousand men and twelve thousand beasts. This tribute to the campaigning powers of the French reveals incidentally the exaggerated conception of their strength entertained ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... is no wonder that strangers are puzzled to form a correct conception of Bucarest, and their perplexity is not likely to be relieved if they read the descriptions that have been given of the city and its inhabitants from time to time. Some writers have described it as an assemblage of dilapidated houses standing in unpaved streets. Its upper classes ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... immediate instruments in transmitting to us those Oriental tales, of which the conception is so brilliant, and the character so rich and varied, and which, after having been the delight of our childhood, never lose entirely the spell of their enchantment over our maturer age. But while many of these tales are doubtless of Arabian origin, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness, and it is probably this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his expression that makes us incline to go with him but half-way; and then stand and build dogmas. But if we can not follow ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... only person of whom the envoys of San Martin and their creatures in the Chilian Government desired to get rid. General Santa Cruz was openly appointed to supersede General Freire as Governor of Conception and Chief of the Army of the South; the keen discrimination of Freire having estimated San Martin and his proceedings in Peru as they deserved, and hence he had become obnoxious to those whose design it was to lay ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... all look alike. The mind is confused amid a riotous and fantastic display of colours. The fact is that the minor details of Indian dress are an index to Indian character and often tell the story of his position in the tribe, and surely tell the story of his individual conception of the life here, and what he hopes for in the life hereafter, and like the laurel wreath on the brow of the Grecian runner, they spell out for us his exploits and achievements. To the white man all these decorations are construed as a few silly ornaments, the indulgence of a feverish vanity, but ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... appeal to so devout a Christian as one who had already attained episcopal rank. But to Heliodorus his work (which may well have been the employment of some years) stood for all that he held most dear. It was his conception of the ideal in worldly—as opposed to spiritual—life. Less austere, perhaps, than many of the fathers of the early Church whose works had seemed so tedious to him in his youth, his devoutness was tempered largely with a charity and forgiveness that were not unworthy ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the transformation from the original Norman design was brought about; but it may be worth while to quote an architect's verdict on the general effect of Wykeham's work in the nave. "If we cannot admire all the details," says this writer, "we can but bear tribute to the conception of the whole. Its lofty arcades give no space for triforium, and the proportion between the clerestory and the arcade is somewhat unsatisfactory. If we except the vaulted roof, and the chantry of the great Wykeham ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... hypnosis represent to such an individual? To them, hypnosis represents some sort of "magic spell" which invokes a state of complete helplessness and dependency upon the hypnotist. We previously discussed how this erroneous conception can take place because of the manner in which hypnosis is usually interwoven with bizarre ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... great differences, surely thoughts like these, engraven in the hearts of a young people, will lead, in the great and glorious future that lies before them, to a conception of justice, to a method of dealing with crime, very different from what we know ourselves. They are now very much as we were sixteen centuries ago, when the Romans ruled us. Now we are a greater people, our justice is better, our prisons are better, our morality is inconceivably better ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... is not easy to calculate the benefit that we should have secured, had the presentation of some important events in the history of our national defence been as accurate as it was effective. Enormous sums of money have been wasted in trying to make our defensive arrangements square with a conception of history based upon misunderstanding or misinterpretation of facts. Pecuniary extravagance is bad enough; but there is a greater evil still. We have been taught to cherish, and we have been reluctant to abandon, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... assimilating M. Cumont's contribution to knowledge, and above all, to life, that these brief words of introduction are undertaken. The presentation in outline of the main lines of thought which underlie his conception of the importance of the Oriental religions in universal history may afford the uninitiated reader a background against which the author's depiction of the various cults of the Oriental group will be more easily ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... failed Wilson at Paris, being one of Wilson's greatest sources of weakness there. His excessive optimism, his kindheartedness, his credulity, his lack of independence of mind, his surrender of his imagination to a stronger imagination, his conception of politics not as morals but as the adjustment of personal differences, left Wilson without a capable ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... "joined with those of Asia and Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." He tells us that particular histories can not give us a knowledge of the whole, more than the survey of the divided members of a body once endowed with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the comeliness and vigor which it has received from Nature. To Polybius belongs the distinction of being the first to undertake a universal history. Christianity, with its doctrine of the unity of mankind, and with all the moral and religious teaching ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... without offence?—was less in discord with her surroundings than she should have been; that in dress, pose and manner (as we exchanged some trivialities) she was too near reflecting the style of the other woman; that, in fact, she in some sort realized my original conception of her, so brutally avowed to Davies, so signally, as I had thought, falsified. In the sick perplexity that this discovery caused me I dare say I looked as foolish as Davies had done, and more so, for the close heat of the room and its tainted atmosphere, succeeding so abruptly to the wholesome ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... some conception of the relief which a solitary walk, on a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered for so many hours in plying the irksome task ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... conceived, in short, that most things 'growed.' Especially is it known that in the opinion of the evolutionists as a body we are all of us ultimately descended from men with tails, who were the final offspring and improved edition of the common gorilla. That, very briefly put, is the popular conception of the various points in the great ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... desirable that every parent and teacher should have a distinct and clear conception of the true nature of punishment, and of the precise manner in which it is designed to act in repressing offenses. This is necessary in order that the punitive measures which he may employ may accomplish the desired good, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... device of the Life-force for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named as the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation of man's will. The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplation of Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at night and giving the earth only dreams; but the Stendhalian conception of Beauty as a promise of happiness he ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... countries of the Old World, and one strikingly illustrated in this exposition. In our own country education is conceived as an integral process steadily developing from the kindergarten to the university. To this conception corresponds the sequence of elementary and high schools united under a common administration and by close scholastic bonds. Hence a measure of violence is done both to elementary and secondary education as here organized by the endeavor ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... alter the course of their destiny? Why appeal to their sympathy and their confidence? What better lot have I to offer them and what can I hope for even if they respond? Certainly I wish them fairer and more perfect, freed from their childish dread of criticism, armed with a prouder and more personal conception of honour than the code which is laid upon them, respectful of their life and also encompassing it with infinite indulgence and kindness. But is not that a wild ideal? In my memory, I still see them smiling at it, those radiant ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... the seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the true Witch. The harmless "Sabasies" (from Bacchus Sabasius), and the petty rural "Sabbath" of the Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass of the fourteenth century, with the grand defiance then solemnly given to Jesus. This fearful conception never grew out of a long chain of tradition. It leapt forth from the horrors of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... aided by memory in the conception of this plan. I remembered having both heard and read of boys—and men as well—concealing themselves aboard ships, and being thus carried out to sea; and then crawling forth from their hiding-places, when the vessels were too far from land for them ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... meditations of which make us roam like botanists through the vast fields of thought, the fruitful comparison of human ideas, the enthusiasm given by a clear conception of works of genius, came to be the inexhaustible and tranquil joys of the young man's solitary and dreamy life. Flowers, ravishing creatures whose destiny resembled his own, were his loves. Happy to see in her son the innocent passions which took the place of ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac |
