"Receptivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conceive an active or a passive verb? May I once more quote Kant without incurring the suspicion of wishing to strangle free inquiry by authority? "Concepts," says the old veteran, "are founded on the spontaneity of thought, sensuous intuitions on the receptivity ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... to be so I cannot question; but what you term 'open-mindedness'—implying a state of receptivity—is in fact an utter rejection of all established spiritual truths. The open-minded and the atheistical draw dangerously closer day by day. The only thing of which they are sure is that they are sure of nothing and their credo is 'I do not believe.' ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... He sits there waiting for the sunlight; I here, and readier to be musical than you think. I can at any rate be impartial; and do but fix your eyes on the sunlight striking him and swallowing the day in rounding him, and you have an image of the passive receptivity of shine and shade I hold it good to aim at, if at the same time I may keep my characters at blood-heat. I shoot my arrows at a mark that is pretty certain to return them to me. And as to perfect success, I should be like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of children at school. Children of even the same family manifest different degrees of receptivity to certain studies. Some "take to" one thing, and some to another. Some find arithmetic so easy that they almost absorb it intuitively, while grammar is a hard task for them; while their brothers and sisters find the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... beings eat anything?" I was drinking in his marvelous elucidations with the receptivity of all my faculties-mind, heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently real and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions are never more than temporarily or relatively true, and soon lose in memory ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life. Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,—talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... if it did touch a high one it could long hold it in a living growth, cut off from the rest of the world. I do not believe it. For no state, however large, is sufficient unto itself. No state is really alive in the highest sense whose receptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that men who could no longer fix their attention on it in their own souls might love it in him. He was their master-conception, their true ideal, acting before them, captivating the attention of their senses and emotions. This is what a man of our times, possessed of rare receptivity and great range of comprehension, considered to be the pith of Jesus' teaching. Matthew Arnold gave much time and labour to trying to persuade men that this was what the religion they professed, or which was professed around them, most essentially meant. And he ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... determines entirely the worth of his services. If his aim be happiness, the more of a man he is, the larger is his capacity of enjoyment; for as a dog gets more enjoyment out of life than a zooephyte, and a man than a dog, so does the fully and symmetrically developed man exceed in receptivity of happiness him whose nature is imperfectly or abnormally developed. Now it is through the thorough training and faithful exercise of his moral faculties and powers that man is most capable of influence, best fitted for usefulness, and endowed with the largest capacity for ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... love in this connection is significant of a very definite attitude toward books,—an attitude not uncritical, since it is love of the best only, but an attitude which implies more intimacy and receptivity than the purely critical temper makes possible; an attitude, moreover, which expects and invites something more than instruction or entertainment,—both valuable, wholesome, and necessary, and yet neither descriptive ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... one of them may be used as an agent of that all-conscious Will. In order that that Will may express itself in the outer world, a means of expression must be found, and these beings, in proportion to their receptivity, offer the necessary channels, and become the intermediary workers between one point of the kosmos and another. They act as the motor nerves of His body, and ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... them to become rulers in those wild, unsettled times; as their successes, not merely in Britain, but also in Southern Italy and Syria, show. They had the idea of a strong, centralized Government; and more than that they had a marvellous capacity for receptivity. Thus we see that in England, after a period of rough tyranny, they blended the existing Anglo-Saxon Government—the strength of which lay in its local organization—with their own; and from the union of the two has ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... here [in Munich] have an extraordinary receptivity for music, which is much cultivated. But it appears to me that everything makes an impression and that the impressions ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... more than a risky venture in stocks. These affairs were conducted with an air of great secrecy in violent whisperings, emphasized by blows of the fist upon the back of the chair. The favored patients were deftly informed of "a good thing," the dentist taking advantage of the one inevitable moment of receptivity for his thrifty promotions. The schemes, it must be said, had never come to much. If Dr. Leonard had survived without any marked loss a dozen years of venturing, he might be said to have succeeded. He had no time for other games; this was his poker. They were always ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... would have attracted a French-woman of the eighteenth century. Her maimed life had made her perforce an 'intellectual'; and in these letters, the man's natural poetry and force stirred her enthusiasm. Hence a new interest and receptivity in her, quickened by many small and natural incidents—books lent and discussed, meetings in picture-galleries, conversations in her father's house, and throughout it that tempting, dangerous pleasure of 'doing good,' that leads astray ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... city died down into the night. Mrs. Ardagh, now sinking in the confusion of a rather dreary middle age, complicated by a natural melancholy, and by incessant confession to a ritualistic clergyman seductive in receptivity, was relieved to think ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... cases Persian walnut trees remain barren when planted alone, not because of incompatibility between the pollen and the pistillate flower, but because pollen shedding and receptivity do not occur at the same time. Sometimes pollen shedding is over before pistils are receptive. Such blooming is termed protandrous by botanists. In about an equal number of cases the pistils lose their receptivity before pollen is shed. Such blooming ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... become indifferent through habit; whether the appetite for beauty was so soon dulled that it could be kept alive only by privation. Here, at any rate, was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger: he almost wished he might stay on in Paris long enough to take the measure of Miss Viner's receptivity. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... to well up from nowhere. But at any rate, since all particles in turn pass through each of them, it will be clear that it is thus possible for each in turn to evoke in all the particles of the body the power of receptivity to a certain set of vibrations, so that all the astral senses are equally active in ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... C. A. Reed told of studies of blossoming habits of pecan varieties at Rockport, Indiana, conducted for four seasons in co-operation with Mr. J. F. Wilkinson. There the Busseron was found to be a protandrous variety, shedding most of its pollen, and in some years all of it, before the period of receptivity of its pistillate flowers. "With Butterick ... the order was reversed, as the period of receptivity began first," and it was classified, therefore, as regularly protogynous. "... Furthermore, upon close observation it has been ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... some cottages. Some of the people were magnificent, throwing themselves upon you with such vigour of accent, such warmth and fun, and endless receptivity, bright, well pulled together, sonorous, that I nearly staggered under it—not chaff—good heavens! no—but would have been chaff, only it wasn't, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... his self-induced receptivity of mind, redreaming the evil dreams of those who had occupied that ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... of evening. I earnestly desire to grow old gracefully; to know when to stop, when to slip into a wise and kindly passivity, with sympathy for those who are in the forefront of the race. And yet if one does not practise wonder and receptivity and hope, one cannot expect them to come suddenly and swiftly to one's call. There comes a day when a man ought to be able to see that his best work is behind him, that his active influence is on the wane, that he is losing his hold ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the sights of the city, he did not come to them with the naive receptivity of Purdy. It was, besides, hard to detach his thoughts from the disagreeable affair that had brought him to Melbourne. And as soon as banks and offices began to take down their shutters, he hurried off to his interview with ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... summoned from his rustication; the French Ambassador at Warsaw gets his instructions. French Ambassador opens himself largely, at Warsaw, by eloquent speech, by copious money, on the subject of Stanislaus; finds large audience, enthusiastic receptivity;—and readers will now understand the following chronological ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... same as a logical one. It does not say simply that as a matter of fact it always does please—-even if we add the limitation those who for, as we know, our varying mood and state of receptivity make a profound difference in the fulness of the aesthetic enjoyment. It is a "judgment of value'' which claims for the rose aesthetic rank as an object properly qualified to please contemplative ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Lincolnshire; and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... questions. Her seventeen years had been spent in close companionship with a woman of exceptional character, and although the girl did not share in the abnormal sensitiveness of her foster-mother, she had gained from her intimacy with her, an unusual receptivity to all the delicate influences of Nature. Sara claimed to be clairvoyant, though she had never heard the word. Morva was clear seeing only; her pure and simple spirit was undimmed by any mists of worldly ideas; no subterfuge or plausible ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... as outlined above there are a number of minor problems that are receiving some attention: such as the retention of the vitality of pollen, the period of receptivity, the seed production in hybrid fruits, and the time for and percentage of the germination of seeds. On all of these points we are accumulating considerable information that it is hoped may be of some practical value."—Journal ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... of wide and varied reading. When it is further considered that only a fraction of what any author reads leaves a mark that can be identified on what he writes, we shall readily allow that in the matter of study Shakespeare showed an activity and receptivity of mind that harmonizes with the impression received ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... named varies within the limits of each group; but none of the first four are ever in the lists degraded to the second or third group, and none of these are ever promoted beyond their own class. So there were apparently degrees among the Twelve, depending, no doubt, on spiritual receptivity, each man being as close to the Lord, and gifted with as much of the sunshine of His love, as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... of young Mowbray was strange with emotion, pale but brilliant-eyed, his long features bending to her. She was utter receptivity. Neither knew until afterward how rare and perfect was ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... face of this unexpected mood of receptivity, however unwilling, came a sharp corrective in the person of the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... for a little display of Mancji power. They ran out some kind of antenna. I'm getting a loud static at the top of my short wave receptivity." ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... there is nothing so just as this comparison. The current is the cause of the movement of the vessel, but not of its retardation; God is the cause of the perfection in the nature and the actions of the creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the cause of the defect in its actions. Thus the Platonists, St. Augustine, and the schoolmen, have reason to say that God is the material cause of evil, which consists in what is positive, and not the formal cause of it, which consists ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... fact that this scene was not as terrible to her as it might have been. The experience of the day had sharpened her receptivity, broadened her out-look. She took it for what it was worth. She hated it, but she did not let ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... the same movement, must not be taken into account. It is therefore matter itself which originally is inclined to slowness or privation of speed; not indeed of itself to lessen this speed, having once received it, since that would be action, but to moderate by its receptivity the effect of the impression when it is to receive it. Consequently, since more matter is moved by the same force of the current when the boat is more laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Spirit of God comes to the former, He finds something still to appeal to. There is more or less receptivity to receive the Grace of God, as there is more or less life still in the germ formerly implanted. When He comes to the latter class there is nothing to work on. The foundations must be laid. A receptivity must be brought about, a new life must be inbreathed. In other words, in the conversion of the latter the Holy Spirit must do what He has already done in the former. The one is the conversion of a once regenerate but now lapsed one. The other is the regeneration and conversion ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... read in and between the lines of the Pauline Epistles. As far as any later time can accurately recast the thought and method of a far earlier time evangelical Protestant theology fairly interprets St. Paul. Faith—a big enough word, standing for both intellectual acceptance and a kind of mystic receptivity to the love and goodness and justice of God revealed in the Cross of Christ—is the key to salvation and the condition of Christian character. It is also that through which religion becomes real ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... speedily assigned to the girl's account. He continued, as at first, to ignore her. But in the slow rumination of the forest he became more and more irritably sensible of her presence. Sam's taciturnity was contrastedly sunny and open. He looked on things about him with the placid receptivity of an old man, and said nothing because there was nothing to say. The Ojibway girl remained inscrutable, helping where she could, apparently desirous ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... their own, and in the development of the polygonal wall-architecture perhaps excelled their instructors. Etruscan art is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an evidence even of genial receptivity. As scholars have long since desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place in the history ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... investigated the remote and preparatory factors which give the mind of crowds a special receptivity, and make possible therein the growth of certain sentiments and certain ideas. It now remains for us to study the factors capable of acting in a direct manner. We shall see in a forthcoming chapter how these ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... corresponding degree of culture and learning, but associated with a certain vulgarity of thought and conduct. The psychic is essentially impressionable, liable to mental contagion, easily stirred by suggestion. The tendency to instability, to emotional excess, is part of this receptivity which culminates in the state of being "controlled." An untrained psychic who is mastered by his impressions, instead of being their master, may easily be induced to tell lies and give false messages by a visitor ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Satan always finds mischief for idle hands to do. These children become passive except under the impulses of instinct or of mischievous ideas; they have no regular and systematic work to do; everything is done for them. During their early years habits of idleness, of passive receptivity, of mischief, and possibly of crime, are ingrained. And though this kind of life may be more pleasurable, in a low sense, than the active life of the country, there can be no doubt as to which is ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... will help it to solve the problem. Beth did humorous things at this time, but she had no sense of humour; she was merely experimenting. Her big eyes looked out of an impassive face solemnly; no one suspected the phenomenal receptivity which that stolid mask concealed, and, because the alphabet did not interest her, they formed a poor opinion of her intellect. The truth was that she had no use for letters or figures. The books of nature and of life were spread out before ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and steady gaze as he said, 'Look on us!' It was a strange preface, if only some small coin was to follow. It kindled some flicker of hope of he knew not what in the beggar. He expected to receive 'something' from them, and, no doubt, was asking himself what. Expectation and receptivity were being stirred in him, though he could not divine what was coming. We have no right to assume that his state of mind was operative in fitting him to be cured, nor to call his attitude 'faith,' but still he was lifted from his usual dreary hopelessness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... something in the sound of that "gravened" voice arrested Mr. Fane-Smith's attention. He had not heard what had passed before, and there was nothing special in the words that fell now upon his ear; it was rather that his own soul was in a state of receptivity, and so through the first channel that came to hand he was able to receive a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... calm, in all its movement never troubled, in all its repose never stagnating; and on the other side is the empty aridity of our poor weak natures. Faith opens these to the influx of that great sea, and 'according to our faith,' in the exact measure of our receptivity, does it enter our hearts. In itself the gift is boundless. It has no limit except the infinite fulness of the power which worketh in us. But in reference to our possession it is bounded by our capacity, and though that capacity enlarges by the very fact of being filled, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... way the generally friendly attitude towards others, genial expansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is called "charity for human weakness." The gentle cynic can see and tolerate other ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to all right-minded and generous Frenchmen that their influence should also be in the direction of preserving the freedom of this nation?—one of the few dark peoples who have shown an unusual receptivity for civilization and Christianity, who have already advanced themselves so much, and who will still, if left undisturbed, become one ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... shopkeepers. "The traders' spirit, that is Englishdom." I confess that as an Englishman I have always felt there was an uncomfortable amount of truth in this sneer. We are surely a somewhat stodgy, money-making people with far too little receptivity for new ideas. "I have long thought and preached," wrote Lord Haldane in the Nation of August 7, 1915, "that the real problem in this country is the development of thought and ideas." Dr. Drill does not in his review concern ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... all. The beloved maiden attracts us, as a ray of light attracts the wanderer in the dark. Yet we know that every creature of her kind can shed this radiance about her, and that it is simply our own accidental receptivity that, among so many thousands, gives to this one creature in particular her ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... with Hector, where her growth in the knowledge of literature, and her experience in the world of thought, would be gradually fitting her for a companion to him whom she continued to regard as so much above her. Her marked receptivity in the matter of verse, and her intrinsic discrimination of nature and character in it, became in her, at length, as they grew, sustaining forces, enlarging her powers both of sympathy and judgment, so that soon she came to feel, in reading certain of the best writers, as if she and Hector ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... that subject, reacting upon mere sensations and ideas, its object, and, as a new immaterial subjective unity, acts determiningly upon that subject which has just become object. This new subject, considered from the side of its receptivity, we call self-consciousness; from the side of its spontaneity, free moral self-determination. Whether we consider this freedom predetermined or not, does not at all alter the described fact and the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... dwelling upon pictures derived from his own thought-world, he is apt to develop a tendency to withdraw himself from the impressions of the outer world. Yet such a step only leads to parching and withering the inner life; and he will go farthest who manages to retain an unchecked receptivity for all impressions of the outer world, while possessing the power to withdraw within his own inner self. It is by no means necessary to think only of the so-called important events of life: every one, in every sphere of life, be his four walls ever so humble, ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... political economy. This unexampled multiplicity of ways of cultivating the soil is not only typical of the wonderfully rich organization of our social conditions, but it also furnishes the most natural basis for the peculiar suppleness, many-sidedness, and receptivity of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of quasi-material results; and his success in doing this will be gauged in due course by an "examination,"—a periodic test which is designed to measure, not the degree of growth which the child has made, but the industry of the teacher as indicated by the receptivity of his class. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... gone, expressing positive opinions with the confident conceit of mediocrity, although she had not at that time made any sign of what manner of person she really was. She had only been a week amongst them, and her mind had been in a state of passive receptivity the whole time, subject to the impressions which might be made upon it, but not itself producing any. It was her appearance that they presumed to judge her by. But her intellect had been both nourished ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of fancy I often think a salesman is more truly a creative artist than many of those who arrogate the title to themselves. He uses words, on one hand, and the receptivity of prospects on the other, to mold a cohesive and satisfying whole, a work of Art, signed and dated on the dotted line. Like any such work, the creation implies thoughtful and careful preparation. So it was that I got off the bus, polishing a new salestalk to fit the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... been my delight in the country, my receptivity and hospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... problem of Study is not to be approached by any high priori road; in other words, by setting out from abstract principles as to the nature of the mind's receptivity and the operation of book-reading upon that receptivity. A humbler line of approach will be more ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... extremely strict, and rightly so, on the subject of smallpox; but is it not a farce to take so much trouble about the health of our immigrants when inside the city we are all the time encouraging a high degree of receptivity towards this very disease? I should call this a very clear case of straining at the international gnat and swallowing the municipal camel. The community at present is at the mercy of its least instructed members. A most sensible suggestion is that if an outbreak ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... methods of work still bear witness to the late introduction of historical teaching. In most historical classes methods still prevail which only exercise the pupils' receptivity: the course of lectures, the summary, reading, questioning, the redaction, the reproduction of maps. It is as if a Latin pupil were to confine himself to repeating grammar-lessons and extracts from authors, without ever doing translation ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... implied the same preference; yet they found themselves slipping more and more into Flamel's intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that she enjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took the negative form of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard felt a growing preference for the kind of people who have their thinking done for them by ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... less respectably dressed are often objects of suspicion to public librarians; they are also a class infinitely more difficult to deal with than men, for, whilst the receptivity of their cloaks is infinite, their 'feelings' have to be considered. Whether guilty or innocent, the suspected party is bound to create a 'scene,' probably hysterics—and what is a public librarian, or, indeed, any other man, to do ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... of God seems a long way round to reach the friend at our side,—for the mother to reach her child in her arms,—but it usually proves the quickest and most effectual way. Where before were only resistance and indifference, there come, in answer to prayer, strange telentings, mysterious longings, receptivity, and sometimes, in a way that is astonishing, full ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... sake. She did not possess in all Berlin a single friend or relative of her own family, yet she soon felt at home in the capital. She loved my father. Heaven gave her children, and her rare beauty, her winning charm, and the receptivity of her mind quickly opened all hearts to her in circles even wider than her husband's large family connection. The latter included many households whose guests numbered every one whose achievements in science or art, or possession of large wealth, had rendered them prominent in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it was that he did not know very clearly which plays were unpleasant and which were pleasant. "Pleasant" is a word which is almost unmeaning to Bernard Shaw. Except, as I suppose, in music (where I cannot follow him), relish and receptivity are things that simply do not appear. He has the best of tongues and the worst of palates. With the possible exception of Mrs. Warren's Profession (which was at least unpleasant in the sense of being forbidden) I can see no particular reason why ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity. And having said thus much, I think that I may let the matter ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... form of roof after the De Lorme pattern, which he proposes for his house, is entirely practicable, for he himself had "used it at home for a dome, being 120 degrees of an oblong octagon." He was characteristically American in his receptivity to new ideas from any source. A chance item about Eli Whitney of New Haven arrests his attention and forthwith he writes to Madison recommending a "Mr. Whitney at Connecticut, a mechanic of the first ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... things about Forster was his "receptivity." Stern and inflexible as he was in the case of old canons, he was always ready to welcome anything new or striking, provided it had merit and was not some imposture. I never met a better appreciator of genuine ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... to see yourself successfully responding to the foot test. When you have actually accomplished test No. 4, you see yourself accomplishing the "hand levitation" test—No. 5. In other words, you use each step to enhance a greater receptivity for the following progressive test. As you couple this approach with posthypnotic suggestions that you will go deeper and deeper into the hypnotic state at a given stimulus, you set into motion a conditioned ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... primitive Unity, or the simple original Substance of which all the creatures, or original monads, are the products, and are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations from moment to moment, bounded by the receptivity of the creature, of whose existence limitation is an essential ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... every man's feeling, to enlighten our understanding and purify our desires. To every man he gives all that he can receive of light and power. To many his gifts are but meagre, because their capacities are small and their receptivity is limited; but there are always in the world open minds and docile tempers, to whom he imparts his larger gifts. Thus we have the order of prophets and inspired men, whose words are full of light and leading. In the Bible we have a record of the messages given by such men to the ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... relation with the world will necessarily be the greatest possible mutability and extensiveness. Since personality is permanence in change, the perfection of this faculty, which must be opposed to change, will be the greatest possible freedom of action (autonomy) and intensity. The more the receptivity is developed under manifold aspects, the more it is movable and offers surfaces to phaenomena, the larger is the part of the world seized upon by man, and the more virtualities he develops in himself. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... logically and distinguishing the true from the false, the faculty of combining aesthetic thoughts and sensations, all constitute human values which are much superior to the faculty of rapid assimilation or receptivity, and a good memory for words ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... you say, too final and too dogmatic. This is at once his weakness and his strength: his weakness, because it limits his own spiritual receptivity; his strength, because it focusses his power in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... the chimerical to the actual, from the child's poetic interpretation of life to life's practical version of itself, is too gradual to be noticed while the process is going on. It is only in the retrospect we see the change. There is still, for yet another stage, the same and even greater receptivity, - delight in new experiences, in gratified curiosity, in sensuous enjoyment, in the exercise of growing faculties. But the belief in the impossible and the bliss of ignorance are seen, when looking back, to have assumed ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... just as high. Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones. To the north-east and north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is tolerance, receptivity to new ideas and practices, the capacity to adapt and to assimilate the outside elements which are constantly incorporated into the growing, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... our part, the dialectical spirit, which to the last will have its diffidence and reserve, its scruples and second thoughts. Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the "philosophic temper," in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... embarrassment, "your mind interests me exceedingly. It is not complex, nor subtle, but remarkably intuitive. You have imagination and humor, and great receptivity." ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... young and illiterate; there is much room for improvement in these things, and with regard to the young, I can answer for them that, if they are addressed in proper language, which they can understand, and are supplied with proper religious food for the understanding, suitable to its state of receptivity, and, if I may say, digestive powers; they, as a body, will shew us an example which will surprise many. With regard to the Church, there might be taken from the Prayer Book, a simple service adapted to the purpose. I am certain I could do it with ease, as I know what is adapted ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works out her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... fastening helmets upon heads; but we have, by our own effort, to clothe ourselves with God's great gift, which is of no use to us, and is in no real sense ours, unless we do. It takes no small effort to keep ourselves in the attitude of dependence and receptivity, without which none of the great gifts of God come to us, and, least of all, the habitual practice of Christian virtues. The soldier who rushed into the fight, leaving armour and arms huddled together on the ground, would soon fall, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... well. In winter, wearing a tweed coat-and-skirt and a small hat of black fur pulled over her eager, palpitant face, she seemed to move down the street in a drifting motion of suspense and exceeding sensitive receptivity. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... always be, as much as possible under the form of original research, it exercises perseverance and sincerity. As says Professor Tyndall of inductive inquiry, "It requires patient industry, and an humble and conscientious acceptance of what Nature reveals. The first condition of success is an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something noble in it, and of which the world never ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... temper, on the other hand, lets itself go with a more passive receptivity; and permits the formless, wordless brooding of the vast earthpower to work its magic upon it, in its own place and season. Not, however, in any destruction of the defining and registering functions of the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... further complication. The more anarchic modern may again attempt to escape the dilemma by saying that education should only be an enlargement of the mind, an opening of all the organs of receptivity. Light (he says) should be brought into darkness; blinded and thwarted existences in all our ugly corners should merely be permitted to perceive and expand; in short, enlightenment should be shed over darkest London. Now here is just the trouble; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... back in his chair. "Of course we know that the human body has electrical capacity and that operators sometimes have to use metal shields to protect the tube from the influence of the hand. And in our loop aerial at Ocean Point you noticed that the receptivity of the tube was modified when we ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... extraordinarily sensitive to impressions. It was to that quick receptivity that the success of "The Great Fortinbras" had been chiefly due. She had a gift of rapid comprehension. It was not that she argued, or deducted, or inferred. But she felt. To take a metaphor from the work of the man she loved, she was a natural ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... time, of receptivity, and treatment," said the doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. "I do not regard either ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... little. As I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively—a thing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate. During all the intervening time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night my brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the food I had eaten, grew ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... in direct contrast with each other; one, the animated debates and attempted logical presentation of a subject with its related facts, as presented at the Worcester Academy; and this new method of passive receptivity, this opening of the inner eye of the mind to receive impressions. It was a long time before I could experiment with any success in this new direction, for I was of an active and impatient temperament, longing ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... tone of De Brosses' book was calculated to make a telling appeal to the French nation, with their love of eclat and their ready receptivity. It was made, too, in the age of Voltaire, when the great man was living at Lausanne; and when, too, another of equally enduring fame, Edward Gibbon, was, in the same neighbourhood, polishing those ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... based exclusively either in the sensuous or in the spiritual part of his being. It is only the perception of beauty that makes of him an entirety, because it demands the co-operation of his two natures. All other forms of communication divide society, because they apply exclusively either to the receptivity or to the private activity of its members, and therefore to what distinguishes men one from the other. The aesthetic communication alone unites society, because it applies to what is common to all its members. We only enjoy the pleasures of sense as individuals, without the nature of the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... melody, the golden repetitions, the heart-lifting ascents and wistful falls drooping softly as a flower, seemed wonderful to her as an angel's song. She and the bird, sheltered under the grey-silver feathers of the trees, lived their great moments of creation and receptivity until suddenly there was a sharp noise of hoofs, the song snapped, the willow was untenanted, and Reddin's horse splashed ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... along in the third act that the audience became, for her, anything but a colloid mass—something that you squeezed and thumped and worked as you did clay, to get into a properly plastic condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think of it with a plural pronoun; ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The protoplasm in man has a something in addition to its instincts or its habits. It has a capacity for God. In this capacity for God lies its receptivity; it is the very protoplasm that was necessary. The chamber is not only ready to receive the new Life, but the Guest is expected, and, till He comes, is missed. Till then the soul longs and yearns, wastes and pines, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... good of the conduct of life. Its natural method is rhythmic, intermittent, work alternating with rest, activity and receptivity succeeding one another, the rhythm of life. The steady strain, the continuous uniformity of life, is what kills. Work unrelieved by play, and play unrefreshed by work, grow equally stale and dull. Activity without reflection loses its grasp; meditation {19} without action sinks into ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... she felt was alone appropriate in a house dedicated to love. But it was not only Dellwig and the brick-kiln that had depressed her; she had actually had doubts about her three new friends, doubts as to the receptivity of their souls, as to the capacity of their souls for returning love. At one awful moment she had even doubted whether they had souls at all, but had hastily blown out the candle at this point, extinguishing the doubt at the same time, smothering it beneath the bedclothes, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... communication. We cease, as we see their active hearts possess his active art, to think a question as to his sincerity seriously worth asking; what sincerity he has is so absorbed in the one excited act of receptivity. That, indeed, he performs with all the will, all the precipitation, all the rush, all the surrender, all the wholehearted weakness of his subservient and impetuous nature. I have not named the Greeks, nor the English Bible, nor Milton, as his ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... humanity, just as Victor Hugo and Dumas pere, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the same time. A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was the romantic soul. With the magnificent power of receptivity which she possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from the four quarters of romanticism. She sent them back with unheard-of fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration. From that time forth a woman's voice could ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... the fence a long time; long after the phaeton had passed from view, long after the sound of the mare's paddling feet had died away, he stood there, ears cocked, eyes wide, tail motionless, in an attitude of receptivity, spiritual absorption, as one flicked with ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... valuable and effective methods, at that. But, notwithstanding this, I feel that I should impress upon you the importance of laying a firm foundation for such instruction, by developing yourself first along the lines of telepathic power. Such a course will not only keenly sharpen your powers of receptivity to such vibrations as you may wish to receive; but it will also train your mind in the direction of translating, interpreting, and recording ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... myself! I saw you kneeling beside it. I helped to sort it, afterwards. The actual heap on the floor was the broken chair, Ronnie mixed up with it; and, on top of both, that unholy Infant, whose precocious receptivity is responsible for the entire business. I exonerate the Florentine chair; I exonerate poor Ronnie. I shall always maintain that that confounded 'cello worked the whole show, out ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an intuition can take place only in so far as the object is given to us. This, again, is only possible, to man at least, on condition that the object affect the mind in a certain manner. The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects, objects, is called sensibility. By means of sensibility, therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes us with intuitions; by the understanding they are thought, and from it arise ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... his years had crept upon him and was deepening; and he felt his youth slowly withering under their fallen leaves. With more education, and perhaps more receptivity than most farmers, he had married a woman he fervently loved, whose rarely truthful nature, to which she had striven to keep true, had developed the delicate flower of moral and social refinement; and her influence upon him had been of the eternal sort. While many of their neighbors were ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... In my lack of receptivity for legal details, and my want of interest in Positive Law, I flung myself with all the greater fervour into the study of what in olden times was called Natural Law, and plunged again and again into the study of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and a man are coming through the great archway—and instantly I guess what has happened. She it is arrests my attention first—long ago I knew she was a sweetly beautiful woman. She is fair, with frank blue eyes, that look with a sort of tender receptivity into her companion's face. For a moment or so they remain, greyish figures in the cool shadow, against the sunlit greenery ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... don't you?" Lydia repeated, but more gently. She began to wonder now whether trouble had weakened the wife's brain, her power at least of receptivity. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... as some others composed in this age, make the realization of it; an invention which proposes to substitute for the languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of books—the kind of books which this author found invented when he came—for the passive, sluggish receptivity of another's thought, the living glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... principle of confidence in leadership is one of the great moving powers of the world. In teaching, it is specially important. This feeling may indeed be in excess. It may exist to such an extent as to extinguish all independence of thought, to induce a blind, unquestioning receptivity. Such an extreme is of course opposed to true mental progress. But short of this extreme point, there is almost no amount of faith that children can have in their teacher, that, if well founded, is not of the highest advantage. Seeing the firm, assured tread of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... winter evenings her father found no pleasure like that Kate had always ready for him in the cheery library. He was soon amazed at his keen interest in the world of mind unrolled to his understanding; more than all, he retained with the receptivity of a boy all that was read to him. Kate made believe that she needed his help in reviewing her own studies, and so carried him through all she had gone over in the seminary classes. Boone began presently to see that education is not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... were certainly known and acknowledged by them. We must never forget that it is from above that each of the prophets received his share of the prophetic spirit, and that this depended partly upon the measure of his receptivity, which might have been greater with the former than with the latter prophets,—and, partly, upon the wants and capacities of those for whom ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... hinder it from its free radiation. Sulphur is to be regarded as a symbol of the expansive power, as individual initiative, as will. Mercury stands opposite to it as woman does to man, as that which goes to the subject from without, or as absolute receptivity. Salt is midway between both; in it the equilibrium between [Symbol: Sulphur] and [Symbol: Mercury] is found. It is a symbol of what appears as the stable being of man. In the first degree the purification of the salt ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Faculties Original Thought Memory Reason Receptivity in Training Efficiency in Execution Nervous Energy Keenness of the Senses ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... universe of thought and grasps ideas far beyond its conscious intention. All great thoughts come from uncharted sources of inspiration, and it may be that the function of the mind is not to create thought, but only to record it. To do so it must be tuned to the proper key of receptivity. Grant had a consciousness, as he walked along the deserted streets toward his hotel, that he was in that key; the quietness, the domesticity of Murdoch's home, the loveliness of Phyllis Bruce, had, for the moment at least, shut out a background of ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Andrea del Sarto and the Unknown Painter. But his very preoccupation with Art and with Love itself sprang mainly from his peculiar joy in the ardent putting-forth of soul. No kind of vivid consciousness was indifferent to him, but the luxurious receptivity of the spectator or of a passively beloved mistress touched him little, compared with the faintest pulsation of the artist's "love of loving, rage of knowing, feeling, seeing the absolute truth of things," of the lover's passion for union with another soul. When he describes ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... follow this native bias is the first rule, the second is concentration.—To the bias of the individual mind must be added the most catholic receptivity for the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... perceived, are essentially anthropocentric, and involve, when used in metaphysics, an attempt, however veiled, to legislate for the universe on the basis of the present desires of men. In this way they interfere with that receptivity to fact which is the essence of the scientific attitude towards the world. To regard ethical notions as a key to the understanding of the world is essentially pre-Copernican. It is to make man, with the hopes and ideals which he happens ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... France and caused the earlier events of the Revolution to fade away into a seemingly remote past. The failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French character, which was in a mood of expectant receptivity. In 1800 everything was in the transitional state that favours the efforts of a master builder; and one was now at hand whose constructive ability in civil affairs equalled ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... I stood, trembling and striving not to be tense, which destroys the receptivity, there came thrilling round and round my spiritual essence the throb of the Master-Word, beating steadily in the night, as doth that marvellous sound. And then, with all that was sweet in my spirit, I called with my ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... inwardness which we have been recently told is lacking in poor Goldsmith, we are requested by Mr. Shorthouse to refrain from all brutal laughter, but, with a shadowy smile and a profound seriousness, to attune ourselves to the proper state of receptivity. Old-fashioned, coarse-minded people may perhaps ask, "But if we are not to laugh at 'Don Quixote,' at whom are we, please, to laugh?"—a question which I, for one, would hardly dare to answer. Only, after r ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... right to be a critic whose mind cannot, with Protean receptivity, take first one form and then another, as the great Spells, one by one, are ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... question; and one, I am disposed to think, which can receive its solution only by the idea, or the act and fact of justification by faith self-reflected. But, humanly considered, this position of Luther's provokes the mind to ask, is there no receptivity of faith, considered as a free gift of God, prerequisite in the individual? Does faith commence by generating the receptivity of itself? If so, there is no difference either in kind or in degree between the receivers and the rejectors of the word, at the moment ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... inspiration but she did find a dependable kindness in Mrs. Westlake, and at last she yielded to the old woman's receptivity and had relief in sobbing the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... priest and poet, had inscribed the record of five hundred years. From the Revival of Learning to the middle of the nineteenth century, Longfellow knew the soul of Europe as few men have known it, and he helped to translate Europe to America. His intellectual receptivity, his quick eye for color and costume and landscape, his ear for folklore and ballad, his own ripe mastery of words, made him the most resourceful of international interpreters. And this lover of children, walking ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... vision, which [220] should take up into itself and explain this world's delightful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, till then but half-understood, might be taken up into the text of a lost epic, recovered at last. At this moment, his unclouded receptivity of soul, grown so steadily through all those years, from experience to experience, was at its height; the house ready for the possible guest; the tablet of the mind white and smooth, for whatsoever divine fingers might choose to write there. And was not this precisely ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... why, people will perceive in proportion to their receptivity. Candor and intelligence will suffice to appreciate that the secret of M. Rodin's art is structural expression, and that it is this and not any superficial eccentricity of execution that definitely distinguishes ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... have. For the spiritual man knows that his labor for others insures of himself the results that are best. So the discourse of Jesus in this connection defines prayer, in its highest sense, as an inward, not an outward attitude; a state of mental receptivity to the guidance of truth and desire for the good of others, always to be observed, not the mere utterance of terms of petition or praise. He tells us to withdraw into the soul's most secret place, where God already sits enthroned, and there commune ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... place, we must set about our reading only when we are in the proper mood of receptivity. Poetry is not science, any more than painting is photography, or architecture is building in squares and cubes and circles. To approach the great poetry of "high seriousness" when we are in a cynical or flippant mood; to snatch glances at a great drama or epic ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... had given her, that if he chose he could at any moment take away. What had come from her came only through him. She owned, with a sort of exultation, that there was nothing in the least creative in her. She had not one virile quality; only this receptivity of hers, infinitely plastic, infinitely tender. What lay in the lamplight under her caressing hand had been born of their friendship. It was ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... teaching as never man taught; and it is in proportion as we walk meekly with our fellow-men that our capacities become capable of receiving, to their fullest extent, the influx of goodness and truth that should be the end of social intercourse. Nothing obstructs our receptivity so much as that egoism of thought and affection which keeps self perpetually before the mind's eye, and to this egoism meekness is the direct opposite. Meekness implies forgetfulness of self. There is nothing servile about it, but it pursues its way in pure simplicity, forgetting self in ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... and, in general, his measurement sufficed for all his practical needs. Just how much of the geometrical knowledge which added to the fame of Thales was borrowed directly from the Egyptians, and how much he actually created we cannot be sure. Nor is the question raised in disparagement of his genius. Receptivity is the first prerequisite to progressive thinking, and that Thales reached out after and imbibed portions of Oriental wisdom argues in itself for the creative character of his genius. Whether borrower of originator, however, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sherry, helped to quicken in these men of thought the power to grapple with a reality. The aforesaid three or four who had been down at the river recovered their lost belief in the evidence of their eyes and ears. In the rest was a spirit of receptivity which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction. The Sub-Warden made a second and more determined attempt to enlighten the Warden; but the Warden's eye met his with a suspicion so cruelly pointed that he again ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of mind, and an uncommon receptivity and docility, and soon became to all that got acquainted with her a dear and precious object. To declaim passages from her Brother's Poems was her greatest joy; she did her recitation well; and her Swabian accent and naivety of manner gave her an additional ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of ourselves to see dimly the visions and share the emotions of another soul. For youth all is reality in this world, and with justice, since it apprehends so vividly its images behind which a longer life makes one doubt whether there is any substance. I trusted to the fresh receptivity of these young beings in whom, unless Heredity is an empty word, there should have been a fibre which would answer to the sight, to the atmosphere, to the memories of that corner of the earth where my own boyhood had received its earliest ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... be consistent, shall the man be removed, shall he change his habits, shall the law regarding instruction in hygiene be changed, or shall other provision be made for bringing child and essential facts together in a way that will not dull the child's receptivity? ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... and independent intellect it may be many years before the precociously dulled feelings become fresh again, before the fetters of routine fall off, and he is enabled at last to approach the Bible with fresh receptivity and to realize, for the first time in his life, the treasures of art and beauty and divine wisdom it contains. But for most that moment never comes round. For the majority the religious education of the school as effectually seals the Bible for life as the classical education ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... is consistent with progress; with an attitude of receptivity toward new light. A firm belief in what the Lord told us yesterday is harmonious with an eagerness to hear what He may have to add to-day. It is indeed to be regarded as proof of our faith in yesterday's communication that we hearken for to-day's word. Certainty is possible ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when, his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter of the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions |
