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More "Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now convinced of the need of a radical change of frontier policy. He summed up his contentions in the following phrases in his despatches of the early summer of 1877:—"Shere Ali has irrevocably slipped out of our hands; . . . I conceive that it is rather the disintegration and weakening, than the consolidation and establishment, of the Afghan power at which we must now begin to aim." As for the mountain barrier, in which men of the Lawrence school had been wont to trust, he termed it "a military mouse-trap," ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... only to speak three words," he answered, "and it will happen. Are you strong enough to support the highest joy that your heart can conceive ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... judgement, formed a Commune-wealth, such as it should be; but the other, in the person of Cyrus and the Persians, fashioned a government, such as might best be: So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by ensample then by rule. So have I laboured to do in the person of Arthure: whom I conceive, after his long education by Timon (to whom he was by Merlin delivered to be brought up, so soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne) to have seen in a dreame or vision the Faerie Queene, with whose excellent beautie ravished, hee awaking, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Fredericksburg, he quartered his suite comfortably, and then repaired alone and on foot to see his mother, whom he had not seen for over six years. She met him at the door with feelings we cannot conceive, much less describe. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... not virtue, is at least a necessary thing with her; for she expects everything from you. In the first place, society sanctions the slavery of a wife, but she does not conceive even the wish to be free, for she feels herself weak, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... intelligible by, every English reader,[5] it may be well that I should here set forth a very brief exposition of the matters of fact out of which the problem has arisen; and of some consequences, which, as I conceive, must be admitted if the facts ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... conceive that a young man who gets this book into his hands may, in after life, date his success from reading it. It is sound, wholesome, stimulating. The treatment is concrete. It abounds in specific advice and telling ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... had been "The Last Rose of Summer." "Kindermann's" voice is splendid, but there is no trace of "Wolfram" about him. Still less was "Fraulein X." able to identify herself with Venus, whom she seemed to conceive as an ideal Munich barmaid. "Lindemann", the Landgrave, you know, from Hamburg; his voice is as powerful as ever, and he might, later on, serve you as "Fafner" ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... such a one; he was not given to undervalue the advantage of his friendship or patronage. A career of unbroken prosperity, and a character by nature self-contained and strong-willed, combined to sustain his belief in himself. He could not for a moment conceive that Mr. Lovel declined his acquaintance as a thing not worth having. He therefore concluded that the banished lord of Arden felt his loss too keenly to endure to look upon his successor's happiness, and he pitied ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... grace of God obtained through prayer, said the Christian. Is man then free, or is he the passive creature of a greater power, and of what nature is that power? Now, where theologians have sought to define the Deity, and to conceive his government of his creatures in terms of a personal affection and will, scientists, contenting themselves with observation of facts, have shown that each man is what he is and does what he does partly because of what his parents and remoter ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... war. It is a world-destroying battle. All that has gone before this war in this world till now has been only boys throwing coloured powder at each other. No man could conceive it! What do you or the Mohmunds or anyone who has not been here know of war? When the ignorant in future speak of war, I shall laugh, even though they be my elder brethren. Consider what things are done ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... nevertheless, far transcend what is merely decorative, and are full of imagination and feeling. In fact, into this frame-work, which might have contained nothing beyond conventional imitation, Mr. Smith has put vivid touches which show that he has the faculty to conceive and the skill to handle which belong to the true artist. It would be easy to instance several of these borders as remarkably good in their way: that which surrounds the "Lord's Prayer" suggests dazzling effects in jewelled glass. The book is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... known as Mary Tofts, declared to the world, that, instead of a human child, she had given birth to a litter of rabbits. How such a ridiculous tale ever found believers, it is impossible to conceive; but such was the case. All England, with the very small exception of those who united the possession of learning with common sense, was imbued with the frenzy. The price of warrens was abated to a mere song, and for a season a Londoner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... it gives me great pleasure to be here because as a forester and tree lover by profession I am also a tree lover by nature. I can conceive of no more worthy, more beautiful nor attractive memorial than a tree dedicated to the Father of our Country, something which will grow in size, in beauty and in productivity as the years roll by. As foresters would remind you, ladies and gentlemen, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... seemed to take much offence that I did not invite her to take her seat at the supper table. I believe I was the only male traveller in the inn; and flattery, and even substantial gallantry, is so necessary and so natural to French women, that they look to it as their due, and conceive themselves injured when it ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... conversation with Phillida, Millard hit upon during the night that followed Gouverneur's visit, he could not have told. He planned letters to her in a dozen different veins, and rejected them all. He thought of appealing to Mrs. Callender once more, but could not conceive of Mrs. Callender's overruling Phillida. His mind perpetually reverted to Agatha. If only he might gain her co-operation! And yet this notion of securing the assistance of a younger sister had an air of intrigue that ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... strangely, flapping the water with its wings, and tugging away at swimming, without appearing to gain scarce a single foot, that I soon laid down my piece and concluded I would try to take it alive, supposing it must have got fast tangled with something, but with what, I was wholly unable to conceive. So, taking up my oar, and gunning my canoe, so as to send it by within reach of the bird, I gave two or three strong pulls, threw down the oar, put out my hand, and sat ready for the grab, which the next moment I made, seizing the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... don't know whether you are a wizard or what, and I can't conceive what reason you can have for making such ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... existence was a vital matter to the awful Power that ruled the universe; and while he worked that May evening at the second act of his great play, with the sweat raining from his brow in the sweltering heat, it was as impossible for him to conceive of ultimate failure as it was for him to realize that he should ever cease to exist. The air was stagnant, the light was bad, his stomach was empty, and he was tormented by the stinging of the gnats that circled around ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... that it must be some comfort for you to know that we, my husband and I, who might seem indifferent—not that—say unaffected by what has happened,—feel it very, very deeply; and to know that his life, which I can't conceive of as finished, has left a deep, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... round to see if my partner has returned, and find no news of him. It is idle to deny that I am getting anxious, as I cannot conceive what has happened. Should he not be back by tomorrow morning, I shall put the matter into the hands of the police. I trust that my anxieties are unfounded, but the matter is ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... us, at this day, to conceive how destitute of all the ordinary means of comfort and enjoyment, in comparison with a modern dwelling, the ancient feudal castles must have been. They were placed in situations as nearly inaccessible as possible, and the natural impediments ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious adjustment. The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of the golden bracelet filled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... belief in Christ: in others it had created one. War had unleashed the old hidden primitive instincts of manhood: likewise it had fired hearts to hate of hate and love of love, to the supreme ideal consciousness could conceive. War had brought out the monstrous in men and as well the godlike. Some soldiers had become cowards; others, heroes. There were thousands of soldiers who became lions to fight, hyenas to snarl, beasts to debase, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... national architecture, for official recognition of past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd. How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only hope he will attract ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... was a man far above the average of his contemporaries, and possessed a greatness of mind which could not fail to rivet attention. He differed from the majority of generals by not only daring to conceive bold plans, but by contriving to carry ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... of the mountain, the white-robed forms of the tall Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched culprit and hissing like so many fierce serpents, all suggested some uttermost deep in the infernal regions as one might conceive them in a nightmare. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... there, spread over the north-eastern sky. Small, isolated smoke-clouds rose above the stretches of forest, and an irregular-shaped tract of charred grass at the edge of the plain showed how far the flames had encroached upon it before they had been got under. One might well conceive with what almost superhuman exertions the beaters had at length accomplished their task. A large number of cattle had been driven by the fire on to the pasture beyond the home paddock—a pasture that had so far been carefully nursed in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... went to the management, happily engaged with its finishing touches to the play. Your share in the business, of course, was not mentioned; your cuttings had become the official act of the department. What that meant, you can perhaps hardly conceive. Here was popular musical comedy censored as it had never been censored before. Time was too short for negotiation; besides the whole thing was too drastic for half measures to be of any avail. Dullness, decorum, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... of his father's business or occupation that he could conceive of no cause for worriment. When his advances met with little response he asked: "Have you got a ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... Mr. Pickwick; while the ever gallant Mr. Tupman led Mrs. Bardell, who said she was better, downstairs. "I cannot conceive what has been the matter with the woman. I merely told her of my intention of keeping a manservant, when she fell into an extraordinary paroxysm. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... formidable band of marauders. The Scythians of the country supposed that they were men, but they could learn nothing certain respecting them. Their language, their appearance, their manners, and their dress were totally new, and the inhabitants were utterly unable to conceive who they were, and from what place they could so suddenly and ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... he humbly; for he could not look upon my face and hold his anger. "If I haf not alreaty gifen to Mees Veensheep t'e perfect beauty t'at I promised, I cannot conceive greater perfection. You are satisfied vit' our ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... brother, and 'tis no aim of mine to increase the obstacles already in my path." Then his tone changed. He leaned across the table. "Come, now, Peter. What is at the root of all this matter? Can we not compose such differences as you conceive exist? Out with them. 'Tis no matter for Sir John. He's a curmudgeon who signifies not a finger's snap. But you, 'tis different. You are her brother. Out with your plaints, then. Let us ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition to his other qualities—and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses. And, at the start, he had a conviction ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this policy would make the army "a machine," and it would be difficult to conceive of a more utterly worthless machine than it would have then been. It is highly probable that, under certain conditions, the Southern boys can be disciplined. If a few of them were caught up at a time, and were penned up in barracks ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... simple schoolchildren, and sensible schoolmasters, are to do in this atmosphere of Egyptian marsh, which rains fools upon them like frogs, I can no more with any hope or patience conceive;—but this finally I repeat, concerning my own books, that they are written in honest English, of good Johnsonian lineage, touched here and there with colour of a little finer or Elizabethan quality: and that the things they tell you are comprehensible ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... never so familiar with his wife, the apothecary dares not (for the richest horn in his shop) displease him. All the midwives in the town are his intelligencers; but nurses and young merchants' wives that would fain conceive with child, these are his idolaters. He is a more unjust bone-setter than a dice-maker. He hath put out more eyes than the small-pox; more deaf than the cataracts of Nilus; lamed more than the gout; shrunk more sinews than one ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... absolution from the pope, who delivered his celebrated brief, in which he requested the ladies of Franconia to be a little more lively, and prevent a repetition of such a crime. Madame de l'Ile Adam did not conceive, and fell into a state ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... how, when Nelson left Portsmouth for death and victory, the throng pressed after him down the beach in tears, and ran into the water for a last grasp of his hand, conceive with what emotion we lined up and escorted our hero to the ferry; through what tears we watched him from the Passage Slip as he waved back from the boat tiding him over to the farther shore, where at length Boutigo's Van—"The Eclipse," Troy to Torpoint, No Smoking Inside—received and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lord no sooner received, but that having broken it open, and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date or subscription, called one of his men[3] to help him to read it. But no sooner did he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it (as whether of a matter of consequence, as indeed it was, or whether some foolish devised pasquil, by some of his enemies to scare him from his ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker
... nothing to say. I only said that I couldn't conceive how any educated woman could be happy without ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... blasts of January are like on these stupendous heights we can well conceive. At one point of our journey we reach an altitude above the sea equal to that of the Puy de Dome. This is the lofty plateau of granitic formation called Le Palais du Roi, a portion of the Margeride chain, and as the old writer before mentioned ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... new church is so much needed. How strange that you should be willing to stay, and that we can work together! Oh, Vida! I prayed—with faith, I thought—but I never dreamed of an hour like this; surely 'It has not entered into our hearts to conceive the things which God has prepared for them that love ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... Monsieur Mair was here and with Mr. Scott! I am glad that you conceive an opinion so favourable of Monsieur Mair, but I regret that I am unable to share in the regard. I think I had better open your eyes somewhat to the character of this agreeable gentleman. Since coming to Red River, his chief occupation has been writing correspondence ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... that he understood it as well as I did, at all events; that I could not conceive why I should get into these difficulties, one after the other; but that I believed I was a crazy man on this one subject—matrimonial monomania; that when I had gone through with one of these scrapes, and had suffered the severe ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... it well enough. To a cultivated taste, it was superior to the more pretentious "new house." During the first year of Mulrady's tenancy, the plain square log-cabin had received those additions and attractions which only a tenant can conceive and actual experience suggest; and in this way the hideous right angles were broken with sheds, "lean-to" extensions, until a certain picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline, and a home-like security and companionship ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... I came to look things squarely in the face in my berth by myself, I began to see how utterly impossible it would be for me after all to go and stop with the Cheritons. How I could ever have dreamt it feasible I could hardly conceive. I ought to have refused at once. I ought to have been braver. I ought to have said outright, "I'll have nothing to do or say with anyone who is a friend or an acquaintance of Courtenay Ivor's." And yet, to have said so would have been to give ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... remembered how, when one Stacy, with an oath, assured my father that his word was as good as his bond, my parent said dryly that this equality left him free to choose, and he would prefer his bond. I saw no way to what was for me the mysterious security of a bond, but I did conceive of some need to stiffen the promise Dove had made before I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... what I do not: And I should have much stronger Expectations then I dare yet entertain, to see Philosophy solidly establish't, if men would more carefully distinguish those things that they know, from those that they ignore or do but think, and then explicate clearly the things they conceive they understand, acknowledge ingenuously what it is they ignore, and profess so candidly their Doubts, that the industry of intelligent persons might be set on work to make further enquiries, and the easiness ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... sat a person who was not a member of the family—Mr. Cunningham's curate, a great big broad-shouldered young man, six feet three at least in height, with a pleasant, open face, rather sun-burnt, and the most good-tempered smile that you can possibly conceive. ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... to think of all this; to think that Bazaine carried into Metz—a place that should have been held, if at all, with not over 25,000 men—an army of 180,000, because it contained, the excuse was, "an accumulation of stores." With all the resources of rich France to draw upon, I cannot conceive that this excuse was sincere; on the contrary, I think that the movement of Bazaine must have been inspired by Napoleon with a view to the maintenance of his dynasty rather than for the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... forming a vast network of communications and correspondence which kept them acquainted with the innumerable intrigues of all the petty native courts. Madame Dupleix, a Creole, brought up in India, understood all its dialects. Her husband had been the first to conceive the idea of that policy which was destined before long to deliver India to the English, his imitators; mingling everywhere in the incessant revolutions which were hatching all about him, he gave the support ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... leads us to another and most formidable objection. To conceive the eternal existence of one Being infinite in power, "self-created and creating all others," is by no means impossible. Indeed, as everything must have had a cause, nothing we see being by possibility self-created, we naturally mount from particulars to generals, until ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... Indian's politeness of never interrupting. What, absolutely never? Is there no case in which I should? If a man's nose, or ear, as sometimes happens in high latitudes, were suddenly and visibly frost-bitten, so as instantly to require being rubbed with snow, I conceive it lawful to interrupt that man in the most pathetic sentence, or even to ruin a whole paragraph of his prose. You can never indeed give him back the rhetoric which you have undermined; that is true; but neither could he, in the alternative case, have given ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... studies of Blackstone, upon which the gentlemen who argue thus have entered in order to fit themselves for the legal and constitutional argument of the question, have confused their minds, and that they are misled by some fancied analogy between a tract and an action of trover, and conceive that the one, like the other, cannot be employed till after an actual conversion has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... danger and judgement which threatens the Authors and Abettors of these things, doth affect our Spirits with horrour, and maketh us desire that it may be given to them of God to repent: So we should conceive our selves void of Christian affection and compassion toward those in England, who suffer for the truth and Cause of God, if we were not very sensible of all their present troubles and calamities. It is no small ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... counselled him to do. Alessandro had given him so vivid a description of the Senora's face and tone, when she had ordered him out of her sight, that Felipe was alarmed. He had never seen his mother angry like that. He could not conceive why her wrath should have been so severe. The longer he talked with Alessandro, the more he felt that it would be wiser for him to be out of sight till the first force of her anger had been spent. "I will say that I sent you," said Felipe, "so she cannot feel that you have ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not easy to conceive a more dismal scene of misery than this, families locked up from all their acquaintance, though seized with a distemper which the most of any in the world requires comfort and assistance, abandoned it may be to the treatment of an inhuman nurse, (for ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... reference be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of the hand which could do all and the brain which could conceive all. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Dawson's own accounts of his exploits—I can conceive no greater exercise in folly—one would conclude that he never failed, that he always held the strings by which his puppets were constrained to dance, and that he could pluck them from their games and shut them within his black box whenever he grew wearied ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations until a proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes of Virginia. The estimated value of the new-born infant is so low (say twelve dollars and fifty cents) that it would probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six hundred millions of dollars, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... he could not cause me not to exist so long as I thought. To be deceived means to think falsely; but that something is thought, no matter what it be, is no deception. It might be true, indeed, that nothing at all existed; but then there would be no one to conceive this non-existence. Granted that everything may be a mistake; yet the being mistaken, the thinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains. The whole content of consciousness is destroyed; consciousness itself, the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... in her hurried visits to New York, between her excursions from studio to studio—her luncheons with this lady who had to play at a matinee, and her dinners with that singer who had an evening concert—had seen enough of her friend's handsome daughter to conceive for her an inclination of such violence and assurance as only Flavia could afford. The fact that Imogen had shown rather marked capacity in certain esoteric lines of scholarship, and had decided to specialize in a well-sounding branch of philology at the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... According to the evidence given before the Commission of the National Assembly, the chief reason for our rejection of mediation was distrust of Mr. Wilson. Nevertheless, I still believe that ignorance and undervaluation of America was a stronger influence. At least I cannot conceive that all the authorities concerned would have voted for unrestricted submarine war if they had been firmly convinced that the United States would come into the war with all her military and economic power. However that may be, I tried ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... would be useless and absurd for the State to attempt to promote friendship and sympathy between man and man directly. But I see no reason why, if it be otherwise expedient, the State may not do something towards that end indirectly. For example, I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community. A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Spaniards failed to subjugate the Mahometans, or to incorporate their territory in the general administrative system of the Colony, after three centuries of intermittent endeavour, it is difficult to conceive that the Philippine Republic (had it subsisted) would have been more successful. It would have been useless to have resolved to leave the Moros to themselves, practically ignoring their existence. Any Philippine Government must needs hold them in check for the public weal, for the fact is patent ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... him through the fool's argument clearly. Lempriere closed his eye, and struggled with it, his lips outpursed, his head sunk on his breast. Suddenly his eyes opened, he brought the bottle of canary down with a thud on the turf. "'Fore Michael and all angels, I have it, fool; I travel, I conceive. De Carteret of St. Ouen's must have gone to the block ere conceiving so. I must conceive thus of the argument. He who compasseth the Queen existeth ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... descending to earth in a new avatar, as son of Dasharatha. Shortly afterwards, an angel appears before King Dasharatha, bringing in a golden bowl a substance which contains the essence of Vishnu. The king gives it to his three wives, who thereupon conceive and dream wonderful dreams. Then Queen Kausalya gives birth to Rama; Queen Kaikeyi to Bharata; Queen Sumitra to twins, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. Heaven and earth rejoice. The four princes grow up in mutual friendship, yet Rama and Lakshmana are peculiarly drawn ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... accompanied by an elegance which might have seemed scarcely compatible with that power. There is in both an absence of any extraordinary elevation or vigour; which we do not regret, because we can hardly conceive but that they would be less pleasing if they were in any respect different from what they are. Each possesses a perfect facility and command over his own peculiar manner, which has secured him from having any successful imitator. Yet as they were both employed in ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... For the first two or three minutes, therefore, T exhibited as finished a specimen of the dastardly as could be imagined. My hair absolutely raised my cap some inches off my head; my mouth opened to an extent which I did not conceive it could possibly reach; I thought my eyes shot out from their sockets, and my fingers spread out and became stiff, though powerless. The "obstupui" was perfectly realized in me, for, with the exception of a single groan, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... able to act in such a manner as to bring no discredit upon myself in your eye; and that is all now that I have to wish for. But, if I value him so much as you are pleased to suppose I do, the trial, which you imagine will be so difficult to me, will not, I conceive, be upon getting from him, when the means to affect my escape are lent me; but how I shall behave when got from him; and if, like the Israelites of old, I shall be so weak as to wish to return to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... mint. In the meantime, as an assayer's office is established there, I would respectfully submit for your consideration the propriety of authorizing gold bullion which has been assayed and stamped to be received in payment of Government dues. I can not conceive that the Treasury would suffer any loss by such a provision, which will at once raise bullion to its par value, and thereby save (if I am rightly informed) many millions of dollars to the laborers which are now paid in brokerage to convert this precious metal into available ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... of a railroad accident which should result in the wholesale destruction of the entire orchestra, haunted his mind. Another great fire might wipe Chicago out of existence. The one thing which his imagination failed to conceive, was the possibility that he, Lewis Peckham, might be deterred from hearing the concert when once it should take place. In the interim he made repeated calculations of the number of hours that must be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... a spirit of self-denial of which we can scarcely conceive Richard did wait, and the shade was drawn closely down as little Nina, grown more bold climbed up beside him, and poised upon one foot, her fat arm resting on his neck, played "peek-a-boo" beneath the shade, screaming at every ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... second, and the third. The first is to conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... instead of impressing on him the fact that doubt may be the stamp of a truth-loving mind—that sunt quibus non credidisse honor est, et fidei futurae pignus—seems to have produced precisely the contrary effect. It has not enabled him even to conceive the condition of a mind "perplext in faith but pure in deeds," craving light, yearning for a faith that will harmonize and cherish its highest powers and aspirations, but unable to find that faith in dogmatic Christianity. His own doubts apparently were of a different kind. Nowhere ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive or his tongue utter, to deliver us from "sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion." And reason good,—for while a rebellion against tyranny; a rebellion designed, after prostrating arbitrary power, to establish free government on the basis of justice and truth, is an enterprise on which ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... represented in the House of Representatives. The Senators from that State were chosen by a legislature in which the country west of that river was represented. In view of all these facts it is difficult to conceive upon what ground it can be maintained that in occupying the country west of the Nueces with our Army, with a view solely to its security and defense, we invaded the territory of Mexico. But it would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Conceive of the situation if you can. Imagine the horror of it, and then ask yourself if it was likely that when next morning came I could by any possibility bring myself to my work-table in fit condition to prepare for you anything at all worthy of publication in the Idler. I tried. I implore you ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... therefore they are before the throne of God. Yea, therefore it is that their good works stand in such a place.' 'Nor must we think it strange,' says John Howe, in his Blessedness of the Righteous, 'that all the requisites to our salvation are not found together in one text of Scripture. I conceive that imputed righteousness is not here meant, but that righteousness which is truly subjected in a child of God and descriptive of him. The righteousness of Him whom we adore as made sin for us that we might ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... and I undeceived them. When they knew who I really was, they only behaved towards me with still greater kindness. I passed my time in reading and praying, and led the quietest, sweetest life it is possible to conceive. ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... influx of migrants into California in recent years has resulted in problems of health, morals, and especially finance, the proportions of which are staggering. It is not for us to say that this is not true. We have repeatedly and recently affirmed, and we now reaffirm, that we do not conceive it our function to pass upon 'the wisdom, need, or appropriateness' of the legislative efforts of the States to solve such difficulties. * * * But this does not mean that there are no boundaries to the permissible area of State ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... mournfully. "I cannot conceive how the poor Silts go on in that great house. Whatever she intended, it could not have been that. The house, the farm, the money,—everything down to the personal articles that belong to Mr. Failing, and should have reverted ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... summit of a hill, the ruins of its temple, of which there are, I believe, twenty-three columns still remaining up-right. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive any landscape more lovely than the one now before us. The wooded isle,—the ruined temple, rising above the dense masses of foliage,—Athens and its Acropolis, just distinguishable in the distance,—Pentelicus and Hymettus ranging behind it, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... of it!" cried the old man. "You cannot conceive how deep my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was suddenly attacked by a sickness—disgust of humanity. When I think that Napoleon is at Saint-Helena, everything on earth is a matter of indifference ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... had found that these were the miracules chiefly of previous years—about three hundred and fifty in number.[6] They formed a considerably large procession. I had looked at their faces: there were many more women than men (as there were upon Calvary). But as I watched them I could not conceive upon what principle the Supernatural had suddenly descended on this and not on that. "Two men in one bed.... Two women grinding at the mill.... One is taken and the other left." Here were persons of all ages—from ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... the social scale lay the masses of the poor. They were ignorant and brutal to a degree which it is hard to conceive, for the increase of population which followed on the growth of towns and the developement of commerce had been met by no effort for their religious or educational improvement. Not a new parish had been created. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... i., pp. 106, 109, that the words which I have italicised were inserted in the article, deliberately and after considerable discussion, in order to render illegal any attack from the air upon undefended localities; among which I conceive that ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... vanity or flattery say hitherto he hes not bein inclined to any vice or evill way and I hope sall so continue. I know not positively what may defray his charges in his studies, diet, and otherwise, but I conceive about 7 or 8 hundred franks a year may do it; whowever I entreat you let me hear from you what ye think wil do it and what ye will take for the frank. So being confident of your cair heirof, and in doing wheirof ye sall very much oblidge him ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... name. You have five years unexpired term yet to serve in the Missouri penitentiary, and I conceive it my duty to see that you keep ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... which seeks to divest all that is said about the devil in Scripture of everything like personality, and to refine it away into figurative representation of "the principle of evil," is as unphilosophical as it is unscriptural. How can we conceive of moral evil in the abstract? How can we think of it apart from the depraved will of some intelligent being? Whatever theories may be held respecting the difficult question of the origin of evil, it is surely inconceivable that it should exist independently ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... but the denser the air the sooner it loses its motion. In a dense fluid like water, the motion is imparted quickly, and the sound is not a ring but a click. If we diminish the density of the air, the loss of motion is retarded; so that we might conceive it possible, provided the bell could be suspended in a perfect vacuum, without a mechanical tie, and there was no friction to overcome from the rigidity of its particles, that the bell would vibrate forever, although its sound could never reach the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... to come in violent gusts, striking the ship every now and then with a force that seemed to bury her in the water; while the sea got rougher and rougher, looking as angry as it was possible to conceive. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... greater than they know. Ah, me! Thought surges upon thought, and has its will, Care, gnawing upon care, my soul must kill; Love—hate—fear—pain: I am of each the prey, I grope for light, but never find the day! Oh, what I suffer thou canst not conceive, Each passion rages, but can ne'er relieve; For I have noble thoughts that die still-born, And I have thoughts so base my soul I scorn. I love the foolish wretch who is my son, I hate the folly which hath all undone; I mourn his death,—yet, if I Polyeucte ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... says M. Dupotet, "to conceive the sensation which Mesmer's experiments created in Paris. No theological controversy, in the earlier ages of the Catholic Church, was ever conducted with greater bitterness." His adversaries denied the discovery; some calling him a quack, others a fool, and others again, like the Abbe Fiard, a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... had brought with them—conceive what? A ship's anchor! To this anchor was tied a long thick rope. Their object was, of course, to fix the anchor to the burning beam, which being done, fifty, sixty or more strong men could pull the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... light; arched over with a heaven of stars; bordered about by heavy woods; dipping to the sea on two sides and extending shimmering sands to the breaking swell on the third. Say that a hot blue fog quivers in the air above this meadow-land, and is breathed in at every breath you take. Conceive a mind so played upon by this vapour that the meadows and the woods beyond the meadows are gradually lost to view, and a wonder-world quickly takes their place. Do this, and you may follow me more surely to a phantom city of majestic temples ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... forty-five pillars, and besides them four rows of pillars, and all this to bear up an invisible burden, for we read of nothing upon the pillars but the heavens and roof. It should be to show that it is impossible that a carnal heart should conceive of the weight that truth lays upon the conscience of a believer. They see, nothing, alas, nothing at all, but a beam, a truth, and, say they, are you such fools to stand groaning to bear up that, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Noorna, ere the time of breathing is commanded to cease. Now, in that respite the thing that will occur, 'tis for thee to see and mark; sure, never will reverse of things be more complete, and the other side of the picture more rapidly exhibited, if all go as I conceive and plot, and the trap be not premature nor too perfect for the trappers; as the poet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I believe hast not been one of Venus' Hand-maids so long, but thou understand thy Trade— In short, fair Damsel, this honest Fellow here who is so termagant upon thy Lady, is my Friend, my particular Friend, and therefore I would have him handsomly, and well-favour'dly abus'd— you conceive me. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in which, however, may be found figures and forms such as Michel Angelo never drew nor such even as his imperial and suggestive mind could conceive. ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... making Nature parallel with my own or with any creed. The only legitimate questions one dare put to Nature are those which concern universal human good and the Divine interpretation of things. These I conceive may be there actually studied at first-hand, and before their purity is soiled by human touch. We have Truth in Nature as it came from God. And it has to be read with the same unbiased mind, the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... it is very difficult to conceive how this could have happened to a powerful nation, in which it does not appear that the conqueror had one partisan. It stands a single event in history, unless, perhaps, we may compare it with the reduction of Ireland, some time after, by Henry the Second. An attentive consideration of the state ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that any groups of simians ever conceive of, from the woodenest little idol in the forest to the mightiest Spirit, no matter how much they may differ, will have one trait in common: a readiness to drop any cosmic affair at short notice, focus ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... all other authors have written on this affair with great impartiality, yet I cannot conceive that any of them have the least merit; nor do I find one man that has treated this subject sensibly, besides myself.—Smithson's Amiableness of Candour and Diffidence, page 8.—What modesty! what candour! amiable critic! doubtless your ingenuous style has obtained you a place on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... knew the Russian, in whose power they were, so well that he could not doubt but that the man, filled with rage that Jane had once escaped him, and knowing that Tarzan might be close upon his trail, would wreak without further loss of time whatever vengeance his polluted mind might be able to conceive. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rarely quick, unless they have been corrupted into unnatural vigilance by the necessities of suspicion. But a nature more thoroughly unsuspecting, more frank, trustful, and genuinely loyal than that young Earl's, it was impossible to conceive. All these attributes considered, we have the key to much of Harold's character and conduct in the later events of his fated and ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Gospel." The 'Ministers' in 1661 took 'Exceptions' to this rubric on the ground that this portion of the Service "being for the most part neither Psalms nor Hymns, we know no warrant why they should be sung in any place, and conceive that the distinct reading of them with an audible voice tends more to the edification of the Church." To this the bishops replied, that "the rubric directs only such singing as is after the manner of distinct reading, and we never heard of any inconvenience thereby, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... therefore the truth of GOD and the ideal for man in Him are one. In Him we see man as he ought to be, man as he is meant to be. And because we instinctively judge that the highest human nature is divine, and because also we feel that GOD Himself would be most divine and worshipful if we could conceive of Him as entering in and sharing our human experience and revealing Himself as man, those who have reflected most deeply about the matter have commonly been led to believe that so indeed it is. They have felt that ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Whirlpool at Niagara. In the mean time it is easy enough to go down, and the ladies go down every day, taking their novels or their needle-work with them. They have various notions of a bath: some conceive that it is bathing to sit in the edge of the water, and emit shrieks as the surge sweeps against them; others run boldly in, and after a moment of poignant hesitation jump up and down half-a-dozen times, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not ourselves from it, nor from our part in it, we offer you to put our whole quarrel, with God's grace, between our person and yours. And if it should seem to you that you cannot agree to this, because of the interest which you conceive our cousin, your father, has in it, we declare to you in this our intention, that if you will entertain it, and engage in it, we are well pleased that our said cousin, for our reverence to God, and because he is a sacred person, shall have and enjoy all he has at present for ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the drunkard is a process of culture, and involves something of a constitutional tendency as in other diseases. I conceive that there is an alcoholic temperament, or a temperament in which the inability to bear with patience the various mental and physical woes of life is marked even from childhood. Indigestion and every ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... the greatest courage, and of the most perfect discipline, and who are fighting for pay, without any personal motive, against five hundred thousand men, whom we shall suppose utterly ignorant of the art of war, but who conceive they are fighting for their liberty and their country, for their families and their property, and then reflect on the courage and bravery of these very men, on their impetuosity, their acharnement, or desperate violence in fight, which may be compared to the irresistible ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... against this body, and the memory of it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being representative and popular—not in its constitution, but in its object.—With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You, Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are unconstitutional.—If you heard this ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... the terrific obstacles in human nature against which any real moral advance on earth must win its way. Too often we have taken for granted what a recent book calls "a goal of racial perfection and nobility the splendour of which it is beyond our powers to conceive," and we have dreamed about this earthly paradise like a saint having visions of heaven and counting it as won already because he is predestined to obtain it. Belief in inevitable progress has thus acted as an opiate on many minds, lulling them into an elysium where all things come by ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... is disheartening in these days of splendid progress, when we had hoped that war was for ever banished from the world, to find that humanity has yet to endure the old horrors once more. How fearful these horrors will be, and how great the destruction of life, it is hardly possible to conceive, so terrible are the forces at man's command nowadays, if he uses them simply for destructive purposes. The Sclav has spread from South-Eastern Europe and multiplied greatly in Asia, till his boundaries are coterminous with British territory, ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... interfere with the private arrangements of the royal family, but the king had given pensions to two of his sisters at the expense of the unfortunate Leeward Islands, and why these islands were singled out for such a purpose he could not conceive. Then there were pensions of L500 each to the Misses Fitzclarence; and there were also gentlemen high in office who condescended to allow the Leeward Islands to support their families. Right honourable gentlemen, he continued, could not say that they were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to an enchanted hall," said he. "I daren't wind the horn lest I should fall under the spell. The portal yielded to my touch, and I entered the first room, where conceive my surprise to see, fantastically dressed, and reclining in Eastern fashion on skins and cushions, a galaxy of beauty. They were silent, too, except one, who, in a hushed, mysterious, voice, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... point to be noticed is the geographical position of the great pyramid, so far, at least, as this position affects the aspect of the heavens, viewed from the pyramid as from an observatory. Little importance, I conceive, can be attached to purely geographical relations in considering the pyramid's position. Professor Smyth notes that the pyramid is peculiarly placed with respect to the mouth of the Nile, standing 'at the southern apex of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... we reached the mountain range which divides Pachatupec from the desert. Anything more lonesome and depressing it were impossible to conceive. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass nor any green thing; neither running stream nor gleam of water could be seen. It was a region in which the blessed rain of heaven had not fallen for untold ages, a region of desolation and death, of naked peaks, rugged precipices, and rocky ravines. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... an ominous undernote of threat. "Let's have done with pretense. In so far as any individuals can make or break—we can. When you came, an unlicked cub, into the world of large affairs it was through us you made the alliances upon which your success is built. However great you conceive yourself to be, 'Consolidated' still recognizes ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... individually alike: for, as the process of forming them was a real growth, an evolution from a germ, the spontaneous result of creative Nature working within them, so there could be no copying of one from another. Accordingly, as in the men and women of Nature's own making, different minds conceive different ideas of them, and have different feelings towards them, and even the same mind at different times: in fact, hardly any two men view them alike, or any one man for two years together; the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... upon their conversation, or acknowledging any superiority, there was nothing extraordinary in the familiarity I had witnessed. How this sort of association can be relished by officers of gentle breeding I cannot conceive; and many of them must be so, though a great part are men who, having risen from the ranks, have not been accustomed to more refined companionship. If it ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... tender contempt his pale yellow child, to patronize loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who loved pink neckties and wore patent-leather boots on his little feet, and was so humble before the white husband of the lucky sister. Those were the delights of his life, and he was unable to conceive that the moral significance of any act of his could interfere with the very nature of things, could dim the light of the sun, could destroy the perfume of the flowers, the submission of his wife, the smile of his child, the awe-struck respect of Leonard da Souza and of all the Da Souza family. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... among the beasts, who love and cling to each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of esteem, and who are incapable ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... curious phenomena I have just recapitulated, are immediately dependent on the last series of changes, organic and inorganic, in these regions; and as the phenomena presented by the island of Celebes differ from those of all the surrounding islands, it can, I conceive, only be because the past history of Celebes has been, to some extent, unique and different from theirs. We must have much more evidence to determine exactly in what that difference has consisted. At present, I only ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... expedition of this kind is certainly no sinecure; but I am sure that no one who has not occupied a similar post can conceive the anxieties and disquietudes under which I have laboured during all these difficult days. Almost ever since our departure from Ghat we have been in fear, either for our lives or our property. Danger has ever hung hovering over us, sometimes averted, sometimes seeming to be turned into smoke; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... then the facts of the case in its philosophic and rational bearings, I may say this: Not merely would it be no wrong to remove Drusus from a world in which he is evidently out of place, but I even conceive such an act to rise to the rank of a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... condition of a man's religious faith? How can we possess clear and definite ideas of the grand mystery of Creation? Consider only this simple metaphysical fact, that space has no limit, and that we can neither conceive a beginning of time nor imagine time without a beginning. What is there outside of the universe? The brain reels as we think of it. The time has gone by when a man can say to himself definitely, I believe this or I believe that; but we know at least that we, "the creature of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that Providence should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... robbers and ravishers, under the names of Christian parties but savages at heart, put the whole people to ransom and to sack. Indeed, the Wars of Religion were like hell; the tongue can describe them better than the imagination can conceive them. The whole sweet and pleasant land of France, from the Burgundian to the Spanish frontier, was widowed and desolated, her pride humbled by her own sons and her Golden Lilies trampled in the bloody mire. Foreign ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... this treatise are perhaps sufficiently developed in connexion with the various topics which are successively treated of in the Introduction. That method of teaching, which I conceive to be the best, is also there described. And, in the Grammar itself, there will be found occasional directions concerning the manner of its use. I have hoped to facilitate the study of the English language, not by abridging our grammatical code, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... utterly impossible to convey the impression of as to describe the movement which followed, or rather accompanied, it, so confused, strange and unnatural was the entire sensation. It was like the rush of many waters, the explosion of cannon—like anything the imagination can conceive; and at the same time the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... think it?" resumed Sir Thomas, when everybody was helped, and conversation free to flow. "Master Tremayne doth conceive that we Christian folk be meant to learn somewhat from those ancient Jews that did wander about with Moses in the wilderness. Ne'er heard I no such a fantasy. To conceive that we can win knowledge from the rotten old observances of those Jew ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its influence over all or any thing that I have written;—but I deny Marlow and his progeny, and beg that you will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... out, if possible, this traffic on and near our settlements on the coast, I must now give you notice, that you must break up your establishment at this point, in two weeks from this date; failing to do so, I shall take such measures as I conceive necessary to attain this object. I will thank you to send a reply to this communication immediately, stating your intentions, and also sending an account of the number of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Presley's imagination, with all the dignity of the tragedy. He could not blame Caraher for being a "red." He even wondered how it was the saloon-keeper had not put his theories into practice, and adjusted his ancient wrong with his "six inches of plugged gas-pipe." Presley began to conceive of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... peculiarities of the many priests and religious who had passed through the house since she knew it—alas! she hated them all!—and did not know how she was to help hating them in the future. These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct, that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... determining by rule who should be admitted to practice before that tribunal, and that we ought not by legislation to undertake to interfere with its rules. Now, with the greatest respect for that tribunal, I conceive that the law-making and not the law-expounding power in this government ought to determine the question what class of citizens shall be clothed with the office of the advocate. I believe that leaving to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... servitor. That relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it. Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among us. Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the nation may ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and rigidity of the mores. We see that we must conceive of the mores as a vast system of usages, covering the whole of life, and serving all its interests; also containing in themselves their own justification by tradition and use and wont, and approved by mystic sanctions until, by rational reflection, they develop their ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... "there are the great llanos, (plains,) no hay agua; no hay zacate— nada: there is neither water nor grass—nothing; every animal that goes upon them, dies." It was indeed dismal to look upon, and to conceive so great a change in so short a distance. One might travel the world over, without finding a valley more fresh and verdant—more floral and sylvan— more alive with birds and animals—more bounteously watered—than we had left in the San Joaquin: here within a few ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... obtained were those of four human beings. They are now preserved in a room at Pompeii, and more ghastly and painful, yet deeply interesting and touching objects, it is difficult to conceive. We have death itself moulded and cast—the very last struggle and final agony brought before us. They tell their story with a horrible dramatic truth that no sculptor could ever reach. They would have furnished a thrilling episode to the accomplished ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of a fixed apparatus is merely an economical substitute for the wasteful vent- pipe, because it is a place in which acetylene can be held in reserve whenever the make exceeds the consumption in speed. It is perhaps possible to conceive of a large table acetylene lamp fitted with a water- sealed rising holder; but for vehicular purposes the displacement holder is practically the only one available, and in small apparatus it becomes too minute in size to be of much service as ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... then must it be an awful and deadly sin to gainsay her bidding. There be that take in hand to question the same: whom holy Church condemneth. I Cicely cannot presume to speak thereof, not being a priest, unto whom alone it appertaineth to conceive such matter. 'Tis true, there be that say lay folk can as well conceive, and have as much right as any priest; but holy Church agreeth not therewith. God be merciful to us all, whereinsoever we ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... points of view, Mr. Spencer Wyatt," he said, "as to Germany. Mr. Hebblethwaite believes that I am an alarmist. I know that I am not. This isn't any ordinary visit of mine. I have come to see you on the most urgent matter which any one could possibly conceive. I have come to give you the chance to save our country from the worst disaster ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the part of the one more spiritually enlightened toward the one less enlightened. One should no more consent that his friend should do an ignoble thing than he should consent to do an ignoble thing himself. He should hold his friend in thought to the divine standard. He should conceive of him nobly and expect from him only honor and integrity. "Those who trust us educate us," says George Eliot; and still more do they who hold us in the highest thought draw us upward to that atmosphere through which no evil may pass. Each one is his brother's keeper, and life achieves ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... which went by the name of Palilia. The Roman and Greek months have now little or no agreement; they say, however, the day on which Romulus began to build was quite certainly the thirtieth of the month, at which time there was an eclipse of the sun which they conceive to be that seen by Antimachus, the Teian poet, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad. In the times of Varro the philosopher, a man deeply read in Roman history, lived one Tarrutius, his familiar acquaintance, a good philosopher ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... an argument which multiplies the others which I have used. On what ground could we refuse that equal treatment of the Orange River Colony? There is only one ground which we could assign for such a refusal, and that is that in the Orange River Colony there is sure to be a Dutch majority. I cannot conceive any more fatal assertion that could be made on the part of the Imperial Government than that on this specific racial ground they were forced to refuse liberties which otherwise they would concede. I say such a refusal would be an ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... being seconded by the often-falling tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be appreciated." This is literally true: any sight more inexpressibly exquisite than that of an English lawn in fine order is what I am quite unable to conceive.[003] ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... strange; but that Nero himself, for whom she had made such exertions and incurred such dangers, and to whose interests she had surrendered and sacrificed every thing that could be dear to the heart of a woman—could believe such tales, and actually conceive the design of murdering his mother on the faith of them, was not to be endured. "Does not he know well," said she, in a voice almost inarticulate with excitement and indignation, "that, if by any means, Britannicus, or Plautus, or any other man were to be raised ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abominable din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive. And to make matters still more distressing, the rascally little scape-grace in the steeple was evidently exerting himself to the utmost. Every now and then one might catch a glimpse of the scoundrel through the smoke. There he sat in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hundred louis. I was not mistaken. I inquired at the inn if they knew citizen Jean Picot. They replied that not only did they know him, but in fact he was then dining at the table d'hote. I went in. You can imagine what they were talking about—the stoppage of the diligence. Conceive the sensation my apparition caused. The god of antiquity descending from the machine produced a no more unexpected finale than I. I asked which one of the guests was called Jean Picot. The owner of this distinguished and melodious name stood forth. I placed the two hundred louis before him, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... of Mercedes's romantic benevolences. Mrs. Talcott is a sort of old pensioner; a distant family connection; the funniest old American woman you can conceive of. She has been with Mercedes since her childhood, and, like everybody else, she is so devotedly attached to her that she regards it as a matter of course that she should be taken care of by her for ever. The way Karen takes her advantages as a ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... breathe, a tree really vegetate." And Millet—"I try not to have things look as if chance had brought them together, but as if they had a necessary bond between themselves. I want the people I represent to look as if they really belonged to their station, so that imagination cannot conceive of their ever being anything else. People and things should always be there with an object. I want to put strongly and completely all that is necessary, for I think things weakly said might as well not be said at all, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... much interested in the moral and religious instruction given by those lady friends, Mrs. E. and D., to whom they had been introduced in the manner already pointed out. Request was extended to the warden that they might have the privilege of corresponding, but he peremptorily refused; why, none could conceive, though some would contend that the reason must be found in the vindictive, for the correspondence was to go through the usual channel and be open to his own inspection, that, had anything objectionable appeared, he could have ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... there were no stages; we may have simply leaped by one bound at that consummation. He had swung himself into my compartment as the train was leaving the platform at Blackheath; so I suppose it was destiny. After that I was tempted to conceive that he fastened on me as on something that he had need of; but I think it was rather that I fell to his ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... these courses. I made a friend of the girl; talked to her more and more confidentially; and at last—fatal moment—told her my history. Yes, I was ass enough to tell that girl the whole story of my life. Can you conceive ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Rome, the equal of Demosthenes, was his supreme desire, and to it all other studies were made subservient. Poetry, history, law, philosophy, were regarded by him only as so many qualifications without which an orator could not be perfect. He could not conceive a great orator except as a great man, nor a good orator except as a good man. The integrity of his public conduct, the purity of his private life, wonderful if contrasted with the standard of those around him, arose ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... impatient scorn on the barren and barbarous annals of her people. We in whose ears the notes of the Teutonic minstrelsy of the Middle Ages are still sounding, we who know that Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe were all one day to arise from beneath the soil of Germanic literature, can hardly conceive how dreary and repulsive the national sagas, and even the every-day speech of her people, would seem in that day to a woman of great intellectual endowments, nor how strong would be the antagonism between culture and national patriotism in the heart ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... "Conceive your position as my aunt (I say nothing of myself), if I had adopted the other alternative. Turned out of the Jockey Club, turned out of Tattersalls', turned out of the betting-ring; in short, posted publicly as a defaulter ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage, the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born. Vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations, and grand the undegenerate head where ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the purpose—that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not the remotest notion of the means employed. Yet we can see so much as this, that here again, other laws, belonging ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the young one? Not a bad-looking girl, if she dressed properly!" threw in the Emir; and again Iskender was at a loss, for he could not conceive how dress could do otherwise than hide a woman's beauty. He returned ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... roads free from robbers and the sea from pirates; subduing the whole coast from [Leucke->Leuke] Come to Sabea. The inscription adds: "In the accomplishment of this business I had no example to follow, either of the ancient kings of Egypt, or of my own family; but was the first to conceive the design, and to carry it into execution. Thus, having reduced the whole world to peace under my own authority, I came down to Aduli, and sacrificed to Jupiter, to Mars, and to Neptune, imploring his protection for ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... this caused me a very painful feeling, but my consciousness of never having neglected my duty in any respect, induced me to suppose that the same may have been the case on this occasion, as it often is in human life,—for I can easily conceive that Y.R.H., immersed in ceremonies and novel impressions, had very little time to spare in Olmuetz for other things. I should otherwise certainly have anticipated Y.R.H. in writing. May I ask you graciously to inform me what length of stay you intend to make ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... know not whether these quakings were shared by the Don, but certainly our misgivings never entered Moll's little head. Nay, rather, her romantic disposition did lead her (when she heard our narration) to conceive that this mysterious Dario might be some wandering genius, whose work upon our ceiling would make the Court for ever glorious. And while in this humour she bade me go to Simon, whose presence she would not tolerate in her house, and make him acquainted with her high displeasure, and furthermore, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... what our hate deems him to be. All disguises are stripped off. Children sometimes fancy a hated object of anger flogged until he is raw, abandoned by all his friends, an outcast, homeless, alone, in the dark, starving, exposed to wild animals, and far more often more prosaic fancies conceive him as whipped by a parent or stronger friend, or by the victim himself later. Very clever strategies are thought out in detail by which the weaker gets even with or vanquishes the stronger, and one who suffers a rankling ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... given why a Christian should not be as well-bred as his neighbor. It is difficult to conceive how a person can follow the rules given in the Sermon on the Mount, without being, and showing himself to be, well-bred. I have even known men who were no friends to the bible, to declare it as their unequivocal belief that he whose life should conform to the principles of that sermon, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... its fullest this principle of nature. I take it for granted that we must work. All that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it is better to work intelligently and forehandedly; that the better we do our work the better off we shall be. All of which I conceive to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... original articles, etc. He also furnished a number of theatrical articles on the acting of Kean. As a political writer he was apt to be too violent; though in general he was not a man of violent temper. He was also apt to conceive strong and rooted prejudices against individuals on very slight grounds. But he was a good-hearted man ... Private circumstances, it is said, contributed to sour his temper and to produce a peculiar excitement which too frequently held its sway over him. Mr. Hazlitt and Mr. Perry did ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... beneath some great plant of convolvulus, or any trumpet-shaped blossom, and watch the humming-birds flashing to and fro in the sunlight. Their scale-like feathers on throat and head reflect the sun rays like so many gems, and their colours are the most gorgeous that it is possible to conceive. But there, I tire you. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... purpose he was entirely successful. As a whole, by the consent of all competent judges, 'Paradise Lost' is worthy of its theme, perhaps the greatest that the mind of man can conceive, namely 'to justify the ways of God.' Of course there are defects. The seventeenth century theology, like every successive theological, philosophical, and scientific system, has lost its hold on later generations, and it becomes dull indeed in the long expository passages of the poem. The ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... made Juvenal a poet.' The scholar needs no explanation; but the reader whose scholarship is yet amongst his futurities (which I conceive to be the civilest way of describing an ignoramus) must understand that Juvenal, the Roman satirist, who was in fact a predestined poet in virtue of his ebullient heart, that boiled over once or twice a day in anger that could ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... in King Street, Cheapside."—"Here," he proceeds, "I read through the catalogue, folios and all, whether I understood them, or did not understand them, running all risks in skulking out to get the two volumes which I was entitled to have daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny comer, and read, read, read,—fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plum-cake, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... intended for the clergyman,—and that a vicar was somebody's deputy, and therefore entitled only to little tithes, as being a little body: of so much we that are simple in such matters have a general idea. But one cannot conceive that even in this way any approximation could have been made, even in those old mediaeval days, towards a fair proportioning of the pay to the work. At any rate, it is clear enough that there is no ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... my answer and my oath, then I give you both. I did not do what you suggest, nor can I conceive how any man should think me guilty of it. I loved Lady Catharine Knollys with all my heart. 'Twas my chief bitterness, keener than even the thought of the gallows itself, that she forsook me in my trouble. Then, bitter as any man would be, I persuaded myself that I cared naught. Then came this ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... come to is as to the way in which we are to conceive intelligent and efficient cause to be exerted, and upon what exerted. Are we bound to suppose efficient cause in all cases exerted upon nothing to evoke something into existence,—and this thousands of times repeated, when a slight change ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... possessing nought but dead fortunes which constant sharing diminishes and which must soon disappear with the princes themselves. And then there is the people, which has suffered so much and suffers still, but is so used to suffering that it can seemingly conceive no idea of emerging from it, blind and deaf as it is, almost regretting its ancient bondage, and so ignorant, so abominably ignorant, which is the one cause of its hopeless, morrowless misery, for it has not even the consolation of understanding ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... yt the three Constables doe attend att ye three great doores of ye meeting house every Lord's day att ye end of sermon, boath forenoone and afternoone and to keep ye doors fast and suffer none to goe out before ye whole exercise bee ended, unless itt be such as they conceive have necessary occasion and to take notice of any such as shall presume to goe forth as above said and present their names as ye law directs. Ordered that all ye boys of ye towne are and shall bee appointed to sitt ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... purpose of this communication respectfully to state that we conceive the existing circumstances call for the immediate action of the Executive upon the information and papers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... that last awful year's work at college," said Sally regretfully. "Why did he ever conceive the idea of doing two years' work in one—and why did his ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... brightness. No, replies Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am, I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection; that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I did not conceive of infinity, and the word imperfect would have no meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection is but the negation. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the danger was not immediate. I did not conceive it so. My conception was based upon experience. I had met the prairie Indians before—in the south; but north or south, I knew that their tactics were the same. It is a mistake to suppose that these savages rush recklessly upon death. Only when their enemy is far inferior to them in numbers—or ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was, an intrigue was laid for peace before the war was declared! And this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making war. It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace, with objects to be accomplished by means of war. . . . They wanted a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large enough to make military ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... cannot be expended on the elucidation of the internal structure of the Psalms. In this laudable endeavour, your correspondent T. J. BUCKTON has, as I conceive, fallen into an error. He assumes that those Psalms which are entitled "Songs of Degrees" were appropriated for the domestic use rather than the public services of the Jews. I cannot consider that the allusions to external objects which he enumerates ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... Britain. Yet if one could imagine the British fleet reduced to inefficiency, let us say by a futile, suicidal attack upon Kiel or Heligoland which would leave it crippled, and free the Germans, or if we could conceive that the German threat to reduce Great Britain to subjection by the submarine campaign, proved effective, the peril of New York would then be very real and very immediate. For, although the harbour defences are declared by military ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Yotsuya to Sunamura is a very great distance. It would occupy a woman's legs for the space of a day; or faint-hearted fellows, water drinkers, such of the kind as would try it. Winding along what rivers, by what intersecting canals had they floated here? In no way does one conceive. All the more the reasons influencing the author's design are not known. Very interesting is the story, to the cheerful character, and those not to be chilled by apparitions. At all events they get to Ombo[u]bori? The third Kikugoro[u], the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... expression; but before their meditations were converted from uncertainty into mourning, the object of them made his appearance at the entrance of the cavern, with his coat torn, limping in his gait, and with an ugly wound in his head, looking altogether as disconsolate a brute as you can well conceive. He did not condescend to say where he had been, nor what he had been doing; perhaps no one made the inquiry: but it was very evident he had been doing no good, and had got his reward accordingly. If, however, this great bear's ill temper was remarkable before, judge ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Mahawanso, and Mr. TURNOUR has noticed the strong similarity between this story and Homer's account of the landing of Ulysses in the island of Circe. The resemblance is so striking that it is difficult to conceive that the Singhalese historian of the 5th century was entirely ignorant of the works of the Father of Poetry. Wijayo and his followers, having made good their landing, are met by a "devo" (a divine spirit), who blesses them and ties a sacred thread as a charm ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... pocket, which has been the plague of my life. Its bright ominous barrel peeped out in quiet Denver shops, children pulled it out to play with, or when my riding dress hung up with it in the pocket, pulled the whole from the peg to the floor; and I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which I could feel it right to make any use of it, or in which it could do me any possible good. Last night, however, I took it out, cleaned and oiled it, and laid it under my pillow, resolving ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... his necessity, and afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other misanthropic visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their mechancete, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now I conceive that any interloper into the Greek chorus must have danced when they danced, or he would have been swept away by their impetus: nolens volens, he must have rode along with the orchestral charge, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... that we accept the literal meaning of the passage, and conceive the Deity speaking with human voice, and calling creation forth by audible fiat. The voice of the Deity is that unheard and silent command which nature hears and obeys throughout all his works. The pious and sincere believer sees an overruling providence ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... crowding the hotels of foreign countries, and expending upon thankless strangers the wealth so hardly drained from their laborious peasantry. I have looked upon these latter with a mixture of censure and concern. Knowing the almost bigoted fondness of an Englishman for his native home, I can conceive what must be their compunction and regret, when, amidst the sunburnt plains of France, they call to mind the green fields of England; the hereditary groves which they have abandoned; and the hospitable roof of their fathers, which they have left desolate, or to be inhabited by strangers. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... severity: "I cannot conceive that such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... figures playing on musical instruments, or sustaining cornucopies carved in the most perfect manner. The pillars on the different sides of this edifice comprise the four orders of doric, ionic, corinthian, and composite. I cannot conceive a more sublime and delightful sensation than that which is caused when the first low notes of the organ begin to swell; the aisles being extremely lofty and vaulted, the sound appears gradually to peal through ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... which characterizes elation. Further, after a prolonged period of composition, I experienced a comforting sense of exhaustion which I had not known while elated. I therefore concluded—and rightly—that my unwonted facility was the product of practice. At last I found myself able to conceive an idea and immediately transfer it to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... was handed round in silence. The old man, with a look alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group. The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. "It's a forgery evidently," he said in a low voice. "He's cunning enough to conceive it (they always are); but you'll find he'll fail in executing it. Watch his face!—Old man," he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, "this is a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in the eye. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... distinction than any previous Minister, and his manners towards her were the most agreeable it is possible to conceive, at once respectful and gallant. He never passed a day without seeing her. M. de Marigny could not endure M. de Choiseul, but he never spoke of him, except to his intimate friends. Calling, one day, at Quesnay's, I ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... gift, for these be exceeding precious jewels, and know, O my mother, that I have gone many a time to the market of the jewellers and have seen them sell jewels, that had not an hundredth part [341] of the beauty of these of ours, at exceeding high prices such as man's wit cannot conceive. When, therefore, I saw this, I said [in myself], 'Verily, the jewels that are with us are exceeding precious.' So now, O my mother, arise, as I bade thee, and fetch me the China dish whereof I bespoke thee, that we may range of these jewels therein ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... grandly fashioned and full of majesty. Mr. Long says: "Most speculations on the origin of the compound figure, called a sphinx, appear unsatisfactory; nor, indeed, is it an easy matter for the modern inhabitants of Western Europe to conceive what is meant by the symbolical forms which enter so largely into the ancient religious systems of the Eastern world. It seems to us altogether an assumption without proof, that either the andro-sphinx, or the sphinx with the female head, ought to be considered as the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... water-bag; the bearer transferred it to the spirit-bottle by neatly thrusting a packing-needle through the head. The pretty specimen of an amiable, and much oppressed, race did not show an atom of vice. I cannot conceive what has caused the absurd prejudice against snakes, even the most harmless. Perhaps we must trace it to the curious resemblance of the profile, with the flattened forehead, the steely bright eye, the formidable biting apparatus, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... she came to expostulate with me, for the peace-sake of the family: for that she could not believe it possible, if I did not conceive myself unkindly treated, that I, who had ever shewn such a sweetness of temper, as well as manners, should be thus resolute, in a point so very near to my father, and all my friends. My mother and she were both willing to impute my resolution to the manner ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... at the lamp-post in the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under that lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper boy issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible, paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more dismal, and the Major shuddered to think that any one should select such a residence. "Good Ged!" he said, "the poor ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day, and the human race will be poorer by the loss of one of those half-matured discoveries which have more than once in the world's history been on the point of raising the animal called man to a higher, stronger, finer development of brain and muscle than we can conceive of under existing circumstances. Who can tell? Perhaps the strange solitary bush may be found growing elsewhere—in some other continent across the ocean. The ways of Nature are past comprehension, and no man can say who sows the seed that crops up in strange places. The wind bloweth ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... The fact of this sort of thing was no longer a mystery to her. But the why of the fact—that seemed more amazing than ever. Now that she had discovered that her notion of love being incorporeal was as fanciful as Santa Claus, she could not conceive why it should be at all. As she was bringing round the braids for the new coiffure she had adopted she ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... You are to conceive of a man between thirty-eight and forty years of age, big-bodied, rapidly acquiring that rotund shape which is thought becoming to bishops, about six feet high though stooping a little, prodigiously active, walking with incredible rapidity, having large limbs, large ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... brings currents containing particles of food for the Melicerta, and materials for his house. Mr. Melicerta "is at once brick-maker, mason, and architect, and fabricates as pretty a tower as it is easy to conceive." The mouth is situated between the two large leaflets, and leads to a narrow throat, in which are the curious jaws and teeth of the animal. Below the jaws are the stomach and intestine; so you see the Melicerta, though so ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... admire such young people with that eager pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant, gracious, and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history will have been justified. Quod erat demonstrandum—if ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... remembered all our lives. Such majesty of silent, sunny cliffs! Such exquisite tones, such balance of lights and shadows, such tracery of snow-laden boughs! It was impossible for my lowland bride to conceive of any mountain scene more gorgeous, more sumptuous, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... this is my answer," said the doctor, at last, gulping an amount of shame and anger which Nettie could not conceive of, and which the darkness concealed from ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... The meekest that ever was Hail, temple of the Deity Hail, Virgin pure! I thee ensure, Within a little space Thou shalt conceive, And Him receive That shall bring ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... grocer.[8] It is sad, and is suggestive of many inquiries, that this abundance was followed, at least in the West, by a famine of more than a thousand years. And it is hard, even after all allowances, to conceive that of all the many manuscripts of Homer which Italy must have possessed we do not know that a single parchment or papyrus was ever read by a single individual, even in a convent, or even by a giant such as Dante, or as Thomas Acquinas, the first of them unquestionably master of all the knowledge ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... once a repression and causes him completely to forget it, there remains then no other possibility than that we have to do with a strongly forbidden wish, which the conscious censor will not allow to pass. It is easy to conceive a sexual motivation in this second instance if we remember that in the first sleep walking something sexual ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... the universe. Their speculations, however, are concerned with what is called Avantara srishti or that creation which springs forth with the awakening of Brahman. Creation and Destruction have occurred ceaselessly and will occur ceaselessly. The original creation is impossible to conceive as Eternity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was understood in Scotland that the King had disowned the act for the East India company, from which it was expected that great riches should flow into that Kingdom, it is not easy to conceive how great and how general an indignation was spread over the whole kingdom: the Jacobites saw what a game it was like to prove in their hands; they played it with great skill, and to the advantage of ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... without the walls, on territory, therefore, called by the Byzantines, [Greek: chorion], the country. The literal meaning of a word is earlier than its artificial and poetical signification. And one can easily conceive how, when the style Chora was no longer literally correct, men abandoned the sober ground of common-sense and history to invent recondite meanings inspired ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... this, the last occasion in Britain in which a political prisoner was tortured, was so moved that he reported to the Earl of Melville that such manly resolution could come only from a deep religious fervor: "[Payne] did conceive he was acting a thing not only generous towards his friends and accomplices, but likewise so meritorious, that he would thereby save his soule, and be canoniz'd among the saints" (Letters ... to George Earl of Melville, Bannatyne Club, ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... interested in their endeavours, more willing to believe them in the right, than Milton. Hardly had he been settled in his new house in High Holborn, however, when there came the snap of all those negotiations by the King's flight from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight (Nov. 11, 1647). Then, I conceive, Milton's mood changed, in exact unison with the change of mood at the same time among the Army-chiefs and other leading Independents. For a month or two, indeed, there may have been some interest, some faint prolongation of hope, in attending to the proceedings of Parliament ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... perhaps did not conceive the situation, exactly, she said, Oh, they were quite right in that; but she might count upon Miss Claxon for her dance, might not she; and might not she do anything in her power for them? She rose to go, but Mrs. Lander ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... filth—in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled Douglases, or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave. How ignorant are plough-boys!—Nay, I have since discovered that a godly woman may be a—!—But hold—here's t'ye again—this rum is generous Antigua, so a very unfit ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... country homes, secure from every invader, find it difficult to conceive the trials that beset the hardy pioneers who settled our Western country during the ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person of remarkable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... remonstrants of a still more impracticable frame of mind, who could see the right, absolute or potential, of any despotic or constitutional monarchy, or any conquering power, to suppress secession and revolt, but could not conceive that any similar right pertained to the central government of a federative republic. To hear them, the will of a national majority was of no account in a national issue, provided the majority of any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... name," replied I; "but although, as you must be acquainted with my history, it is very easy to conceive why I have joined the society, yet, upon what grounds you can have so ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... asked she, wonderingly. "Love a coloured woman! I cannot conceive it possible," said she, with a look of disgust; "there is something strange ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... innumerable minor points which it would be easy to bring forward, but some really crucial point of doctrine, the importance of which no man in his senses will have the hardihood to deny. Let us say, for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Can we conceive anything that a devout Christian would be more anxious to ascertain than whether Our Divine Lord and Saviour be really and personally and substantially present under the appearance of bread, or no! Picture to yourselves, then, a fervent worshipper ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... that a person that loves is not necessarily loving, nor a person that gives necessarily generous. A loving person may never love and a generous person may never give, and the practice of either quality does not indicate an impulse. One can conceive, accept and appropriate the idea of generosity, lovingness, etc., etc., and act it, but that is not the thing. I hate all effort which has for its aim the creation of self, the conscious creation. I like the self to become through slavery to the best natural impulses ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... on Congress (31st) Street, in the latter part of the last century lived a lady much beloved by rich and poor. She was the first person to conceive the idea of a diet kitchen for the needy. She had not much of this world's goods, so she went daily to the different butchers who gave her scraps of meat which she cooked, and had continually on hand jars of "beef tea." All the doctors knew ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... preferential but sceptical solution of the Buddhists; and, in a large view, I believe it would be difficult to indicate any further essential difference between their theoretic systems, both, as I conceive, the unquestionable growth of the Indian soil, and both founded upon transcendental speculation, conducted in the very same style and manner."—The ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... First—To conceive a broad and fundamentally correct method of distributing the current, satisfactory in a scientific sense and practical commercially in its efficiency and economy. This meant, ready made, a comprehensive plan analogous to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... corrected by a confederate. On the other hand the drawing of the skull and cross-bones seemed to him to display a skill to which the immature genius of the Terror might easily have attained, while he could readily conceive that he would spell desperate with two "a's" ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... tents, brought their weighty tribute to Babylon and kissed the feet of the suzerain." Events had followed one another so quickly, and had entailed so little bloodshed, that popular imagination was quite disconcerted: it could not conceive that an empire of such an extent and of so formidable an appearance should have succumbed almost without a battle, and three generations had not elapsed before an entire cycle of legends had gathered round the catastrophe. They related how Cyrus, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rekindled Archie's interest. "I could never deny," he began - "I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merit of his necessity, and afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other misanthropic visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their mechancete, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now I conceive that any interloper into the Greek chorus must have danced when they danced, or he would have been swept away by their impetus: nolens volens, he must have rode along with the orchestral charge, he must have rode on the crest of the choral billows, or ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... do not, sir, in our profession. The only brief I would refuse would be a losing or an ill-paid one. I don't conceive it to be our business to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there was more room for the echoes to disperse in. I could now hear Alphonse's howls much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Supreme Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them from profanity, were, to say the least, very remarkable. Taking up a paddle I managed to drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking that the end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... I was impressed that the Bible was not properly interpreted by the preachers, for I could not conceive of a God of wrath who was unjust enough to allow His little ones to suffer pain, misery, and death. I had hope, however, that some day the truth would be revealed to an awakening world, but little did I dream that even then there was one of God's noble women who reflected sufficient purity ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... no intention of making a mystery of this. It was necessary definitely to attract your attention, and I could conceive of no more certain way than in this manner. In return for the value of the jewels I shall ask that you and the four others concerned give me an audience in your office on Thursday afternoon next at three o'clock; that you make known this request to the others; and that three experts whose ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... he talked all the time. By jing! He makes your blood run cold. He up and said there was no such place as hell. "Why not?" says I. "Because," says he, "God, with all His infinite power, could not conceive of a space huge enough to hold all the hypocrites and sinners." Then he grinned and said he had set aside in his will the sum of a hundred dollars to build a church for the honest man. "That will be a pretty small church," says I. "It will be a small congregation, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... mind, the most charming of all living writers for children, and 'Mopsa' alone ought to give her a kind of pre-emptive right to the love and gratitude of our young folks. It requires genius to conceive a purely imaginary work which must of necessity deal with the supernatural, without running into a mere riot of fantastic absurdity; but genius Mrs. Ingelow has, and the story of 'Jack' is as careless and joyous, but as delicate ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... thereby in space. That this has actually been effected, those who are in corporeal sensual things, and who think from them, cannot be induced to believe. The reason is that the corporeal sensual [faculties] cannot conceive of progressions apart from spaces. But, nevertheless, those who think from the Sensual of their spirit, that has in some degree been removed or withdrawn from the Sensual of the body, thus, who think interiorly in themselves, may be ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... principles here presented embody not what I conceive to be right, but what the great masters of the short story have thought to be right, and what they have proved to be at least successful. I speak only as a delver into the secrets of other men; ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... final triumph, the Mississippi River had scarcely less value of a practical character. Vicksburg and Port Hudson cut out a mid-section of about 200 miles of the great stream, which section still remained under Confederate control. Vicksburg was General Grant's objective point. Even to conceive the capture of this stronghold seemed in itself evidence of genius; no mere pedant in warfare could have had the conception. Every difficulty lay in the way of the assailant. The Confederates had spared no skill, no labor, no expense in fortifying the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... reverend father," she said, very quietly, "to the full as well as it list you to tell me, how young, and weak, and all unwitting I be. But I trow that Christ deceiveth not His children because they be weak; and that if I can any words at all conceive, I can His. Saith He not, 'If ony man wole do His wille, he schall knowe of the techinge'? [John vii. 17.] Saith He not again, 'Seke ye Scripturis'? [John v. 39.] I pray you now, father, to whom ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth. Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to Lochleven, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... was an end of the dreams which up to that moment had made life pleasant. In sober reason I had no more cause to deplore Ellen's marriage than to feel aggrieved because Grant had succeeded Johnson as President. Nevertheless, you can scarcely conceive how much this affair—I mean the marriage—grieved me. My absolute nothingness suddenly stared me in the face. I saw myself as I was—a mere schoolmaster, with no motive for pride in the past, or pleasure in the present, or hope in ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... "I can conceive plenty of excellent reasons for murdering Marks," I said impartially. "I should hardly think they would have appealed to McMurtrie, though. The chief thing that makes me suspicious about him is the fact of his ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... happiness and could not be confided to me? What! to conceal it from me! And yet I could not find it in my heart to suspect her. The appearance of suspicion revolted me and filled me with horror. On the other hand, how could I conceive of inconstancy or of caprice in that woman, as I knew her? I was lost in an abyss of doubt, and I could not discover a gleam of light, the smallest point, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the eighteenth century, was first to conceive the idea of compensating for the loss of gas due to expansion by fitting to the interior of a free balloon a ballonet, or air bag, which could be pumped full of air so as to retain the shape and rigidity of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with which France was threatened; but that hitherto he had not perceived the possibility of remedying them. "Frequently," I said, "people at a distance see more clearly, than those who are nigh: what are the views of M. de Metternich and the allies on this point? what means do they conceive may be employed, to get rid ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sense of delight always seems to me to explain, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive,"' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make a romantic or a realistic work is to wish to force him to modify his temperament, refuse to recognize his originality, and not permit him to employ the eye and the intellect which nature has given him. Let us allow him the liberty to understand, to observe, and to conceive in whatever way he wishes, provided that he be ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... misery in New York which those who have not seen it, cannot conceive of. It exists among the poorer classes, who spend their earnings in drink. They are always half stupefied with liquor, and are brutal and filthy. They get the poison from low shops, called ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... apparent at first glance. Through the bewildering riot of greenery had been woven an almost invisible netting, and the space behind formed a prison for birds and butterflies. Where they had come from or at what expense they had been procured it was impossible to conceive. But, disturbed by the commotion, the feathered creatures twittered and fluttered against the netting in a panic which drew attention to them even if it did not wholly convey the illusion of a woodland scene. As for the butterflies, no artificial light could deceive ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... so beautiful," he whispered to the mother, "that I can conceive the frenzy which leads a man to pay ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... that he could never have leasure to cut his haire, or pare his nailes: nor would I have his noble manners obscured by the incivilitie and barbarisme of others. The French wisdome hath long since proverbially been spoken of as verie apt to conceive study in her youth, but most unapt to keepe it long. In good truth, we see at this day that there is nothing lovelier to behold than the young children of France; but for the most part, they deceive ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... horse. The next day toward night we approached the Mission of San Francisco, and the village of Yerba Buena, tired and weary—the wind as usual blowing a perfect hurricane, and a more desolate region it was impossible to conceive of. Leaving Barnes to work his way into the town as best he could with the tired animals, I took the freshest horse and rode forward. I fell in with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode into Yerba Buena together about an hour before sundown, there being nothing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... touching Robin. There be times when I feel as though I could bear it no longer, though what I could do to end it, soothly I cannot tell. I conceive well what David signified, when he saith he did roar through the very disquietness of his heart. I dare not tell this to Marguerite, for she is too nearly of the same complexion to give me any comfort; and to say a word to Esther ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... bones bleach to return to the dust of the earth from which all men originally came and to which they must return. His body would remain millions of years in a perfectly preserved state, untouched by the hoary palm of such time as only geologists and astronomers can conceive. ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... reader that an immense number of persons, both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in the shabbiest street of a country town, all are regarded as leagued in one wide-spreading ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... from impending servitude to acknowledged independence. But faith has its limits, as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice, or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation. Hurried to the very verge of both, another step would ruin you for ever. To be tame and unprovoked when injuries press hard upon you, is more than weakness; but to look up for kinder usage without one manly effort of your own, would fix your character, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... is in terms of this latter kind of progress that our duty to the past, as we conceive it, may be defined. And in its terms also must we define the grounds of our veneration for the past. None of us invented language, spoken or written; nor yet numbers, nor the wheel, nor much else. We see further than our ancestors because we ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb 'to go round' in one practical ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... limited degree raised himself above his immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilisation, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilised nations. To these alone—of the twelve races of mankind only to ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... other. Shell after shell came roaring over; one dropped on the remaining walls of a chateau, and when the smoke had cleared there was absolutely nothing left. How in the world anything could live in such a maelstrom of explosive it is difficult to conceive. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... modern Catholicism the phrase has changed its meaning remarkably and signifies in effect love for Christ's person, because piety has taken a sentimental turn and centred on maintaining imaginary personal relations with the Saviour. How should we conceive that a single supernatural influence was actually responsible for moral effects themselves so various, and producing, in spite of a consecutive tradition, such various notions concerning their object ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... civilization tends to subordinate, if not to minimize, modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a fundamental social law of life. But an essential grace of life it still remains, and whatever delicate variations it may assume we can scarcely conceive of its disappearance. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... answer by the Court of France that he must absolutely despair of any number of troops whatever, but he had been made in general to hope for some money, some arms, and some ammunition; a little sum had, I think, been advanced to him. In a case so plain as this it is hard to conceive how any man could err. The assistances demanded from France at this time, and even greater than these, will appear, in the sequel of this relation, by the sense of the whole party, to have been deemed essentially necessary to success. In ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... hate American "flunkeyism," with its laced coachmen, etc., is because mere money, by aping the insignia of rank, its gewgaws and trumpery, shows too plainly how much of the rank itself depends upon the fabrics and demonstrations through which it sets itself forth. We can conceive that an English nobleman travelling in this country, who might chance in one of our cities to see a turn-out with its outriders, tassels, and crests, almost or quite as fine as his own, if he were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... and sweetness and wisdom was expressed in her life and manners could not but be caught and repeated in his susceptive and fertile mind. He must have grown familiar with the noblest parts of womanhood somewhere; and I can scarce conceive how he should have learned them so well, but that the light and glory of them beamed upon him from his mother. At the time of her death, the Poet was in his forty-fifth year, and had already produced those mighty works which were to fill the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... course of his northern peregrinations in search of subscribers that he met with Charles Lloyd. This young man, the son of an eminent Birmingham banker, was so struck with Coleridge's genius and eloquence as to conceive an "ardent desire to domesticate himself permanently with a man whose conversation was to him as a revelation from heaven;" and shortly after the decease of the Watchman he obtained his parents' consent to ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... with his meat course, and a bottle of white wine with the salad and dessert course. When the demi-tasse comes along, with it must be served his cordial in the shape of cognac, benedictine, or creme de menthe. He can not conceive of a man not taking a little alcohol with his after-dinner coffee, as an aid, he ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... withdrawn from the Vatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authority of a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately been the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitive spirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution younger by many years than themselves, an institution which had, under ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... night, so bright that one might almost see to read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of these ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the several genera, there are, I conceive, no grounds for dividing the Lepadidae into sub-families, as has been proposed by some authors, who have trusted exclusively to external characters. In establishing the eleven genera in the Lepadidae, no one part or set of organs affords sufficient diagnostic characters: ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... one; he was not given to undervalue the advantage of his friendship or patronage. A career of unbroken prosperity, and a character by nature self-contained and strong-willed, combined to sustain his belief in himself. He could not for a moment conceive that Mr. Lovel declined his acquaintance as a thing not worth having. He therefore concluded that the banished lord of Arden felt his loss too keenly to endure to look upon his successor's happiness, and he pitied him accordingly. It would have been the one last drop ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... means, sir. God has none of the properties of matter. Even our minds, sir, which are more nearly like unto God than is anything else we conceive, have no properties like matter. Yet are we bound to matter, and our ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... would do so. Not, as he knew well, that guineas are generally made with ease by barristers of four years' standing, but because, as he said to his friends, he did not see his way to the knack of it. He did not know an attorney in the world, and could not conceive how any attorney should ever be induced to apply to him for legal aid. He had done his work of learning his trade about as well as other young men, but had had no means of distinguishing himself within his reach. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... sketch which I conceive to be that of a plain orator, but still of a great one, and one of a genius very kindred to the Attic; since whatever is witty or pleasant in a speech is peculiar to the Attics. Not, however, that all of them are facetious: Lysias ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... for special legislation in our behalf; we are not here whining to be given a chance; we are not here, even to complain of our hard lot, or to find fault with conditions which we cannot change. This, we conceive, would be a very poor programme to attract the attention of the business world, but we are here, representing hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus demonstrating that we have achieved, at least in a small measure, one of the things which, by common ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... obtained this reprieve for Heartfree, thought it incumbent on him to visit him in the prison, and to sound, if possible, the depth of this affair, that, if he should appear as innocent as he now began to conceive him, he might use all imaginable methods to obtain ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... much honoured with your order for my copies, and incomparably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of applause as the sons of Parnassus: nor is it easy to conceive how the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture, when those, whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and influence in this country that their success in putting the inhabitants together by the ears, has exceeded even their own expectations: the distraction that prevails surpasses any thing I ever before witnessed, and equals any idea, which your imagination can conceive, of a desperate and inveterate ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... softly lifted his hand above his head, and whispered: "Swear." And she kissed him. Her lips were icy, though he did not think so. The blood tossed in his veins. He swore: but, doing so, he could not conceive all that would be required of him. He was hers, body and soul, and she had resolved on a grim thing. . . . In the darkness, they left the hut and passed into the woods, and slowly up ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "And now conceive the massive frame of the megathere convulsed with the mighty wrestling, every vibrating fibre reacting upon its bony attachments with the force of a hundred giants. Extraordinary must be the strength and proportions of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... they were very handy; if there was no superlative finish about their work, there was soundness of quality, which they knew would be recognized as so much to their credit. Old gossip bears me out. Conceive the nimble and self-confident temper of those two cottage women—not in this village, I admit, but in the next one to it, and the thing was quite possible here—who always planned to do their washing on the same day, for the pleasure of seeing who had the most "pieces," and ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... suspended from the button of her chemisette by a small gold chain, so as to lie constantly against her heart. How her pride had ever stooped to receive and wear the pledge originally given to another it was difficult for me to conceive, and little less bitter, I confess, at first to know. I thought all care was over as to Claude Bainrothe and his affairs, but a qualm of anguish surged through my whole being, the dying throe, I well believe, of trust and affection, when I beheld ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... self-esteem,[3120] constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific than in Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did a man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... womanhood, and from womanhood to the half-imperial masculinity of a dictatress, her heart was younger than the youngest, was as unsuspicious of itself as a child's, ready to give itself in an innocent generosity which could not conceive that giving might mean being taken, or be as like it as to deceive such a willing, love-sick man as poor Gianluca. She did not say that she loved him, she did not love him, she did not wish him to think that she could love him. Why should he ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took the lead through the various superiorities of its members. Therefore the imagination of those who ever resided, even for a short time, in a little town of this kind can conceive the air of profound satisfaction upon the faces of these people, who believed themselves the solar plexus of France, all of them armed with incredible dexterity and shrewdness to do mischief,—all, in their wisdom, declaring that the hero of Essling was ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... he, shruggin' his shoulders and smilin' cynical. "Really, I can't conceive just why he should remember me. True, during our brief acquaintance, he showed a most active dislike for me; but I assure you it was not mutual. A man of Gordon's type—— Bah! One simply ignores ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... attempted. The ear hears; but what is heard is not comprehended. The senses are of no use whatever, except to hinder the soul's fruition; and so they rather hurt it. It is useless to try to speak, because it is not possible to conceive a word; nor, if it were conceived, is there strength sufficient to utter it; for all bodily strength vanishes, and that of the soul increases, to enable it the better to have the fruition of its joy. Great and most perceptible, also, is the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... no reason why I should not, Madame," I replied easily—"I cannot conceive why you should object to the union—and many why you should desire to see two people happy. Otherwise, if I had had any idea, even the slightest, that the matter was obnoxious to you, I would not ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase in the second twenty-five years might equal the present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole produce ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... not want our people to devote themselves entirely to the art of being agreeable. If we could conceive of a world where everybody was perfectly polite and smiling all the time we should hardly like to live in it. It is human nature not to like perfection, and most of us, if brought face to face with that model of behavior, Mr. Turveydrop, who spent his life ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... knowledge I must be content. The first trial had ended in death and victory. How would the second end? I wondered, and those words seemed to jumble themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence that it did not conceive. It was: "In the victory that is death," which, when I came to think of it, of course, meant nothing. How victory could be death I did not understand—at any rate, at that time, I who was but ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... We were hastening to preserve from destruction the accursed viper who was to sting us to death. Thus, Heaven ordained it should be, and its ways are dark and intricate, beyond my comprehension, for surely it is against all the rules one can conceive of justice that a virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... itself. . . . I think I never saw so many children before in one morning, and I felt so much moved at the spectacle of such a mass of life collected together and animated by one feeling, and that a joyous one, that I was at a loss to conceive how any woman's sides can bear the beating of so strong a throb as must attend the consciousness of being the object of all that excitement, the centre of attraction to all those eyes. But the Queen has royal ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... say well, and well you do conceive; And since you do profess to be a suitor, You must, as we do, gratify this gentleman, To whom we ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... us remember that the daily victualling of 70,000 people means an immense service. We are so accustomed to find everything ready to hand in cities containing millions as well as in villages of hundreds, that we forget the magnitude of this service. No mind can conceive the magnitude of the food supply of modern London, Paris, New York, or even such towns as Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol. Yet try to understand what it means to feed every day, without interruption, only a small town of 70,000 people. So much bread for every ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... "isn't that as interesting as your Irish romances? Where would you find a landlord of England or Ireland who would make a free gift of three thousand dollars to a servant? They simply could not conceive of such generosity unless it were the gift of a king or a prince, and then it would be put down in their histories for all men ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... leads man to a critical, analytical, and logical examination of his environment, and it is this that has lead to all of our advances. Religion creates a stunted standard of reasoning. The pathetic cry of St. Augustine, "But if I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me, where I pray thee, O my God, where, Lord, or when was I, thy servant innocent?" typifies the major concern of the narrow, egotistical mystic. From the time that the ideas of the later Greek philosophers had been forgotten ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... with a heavy sigh, "I understand quite well and easily conceive why you voluntarily laid down your power and retired from the government before death had sent his summons. An Elector of Brandenburg has by no means a comfortable, pleasant life of it; and a sorely ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... first the miller took them to be robbers, but after a great deal of begging, he let them in. Then the king tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, and wrote a note to General Cocceji. The miller's daughter took it to Warsaw, not without much begging on the king's part; and you can conceive the joy of the people when they heard that the king was safe, for everybody seeing his cloak in the streets, and his hat and plume on the road, naturally supposed that he had been murdered. Well, General Cocceji, followed by the whole court, hurried to the mill; and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... exact, to a comma. There is a calm accuracy throughout, which seems the production of a species of intelligence that cannot err, and which, if we may so speak, would affect us with a more human warmth, if we could conceive it capable of some slight human error. The chirography is characterized by a plain and easy grace, which, in the signature, is somewhat elaborated, and becomes a type of the personal manner of a gentleman of the old school, but without detriment to ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... world should have made Nym so to do cannot I so much as conceive. He might have found a deal fairer lasses. Why, our Milly and Edith are ever so much better-favoured. But to want me!— nor only that, but to come with so pitiful a tale, that he should go straight to ruin an' I would not wed with him; ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... him with astonishment. He could not conceive the possibility of any one seeing danger in going with a spring from rock to rock among which the beautiful river rushed, and his ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... and solemnly protest, in the presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, whereof I am a member, I will not maintain anything in matters of doctrine, but what I think in my conscience to be truth; or in point of discipline, but what I shall conceive to conduce most to the glory of God, and the good and peace of ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... see us. What could it mean? Surely something must be wrong; and we left with terrible presentiments of coming evil. It came. Yes, too soon were our worst fears realized. I called one day resolved to see her before I left the house. Conceive, if you can, my surprise and horror, when they told me that my beautiful, idolized sister had resolved to become a nun. That she had already renounced the world, and would hold no further communication with her relatives. "Why did I not know this before? I exclaimed." "You know it now," was ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... have my answer and my oath, then I give you both. I did not do what you suggest, nor can I conceive how any man should think me guilty of it. I loved Lady Catharine Knollys with all my heart. 'Twas my chief bitterness, keener than even the thought of the gallows itself, that she forsook me in my ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and consummate management had been the means of effecting this great change without violence or bloodshed, was rewarded by being made Duke of Albermarle. This was a very great reward. In fact, no American imagination can conceive of the images of glory and grandeur which are connected in the mind of an Englishman with the idea of being made a duke. A duke lives in a palace; he is surrounded by a court; he expends princely revenues; he reigns, in fact, often, so far as the pomp and pleasure of reigning are ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... damages. The French were thus warned of the enemy's approach, and although not suspecting his intention to attack, De Grasse feared that Hood would pass down to leeward of him and disturb the siege of Brimstone Hill,—an undertaking so rash for an inferior force that it is as difficult to conceive how he could have supposed it, as to account for his overlooking the weakness of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... tongue an embargo is laid to speak to no one, pacing the surly rocks, his hands on his arms, ready to deal forth death on the first legal opportunity. Beings such as these an amiable and delicate mind shudders to contemplate, and always finds it difficult to conceive; yet, such are the preventive men who line our coast—melancholy examples of the truth stated at the outset of this paper. Occasionally, however, the good traveller will, much to his joy, meet with an exception to this sad rule, in the person of an old tar, whom necessity has pressed into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... age, and on Wednesday, the 2nd inst., the defendant came to her and abused her. The complainant, who looks scarce more than a child, repeated, despite the efforts of the magistrates' clerk to stop her, and without being in the least abashed, some of the worst language it was possible to conceive—conversation of the most gross description, alleged to have taken place between herself and the defendant. They appeared to have got from words to blows and, while trying to fasten the gate, the defendant hit her across the hand ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... God. These, however, he will not waste his time with, nor will we. He then passes to the second class of reprobates, whose Atheism springs not from defect of intellect, but from moral disorder, and who delight to conceive the universe as resembling their own chaos. These we shall dismiss, with a passing remark that if moral disorder naturally induces Atheism, some very eminent Christians have been marvellous hypocrites. Lack of reverence is the next cause of Atheism, and is indeed its "natural soil." ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... her stomach. "I know what you are thinking, but you're wrong. We Lani know about these things. In forty generations I am the first to conceive as the Master intended." ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... show of zeal, to supply, procuring a pot of paint and a brush, with which he came bustling aft. Now, if there is one thing upon which I pride myself more than another, it is the scrupulous cleanliness of my decks; conceive, therefore, if you can, the extremity of my disgust and annoyance when I saw Joe catch the naked toes of his right foot in the corner of a hen-coop, and, in his agony, drop the pot of paint upon my beautifully clean poop, of course spilling the whole contents. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... wonder is that they should have worked so long in partnership and yet succeeded in remaining "somewhat different." But each has so welded his mood to the other that their joint humour is, as it were, a bond as spiritually indissoluble as matrimony. You cannot conceive either Mr. Dale or Mr. O'Malley working alone or with any other partner. I have heard them crack the same quips and tell the same stories for the last five years, yet they always get the same big laugh and the same large "hand." That is a delightful ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... these effects will predominate, we conceive, according to the intellectual state and capacity of the individual, as well as in accordance with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... easily conceive that Nanse got a surprise, when I paraded ben to the room with the grand coat and waistcoat on, cocking up my head, putting my hands into the haunch pockets, and strutting about more like a peacock than a douce elder ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... to another and most formidable objection. To conceive the eternal existence of one Being infinite in power, "self-created and creating all others," is by no means impossible. Indeed, as everything must have had a cause, nothing we see being by possibility self-created, we naturally mount from particulars to ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... little barred apertures in the gate, and grin amusedly at the sight of a Fankwae, as I stand for a few minutes uncertain of what course to pursue. From sheer inability to conceive of anything else I seize upon a well-dressed youngster among the crowd, tender him a coin, and address him questioningly—"Sam-shue lo. Sam-shue lo." The youth regards me with monkeyish curiosity for a second, and then looks round at the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Boardman makes this entry in his journal. "After nearly two years of wanderings without any certain dwelling-place, we have to-day become inhabitants of a little spot of earth, and have entered a house which we call our earthly home. None but those who have been in similar circumstances can conceive the satisfaction we now enjoy." ... "The population of the town is supposed to be 20,000. One year ago it was all a thick jungle, without ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... strength and happiness, the new arrangement would be threatened with the same fate as that of the political combination of 1815. Independent Belgium has her share of European duties to fulfil, but it would be difficult to conceive what obligations could be imposed upon her by treaties in the conclusion of which she had ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... slightest reference to the present measure, which apparently had been brought in as an afterthought, and something must have occurred after the Governor-General's speech was delivered, otherwise one could not conceive of such an important Bill being omitted from the speech. As it was the Bill would simply hang things up until the Commission reported, and now the House would be legislating in the dark. The vast majority of Natives had declared themselves to be against the Bill. He had had no desire whatever ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... must confess that this caused me a very painful feeling, but my consciousness of never having neglected my duty in any respect, induced me to suppose that the same may have been the case on this occasion, as it often is in human life,—for I can easily conceive that Y.R.H., immersed in ceremonies and novel impressions, had very little time to spare in Olmuetz for other things. I should otherwise certainly have anticipated Y.R.H. in writing. May I ask you ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... my way into the gardens, and stood for a few minutes looking out across the park. It was a still, hot evening; the scene was perhaps as peaceful a one as a man could conceive. The tall elms stood out like painted trees upon a painted sky, the only movement in the quiet pastoral landscape was where a little string of farm laborers were trudging homeward across the park, with their baskets over their shoulders. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... other respect the stores were in a low state. We had really wanted nothing, but there was scarcely any thing left. Well, while we were in prayer to God, your letter came. One of the sisters opened the door and received it, and after prayer it was given to me. You will be able to conceive the greatness of our joy, on opening it, and finding it to contain 5l. I cannot express how much I felt. During the trial I had been much comforted by the Lord's sending a little token of his love every day. ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... invincible constraint to make you accept a throne," said Cinq-Mars, bitterly. "I well conceive you must need some efforts to resist such seductions; but first, Madame, I must release ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... should conceive is so possible to God's power, that it is possible in nature, say ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... invitation; but I beg you will excuse me; it may be pretty sport for you, but, for my part, I can enjoy myself much better to stay here and arrange my baby-things, for I expect some girls to see me this afternoon. I cannot conceive what there is in those ugly-looking snow-birds to interest you; they are not handsome, surely; they have not a single bright feather; and, as for their songs, they sound like the squeak of ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... definite place is chosen for adoration, not on account of God Who is adored, as though He were enclosed in a place, but on account of the adorers; and this for three reasons. First, because the place is consecrated, so that those who pray there conceive a greater devotion and are more likely to be heard, as may be seen in the prayer of Solomon (3 Kings 8). Secondly, on account of the sacred mysteries and other signs of holiness contained therein. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... perchance miss in the above proposed eight several elements the UNITY OF NOTION, which he has all along seemed to feel in his own spirit and understanding? Let him at once conceive, as intensely joined, the two permanent characters of tenuity and mythological displacement, and take this compound for the nucleus of the unity he seeks. About these two every other element will easily place itself. For a soul, he shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the 6th of December, and the cold winds of approaching winter began to sweep over the water, which seemed almost to surround them. Imagination can hardly conceive a more bleak and dreary spot than the extremity of Cape Cod. It was manifest to all that it was no place for the establishment of a colony, and that, late as it was in the year, they must, at all hazards, continue their search for a more inviting location. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... already seen; and it was in savage and unmanly revenge towards Theresa, for the frankness and decision of her conduct, that the king had directed his favorite to enclose me that letter whose sudden perusal had wrought the destruction of my unhappy wife. You will easily conceive that the terms of my answer to the Duke of Buckingham were those of unmeasured indignation—yet he, the parasite, the ready instrument of royal vice, and the malignant associate of Charles in his last act of premeditated cruelty, suffered the accusations ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... of civilisation; and probably there is now a respectable hotel at Longarone. I suppose, therefore, that I may say, without risk of laying myself open to an action for slander, that a more filthy den than the osteria before which my charge and I alighted no imagination, however disordered, could conceive. It was a vast, dismal building, which had doubtless been the palace of some rich citizen of the republic in days of yore, but which had now fallen into dishonoured old age. Its windows and outside shutters were tightly closed, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... in silence. The old man, with a look alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group. The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. "It's a forgery evidently," he said in a low voice. "He's cunning enough to conceive it (they always are); but you'll find he'll fail in executing it. Watch his face!—Old man," he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, "this is a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... his thought in books. But let us conceive what might have been its history but for the books;—how it might have been written in the fibres of the soul, and lived in eternal reason, instead of having been written on papyrus and involved in the realm of dead matter. His idea, thrilling his own soul, would have revealed itself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... settled him in his chair. He became additionally solemn, and dignified, and confidential. He held up two of his horrid fingers and gave me another of his unpleasantly penetrating looks. What was I to do? I was not strong enough to quarrel with him. Conceive my situation, if you please. Is language adequate to describe it? ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... campaign. To make quite sure of victory they directed twenty-five thousand of their best men on it under the Commandant-General himself. Flushed with the spirit of invasion, they scarcely reckoned on a fortnight's resistance; nor in their wildest nightmares did they conceive a four months' siege terminating in the furious inroad ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
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