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Line of thought   /laɪn əv θɔt/   Listen
Line of thought

noun
1.
A particular way of thinking that is characteristic of some individual or group.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Line of thought" Quotes from Famous Books



... The present line of thought has now reached the point where an important question confronts us,—a question not wholly new. Within the memory of living men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What if the geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblically derived ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... this line of thought; but he spoke to Miss Baring, after a little introductory flourish about the weather, his ride from Ashpound, and the embroidery which she had taken up, in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... much satisfaction was the result. Woodell was of the kind who, if religious at all, believe without much reasoning, but Harlson had repeated to him the reasoning of the Hindoo skeptic. Woodell had at least intelligence enough to follow the line of thought, and, in after time, when he was a family man and deacon, the lines would ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... think that for him such a woman could wear this countenance of wonderful and thrilling woe. What was there in Morris that it should have called forth this depth of passion undefiled? Now, if there were no Mary—but there was a Mary, it was folly to pursue such a line of thought. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... following his own line of thought. "The Mormons are right," he said. "It's the families that count. A man can't do real pioneering without a woman and Lost Chief is still pioneering. The right kind of a woman could do more for Lost Chief ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... room, Quincy was pursuing a similar line of thought. He was thinking of the nice times that Alice and he could have singing together. To be sure he wished to do nothing to make his father angry, for Quincy appreciated the power of money. He knew that with his mother's third deducted, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the driver interrupted to demand how much farther southward he was expected to go; and as Chambers Street was even then just ahead, the eastern turn was made at once, which set Johnnie off along a new line of thought—his coming ordeal. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... "I like your line of thought, Linda," he said quietly. "It greatly appeals to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest, why he'll be ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... this line of thought there could be no question of doing useful work. The same ideas went on passing through his mind, and he pronounced mentally the same words over and over again. He shut up all the books and rammed all his papers into his pocket with ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... analysis of this name is given by Father J.A. Cuoq, probably the best living authority on the Iroquois, in his Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise, p. 180 (Montreal, 1882). Here also the Iroquois followed precisely the line of thought of the ancient Egyptians. Shu, in the religion of Heliopolis, represented the cosmic light and warmth, the quickening, creative principle. It is he who, as it is stated in the inscriptions, "holds up the heavens," and he is depicted on the monuments ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... order to reach it. Men's minds are like the pieces on a chess-board in their way of moving. One mind creeps from the square it is on to the next, straight forward, like the pawns. Another sticks close to its own line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for others' opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own color. And another class of minds break through everything that lies before ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... on his line of thought. "Exactly!" said he. "Vermin destroyer. I should be the vermin. But once destroyed, what contrition should I have to endure? Remorse is a game that takes two selves to play at it—a criminal and a conscientious person! Suppose the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the highest law had imprisoned it. The Unity of the Spirit is found to result in perfect Liberty; the old sequence of Karma has been cut off, and a new and higher order has been introduced. In the old order the line of thought received its quality from the quality of the actions, and since they always fell short of perfection, the development of a higher thought-power from this root was impossible. This is the order in which everything is seen from without. ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... one of his most famous poems. The reason is a curious one; he wrote those stirring verses, by request, on the motto for the New York coat-of-arms, which is legended not quite accurately, Excelsior. And when, in the same line of thought, I inquired why he named a German story "Hyperion," with no apparent reason from classical associations, he pertinently enough answered me by pronouncing the name huper-iown, ("going higher"), the story being a tale ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... appertaining to what he was interested in here, and kindred subjects. He thinks you are developing in the right direction. I think he has communicated with you. I think he has an overshadowing approval of your work. He feels that you are in an original line of thought, not dominated by any other minds. There seems an overshadowing influence ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... to nationhood in such neglected fashion and with such little practical concern in the Motherland. Hence the dislike of the Queen and himself—because she had the statesman's understanding as well as her husband—to the Manchester school, and their opposition to the line of thought which said that Colonies were useless except for commerce and not much good for that. Hence the Queen's long-after regard for Lord Beaconsfield and her appreciation of his stirring ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... Murray say?" she asked, still anxious to avoid the embarrassment of silence, and unfortunately striking again a line of thought in his mind which ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... botanist of that day, in his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution; while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought out ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... TODD, an immaculate young gentleman of twenty-five, is half-sitting on the gate-legged table with one foot on the ground and the other swinging. He is dressed in a brown flannel coat and white trousers, shoes and socks, and he has a putter in his hand indicative of his usual line of thought. The third occupant is the Butler, who, in answer to TOMMY'S ring, ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... bloody faces with scarcely a shudder, and gave Lane a smile from her purple eyes, as if to cheer him, to assure him she could save the situation. It struck Lane that Chief Bell looked as if he might be following a similar line of thought. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... Sometimes only a mere trifle keeps one from branching out and becoming a success. Discover why you have not been making good—the cause of your failure. Have you been expecting someone to lead you, or to make a way for you? If you have, concentrate on a new line of thought. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont

... until half-past eight, he gives special attention to the subject of the morning sermon, and usually selects his text and general line of thought before sitting down to breakfast. After family prayers, he spends half an hour in his study, at home, examining books and authorities in the completion of his sermon. Sometimes he is unable to select a text until reaching The Temple. He has, though rarely, made his selection after ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... Following up this line of thought, we can see how tempting was the German course of action. Falkenhayn has told us what a violent strain was imposed upon Germany by the stabilisation of the Western Front early in 1915. The tension between the Great General Headquarters and the Home Government ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... closely akin to each other that it is quite difficult to separate them, even in the mind. "Order is heaven's first law," it is said; also, "Method consists in the right choice of means to an end." Here a distinction is made; but the two words taken together, cover the line of thought we now wish ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... think, reader, that this line of thought and emotion, even in a savage, was unnatural? Is not the same principle set forth in Scripture in reference to far higher things? Need we remind you that it is "the goodness of God which leadeth thee, (or any ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... and harshly, these three propositions sound incredibly silly, particularly in view of the example the world has just had of large scale competition—the World War—yet they are a fair picture of the line of thought and conduct accepted as rational by modern economic society. The normal processes of competition are directed to the destruction of competitors. War is a frankly avowed means of smashing rivals. Nationalism ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... His Royal Highness, pursuing a line of thought, "that the greatest man in the world was a man named Lincoln. But that he is dead. And he said that kings were nuisances, and didn't earn their bread-and-butter. Of course," Otto hastened to explain, "he didn't know that my grandfather ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... day after Dickens's death, in the Abbey where he was so soon to be laid, closed a plea for the toleration of differences of opinion where the foundations of religious truth are accepted, with these words. "It will not be out of harmony with the line of thought we have been pursuing—certainly it will be in keeping with the associations of this place, dear to Englishmen, not only as one of the proudest Christian temples, but as containing the memorials of so many who by their genius in arts, or arms, or statesmanship, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... doctor, absently, while his mind followed a new line of thought suggested by what might have been called Nostromo's return to life. "She died, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... impression itself, and the frequency of its repetition. Fear to speak, lest I should incriminate myself and others, gave to my impressions the requisite intensity, and the daily recurrence of the same general line of thought served to fix all impressions in my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its blessing and dropped a tear by implication over ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... insist on this point, because the extreme difficulty (or rather impossibility) of determining the true relations of becoming and being, of time and eternity, is constantly tempting us to adopt some facile solution which really destroys one of the two terms. The danger which besets us if we follow the line of thought natural to speculative Mysticism, is that we may think we have solved the problem in one of two ways, neither of which is a solution at all. Either we may sublimate our notion of spirit to such an extent that our idealism becomes merely a sentimental ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... every mind, that we the more cheerfully resign ourselves to the necessity which renders a full and fair review of this little book an impossible thing for us. Let us briefly call to notice some of its peculiar excellences, and indicate the line of thought which we think its sympathetic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... changes that are caused by the investigating spirit of the time, and then to point out some things that are not touched, that cannot be shaken, and that therefore must remain. And I ask you to have in mind, as I pursue this line of thought, the question whether doubt has taken away anything really valuable from mankind. The negative part of my theme I shall touch on very lightly, and dispose of ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... it." So said the old man to himself, but quite as though he spoke to some one else. He paused a little, then said again: "Yes; I was wrong. But oh, what a damned scoundrel! And what a woman!" Then, as though he feared a return of his old line of thought, "I wish Sally would come." And a dreadful half-thought came to him, "Suppose there were a fire at the theatre, and I had to wire ... why—that would ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... cephalic animal, or the plant and the animal" (p. 382). The intestine of the sexual animal is the large intestine; the lungs of the sexual animal are the kidneys, its glottis is the urethra, its mouth the anus. So, too, the mouth is the stomach of the head. On another line of thought the sternum is a ventral vertebral column. Limbs are connate ribs, the digits indicating the number of ribs included (cf. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of Thoughts in Aid of Faith. In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly recalls the theories of George Eliot. In a series of more recent books she has continued the same line of thought. The early and intimate friendship of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater or less extent even when the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... only great nation which has really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In this she pursued a logical line of thought which was, if anything, too unsympathetic with the energies and religions of the East. Every other country, one may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol and the Moslem. The ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... the third day after her return she was able to come down-stairs and the line of thought which has been suggested for her induced her to undertake some trouble with the white and pink robe, or dressing-gown in which she had appeared. "Well, my dear, you are ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... Mrs. Sargent herself doesn't employ graduate servants!" Mrs. Salisbury, who had been following a wandering line of thought, threw ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... this same general line of thought, the Congress, in enacting territorial bills, left out a provision which had before been usually contained in them, requiring the Legislature of the Territory to submit its laws to the Congress of the United States. It has been sometimes assumed that this was the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... years. In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, [1] he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application by the necessities of circumstances. The person to whom this dialogue is addressed, though praised by Seneca, seems to have been but a poor philosopher. In complaisance to the emperor he went so far as to attract to himself ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... escaped observation. In the "Introduction a la connaissance de l'esprit humain," he speaks of a writer who has argued that private vices are public benefits, and he attempts to show that this is a fallacy. He returns, less definitely, to the same line of thought in the "Discours sur la gloire," where he denies that vice has any part in stimulating social action. It is strange that no one, so far as I know, has observed this proof that Vauvenargues was acquainted with the celebrated paradox ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... whom the tax-gatherer was as yet a rarer animal than baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so ignorant of the future in the knowing enjoyment of the present! And the writer still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... followed in which neither spoke. Jeff was slowly pursuing his line of thought. After Joe's last remark he returned his pipe to his pocket and brought out a tobacco-pouch. He tore off a large portion of the weed and thrust it into his mouth. Then he held out the little buckskin sack ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... presented to it, has arisen during the last three hundred years. Like the spirit of the Renaissance and of the classical age, it attracts into its orbit all the great works of contemporary intelligence." Quinet, pursuing a somewhat different line of thought, regards the worship of German ideas inaugurated in France by Madame de Stael as the natural result of reaction from the eighteenth century and all its ways. "German systems, German hypotheses, beliefs, and poetry, all were eagerly welcomed as ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... we shall presently see, are traceable to the early results of this fundamental relation between organism and medium. I may add that it is in an essay on "Transcendental Physiology," first published in 1857, that the line of thought here followed out in its wider bearings, was first ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... should have a cadet-corps." The General pursued his own line of thought. "You shall have a cadet-corps, too, if my recommendation in Council is any use. I don't know when I've been so pleased. Boys animated by a spirit like yours should set an ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... cares to push forward the line of thought suggested in the preceding pages and to submit it to a concrete test he can do so without difficulty. He has but to compare the post-Union history of linen with that of cotton. Linen in Ireland had been a perfect type of the State-created, spoon-fed ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... place, an increased emphasis laid upon this line of thought, in common with religious subjects in general, and the reasons for the belief in the existence of the gods (for the Greek schools never transcended polytheism—when they speak of {theos} they mean simply the abstract divinity of the many separate divinities) seems, so ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole

... of the woods, that parcels off the valleys, each to the hunter first arriving, or succeeding the one who had, was following his own line of thought. Rolf was puzzling over means to get an outfit, canoe, traps, axes, and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... any lack of the best form, as through lack of the best matter, or of the most earnest spirit. In education, the teacher is the fluent element, full of present resources; the book should be the fixed element, always bringing back the discursive faculties to the rigid line of thought and purpose of the subject. We have now the fluent element in better forwardness and command than the fixed. We have much of the spirit; an almost overwhelming supply of the matter; but the ultimate and best form is yet largely wanting, and being so, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... quick sensitiveness as to close unity and slight diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate, as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling for perspective, so-called, can be acquired only by continued ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... matter in this paper and sermon is largely the same as that in the previous chapter, I present it because, as the line of thought is out of the ordinary and somewhat difficult to the general reader, its repetition in this conversational style will help to get a better grasp of the deadly delusions of rationalism. Truth usually has to be repeated in various ways before it gets a thorough hold upon ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... tempted to pursue the line of thought thus invitingly opened, but I forbear; for it really has no special connexion with the retrospective vein. I am now describing the years 1876-1880, and dinners then were pretty much what they are now. The new age of dining had begun. Those frightful hecatombs of sheep ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... convenient," said Henry, probably following a line of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times before him. "Do she and Comus hit it off ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... East makes free use of such phrases as the Buddha in the heart, the Buddha mind and the Buddha nature. These seem to represent such Sanskrit terms as Buddhatva and Bodhicitta which can receive either an ethical or a metaphysical emphasis. The former line of thought is well shown in Santideva[117] who treats Bodhicitta as the initial impulse and motive power of the religious life, combining intellectual illumination and unselfish devotion to the good of others. Thus regarded it is ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... [32] "poisons for me all imperfect possession"; and again, "The Buddhist tendency in me blunts the faculty of free self-government, and weakens the power of action. I feel a terror of action and am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective line of thought." But then, again, with him "action" meant chiefly literary production. He quotes with approval those admirable words from Goethe, "In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister"; yet still always finds himself wavering between "frittering myself away on the infinitely little, and ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... Spencer's theory of an ultimate reality that must for ever remain unknowable? Following a line of thought that had been steadily gaining ground since Hume—although much older than Hume—Spencer holds that in final analysis all our knowledge is a knowledge of mental states and their relations. Beyond this we know nothing, and can never know anything. Nevertheless, while we ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... 1. The line of thought proposed is intended to show it probable that any thing which has been or is, might, viewed antecedently to its existence, by an exercise of pure reason, have by possibility been guessed: and on the hypothesis of sufficient keenness and experience, that this idea may be carried ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the position much, for if the woman were utterly unprincipled, which she could well believe, why should the man who had, of his own will, pledged himself to her?—but she flushed again as she refused to follow that line of thought further. Nevertheless, she clenched a little hand in a manner that boded ill for Thurston when next he sought speech with her. Afterwards she endeavored to treat the incident with complete indifference, and succeeded ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... beginning of things yet," he interrupted, following up the line of thought the Maluka had at first suggested. "Before any trees are cut down, we'll have to dig a saw-pit and find a pit-sawyer." Dan was not a pessimist; he only liked to dig down to the very root of things, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... not plan to take his daughter beyond the creek. If he attempted it there were men enough to prevent the mad act. Across this line of thought came the recollection of the Grisdols' fate. The girl would be safe at Howard's Creek, but death lined the trace leading thereto. My reason assured me Black Hoof's band had long since departed from ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... the first page, and by the time you have finished the last column oh the last page you may have read a hundred articles, each one of these articles touching on a different line of thought. The daily newspaper contains climaxes of all kinds. Each article is a distinct change of thought. The daily newspaper gives us statistics, sorrow, laughter, crime, passion, death, lies, humor, and so on all through the gamut of the scale of ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... "poster" and are characterised by strength, simplicity and few tones, why would they not give the same crispness of detail that constitutes one of the charms of Gothic work? Perhaps the factories existent in America will work out this line of thought, combine it with honesty of material and labour, and give us the honour of prominence in an ancient ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... "universal love" reflects the breakdown of the clans and the general weakening of family bonds which had taken place. His ideal of social organization resembles organizations of merchants and craftsmen which we know only of later periods. His stress upon frugality, too, reflects a line of thought which is typical of businessmen. The rationality which can also be seen in his metaphysical ideas and which has induced modern Chinese scholars to call him an early materialist is fitting to an age in which a developing money economy ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... Doris entered, little by little, into her social duties so long neglected; the children romped and lived joyously in the old house—"just children"—until suddenly a small but significant thing occurred when they were nine years of age that startled Doris into a line of thought that brought about a radical ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... third view, a little longer-sighted than the others, casts the blame upon the purchasing public. Wages must be low, we are told, because the purchaser insists on low prices. It is the rage for "cheapness" which is the real cause, according to this line of thought. Formerly the customer was content to pay a fair price for an article to a tradesman with whom he dealt regularly, and whose interest it was to sell him a fair article. The tradesman could thus afford to pay the manufacturer a price which would ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... argument of the next chapter will make plain. But the most desirable number of doctors, barristers, teachers, etc., is not a thing which can be settled on purely economic grounds, and it is unprofitable to carry further this particular line of thought. Few people would advocate, as an ultimate ideal, that the remuneration of the professional grades of labor should exceed that of lower grades by more than the extra expense of training and waiting they involve. That the excess is usually greater than this at the present time seems very probable: ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... could face facts; and the man who can look facts fairly in the face is not far from the kingdom of God. Richard Cecil was not, his skepticism notwithstanding. 'I see,' he says, in telling us of the line of thought that he pursued as he lay in bed one night, 'I see two unquestionable facts.' And what were they? They both concerned ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... power of even genius to triumph over an impossibility. During the first part of Bonaparte's life it was possible to paint or chisel Bonaparte's protuberant skull, his brow furrowed by the sublime line of thought, his pale elongated face, his granite complexion, and the meditative character of his countenance. During the second part of his life it was possible to paint or to chisel his broadened forehead, his admirably defined eyebrows, his straight nose, his close-pressed lips, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... accordingly become queen bees; and that they only depart from their ancestral course on being treated in such fashion as their ancestors can never have remembered; also, that when they have been thrown off their accustomed line of thought and action, they only take that of their nurses, who have been about them from the moment of their being deposited as eggs by the queen bee, who have fed them from their own bodies, and between whom and them there may have been all manner of physical and mental ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... had endeavored to refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic. Apparently he gathered momentum in moving along this line of thought, until in England his disbelief took on for a time an extreme and objectionable form. His opinions then were "that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world; and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things existing." But the pamphlet, already mentioned, in which he ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... to fix him to any line of thought, and Mary did not attempt it. To move the child in him was ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... 1916. He was beginning to lisp a little along that restless line of thought in 1910. And in 1940 he may be sitting in that same sanctum with walls of heavy books on two sides of him, telling somebody just how it came to be that an economic cyclone on the prairies once caught up all the Grits and Tories and nothing was ever heard ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... treatments and by keeping him in a darkened room. By the way, Carnes, if I am correct in my line of thought, it would be well to have an extra guard put over Karuska. He was the only real expert in ordnance that the Young Labor party had, and if they have Breslau's model they'll need him to supervise ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... from its being open to the possible objection that it plays on the meaning of the word "good," is perhaps too conclusive to be really convincing. I will therefore try to make my way to its conclusion by another line of thought. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... became unstable by this law, seeking new equilibrium and compelled to find it. Loving paradox, Brooks, with the advantages of ten years' study, had swept away much rubbish in the effort to build up a new line of thought for himself, but he found that no paradox compared with that of daily events. The facts were constantly outrunning his thoughts. The instability was greater than he calculated; the speed of acceleration passed bounds. Among other general rules he laid down the paradox that, in the social disequilibrium ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... the line of thought which passes through the mind of the orthodox Hindu devotee under all circumstances, be they pleasant or disagreeable. And it is one of the most difficult things for him, under these circumstances, to cultivate a true sense ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... visible revelation of an invisible Universe, and upon the idea that man is a microcosm, a little world, reproducing in epitome, point for point, though in miniature, the great world, or macrocosm. On this line of thought, everything is double. The things that are seen are parables of other things which are not seen. They are like printed words which mean something vastly more and deeper than what the eye sees as it scans mere letters. One indwelling Life, one animating Soul, lives ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... on with her own line of thought. "It will be the best thing that ever happened to Eunice if she can only be got to ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... But the absorbing study she was giving to the old pictures, the intensity of which was surprising to Bettina, was an indication of it. Her quick endeavor to follow any line of thought suggested by Mr. Sumner—and her restlessness when she saw the long conversations he and Miss Sherman would so often hold, were others. It seemed to her lately as if Miss Sherman were always claiming his time and attention—even their ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... his line of thought, "I can depend on the Dutchman and my good right arm, and I can't depend on the Pure Flame of Inspiration, or whatever it's called, so methinks the Sturgis Water Line will make its first trip at 8:30 promptly to-morrow morning, as advertised. All the same," he added jubilantly, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... theory) to the chances of eternal misery. If God interferes at all to procure the happiness of mankind, it must be on a far more comprehensive scale than by providing for them a Church of which far the majority of them will never hear. It was on this line of thought, the details of which I need not pursue, that I passed out of the Catholic phase, but slowly, and in many years, to that highest development when all religions appear in their historical light as efforts of the human ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... pursue this line of thought, we can see how, in Jesus' opinion, a man may be sure of God and of God's word for him. If a man be candid with himself, if he face the common facts of life with seriousness and in the doing of duty, perplexities vanish. Such a man is prepared ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... In 1830 an alarming note was sounded in the publication by a learned clergyman of a history of the Jews. We have seen (p. 56) how Mr. Gladstone was horrified by it. Milman's book was the beginning of a new rationalism within the fold. A line of thought was opened that seemed to make the history of religious ideas more interesting than their truth. The special claims of an accepted creed were shaken by disclosing an unmistakeable family likeness to creeds abhorred. A belief was deemed to be accounted ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... girls may realize the sad results of forming habits which hinder growth, development and fruit-bearing, is one of the great objects of the teaching of the Sunday school. Rally Day is an especially appropriate time for a lesson along this line of thought. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... that line of thought. He sat back and resumed his nervous tapping of the cloth, not listening, hardly thinking, but conscious of a discontent ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... government of the day, would certainly not be recognized as work. No more would the painting of pictures in a different style from that of the Royal Academy, or producing plays unpleasing to the censor. Any new line of thought would be banned, unless by influence or corruption the thinker could crawl into the good graces of the pundits. These results are not foreseen by Socialists, because they imagine that the Socialist State will be governed by men like those who now advocate it. This is, of course, a ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... Karmazinov had consented to increase the subscriptions to the fund by reading his Merci in the costume of the governesses of the district; that there would be a literary quadrille all in costume, and every costume would symbolise some special line of thought; and finally that "honest Russian thought" would dance in costume—which would certainly be a complete novelty in itself. Who could resist subscribing? ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Pursuing a similar line of thought, Mr. Wilson said: "Allow the black men to vote without this qualification and they will demand education, the school-houses will rise, school-teachers will be employed, these people will attend the schools, and the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... The other line of thought is a direct reference to the doctrine of transmigration unmixed with the idea of reaping the fruits of his deeds (karma) by passing through the other worlds and without reference to the doctrine of the ways of the fathers and gods, the Yanas. Thus Yajnavalkya says, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... "That same line of thought would make us content to go through a losing season, for all the fellows in other towns who received that betrayed code sent the information right back to us," smiled Prescott. "But we're not going to lose to-day's game, Mr. Morton, nor any other day's. Drayne's ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock

... mirth-provoking, the other leading to serious thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it promoted atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which has since been developed, one feels that the older theologians ought to have put up thanksgivings for Chambers's theory, and prayers that it might prove true. The more serious result was that it accustomed men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possible or even ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops 85 Of planetary music heard in trance. In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap Under the lightnings of the soul—too deep For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 90 The glory of her being, issuing thence, Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade Of unentangled intermixture, made By Love, of light and motion: one intense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, 95 Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing, Around her cheeks ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... meter and rhyme are irregular, but that fact gives a pleasing variety to the poem and corresponds to the somewhat abrupt changes in the line of thought that at first make the poem rather hard to read. The children will be interested in comparing the lengths of lines in different stanzas and sometimes in different parts of the same stanza. It is easy to pick out the rhymes, to see how often ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... sentiments to which one's discourse is giving birth. This necessity of ceaselessly varying one's language in accordance with the effect produced at the moment of speaking deprives from the outset a prepared and studied harangue of all efficaciousness. In such a speech the orator follows his own line of thought, not that of his hearers, and from this fact alone ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. "Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to understand the future as the development of the present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that while the age in which we live is the age of the great, closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the twentieth century will ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that, losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in prison, the quarrel between the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... It stirs interest and guarantees attention and thus tends to keep aroused the activity of the students. It establishes an end toward which all effort of teacher and student must bend. It enables the student to follow a line of thought more intelligently, and occasionally to anticipate conclusions. For the teacher it serves as a standard, in terms of which he reorganizes his subject matter, judges the value of each topic, and omits socially useless matter which has too long been retained in the course ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... Ledantec's doing," said Gascoigne, following out a line of thought of his own. "She was nothing loth, perhaps, for he has been instilling insidious poison into her ears for these weeks past. I had my suspicions, but could prove nothing; now I know. It was for this, to put money in his purse for her extravagance, that he first ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... now," cautioned Skipper Zeb. "'Twill do you no good and 'twill do they no good. Just be thinkin' how joyful they'll be when you goes home in July month. What a fine surprise 'twill be for un!" And then to change the line of thought, he suggested: "You'll be needin' a fit out o' clothes for ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... but a school system different from anything you have on your Earth. The task of the teacher is, not to teach knowledge but to assist in bringing out what is already latent in the soul, rather than a set routine, for every individual is considered a master in some line of thought and activity. The pupil is led into knowledge instead of being ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... reason. I would avoid all this, because it is wandering from the true point in question, and only helping the Deist to oppose the Gospel with a show of argument, which he must necessarily want, was the Gospel left to stand upon its own bottom.'[558] To follow up the line of thought suggested by these words would be in itself a treatise. It is a first axiom among all mystics, that light is its own witness. With what limitations and precautions this is to be transferred to the spiritual ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot imagine that a barbarous and infant people, groping in the mysteries of the moral universe, might entertain some earnest and poetic views which were not precisely in the line of thought of the Londoners of the nineteenth century, and yet which might be worth investigating. To his mind, there is no grand march of humanity, slow, but certain, towards higher ideals, through the various lines of race,—but rather innumerable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... State, but also against collective action by the citizens. The root of it was probably the extreme individualism which felt that a man surrendered too much of himself, too much of truth and manhood in any political association. The beginnings of this line of thought may be detected in a vivid contemptuous account of the riotous Westminster election of 1788, in which Holcroft had worked with the Foxites: "Scandal, pitiful, mean, mutual scandal, never was more plentifully dispersed. Electioneering is a trade so despicably ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... feeling I had no dependent ones to leave behind. But as it was I felt I should be morally guilty of murder if I should forsake Mr. Bennett's wife and children, and the family of Mr. Arcane with whom I had been thus far associated. It was a dark line of thought but I always felt better when I got around to the determination, as I always did, to stand by my friends, their wives and children let come ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... when he remarked that people would come here for generations to see what Germany had done—but he did not seem to follow my line of thought. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... "Kojiki" suggests easily the same line of thought with the myths of cosmogony and theogony, and it is interesting to note that this archaic implement is still used at the sacred temples of Ise to produce fire. After the virgin priestesses perform the sacred dances in honor of local deities the water for their bath is heated by fires ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... to be what she called "on the pounce." He had an odd air of being swayed, carried away, by what those around him were saying, even by what they were thinking, as if something in his nature demanded to acquiesce. Yet she fancied that he was secretly following his own line of thought with a persistence ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... get through with the line of thought engendered by observing the saw-mill, we have canvassed the whole lumber industry from the pineries to the plans of architects and builders in the actual work of construction. Not only has there been this progress of the mind from one object or machine ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... seemed to lighten a little. "Ah! that is a noble study, a study of incalculable service to mankind. I am deeply interested in that line of thought myself—I may say vitally interested, for I suffer from lung trouble. One by one the germs of disease are being discovered and their antitoxins catalogued." It was evident that he was anxious to impress ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... could not expect to understand at our present stage of knowledge how so marvellous a result is produced, and to attempt an explanation would only be to involve ourselves in a mist of words from which we should gain no real information. Yet a line of thought recurs to my mind which perhaps suggests the direction in which it is possible that that explanation may lie: and whatever helps us to realize that so astounding a statement may after all not be wholly impossible will be of assistance in ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with hopping and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist in pink muslin, had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk one has breath for while dancing to continue in a line of thought started by an annoying little smart where a shred of skin had been rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come from the dining-room. He mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and after comparing the pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as an excuse for ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... Fifty-five that Wallace, alone in the wilds of the Malay Archipelago, became convinced of the scientific truth that species were an evolution from a common source, and he began making notes of his observations along this particular line of thought. Some months afterward he wrote out his belief in the form of an essay, but then he had no definite intention of what he would do with the paper, beyond keeping it for future reference when he returned to England. In the Fall of Eighteen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... this time, but rode at his side in silence with a frown and little line of thought ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin



Words linked to "Line of thought" :   thought, thought process, cerebration, intellection, mentation, thinking



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