"Perception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... partners interchanged, on hearing this absurd, ungrateful, and insolent speech of his—the expression that flitted across their shrewd faces; that was, of intense contempt for him, hardly overmastered and concealed by a vivid perception of their own interest, which was, of course, to manage, to soothe, to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... capable of motion long before it had limbs; it assimilated food long before it had a mouth or a stomach. It had a digestive tract long before it had a spinal cord; it had nerve ganglia long before it had a well-defined brain. It had sensation long before it had perception; it was unisexual long before it was bisexual; it had a shell long before it had a skeleton; it had instinct and reflex action long before it had self-consciousness and reason. Always from the lower to the higher, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... spoke, had kept his eyes fixed on the hand he held, a beautiful hand, white, curiously narrow, with pointed, upturned finger-tips. Once or twice a dull color rose to his sunburned cheek, but in his well-balanced mind was a steady perception of what the filial grief and pain must be from which certain words came. He could not resent them; it was inevitable that a child who had so loved her father should so think and feel. And her self-control, her accurate fluency, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of aggression from the east has been brought home to us by the present war; gradually it will be understood even by those Occidentals who at present unhappily lend their support to that aggression. On this perception of the higher common interests of self-defense do I build the possibilities of a western coalition. But a time may come when Russia will be compelled to join it and to complete thereby the union of the whole of Europe; it may come sooner than the conversion of Russia ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the awful and mysterious fate of the tailor, who, as a hero, could not of course die; he merely dissolved like an icicle, wasted into immateriality, and finally melted away beyond the perception of mortal sense. Mr. O'Connor is still living, and once more in the fulness of perfect health and strength. His wife, however, we may as well hint, has been dead more than ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... been lost in admiration of the mysterious spirit which could penetrate the remote and sublime secrets of the science; and on no other occasions have I felt so profound a conviction of my own isolated insignificance, or so lively a perception of the stupendous majesty of ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had taken a shine to the fellow, for all his robbery of poor Toby, and I admired his quickness of perception and readiness of speech. Perhaps he too felt not unkindly toward me. At any rate ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... respect for the feelings of others usually originates in selfishness, and issues in {71} hardness and repulsiveness of manner. It may not proceed from malignity so much, as from want of sympathy, and want of delicacy—a want of that perception of, and attention to, those little and apparently trifling things, by which pleasure is given or pain occasioned to others. Indeed, it may be said that in self-sacrifice in the ordinary intercourse of life, mainly consists the difference between being ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... not talk much of this to her daughter, only telling her that the kind ladies had promised to befriend her, and find a situation for her; and Anne was too much shocked to find her mother actually making such arrangements to enter upon any inquiries. The perception that her mother was looking forward to passing away so soon entirely overset her; she would not think about it, would not admit the bare idea of the loss. Only there lurked at the bottom of her heart the feeling that when the crash had come, and desolation had over taken her, it would be more ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ways. The teachings of Symeon "the New Theologian" on these matters lived on in the cloisters; it was taken up by the Hesychasts of the 14th century, and developed into a peculiar theory as to the perception of the Divine Light. In spite of all opposition their teaching was finally justified by the Eastern Church (sixth synod of Constantinople, 1351). And rightly so, for it was the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... note from her uncle, and a stiff, large document, looking as though it had come from the hands of a lawyer. Isa glanced at the document, and read some few of the words on the outer fold, but they did not carry home to her mind any clear perception of their meaning. She was flurried at the moment, and the words, perhaps, were not very plain. Then she took up her note, and that was plain enough. It was very short, ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... understand. You needn't apologize for your great delicacy in the perception of inhuman evil. I am ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the perplexities, and the self-reproach which had attended ever these early weeks in wonderland. Just as Anna's shrewdness had perceived, so was it the truth that an image of perfect womanhood dazzled his imagination and left him without any clear perception whatever. For little Lois of the slums he had a sterling affection, begotten of long association and of mutual sympathy—but the vision of Anna had been the beatification of his love dream, so to speak, deceiving him by its immense promise and leading him to credit Gessner's ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... us weigh and compare opinions, when, surely, we shall discover the right. Only promise me this one thing, Leuchtmar, that on all occasions you will speak the truth to me, according to the best of your knowledge and perception—that you will not conceal it from me, even when you may know that it will be irksome and disagreeable to me. Will you promise ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... only through our ignorance and subjectivity that things appear distinct and individuate. Could we transcend this subjectivity, isolated objects would cease to exist. Things in their fundamental nature cannot be named or explained: they are beyond the range of language and perception: they have no signs of distinction but possess absolute sameness (samata). From this totality of things nothing can be excluded and to it nothing can be added. Yet it is also sunyata, negation or ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... satire indirecte des gouvernemens d'Europe, ou chaque jour les rois, et meme les seigneurs particuliers, vexoient ce qu'ils appeloient leurs hommes ou leurs sujets par des tailles arbitraires et des milliers d'impots dont les noms etoient aussi bizarres que l'assiette et la perception en ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... To this distant perception of man—of man "purified, removed, and to a distance that was fit"—was added, in his first summer vacation, a somewhat closer interest in the small joys and sorrows of the villagers of Hawkshead,—a new sympathy for the old Dame in whose house the poet still lodged, for "the quiet woodman ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... was of his scholastic achievement and its reward at the hands of the Pope, Henry was doing more for the future of England by his attention to naval affairs than by his pursuit of high-sounding titles. His intuitive perception of England's coming needs in this respect is, perhaps, the most striking illustration of his political foresight. He has been described as the father of the British navy; and, had he not laid the foundations of England's naval power, his daughter's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... a new light for those seeking to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary pretensions and delusions ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the snow white sail, and dark hull of some stately war-ship, becalmed in the offing, and only waiting the rising of the capricious breeze, to waft her onward on her THEN peaceful mission of dispatch. Lost indeed to all perception of the natural must he have been, who could have listened, without a feeling of voluptuous melancholy, to the plaintive notes of the whip-poor-will, breaking on the silence of night, and harmonising with the general stillness of the scene. How often ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... natural than any of the others, and this is an important lesson for everybody who wishes to write.'[26] He did not see how nearly everything went in this concession, that Moliere was, above all, natural. With equal truth of perception he condemned the affectation of grandeur lent by the French tragedians to classical personages who were in truth simple and natural, as the principal defect of the national drama, and the common rock on which their poets made shipwreck.[27] ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... head at this moment was on his knee, while her limpid eyes swore to him that all her love was his, suddenly turned and rent him, it would scarcely be a shock worse than that he had received. He had been undeterred by the ominous gloom of the Major's greeting; few young men have very keen perception of mood, and Larry, deeply self-engrossed, wildly happy, had flung at once into his theme, which, it need hardly be said, was Christian. Then the storm broke, and the lightning blazed, and the thunders of the house uttered their voice, while Larry, amazed, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideas respecting the external world reach the brain. The access of such ideas to the brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of perception. Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from a vast number of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain devoted to perception, and that even this is subdivided into portions which are respectively dedicated to the reception of different sets of ideas, as those of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Throne, and there are lost. Their course is towards Him, and is, so far as it goes, an indication of Him: but He is infinitely, unspeakably above them. No intelligence created, or creatable, can arrive by its own natural perception to see Him as He is: for mind can only discern what is proportionate to itself: and God is out of proportion with all the being of all possible creatures. It is only by analogy that the word being, or any other word whatever can be applied to Him. As Plato ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... also which has lessened our perception of the miraculous good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were suddenly to learn that Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him—the very best of him—at ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his eyes to normal perception. Even in the short moment of dilation the fluoros had given him a headache. He blocked it off from consciousness ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... Billy, joyously, "I see it in your face. You know what I mean. Don't try to appear more thick-headed than you are. Oh, perhaps you are troubled with false modesty, and wish to hide the light of a keen perception. Let it shine, Dic, let it shine. Hide ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... attentively for some time and then withdrew, but returned in half an hour afterwards, with the skin of another fish in his hand prepared by himself, and so well done too, that it was added to the collection. I could give many other instances of his sagacity, his docility, and even his acute perception of character—latterly, he seemed even to read my very thoughts. He accompanied me in the Fly to Torres Strait and New Guinea, and on our return to Port Essington begged so hard to continue with me that I could not refuse him. He went with us to Singapore, Java, and Sydney, and from his great ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... finally determined his momentous course of action were: first, his aversion from taking any part in coercing the home folks of Virginia; secondly, his belief in State rights, tempered though it was by admiration for the Union; and thirdly, his clear perception that war was now inevitable, and that defeat for the South would inevitably mean a violent change of all the ways of Southern life, above all, a change imposed by force from outside, instead of the gradual change he wished to see ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... candidates; now, in 1800, there is a dearth of acceptable candidates for places in the civil service and not, as in 1789, or at the present time, a superabundance and even too great a crowd.—In the military service especially, capacity is innate; natural endowments, courage, coolness, quick perception, physical activity, moral ascendancy, topographical imagination form its principal elements; men just able to read, write and cipher became, in three or four years, during the Revolution, admirable officers and conquering generals.—It is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... license and slavery. The breaking of arbitrary fetters, forged by ignorance and intolerance, does not mean a fall into loose living. The heretic in religion, while resenting outside control, by his very perception of the vast and far-reaching consequences of human action, is often chained to "the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... at the fellow, a thousand questions in my mind, and a dim perception of what he meant permeating ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... those princes whom he had so basely betrayed? But who can thread the labyrinth of an intriguing and selfish heart? Who can calculate the movements of an unprincipled and restless politician? Maurice, at length, awoke to the perception of the real condition of his country. He saw its liberties being overturned by the most ambitious man whom ten centuries had produced. He saw the cause, which his convictions told him was the true one, in danger of being ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... was very like irony, and probably not too subtle to escape the fine perception of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... her strong conviction seemed to kindle in Christine a livelier perception of all its bearings than she had known while it had lain unformulated in her mind. For when she had done speaking she fell down on her knees before her father, covered her face, and said, 'Please, please forgive me, papa! How could I do it without letting you know! I don't ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... silence. At the back of her mind, dim and yet disconcerting, was the perception that she herself did not know what she wanted. And yet she knew it was not fair to call her a ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... dignity of conduct, associated with a cultivated taste, while an uncultivated taste is almost always accompanied by the opposite qualities. With considerable assurance, the most civilised nation of antiquity is cited as an evidence of this, the Greeks, among whom the perception of the beautiful attained its highest development, and, as a contrast, it is usual to point to nations in a partial savage state, and partly barbarous, who expiate their insensibility to the beautiful by a coarse or, at all events, a hard austere character. Nevertheless, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... not give up that one hour with Emil for a whole life such as her sister-in-law led. Moreover, as she thought to herself as she was walking homewards, she had not been able to arrive at a complete perception of her happiness, which, indeed, had all slipped by so quickly. And then that room, that whole house, that frightful picture.... No, no, it was all really hideous rather than anything else. After all, the only really beautiful moments had been those which ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... artist? These different processes, mental and technical, are too many, too varied and involved to invite an answer in a short space of time. Suffice it to say that the most important mental process, to my mind, is the development of a perception of beauty. All the perseverance in the study of music, all the application devoted to it, is not worth a tinker's dam, unless accompanied by this awakening to the perception of beauty. And with regard to the influence of teachers? Since all teachers ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... their intelligence and the bold frankness of their character, free from all that is mean and sordid. Yet for the moment the extreme roughness of their manners half inclines one to forget their heroic qualities. Most of them seem without the least perception of delicacy or propriety, though among them individuals may be found in whose manners there is a plain courtesy, while their features bespeak a gallant spirit equal ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... programs are fixed, except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... and orchards and fields, he says, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, - all is an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been arguing was all but impossible, seemed to have paralysed every one, for no one made the slightest effort to escape. Perhaps the appearance of the wall-like bow of the steamer, without rope or projection of any kind to lay hold of, or jump at, might have conveyed the swift perception that their case was hopeless. At all events, they all went under with the doomed yacht, and nothing was left in the wake of the leviathan but a track of ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... though his talents seem to have been exercised only in the composition of treatises on the theory and practice of music, yet he appears to have anticipated even his son in a just estimate of the philosophy of the age, and in a distinct perception of the true ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... in the least inclined to reproach you for the past," was the sober answer. Geoffrey was distinctly perplexed, for he had acquired a clearer perception of Millicent's character since he left England, and now he felt almost indignant with himself for wondering what she wanted. Glancing at her face he was conscious of a certain pity as well as a vague distrust, for it was evident that her life had not been altogether ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... unfortunately had had too much their own way under the slack though fitful reign of William the Testy; and though upon the accession of Peter Stuyvesant they had felt, with the instinctive perception which mobs as well as cattle possess, that the reins of government had passed into stronger hands, yet could they not help fretting and chafing and champing upon, the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... be commenced in early childhood. Parents should not only encourage their children to express themselves freely upon everything that attracts their attention and interests them, but they should also incite their faculties of perception, memory and close observation, by requiring them to recount everything, even to its minutest details, that they may have observed in walking to and from school, or in taking a ride in a carriage or in the cars. By training a child to a close observation ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... on through every degree, from the lowest depths of ignorance to the greatest heights of intelligence, a man's life must always be the exact reflection of that particular stage which he has reached in the perception of the divine nature and of his own relation to it; and as we approach the full perception of Truth, so the life-principle within us expands, the old bonds and limitations which had no existence in reality fall off from us, and we enter into regions of light, liberty, and power, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... is a free and living creature, and not a machine controlled by fixed laws. Every life is a work of art shaped by the man who lives it; according to the faculty of the artist will be the quality of his work, and no general rules can supply the place of his own direct perception at every turn. The Good is the right proportion, the right manner and occasion; the Bad is all that varies from this "right." But the elements of human nature in themselves are neither good nor bad; they are merely the raw material out of which the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... approaching express was the cause of it. I thought of Julia; surely the demon of unrest would be banished if I saw her. With an almost childish impulse I sought her presence. Before I had time to seat myself, Julia, with a woman's keen perception, noticed my nervousness and asked the cause of it. Man-like I laughed at her anxiety, and tried to deceive her by being boisterously happy, but of course this failed to allay her fears. Before five minutes had elapsed I was madly anxious ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... REPRESENTATIVE PERCEPTION.—We have seen in Chapter II that it seems to the plain man abundantly evident that he really is surrounded by material things and that he directly perceives such things. This has always been the ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... hand," pursued Jack, in the same reflective tone, as if taking up her thought, "persons who are not good have a perception of the indefinite. I did not think of it ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... what he counted its beauty, and yet more in the delight that his was the mind that had generated such a meteor! To be able to think pretty things was to him a gigantic distinction! A thought that could never be soul to any action, would be more valuable to him than the perception of some vitality of relation demanding the activity of the whole being. He would call thoughts the stars that glorify the firmament of humanity, but the stars of his firmament were merely atmospheric—pretty ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... When disturbed they keep constantly shifting, not going far, but hovering about in a most tantalising way. Natives it cares little for, unless it be a shikari with a gun, of which it seems to have intuitive perception; but the ordinary cultivator, with his load of wood and grass, may approach within easy shot; therefore it is not a bad plan, when there is no available cover, to get one of these men to walk alongside ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... why an Apostle would probably have deemed it hopeless to attempt to persuade his disciples, immediately and directly, of the sin of war, is to be found in the fact of their feeble and distorted perception of truth and duty. We, whose advantage it is to have lived all our days in the light of the gospel, and whose ancestors, from time immemorial, had the like precious advantage, can hardly conceive how very feeble and distorted was that perception. But, consider for a moment who ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Branwell, and is, indeed, a valuable storehouse of facts. It might have had more success had it been written with greater brightness and verve. As it stands, it is a dull book, readable only by the Bronte enthusiast. Mr. Leyland has no literary perception, and in his eagerness to show that Branwell was a genius, prints numerous letters and poems which sufficiently demonstrate ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... are lengthened, our machinery is made more perfect, the number of our schools is multiplied, our newspapers are read in ever-widening circles, the spirit of humanity and of freedom breathes through our life; but the individual remains common-place and uninteresting. He lacks intelligence, has no perception of what is excellent, no faith in ideals, no reverence for genius, no belief in any highest sort of man who has not shown his worth in winning wealth, position, or notoriety. We have a thousand poets and no ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... Texan riflemen outside the Alamo look Urrea by surprise, but he was quick of perception and action, and his cavalrymen were the best in the Mexican army. He wheeled them into line with a few words of command and shouted to them to charge. Bowie's men instantly stopped, forming a rough line, and up went their rifles. Urrea's soldiers who carried ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... having instilled into the children, in virtue of their example and daily discourse, feelings that set at naught the innovations of a changeable state of society. With them, Clawbonny is still Clawbonny; and I and mine remain a race apart in their perception of things. I gave Neb and Chloe their freedom-papers, the day the faithful couple were married, and at once relieved their posterity from the servitude of eight-and-twenty, and five-and-twenty years, according to sex, that might otherwise have hung ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... surprise if not disgust. Her conversation is crude and infelicitous, her conduct excessively ill-bred. Indeed, for a company of so-called elegant people, the talk and doings are singularly bald and crude. Even the Jesuit Father seems to have a dull perception about nice points of good behavior, and we have a doubt which amounts to an active suspicion as to the reality of the writer's experience of Jesuitical casuistry and social wiles. Certainly, Father ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... stiffened, stared at the books in front of him, turned, caught sight of her profile, and stood gazing in amazement—a girl's face that was more than pretty, a face in which there was purpose, and proof of clear perception. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... accidentally and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's balance ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to be classed with notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He seems to possess neither the power nor the perception of coherent thinking and logical arrangement. He does not appear to be aware that prepossessions are not proofs, that assertions are not arguments, that the proper method to answer an objection is not to repeat the proposition against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... affairs of Honora Fulham became somewhat blurred to Kate's perception. Besides, she was unable to decide what to do. She had heard that one should never interfere between husband and wife. Moreover, she was very young, and she believed in her friends. Others might do wrong, but not one's chosen. People of her own sort had temptations, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... line hereabouts was very pretty, but it was not at all grand, and Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of this fact. "I am afraid it seems to you very rough," she said. "It's not like the coast ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... which is a practical question, and, therefore, more interesting than the other, which is a pure question of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering. And his answer was,—That utility, a perception of the resulting benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it was objected that often the most obvious results from a virtuous action were far otherwise than beneficial. Upon which, Paley, in the long note referred to above, distinguished thus: That whereas ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... all parts of the world. Frontiers did not exist for Ambroise, he enriched himself with the spoils of the earth, particularly striving to extract from the colonies all the wealth they were able to yield, and carrying on his operations with such triumphant audacity, such keen perception, that the most hazardous of his campaigns ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... a very brilliant suggestion of the squire's muddy intellect—as though every man who carried matches was necessarily an incendiary. But no matches were found upon Harry; and, according to the intelligent justice's perception of the nature of evidence, the suspected party should ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... had made apparent the wealth which he possessed, he was master of the situation. The marchesa's quick perception told her so. While he was accepting all her debts, with the superb indifference of a millionaire, she grew ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... in dreams, I lay on the night in question tranquilly sleeping, but gradually roused to a perception that discordant sounds disturbed the serenity of my slumber. Loth to stir, I still dozed on, the sounds, however, becoming, as it seemed, more determined to make themselves heard; and I awoke to the consciousness that they proceeded from a belt of adjacent jungle, and resembled the noise ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her. She made ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worth thinking about, but in the meantime he wanted to see much more of Rhoda Nunn. Rhoda he was beginning to class with women who are attractive both physically and mentally. Strange how her face had altered to his perception since the first meeting. He smiled now when he beheld it—smiled as a man does when his senses are pleasantly affected. He was getting to know it so well, to be prepared for its constant changes, to watch for certain movements of brows or lips when he had said certain things. That forcible ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, and the shilling duty which was then left was abolished in 1869. Considering that the author belonged to a land-owning family, his clear perception of the evils caused by ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... (as for all who have mastered the inward constitution and commingling of the elements) was impossible. His real LIFE was not injured or affected by the agony on the Cross, or by His three days' entombment; the one was a torture to His physical frame, which to the limited perception of those who watched Him 'die,' as they thought, appeared like a dissolution of the whole Man,—the other was the mere rest and silence necessary for what is called the 'miracle' of the Resurrection, but which was simply the natural ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... memories that seem half dreams. I'm not sure that's quite unusual in the case of a man who has consumed as much whisky as I have. Besides, it's a little difficult to distinguish between dreams and what we look upon as realities, since the latter exist only in the perception of our senses, which may be deceptive. They agree on that point, don't they, in places as ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... final period to identity. But if prophets down the millenniums spake with truth, man is essentially of incorporeal nature. The persistent core of human egoity is only temporarily allied with sense perception. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... whole being as to be to him, not so much a conscious matter of thought as an unconscious mode of thinking. For it is a thing which shapes all his thoughts instead of constituting the substance of one particular set of them. That subject is art. To it he is born as to a birthright. Artistic perception is with him an instinct to which he intuitively conforms, and for which he inherits the skill of countless generations. From the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, in whose use he is surprisingly proficient, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... never saw the description given of it by a trained and skilful French critic, who has been able to pass under his review the whole of English literature without any apparent sense or understanding of one of its most important as well as richest elements. A man without the perception of humour taking English prose literature in hand, can of course set about it only in one way. Accordingly, in Mr. Taine's decisive judgments of our last great humourist, which proceed upon a principle of psychological analysis which it is only fair to say he applies impartially to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... grave. Men differ in genius, he would assert, by education and experience, not by natural organisation. The original acuteness of the senses has little to do with the development of talent. The new psychology had swept "faculties" away. Interest is the main factor in the development of perception and attention. The scarcity of attention is the true cause of the scarcity of genius, and the chief means of promoting it are emulation and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the first time that he had been in love, by a great many times. The list of the idols he had worshipped stretched backwards to the dim remoteness of boyhood. But to-day, awakening all at once to a keen perception of his hapless state, he told himself that he had never loved before ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... of the spirit, the informing idea, the essence of each passing scene; but, hereafter, his bodiless spirit would, as it were, encounter the place-spirits face to face. It is to be noted that warmth of feeling, not clearness or fulness of perception, attends this spiritual recognition.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... however, suppose that the first sounds uttered by man were demonstrative of pain or pleasure, marking a great primary distinction, which we make in common with all animals. But our next expression showed superior sensibility and organism: it denoted a very peculiar perception of the intermingling of pain and pleasure, a combination of opposite feelings not possessed by other animals, or not distinct enough in them to have a specific utterance. There might seem to be something almost physical in the sensation, as it can be excited by tickling, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... satisfaction of wounded vanity. Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. She trembled under a perception that this might be the supreme moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out their untried hands grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his spirit might, in temporary blindness, be struggling to take hold of its impalpable future. They to whom a boy comes asking, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... been taken? Really, I could almost find it in my heart to be downright angry with you both. I cannot understand men a bit. They seem—some of them—to have been born absolutely devoid of the faculty of perception of danger, even when it is staring them in the face; and accordingly they rush into the midst of all sorts of perils, seemingly with a happy unconsciousness that they are doing so, and with a heedlessness as to consequences which is perfectly bewildering. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... but of coldest kind, Express'd the sadness of the Poet's mind; Whose heavy hours were pass'd with busy men, In the dull practice of th' official pen; Who to superiors must in time impart; (The custom this) his progress in their art: But so had grief on his perception wrought, That all unheeded were the duties taught; No answers gave he when his trial came, Silent he stood, but suffering without shame; And they observed that words severe or kind Made no impression on his wounded ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... good taste, and without utility. But in such cases classical learning has only not inspired natural talent, or, at most, it has but made original feebleness of intellect, and natural bluntness of perception, something more conspicuous. The question, after all, if it be a question, is, whether literature, ancient as well as modern, does not assist a good understanding, improve natural good taste, add polished armor ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... art which exercises eternal authority over men's minds; (all other imagination than this is either secondary and contemplative, or utterly spurious;) the base of whose authority and being is its perpetual thirst of truth and purpose to be true. It has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks, and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it sometimes ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... evidence at first hand, we have rich store of memoirs and private letters, by means of which we can form real pictures of individuals—approaching almost to personal acquaintance and intimacy—and regard the same events from many points of view, to perception of the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there paler and whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it. He understood her nature, and his soul was assured that she would never rest until she had made plain to herself ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... speck at the point of the chin, the imperceptible down at the corners of the lips, the velvety floss upon the brow, the quivering shadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks—I could notice everything with astonishing lucidity of perception. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... to my ear and was almost deafened. For a moment I wondered whether I were not in the throes of some acute nervous disorder, in which the senses became sharpened to an incredible degree. Such an exultation of perception could only be due to some powerful intoxicant at work on my body. Was I going mad? I laid the watch on the counterpane and in the act of doing it, the explanation burst on my mind. For the recollection of Mr. Herbert Wain and the Clockdrum ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... outstretched. Listening to the calm, mournful voice which alone had power to stir and thrill his pulses, he could not endure the pain of watching the exquisite face that haunted him day and night; and when he computed the chances of her conviction, a maddening perception of her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... latest publication, entitled, "Ragged and Industrial School Rhymes," appeared in 1854, and has well sustained his reputation. Imbued with a keen perception of the beautiful and pleasing, alike in the natural and moral world, his poetry is marked by refinement of thought, elegance of expression, and an earnest devotedness. In social life he delights to depict the praises of virtue. The lover's tale he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... commenced; and the wild cry which escaped from the lips of the sailor-lad announced his first perception of the new phase into which the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... prefer not to submit to, but in my amateur way I have during the past year or two been sharpening my cheese perception with whatever varieties I could encounter around New York. I've run into briny Caucasian Cossack, Corsican Gricotta, and exotics like Rarush Durmar, Travnik, and Karaghi La-la. Cheese-hunting is one of the greatest—and least competitively ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... onward, and he began to doze. Then after a while he slept and dreamed. He dreamed that he was here in this train, not fettered, but spell-bound, unable to move and hide, only able to understand what was happening and to suffer from his perception of the hideous predicament that he was in. Another train, on another of the four tracks, was racing after this train, was overhauling it, was infallibly catching it. Mysteriously he could see into this following, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... when our victorious armies returned from Mexico and it devolved on Congress to provide for the territories acquired by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The great relations of the subject had now become distinct and clear to the perception of the public mind, which appreciated the evils of sectional controversy upon the question of the admission of new States. In that crisis intense solicitude pervaded the nation. But the patriotic impulses of the popular heart, guided by the admonitory advice of the Father of his Country, rose ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "A dim perception of the sublime teaching of the Lord by whom God has redeemed the world had dawned, even before His appearance on earth, on the spirit of the best of the heathen, and in the hearts of those wise men who—though not born into the state of grace—sought and strove after the truth, after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impending. I observe that whenever an accident, a murder, or death is about to happen, there is something in the furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere, that foreshadows and suggests it years in advance. I cannot say that in real life I have noticed it,—the perception of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Temperance and charity, the discernment of holy truth, the perception of Nibbana: this is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various |
