"Preconceived" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... law, but availing itself of those very restraints as means and aids for their performance. Where so much aptness is, adaptation surely must have been: where arrangement is so plainly conducive to ends, the ends must surely have been foreseen, and the arrangement effected by design and according to preconceived plan. And there cannot have been design without a designer or designers: the plan cannot but have had its author or authors: nor could the plan have been executed without an artificer or artificers. Author or authors, too, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality. Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and see, unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places—to glance over their very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters which they bear—without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction of our preconceived notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal insecurity of the East. But while we observe the avidity with which our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from Indian to Birmingham muslins, from Golconda to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus to Sheffield steel, from Cashmere ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... everything to do with it, First Mortgage; in fact, it is it. Have you any preconceived ideas on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... the country. I began with one battalion, and in a few days I had collected an army. Let the gentry go out on horseback, and the people with scythes and pikes." Let the officers who had been trained to a different service abroad put aside preconceived ideas, and fight in the methods demanded of a ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... a Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and that spirits animated all life, and existed even in minerals; he also believed in preconceived purpose. With these views were associated the Dogmatic School of Medicine, and the name of Hippocrates, and this belief ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... first to examine into the external grounds, evidences, &c., and to weigh their value; and then to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work. The critics of Shakspeare follow a course directly the reverse of this; they set out with a preconceived opinion against a piece, and seek, in justification of this opinion, to render the historical ground suspicious, and to set them aside. Now Titus Andronicus is to be found in the first folio edition of Shakspeare's works, which it ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... but slight annoyances at most, which a little good-humor and desire to conform to the habits and ways of doing of the country will remove. He who goes abroad always ready to bristle up against what does not exactly conform to his preconceived ideas of propriety, measuring and weighing all things with his own national weights and measures, will be continually making himself disagreeable and unhappy, and in the end profit little by his absence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the subject concerning his suggestibility. He seeks and needs the satisfaction of knowing he has attained the prerequisites necessary before any therapeutic program can benefit him. The subject's prerequisites need not be actually related to the hypnotic process, per se, but merely match his preconceived ideas about what is necessary. Let me ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... being captured, so that the gain was all on his side. So far as the West Indies were concerned, the French expedition ended not only in a dead loss, but was a humiliating fiasco, unless, as I have stated before, it was a preconceived decoy for some other purpose. But whether it were strategy or decoy, it taxes one's intelligence to conceive why the French fleet did not proceed to bombard the British possessions on arrival, then steal into safe obscurity and make their way back to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... remedy, instead of changing the remedy when you do not see relief from its use, change the dilution from low to high or high to low, as the case may be. I could detail many cases to show the importance of doing this. No physician should labor specially to sustain either a theory or preconceived ideas, but to cure his patients promptly. The health and lives of our fellow-beings are too ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... my surprise depends on preconceived ideas of conversions. I have heard of sudden and violent crises of the soul, of a thunderbolt, or even of faith exploding at last in ground slowly and cleverly mined. It is quite evident that conversions may happen in one or other of these two ways, for God acts as ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... subject of this work might have been treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; and there has since appeared an attempt to combine with this investigation the medical science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a description; a conversation or a monologue; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... expected a lover to say. Indeed, the conversation, as carried on by him, between the moment of betrothal and the arrival at the chemist's shop, was the one phenomenon of the engagement which corresponded with her preconceived ideas concerning such an affair. It convinced her ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the scarabaeus, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions—especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been developed a race ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... struck by the vehemence of her appeal. He allowed himself to listen for a moment—to overbalance all his preconceived plans, but just then his past life, Jordan Morse, his own near approaching end, sank into his mind, and the fire in his eyes went out. There was finality in the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... proceeds on one grand fallacy; for, whereas this wretch is endeavouring by a supercilious conduct to lead the beholder into an opinion of his superiority to the despised person, he inwardly flatters his own vanity with a deceitful presumption that this his conduct is founded on a general preconceived opinion of this superiority. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... fact. In the former process, called induction, certain moral qualities come into play. The first condition of success is patient industry, an honest receptivity, and a willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something lofty in it, and of which the world never hears, is often enacted in the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... diffused or everywhere growing, species of globules constantly in course of decay and restoration, which, through the blind and spontaneous development, transform themselves, multiply and combine, and which, without either foreign direction or any preconceived end, solely through the effect of their structure and surroundings, unite together to form those masterly organisms which we call plants and animals: in the beginning, the simplest forms, and next a slow, gradual, complex and perfected organization; the organ created through habits, necessity and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... from literary curiosity; but there was also a tinge of enthusiasm in his character, like that which carries a traveller to the wastes of Africa or the icebound regions of the Pole. Whenever there was work ready for him, he was ready for the work. But he had no theories to substantiate, no preconceived objects to attain. Sobriety and thoroughness are the distinguishing features of all his works. There is in them no trace of haste or carelessness; but neither is there evidence of any extraordinary effort, or minute professional scholarship. In the same business-like spirit in which he ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... pleasure of dwelling upon the absurdities and oddities of the life as they strike him, but there is also another side to the question. Our own civilization, presenting so many features so extremely removed from his own ancient ideas and preconceived notion of things in general, probably looks quite as ridiculous from the standpoint of the Chinese. The East and the West each have lessons to offer the other. The West is offering them to the East, and they are being absorbed. And perhaps were we ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... nose—forty years of age or thereabouts, but so got up as to look not much more than thirty. But his guest was by no means a man of that stamp. Excepting that the count's age was altogether uncertain, no correctness of guess on that matter being possible by means of his appearance, Harry's preconceived notion was wrong in every point. He was a fair man, with a broad fair face, and very light blue eyes; his forehead was low, but broad; he wore no whiskers, but bore on his lip a heavy moustache which was not gray, but perfectly white—white it was with years, of ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... new scope for satisfactory thinking—a sort of treasure one can always carry about, and, unlike other treasures, is most valuable in the solitude of a desert. The beauty of your theory as to the nature of the source of light is, that it rather supports all preconceived notions respecting the soul, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... earth, and to predict where the vertical dip would be found. These deductions seem the more wonderful because at the time he made them the dip had just been discovered, and had not been studied except at London. His theory of the dip was, therefore, a scientific prediction, based on a preconceived hypothesis. Gilbert found the dip to be 72 degrees at London; eight years later Hudson found the dip at 75 degrees 22' north latitude to be 89 degrees 30'; but it was not until over two hundred years later, in 1831, that the vertical dip was first observed by Sir James Ross at about ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that I entered were not remarkable for dimensions above the many that are to be found over the country. It is probable that the whole of the refugees might sleep in these several places, if there were no village there at the time, which seems probable; but it was merely my own preconceived notion that they all lived in one vast cavern. The text of Judg. xx. 47 ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... show him samples of the wheat it must use and the grades of flour it must make, and have him make a programme for the mill and plan the machinery to fit it. Then have the mill built to fit the machinery. When it starts follow the programme, whether it agrees with your preconceived notions or not, and the mill will, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, do ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... up to that moment he did not care much for a savage in European attire. He had not come to Australia to see Australians in coats and trousers. He preferred them simply tattooed, and this conventional dress jarred on his preconceived notions. But the child's genuine religious fervor won him over completely. Indeed, the wind-up of the conversation converted the worthy geographer into ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... But my preconceived plan was entirely frustrated by the peculiar situation of the Indian encampment. I had anticipated that there would be either trees, brushwood, or broken ground in its neighbourhood, under shelter of which we might approach it. To my chagrin, I now saw that there was none of the three. There ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... be impossible to recapitulate the arguments or even to indicate the varying points of view. And indeed the main hindrance in forming a just idea of The Prince is the constant treatment of a single side of the book and the preconceived intent of the critic. Bacon has already been mentioned. Among later names are Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz. Herder gives qualified approval, while Fichte frankly throws down the glove as The Prince's champion. 'Da man weiss dass politische Machtfragen nie, am wenigsten ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... at Split without meeting people who had fled from the occupied islands. It was also, in consequence of what they told one, impossible to set out with an unprejudiced mind. But, after all, we have our preconceived ideas on Heaven and Hell, and that will be no reason for us not to go there. I had become acquainted at Split with Captain Pommerol, of the British Army, a Mauritian of imposing physique and, as ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Earth, with but few exceptions, has degenerated from God's holiest of institutions to a happy convenience for the gratification of the animal passions; and the rearing of children is an accident rather than a preconceived reality. Such marriages are unholy and destructive, and unless your people respond to a Spiritual awakening such as God's workers are now trying to inaugurate on your Earth the growing degeneracy will be augmented rather than ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... ten feet above the quarterdeck, and broke into clouds of blinding, strangling spray over the forecastle and galley, careening the ship until the bell on the quarter-deck struck and water ran in over the lee gunwale. It did not exactly correspond with my preconceived ideas of a storm, but I was obliged to confess that it had many of the characteristic features of the real phenomenon. The wind had the orthodox howl through the rigging, the sea was fully up to the prescribed standard, and the vessel pitched and rolled in a way to satisfy the most critical taste. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... also about which lay the government buildings. It was the event of some celebration; I believe the throwing off of the yoke of Spain. The city flocked into the plaza. Strangely enough, those who were disaffected—the soldiers under Urquijo—faced the loyal troops. By a preconceived plan, the artillery was under the command of Urquijo. Suddenly this Captain's murderous and traitorous guns swept the plaza, mangling women and children. There was a flaw, however, in the stroke. Urquijo fled, a reward posted ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... UNIMPORTANT PEOPLE, by Rupert Hughes (Harper & Brothers). This is an unimportant book containing one superb story, "The Stick-In-the-Muds," which I had the pleasure of printing last year in this series. It is one of the stories which Mr. Hughes has written for his own pleasure and not for the preconceived pleasure of his large and critical public. I consider that it ranks with the excellent series of Irish-American studies which Mr. Hughes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... surprised to find a most attractive interior. It looked like the inside of a prosperous club house. I don't know what I expected but I wouldn't have been startled if I'd found a hall filled with wooden settees and a prayer meeting going on. I had a lot of such preconceived notions knocked out of my head ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... brother and sister. They came to me to study from Omaha, Nebraska, as little tots of about six and seven years of age. Adele was always fond of coming to her classes; but Fred says that he just "followed on" through brotherly association rather than from any preconceived ambition to become a professional dancer. Then, through reverses of family fortunes, the time came when they felt that they should be supporting themselves. They continued to study under me, and I was very happy to be able to place them in vaudeville in a singing ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... of the briefest, over before he fairly grasped their import, gone like a breath, were still sufficient to discredit many preconceived ideas and enlarge his mental horizon to a somewhat anxious extent. They carried him very far from life as lived at Canton Magna Rectory; very far from all, indeed, in which the roots of his experience were set, thus producing an atmosphere of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... man's simply nowhere in comparison," said Lapham. But he respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. It seemed to him that he had discovered the fellow (as he always called him) and owned him now, and the fellow did nothing to disturb this impression. He entered into that brief but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... undergoing a wonderful change. Even within the memory of some twenty-five years, what events have occurred to verify the remark. Civilization changes all the preconceived perfections of the past, and introduces new scenes of life; it reforms without injuring, and leaves us undecided as to the value of the progress made. New customs and new habits leave man where he was; his nature ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bowdoin, with Longfellow, in the class of 1825, and returned to Salem for thirteen brooding lonely years in which he tried to teach himself the art of story-writing. His earliest tales, like Irving's, are essays in which characters emerge; he is absorbed in finding a setting for a preconceived "moral"; he is in love with allegory and parable. His own words about his first collection of stories, "Twice-Told Tales," have often been quoted: "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade." Yet they are for the most ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the scarabaeus, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions, especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas; and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... subtle and abstruse. He hit the House just between wind and water. And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious or more earnest than the preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required, to whom he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to the temper of the House; and he seemed to guide, because he was always sure ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. The excessive flatness of the scene makes it dreary, but tame. Grandeur is certainly not its characteristic. I retired from the rest of the party, to understand my own feelings the better; and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... arms against the windowframe, watched her in silence as she moved restlessly about the room, gathering together some scattered books and tossing a handful of torn letters into the paperbasket. When she ceased, he rejoined: "All you say is based on preconceived theories. Why didn't you put them to the test by coming down to meet your old friends? Don't you see the inference they would naturally draw from your hiding yourself when they arrived? It looked as though you were afraid of them—or as ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... could perceive in geology nothing but the ordinary operation of actual causes, carried on in the same manner through infinite ages, without the trace of a beginning or the prospect of an end, must have surveyed them through the medium of a preconceived hypothesis alone[24].' ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some with ear-rings ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... engage the enemy. In vain had arms, in vain had strength, in vain had courage been given them." While they were giving vent to such grievous reflections, the fatal hour of their disgrace arrived, which was to render every circumstance still more shocking in fact, than they had preconceived it in their imaginations. First, they were ordered to go out, beyond the rampart, unarmed, and with single garments; then the hostages were surrendered, and carried into custody. The lictors were next commanded ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Croly was suggestive, inspiring and encouraging. It was always with a slight shock to preconceived notions and prejudices that one listened to his comments on any current movement or event, for he was sure to take an original and characteristic view which ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... psychiatry: if one denies that creative work involves problems and purposes, one must admit that an artist creates without premeditation or intention, in a state of aberration; therefore, if an author boasted to me of having written a novel without a preconceived design, under a sudden inspiration, I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... a wave of the hand and a preconceived smile: "Why, according to the evidence, the prisoner was noisy and troublesome ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... you anything that may interest you," Gimblet consented readily. "Every one enjoys talking about their work to sympathetic listeners such as yourselves. It is a bad thing to start on a case with a preconceived idea, and I can't deny that when I first came here I was very near having an idee fixe as to the origin of the crime. I tried to deceive myself into thinking that I kept an open mind on the subject; but I don't think I ever really doubted for ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... he ate, and to whose rise he had himself contributed, yet if he could remain true to him without injuring he; he would account himself happy. The day came when he had to decide between them, and, against all chances, against his own preconceived notion of what he would do under these circumstances, he ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... first on the island, there is no doubt that the mass of the population regarded us with acute distrust, if not with dislike and fear. But the prompt measures taken by General Miles to disabuse their minds of any preconceived ideas of ensuing rape, robbery, or desecration, did much to soothe the more ignorant and childish of the natives, while the intelligent and educated class needed no further assurance than that contained in the proclamation ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... threshold of this discussion, I ask the reader to, as far as possible, divest his mind of all prejudice arising from preconceived opinions, and view in a perfectly candid and judicial manner this problem upon which the last word will not be spoken until woman is emancipated. As long as free discussion is tabooed and conservatism finds it possible to dismiss the question with a flippant jest, a ribald joke, or a basely unjust ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... become so far deteriorated in vigor of body, or demoralized in spirit, as to be unfit for military service. The Southern leaders looked with scorn upon our volunteer army only until they encountered it in battle. They were then compelled to alter their preconceived opinions of the Yankee character, and to change their contempt, real or pretended, into respect, if not admiration. Even when superior numbers or better strategy enabled them to beat us, they have seldom ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the cramped hallway interrupted these reflections; then a moment later Doctor Alvarado was introducing O'Reilly to a young woman so completely out of the picture, so utterly the opposite of his preconceived notions, that he was momentarily at a loss. Johnnie found himself looking into a pair of frank gray eyes, and felt his hand seized by a firm, almost masculine grasp. Miss Evans, according to his first dazzling impression, was about the most fetching creature ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a vast Cathedral nave something almost overpowering in its sense of ordered beauty. It may be that average lives are so planless, so haphazard and without order that an achievement of such magnitude representing years of labour and concentrated thought in steadily following out a preconceived plan cannot fail to be a tremendous contrast to the smallness and pettiness of the majority—a contrast so great that it is mentally and spiritually a glimpse of the world of new possibilities attainable when once the feverish clinging to the ideals of the totem post is abandoned. ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... know, who summed up gratitude as a lively sense of favours to come. Now, in this case, let us play fair, actuated by the one desire to see that justice is done. This case does not strike me as quite such a simple affair as it seems to you. You approach it with a preconceived theory to which you are determined to adhere. Your theory is plausible and convincing—to some extent—but that is all the more reason why you should examine and test every link in the chain. You cannot solve difficult ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable—the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions ...
— The Federalist Papers
... invented to account for the social inferiority of the Pardhans to the Gonds, but their position merely accords with the general rule that the bards and genealogists of any caste are a degraded section. The fact is somewhat contrary to preconceived ideas, but the explanation given of it is that such persons make their living by begging from the remainder of the caste and hence are naturally looked down upon by them; and further, that in pursuit of their calling they wander about to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... forever, whether or not you can pigeonhole it in some ready-made category. After all, the critical pigeonholes are made for the things, not the things for the pigeonholes. The work is there, and if it does not fit your preconceived definition the fault is as likely to be in the definition as in the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... duration, as that it was in the middle of Lincoln's Inn Fields, or the first degree of Taurus, and in the year of our Lord 1671, or the 1000th year of the Julian period. All which distances we measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration,—as inches, feet, miles, and degrees, and in the other, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... probably seem absurd to those who are at all familiar with mineral springs or Saratoga waters. Nevertheless, it is a not unfrequent and amusing occurrence to hear remarks from strangers and greenies who have a preconceived notion that the springs are doctored, and that a mixture of salts, etc., is tipped in every night or early in the morning! Strange that the art should be limited to the village of Saratoga! The incredulity of some people ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable names for the dramatis personae. Balzac used to look long among the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to the fleshless owners of them. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Australia, and taking up wheatgrowing, stand a better chance than many of the long-settled farmers who have got into a groove—even a profitable one—and who do not care to bother greatly with progressive ideas. The new comer has no preconceived notions, and comes with an open mind adaptable to the teachings ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs
... it is otherwise. Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for development and definition. If the poet already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? The poem would in fact already be written. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... dying—most probably he was. If so this was a lucid interval before death, and in it his mind was playing him no tricks. The supposed friend loomed in an unmasked and traitorous light which even the preconceived idea could not confuse or mitigate. Maggard did not want to give credence to the certainty that was shaping itself—and yet the conviction had been born and could not be thrust back into the womb of the unborn. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... hinterlands of British Columbia. She had a vague impression that any dwelling occupied exclusively by a man must of necessity be dirty, disordered, and cheerless. But she had never seen a room such as the one she now found herself in. It conformed to none of her preconceived ideas. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... war against the narrower interpretations and applications of the principles they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... doubts would have been dispelled could she have read some of the letters which he dispatched from Scheveningen. That she herself was captivated by him there seems no doubt. It was an amusing change from her preconceived notion of him. She had imagined him a stiff, disagreeable, jealous old man, who wore a green velvet skull-cap and played tedious fugues. This prejudice, needless to say, was dispelled at their first meeting, when she found the crabbed creation of her fancy a man of the world, with gracious, winning ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... unity, but the unity is not of the kind which constitutes a person or a self-consciousness. It is (as Dr. McTaggart holds) the unity of a Society, but of a Society (as I have attempted to argue) which emanates from, and is controlled by and guided to a preconceived end ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... silence of the grave could longer hide away. Those who have been accustomed to dream of death as the end of all whom its shadowy portals inclose, alone are prepared to appreciate the awful and startling reality of this strange scene, breaking apart, as it did, like a rope of sand, all the preconceived opinions of countless ages on the existence and destiny of the ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... more liberal man, Decazes, succeeded him. He was supported by a party which arose at this time, called Doctrinaires on account of a certain pedantic spirit, and a disposition to shape political action by preconceived theories or ideas, which was imputed to them. In their ranks were Royer-Collard, Guizot, Villemain, Barante, and others. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among the liberals not affiliated with them was La Fayette, who encouraged the Charbonniers, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... probabilities in connection with this other name seems futile this morning. The ease with which one can twist the appearances of things to fit a preconceived theory as exemplified by the effort you have just made warns us to be chary of pushing one's idea too far without the firmest of bases to support it. If you find a man's coat showing somewhere on its lining evidences ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... this eye for detail, this lack of general ideas and of guiding principles at least guarded Rashi against a danger more original spirits failed to escape, namely, of reading preconceived notions into the text, of interpreting it by an individual method, and, thus, of gathering more meaning, or another meaning, than was intended by the author. Unlike the Jewish and Christian theologians, Rashi felt no need to do violence to the text in order to reconcile it with ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... discovering the passion of his antagonist for the beautiful Cephalis, for whom he had himself a species of predilection; and it was also obvious to him, that there was some lurking anger in the mind of her father, unfavourable to the hopes of his rival. The stimulus of revenge, superadded to that of preconceived inclination, determined him, after due deliberation, to cut out Mr Escot in the young lady's favour. The practicability of this design he did not trouble himself to investigate; for the havoc he had made in the hearts of some silly girls, who were extremely vulnerable ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... description, and entire ignorance is wholly unknown, the proportion of criminals to the entire population is TWELVE TIMES greater than in France, where education of any sort has only been imparted to two-fifths of the community.[13] These facts are startling—they run adverse to many preconceived ideas—they overturn many favourite theories; but they are not the less facts, and it is by facts alone that correct conclusions are to be drawn in regard to human affairs. In America too, it appears from the criminal returns, many of which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to think that Espronceda's biographers underrate his services in the Chamber of Deputies. The trouble is that in his rle of deputy their hero failed to justify preconceived notions regarding his character. Those who looked for revolution in his speeches found only sound finance. We seek in vain for anything subversive. There is nothing suggestive of the lyric poet or even of the fiery defender of El Huracn. As a poet he had praised the destructive fury of the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... more unlikely comparison than one instituted between Medusae and the embryonic stages of back-boned animals. But Huxley made it, not allowing the evidence brought before his reason to be swamped by preconceived ideas. At the time he did no more than to make the comparison. It was much later that the full importance of it became known, when more extended work on the embryology of vertebrates and of the different groups of the invertebrates ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... to belong to memory. It is this which the Platonists felt when they wildly supposed that souls attracted to each other on earth had been united in an earlier being and a diviner sphere; and there was in the young face on which Ernest gazed precisely this ineffable harmony with his preconceived notions of the beautiful. Many a nightly and noonday reverie was realised in those mild yet smiling eyes of the darkest blue; in that ingenuous breadth of brow, with its slightly-pencilled arches, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with us upon the character of this legislation prefer to have the question settled now, even against their preconceived views, and perhaps settled so reasonably, as I trust and believe it will be, as to insure great permanence, than to have further uncertainty menacing the vast and varied business interests of the United States. Again, whatever action Congress may take will be given a fair opportunity ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the selection of words in which the consonants alliterated and the vowels varied. In his Philosophy of Composition he described how his best known poem, the Raven, was systematically built up on a preconceived plan in which the number of lines was first determined and the word "nevermore" selected as a starting point. No one who knows the mood in which poetry is composed will believe that this ingenious piece ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... after the other, that the abandonment of Higgs had been a preconceived plan. Several of them added that Shadrach was in traitorous communication with the Fung, whom he had warned of our advent by firing the reeds, and had even contrived to arrange that we were to be taken while he and the other Abati, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... delight and edification in the calendar of the Deluge, who had determined to read Genesis with a view to discovering what knowledge existed in the patriarchal age of a future life? No. Your wisdom will be to divest your minds, as much as possible, of any preconceived notion as to what the Bible contains, or was intended to teach you. You should wish to find there nothing so much as the authentic evidence of what Divine Wisdom hath seen fit to communicate to man. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... that men of the world such as Turkey and the Egghead would for a moment condescend. If it had not been for the added bait of a Princeton game, he would never have found the courage. The result upset all his preconceived theories, and it was not until he found himself on the high road to Princeton, actually squeezed into a buggy between two eager and enthusiastic lords of the school that he attempted to reason it out. The attempt, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... is so glamorous that it is difficult to review his life and character with an unbiased mind. While Fundamentalists and Modernists differ regarding the divinity of Christ, all Christians and many non-Christians still cling to preconceived notions of the perfection of Jesus. He alone among men is revered as all-loving, omniscient, faultless—an unparalleled model ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... not quite prepared the traveler for the facts and experiences which crowd upon him, when among this very interesting race. The actual embodiment of the people, their manners and customs, together with the local surroundings, are all so different from the preconceived ideal, that everything comes with the force of a surprise. Figure, physiognomy, costume, nudity,—one is not quite prepared for anything; all is like a fresh revelation. Once brought face to face with Japanese life, our fabric of anticipation tumbles to pieces like a house of cards. Everything is ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... up his hair till it reached the climax of Struwel Peterdom. The most wonderful thing in his life had happened. A woman loved him. It upset all his preconceived notions of his place in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Any preconceived form would have fettered Bunyan's free spirit; he was a giant in prayer, and commanded the deepest reverence while leading the public devotions of the largest congregations. The great question as to public prayer is whether ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gone to the mission-field with the firm resolve to do the work in only one way. Such a resolve has ever seemed to me most unwise, savouring more of wilfulness than of holy steady purpose to do the Master's work. The missionary ought to go out ready to part with every preconceived notion at the call of providential direction and the Spirit's guidance, prepared to do with all his might whatever he may have the opportunity of doing for the advancement of Christ's kingdom, however little may be his natural liking or ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... long use has become the habit of the old-school practitioner. Moreover the swift impressions gathered under the clinical eye are spontaneous and reliable whereas, as the result of questioning or the description of the patient, they possibly are not, but rather represent too often some preconceived notion of alleged heredity or devotional pessimism, sometimes original but more probably the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... covered galleries, and the people moving in the big, circular place into which we drove—the place of the Kurhaus and of the circus—were drifting particles of the bright mosaic; tall, dark young officers (not at all typically Dutch according to preconceived ideas) in green and crimson or bright blue uniforms; pretty girls in white with rose-trimmed or scarlet hats; nursemaids in the costume of some remote province, the sunlight setting their gold head-ornaments ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... still great uncertainty, and often the most curious triviality and low intelligence, but we were able to check the possible tendency to the simulation of the supra-normal activity. And even so the character of the "manifestation" was generally so trivial and opposed to all preconceived ideas of spiritual intelligence as to justify the conclusion that the departed had left their wits behind them, so that even in those "circles" which included only personal friends and individuals of unquestionable sincerity the results rarely had any intellectual importance. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... constant encroachment of experiment and observation on the domain of hypothetical dogma; and that the most difficult, as well as the most important, object of every honest worker is "sich ent-subjectiviren"—to get rid of his preconceived notions, and to keep his hypotheses well in hand, as the good servants and bad masters that ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Hebrew, or the opinions of those ancient writers, let them be worth ever so much, would never find their way to us. And when we have gained those supposed opinions, through the translation, how do we know that the translators were faithful? Who can say they were not warped by system? not misled by preconceived ideas? Who can say they have not wilfully imposed upon us? Under such circumstances, the ability to detect any inaccuracies or imposition, would, in my view, be very desirable. You have, yourself, my brother, availed yourself of this ability, and very justly merited the gratitude ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... perfection of the body: they are alembics through which its parts must necessarily move to attain that vigor which shall continue forever."18 To state this figment is enough. It would be folly to attempt any refutation of a fancy so obviously a pure contrivance to fortify a preconceived opinion, a fancy, too, so preposterous, so utterly without countenance, either from experience, observation, science, reason, or Scripture. The egg of man's divinity is not laid in the nest ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... miner had interested her from the first as representing a perfect type of her preconceived ideal of the real Westerner. She had liked the firm character of his face, the quiet, thoughtful way in which he acted, the whole unobtrusive bearing of the man. Then, as they had walked that long ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... all preconceived ideas," Seaman enjoined. "What your duties are with regard to Terniloff will grow upon you gradually as ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... property of air, had sufficed to raise him, in apparent defiance of the retardation of friction, and of the drag of gravitation. This power of soaring is the most wonderful of the various problems of flight being accomplished without effort; and yet, according to our preconceived ideas, there must be force somewhere to cause motion. There was a moderate air moving at the time, but it must be remembered that if a wind assists one way it retards the other. [Footnote: See ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the power of preconceived opinion, especially when any personal interest is enlisted on the same side as itself, that though it is hard to deduce new truths from the study of nature, it is still harder to get them recognized by ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... necessary for the understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say then, it was not a question of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of miracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at the time, for the triumph of some preconceived idea—oh, no, not at all—what he saw before all was one figure—the figure of his beloved elder, the figure of that holy man whom he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the love that lay ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... much what I had preconceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the verge of the open space. . . . . The French soldiers, who keep guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... preconceived notions, prejudices of "School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the most ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... sphere is not an enclave at all in the proper sense; indeed it can only seem one to those who still believe that it is still possible to pre-empt provinces by ministerial declarations. The Japanese have been the first to dare to say that the preconceived general belief was stupid. They know, of course, that it was a British force which invaded the Yangtsze Valley seventy-five years ago, and forced the signature of the Treaty of Nanking which first opened ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate monotony of the mats, to the finely finished simplicity of the white woodwork. I am even losing my Western prejudices; all my preconceived ideas are this evening evaporating and vanishing; crossing the garden I have courteously saluted M. Sucre, who was watering his dwarf shrubs and his deformed flowers; and Madame Prune appears to me a highly respectable old lady, in whose past there is ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of Eugene Carriere, for instance his masterly portrait of Paul Verlaine, a song, sometimes an entire role, may be worked out in monochrome; though the gradations of tint are numerous, they are consistently kept within their preconceived colour-scheme. Some few exceptional singers, like Jean-Baptiste Faure or Maurice Renaud, have this gift of many shades of the one colour in their singing of certain roles. The colour is determined by the psychological character of the personage ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... writers—alike its history, site, and natural features are so curious and poetic, such a flavour of antiquity clings to it, that perhaps no other town in the Jura is approached with equal expectation. Nor can any preconceived notion of the attractiveness of St. Claude, however high, be disappointed, if visited in fine weather. It is really a marvellous place, and takes the strangest hold on the imagination. The antique city, so superbly ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is in our mind, or be misshapen and deformed to our sense. Men's desires and designs may be said to conceive, for they form an inward image and idea within themselves, to which they labour to make the product and birth of time conformable, and when it answers our preconceived form, then we rejoice as for a man child. But for the most part it is a monster as to our conception, it is an aberration from our rule, it is either mutilated and defective of what we desire, or superfluous or deformed, which ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... this thing a bit better, I am going to break one of my rules." As they walked along he remarked: "A man's affairs are sometimes directed and controlled for him in a most singular fashion. Little things change preconceived notions very suddenly." ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... themselves into two classes: those in which the speaker is defending a preconceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied; and those in which he is trying to form a judgment or to accept one: and the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. The first kind of argument or discussion is carried ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same cake was put in his month, he spit it out without observation. The following instance of the dependance of his perceptions upon, or rather their subordination to, his preconceived ideas is truly wonderful. It is to be observed that he always knew when his pen had ink in it. Likewise, if they adroitly changed his papers, when he was writing, he knew it, if the sheet substituted was of a different size from the former, and he appeared embarrassed in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... subject. At best they represent merely the conclusions reached by three investigators. Attempts to arrive at positive differences in favor either of original nature or of education are frequently made in the interest of preconceived opinion. The problem, as far as science is concerned, is to discover what limitations original nature places upon response to social copies, and the ways in which the inborn potentialities find expression or repression in differing types ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and sweetness of disposition, by which all who conversed with him were engaged to love and esteem his character. He was naturally eloquent, both in illustrating and proving the reasonableness of his own opinions, and in converting others from their erroneous preconceived notions. Above all, he possessed that steady and persevering resolution, which not only enabled him to vanquish the greatest difficulties, but gave such appearance of success to every thing be promised or undertook, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... aware which foot it is. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable, but effeminate—clear, harmonious, and so distinct, that though his general tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost. His manners are as unlike my preconceived notions of them as is his appearance. I had expected to find him a dignified, cold, reserved, and haughty person, resembling those mysterious personages he so loves to paint in his works, and with whom he has been so often identified by the good-natured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... idea of the next step in his adventure. He had swum from the bateau largely under impulse, with no preconceived scheme of action, urged chiefly by the hope that he would find St. Pierre in the cabin and that something might come of it. As for knocking at the door and rousing the chief of the Boulains from sleep—he had ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... excellence...He summed up in his imagination, he represented in his talent, a poetic feeling inherent in his nation and diffused there among all his contemporaries. Like the true national poets, Chopin sang, without a fixed design, without a preconceived choice, what inspiration spontaneously dictated to him; it is thus that there arose in his music, without solicitation, without effort, the most idealised form of the emotions which had animated his childhood, chequered his adolescence, and embellished his youth...Without making ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... facts and laying before their countrymen and countrywomen conclusions based on acquired knowledge and wide experience. But their efforts are only partially successful. They are often shivered on the solid rock of preconceived prejudices, and genuine but ill-informed sentimentalism. A large section of the English public are, in fact, singularly wanting in political imagination. Although they would not, in so many words, admit the truth of the statement, they none the less act and speak as if sound ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... not, and, owing to some defect in her or for some other cause, perhaps could not sink down to become rooted in her heart. After Mrs. Churton had, as she imagined, utterly and for ever smashed and pulverised all Fan's preconceived and wildly erroneous ideas about right and wrong, the girl's mind for some time had been in a state of chaos with regard to such matters. But gradually, by means of a kind of spiritual chemistry, the original elements of her peculiar system came together, and crystallised again in the old form. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... however, men were sure to be stationed; so, with a soothing word to his horse, he plunged into the depths of the wood along a narrow track, as one who knew his way perfectly and was acting on some preconceived plan. In a small clearing he halted, listening for the sounds of pursuit, and then pressed forward again until he presently came out upon the green sward bordering a road. Again he halted to listen, and, satisfied that the hunters were not too perilously close upon his heels, he cantered ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy. 1770. 2 vols. 8vo.—These works are noticed principally because they afford a curious and instructive proof of the very different views which may be taken of the same objects, according to the extent and accuracy of the knowledge, and the preconceived opinions and feelings of the observer. Barretti's work is certainly more accurate than that of Sharp, but in opposing him, he has sometimes gone into the opposite extreme: from comparing both, perhaps the reality may often ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... in August showed themselves wholly indifferent to the reverses of the German Army. They were sincerely and profoundly convinced that, if the German Army retired, it was in virtue of a preconceived plan, and that our successes would lead to nothing. The events at the end of August were calculated to strengthen this contention in the minds ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which Wally, apparently examining her last words and turning them over in his mind found that they did not square with his preconceived theories. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... can be easily verified if the subject of malaria be studied on the spot and without any preconceived notions, explain the tendency which has always been manifested to attribute this specific poisoning of the air to a living organism which is multiplied in the soil; and they also explain the ardor with which hygienists have applied themselves ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... those who are more intimately acquainted with the secret history of the times will perceive how erroneously the personal character of this sovereign is exhibited in our popular historians, and often even among the few who, with better information, have re-echoed their preconceived opinions. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the differentiation of the sexes by the action of love's-selection. It is a truth that I wish as strongly as I am able to emphasise. We cannot learn to know love's selective powers by enclosing its action within the narrow circle of our preconceived ideas. Instead of limiting its power we should extend it without hindrance of any form—to the female as well as the male; to the woman as to the man. We should regard nothing as impossible, no development of either sex too great to be accomplished, knowing that all progress is possible ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... dissertation. The names are given in the order in which they occur in the botanic notebook filled on the reservation, excluding names of food plants and species not identified, so that no attempt has been made to select in accordance with a preconceived theory. Following the name of each plant are given its uses as described by the Indian doctors, together with its properties as set forth in the United States Dispensatory, one of the leading pharmacopoeias in use in this country.[7] For the benefit of those not versed ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... but with caution, lest the hearers distracted by them should let go their conceptions, not being able sufficiently to apprehend the solutions, but so weakly that their comprehensions may easily be shaken. For even those who have, according to custom, preconceived both sensible phenomena and other things depending on the senses quickly forego them, being distracted by Megarian interrogatories and by others more numerous and forcible." I would willingly therefore ask the Stoics, whether they think these Megarian ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch |
