"Conceive of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the one line which goes back of our very conception of a personal God, or which is inherent in that conception. We cannot conceive of God as God, unless we conceive of him as the true God, and the God of truth. If there be any falsity in him, he is not the true God. Truth is of God's very nature. To admit in our thought that a lie is of God, is to admit that falsity is in him, or, in other ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... go further in luminous conjectures. Even with her present mind, Alma could not conceive of Mary Abbott as a wanton, of Harvey Rolfe as a shameless intriguer; but it stung her keenly to think that for years there had been this secret between them. Probably the matter was known to Mrs. Abbott's ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... way—He is called Purusha, because of the attribute of fulness eternal, because he has neither beginning nor end; immutable, because there is no change in him; undeteriorating, because he has no body that may be subject to decay; immeasurable, because the mind cannot conceive of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the door made the sisters tremble and consult each other with their eyes, for they dared not speak. Forty years' separation from the world had made them like plants of a hot-house which wilt when brought into the outer air. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they could not conceive of any other; and when one morning their bars and gratings were flung down, they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the species of imbecility which the events of the Revolution, enacted before their eyes, had produced in these innocent souls. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... would give an individual such pain, in this situation, as the fear that her too partial admirer might conceive of her as a divinity, instead of a mere woman, inheriting the common frailties of our nature. Her chief solicitude would be, we should think, to guard against his forming too high expectations of her future character. Rather would she that he undervalue her merits, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... which is to be a man, Set to instruct himself by his past self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. God's gift was that man should conceive of truth And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he reach fact indeed. The statuary ere he mould a shape Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next The aspiration to produce the same; So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage. So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves. When time had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... notice of the passers-by, as did the other men who shouted so continually and vehemently at the hurrying crowds. He did not know what might happen if he failed to sell one of his statues; it was a possibility so awful that he did not dare conceive of its punishment. But he could do nothing, and so stood silent, dumbly presenting his tray to the ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... hastening to preserve from destruction the accursed viper who was to sting us to death. Thus, Heaven ordained it should be, and its ways are dark and intricate, beyond my comprehension, for surely it is against all the rules one can conceive of justice that a virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Can you conceive of a man pretending to care for a girl and yet treating her so? I can't tell you the grief, the mortification, I have endured." She spoke with a half-sob in her throat, as if she was struggling not to cry, which made me wish I had ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... am in the world and obliged to dress as the world does, it constantly haunts me, and tempts me to give more time, more thought, more money, to these things than I really think they are worth. But I can conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being much easier than regulating it to the precise point. I never read of a nun's taking the veil without a certain thrill of sympathy. To cut off one's hair, to take ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... never suspected these injuries to his pride. They were delighted at his favor with the Prince. Poor Louisa could conceive of nothing finer for her son than these evenings at the Palace in splendid society. As for Melchior, he used to brag of it continually to his boon-fellows. But Jean-Christophe's grandfather was happier than any. He pretended ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... all our material enjoyments. If you cannot think that He is with you, if you cannot conceive of His being there, that is no place for you. If you cannot feel that He approves, that is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... through the depths of the sea. Twenty-five years ago there was not an ocean cable in the world. A few short lines had been laid across the channel from England to the Continent, but all were in shallow water. Even science hardly dared to conceive of the possibility of sending human intelligence through the abysses of the ocean. But when we struck out to cross the Atlantic, we had to lay a cable over 2,000 miles long, in water over 2 miles deep. That great success gave an immense impulse to submarine telegraphy then in its infancy, but which ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... mountains? who frolicked on a shore now piled with miles of massive rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and Ichthyosauri,—when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills of moving ice? And yet in those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... is another of Mercedes's romantic benevolences. Mrs. Talcott is a sort of old pensioner; a distant family connection; the funniest old American woman you can conceive of. She has been with Mercedes since her childhood, and, like everybody else, she is so devotedly attached to her that she regards it as a matter of course that she should be taken care of by her for ever. The way Karen takes her advantages ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... say the Zulus, "does the same as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling; he says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'" Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,(3) and no forgetfulness of the original meaning of words. The ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... says Robert, striving to drag Isabella away, ... and that simple word was made frantic, breathless, by the accent accompanying it. No one who has not heard Delsarte utter the word rival can conceive of all the mysteries of hate and pain ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of man's primal needs. There was indeed a time when no formula of language existed, when men communicated with each other by means of gestures, grimaces, guttural sounds, or rude images of things seen; but it is impossible to conceive of a time when men had no means of communication at all. And at last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those wonderful instruments ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... certain degree in almost every theatre, and of which Philadelphia and New-York have exhibited some striking instances. I mean the practice of certain meanspirited wretches, who bear malice towards particular performers, and make parties to hiss them off the stage. It is not easy to conceive of a greater degree of baseness, turpitude, and cowardice, than is manifested by this conduct. The object of their malice is unable to defend himself from their attacks. This, to a generous mind, would be an aegis, and protect the person who could make such a plea, as completely as her sex ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... deliberately, as in a thing of his creating; seeing through them with that extraordinary lucidity of his, yet abandoning himself all the more. Flossie's weakness made him tender, her very faults amused him. As for his future, he could not conceive of his marriage as in any way affecting him as a poet and a man of letters. While the little suburban Eros lit his low flame upon the hearth, his genius would still stand apart, guarding with holy hands the immortal fire. For those two flames could never mingle. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... is this, and it is a very important one: Do you know, or can you conceive of any motive which could have actuated this person to plot against you in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Bill knew him and would not resent perfect candor, when properly mixed with the right brand of sympathy. He thought, as he wrote, of the peculiar independence of character and cynicism of Watson; the combined traits amounting almost to recklessness. But he could not conceive of Bill's going wrong. He reflected that Hazel must love Bill, in spite of her fear that he was weak, and wondered at the tenderness of woman. Why was she so little considered in this world ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... question with admirable adroitness. "My uncle was the kindest of men," she said. "I can conceive of no reason why he should have ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... who upheld them became more and more violent. Now, in all this there can be no doubt that Mr. Gourlay was from first to last chiefly actuated by genuine philanthropy. He certainly had no selfish or pecuniary purpose to serve; and indeed it is hard to conceive of a man less influenced by mercenary motives. His life was passed in a perpetual war against veritable and undoubted evils; but unfortunately his hotheadedness and want of tact prevented him from doing justice to himself and his views. He lacked ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... also conceive of this Jupiter as a deity "making for righteousness," or acting as a sanction for morality? It would not have been impossible or unnatural for a Roman so to think of him, for of all the Roman deities Jupiter is the one ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,—we cannot conceive of their existence in a vast wilderness and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... concerned with the literary aspects of the classics, and the scholars of succeeding generations, so far as they studied the language, confined their attention to that of the great Latin stylists. The first student to conceive of the existence of popular Latin as a form of speech which differed from formal literary Latin, seems to have been the French scholar, Henri Etienne. In a little pamphlet on the language and style of Plautus, written toward ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... smile and his tones fell to a moderate volume. "Such," said he, "are the joys which our country shares with its King. Because they are his they are ours; because they are his they are hers. Hers and his are they till their lives' end; ours while our hearts are worthy to conceive of them." ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the best side of slavery that I can conceive of, the reader can exercise his own judgment in deciding whether a man can be a Bible Christian, and yet hold his Christian brethren as property, so that they may be sold at any time in market, as sheep or oxen, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... correctly focussed, as it were. And while in that condition, if he was tempted to drift into actual wrong-doing, I should imagine that self-loathing and remorse would afterwards be a worse punishment for him than you could possibly conceive of. This is presuming he has done anything to be ashamed of. In that case, I could not be harsh. Love always forgives—even to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... the matter in its other aspect, he found that his theory of Free-will was as little compatible with moral responsibility as was the opposing theory of "Bond-will;" for not only did he candidly confess that he could not conceive of will as acting without motives, but he further allowed the unquestionable truth "that, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worthless."[13] I say this is very instructive, because it shows that in Hamilton's view each ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... famous speeches, appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation. In other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even contemplate a really revolutionary change. Wilkes ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of the sun, the succession of days and nights, and all other unquestioned and unalterable things in the world. To suggest to such a man the possibility of lessening in his allegiance to a wife, is like proposing to him to overthrow the whole course of nature. He simply cannot conceive of such a thing; and he has no tolerance for it. He is by the very virtue of his organic structure incapable of charity for men who sin in that way. There are not many such men, but the type exists; and well may any woman felicitate herself ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... something about a locus, which was a curve or a surface every point on which satisfied some particular equation of relation among the coordinates. It begins to look to me as though life might be a kind of locus, whose commanding equation we call God. The points on that locus cannot conceive of the equation, yet they are subject to it. They cannot conceive of that equation, because of course it has no existence save as a law of their being. It exists only for them; they, only by it. But there it is—a perfect, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... nude, "un bel corpo ignudo," was the final test of mastery in plastic art. Mr. Ruskin develops his text in sentences which have peculiar value from his lips. "This is the simple test, then, of a perfect school—that it has represented the human form so that it is impossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... imagination can conceive of the terrible and heart-rending was realized in the awful destruction of this boat. Scores sank despairingly under the wild waters; but there is reason to fear that many, very many, strong men, helpless women, and tender ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... this way conceive of transparency in a solid without any necessity that the ethereal matter which serves for light should pass through it, or that it should find pores in which to insinuate itself. But the truth is that this matter not only passes ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... to the "vitalistic, teleological, and dualistic view of the world." In order to obtain a correct view of this standpoint, we quote from Haeckel's "Natural History of Creation", Vol. I, page 23, the following passage: "By the theory of descent we are for the first time enabled to conceive of the unity of nature in such a manner that a mechanico-causal explanation of even the most intricate organic phenomena, for example, the origin and structure of the organs of sense, is no more difficult (in a general way) than is the mechanical explanation of any physical process; ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... enemy has prevented the celebration of the Country Dionysia for six years. How is it possible, under such circumstances, to conceive of Euripides as composing tragedies in the country? How could the general Lamachus be living out of the city in such a time of danger? Certainly the play itself gives us authority that this scene also is in Athens. At v. 241 ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... suppliant was the virtual counterpart, fragile, complex, too sensitive, too ardent, the predestined prey of impulses and disabilities that none but themselves, their adorers, and specialists in neurasthenia, could conceive of. In the present woman he discerned the same lovely and neurotic countenance, the same traces of mingled fastidiousness and desperation, the same promises of exceptionally passionate and ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... has told us what no other historians have told.... The skill, the animation, the brightness, the force, and the charm with which he arrays the facts before us are such that we can hardly conceive of more interesting reading for an American citizen who cares to know the nature of those causes which have made not only him but his environment and the opportunities life has given him ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... were the gods of the old times, and how did the ancient Hawaiians conceive of them? As of beings having the form, the powers, and the passions of humanity, yet standing above and somewhat apart from men. One sees, as through a mist, darkly, a figure, standing, moving; in shape a plant, a tree or vine-clad ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... is there no need except that covered by vice? Can you not conceive of a plight being all the worse because there ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... a country somewhat larger than the United Kingdom situated in a part of the European continent which renders it accessible from almost every side, and can conceive of eight or nine great hordes of armed savages tens or hundreds of thousands strong, with many smaller ones, pouring intermittently, and even simultaneously in some instances, into that devoted territory, and there alternately burning and plundering or making slaves ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... may profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... prescribed by his own mind. He shapes, disposes, penetrates, colors, and contrives everything, and the whole action, is a series of events which could have occurred only in his own brain, and which it is difficult to conceive of as actually "happening." And yet in none of his other works does he evince a shrewder insight into real life, and a clearer perception and knowledge of what is called "the world." The book is, indeed, an artistic creation, and not a mere succession of humorous and pathetic scenes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... easily curable disease by a hundred different nostrums, though the truth is that it is incurable by any known drug. Men who advertise these remedies are deliberately trafficking in human life, and they are thoroughly well aware of it. It is difficult to conceive of the type of manhood who would advertise a remedy as "The only sure cure for consumption in the world;" this was extensively done by the concern that put a certain "New Discovery for Consumption" on the market. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... civilization, the movement for the state control of education, itself an expression of new world forces and new national needs, has in a century spread to every continent on the globe. To-day progressive nations everywhere conceive of education for their people as so closely associated with their social, political, and industrial progress, and their national welfare and prosperity (R. 336), that the control of education has come to be regarded as an indispensable function of the State. State constitutions (R. 333) have ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual pursuit of the india-rubber or the other kinds of ball; she can conceive of the open air as something better than a place to play games in. Like ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... prompt offer of hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the week he had been allowed to show his gratitude by paying the rent, and by the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as there are those, like ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... only conceive of the best of the spiritual by the best we know of the material; we can imagine no musical instrument in the bands of the angels superior to a harp; no weapon better than a sword ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... concluded of De Quincey that he was the most remarkable instance in his time of a more than abnormal, of an artificial, condition of body and mind—a characterization which he must necessarily be the last man to conceive of. To understand this, it is necessary to glance at the events of his life. The briefest notice will suffice, as they are within the reach of all, as ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... father nipped, in a similar way, his attachment for Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, afterward Madame Necker:—"After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life." It is difficult to conceive of Gibbon's wound as a deep one, or of his struggle as painful. But Wilson, whose affections were far stronger, suffered much. He almost made up his mind to run away to Timbuctoo, with Mungo Park; and his deep gloom showed how the iron had entered his soul. But time and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own—for he cannot conceive of any other except himself—and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... proposition was regarded by some with horror and by others with contempt. One of the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once said to me, "The provision for freedom of worship in the constitution is a mere abstract proposition,—it can never have any practical value except for foreigners. I cannot conceive of a Spaniard being anything but a Catholic." And so powerful was this impression in the minds of the deputies that the article only accords freedom of worship to foreigners in Spain, and adds, hypothetically, that if any Spaniards should profess any other religion than ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... having acted with the most perfect fidelity and the greatest assiduity in discharging the trust reposed in him, he is altogether at a loss to conceive the reasons of your Lordships' having altered the favourable opinion you were pleased to conceive of him, sensible that your Lordships would not proceed to so severe a measure without some apparent good cause; he therefore has every reason to believe that his conduct has been grossly misrepresented to your Lordships; and he is the more confirmed in his opinion, because, by opposing measures ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... a conception of another mode of being besides the inert. We conceive of being which possesses a spontaneous and primary activity. This kind of being is called spiritual. This kind of being has shaken off the reproach of inertness. It can act, and originate action. The physical thus ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... waited. I should have drawn her to me and shared that rapid, nervous walk—should have compelled her with sweet force to render an account of that emotion. But I was so secure, so entirely one with her in thought, that I could conceive of nothing but a passing tempest at my blundering, stupid thoughtfulness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... himself, so it was by himself at once—'For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified' (10:14). Now by this word 'at once,' or by 'one offering,' is cut off all those imaginary sufferings of Christ which foolish men conceive of; as that he in all ages hath suffered or suffereth for sin in us.[30] No; he did this work but once. 'Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... been defined as "room to move about." Let us accord to this definition the utmost liberty of interpretation. Let us conceive of space not alone as room to move ponderable bodies in, but as room to think, to feel, to strike out in unimaginable directions, to overtake felicities and knowledges unguessed by experience and preposterous to common sense. Space is not measurable: we attribute dimensionality to ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... arranged to cable after the attack, had I known that any such absurd rumours had been started. Here one has a wholesome notion of the unimportance of the individual. It needs an effort of imagination to conceive of its making any particular difference to anyone or anything if one goes under. So many better men have gone, and yet the world rolls on ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... my mind has been, whether electricity has an actual and independent existence as a fluid or fluids, or was a mere power of matter, like what we conceive of the attraction of gravitation. If determined either way it would be an enormous advance in our knowledge; and as having the most direct and influential bearing on my notions, I have always sought for experiments which would in any way tend to elucidate ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... of the big ship, the very substance of it, made the space ship idea the harder to grasp. Lieutenant McGuire found that it was easier to see an imaginary craft taking off into space than to conceive of this monstrous shape, many hundreds of tons in weight, being thrown through vast emptiness. Yet ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... are marriages in heaven cannot be admitted as an article of faith by those who imagine that a man after death is a soul or spirit, and who conceive of a soul or spirit as of a rarefied ether or vapor; who imagine also, that a man will not live as a man till after the day of the last judgment; and in general who know nothing respecting the spiritual world, in which ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... conceive of their astonishment and mortification, when they found that the mistress of the Rookery was no other than the former governess, Agnes Elwyn! Agnes received them with the utmost kindness; begged them to ask their father, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... of then was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger. The great country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable, so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and fundamental a thing could not be injured, a war for its defence had appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last, less and less vaguely, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... strongest personal obligations to Washington, he did not hesitate, in his lame attempt to vindicate himself, to resort to violent abuse of his late friend and patron. Washington is said to have lost his temper on reading Randolph's calumnies, [2] as well he might, for it is difficult to conceive of blacker ingratitude than he suffered on this occasion. Late in life Randolph seems to have been sensible of the enormity of his conduct. On the 2nd of July, 1810, he used the following language in a letter to the Hon. Bushrod Washington: ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... penitence could not blot out from his own remembrance the act of weakness and injustice: he pondered upon it long after the gentle girl had forgotten that ever unkind word had passed between them. Beings of a gross and fettered nature cannot conceive of a love so pure as that which Barbara felt for the mis-shapen Robin—so perfectly devoid of earthly passion, yet so faithful—so exalted—so devoted—so engrossing! She had looked so long on his deformities, that she had ceased to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Count Beust (Gastein, October 1871), he broached for the first time the question of an alliance and, touching upon the eventual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, 'obligingly remarked that one could not conceive of a great power not making of its faculty for expansion a vital question'.[2] Quite in keeping with that change were the counsels henceforth tendered to Prince Carol. Early that year Bismarck wrote of his sorrow at having been forced to the conclusion that Rumania had nothing to expect ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... the sake of being regarded with wonder and awe by the people, pretended to obtain their superior endowments from supernatural beings. They affected the name and character of sorcerers, diviners, and soothsayers. It is easy to conceive of the early existence and the great influence of such impostors. Patient observation, and often mere accident, would suggest discoveries of the existence and operation of natural causes in producing phenomena before ascribed to superhuman agency. The knowledge thus acquired would ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... plan of putting the Indian Bureau under a commission of several men, to be appointed for long terms or for life, free of political considerations. I can scarcely conceive of wholly non-partisan appointments in this age, but length of service would be a great advantage, and it does seem to me this experiment would be worth trying. Such a commission should have full authority to deal with ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... Before the railroad, that question had but a single answer,—the inculcation of contentment, by contrast with the most disagreeable surroundings in which one might anywhere else be placed. Perhaps it is over-sanguine to conceive of a further answer even now. If there be any, it is this: In its crudest state the alkaline earth of the Desert is sufficiently pure to make violent effervesence with acids. No elaborate process is required to turn it into commercial soda and potash. Coal has been already found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... those they love. Just as the way to cultivate in the minds of children a feeling of pity for those who are in distress is not to preach it as a duty, but to make them love you, and then show such pity yourself; and the way to make them angry and revengeful in character—if we can conceive of your being actuated by so unnatural a desire—would be often to express violent resentment yourself, with scowling looks and fierce denunciations against those who have offended you; so, to awaken them to sentiments of gratitude for the favors ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... York who bore the name of Alfonzo Alonzo Agamemnon Dionysius Bogardus. The sister of this youth, she stated, was named Clementina Seraphina Imogen. I think this statement must have been evolved from her own brain, as it would be difficult to conceive of parents who would consent to make their children notorious in such a ridiculous manner. Fanny Kemble married Pierce Butler, a lawyer of ability and cousin of the U.S. Senator from South Carolina of the same name, and they ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... world, man did not know of God; he had not looked to the blank horizon and spoken to the Someone beyond. He had all the need to speak, all the oppression in his soul, all the sorrow and longing pent up in him and the tears unshed, but knew no means of relief, did not even conceive of any one beyond himself. He had no great Father, as we have. A strange, unhappy life he lived upon the world, uncomforted, unfriended. He looked at the stars and comprehended them not; and at the graves, and they ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... conception of its own existence. Imagine, if you can, a act coming in suddenly with a force capable of shattering that very conception itself. It was only because of the girl being still so much of a child that she escaped mental destruction; that, in other words she got over it. Could one conceive of her more mature, while still as ignorant as she was, one must conclude that she would have become an idiot on the spot—long before the end of that experience. Luckily, people, whether mature or not mature (and who really is ever mature?) are for the most part quite incapable of understanding ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... "class-strike." Let him consider the waste of time, the ill-temper, the censorious, invidious spirit engendered by this fermentation, the loss of faith in the conduct, and even the honesty, of the faculty. Can he conceive of anything more likely to frustrate all the aims of college study? Yet in nine-tenths of the cases of public disorder it will be safe to assume that the dormitory system lies at the base of the evil. Where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... word with you. [To the Secretary, aside.] Let there be letters writ to every shire, Of the King's grace and pardon. The grieved commons Hardly conceive of me; let it be nois'd That through our intercession this revokement And pardon comes. I shall anon advise you ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... please you, yes, I will admit it. I have altered certain ideas, Boots; I cannot, just now, conceive of any circumstances under which I should feel justified in marrying, but such circumstances might arise; I'll ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuous and conscious existence. A man asleep does not cease to be a man; a dead man does not cease to live. It has often been argued from this metaphor that we are to conceive of the space between death and the resurrection as being a period of unconsciousness, but the analogies seem to me to be in the opposite direction. A sleeping man does not cease to know himself to be, and he does not cease to know himself to be himself. That mysterious consciousness of personal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... less the slave to the letter of success . . . . But why reflect at all? Here was a goodly income approaching, perhaps a seat in Parliament; a station for the airing of his opinions—and a social status for the wife now denied to him. The wife was denied to him; he could conceive of no other. The tyrant-ridden, reticent, tenacious creature had thoroughly wedded her in mind; her view of things had a throne beside his own, even in their differences. He perceived, agreeing or disagreeing, the motions of her brain, as he did with none other of women; and this it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... asinine blunderers, Landis!" Mr. Buehlor looked foolish. Then he sighed relievedly. "That clears matters for you. I'm glad. I couldn't conceive of you as anything but honest, Landis. But tell me about ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... that class of men of talent who distrust themselves and are easily discouraged. His soul was contemplative. He lived more by thought than by action. Perhaps he might have seemed deficient or incomplete to those who cannot conceive of genius without the sparkle of French passion; but he was powerful in the world of mind, and he was liable to reach, through a series of emotions imperceptible to common souls, those sudden determinations which make fools say of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... shied away from that. He could imagine her as the mother of a child, beautiful mother of a child almost as beautiful; but he could not conceive of her as the "mater" of a person ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Any place is a home-world to you. You can adapt yourselves to any condition. And—most dangerous to them—you can do it instantly. You are their most deadly enemies, and they realize it. They have no intelligent machines; probably they can conceive of none. When you attack them, they merely say 'The life-form of Earth is sending out controlled machines. We will find good machines we can use.' They do not conceive that those machines which they hope ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... millions. From the grossest form of religious superstition, and crudest form of ceremony and worship, up to the most refined idealism and beautiful symbolisms, runs the gamut of the Hindu Religions. Many people are unable to conceive of an abstract, ideal Universal Being, such as the Brahman of the Hindu Philosophy, and consequently that Being has been personified as an Anthropomorphic Deity, and human attributes bestowed upon him to suit the popular fancy. In India, as in all other countries, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... is, that it shall be surrendered on the 5th of September next, in case they are not in the meantime relieved. This circumstance gives foundation to believe, that the enemy have acted in this manner, rather from some hopes they conceive of a treaty of peace before that time, than any expectation from their army, which has retired towards their former works between Lens and La Bassee. These advices add, that his Excellency the Czarish Ambassador has communicated to the States-General, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... warrior is sufficiently recovered of his wounds to travel, I have received no word to the contrary from Johnson, I shall let him go, and bid him God speed. If, however, I should receive orders to continue to hold him, or even to deliver him over to his savage captors, which God forbid, I can conceive of no alternative save that ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... dictate to their masters alterations in the traditional time-table, or to insist on a modified curriculum.... These worthy people [officials] confuse manly independence with disloyalty; they cannot conceive of natives except either as rebels or as ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... months I remained prisoner among the Hans I had tried to develop a plan of escape, but could conceive of nothing which seemed to have any reasonable ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... could have advanced a claim, or could have desired to advance a claim, to restrain the United States from making any rules and regulations respecting this territory, which the United States might think fit to make; and still less can I conceive of any reason which would have induced the United States to yield to such a claim. It was to be expected that France would desire to make the change of sovereignty and jurisdiction as little burdensome as possible ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... the way. If we style one of these stations arithmetic, it will be evident, at once, that this station is a subsidiary element in the enterprise and not the goal, for that is the flag at the top. These supply stations are useful in helping the youth to reach his goal. We may conceive of many of these stations, such as algebra, or history, or Greek, or Chinese. Whatever their names, they are all but means to an end and when that end has been attained the youth can afford to forget them, in large part, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... ice-rivers, the glaciers. Among such causes we may suppose a long series of rainy seasons in regions where important tributaries have their far-off and almost unknown sources; and with no less probability, we may conceive of the opening of communications with great subterranean reservoirs, which may from year to year empty large quantities of water into the bed of the stream; or the closing up of orifices through which a considerable portion of the water of the river once made its way for the supply ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... advance, but what would impel or restrain him at the crucial hour. She put no faith in her own arts: she was too sure of having none! And if some beneficent enchanter had bestowed them on her, she knew now that she would have rejected the gift. She could hardly conceive of wanting the kind of love that was a state one ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Bailiff at his spunging-house; from the Duchess at her drum, to the Landlady behind her bar"; but it was in the rural seclusion of an old cathedral town that he wooed and won the beautiful Miss Cradock. Indeed it is impossible to conceive of Sophia as for ever domiciled in streets. The very apostrophe which heralds her first appearance in Tom Jones is fragrant with flower-enamelled meadows, fresh breezes, and the songs of birds "whose sweetest notes not even Handel can excel"; and it is thus, with his reader's mind attuned ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... not principal or sui arbitrii agents, it is necessary, in order to the new movement, that they should be irritated from some source: for, it is impossible that a fibre in repose, can be set in action without an irritating cause; nor can we conceive of a part being irritated without perceiving the irritation. It is like speaking to a deaf man, or trying to ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... especially fewness of possible combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous elements in the brain serving as connections between sensory regions—whether one conceive of them as centers (Flechsig), or as bundles of commisural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke)—are hardly outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Bull immensely. Here was a man talking commonplaces in the face of death. A greater man than Uncle Bill, he felt at once—a far greater man. It was impossible to conceive of that keen, sharp eye and that clawlike hand sending a bullet far from the center ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... nothing to be done just now, John," remarked Tom McGregor, "but I cannot conceive of anything more likely to affect badly a ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... a window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,—the clearest, purest soprano which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested the idea of complaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate grief and despair. It died away at last,—and then ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... paste-pot. He looked up at her strangely. The closed door seemed to open a little way. "I can't conceive of 'minding' anything you might say to me, Miss Noah,"—he had called her Miss Noah ever since she, by mistake, had one day ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... thing which does not stand by itself, it will beseem it (if need be) to walk in the mud, to tread on thorns, and sometimes even to be cut off, for the benefit of the whole body; else it is no longer a foot. In some such way we should conceive of ourselves also. What art thou?—A man.—Looked at as standing by thyself and separate, it is natural for thee in health and wealth long to live. But looked at as a Man, and only as a part of a Whole, it is for that Whole's sake that thou shouldest at ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... composure was tempered by some amusement, by more admiration; the woman's eyes were very handsome, even when hardest and most cold. It was not easy to conceive of her as being the mother of a son so immaturely mature. Why, she must have been at least thirty-eight or -nine! One wondered; she did not ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... entail quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow his name and affection upon them, and leave them his property. One can scarcely conceive of a more outrageous wrong than this; and it is in order to guard against such a possibility that society from remote ages has watched over the chastity of women far more jealously than over that of men. It is as a result ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... suspicion that it was not always the same game, and that it in any way resembled our game is not to be imagined. Base- ball in its mildest form is essentially a robust game, and it would require an elastic imagination to conceive of little girls possessed of physical powers ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... to be realized, what could be the nature of a secret that destroyed our happiness and could not be confided to me? What! to conceal it from me! And yet I could not find it in my heart to suspect her. The appearance of suspicion revolted me and filled me with horror. On the other hand, how could I conceive of inconstancy or of caprice in that woman, as I knew her? I was lost in an abyss of doubt, and I could not discover a gleam of light, the smallest point, on ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... There were trees nearby—spreading, fantastic-looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But still—as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms—whatever the size of the tree, I could only conceive of myself as a normal man of six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... him in regard to his origin? And will it be further asserted that the Deity placed similar stumbling-blocks to the human reason in the embryo, in order to deceive those who should extend their researches to this low level? It would be difficult to conceive of a more preposterous idea, yet there is no other escape from what seems a self-evident fact, that man is a product of evolution from the lower animals, and bears the marks of his ancestry thick ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... paper, made from the bark of certain trees, with alphabetical and phonetical characters, we must of necessity believe that, at some time or other, the country was not only densely populated, but that the inhabitants had reached a high degree of civilization. To-day we can conceive of very few of their attainments by the scanty remains of their handiwork, as they have come to us injured by the hand of time, and, more so yet, by that of man, during the wars, the invasions, the social and religious convulsions which ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... means," asserted Chichikov, pressing his hand to his heart. "In this breast, madam, will abide for ever the pleasant memory of the time which I have spent with you. Believe me, I could conceive of no greater blessing than to reside, if not under the same roof as yourselves, at all events ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... You may conceive of the wonder and amazement of Barnaby's dear stepfather when, clad in a dressing gown and carrying a lighted candle in his hand, he unlocked and unbarred the door, and so saw who it was had aroused him at such an hour of the night, and the young and beautiful lady whom Barnaby ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... could conceive of would be your continuing this bad practice of telling big stories," replied Somers, standing up by ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... of conservation, for example; and I do not conceive of conservation in any narrow sense. There are forests to conserve, there are great water powers to conserve, there are mines whose wealth should be deemed exhaustible, not inexhaustible, and whose resources should be safeguarded and preserved for future generations. But there ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... families, and the state. They forget that the love which they are discussing is a personal love, which might expand in a rarefied form to embrace a man's native country, but which disappears before it can embrace an artificial state such as Austria, England, or Turkey, and which we cannot even conceive of in relation to all humanity, an absolutely ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... motion, a body of water is driven astern and the ship is driven ahead. Water, from its excessive mobility, is incapable of giving any resistance to the screw or paddle save that due to its inertia. If, for example, we conceive of the existence of a sea without any inertia, then we can readily understand that the water composing such a sea would offer no resistance to being pushed astern by paddle or screw. When a gun is fired, the weapon moves in one direction—this is called ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... seem incredible to you, but it is not so incredible as any other explanation you may offer. You cannot think my wife or I would misstate what happened, can you? You cannot assume that Madame Parlato obtained this in any underhanded way, for you cannot conceive of any way in which she could do so. Then, what do ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... in God, so is no sort of perfection possible to man. I do not know how for a moment to imagine an Omniscient Being who is not Almighty, or an Almighty who is not All-Righteous. So neither do I know how to conceive of Perfect Holiness anywhere but in the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... far beyond its apparent importance. She could conceive of no possible reason for Julius interfering in Harry's life, and she had the feeling of a person facing a danger in the dark. Julius was also annoyed at her discovery. "It precipitates matters," he said to ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... would be to build a nest for this delicate dear bird, and take her to it, and live deliciously ever afterwards. This is what Osborn Kerr imagined while—like Rokeby—he watched her. He had never seen her other than pretty and dainty, than happy and gay; he could not conceive of her otherwise. He had not the faintest doubt of being able to keep her so, in that nest which he had built for two on the other side of town. Whenever it was possible, in the teacup passing, he tried ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... of fifteen hundred millions of human beings living on one planet matter to God, when there are so many planets and stars, and there have been so many generations? Can he matter? It all depends on how we conceive of God. Here it is essential to give all the meaning to the term "God" that Jesus gave to it, to believe in God as Jesus believed in God, if we are to understand the fullness of Jesus' "good news." It all depends ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... of Jeremy Taylor, full of hope for his fellow-men, and longing to be of use to them, conscious, undoubtedly, of a growing power of thought, it was natural that Emerson should turn from the task of a school-master to the higher office of a preacher. It is hard to conceive of Emerson in either of the other so-called learned professions. His devotion to truth for its own sake and his feeling about science would have kept him out of both those dusty highways. His brother William had previously begun the study ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
