"Conceive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... celebrated a triple triumph over the expulsion of barbarians from Italy, the reunion of the empire, and the Church's victory over the Arians, a contemporary historian writes that the mind of man had not power enough to conceive so many reverses of fortune, such destruction of cities, such a flight of men, such a murdering of peoples, much less to describe them in words. Italy was strewn with ruins and dead bodies from the Alps to Tarentum. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... can be given why a Christian should not be as well-bred as his neighbor. It is difficult to conceive how a person can follow the rules given in the Sermon on the Mount, without being, and showing himself to be, well-bred. I have even known men who were no friends to the bible, to declare it as their unequivocal belief that he whose life should conform to the principles of that sermon, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of confidence had been imparted to him. This practice drew upon him an universal accusation of ingratitude; nor can it be denied that he was very ready to set himself free from the load of an obligation; for he could not bear to conceive himself in a state of dependence, his pride being equally powerful with his other passions, and appearing in the form of insolence at one time, and of vanity at another. Vanity, the most innocent species of pride, was most frequently predominant: he could ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... enough, and as for his Majesty's feelings, there is small inclination to inquire into them. I conceive of the whole war as a blunder out of which we have come as we deserved. The day is gone by for the assertion of monarchic rights against the will ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... really possible to suppose that all these people—all the most imaginative and interesting artists of our day—definitely subjected themselves to the influence of William Blake. The more rational way of accounting for the extraordinary resemblance is to conceive that Blake, by some premonitory inspiration of the world-spirit "brooding upon things to come," anticipated in an age more emotionally alien to our own than that of Apuleius or of St. Anselm, the very "body and pressure" of the dreams that were to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... goods are stowed, which part is easiest of attack, etc. I know not whether these quakings were shared by the Don, but certainly our misgivings never entered Moll's little head. Nay, rather, her romantic disposition did lead her (when she heard our narration) to conceive that this mysterious Dario might be some wandering genius, whose work upon our ceiling would make the Court for ever glorious. And while in this humour she bade me go to Simon, whose presence she would not tolerate in her house, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... If by some monstrous cataclysm the sun was suddenly extinguished, it is impossible to conceive the misery that would follow. In the event of such a fearful calamity it would require but a very short time to depopulate the earth. We repeat, light is a necessity of existence, and it behooves us all to allow it free access to our dwellings. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... with blank indifference or with bitter and furious hostility. But, in all these cases, dissent from the Christian creed depended upon negations far deeper than "Miracles do not happen." It depended on a stark incapacity to conceive the ideas of God, of permitted evil, of sin, its consequences and its remedy, and of life after death. Where there was the capacity to conceive these mysteries, men were not troubled by the minor questions of miracle, prophecy, and textual research. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... imagination would have been able to clothe it all with an unbroken forest. Yet how small a portion this would be of the stupendous whole—of a forest region equal in extent to the whole of Europe! All loveliness, all grace, all majesty are there; but we cannot see, cannot conceive—come away! From this vast stage, to be occupied in the distant future by millions and myriads of beings, like us of upright form, the nations that will be born when all the existing dominant races on the globe and the civilizations ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Baron, "did you ever read Hoffmann's beautiful story of Master Martin, the Cooper of Nuremberg? I will read it to you this very night. It is the most delightful picture of that age, which you can conceive. But look! the sun has already set behindthe Alsatian hills. Let us go up to the castle and look for the ghost in Prince Ruprecht's tower. O, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of the main ideas in the brief on page 213 as being separate; then picture your mind as sorting them out and placing them in order; finally, conceive of how you would fill in the facts and examples under each head, giving special prominence to those you wish to emphasize and subduing those of less moment. In the end, you have the outline complete. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... love my neighbor as myself; Myself like him too, by his leave; Nor to his pleasure, power, or pelf Came I to crouch, as I conceive; Dame Nature doubtless has designed A man ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... in his ceremonies; and there was no anxiety to dissipate the overpowering awe that lay on his soul. He felt at once natural and unreal; it was supremely natural that he should be here; he could not conceive being other than a priest; there was in him a sense of a relaxed rather than an intensified strain; and yet the whole matter was strange and intangible, as he felt the supernatural forces gathering round, and surging ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... streets, and so mindful that true courage consisteth not in recklessness, they despatched one of their number for crackers and cheese, which they washed down with copious draughts of cold water. But they had that to eat and drink besides, whereof the spirits of mischief without could not conceive. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... certain general principles involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all [of ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... feelings and ever diversified emotions, in fine, with all the variety of pleasure and pain, of ignorance and knowledge, that pertains to this imperfect and probationary life,—it is because mankind thus conceive of the final state, that it exerts no more influence over them. But such is not its true idea. There is a marked difference between the present and the future life, in respect to uniformity and clearness of knowledge. "Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known." The ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... to think of it, she was not so very sure. There was another world, and saints and angels and eternity; yes, of course—but how on earth would all those baccarat people ever fit into it? Who could, by any stretch of imagination, conceive Madame Mila and Maurice des Gommeux in a spiritual existence around the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sight in safety, it would have been a magnificent spectacle—the grandest, the most terrific, perhaps, it is possible to conceive—a ship on fire at night in the mid-ocean. The hull of the vessel lay flaming like an immense furnace on the surface of the deep; her masts, and the lower and topsail-yards, with fragments of the rigging hanging round them, sparkling, and scattering the fire-flakes, rose high above it, while huge ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... on his watch-chain, where he was accustomed to have important days in his life marked, such as the day he adopted his boy, his mother's death. It is preceded by the Greek letters [Greek: BP], which from a certain entry in his diary I conceive to be [Greek: baptisma pyros], "the baptism ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... between the body producing the waves and the sensitive organ. The waves must go around this body and will produce an eddy behind it, so that the wave front will have a different direction, and the organ of sense will conceive the origin of the waves to lie in a direction different from that before the body was interposed. Now consider the waves to be waves of light, and their origin the sun. The organ of sense is the retina of the eye. The moon is the opaque body interposed in the course of the waves, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Could you send Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know when and where I could see him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... mystified rather than enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of the phrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality which has been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp who chose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than we conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." Fiona's work, too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she has perceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Conceive this terrible position in which his justifiable jealousy—his naturally vindictive rage—had so irretrievably ensnared him. He had been so intent upon the administration of poetic justice, so intent upon condignly ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... "Pray tell him that I'll pay him for it," said he. "We'll make that all right," I answered; and then we remounted,—not without some difficulty on his part. "You should have let me rub in that brandy," I said. "You can't conceive how efficaciously I would have done it." But he ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... my government to root out, if possible, this traffic on and near our settlements on the coast, I must now give you notice, that you must break up your establishment at this point, in two weeks from this date; failing to do so, I shall take such measures as I conceive necessary to attain this object. I will thank you to send a reply to this communication immediately, stating your intentions, and also sending an account of the number of slaves ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... 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 to touch her hand; he longed for ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... and ruin, will ravage the land." The intrepid Samuel Adams would say,—"Before the King and Parliament shall dragoon us, and we become slaves, we will take up arms and our last drop of blood." The calm Andrew Eliot would say,—"You cannot conceive of our distress: to have a standing army! What can be worse to a people who have tasted the sweets of liberty?" Hutchinson wrote,—"Many of the common people were in a frenzy, and talked of dying in defence of their liberties," while "too many above the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... incredulity of death lies passively admission of death's final certitude. He believed what she believed; but he believed it as are believed infinity and eternity: wherein mankind, believing, reposes upon that limitation of the human mind which cannot conceive infinity but sees ultimately an end, and can pretend eternity through myriad years but feels ultimately a termination. Harry believed what she believed but only by stabilisation of a man's inherent articles of faith. He was of the male kind; ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Conceive of him, on the other hand, attacking the capital with the army of Manoury on his right, which constituted a serious menace to his left, and in front of him the British army and the Fifth French Army; he might have been caught as in a vise between these forces while all his activity was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in Italy it prepared them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... remember that the daily victualling of 70,000 people means an immense service. We are so accustomed to find everything ready to hand in cities containing millions as well as in villages of hundreds, that we forget the magnitude of this service. No mind can conceive the magnitude of the food supply of modern London, Paris, New York, or even such towns as Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol. Yet try to understand what it means to feed every day, without interruption, only a small town of 70,000 people. So much bread for every day, so much meat, so much fish, so ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... place of the three principles originally worshipped—that, as it really embodied the essence of the other two, little was heard of the Creator and Preserver. Doubtless this God was the one which Moses intended the Israelites to worship, but as they were unable to conceive of an abstract principle he invested it with a personality which, as we have seen, was burdened with the frailties and weaknesses common ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... swift-footed Achilles, answering, addressed: "Phoenix, respected father, old man, Jove-nurtured, to me there is no need of this honour, for I conceive that I have been honoured by the behest of Jove, which will detain me at the crooked ships whilst breath remains in my bosom, and my knees have the power of motion. But I will tell thee something else, and do thou revolve it in thy mind. Disturb not my soul, weeping and lamenting, gratifying ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... purpose I can do no better than to quote from a work that has been communicated to me, and which emanates from one of our most learned hydrographers. "France," he says, "created more than two centuries ago the most ancient nautical ephemerides in existence. She was the first to conceive and execute the great geodetic operations which had for their object the construction of civil and military maps and the measurement of arcs of the meridian in Europe, America, and Africa. All these operations were and are based on the Paris meridian. Nearly all the astronomical ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... page of history, would have been accounted fabulous dreams of impure romancers, taxing their extravagant imaginations to create combinations of wickedness more hideous than civilized men would tolerate, and more unnatural than the human heart could conceive. Let us, by way of example, take a short chapter from the diabolic life of Caligula: In what way did he treat his nearest and tenderest female connections? His mother had been tortured and murdered by another tyrant almost as fiendish as himself. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Astronomy cherishes the feelings of awe and reverence and praise, because it inspires a continual yearning after additional knowledge, because it reveals to us something of the character of God, we conceive that of all the sciences it affords the purest intellectual gratification. Certainly it is one of the most absorbing. Its attraction seems to be irresistible. Once an astronomer, always an astronomer; the stars, we may fancy, will not relax the spell ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... labelled "poison," you must telegraph for a Christian Scientist, who will be ready to maintain that without her own consent it cannot do her any harm. What would happen to a child brought up on Shaw's principle I cannot conceive; I should think he would commit suicide in his bath. But that is not here the question. The point is that this proposition seems quite sufficiently wild and startling to ensure that its author, if he escapes Hanwell, would reach the front rank of journalists, demagogues, or public entertainers. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... peal, in which his companion joined, for anything more comic than the aspect of the "Solemn-un" up to his neck in the bog it would be hard to conceive. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... as they find it, and help others to do the same; always regarding it as the preparatory school or training-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and more glorious than anything the merely mundane imagination can conceive—you can realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast between them and the laywomen of Society, peevish, hysterical, neurotic, sensual, and bored. But before these chastened, temperate bodies, these serene and well-balanced minds attained the state of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... can conceive," Beethoven wrote to the Baroness Droszdick, "the intense happiness I feel in getting into the country, among the woods, my dear trees, shrubs, hills, and dales. I am convinced that no one loves country life as I do. It is ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... that has been raised at the slow progress of the war, it is difficult for a comprehensive mind to conceive how, on the whole, the struggle with the South could have advanced more favorably to the general interests and future prosperity of the whole country, than it has thus far done. 'Had the Administration ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with the language of ordinary men; or with that which I can conceive at all likely to proceed, in real life, from such a narrator, as is supposed in the note to the poem; compare it either in the succession of the images or of the sentences; I am reminded of the sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which MILTON, in opposition to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is appointed, we are told, to fulfil the will of the nation. Then why doesn't it do it? If it has a job to do, why does it stand day after day, week after week, year after year, cackling, cackling, cackling about it? Can the mind of man conceive anything more intensely ridiculous than this spectacle solemnly presented for our admiration by the champions of the system, of six hundred garrulous old gentlemen making a set and formal business of cackling—cackling, cackling, cackling, with infinite ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... anthropomorphism of their ancestors; they had exchanged the God who of old lived behind the veil of the temple for an infinite Intelligence pervading the universe, and, avowing their inability to conceive that any thing which had on a sudden been called into existence should be capable of immortality, they affirmed that the soul of man is connected with a past of which there was no beginning, and with a future to which there ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... necessity to the lowest excitements of drinking, gambling, and debauchery for sole recreation; independent of all opinion; ignorant of all progress; isolated from all society—it is impossible to conceive a more savage existence within the border of any modern civilization." The picture of the poor whites is graphic and somber, but ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... been showing that they are right in admitting every man as a counsellor about this sort of virtue, as they are of opinion that every man is a partaker of it. And I will now endeavour to show further that they do not conceive this virtue to be given by nature, or to grow spontaneously, but to be a thing which may be taught; and which comes to a man by taking pains. No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or be angry with those whose calamities they suppose to be ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... it requisite to introduce any illustrations of flies, because I cannot conceive that any really beneficial results are obtainable by merely showing the difference on paper between natural and artificial flies. Catch the natural fly, imitate it as closely as possible; put your made fly into a tumbler of clear water, then if the size and the prevailing colours ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... where he reposes upon "a bank such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign," and reflects that a "uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the imagination nor enlarge the understanding." Fielding's contribution to geography has far less solidity and importance, but it discovers to not a few readers an unfeigned charm that ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... "As they are designed for wearing apparel for myself, I have committed the choice of them to your fancy, having the best opinion of your taste. I want neither lace nor embroidery. Plain clothes, with a gold or silver button (if worn in genteel dress) are all I desire." "Do not conceive," he told his nephew in 1783, "that fine clothes make fine men more than fine feathers make fine Birds. A plain genteel dress is more admired, and obtains more credit than lace and embroidery, in the Eyes of the judicious and sensible." And in connection with the provisional army ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... incapable of ideality, of real and adequate aspiration; nature works by flux and reflux; and if we waive the rough temper and the coarse edge of passion due to youth, it will not be impossible to conceive another picture of these girls. Sally, good-hearted and true, full of sturdy, homely sense, willing to take care of a man's money, and make him a straightforward wife; Maggie, gentle and sinuating— always a ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... suspense. He now perceived that her neglect of his addresses when he was at Winchester, must have been owing to some mystery which he could not comprehend; and she began to suspect and to hope that the letter which she received was spurious, though she could not conceive how that could possibly happen, as it had been delivered to her by the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... romance, the skeleton is present with me all over life. And my health is not good. I crave for money. I should marry to be rich. I should not worship you. I should be a burden, barely a living one, irresponsive and cold. Conceive such a wife, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immensity of the empire, from Persia to the Frozen Sea. For these men, who travel night and day, with the rapidity of lightning there are neither seasons nor obstacles, fatigues nor danger; living projectiles, they must either be broken to pieces, or reach the intended mark. One may conceive the boldness, the vigor, and the resignation, of men accustomed to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... frequently raised and heavy penalties were frequently imposed upon importers who were never permitted to know what the evidence was and who never had an opportunity to meet it. It is quite probable that this system tended towards an increase of the duties collected upon imported goods, but I conceive it to be a violation of law to exact more duties than the law provides, just as it is a violation to admit goods upon the payment of less than the legal rate of duty. This practice was repugnant to the spirit of American law and to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Gentlemen, I conceive that an insinuation has been made, derogatory to our honor. Mr. Goldworthy, your words indirectly imply a suspicion; I must request you, sir, to explain your words, and to state distinctly whether or no you suppose ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... But they still confess what we have asserted, that death hath in it nothing of either good hope or solace, but that all that is complacent and good is then wholly extinguished; at which time those men look for many amiable, great, and divine things, that conceive the minds of men to be unperishable and immortal, or at least to go about in certain long revolutions of times, being one while upon earth and another while in heaven, until they are at last dissolved with the universe and then, together ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... month, in sickening expectation of a reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her father's cottage; and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive. During my father's life, she had been made familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... place upon her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy happening to be found in a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Lorenzo have not any thing which he may conceive more interesting to propose, I move that you, good Lysander, now resume the discussion of a subject which you so pleasantly ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cannot conceive of two great contemporary statesmen more unlike in their mental structure and more antagonistic in their general views than Gladstone and Macaulay, and unlike also in their style. The treatise on State and Church, on which Gladstone ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... general conception and theory of a lawsuit is the recovery of some material benefit, the lay mind is apt to conceive of great sums of money being awarded to a complainant by way of damages upon a favorable decision in an important patent case. It might, therefore, be natural to ask how far Edison or his companies have benefited ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... you for your invitation; but I beg you will excuse me; it may be pretty sport for you, but, for my part, I can enjoy myself much better to stay here and arrange my baby-things, for I expect some girls to see me this afternoon. I cannot conceive what there is in those ugly-looking snow-birds to interest you; they are not handsome, surely; they have not a single bright feather; and, as for their songs, they sound like the ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... it suggests." I ask, What is an indefinite art? What is a vague art? Do not the two words contradict each other? Can this strange combination exist at all? Can an artist write anything that he does not clearly conceive? Do people think he composes at random as his genius whispers to him? One must at least say this: A symphony of Beethoven's is a "definite" work down to its innermost folds; and Beethoven had, if not an exact knowledge, at least a clear intuition of what he was about. His ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... to one of the king's messages, where it was hinted that, if there was "no correspondency between him and the parliament, he should be forced to use new counsels," "I pray you consider what these new counsels are, and may be: I fear to declare those I conceive!" However, Sir Dudley plainly hinted at them, when he went on observing, that "when monarchs began to know their own strength, and saw the turbulent spirit of their parliaments, they had overthrown them in all Europe, except here ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... no way resembles the human intellect, for we cannot conceive Him as proposing an end and considering the means to attain it. "The intellect of God, in so far as it is conceived to constitute His essence, is in truth the cause of things, both of their essence and of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the office, where all the morning we sat. Here I first hear that the Queene hath miscarryed of a perfect child, being gone about ten weeks, which do shew that she can conceive, though it be unfortunate that she cannot bring forth. Here we are told also that last night the Duchesse of Monmouth, dancing at her lodgings, hath sprained her thigh. Here we are told also that the House of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... endowments, how could incessant exercise, during twenty years' hourly conflict with the ablest of his brethren and of the bench, fail of developing his splendid energies to the uttermost, even up to a point of which we may conceive as little short of perfection? The strength of his reasoning faculties was equalled, if not exceeded, by that of his memory, which was equally susceptible, tenacious, and ready; qualities these, which, as Dugald Stewart has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... gazed out of the window, that Tuesday night, and saw her nephew driving away with Ellen, and reflected, with pain, that her husband had been fond and proud of that bay. She was a little at a loss to conceive what could make up to her husband for that in another world, but she succeeded, and evolved from her own loving fancy, and her recollection of the Old Testament, a conception of some wonderful creature, shod with thunder and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was handed round in silence. The old man, with a look alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group. The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. "It's a forgery evidently," he said in a low voice. "He's cunning enough to conceive it (they always are); but you'll find he'll fail in executing it. Watch his face!—Old man," he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, "this is a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... It is difficult to conceive how the Umbrella could come into general use, owing to the state in which the streets of London were up to a comparatively recent period. The same amusing author to whom we owe the description of Jonas Hanway, gives the following account of them ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... have been greater marvels than that. Our boldest fathers often died the meekest shavelings. An' I had ruled this realm as long as Henry,—nay, an' this same life I lead now were to continue two years, with its broil and fever,—I could well conceive the sweetness of the cloister and repose. How sets the wind? Against them still! against them still! I cannot ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peculiar pitch. The final word of each phrase, sustained at incredible length, and with marvellous power of breath, ascends a fourth of a tone, purposely making a discord. That is barbarous, perhaps, but the charm of it is indescribable, and when one is accustomed to hear it, one cannot conceive of any other song at that time and in those localities that would not disturb ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... although when I look with the eye of a philosopher at the varied courses and pursuits of mankind at large, I find scarcely one which does not appear in vain and useless, I nevertheless derive the highest satisfaction from the progress I conceive myself to have already made in the search after truth, and cannot help entertaining such expectations of the future as to believe that if, among the occupations of men as men, there is any one really excellent and important, it is that which I ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... between the several genera, there are, I conceive, no grounds for dividing the Lepadidae into sub-families, as has been proposed by some authors, who have trusted exclusively to external characters. In establishing the eleven genera in the Lepadidae, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... be communicated to the human spirit while the senses are closed, that it would be unphilosophical to pronounce even upon those fugitive thoughts as unreal. That Napoleon must have often reflected on his selfish and cruel desertion of Josephine, it is perfectly natural to conceive. That he may have bitterly regretted it, is equally natural, for, from that day, his good fortune deserted him. And he might also have discovered that he had committed a great crime, with no other fruit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... religion; and that there could be unity of action in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would naturally follow, or be justifiable in an association where Mr. Gladstone's views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of the circumstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... hang 'em! It's about Robin Frost, sir. What on earth have come to him I can't conceive. This last few nights he have took to prowling out with a gun. He lays himself down in the copse, or a ditch, or the open field—no matter where—and there he stops, on the watch, with his ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... by flakes, and as you see gauze curtains lifted away, one by one, before a great fairy scene at the theatre. This will give idea enough of the fog; the difficulty is to describe the scene afterwards, which was in truth the great fairy scene, than which it is impossible to conceive anything more brilliant and magnificent. I can't go to any more romantic place than Drury Lane to draw my similes from—Drury Lane, such as we used to see it in our youth, when to our sight the grand last pictures of the melodrama or pantomime were as magnificent as any objects of nature ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... familiar to every schoolboy of the nation, but his personal attributes, which are so strangely distinguished from the attributes of other great men, are now the most interesting study of young and old throughout our land, and I can conceive of no more acceptable presentation to the public than a compilation of anecdotes and incidents pertaining to the life of the greatest of all ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... shelter herself in the most dreary retreat, where she partook of no comfort but the still unremitting friendship of Miss Woodley. Even her child she left behind, that she might be under her father's protection. Conceive, then, how sharp her agony was on beholding the child sent after her as the perpetual outcast of its father. Lord Elmwood's love to his wife had been extravagant—the effect of his hate was the same. Once more he met Lord Frederick in a duel, the effect of which was to leave his adversary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... is permitted to us," she says, "to measure our hope by our courage, it is noble to sustain it amidst trials; but it is not less glorious to suffer the entire ruin of it with the same high-heartedness which had dared to conceive it." Those are noble sentiments, and revealing a vigorous mental power. The end of the Princess Palatine (1681) showed clearly that she had not, for the mere pleasure of expressing herself elegantly, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a great loss to conceive what reason Lieutenant-governor Hamilton could have for wishing a truce of three days on such terms as he proposed. Numbers said it was a scheme to get me into their possession. I had a different opinion and no idea of his possessing such sentiments, as an act of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... observing that his forehead indicated great intellect. "Yes," replied Mr. Gallatin, touching his own forehead with his finger, "there is a great deal in that head of his: but he has a strange fancy. Can you believe it? He has the idea that he will one day be the Emperor of France. Can you conceive anything more absurd?" ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... is never so well dressed as when she emerges from her bedroom at early morning; and I must say that Mary looked the daintiest little housewife possible to conceive as she went about dusting and polishing in a pink cambric dress and tiny black apron. But, neat as she was, and neat as my beard and the room were in a fair way of becoming, we were overwhelmed with surprise and confusion at what followed, for quite suddenly the door was thrown open; there was a ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... is possible to conceive a force of circumstance strong enough to make any woman in the world marry against her will: no conceivable pressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once married to her lover ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Liebig confesses that it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE MIND to conceive of particles absolutely indivisible; he recognizes, further, that the FACT of this indivisibility is not proved; but he adds that science cannot dispense with this hypothesis: so that, by the confession ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... one side of his mother, and on the other sat a person who was not a member of the family—Mr. Cunningham's curate, a great big broad-shouldered young man, six feet three at least in height, with a pleasant, open face, rather sun-burnt, and the most good-tempered smile that you can possibly conceive. ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat with that dislike which people not too good-natured usually conceive of each other at first sight. The coach jumbled us insensibly into some sort of familiarity; and we had not moved above two miles when the widow asked the captain what success he had in his recruiting? The officer, with a frankness he believed very graceful, told ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... until the house-boat was in its winter quarters. I witnessed his complete recovery, the scene being his chambers. Really it is rather a pathetic story, and so I give the telling of it to a rose, which the lady once presented to Gilray. Conceive the rose lying, as I saw it, on Gilray's hearth-rug, and then ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... mind and in want of faith. No creature can conceive what I suffer in the prospect of having to speak in a foreign tongue ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... the various tribes of South America and the Malay Archipelago, what have they improved from since those regions were first inhabited? The Patagonian's rude shelter of leaves, the hollowed bank of the South African Earthmen, we cannot even conceive to have been ever inferior to what they now are. Even nearer home, the Irish turf cabin and the Highland stone shelty can hardly have advanced much during the last two thousand years. Now, no one imputes this stationary condition of domestic ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... divine Name which is the ground and object of all our prayers. It is not merely a formula of address, like the superscription on a letter, but the reality of His character as revealed before us. There is inseparable from all prayer the effort to conceive worthily of Him to whom we speak; to raise our souls to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." (Matt 13:40-42) Who can conceive of this terror to its full with his mind? Wherefore much more unable are men to express it with tongue or pen; yet the truly penitent and sin-confessing Publican, hath apprehension so far thereof, by the word of the testimony, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Romancero du Cid. 'J'en passe, et des meilleurs,' as Ruy Gomez observes of his ancestors. Here at any rate are jewels enough to furnish forth a casket that should be one of the richest of its kind! The worst is, they are most of them not necessaries but luxuries. It is impossible to conceive of life without Shakespeare and Burns, without Paradise Lost and the Intimations ode and the immortal pageant of the Canterbury Tales; but (the technical question apart) to imagine it wanting Hugo's lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which he was so prodigal has but an arbitrary ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... shown that James did sincerely wish to establish perfect freedom of conscience, we shall think his conduct deserving of indulgence, if not of praise. We shall not be inclined to censure harshly even his illegal acts. We conceive that so noble and salutary an object would have justified resistance on the part of subjects. We can therefore scarcely deny that it would at least excuse encroachment on the part of a king. But it can be proved, we think, by the strongest evidence, that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and continuous, the work of the best men in successive ages. From point to point it still runs, and when near you feel it as the clear and bright and searchingly irresistible light which Truth throws forth when great minds conceive it. (Walter Moxon, Pilocereus Senilis and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... serious to Hazlehurst, and a loss to all three. But I cannot conceive it possible that such a daring imposture can succeed so far. We shall be obliged, however, to proceed with prudence, in order to counteract the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... life, the impulse to be what those she loved would like to have her. It was not that she was willing to give up her own individuality to gratify the impulse, but rather that she did not for an instant conceive of the necessity for such a sacrifice. It was part of her immense happiness that she had always loved to be what it pleased everyone to have her, and that, apparently, people wished to have her only what she wished to be. She was like a child guarded by her elders from any knowledge ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Forbeses of 1870 to the chroniclers of Armageddon the other day will probably not be very unhappy. The Paston Letters are simply genuine family correspondence—of a genuineness all the more certain because of their commonplaceness. It is impossible to conceive anything further from the initial type of the Greek rhetorical "letter" of which we have just been saying something. They are not, to any but an excessively "high-browed" and high-flying person, uninteresting: but ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... these little stories two families of young cousins, all descendants of George Washington, conceive the clever idea of carrying out in their play the dramatic events of Washington's life. Every boy and girl will receive a true and unforgettable picture of the great career of the Father of His Country through the ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... terrible temptation. The more she shrank from it the more stealthily it returned to her, like the slow fingers of an incoming tide. So many circumstances gave colour to her belief that the poison could be given without discovery that Sally found every detail too easy to conceive. Gaga would be sick again and again, would weaken, would.... Always her imagination refused to complete the story. She covered her face with her hands and sought frantically to hide from this loathsome whisper that pressed temptation upon ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the proper administration of the state government?" The Bureau of Conscription estimated that Brown kept out of the army approximately 8000 eligible men. The truth seems to be that neither by education nor heredity was this Governor equipped to conceive large ideas. He never seemed conscious of the war as a whole, or of the Confederacy as a whole. To defend Georgia and, if that could not be done, to make peace for Georgia—such in the mind of Brown was the aim of the war. His restless jealousy of the Administration ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... to conceive What's right, and limit the o'erreaching will To this one measure only, is the whole Of that grand rule, and wise necessity, Which only ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the use of Anthropomorphism. Mr. Spencer's argument, in his own words, is this:—"From the inability under which we labor to conceive of a Deity save as some idealization of ourselves, it inevitably results that in each age, among each people, and to a great extent in each individual, there must arise just that conception of Deity best adapted to the needs of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... to suspect any one, and behave unjustly, but I must have this matter cleared up. Michael Bannock is away, and I cannot conceive his being absent without money, unless he is ill. Wimble, go ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... a question of mastery. The issue was life or death. Tog was now of an age to conceive murder. Moreover, he was of a size to justify an attempt upon Jimmie. And murder was in his heart. He crouched, quivering, his wolfish eyes fixed upon the boy's blazing blue ones. For a moment neither ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... write a letter to Sir Boreas. I cannot conceive that it should have any effect. It ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... unauthorised person can penetrate into "Ducker"; in summer-time it is the boys' own domain. The long tiled pool stretches in sweeping curves for 250 feet under the great elms, a splashing fountain at one end, its far extremity gay with lawns and flower-beds. I can conceive of nothing more typical of the exuberant joie-de-vivre of youth than the sight of Ducker on a warm summer evening when the place is ringing with the shouts and laughter of some four hundred boys, all naked as when they were born, swimming, diving, ducking ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... not refuse," returned the Indian firmly. The savage mind could not conceive such a possibility as refusal to purchase freedom at any cost, no matter how despicable that cost might be. "The pale-faces will not refuse," he repeated. "The flames hurt much, and white men die slow, slow as tongue of fire lick their bodies. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... has been considered as evidence that the retarding force was not applied at a single spot on the earth's surface, but was a distributed force, which acted on the water as well as on the land, though to a less extent. It is difficult, however, to conceive of a force capable of acting in such a way; and Bjoernson's theory of the magnetic vortex in the ether has been rejected by ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... soule Safer by reading verse? Did he give dayes Past marble monuments, to those, whose praise He would perpetuate? Did he (I feare The dull will doubt:) these at his twentieth year? But, more matur'd; Did his full soule conceive, And in harmonious-holy-numbers weave A [2]Crown of sacred sonnets, fit to adorne A dying Martyrs brow: or, to be worne On that blest head of Mary Magdalen, After she wip'd Christs feet, but not till then? Did hee (fit for such penitents as shee And he to use) ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... a man far above the average of his contemporaries, and possessed a greatness of mind which could not fail to rivet attention. He differed from the majority of generals by not only daring to conceive bold plans, but by contriving to carry ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... incredible. But Irenaeus, in common with Clement, Tertullian, and others, quotes our four canonical gospels as alone possessing apostolic authority, and as having been always received by the churches. It follows that the "Memoirs" of Justin must be the same gospels. We cannot conceive that in this brief period an entire change of gospels should have been made throughout all the different and distant provinces of the Roman empire, at a time when concerted action through general councils ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... was going once to call on a lady in London, and when the door was opened and the servant announced my name, I saw the lady advancing to the door with a look of absolute consternation on her face. I could not conceive what had happened, and thought I had entered her room at some inconvenient moment, but, on looking over her shoulder, I perceived Mr. and Mrs. GLADSTONE sitting at the tea-table, and she evidently thought that there would be some great explosion when we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... doubtless always remain true that the subtler and more intellectual types of art can never become popular. Like higher mathematics, they will continue to be completely intelligible only to the few. Yet I can conceive of no social system likely to grow out of modern tendencies that would suppress them. The artist in the new state would have his leisure, as other men would, in which he could devote himself to the refinements of his art. It is doubtful whether he would ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... it chanced the sayd William Longespee with his company of English soldiers to get, more by politique dexteritie then by open force of armes, wherewith, he and his retinue were greatly enriched. When the Frenchmen had knowledge hereof (they not being made priuie hereto) began to conceive an heart burning against the English souldiers, and could not speake well of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... one of our northern manufacturing towns, in the year 18—, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive—the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges; and even Art, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abstract, it is a little difficult to conceive why there should be more uncertainty about the life processes of a group of lowly living things than there should be about the behavior, in reaction, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... spectacle as he moved off with his little dog Dan slinking at his heels. It should be said in behalf of Dan, however, that his bristles were up, and that he looked back and growled. It may be that the dog had the advantage of insignificance, but it is difficult to conceive how a dog bold enough to raise his bristles under Calderwood's very eyes could be as insignificant as Free Joe. But both the negro and his little dog seemed to give a new and more dismal aspect to forlornness as they turned into the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... "classic well-nigh universal major taboo" of the woman shunned. Dr. Marett uses her as his most telling argument against the inclusiveness of the concepts of Dr. Frazer and of MM. Hubert and Mauss. He says: "It is difficult to conceive of sympathy, and sympathy only, as the continuous, or even the originally efficient cause of the avoidance." Mr Crawley had called attention to the fact that savages fear womanly characteristics, that is, effeminacy, which is ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... thought. She had been taught that every created thing fulfilled some useful purpose, and she tried conscientiously to discover just what was the rightful place of the kaldane in the universal scheme of things. She knew that it must have its place but what that place was it was beyond her to conceive. She had to give it up. They recalled to her mind a little group of people in Helium who had forsworn the pleasures of life in the pursuit of knowledge. They were rather patronizing in their relations ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would fade. No longer did even the wiser of the two remember that this is that same abyss out of which slowly, painfully, the race has climbed. With the lessened power to keep from falling in, the terror of it lessened. Many strange things grew natural. It was no longer difficult or even shocking to conceive one's partner giving out and falling by the way. Although playing about the thought, the one thing that not even the Colonel was able actually to realise, was the imminent probability of death for himself. Imagination always pictured the other fellow down, one's self ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... love's a Bitter-sweet I ne'er conceive Till the sour minute comes of taking leave, And ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Further, from the union of soul and body results the nature of the human species. But Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 3), that "we must not conceive a common species in the Lord Jesus Christ." Therefore there was no union of soul and body ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... was an actor and with such an inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives. This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive." It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player. This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... duty of replying to that very explicit statement. "There is none here," he said, "that is not grateful for the benevolence he has received at the hands of the Tokugawa. If there be such a thankless and disloyal person, and if he conceive treacherous designs, I, Masamune, will be the first to attack him and strike him down. The shogun need not move so much as one soldier." With this spirited reply all the assembled daimyo expressed their concurrence, and Iemitsu proceeded to distribute his father's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... right. She had never seen New York before. Never before had its immense panorama been swept within two hours. Never before had she realized its dimensions. She had always felt stunned and crushed in the effort to conceive it. Today she had wings. The city lay at her feet, conquered. She was mistress of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... with astonishment. He could not conceive the possibility of any one seeing danger in going with a spring from rock to rock among which the beautiful river rushed, and ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... sincerity flies out of the window. I was not tired after the day, or I was too excited to feel tired. My small brain was agog; my little head was turned. Amidst all that I did not understand I understood enough to conceive that I had become a great man. I saw Victoria led off to bed, and going meekly. But I was not as Victoria; she was not a king as I was; mother had not knelt before her; the archbishop had not told Victoria that she had no lord ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down of crushed and broken natures, formed to be raised up higher than such maggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,' pursued the Goblin of the Bell; 'who does so, does us wrong. And you have done ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... first assertion they cite the following passage from the Talmud: "The Bible is like water, the Mishna, like wine, the Gemara, spiced wine; the Law, like salt, the Mishna, pepper, the Gemara, balmy spice." But surely only a very shallow mind could conceive from these similitudes that the Rabbis rated the importance of the Bible as less than that of the Talmud; yet an English Church clergyman, in an article published in a popular periodical a few years since, reproduced this ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... crowd of mushrooms, of all shapes, from ten to fifty feet across, close together side by side, their tops being kept at exactly the same level, their rounded rims squeezed tight against each other; then conceive water poured on them so as to fill the parting seams, and in the wet season, during which we visited it, to overflow the tops somewhat. Thus would each mushroom represent, tolerably well, one of the innumerable flat asphalt bosses, which seem ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... his appearance as a playwright in partnership with Middleton or with Chettle, with Haughton or with Day; but a stranger association than that of Massinger's name with Dekker's it would not be easy to conceive. Could either poet have lent the other something of his own best quality, could Massinger have caught from Dekker the freshness and spontaneity of his poetic inspiration, and Dekker have learned of Massinger the conscientious excellence and studious self-respect of his dramatic workmanship, the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have but to recollect that the number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and other navigators assigned to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with coasts adapted for fishing, might, from the great fertility of its soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other nourishing ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... his master's attention to the affairs of state as a prodigy: he could not conceive how he could submit at his age to the rules he prescribed himself, or that he should give up so many hours of pleasure, to devote them to the tiresome duties, and laborious functions of government; but he blessed ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Behold a young girl who, pure and industrious, toiled for her daily bread. This Vicomte de Talizac abducted her with the assistance of his paid emissaries. The poor creature, driven to despair, committed suicide. This is what your son has done, Marquis! Can you conceive of a ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... houses of all orders. It is to the mediaeval Church, her conservatism in the true sense of the word, her industry, her patience, her disinterested guardianship alike of sacred and of pagan letters, that the world owes most of our knowledge of antiquity. Conceive how great would be our loss if to archaeology alone we could turn for the reconstruction of the civilization, the art, the philosophy, the public and private life of Greece and Rome. If the Church had done no more than this for civilization, it would still ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... slightly rekindled Archie's interest. "I could never deny," he began - "I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is cast on the sincerity of the plea, and we are left to conceive of Satan as of a lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to shatter it in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the same way, when he finds Eve alone, on the morning of the temptation, he is disarmed by her beauty and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly good." ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... was to marry, and it was the only thing, I think, that she meant to do for any one else; yet who would be inspired to clamber over that bristling barrier? What flower of tenderness or of intimacy would such an adventurer conceive ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... Conceive me then at the writing of The Irrational Knot as a person neither belonging to the world I describe nor wholly ignorant of it, and on certain points quite incapable of conceiving it intuitively. A whole world of art ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... breakers on the shore, the tall woods copper-colour, the thickets dishevelled, and the nuts, in the corries of Ardkinglas, the braes of Ardno, dropping upon bracken burned to gold. Until he was out of the glen and into the open land, the traveller could scarcely conceive that what by his chart was no more than an arm of the ocean could make so much ado; but when he found the incoming tide fretted here and there by black rocks, and elsewhere, in little bays, the beaches strewn with massive boulders, the high rumour of the sea-breakers in that breezy weather seemed ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... modesty; in such wise that one might despair of their recovery. And thus experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that, whereas dialectic furthers other studies, so if it remain by itself it lies bloodless and barren, nor does it quicken the soul to yield fruit of philosophy, except the same conceive from elsewhere.[14] ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... accept prostration and endless contrite tears, knowing that to these, upon the very verge of illumination, the forms of slavery have lost their vileness. But to those who are still of earth and can but conceive God's fatherhood according to earthly similitudes, it will not ordain a prone obeisance. Such it will require to stand erect even in contrition, in that posture which is the privilege of sons. We who are unperfected affront God supposing ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... strange to them, beyond his colour. I believe they imagine his wife as appearing much as their own wives, his children as the little children who run about their own doorsteps. They do not stretch their imaginations to conceive any strangeness about his home surroundings to correspond ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... him narrowly. Waldon, who was driving the boat, had not heard what was said, but I had, and I could not conceive how anyone could take it ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve |
