"Notion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the season at which the haddock and some other articles of aliment are supposed to be at their best. This, however, as far as the haddock is concerned, would appear questionable, as there is an almost universal notion that the young of this fish at least are best after a little of May has gone. It is said ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Windle Bent had an old school-friend, a young barrister from London, staying with him, and that both had been asked to supper that evening at Cotherstone's house. But Cotherstone's annoyance was not because of his own forgetfulness, but because his present abstraction made him dislike the notion of company. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... once again, nothing is further from my mind. There are great truths in Socialism, or no one, not even Mr. Hyndman, would be found to hold it; and if it came, and did one- tenth part of what it offers, I for one should make it welcome. But if it is to come, we may as well have some notion of what it will be like; and the first thing to grasp is that our new polity will be designed and administered (to put it courteously) with something short of inspiration. It will be made, or will grow, in a human parliament; and the one thing that will ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in his new poem, Fortunatus, the Pessimist, has hit upon a new notion, to say nothing of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... place and rank due to their merits: if a worthy man is buried in an infidel country, the transporting angel leads him underground to a spot near one of the faithful, while he casts into the sewer the body of any infidel interred in holy ground. Other Mahometans have the same notion; they believe that the transporting angel placed the body of Noah, and afterwards that of Ali, in the grave of Adam. I relate these fantastical ideas only to show their absurdity. As to the other stories related in this same chapter, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the teachings of anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive natures."[1] Returning again to the same thought, she exclaims, "How utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of anarchism, or certain exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of political violence."[2] To this indefatigable propagandist of anarchist doctrine, those who have been led into homicidal violence are ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... deemed sufficient for anyone simply "to be." The whole world is now living the verb "to do." The grace, strength, beauty and worth of womanhood is being enhanced with the constantly enlarging sphere of women's work. The primitive, almost heathen, notion that the feminine sex constituted a handicap in the achieving of great success in a great majority of the fields of human endeavor is rapidly fading away. It can no longer stand in the light of the brilliant achievements women ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... excellent spirits, and, indeed, as I stepped over the side, a lawless idea crossed my mind, of discovering another Princess on board the frigate—a French one this time; I had heard that that sort was rather nice. But I abandoned the notion at once, recollecting that the heroes of all history had always been noted ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... flashed from Thwackum's eyes, and he cried out in triumph—"Oh! ho! this is your mistaken notion of honour! This is the boy who was not to be whipped again!" But Mr Allworthy, with a more gentle aspect, turned towards the lad, and said, "Is this true, child? How came you to persist so obstinately ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... say as to that. In fact, I don't believe the gypsies are anywhere around here. The children have that notion in their heads, but I don't believe in it. Perhaps it was a blueberry picker ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... and if you entertain a notion that the conjunction will suit you, advise me, and you shall be assumed upon equal terms; for I write to you before the affair is finally settled; not that I shall refuse it if you don't concur (for I am determined on the trial by myself); but that I think ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... to try my luck yet at getting at the bottom of the mystery," said Andrew Larkspur. "Five hundred pounds reward is worth working for. I—I've a notion that I shall lay my hands upon Valentine ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... connected with the study of living things is the power we apparently possess of separating animals from plants. So self-evident appears this power that the popular notion scoffs at the idea of science modestly disclaiming its ability to separate the one group of living beings from the other. Is there any danger of confusing a bird with the tree amid the foliage of which it builds its nest, or of mistaking a cow for the grass it eats? These queries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... blandly. "I know that you tried very hard that time to discredit the only possible version of that mysterious murder, the version which is my own. Now, I am equally sure that you have at the present moment no more notion as to who killed and robbed poor Lady Donaldson in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, than the police have themselves, and yet you are fully prepared to pooh-pooh my arguments, and to disbelieve my version of the mystery. Such is ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... from the worship of whom all their peculiar religious ideas were derived. This god, the son of Zeus, is to succeed him in the government of the world, to restore the Golden Age, and to liberate human souls, who, according to an Orphic notion, are punished by being confined in the body as in a prison. The sufferings of the soul in its prison, the steps and transitions by which it passes to a higher state of existence, and its gradual purification and enlightenment, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... not unnatural, therefore, that, while they assent to his general theory, they should protest against his mode of applying it to particulars. They may be incapable of a generalization, (they certainly are, if this be Mr. Choate's notion of one,) but they are incapable also of a deliberate fallacy. We think we find here one of the cases in which his training as an advocate has been of evil effect on his fairness of mind. No more potent lie can be made than of the ashes of truth. A fallacy is dangerous because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "Now I've got a notion," said Rob, one morning not long after they had finished their new barabbara, "that if we were asked about this big island where we are living we couldn't tell very much regarding it. We've only been over a little strip of country ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... The just notion and office of the modern song, as we think of it, is to be the embodiment and expression, in beauty, of some one of those sentiments or thoughts, gay, moral, pensive, joyous, or melancholy, which are as natural and appropriate, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Economiques. Nor was there one current in his time that is not performing its bad office among us. Hence his demonstrations of their absurdity and falsity are equally applicable to our time and country as to his. They may have even greater force among us if they thoroughly dispel the notion that Protection is an "American system." Surely they cannot do ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... trouble you much longer. A fine holiday you're having! But you'll never have another like it, I believe. I—I want your advice before I go. Besides, you have kept to your green, sunny love so long, I would like to give you a notion of what's going on the other side ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... a strange notion. It's a hard thing to explain and you may not understand me, but I should like to see, if it still exists, the stick—my husband's stick—with which this crime was committed. Do the police retain such things? Is there any possibility of my finding it laid away in ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... pine-tree, where they sat close together, as usual, with faces to the west; lacking only in length of tail of being as big as their parents, yet still calling for food, and still, to all appearances, without the smallest notion that they ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... you to lead. It is a study especially prized for the development of the imagination, on account of the difficulty of conceiving conditions so opposed to those of intelligent beings in general. But our women do not read your romances. The notion that a man or woman should, ever conceive the idea of marrying a person other than the one whose husband or wife he or she is destined to be is profoundly shocking to our habits of thought. No doubt you will say that such instances are rare among ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... had worked itself loose in her flight. She gave one glance at us, and quickened her pace at seeing us so close. The bandage, already loose, slipped off her face and fell to the floor. Still she did not seem other than a stranger to me, though I had a half-formed notion that I had seen that face somewhere before. She did not stop to pick the bandage up. She had gained the door and was down the front step on the sidewalk before ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... brother Lakshmana—a greater and a lesser hero, growing into an incarnate god and his chief follower. This is thoroughly in harmony with Hindu ideas, which regularly conceive the teacher as accompanied by his disciple and abhor the notion of a voice crying in the wilderness; indeed we may almost venture to suspect that this symmetry in the epics is not altogether uninfluenced by this ideal. This, however, is a detail: the main point to observe is that Rama was originally a local hero of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... claimant of a great estate that was left without an apparent heir by the death of Cyril Norton, and there was even a suspicion that he, with his fantastic science and antiquated empiricism, had been at the bottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so strangely intertwined with Septimius's notion, in which he went so nearly crazed, of a drink of immortality. It was observable, however, that the doctor—such a humbug in scientific matters, that he had perhaps bewildered himself—seemed to have a sort of faith in ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... We suspect, from the reviewals of it which appear in the journals, that it is of the German free thinking class of philosophical histories. It embraces dissertations on Intellectual Religion, Ancient Cosmogony, the Metaphysical Idea of God, the Moral Notion of God, the Theory of Mediation, Hebrew Theory of Retribution and Immortality, the Messianic Theory prevailing in the days of Jesus, Christian Forms and Reforms, and Speculative Christianity. And these dissertations are written with an eloquence and power unexampled ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... that I perceived my lord began to look very pale and meagre, and I had a notion he was going into a consumption, but did not dare tell him so, for fear he should say I was daily looking for his death, and was now overjoyed that I saw a shadow of it; nevertheless, he soon after began to find himself ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... Though exploration has shown that, it is the flinty North that hides beneath its granite bosom the richest stores of mineral wealth, almost four centuries of failure and disappointment were needed to rid men's minds of the notion that the jungles and the tropical forests were the most abundant hiding-places of gold and precious stones. The wild beauty of the tropics, the cloudless skies, the tangled thickets, ever green and rustling with a restless animal ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to rouse her from this torpor, which will, no doubt, naturally disappear at a given moment. She will then return to conscious life as she quitted it. It is probable that she will not retain any recollection of her present condition, that all notion of time will fail her, and that she will fancy it is only the day following her usual nightly slumber, a slumber which, in this case, has been transformed into a lethargic sleep, without any rigidity ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... to him for the publication of one of the best volumes of sermons that ever appeared in the English language. They are twelve in number, by Dr. Benjamin Whichcote. These sermons (as well as the preface, which is admirable) breathe such a noble spirit of Christianity, as I think will efface every notion that his lordship was an enemy to the Christian religion. In this preface he calls Dr. Whichcote (from his pleading in defence of natural goodness) the 'preacher ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... stay near Killarney, we fondly indulged the last dream for our country. In the remote regions of the counties of Cork and Kerry, the people seemed possessed of no political information. They had a vague notion that an effort was made to free the country from foreign thrall, and that the patriots and their cause were lost through the Catholic priests. It was easy to perceive, by the bitterness with which they cursed, that they—although never reached by a speech of Mr. O'Connell's, or an article ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the wide ocean, He soon took a notion 'T would be nicer to stay with his friends. So he traded his hat For a tortoise-shell cat— And that's how ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... the right to speak one's mind with refreshing freedom whenever differences of opinion arise within the family circle. But our idealists have persistently overlooked this handicap. They cling tenaciously to the notion that it is easier to be friendly with your relations than with your friends; and that in dealing with your own kin, tact may be economized. "Blood is thicker than water," we proclaim to one another across the sea; "and we can therefore afford to be as rude to one another as we please." ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... restlessly, sitting down and knocking their steel scabbards against the tables, or rising and straddling off with their long swords kicking against their legs. They are the most stylish soldiers in the world, and one has no notion how ill they can dress when left to themselves, till one ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... had her abate somewhat of the splendour that gratified her, because he did not think it becoming to outshine her parents; but Catherine scorned the notion. Her old father would know nothing, or would smile in his foolish way to see her so brave; and for her mother, she recked not so long as she had a larded capon before her: nor was it possible to make the young queen understand that ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Basuto nation, even had the guard not given him the royal salute by raising their stabbing assagais aloft in their right hands as they thundered out the word "Bayete!" As for me, I had not the remotest notion of the kind of salutation which His Majesty would expect from me; I therefore contented myself by standing at attention in military fashion and giving him a military salute. The action, which is certainly a very expressive one, seemed to meet with the royal approval, for the king acknowledged ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Hampden they never would get on with a "set of poor tapsters and town-apprentice people fighting against men of honor; to cope with men of honor they must have men of religion." Hampden answered, "It was a good notion if it could be executed;" and Cromwell "set about executing a bit of it, his share ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... YOU in my last, but I shall forgive you if you return soon to England, as you talk of doing; for though you are an abominable correspondent, and only write to beg letters, you are good company, and I have a notion I shall still be glad to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... My notion is, that the word how has been omitted in the printing, from the similarity of blow, show, how; and thus the sentence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... all, to mind wearing a dress many times because it indicates a small bank account, is to exhibit a false notion of the values in life. Any one who thinks well or ill of her, in accordance with her income, can not be too quickly got rid of! But worthwhile people are influenced in her disfavor when she has clothes in number and quality out of proportion ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that the infant which has learned to move discovers that on some occasions its movements are modified by a sense of 'impeded effort.'[483] The sudden interruption to a well-known series excites in its mind the notion of 'a cause which is not in itself.' This is the source of our belief in an external world. That belief is essentially the belief in some cause which we know to be other than our own mental constitution or the series ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... write elementary works. But the good service thus rendered is far more than counterbalanced by the host of erroneous conceptions which at once arise at the introduction of this luckless term. This notion of an "imaginary ether" should be at once and forever discarded by every writer on physics. The very word should be remorselessly expunged from every discussion of the subject. It is one of the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... convinced of our mistaken notion of the riches of this coast, founded on an erroneous idea that the commerce of this country was carried on by sea, whereas it is entirely conducted by land on mules, we now resolved to try our fortune in the East Indies. With this view we sailed from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... polemic against foul religion (foeda religio—turpis religio); to deliver men from which (i. 62-112), by establishing firmly in their minds the conviction that the gods exist far away from this world in unconcerned tranquillity (ii. 646), and by substituting the notion of Nature for that of deity (ii. 1090), was the object ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the other hand, the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis—Colchians, Soani, Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae—were inscribed in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact. The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... account—and, fourthly and lastly, Major Putnam Stone. The major hadn't been included in the assignment originally, but little Pinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning, and the chief decided the major should come along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief had a deluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission and pick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was a convention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be picked up—curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but not ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... for a voice of a particular species of men who fly in the air. Others say the noise comes from certain birds that are unknown to them. The Montagnais say it is the effort of a genius to bring up a snake which he hath swallowed; and they found this notion on observing that when the thunder falls upon a tree, it leaves something like, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... to go on board the "Druid." She was bound for the East Indian seas. How far off that was Kezia had no exact notion, but she knew it must be a long way, and many months, at all events, must pass by before Owen could come back. She embraced him with an affection which made him think of his old nurse, Jane Hayes. "May God, who rules both sea and land, protect you from the many dangers ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... as a man nor as a problem in ethics. But don't be harsh with me. The fault is congenital, I'm sure. Every masculine American is supposed to be interested in politics,—I wonder if the Irish invented the notion,—but I can't conform; I don't ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... life less savouring of poetry and romance than that which he had pursued previously to his departure on his travels, it would be difficult to imagine. In his childhood, it is true, he had been a dweller and wanderer among scenes well calculated, according to the ordinary notion, to implant the first rudiments of poetic feeling. But, though the poet may afterwards feed on the recollection of such scenes, it is more than questionable, as has been already observed, whether he ever has been formed by them. If a childhood, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... questions with a decided negative. These are the persons who like uniformity in their libraries, who would have one shelf look for all the world like the facsimile of the other. These are the persons who, almost as soon as they buy a book, are desirous to have it rebound after some fantastic notion of their own. There is a class of purchaser which revels in long lines of volumes in 'full calf gilt.' You see that sort of thing in most old-fashioned collections. And the effect is not bad in some respects. The rows look ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... marriage—which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal deaf, and her sweet old mouth ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... acted upon it, and if for example they wanted rain they would sprinkle drops of water and utter magic words. Our Vedic priests have now a different kind of symbols, but all the same they still have the notion that ceremony, rita as they call it, has a magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we shall see much issuing ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... of the Church and of God. 'Therefore,' said the good man, 'let all forgive him, and remember only their own sins, and pray Christ to be merciful to them.' After that it was known that he had become possessed with the crazy notion that if he fired into the breast of the Saviour on Corpus Christi Day, just when the Host was being elevated and the benediction spoken, it would make his gun unerring. He fired therefore, and at the same moment the Saviour on the cross raised His head and, fixing on him His eyes full of tears, gave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... a dream," he said, "but somehow I can't get the gold out of my head. I've a notion to go and try them rocks. You might try ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... exclaimed Ned laughingly, "There will be lots of sport in watching you try to sail on a stream like this. And what a sail, too! Why, it's made out of a red blanket! What put the notion into ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... fact that the subject of birth control is much better known now than it was when we first started to propagate it, still it cannot be mentioned too often, for the misapprehensions concerning it almost keep pace with the propaganda. First, there is a foolish notion that we would try to regulate the number of children forcibly, that we would compel people to have a small number of children. Nothing could apparently be more absurd, and still many people sincerely believe it. Nothing is further from the truth. On the contrary, much as we are in ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... being commenced against him in his absence, supposing there to be some one who was not content with the misfortunes we have already sustained. Accordingly, I preferred that he should hurry on to Rome rather than come to me; and at the same time—for I will tell you the truth, and it will give you a notion of the extent of my wretchedness—I could not make up my mind to see him, devotedly attached to me as he is, and a man of most tender feelings, or to obtrude upon him my miseries and ruin in all their wretchedness, or to endure their being seen by him. ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science, in the same strict sense in which this is true of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... from all Protestant countries. Without doing this, we may just pause to note that baptism was also reckoned a remedy for disease. This is doubtless a relic of the old creed which refers all human ailments to witchcraft and other spiritualistic origins. Mr. Henderson, speaking of the notion prevalent in the north of England that sickly infants never thrive until they are christened, relates a story communicated to him by a clergyman, within whose personal knowledge it had happened. He says: "The infant child of a chimney-sweeper at Thorne, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... surprised for a moment; then he said cheerfully, 'Dismiss that notion from your mind. I was a little put out last night by something I heard, and I dare say I said all sorts of disagreeable, sharp things; but there's no danger for your father any more than there is for all of us. Business is not like a profession; ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... into the boy's eyes, and he laughed a piteous, contemptuous laugh at himself for harbouring such a silly, romantic notion. ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... proper notion of what he was up against. Next day he knew less than the day before. He was ready to swear the whole outfit, by all the saints in the chapel, that there hadn't been ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... sensation of being a million miles away from England and her family: it all came as a breath of some other life. She felt strangely nervous, she had not the least notion why. There was a reckless look about things which caused a ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... I couldn't get away till afternoon—up before daylight this mornin', rode two horses plumb off their feet huntin' the wagons—foreman quit yesterday—best blamed foreman I ever had, too. Just up an' quit cold because he took a notion. Tried every which way to get him to stay—might's well talk to a rock. Away he went, Lord knows where, leavin' me nothin' on my mind except bein' owner, manager, ranch boss, an' wagon boss, besides tryin' to sell the outfit. Confounded young whelp! ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... very kind letter about my doctor's visit. I wish I had known him ten years sooner. He is most scrupulously observant of things as they really are, and does not set off, as doctors often do, from a preconceived notion of his own. The results of the regimen are already beneficial. My nights have been gradually improving since it began. Last night I slept perfectly till about two in the morning, and then awoke without any suffocation, and soon fell asleep again, remaining quiet with ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... clearly what is really at the bottom of all these articles and books. It is not mere business; it is not even mere cynicism. It is mysticism; the horrible mysticism of money. The writer of that passage did not really have the remotest notion of how Vanderbilt made his money, or of how anybody else is to make his. He does, indeed, conclude his remarks by advocating some scheme; but it has nothing in the world to do with Vanderbilt. He merely wished to prostrate himself before the mystery of a millionaire. For when we really worship ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... utter human depravity, nor have I any faith in great virtue, nor in the notion that the affairs of life may be removed beyond good and evil. We shall outgrow, we have already outgrown, the conception of sin, but we shall never pass beyond the idea of good and evil; that would be equivalent to skipping the cardinal points in geography. Nietzsche, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... a good notion to help you. There's only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty; and that's the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... The notion seems to prevail that we should prepare ourselves for the formation of just ideas with regard to the mode in which the higher faculties of men come into existence by wiping the slate clean to the extent of assuming ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... might tell a peasant in vain that the State takes fifteen out of the forty sous which he pays for a pound of coffee, and five centimes out of every two sous he pays for a pound of salt; for him, this is simply a barren notion, a vague calculation at random; the impression on his mind would be very different if, standing before the grocer who weighs out his coffee and salt, he saw with his own eyes, right before him, the clerk of the customs and of the salt-tax actually ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... divine truth, which was put before me I know not how, there remains imprinted within me a truth—I cannot give it a name—which fills me with a new reverence for God; it gives me a notion of His Majesty and power in a way which I cannot explain. I can understand that it is something very high. I had a very great desire never to speak of anything but of those deep truths which far surpass all that is spoken of here in the world,—and ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... knowledge of circumstances than they had hitherto possessed. Several skirmishes happened during the night, which merely formed a prelude to the approaching battle, and gave the commanders some notion of the position ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... selected without having the slightest notion of where they were going, but they took their places without a word, only too glad to have some change from the monotonous existence they had been leading ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... could occupy such apartment, or, indeed, was to be found (I mean no disrespect to the abbe) in that quarter of Paris. The window plainly belonged to some thievish den, and the lace formed a portion of the spoils. I began to be distrustful of late visits to the abbe's quarters, and full of the notion of thievish eyes looking out from the strange window—I used half to tremble as I passed along the corridor. I told the abbe of the veil, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... merely nominal, of no advantage to any one, and of little disadvantage beyond the enormous public expense needed to prevent people cheating each other by smuggling and bringing in the cheaper foreign article;—but such a community must forego all notion or idea of a foreign trade;—they must have no desires to be gratified beyond themselves, and they must have within themselves the independent means of supplying every want. For even if the law be ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... This notion is very ancient, and it is almost universal among modern nations. Homer is full of it; and from his unaffected recurrence to the same idea every where in his poems, it is evident that in his day it was not called in question. The ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... this physiognomy—grave and solemn, grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness which made a sort of frame for it—set in motion by a queer, quick, defiant, perfunctory, preoccupied smile, and you will have an imperfect notion of the remarkable presence of our host; something better worth seeing and knowing, I perceived as I quite breathlessly took him in, than anything we had yet encountered. How thoroughly I had entered into sympathy ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... be as well to point out once more that the possibility of such limited depreciation must not be construed into the statement that there has been any general "degeneration of the race." It maybe added that the notion that the golden age lay in the past, and that our own age is degenerate is not confined to a few biometricians of to-day; it has commended itself to uncritical minds in all ages, even the greatest, as far back as we can go. Montesquieu referred to this common notion (and attempted to explain ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Pastor Lindal; his age was apparently over fifty, his features were clear cut and handsome, his eyes blue, and his hair had been a light-brown. There was an impression of probity about him that struck Hardy forcibly. His manner was a trifle awkward to Hardy's notion, but it was kindly. His daughter Helga was like her father. Her complexion was clear and her voice musical. Her manner was, Hardy thought, not refined. It was simple and straightforward, and to John Hardy she appeared to want the ladylike tone of an English lady. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... of Life, is the name given by the Crees to their notion of the Supreme Being. Maatche-Mahneto is the Great Spirit ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... deliciously downright you are, Miss Lambert. Well, do you know I have not the faintest notion why Neville asked me to marry him, any more than I know why I listened to him. I tell him sometimes that it was the most ridiculous mistake in the world, and that either he or I, or both of us, must have been bewitched. I am really very sorry ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... useful information they gave me about things and people in their native province. The weather is perfect, with a warm south wind, a bright blue sky, and feathery clouds subduing the dazzling heavens. We get a good notion of the Jura in its sterner and more arid aspect during this zig-zag drive, first mounting, then descending. Far away, the brown bare mountain ridges rise against the clear heavens, whilst just below we see steep wooded ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... his toilet he summoned the grand marshal for some purpose, and during the conversation said, "I leave you to guess what I ate last night for my supper. The scraps which M. Roustan left. Yes, the wretch took a notion to eat half of my chicken." Roustan entered at that moment. "Come here, you idiot," continued the Emperor; "and the next time this happens, be sure you will pay for it." Saying this, he seized him by ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... had motive enough for exertion to cause them to forget themselves they would find it useful. In the doubt I am rather given to insisting on rest, but the rest I like for them is not at all their notion of rest. To lie abed half the day, and sew a little and read a little, and be interesting as invalids and excite sympathy, is all very well, but when they are bidden to stay in bed a month, and neither ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... the classical writers of the seventeenth century. 'When South says, "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise," he communicates more effectually the notion of the difference between the intellect of fallen and of unfallen humanity than in all the philosophy ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... writing or speaking, this accompaniment is of the vaguest and most fitful kind, as we often find out when we try to write down or say what we are thinking about, though we have a fairly definite notion of it, or fancy that we have one, all the time. The thought is not steadily and coherently governed by and moulded in words, nor does it steadily govern them. Words and thought interact upon and help one another, as any other mechanical appliances interact on and help the invention that ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... struck with the conduct of Lady Emilia; she had shewn, he said, a degree of delicacy and prudence which exceeded what he had a notion of; he never met with a woman who foresaw the little chance she had for happiness in marrying a man who could have no inducement to make her his wife but a nice, often a too nice, sense of honour; and who certainly could have no great opinion of her virtue. The folly of both men and women in these ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... he stoutly averred. "I ain't a-goin' ter do the beck nor the bid of enny onmannerly harnt ez hev tuk up the notion ter riz up over the bluff inter Old Daddy's Window, an' sot hisself ter ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... two young ladies, come home on the next train, where you'll be appreciated," grumbled the doctor. "Anyway, God bless you both. And don't drink dirty water! And keep your patients clean! Keep 'em clean! clean! clean! I've a notion that cleanness is nine-tenths of surgery; and it's all there is to nursing—but few agree with me. Good-bye! Tell Agnew I say that ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... instruments of industry an abstraction. We describe these real things by the use of an abstract term, just as we describe a thousand other realities. A "fund," a "value," a "permanent quantum of wealth," is capital; but with the abstract notion the mind always merges the thought of the concrete entity. It is the tools of industry that, in their endless march, come into and go out of the industrial field that we think of even when we use the abstract ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... her nature, she reverted to it again and again, while in the cart which she alone shared with the child, until it had matured to an immovable conviction. During her changeful, wandering life, she had had no fixed religious principles. But, since the notion had entered her mind that Lienhard would reward her for her love by giving her a share, even though a very small one, of his heart, she had clung tenaciously to it, in spite of all rebuffs and the offensive indifference with which he had treated her. On her sick bed and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... getting very scarce," answered Uncle Barney, "but once in a while you will see a small flock of them. I was after that flock about a week ago, but they got away from me. I've a notion that it's about the last ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... not going to give a catalogue of what is to be seen in Agra, having no notion of writing a guide-book or of filling notes with long passages from such sources, as I see many writers have done; but I must speak of three or four structures ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... presence than his sudden appearance had deprived her of. But, as he noticed that which made La Valliere most uneasy was the means by which he had effected an entrance into her room, he explained to her the system of the staircase concealed by the screen, and strongly disavowed the notion of his ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Bill, I know it. You look now for all the world like a bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to boil over. As for Sall making a noise the first time, that's all a notion, and a very strange one. She was as sweet-spoken then as she was when you left me before supper. The last time, I confess, I made her squall out on purpose. But what of that? you are not the man to get angry with a ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... have a notion, though, while Hart was talking, how the thing might be worked so there wouldn't be no real trouble if it could be fixed so Hart's aunt wouldn't stay in Palomitas more'n about a day; and he come right on down to the Forest Queen to see if he could get the boys to help him put it through. He left ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... lads, whose notion of armourers was derived from the brawny blacksmith of Lyndhurst, who sharpened their boar spears and shod their horses. They made some kind of assent, and Master Headley went on. "These be the times! This is what peace hath brought us to! I am called down to Salisbury to take charge ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... it," remarked Wilmer, after a pause, "this notion you've got that Marshby's the only one that could possibly do? I began ...
— Different Girls • Various
... glory in the fields.... He was the most unselfish of human creatures: unadapted to this world, he cared not for himself, and put himself to inconvenience for the sake of his friends. He had an exquisite sense of humour, and too refined a notion of female purity to bear the little arts of love with patience.... He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Unable to bear the sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, he began to ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... shown at Vienna, where they arrived on the 21st or 22d of August. "You can have no notion of the anxiety and curiosity to see him," wrote Lady Minto.[9] "The door of his house is always crowded with people, and even the street when his carriage is at the door; and when he went to the play he was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... may account for the statement mentioned by Collins, of a native throwing himself in the way of a man who was about to shoot a crow, whence it was supposed that the bird was an object of worship, which notion is, however, contradicted by the common practice of eating crows, of which birds the natives are very fond.—See COLLINS' Account of the Colony of ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... such harsh things about our present-day makers of books that I am going to send you, by way of palliative, a couple of volumes by living writers who really have some notion of literature. One is Brownell's Victorian Prose Masters, and the other is Santayana's Poetry and Religion. If they give you as much pleasure as they have given me, I know I shall win your gratitude, which ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... never openly proclaimed in any offensive way, but the harmless delusion that she could relieve the sick was a favorite notion with her; and we find in the London Gazette (March 12, 1712) an official announcement, stating that on certain days the Queen would "touch" for the cure of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... pray for some things that we really don't want, if we were only honest enough to look into our hearts," owned Aunt Jamesina candidly. "I've a notion that such prayers don't rise very far. I used to pray that I might be enabled to forgive a certain person, but I know now I really didn't want to forgive her. When I finally got that I DID want to I forgave her without having ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... killing the lion as one would naturally expect, Rodriquez took a strange humorous notion into his head. He would make a pet of this same lion and it should be his dog to follow obediently at its master's heels wherever he went. This idea he carried out and he even had a heavy brass collar placed upon its neck, and it followed him on all his trips, slouching with padded ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... very long time before those who had the administration of justice in this department, thought themselves at liberty to issue a commission, when the person was represented as not being idiot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, but as being of UNSOUND MIND, importing by those words, the notion, that the party was in some such state, as was to be contra-distinguished from idiotcy, and as he was to be contra-distinguished from lunacy, and yet such as made him a proper object of a commission, ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... a habit residing in the will, prompting that power constantly to render unto everyone his own. The fundamental notion of Justice is some sort of equality. Equality supposes two terms, physically distinct, or capable of existing separately, one from the other. Between such terms alone can equality be properly predicated. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... be a wild notion to expect perfection in any work of man: and yet one would think the contrary was taken for granted, by the judgment commonly passed upon poems. A critic supposes he has done his part, if he proves a writer to have failed in an expression, or erred in any particular point: and can it then be ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... who do not acquire—and it takes a hard effort to acquire—this notion of a transmitted nerve element will ever understand 'the connective tissue' of civilisation. We have here the continuous force which binds age to age, which enables each to begin with some improvement on the last, if the last did ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... seems, a young country fellow in the neighbourhood where Masson lived, who was just married, and according to a silly notion which prevails not only among the peasants of France but also among the clowns of all other nations in Europe, fancied himself bewitched by some charm or other, which rendered him incapable of performing the rites of his marriage bed. Masson thereupon offered, if he would give ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... pleasure, I believe. They have family traditions about all sorts of things, this among others. It is some notion about taking care of their homes and children, if I remember rightly. Miss Lillie will tell you all about it. How lucky that you met Jack ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... criticised his conduct in the West. To-day it hails his appointment as Commander-in-Chief with joy and enthusiasm! This reminds one of the Moniteur when Napoleon was returning from Elba. The Enquirer's notion is to prevent discord—and ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of that poet in the work. In former days it was Jonson whom the critics and commentators of their time saw good to select as the colleague or the editor of Shakespeare; but a later school of criticism has resigned the notion that the fifth act was retouched and adjusted by the author of Volpone to the taste of his patron James. The later theory is more plausible than this; the primary objection to it is that it is too facile and superficial. It is waste of time to point out with any intelligent and imaginative ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... virtues to idols; the setting up of little oratories, altars, and statues in the streets and highways, and on the tops of mountains; the carrying of images and relics in pompous procession, with numerous lights and with music and singing; flagellations at solemn seasons under the notion of penance; a great variety of religious orders and fraternities of priests; the shaving of priests, or the tonsure as it is called, on the crown of their heads; the imposing of celibacy and vows of chastity on the religious of both sexes—all these and many more rites ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... journey of three days and a half to New York? Modern travellers, who are, or are not, as it happens, run off the track, smashed up, or otherwise suddenly and summarily disposed of, have little notion of our successive and amusing accidents, and of how they diversified and occupied the mind, so as entirely to preclude the ennui which comes from railroad-travelling, with its ninety-nine chances of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... one thinks too meanly of himself because of self-hatred; I say that no one thinks too meanly of himself, in so far as he conceives that he is incapable of doing this or that. For whatsoever a man imagines that he is incapable of doing, he imagines this of necessity, and by that notion he is so disposed, that he really cannot do that which he conceives that he cannot do. For, so long as he conceives that he cannot do it, so long is he not determined to do it, and consequently so long is it impossible for him to do it. However, if ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... the faintest notion. But I wish you could find out. Of course, nobody holds up that bag business as against Florence, but—it's uncomfortable all the same. I wish I'd been here that night. I'm 'most sure I'd have heard a shot, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... them—for a consideration—had never been denied, saw with their own eyes tangible evidence of the Governor's activity, and inferred therefrom a solicitude on his part for the public welfare. Had they, however, been given a notion of the bill which had had to be paid for those frail, though welcome hostelries, they would have stood aghast at the imbecility, or, if not logically that, the something very much worse, through which five times the actual worth of these buildings had been extracted from ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... hand, had lost all notion of time. The days were all confused in his mind, and he had to keep asking in order to realize their passing. After a week passed in the doctor's home, he would sometimes suppose that the sweet sequestration had been but forty-eight hours long, at others ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... day in favor of publication, I will add in the evening a general idea of their character. Private letters from France, by a late vessel which sailed from Havre, February the 5th, assure us that France, classing us in her measures with the Swedes and Danes, has no more notion of declaring war against us than them. You will see a letter in Bache's paper of yesterday, which came addressed to me. Still the fate of Spring's resolutions seems in perfect equilibrio. You will see ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... about the year 530 B.C., followed out the system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of being. Being is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is thought; the All is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... has a place. Although the time has gone by for the burning of witches, and though the human mind is less disturbed by the thoughts of ghosts and Satan in corporeal shape than in past centuries, nevertheless man has not been able to rise altogether above the notion that there are such mortal creatures as witches and warlocks, and such immortal visible visitants to our sublunary world as spirits and the devil. Not only is there a general belief in the existence of ghosts, but we have people ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... it," said Mrs. Eben sorrowfully. "Sara hasn't any more notion of taking Lige than ever she had. I'm sure it's not MY fault. I've talked and argued till I'm tired. I declare to you, Amelia, I am terribly disappointed. I'd set my heart on Sara's marrying Lige—and now to ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... purity. Let me read the following, addressed by him to his little son, who afterward became pastor of the church in Lynn, Massachusetts, and was a burning and shining light. His words will show you that he had no superstitious notion about the church-membership of children, though he represented the common belief at that day, and that he did not count baptism in infancy a saving ordinance; yet you will see how he uses it to plead with his son to be reconciled to God. ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the matter. For two or three hours, he says, the local reports have been confused and unsatisfactory. A few minutes ago he called up Tillman City and hasn't yet succeeded in getting any reply. The local men are sending in train reports, but something isn't right. He's got a notion that they ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... say that I am not throwing this idea out right and left to employers with any hopeful notion that it will ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... question here arises as to the propriety of extending to the first of these classes the privilege of being admitted into the legislative body. There is, I am aware, a party in the colony, by whom the very notion of granting such a privilege to a class of men who have been subject to the lash of the law, would be treated as a chimera pregnant with the most fatal consequences to this infant community. In this, as in most other societies, there is an aristocratic ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... told young gentlemen entering the Army are pointedly required to say who commanded at Aigos-Potamos and wrecked the Peloponnesian War: but of Dettingen and Fontenoy, where is the living Englishman that has the least notion, or seeks for any? The Austrian-Succession War did veritably rage for eight years, at a terrific rate, deforming the face of Earth and Heaven; the English paying the piper always, and founding their National Debt thereby:—but not even that could prove ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or that events should depend upon any but the natural sequence of cause and effect. We have come to look upon the present as the child of the past and as the parent of the future; and, as we have excluded chance from a place in the universe, so we ignore, even as a possibility, the notion of any interference with the order of Nature. Whatever may be men's speculative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief that the order of Nature is constant, and that the chain ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... one to pourtray him. I have been thinking about Henslow all day a good deal, but the more I think the less I can think of to write down. It is quite a new style for me to set about, but I will continue to think what I could say to give any, however imperfect, notion of him in the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... at the notion. He did not entirely understand that he was requested to take part in a bit of defiant frolic which the young princes and princesses were well aware would not have been permitted by their parents. All he grasped was that the Lady Joanna requested his assistance in ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... but such hath not considered, that God's wrath at all times hath with great indignation been shewed against such offenders and their conceits. Indeed they like not for to plead for them under that notion, but rather as Korah, and his company: 'All the congregation are holy every one of them' (Num 16:3). But it maketh no matter by what name they are called; if by their deeds they shew themselves openly wicked: ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... how long some wives will live on friendly terms with their husbands and never measure their temperaments, never know where the shoe pinches, never have a notion how often they worry, and provoke, and pain their spouses, when the least reticence and tact would keep the ship and its consort sailing in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... But he expected nearly as much from others, and had small patience with those who from ignorance or carelessness infringed the rules of etiquette. One of his expressions was, that death or mutilation was the only excuse for being late to dinner. The notion that poets are an unpractical class of people is pure illusion. The lives of our chief American poets will be sufficient to contradict it; if Dante had not been a just governor of Florence and Aeschylus had not fought like a tiger in the battle of Salamis. Bryant was the able ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... a time, a notion was started, that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks |
