"Perceptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit and reveal them in significant and expressive line. Knowledge supported rather than rivaled insight. In the same way, both saint and sinner need religious instruction. Nevertheless they are what they are because they are first perceptive rather than reasoning beings. They both owe, the one his salvation, the other his despair, to the fact that they have seen the vision of the holy universe. Both are seers; the saint has given his allegiance to the heavenly vision. The sinner has resolved ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the great old trees, the colours of old oak and weather-beaten tiles and warm brick, has gently undulated straight lines, and softened all sharp angles, where the very sunlight has the mellowness of old wine, to a mind perceptive of this peculiar and intimate charm of England, Dunster makes a special call, set amid the suave curves of its rich country, crowned by its ancient castle, dignified by its old, beautiful church (grown, like the castle, through Norman ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Teacher'—will afford to those desirous of investigating the second of the problems above proposed, some useful material and hints. Especially will this be true, we think, of the first series of articles, by Mr. William Russell, on the 'Cultivation of the Perceptive, Expressive, and Reflective Faculties;' and of the second, by Rev. Dr. Hill, now President of Antioch College, upon the 'True Order of Studies.' In the outset of his first essay, (which appeared in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... just men made perfect." All imperfection arising from bodily organization, as well as from our fallen state here, has ceased, and the soul has become a pure spirit, in a spiritual world, engaged in spiritual pursuits. Memory is awake; every perceptive faculty is in perfection; the soul that sees far distant places, in a moment, in sleep,—that holds converse with other, but absent, minds, while the body is sealed in slumber,—not only does not need the present body to make it capable of perception, but when ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... chiefly annoyed me hitherto, seemed now to be lost in a sensitive reserve, not cold or egotistic, but strangely winning from its paradoxical frankness. Sincerity was stamped on every lineament. A deep misgiving stirred me that, clever as I thought myself, nicely perceptive of the right and congenial men to know, I had made some big mistakes—how many, I wondered? A relief, scarcely less deep because it was unconfessed, stole in on me with the suspicion that, little as I deserved it, the patient fates were offering me a golden ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was much to the point—in its hand. Courage and good-humour therefore were the breath of the day; though for ourselves at least it would have been also much to the point that, with Amerigo, really, the innermost effect of all this perceptive ease was perhaps a strange final irritation. He compared the lucid result with the extraordinary substitute for perception that presided, in the bosom of his wife, at so contented a view of his conduct and course—a ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... *Conscience*, like all the perceptive faculties, *prompts to action in accordance with its perceptions*. In this respect it differs not in the least from sight, hearing, taste. Our natural proclivity is to direct our movements with reference to the objects within ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange manufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the content appears superiorly and subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal to us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their performance by messages from the other levels. Under these conditions what could be more natural to expect than a confusion which Myers' suggestion would then have been the first indispensable ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... I need not trace the tale;—nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Though Brock's perceptive faculties were well developed, his forecasts, built upon the evidences of opposition among certain Lower Canadians, happily proved only in part correct. Later, when his plan of campaign was menaced by still greater disaffection in Upper ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death? How if, I say, the senses we now trust For date of sensible comparison,— Ay, ev'n the Reason's self that dates with them, Should be in essence of intensity Hereafter so transcended, and awoke To a perceptive subtlety so keen As to confess themselves befool'd before, In all that now they will avouch for most? One man—like this—but only so much longer As life is longer than a summer's day, Believed himself a king upon his throne, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... enough to "take notice" of things, I was fairly deluged with toys: Fuzzy dogs and cats; big, red, yellow and green balls; fancy rattle-boxes, and various other things were used to stimulate my perceptive faculties. All of which should be left to Mother Nature, who ever does these things well in her own good time and way. I became so accustomed to toys, having such an innumerable variety of them, that ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... shop-door. It did not yield to her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual. Without making another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great portal, under the arched window. Finding it fastened, she knocked. A reverberation came from ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sight; (2) the sense of hearing; (3) the sense of smell; (4) the sense of taste; (5) the sense of touch; (6) Mano-vijnyana (lit., mind-knowledge), or the perceptive faculty; (7) Klista-mano-vijnyana (lit., soiled-mind-knowledge), or an introspective faculty; (8) Alaya-vijnyana (lit., ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Ada Cambridge's teaching, so far as it can be gathered from her plots, and the few instances in which she has permitted herself anything in the shape of didactic expression, is to make us more patient with life's complexities and perceptive of its compensations, and more content with whatever happiness may be drawn in our way by the chain of accidents called Destiny, so do her principal characters, in their foibles and their strength—in the little acts and impulses which qualify alike their heroism and their baseness—tend to ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... infinity of things. But just so far as relations can be traced between this object and all other objects, so much the more rational does the knowledge of the watch become. Rationality is the comprehending of anything in its relations. The perceptive, isolated view is irrational. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... it, all this has been but a prelude to the play. Were it not so I should not now stand in such pressing want of the services of a confidential agent,—that is, of an experienced man of the world, who has been endowed by nature with phenomenal perceptive faculties, and in whose capacity and honour I can place the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... fevers. Dementia is a general weakening of the mental powers: the word is specifically applied to senile insanity, dotage. Aberration is eccentricity of mental action due to an abnormal state of the perceptive faculties, and is manifested by error in perceptions and rambling thought. Hallucination is the apparent perception of that which does not exist or is not present to the senses, as the seeing of specters or of reptiles in delirium tremens. Monomania is mental derangement as ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... little stream which ran, choked with maiden-hair, to the trail, and formed a pool. Some philanthropic camper had driven a nail into the rock and hung there a tin cup. Kate (Bertram still talking and gesticulating at her left) threw a perceptive glance. ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... singularly striking and attractive in person, tall, erect, and graceful in figure, with regular features and wavy hair slightly tinged with gray. His sloping forehead, full at the eyebrows, indicated keen perceptive powers. He was suave in address, so suave, indeed, that his enemies often charged him with insincerity and even duplicity, but his gracious manner, exhibited to the plainest woman and most trifling man, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... not well off as regards material goods? Copplestone had the faculty of seeing things at a glance, and refined and cultivated as the atmosphere of Mrs. Greyle's parlour was, it had taken no more than a glance from his perceptive eyes to see that he was there confronted with what folk call genteel poverty. Mrs. Greyle's almost nun-like attire of black had done duty for a long time; the carpet was threadbare; there was an absence of those little touches of comfort with which refined women of even modest means love ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... implication of what of that? Were there not plenty of Nightingales in the world? Miss Sally is perceptive about this. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... which, in connection with space exploration, has been recognized for many years. One of the earliest and most perceptive of the space "buffs" stated it before the British Interplanetary Society in 1946 in these words: "* * * our civilization is no more than the sum of all the dreams that earlier ages have brought to fulfillment. And so it must always be, for if men cease to dream, if they turn their backs upon ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... was a perceptive darkening of the sky, followed by a light, preliminary shower. I'd anticipated that, and was considering heading back for the bug ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... senses. V. be sensible of &c. adj. ; feel, perceive. render sensible &c. adj.; sharpen, cultivate, tutor. cause sensation, impress; excite an impression, produce an impression. Adj. sensible, sensitive, sensuous; aesthetic, perceptive, sentient; conscious &c. (aware) 490. acute, sharp, keen, vivid, lively, impressive, thin-skinned. Adv. to the quick. Phr. "the touch'd needle trembles to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... devil of a fellah sees what he's doing, and cottons to him, and the dervishes and Arabs feel he's right, he might as well leave. But it's just there he counts. There's something about him, something that's Quaker in him, primitive, silent, and perceptive—if that's a real word—which makes them feel that he's honest, and isn't after anything for himself. Arabs don't talk much; they make each other understand without many words. They think with all their might on one thing at a time, and they think things into happening—and so does he. He's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the frontal sinus, and is sometimes half an inch wide. As there is no positive method of determining its dimensions in the living head, there must ever be some doubt concerning the development of the perceptive organs which it covers. The superciliary ridge at the external angle of the brow extends really as much as three-quarters of an inch from the brain. From this angle a ridge of bone (the temporal arch) extends upward and backward, separating the lateral ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... to the moral sentiment when the child discovers it has been deceived—but also a knowledge of the infant mind, a perception of the thoughts and fancies which chase one another through the infant brain, a knowledge and perceptive power which only a watchful and loving experience can acquire. An industry and a patience far beyond any needed by the teacher of more advanced pupils are also required by the highly-cultivated men and women, to whom alone the training of infant minds should be intrusted. ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... sensations which thereupon arise within me, whether immediately or subsequently, either are the results of my seeing, smelling, eating, or hearing, or they are not. To say that they are not is equivalent to saying that an object need not be within reach of the perceptive faculties in order to be perceived; that I may see or smell a rose, though there be no rose to be seen or smelt; may dine sumptuously off empty dishes, and be raised to the seventh heaven of delight by the audible strains of a music which is not being ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... she would do with her time, now that she had gained her own way and was actually all alone in the heart of the country, she did not permit such a thought to trouble her peace. The grave tranquillity of the old house was already beginning to exert its influence on her always quick and perceptive mind,—the dear remembrance of her father whom she had idolised, and whose sudden death had been the one awful shock of her life, came back to her now with a fresh and tender pathos. Little incidents ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best,—much more than we can ever read or enjoy in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of travel, form one of the main staples of conversation round the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to the store of information, and as the very existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes, depends upon the completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the adult savage are devoted to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range, the directions and junctions of all the streams, the situation of each tract characterized by peculiar ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... joy and ecstasy came as from the heart, diffusing most softly through all the inmost fibers, and from these into the bundles of fibers, with such an inmost sense of delight that the fiber seemed to be nothing but joy and ecstasy, and everything perceptive and sensitive therefrom seemed in like manner to be alive with happiness. Compared with these joys the joy of bodily pleasures is like a gross and pungent dust compared with a pure and most gentle aura. I have noticed that when I wished to transfer ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... admire your English literature. It's so deeply cognizant of the really meaningful things in life. And if your coming to this planet has served only to add poetry to our cultural heritage, it would be reason enough to welcome you with open limbs. For it was a truly perceptive versifier who wrote the immortally simple lines: 'Poems are made by fools like me, but only God ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... to a resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little—it has been often said—of the position of posterity. He takes in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... speaking of the Guiana Indians, says that for them "the whole world swarms with beings." Surely this could not be taken to indicate an untutored mind—unless indeed a mind untutored in the nonsense of the Schools—but rather a very directly perceptive mind. And again what more reasonable (seeing that these people themselves were in the animal stage of evolution) than that they should pay great reverence to some ideal animal—first cousin or ancestor—who played ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... warm, poetic imagination, Nature had given him quick perceptive powers, and the faculty of expressing his thoughts without apparent effort, in simple, strong language, as well defined, and sharply cut as a cameo. Beyond this, and better than all, was a tender, sympathetic sensibility; which, if it sometimes overmastered ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Eaton, Jr., for suggesting the study here reported on, for his perceptive criticisms regarding it, and for his continued patience throughout my investigation. Financial assistance was furnished by his National Science Foundation Grant (NSF-G8624) for which I am also appreciative. ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... never has had steadiness, patience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions under which alone can expression be perfectly given to the finest perceptions and emotions. The Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; but he adds to this temperament the sense of MEASURE; hence his admirable success in the plastic arts, in which the Celtic genius, with its chafing against the ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned moods of poetry, but in ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... than the doctors guessed. Something of it had been apparent to them in the earlier days of his illness; but his clear and decided answers to their questions convinced them that memory had to some extent returned. As a matter of fact it was not memory that had returned, but a sharpening of his perceptive faculties, awakening him to the fact that he stood in danger of being taken for an idiot or a madman if he did not frame some answer to the questions which the doctors asked him. This new acuteness was perhaps the precursor to a return of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to me!" She spoke in her high way. "I'll make them all right. Aunt Maud, moreover," she added, "has her so engaged that she won't notice." Densher felt, with this, that his companion had indeed perceptive flights he couldn't hope to match—had for instance another when she still subjoined: "And Mrs. Stringham's appearing to respond just in order to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... many-item'd Union—are not only constantly visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average. To-day, I should say—defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions—an appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solution of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed individual with the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... his memory or understanding of the subject read or thought of will be increased. Very many people think and commit to memory by this method of concentrating attention; they probably do not belong to the quick, perceptive, imaginative class, but rather to those who have power of application and who have educated their minds by close voluntary attention. Galton found a large proportion of the Fellows of the Royal Society were of this motor type. But the fact that certain individuals make use of this faculty ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... testify against this system of principles, because it has a direct tendency to destroy the just and necessary distinction that ought to be maintained between the perceptive and providential will of God, and necessarily jumbles and confounds these together, in such a manner, as a man is left at an utter uncertainty to know when he is accepted and approven of God in his conduct, and when not. That this is the scope of their principles, is confessed, p. 87, of their ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... 'adored' their children—yet spent most of their day in pursuit of other interests—were nonplussed by her complete absorption in the joys and sanctities of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, but in the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... supernatural power upon the details of natural daily life, mental or physical. This view—or rather, this abstention from seeing—is futile; because, without a particle of actual proof to sustain its negative, it refuses to admit possibilities of truth to which the really comprehensive and perceptive mind must always hold ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Jest, Beyond Life, and Figures of Earth before him, it is not easy for the perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. One might as sensibly deny a future to Ecclesiastes, The Golden Ass, Gulliver's Travels, and the works of Rabelais as to predict oblivion for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine fantasy, mellow wisdom and strange ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the wisest course,—as it seems to me,—is not to introduce too many appliances as aids to mental activity, but rather to see what the animal subject thinks and does by its own initiative. In the testing of memory and the perceptive faculties, training for performances is the best method ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... neighbours and friends as if I had known them all my life, and loved them dearly. Nay, what was more, I couldn't in my heart of hearts help liking them. They were really sweet people—so kind and sympathetic, so perceptive of my sensitiveness. They asked no questions that could hurt me in any way. They showed no curiosity about the object of my visit or my relation to Dr. Ivor. They were kindness and courtesy itself. I could see Mr. Cheriton was a gentleman in fibre, and Elsie was as sweet as ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... * * How little it avails to know the theory of wisdom and folly, right and wrong, etc., just so as to occupy only the perceptive and reasoning faculties! What we want, what the world wants, I think, is the Christian version of the present so fashionable idea of earnestness, or, as I have thought it may imply, consistency of ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... one place to another, I have always made it a point, if possible, to be accompanied by one or more natives, and I have often found great advantage from it. Attached to an exploring party they are frequently invaluable, as their perceptive powers are very great, and enable them both to see and hear anything at a much greater distance than a European. In tracking stray animals, and keeping on indistinct paths, they display a degree of perseverance and skill that is really wonderful. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... too, possessed some perceptive powers, despite the fact that she preferred to use them little in ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... to truth is the prior condition of success in formulating or stating it, and that loyalty not only precedes the special success in formulating it, but is the prior cause of universal success in its attainment. Special perceptive powers and favorable opportunities may enable scientists to ascertain certain truths, as a lamp may enable them to discover a few objects near them which darkness hides from others, but loyalty to truth reveals, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... merely a Laboratory but a Temple. The power of physical methods applies for the establishment of that truth which can be realised directly through our senses, or through the vast expansion of the perceptive range by means of artificially created organs. We still gather the tremulous message when the note of the audible reaches the unheard. When human sight fails, we continue to explore the region of the invisible. The little that we ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose |
