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More "Receptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the full knowledge, however, that no one person's recipe can infallibly be used by any other person—so that, in reality, all I have tried to do is to set forth the means I have followed to teach myself the delightful lesson of serenity, of freedom from worry, and thereby to suggest to receptive minds a way by which they may possibly attain the ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... replete with harmonies ready to inflow, if we are but receptive and delicate enough to receive and appropriate them. Blest are they who recognize life's indications, its index-fingers which are pointing each hour to some new experience, which will deepen and ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... a bit reluctantly, for he could see that the men were receptive from a motive of politeness, and not with sympathetic interest. "He has sent other messages, but they would not, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... great deal can also be done by simple resolute suggestion. Few persons seem to know—what is, nevertheless, a fact—that the most effective moment for making resolves is in the comatose calm which precedes going to sleep. The entire organism is then in a passive state, and more permanently receptive of the imprint of volition than at any other period of the twenty-four hours. If regularly at that moment the man says clearly and imperiously to himself, "I will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home; I will not allow my business ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... remarkable. He describes himself as shy, awkward, boorish, and mentally shapeless and inert. In 1833, however, he felt what he describes as the first stirrings of intellectual life within him. 'Hitherto I have had no mind, properly so-called, merely a boy's intelligence, receptive of anything I read or heard. I now awoke to the new idea of finding the reason of things; I began to suspect that I might have much to unlearn, as well as to learn, and that I must clear my mind of much ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... divided into four classes, each class marking an advance in receptive power on the part of the listener and poetic subtlety on that of the composer. We may liken the first stage to that of the savage Indians who depict their exploits in war and peace on the rocks, fragments of bone, etc. If the painter has in mind, say, an elephant, he carves it so that its principal ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... to me as I looked abroad. The scenery was mountainous and solemn, but it was therefore on a large scale and restful to the eye. It had more grandeur than beauty, to my first impression; but I remembered that I was not in a condition of mind to be receptive of the merely beautiful, which might exist for me without my perception of it, even as the life of the dead existed without the perception of the living. Death, if it had taught me less up to that time than it might have done to nobler men, had at least done so ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... clogged with thoughts of self. It is free of these impediments if he shall have been waiting alone in the room. To be come in to is a thing that needs no art and induces no embarrassment. One's whole attention is focussed on the comer-in. One is the mere spectator, the passive and receptive receiver. And even supposing that the young man could come in under his hero's gaze without a thought of self, his first vision would yet lack the right intensity. A person found in a room, if it be a room strange to the arriver, does not instantly detach himself ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... days before I heard of the judge's arrival. I was speaking to her about the advisability of knocking together an occasional omelette for you, or a nice little savoury made of olives and hard-boiled eggs. I found her unusually receptive, and quite prepared to follow up the ideas I put before her. There was just one thing stood ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... classic example of the confinement of a people within its political boundaries is the long isolation of Japan from 1624 to 1854. The pent-up forces there accumulated, in a population which had doubled itself in the interval and which by hard schooling was made receptive to every improved economic method, manifest themselves in the insistent demand for more land which has permeated all the recent policy of Japan. But the history of Japan is exceptional. The rule is that the growing ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... mover toward which it moves, as, for example, matter moves toward form, through desire for the primal being; for matter requires light from that which is in the essence of will, which compels matter to move toward will and to desire it: and herein will and matter are alike. And because matter is receptive of the form that has flowed down into it by the flux of violence and necessity, matter must necessarily move to receive form; and therefore things are constrained by will and obedience in turn. Hence by the light which it has from will, matter ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... thought was an intellectual conquest, not an exchange of ideas. On the north-western frontier there was some reciprocity, but otherwise the part played by India was consistently active and not receptive. The Far East counted for nothing in her internal history, doubtless because China was too distant and the other countries had no special culture of their own. Still it is remarkable that whereas many Hindu missionaries preached Buddhism in China, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... M. Pelletier, who used to follow his wife to Pre-Charmoy as soon as he was free, proved quite a boon to Gilbert in his solitude, and a solid friendship was soon formed between the two brothers-in-law. M. Pelletier's mind was inquisitive and receptive; he had read much, and in the family circle we called him our "Encyclopedia." He made it his duty and pleasure to clear up any obscure point which might embarrass any of us, and often undertook long researches to spare my husband's time. They ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... afflicted with precarious health, and subjected to long and desperate illnesses in childhood, his little soul early took on a gloom and asceticism wholly unnatural to youth. Fear was constantly instilled into his acutely receptive mind by his solicitous, doting parents; and his life was thereby stunted, warped, and starved. He was reared under the constant reminder of the baleful effects of food, of air, of conduct, of this and that invisible ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... little children, we are receptive, become willing to accept the divine Principle and rule of being, as unfolded in divine Science, the interpretation therein will be found to be the Comforter that ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... effective agent for the dissemination of knowledge was ever devised than the American Public School. If only it would live up to its opportunities, its teachers could bring to its millions of receptive minds the best practice in daily living (never mind the theory for the children), and through the children reach the home, where the infants may be saved from the risks that ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... hymn and our familiar talk, in which we always "outlined the policy" of the new day; for the children were apt to be angelic and receptive at nine o'clock in the morning, the unwillingness of the spirit and weakness of the flesh seldom overtaking them till an hour or so later. It chanced to be a beautiful day, for Helen and I were both happy and well, our volunteer helpers were daily growing more zealous and efficient, and there ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... no means complete, it shows that Roosevelt's receptive and sleepless mind fastened on the full circle of questions which interested American life, so far as that is controlled or directed by national legislation. Some of the laws passed were simply readjustments—new statutes on old matters. Other laws were ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively in the work of philosophy,—the Italians, with their receptive temperament and so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development and progress in the transition period alone,—it will be seen that the Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that Granice's self-confidence returned. Here was a sensible man—a man who knew his business—it would be easy enough to make him see through that ridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a cigar, and lighting ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... not large acquirements. R.D.—Not very studious or mentally receptive, except for facts in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... little party rested and then Tarzan suddenly rose and, motioning the others to silence, listened. For a minute he stood motionless, his keen ears acutely receptive to sounds so faint and distant that none of the other three could detect the slightest break in the utter and deathlike quiet of the gorge. Finally the ape-man relaxed and turned toward them. "What is ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that was beyond my feeble powers. Indeed, I could imaginatively frame for her, speech that I could not, myself, deliver. I knew what I wanted her to say—or to imply. For it was hardly necessary for her to say anything. I was ready, wholly sympathetic and receptive. If she would but give me the least sign that she understood, I could respond, though I was so unable ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... walking soberly Along our street all dappled with rich sun, I please myself with words, and happily Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run; And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask, Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes And traitor hand that fails ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... shapes of the clouds. It was all impersonal, it was England itself that was reflected, the hills that had awakened. It was the emanation of a worthy tradition, older than ourselves, that was re-kindled and was glowing, and that would be here when we are not. It was so receptive, it was so spacious, that our gravest memories could abide there, as if night were kind to the secrets we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse, and could protect our better visions, and had sanctuary and ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... required no teaching in the Spartan virtue of suffering, wolf-gnawed, silently. But he was a flower in sunshine to happiness, and he looked to her for it. Why should she withhold from him a thing so easily given? The convalescent is receptive and undesiring, or but very faintly desiring: the new blood coming into the frame like first dawn of light has not stirred the old passions; it is infant nature, with a tinge of superadded knowledge that is not cloud across it and lends it only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this communication. It was not for him. A second mind entered ... was it a mind? Yes, and yet very different. It was strong, but limited—perhaps childlike, in some ways. Alive after a fashion, it was receptive of emotion up to a point and even capable of emotion—up to a point. It seemed an embryo mind, in some ways well developed and in ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... indeed, learn all this at that time; but she had her receptive mind opened to the first lessons of the glorious truth on than summer evening on ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... paused in her digging and stood facing the sun-kissed buttes. Above them in the clear blue sky the father sun was traveling upward as in haste, while to her receptive spirit there appealed an awful, unknown force, the silent speech of the Great Mystery, to which it seemed to her the whole world ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... content to let his opinions crystallise at the age of thirty-five or so. If he would retain his powers of criticism and construction he must have the patience and the energy to maintain the normal, receptive mind with which he is naturally endowed. Unfortunately with that endowment commonly comes another—namely, a tendency to avoid the irk or constant struggle by taking the line of least resistance; by adopting an opinion and upholding it in the face of all reason; ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... assumes the form of one or more tiny nutlets with little sharp-pointed tips. When the blossom has become receptive to pollen, each tip has separated into two separate pistils which spread apart and present fresh, slightly sticky surfaces, which are known as stigmas. This is the time that pollination can take place, which period continues until the stigmas have lost their freshness ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... of course, in plenty. The Lord took Mrs. Eccles's own uncle from his half-filled basket to another world, for which, as a "tea and coffee totaller," he was no doubt well prepared. The too receptive organisms of unsuspecting infancy suffered in their turn. In short, it was a busy season for Mr. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... plate itself?" said the maiden, as she began to arrange her mind towards departure. "As the colours were still in a receptive state this person placed it safely aside for the time. It was somewhat near ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... teachers and confidants. I was papa's own girl. He was very proud of me and wished me to be with him as much as possible. He never wearied in the endless task of answering my questions, always so skillfully directing them by suggestions, that in my receptive mind there was soon unfolded a clear conception of the outlines of the different branches of all useful knowledge. When I was four years of age I knew the alphabet perfectly and could spell and construct a great number of words with my lettered blocks, and then copy ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... expand, resound with large meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind. ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Hindustani, but showed an easy comprehension of her promise of backsheesh when he should return with an answer. She had a joyful anticipation, while she waited, of the terms in which she should tell Arnold how she passed disguised as a Chinese shoemaker, before the receptive and courteous consciousness of his spiritual senior; of how she penetrated, in the suggestion of a pigtail and an unpaid bill, within the last portals that might be expected to receive her in the form under which, for example, certain black ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... twelve, with any expectation of a satisfactory result; yet we read them on Sundays, understood the point of them, and could explain the why and wherefore of them. Chittenden's one fault was his tendency to "force" a receptive boy, and to develop his intellect too quickly. As in the Pelm—(I had very nearly written it) system, he made great use of memoria technica, and always taught us to link one idea with another. At the age of ten I got puzzled over Marlborough's campaigns. "'Brom,' ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... himself with a new abode. A foreign waiter at the hotel—a gray-haired Frenchman of the old school, reputed to be the most ill-tempered servant in the house—had felt the genial influence of Amelius with the receptive readiness of his race. Here was a young Englishman, who spoke to him as easily and pleasantly as if he was speaking to a friend—who heard him relate his little grievances, and never took advantage of that circumstance to turn ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... I thought I was going to broaden Jean, to show her what a narrow little Puritan she is, bound in the Old Testament thrall of her Great-aunt Alison—but not a bit of it. She is very receptive, delighted to be told about people and clothes, cities, theatres, pictures, but on what she calls 'serious things' she is an absolute rock. It is like finding a Roundhead delighting in Royalist sports and plays, or a Royalist chanting Roundhead psalms—if ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... flesh and blood realities of life as we know it. Against this tyrannical influence, which may be in a vulgar and popular as in a scientific form, which may be the dull result of habit or the more specious effect of a sensitive and receptive imagination, but which in all cases is at bottom the same, Mr. Mozley ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... nephews of the great Mr. Melnor appeared. They closed and locked the door behind them as they were tersely bidden, then stood in a row, politely and attentively receptive—well-bred, pleasant-faced, expensive-looking young fellows, typical of the metropolis. Mr. Trinkle eyed ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... rhyme, melody, harmony are all an embodiment in sound, as distinguished from word, of what can be so embodied—the feeling of the poem, which goes before, and prepares the way for the following thought—tunes the heart into a receptive harmony. Then comes the new arrangement of thought and figure whereby the meaning contained is presented as it never was before. We give a sort of paraphrastical synopsis of the poem, which, partly in virtue of its disagreeableness, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... that he never wrote a description whilst the scene was actually before him; and this fact points to an important psychological principle. The human mind, so long as it is compelled to strain the receptive faculties, cannot engage in that "poetic" activity—to use the term in its Greek sense—which is commonly called "original creation." And as with individuals, so with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture a nation inevitably condemns itself ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in our faithful old canoe paddled quickly down over the lake I am afraid that none of us thought of anything save the outcome of the test we were to make of our fortunes at the rapid for which we were bound. It is difficult to be receptive to beauty when one has had only a little watered pea meal for breakfast after a long train of lean and hungry days. We were glad only that the sun was modifying the chill air of the dawn, thus increasing our ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... far confined myself to the purely intellectual side of this question. But man is not all intellect. If he were so, science would, I believe, be his proper nutriment. But he feels as well as thinks; he is receptive of the sublime and beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed, I believe that even the intellectual action of a complete man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an undercurrent of the emotions. It is vain to attempt to separate ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... my cultivated friends; married artists, musicians, highly-strung people, whose lives were passed in an atmosphere vibrating with quick impressions. But I went unrewarded. The children of such people are apt to be peevishly receptive, but their moods are often cloudy, and I wished for a pellucid nature. After a time I went lower down, and I began to look about the streets ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the story the word of the kingdom, refreshing as cold waters to a thirsty soul, while the other, hearing the same words, perceived nothing in them but incoherent and tantalizing enigmas. For the right comprehension of the parables in particular, as of revealed truth in general, a receptive heart is a qualification even more peremptorily and essentially necessary than a penetrating understanding. "If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God" ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... background of the task which (he considered) he had accomplished with extraordinary efficiency, his senses noted faintly the continual trickle of customers, all of whom were infallibly drawn to Miss Ingamells's counter by her mere watchful and receptive appearance. He had heard phrases and ends of phrases, such as: "No, we haven't anything smaller," "A camel-hair brush," "Gum but not glue," "Very sorry, sir. I'll speak firmly to the paper boy," and the sound of coins dragged along the counter, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... in the New. To the uncorrupted mind, to the unjaded mind, which has not been forced to look on books as mere recitals of exciting adventures, the Acts of the Apostles are full of entrancing episodes. It is very easy for a receptive youth to acquire a taste for St. Paul, and I soon learned that St. Paul was not only one of the greatest of letter writers, but as a figure of history more interesting than Julius Caesar, and certainly more modern. Young people delight ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... period of his poetic activity, he was to derive his inspiration from other sources. The most fruitful and important of these was unquestionably his intercourse with Wordsworth, from whom, although there was doubtless a reciprocation of influence between them, his much more receptive nature took a far deeper impression than it made. [1] At the time of their meeting he had already for some three years been acquainted with Wordsworth's works as a poet, and it speaks highly for his discrimination ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... owner drank cider at the Spotted Woodpigeon and talked pleasantly with the villagers, who, on learning that he had never even heard of the Surrey cattle-maimings, were at great pains to pour information and theories into his receptive ear. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... and give free scope to Sir Joshua's "that," and try again, and again; and look, oculo intento, acie acerrima. Looking is a voluntary act,—it is the man within coming to the window; seeing is a state,—passive and receptive, and, at the best, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... worn and wrinkled around the eyes, and grizzled at the temples, was the harder and more square of the two, and it was with something like envy that the owner looked at the comfortable outlines of Pagett's blandly receptive countenance, the clear skin, the untroubled eye, and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to accomplish anything first put yourself in a concentrating, reposeful, receptive, acquiring frame of mind. In tackling unfamiliar work make haste slowly and deliberately and then you will secure that interior activity, which is never possible when you are in a hurry or under a strain. When you "think hard" or try to hurry results too quickly, you generally shut ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So come ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... through and through at a glance. There was a Miss Bluestocking who charmed some people, irritated others, frightened a few, and caused many to sneer. Her chief friend among the males was a young man named Mr Weakeyes, who had a small opinion of himself and a very receptive mind. Miss Troolove, among the ladies, was her chief friend. The strange misnomers which one meets with in society were also found in the little world in that steamer—that Royal Mail steamer we should say—for, while we turn aside for a brief period to condescend upon these ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... his he was a mass of quivering sensibilities. At the slightest impact of the outside world upon his consciousness, his thoughts, sympathies, and emotions leapt and played like lambent flame. He was extraordinarily receptive and responsive, while his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work establishing relations of likeness and difference. "Mr. Eden," was what he had thrilled to—he who had been called "Eden," or "Martin Eden," or just ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... rest satisfied with it. No effort is made to instruct others in a belief which has helped them. The church believes in a teaching ministry, but has not yet come to fully believe in a teaching laity. The laity for the most part assumes a receptive attitude. Our Bible-schools might be doubled in numbers and effectiveness if Christian men and women, well qualified for the task, could be induced to respond to the strong demand for more teachers. There is no reason why Bible instruction and Christian teaching should be wholly confined to Sunday. ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the value ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... schooled in England until the war clouds lowered, and as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... metamorphoses particularly amusing to watch is, that of an observant, receptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided and followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, gradually develops her excellent brain, and rises through fathoms of self-culture and purblind experiment, to the surface of dilettantism and connoisseurship. One can generally detect ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... led and taught from His divine love according to His divine wisdom; but as a man is not deprived of freedom, he can be led and taught only in the measure of his receptiveness as of himself. 6. Those who are receptive are conducted to their places through an infinite maze by winding paths, much as the chyle is carried through the mesentery and the lacteal vessels there to its cistern, and from this into the blood by ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury:—let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, {124} bee-like, buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at. But let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit—Sap will be given us for meat, and ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... will turn over an edition of Shaftsbury, and try to read it with the mind of this merry and receptive printer's boy, will perceive how entirely captivating it must have been to him. The raillery that was always the raillery of a gentleman; the irony so delicate as really to deceive some men who passed for acute; the fine urbanity that pervades even the passages called severe; the genuine reverence ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... course of a few weeks, would you not advocate opening negotiations for peace? And were I to show the Emperor of Germany that his great army could be destroyed in even less time, would he not be more receptive than we now ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... of Albert's promise, the Calvin lumber was not delivered on time. The Reverend gentleman called to ask why. His manner was anything but receptive so far ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and receptive child, eager, interested in all the various entertaining aspects of life in a city which, "gleaning all races from all lands," presents more diversified and picturesque varieties of human condition than any other, East or West. A little incident ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... than transferring to the innermost plane of origination, a principle with which all readers who are "in the thought" may be presumed to be quite familiar—the principle of Receptiveness. We all know what is meant by a receptive mental attitude when applied to healing or telepathy; and does it not logically follow that the same principle may be applied to the receiving of life itself from the Supreme Source? What is wanted, therefore, is to place ourselves in a receptive mental attitude towards the ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... graciously he answered, "Fra Elbertus, I'll do anything that you say." I gave the signal that all the workers should quit their tasks and meet at the Chapel. In five minutes we had an audience of three hundred—men in blouses and overalls, girls in big aprons—a very jolly, kindly, receptive company. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... frank in his likes and dislikes, he hated secrets, and he loved an opponent who engaged him in the open. Herbeck often labored with him over this open manner, but the mind he sought to work upon was as receptive to political hypocrisy as a wall of granite. It was this extraordinary rectitude which made the duke so powerful an aid to Bismarck in the days that followed. The Man of Iron needed this sort of character as a cover and a buckler ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... The Doctor shifted his pillow. "An extremely nice girl, I believe. Exceedingly sympathetic and attentive to all my wants, and receptive to a remarkable degree. She has been reading to me daily, and I find rather an unusual mind, undisciplined of course, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Christianity, and Mohammedanism, sprang from Semitic soil. To this might be added the religion of Babylonia, which, was unquestionably the noblest of early antiquity. In general the Semitic mind is keen, alert, receptive, and intuitional rather than logical. Restless energy and the tendency to acquire have also tended to make them leaders in the widely different fields of commerce and religion. The patriarch Jacob is ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... school she is hardly old enough to enter service, and too often in the year or so that elapses before she 'goes out' much mischief is done. She is then at an age when the mind is peculiarly receptive, and the ways of the young labourers with whom she is thrown into contact are not very refined. Her first essay at 'service' is often as day-nursemaid at some adjacent farmhouse, taking care of ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... name and character, it exists to-day virtually as it came from the maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture, it is a faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding the mass of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them responsive and receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth upward, and passive in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de Maistre used to preach that, all social order depending on the authority of beliefs as well as on the authority of behavior, no man ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Calvinism in all lands aroused {248} republican passions and excited rebellion against the powers that be. This feature was the more prominent in the Netherlands [Sidenote: 1545] in that its first missionaries were French exiles who irrigated the receptive soil of the Low Countries with doctrines subversive of church and state alike. The intercourse with England, partly through the emigration from that land under Mary's reign, partly through the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all Beings to Eyes, some more capable of Sight and receptive of Objects than others; and as to things Invisible, they reckon nothing so, only so far as our Sight is deficient, contracted or darkened by Accidents from without, as Distance of Place, Interposition of Vapours, Clouds, liquid Air, Exhalations, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... tire with his best ex-coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... circulation [40]of the pamphlet at the time, or at any later period, is to introduce an element unnecessary to explain the vogue of the relation. It passed simply as a story of adventure, and as such it fell upon a time when a wide public was receptive to the point of being easily duped. Wood asserts that the "Isle of Pines," when first published, "was look'd upon as a mere sham or piece of drollery; "{1} and there are few contemporary references ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... domesticated and bored with each other in the midst of their travels; there were small parties and large parties, and lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting boisterously, but all thinking, conversing, joking, or scowling as was their wont at home; and just as intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks upstairs. Henceforth they would be labelled as having passed through this and that place, and so would be their luggage. They would cherish this distinction of their persons, and preserve the gummed tickets on their portmanteaus ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... stayed at Mrs. Alexander Whyte's. In the course of these three days He addressed the Theosophical Society, the Esperanto Society, and many of the students, including representatives of almost all parts of the East. He also spoke to two or three other large meetings in the bleak but receptive 'northern Athens.' It is pleasant to add that here, as elsewhere, many seekers came and had private interviews with Him. It was a fruitful season, and He then returned ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... latter, but never with Nature in her varying moods, with the peculiarities of races, or with the manners and customs of each new locality and country. The delight in natural objects grows by experience in every cultivated and receptive mind. The rugged architecture of lofty mountains, the aspect of tumbling waterfalls, noble rivers, glowing sunsets, broad land and sea-views—each of these has a special, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... one to be commiserated, in not seeing that she herself was a greater loser than he, that to return his love would not be a concession but an acquisition. Most men are content to love, to compel women to receive their love; they prefer the passive, the receptive attitude in the woman, and are even bored by being actively loved in return; for love is exacting, and the male is impatient of exaction. Adelaide did not understand just this broad but subtle difference between Dory ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what expression and manner the light allowed them to see was friendly and receptive, as though he listened to brilliant suggestions. He had a nice courtesy, and Miss Hinsdale felt continually that she was cleverer than usual this evening, and no one took his silence to be churlish, though they all innocently ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with the variable sex index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to assume a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine role and vice versa, the tragedy of compelled ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... journey became very agreeable. Godfrey was interested in everything, being of a quick and receptive mind, and Miss Ogilvy proved a fund of information. When they had exhausted the scenery they conversed on other topics. Soon she knew everything there was to know about him and Isobel, whom it was evident ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... average weight of those of another into which it flows, is a problem which we cannot solve. The fact, for example, of the river Shin flowing from a large lake, with a course of only a few miles, into the Oykel, although it accounts for its being an early river, owing to the receptive depth, and consequently higher temperature of its great nursing mother, Loch Shin, in no way, so far at least as we can see, explains the great size of the Shin fish, which are taken in scores of twenty pounds' weight. They have little or nothing to do with the loch itself, haunting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and so had Plotinus; but this was not enough, as More may have wanted to imagine, to make Descartes a neo-Platonist.[3] But the Platonic element implicit in Descartes, his theory of innate ideas, and his proof of the existence of God from the idea of God, all helped to make More so receptive to him. Nevertheless, More did not really need Descartes, nor, as he himself was later to discover, had he even understood him properly, for More had looked at him only to find ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... of psychic power will cheat them of insight and poise; for minds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still, can seldom or never be hushed to a warm ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Gentian," "Among the Trees," "The Fountain" and "A Rain Dream." To read such poems is to understand the fact, mentioned in our biography, that Bryant's poetry was a thing apart from his daily life. His friends all speak of him as a companionable man, receptive, responsive, abounding in cheerful anecdote, and with a certain "overflowing of strength" in mirth or kindly humor; but one finds absolutely nothing of this genial temper in his verse. There he seems to regard all such bubblings and overflowings as unseemly levity (lo! the Puritan), which he must ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... useless to struggle against it, and deafen my ears to the cry. It must be given voice. I felt my soul condemning me as an echoer and imitator of men, as one whose every thought becomes coloured with others' views. Like a sponge I was readily receptive. Let a little mental pressure be applied and I gave back the identical thoughts hardly shaded by inward feelings. This was ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... of nature for a receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch—one of the first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his Ansichten der ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Miss Gannion said regretfully. "I only know people who are, and they are not always receptive in their minds. Still, I may be able to do something, and he made a good impression at Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's recital. In the meantime, bring him to my home, some evening soon. Friday is my day; but, if ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... effect, and, in addition, broadened his mental outlook in a remarkable manner. Foreign travel, a wider acquaintance with differing types of humanity, and, above all, a newly-won acquaintance with the contemporary literature of other countries, made a deep impression upon Bjornson's vigorously receptive mind. He browsed voraciously upon the works of foreign writers. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Taine, Max-Mueller, formed a portion of his mental pabulum at this time—and the result was a significant alteration ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... hitherto done, but as a science that transforms the personality, and is therefore capable of taking its stand as a true and real pedagogy. Whereas the ancient pedagogy in all its various interpretations started from the conception of a "receptive personality"—one, that is to say, which was to receive instructions and to be passively formed, this scientific departure starts from the conception of an active personality—reflex and associative—developing itself by a series of reactions induced by ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... which is advertised to do marvels. He is in such an expectant state of mind that he is willing to make almost any sacrifice to obtain the wonderful remedy; and when he receives it, he is in such a receptive mood that he responds quickly, and thinks it is the medicine ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalising virtue: song would song succeed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... deepest and richest colors and their gradations that contemporary manufacturers could produce—subjects selected from the creation down to the life of Christ, in addition containing a complete alphabet of early Christian symbolism. The roof surfaces being one succession of over-arching curves become receptive of innumerable waves of light and broad unities of soft shadows, giving the whole an incomparable quality of tone and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men's adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably young—still beautifully unthinking—infinitely receptive. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... his name) was of so noble a temper that, being now nigh upon seventy years of age, and all but devoid of natural heat of body, he was yet receptive of the flames of love; and having at an assembly seen a very beautiful widow lady, Madonna Malgherida de' Ghisolieri, as some say, and being charmed with her beyond measure, was, notwithstanding his age, no less ardently enamoured than a young man, insomuch that he was not well able ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and gentlemen was rowed ostentatiously across to land awkwardly at such a point as would herald the fact and afford a precious interim in which we were plainly invited to embellish ourselves—to assume a receptive style of countenance and clothes and company manners. Careless of dignity, the charitable prelude was lost upon us. Our self-conscious and considerate visitors dumbly expressed amazement at their informal reception ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might be counted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in a superficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks' introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely during this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles than this in which the Carsons aspired to move, but ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand themselves and one another that each may move freely along his or her own track without jar or jostle,—a family where affection is always sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,—where all personal delicacies are respected,—and where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a knowledge of the kind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... this kind has certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond of good eating and drinking—costly in costume as its purse can buy; and all through its best average of houses, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... members—after we secure them. A small sum, contributed by each member, will run the whole concern. People who are as constantly employed as these mill operatives have not the leisure nor means to acquire a book education, but a more intelligent, wider-awake, more receptive class is not to be found. Yet let nobody dare to approach them with anything at all in the nature of 'charity' or mental almsgiving. Your democrat beats your aristocrat in the matter of pride every time, and that is a paradox for you to consider. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... head and looked out across the bay; and Shotwell, who once had had a gaily receptive eye for ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... cunning. From hour to hour, growing more restive, it employed devices of craft and subtlety. As when Merton Gill, carefree to the best of his knowledge, strolling lightly to another point of interest, graciously receptive to the pleasant life about him, would suddenly discover that a part of his mind without superintendence had for some moments been composing a letter, something ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Hill's eloquence was in flights, always rising and finally sublime; Stephens' was argumentative with an elegant smoothness, often flowing in sweeping, majestic waves; Toombs' was an engulfing stream of impetuous force, with the roar of thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close a campaign; ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after Pistol has been out Pistol'd, and the welkin rung for hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there, and is watching me, and my thoughts are quiet and my mind receptive, she becomes visible. A ghost in my study, or the lab where I work, or—if I am asleep—in my dreams. Like an angel, or ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... with her elder sister, became the vigilant and joint guardians of their brother's books and fame, till, four years ago, a terrible illness cut short her life, and set free, in her brother's words, the "unclouded and receptive soul." ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fire because the woman next door had been burnt to death. Old Professor Hay, our lecturer in psychology, explained it to us. He said the girl was in a weak state of nerves and health generally, owing to family troubles she'd had to shoulder. She was receptive to suggestion, you see. And she was too tired to think logically. Seeing the burnt woman there very peaceful, and people sorry for her—don't ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was him!" He clambered over the circle of stones and backed away, eyeing the entrance as though he expected to see the Hopi emerge at any moment. He crouched behind a boulder, his pulses racing. He was keyed to a high tension of expectancy. In fact, he was in a decidedly receptive mood for that which immediately happened. He noticed that his horse, a hundred yards or so up the valley, was circling the cedar and pulling back on the reins. He wondered what was the matter with him. The horse was usually a well-behaved animal. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... invigorates us to undertake them. In the morning all things are possible because the heavens and the earth are so visibly united in the fellowship of common life; the one pouring down a measureless and penetrating tide of vitality, the other eagerly, worshipfully receptive. Nature has no more inspiring truth for us than this constant and complete enfolding of our life by a higher and vaster life, this unbroken play of a diviner purpose and force through us. Nothing is lost, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of it, from books; but from this little lady's lips it took on a charm and graciousness which made it fresh to me. I listened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing the cause, that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptive attention, which comes at times to one during the performance of music when untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group of listeners was less compact; and then, as we moved from the first point in the church to a new one, I saw that ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... then it is mostly in a season when, appropriately enough, one may go out and kill something. But his fine days are the best for stopping at home, to read, to think, to muse—even to dream; in fact to live fully, intensely and quietly, in the brightness of comprehension, in that receptive glow of the mind, the gift of the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... being agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made a special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her as against ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you," said Yates, strolling into the barn, taking a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram, who declined any ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... man stands, and not from some special genius, or exceptional and adventitious point. He does not make the impression of the scholar or artist or litterateur, but such as you would imagine the antique heroes to make,—that of a sweet-blooded, receptive, perfectly normal, catholic man, with, further than that, a look about him that is best suggested by the word elemental or cosmical. It was this, doubtless, that led Thoreau to write, after an hour's interview, that he suggested "something a little more ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the occupation of a nation, as whether it shall be militant, commercial, or agricultural. In turn occupation determines what the character of a people and their laws shall be, whether they shall be warlike or peaceful, inventive or receptive, stationary or roving; and these, in turn, are the matters which determine the civil scale to which ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... touch on certain specifications I must premise that the influence of this journal on a Westerner, who read it in a receptive spirit, was probably more potent than on one living in the East. The arrogance of a higher civilization in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia than elsewhere in the United States, the term "wild and woolly West," applied ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... preventing the adaptation of Christianity to the needs of to-day, and to drive the spirit of religion, which is eternal, from organised Christianity to take refuge once more in some newer forms, more receptive of truth, ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... an uncompromising speech. That is by far better than to make a hero out of a McClellan. But the misdeeds of the Administration easily confused such impressionable receptive minds ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... evoked an image of the magnificently fierce old men he chants in his book. But he wasn't fierce, his voice was a tenor of agreeable timbre, and he was gentle, even to womanliness. Indeed, he was like a receptive, lovable old woman, the kind he celebrates so often. He never smoked, his only drink was water. I doubt if he ever drank spirits. His old friends say "No," although he is a terrible rake in print. Without ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a social success; certainly, I think, an artistic one. He had great powers, had any impulse been present to urge him to execution and achievement. But he was for none of these things. Contemplative, receptive, with a keen sense of certain sub-tones and side aspects of life unseen by most, he doubtless chose wisely to enjoy life his own way, and to gather from the fleeting days what bliss they had to give, nor spend them in toiling for a ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; and ivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate color—(therefore to this day the favorite ground of miniature painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-colored marble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white marble and green ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Isaac Brock. It was not long before he had won, with his conquering ways and robust manhood, the allegiance of the big-hearted fur-traders in Montreal. Their wild legends of the great fur country rang in his ears, and his receptive mind was soon stored with the exploits of Radisson and Groseillers, Joliette, Marquette, and other famous pathfinders, with whose exploits a century and a half before, aided by his fluency in French, he ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... Palais, cooled and made receptive to music by the joyous quarter of an hour in the buffet, we heard Mme. Gautier sing "Le Cid," by Massenet, and the Princess Tekau accompany her effectively on the piano. A solo de piston, a violin, a flute, all played by Tahitians, entertained us, and then ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... from all sources without losing its own individuality. It has been said, "There is nothing newer in it than of the sixteenth century; and even then nothing was original, especially in the minor arts." But this is owing to the Hindu being equally endowed with assimilative and receptive capacity,[40] so that in the hands of the Indian craftsman everything assumes the distinctive expression ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... means of an angel there. The Divine in the whole heaven and the Divine in an angel is the same; therefore even the whole heaven may appear as one angel. So is it with the church, and with a man of the church. The greatest form receptive of the Divine is the whole heaven together with the whole church; the least is an angel of heaven and a man of the church. Sometimes an entire society of heaven has appeared to me as one angel-man; and it was told that it may appear like a man ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... York made was carefully placed. As a hunter stops in the forest and gazes straight ahead, his mind, receptive to the slightest movement of a squirrel or the rustle of leaves in any of the trees before him, so this Tennessee mountaineer faced and fought that line of blazing machine guns on the ridge of the hill before ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... is not absolutely new, but is certainly novel. In him it first revealed itself in a receptive sympathy for the rare flood of experiences that his naval life brought on him, experiences which had not fallen to the lot of Bernardin de St. Pierre or Chateaubriand, both of whom he resembles. But neither of those writers possessed Loti's delicate sensitiveness to exotic nature as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... myself raised him to a deaconship of our Monastery. His priestly name is Sergius. He was scarcely out of boyhood when I came here; it was not long, however, before I discovered in him the qualities which drew me to thee during thy prison life at the old convent of Irene—a receptive mind, and a native proneness to love God. I made his way easy. I became his teacher, as I had been thine; and as the years flew by he reminded me more and more of thee, not merely with respect to mental capacity, but purity of soul and aspiration as well. Need ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... easier alternatives; she could go on the stage, or into domestic service, or she could call up Captain Dane and tell him she was hungry. Or she could let any one of several young men understand that she was now permanently receptive to dinner invitations. And she could, if she chose, live on her personal popularity,—be to one man or to several une maitresse vierge—manage, contrive, accept, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the matter of music—ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught. To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never denying, defending or justifying what she might point out as a fault, but setting himself at once to the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive in it. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... eagerly to ask: On this strongly marked temperament, so delicately imaginative and so keenly logical, so receptive and so retentive, a type alike of the philosopher and the poet, the scholar and the musician—on such a contemplative genius, what were the effects of so great and so constant indulgence in a drug noted for its power of heightening and extending, for a season, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... fruits, nuts, oils and raw vegetables and excluding the dalry products, "Yogi" breathing, and "sitting in the silence." That is, sitting in darkness, in seclusion or in company with others, while keeping the mind in a passive, receptive condition for extraneous impressions. These practices tend to develop very dangerous phases of abnormal and subjective psychism, such as ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... the students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, skill which was progressive—in the other, skill which was at pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction—hungry for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and bodily states of the female."[96] We may probably agree that this "secondary law of courting" does really represent a tendency of love in individuals of complex and sensitive nature, and the outcome of such a receptive attitude on the part of the male is undoubtedly in well-marked cases a desire of submission to the female's will, and a craving to experience in some physical or psychic form, not necessarily painful, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... intelligence; the gratitude of savage loneliness toward the beautiful feet of exploration. A consciousness of her clean mind, a consciousness of her young, untamed spirit, had come slowly to life in her since her talk with Holliwell. Joan was peculiarly a woman—that is, the passive and receptive being. Pierre had laid his hand on her heart and she had followed him; now this young parson had put a curious finger on her brain, it followed him. Her husband saw the admiration, the gratitude, the tender excitement in her frank eyes, and the poison ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... to Nature," he said. "I sat down here in this New Forest, sat down fair and square, and looked. That was my first difficulty, to sit here quiet without being bored, to wait without being impatient, to be receptive and very alert, though for a long time nothing particular happened. The change in fact was slow in those ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... give us all that they alone recognize as desirable. On the other hand, that for which alone the nobler soul among us can live is then eradicated from public life, and the people, who have always shown themselves receptive toward the impulses of higher things, and the majority of whom, it might be hoped, could even be raised to that nobility, are—in so far as it is treated as they wish it to be treated—abased beneath its rank, dishonored, and blotted out, since it coalesces with the populace of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... messengers of supereminent light! Oh, ye soul-thrilling angels from realms supernal! Draw nearer—unfold your celestial wings and brood tenderly o'er the aspirations of this receptive heart—this heart already upborne on waves of ecstasy and o'er- mastering joy; fulfill its psychic dreams and lift it to thine own supersensible heights"—she breathed in an exaggerated stage whisper and continued her vague, visionary monologue, or extravaganza, until the curtain fell and ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... priests went with me to the copse. They saw nothing, but were in too anxious a state to be receptive. I saw Ishbel for one moment. She looked agonised, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... voice keyed down again to calm and tender wisdom, the words of the Scriptural poet stole out over the heads of the perturbed people, stilling their minds once more into the right receptive vein: "'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... is to dispose the auditors to be favorable to us in the other parts of the discourse. This, as most authors agree, is accomplished by making them friendly, attentive, and receptive, tho due regard should be paid to these three particulars throughout the ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... not what Mr. Offord said about him, but what he wasn't able to say in return. His idea of conversation for himself was giving you the convenience of speaking to him; and when he went to "see" Lady Kenyon for instance it was to carry her the tribute of his receptive silence. Where would the speech of his betters have been if proper service had been a manifestation of sound? In that case the fundamental difference would have had to be shown by their dumbness, and many of them, poor things, were dumb enough without that provision. Brooksmith ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... to sail that evening, her destination being Miami and the West Coast where Portlaw desired to do some tarpon fishing and Wayward had railroad interests. Malcourt, always in a receptive attitude, was quite ready to go anywhere when invited. Otherwise he preferred a remunerative attention ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... fate that this aunt had convinced her of. Buck had defied it, and laughed it out of countenance. These men, so strong, so capable, had communicated to her receptive nature something of the hope and strength that was theirs. Thus she was ready to believe, to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, feeling that in the future nothing could hurt her. So she was ready for her ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... that is not, strictly speaking, a psi phenomenon at all. Studies in that area belong to the field of mob psychology; they are not properly in my scope." He looked vastly superior to anything and everything that was outside his scope. Malone concentrated on looking receptive and understanding. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... on the subject of Roman camps in general, and the girls listened with receptive faces, but minds wandering upon more modern themes. Morvyth was speculating whether it would be possible to purchase chocolates on the way home, Fauvette was planning her next party frock, and Aveline was wondering whether there would be jam ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... that strangers who come usually sit in front of me. I have a lively curiosity, and I like to look at them. In the winter there are no strangers, and my mind is, I fancy, at such times, more receptive to the sermon. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... Besides, following out your comparison, the treatment that is applied to the ills of the country is so destructive that it is felt only in the sound parts of the organism, whose vitality is thus weakened and made receptive of evil. Would it not be more rational to strengthen the diseased parts of the organism and lessen the violence of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... his dignity, that just escaped being pompous, held in it something that was implacable. A convinced assurance, almost remorseless, gleamed in his eyes when he preached especially, and his threats of hell fire must have scared souls stronger than the timid, receptive Mabel whom he married. He clad himself in long frock-coats hat buttoned unevenly, big square boots, and trousers that invariably bagged at the knee and were a little short; he wore low collars, spats occasionally, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... that they were able to give them a sufficient knowledge of the mysteries of our faith to be able to bestow the rite of baptism.' It may be that the Caaguas, not having much to occupy their minds, approached the mysteries of our faith in more receptive attitudes than is attained by those whose minds are full. But, anyhow, Montoya, with true prudence, deferred their baptism till just before their death, for a few months of life outside the forests ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... head of Garfield's Cabinet, was most directly affected by the catastrophe. He had stepped from the Senate into the State Department at Garfield's request. While he was a receptive candidate for the Presidency this post suited his needs and gratified his taste. He loved business and liked to associate with men. He had a diplomatic vision that led him to formulate a more constructive policy than ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign language which would not remain in the memory. After a certain amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized—as if nauseated—with spasmodic rejections. In such a case pass the question by, but on going to bed, think it over and will to understand it on the morrow. It will often suffice to merely desire that it shall recur in more intelligible form—in ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... stucco, he looked further at the Telegraph. He was rather surprised to find more than a column of enticing palaces, each in the finest position in London; London, in fact, seemed to be one unique, glorious position. And it was so welcome, so receptive, so wishful to make a speciality of your comfort, your food, your bath, your sanitation! He remembered the old boarding-houses of the eighties. Now all was changed, for the better. The Telegraph was full of the better, crammed and packed with tight columns of it. The ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... attribute an added significance to the short length. If the assumption of bilateral equivalence underlying this is correct, then the repetition, in quantitative terms, on one side, of what we have on the other, constitutes the unity in the horizontal disposition of aesthetic elements; a unity receptive to an almost infinite variety of actual visual forms—quantitative identity in qualitative diversity. If presented material resists objective symmetrical arrangement (which gives, with the minimum expenditure of energy, the corresponding bilateral equivalence of organic ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... in all directions, and whenever it impinges upon another mental body in a passive or receptive condition it communicates to it something of its own vibration. This does not convey a definite complete idea, as does the thought-form, but it tends to produce a thought of the same character as itself. For example, if the thought be devotional its undulations will excite ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... introduction was hardly necessary, for in his features there was much of what were the specialities of his father. There was an air of quiet resolution about him, and in the greeting which he gave me he exhibited rather a reticent character; but I attributed that to a receptive nature, which augured well for ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... through which they were passing gave proper setting for Ed's stories, and Shad, a receptive listener, wished that he, too, might battle with nature as these men did. How tame and uneventful his own life seemed. Already the subtle lure of the wilderness was ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... of tragedy and self-sacrifice, and in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of humanity. Few could have passed through such an experience and remained unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and receptive as Sara. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... among the fog and the shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the part of a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Jagow, Solf, and others. Von Bethmann-Hollweg's wife died almost on the day of his arrival in Berlin, so it was impossible for him to see the Chancellor—the man who would have probably been the most receptive to these peace ideas. All the leaders of the government, except Von Tirpitz, gave Colonel House's proposals a respectful if somewhat cynical hearing. Von Tirpitz was openly and demonstratively hostile. The leader of the German Navy simply bristled with antagonism at any suggestion for peace ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... with Freckles only served to confirm me in the belief, almost amounting to a conviction, that the female of our species reaches its full mental development at an extraordinarily early age compared to that of the male. In the male the receptive and elastic or progressive period varies greatly; but judging from the number of cases one meets with of men who have continued gaining in intellectual power to the end of their lives, in spite of physical decay, it is reasonable to conclude that the stationary ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... himself, experienced the preceding night, had extended on into his present. And the possibilities suggested by the conversation he had unwittingly overheard added sufficiently to the other feelings to put him into a peculiarly receptive state of mind. He was wild to be one of the Belding rangers. The idea of riding a horse in the open desert, with a dangerous duty to perform, seemed to strike him with an appealing force. Something within him went out to the cowboys, to this blunt and kind Belding. He was afraid to meet ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... be pleased to see you, Friend Joseph," said Rosa, with one of her sweetest smiles, which penetrated the Quaker's soul, as sunshine does the receptive earth. Yet, when the carriage had rolled away, he harnessed his sleek horses to the wagon, and conveyed Henriet and her babe to the house of a Friend at White Plains, till he ascertained whether these stylish-looking strangers were what ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... deepest lake, and to sit down in the heather and wait half an hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had thought to be prepared and receptive. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... for practice or sport, Raymond remained within the house, generally the companion of the studious John; and as the latter grew strong enough to talk, he was always imparting new ideas to the untutored but receptive ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... republic could have aided the circulation [40]of the pamphlet at the time, or at any later period, is to introduce an element unnecessary to explain the vogue of the relation. It passed simply as a story of adventure, and as such it fell upon a time when a wide public was receptive to the point of being easily duped. Wood asserts that the "Isle of Pines," when first published, "was look'd upon as a mere sham or piece of drollery; "{1} and there are few contemporary references to the relation of either Pine or Van ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... his novel. "As the sun colours flowers, so Art colours life." It seemed to him that this was beginning to come true, and that life was already presenting itself to him in a gayer, brighter dress. He reached the publisher's office, therefore, in an unwontedly receptive mood, and was tremendously impressed by the rudeness of the clerks, who treated authors as mendicants and expressed their opinion of literature by handling books as if ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... fact that the place was brilliantly illumined with electricity, while the silence was emphasised rather than disturbed by the monotonous, regular thud of an accumulator pumping the subtle fluid into a receptive dynamo situated in an outhouse to ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the noblest human sentiments are not made in vain (and no effort of goodness or generosity is ever sterile), the conviction which is gradually forming itself, even in the least receptive minds, that the treaties of peace are inapplicable, as harmful to the conquerors as to the conquered, gains in force. For the treaties are at one and the same time a menace for the conquerors and a paralysis of all activity on the part of the conquered, since once the economic unity ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... caught and held her attention; every sense was quiveringly alert and receptive; she was at the mercy of ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... days of the Alleghany traffic; wagoners deriding Clinton's Ditch; angry boatmen anxious to ram the paddle wheels of Fulton's Clermont, which threatened their monopoly. Such opposition has always been an incident of progress; and even in this new country, receptive as it was to new ideas, the Washingtons, the Fitches, the Fultons, the Coopers, and the Whitneys, who saw visions and dreamed dreams, all had to face scepticism and hostility from those ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... thing to be considered. I believe that the bird, like creatures in other classes, has his receptive period, his time to learn, and that, like some mammals, he learns everything he needs to know in his first year or two; and that, having acquired his proper song, he adds little or nothing to it thereafter, although the song may increase in power and brilliance when the bird comes ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... him, but what he wasn't able to say in return. His idea of conversation for himself was giving you the convenience of speaking to him; and when he went to "see" Lady Kenyon for instance it was to carry her the tribute of his receptive silence. Where would the speech of his betters have been if proper service had been a manifestation of sound? In that case the fundamental difference would have had to be shown by their dumbness, and many of them, poor things, were dumb enough without that provision. Brooksmith took ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... he had stepped back a century or so into the age of credulity. Credulity, he believed, was a good thing, almost a divine thing, if it were properly used; he did not carry his processes far enough to realize that credulity could never become fixed—that it was always open to conviction. A receptive and not an inquiring mind seemed to him the prerequisite for a convert. And black people, he ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... London, the heat, and smoke, and raucous voice of it, seemed far enough away, the wholesome charm of the country very present. For a while Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up to it. Receptive, quiescent, contented, he basked in the sunshine, his mind vacant of definite thought. But for a while only. For as physical fatigue wore off, definite thought returned; and with it the sense of his own loneliness, the oppression of a future empty of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... also a few of the more distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might be counted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in a superficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks' introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely during this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles than this in which the Carsons aspired to move, but he had not yet found them. Anything that had a retiring ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... thought I was going to broaden Jean, to show her what a narrow little Puritan she is, bound in the Old Testament thrall of her Great-aunt Alison—but not a bit of it. She is very receptive, delighted to be told about people and clothes, cities, theatres, pictures, but on what she calls 'serious things' she is an absolute rock. It is like finding a Roundhead delighting in Royalist sports and plays, or a Royalist chanting Roundhead psalms—if you can imagine an evangelical Royalist. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... last. How sweet through the long convalescence to lie, And from the low window, gaze out at the sky, And float, as the zephyrs so tranquilly do, Aloft in the depths of ineffable blue:— In painless, delicious half consciousness brood,— No duties to cumber, no claims to intrude,— Receptive as childhood, from trouble as free, And feel it is bliss enough ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... perfect, save for the scattered restless sound of voices. The grey sheen of the moonlight caught the stretch of water, dark boats plashed and moved. But Ursula's mind ceased to be receptive, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... things. Something in his blood, moreover, craved for dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power also, and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride. All these things were in his Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa. His mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... matter moves toward form, through desire for the primal being; for matter requires light from that which is in the essence of will, which compels matter to move toward will and to desire it: and herein will and matter are alike. And because matter is receptive of the form that has flowed down into it by the flux of violence and necessity, matter must necessarily move to receive form; and therefore things are constrained by will and obedience in turn. Hence by the light which it has from will, matter moves toward will and desires it; but when it receives ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... hour the little party rested and then Tarzan suddenly rose and, motioning the others to silence, listened. For a minute he stood motionless, his keen ears acutely receptive to sounds so faint and distant that none of the other three could detect the slightest break in the utter and deathlike quiet of the gorge. Finally the ape-man relaxed and turned toward them. "What is ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Rolfston's. At night he was stalking across the country again, to his couch on the dry clover; and he thought not even of the Hindoo king. Mrs. Rolfston's school of theology was not of the sort which worries one with puzzling things, and he had been in a receptive mood. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... special genius, or exceptional and adventitious point. He does not make the impression of the scholar or artist or litterateur, but such as you would imagine the antique heroes to make,—that of a sweet-blooded, receptive, perfectly normal, catholic man, with, further than that, a look about him that is best suggested by the word elemental or cosmical. It was this, doubtless, that led Thoreau to write, after an hour's interview, that he suggested "something a little more than human." ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the mental characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively in the work of philosophy,—the Italians, with their receptive temperament and so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development and progress in the transition period alone,—it will be seen that the Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and simplicity, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... sense-dimming style of charlatans and new theorists, which often demands either a translation or a tedious study, to make it at all intelligible to the ordinary reader. For example: "RULE XL Part 3. An intransitive or receptive asserter in the unlimited mode, depending on a word in the possessive case, may have, after it, a word in the subjective case, denoting the same thing: And, when it acts the part of an assertive name, depending on a relative, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... judgment and appreciation of a fine, noble piano performance, and of a simple, pure, well-taught style of singing, and also understand the characteristics of the performer, much more quickly than they do. The sensibility and appreciation of beauty with the public is less prejudiced, less spurious, more receptive, and more artless. Its perceptions are not disturbed by theories, by a desire to criticise, and many other secondary matters. The public do not take a biassed or stilted view. The admiration for Jenny Lind is a striking proof of this, as is also the ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of humanity. Few could have passed through such an experience and remained unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and receptive as Sara. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... not get the priesthood to admit it, but religion is a luxury which few of the hard-workers in this world can afford. But she still maintained that sense of conventional awe which strict religious training drives deep into a receptive mind. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he is, but his strength is as the strength of youth."[9] Behold here the Milton of "Samson Agonistes," a work whose beauty is of metal rather than of marble, hard, bright, and receptive of an ineffaceable die. The great fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth. In the blank verse speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... across the desks at a wall into which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive in it. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... harmony, when man crept close to nature to be taught untroubled joy in living. In such days, despite the storms assailing the young Israelitish nation, a poet, his heart filled with the sunshine of joy, his mind receptive, his eyes open wide to see the flowers unfold, the buds of the fig tree swell, the vine put forth leaves, and the pomegranate blossom unfurl its glowing petals, could carol forth the "Song of Songs," the most perfect, the most beautiful, the purest creation of Hebrew literature and ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of Garfield's Cabinet, was most directly affected by the catastrophe. He had stepped from the Senate into the State Department at Garfield's request. While he was a receptive candidate for the Presidency this post suited his needs and gratified his taste. He loved business and liked to associate with men. He had a diplomatic vision that led him to formulate a more constructive policy than most Secretaries ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well as with an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive—even more so than his stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with him much longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy and helpful conversation; ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... friends, strong as their influence must have been in the aggregate on a nature so receptive, hardly concern us here. His future life, so far as we can see, was most noticeably affected by two men older than himself, and belonging to the dons—both of them fellows and tutors of St. Anselm's, though on ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finally sublime; Stephens' was argumentative with an elegant smoothness, often flowing in sweeping, majestic waves; Toombs' was an engulfing stream of impetuous force, with the roar of thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... and history, and he would have all to do for himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... action of a certain substance called brain matter, and not the product and the result of the action of an essence or force unconnected with, or outside of, brain; and, furthermore, when we know that these lower animals have receptive ganglia analogous to those possessed by man, analogical deductions force us to the conclusion that these animals should possess mental emotions and functions ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... were the tastes that were associated with the more purely intellectual elements in Hellenic culture—with the influence which the Greek rhetor or philosopher exercised in his converse with the stern but receptive minds of Rome, the love of books, the new lessons which were to be taught as to the rhythmic flow of language and the rhythmic movement of the limbs. The Greek adventurer was one of the most striking features ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... level with the novelties of the day. Some of the professors have not been unwilling to co-operate, and I am not sure even that the publishers have been entirely inert. 'The new psychology' has thus become a term to conjure up portentous ideas withal; and you teachers, docile and receptive and aspiring as many of you are, have been plunged in an atmosphere of vague talk about our science, which to a great extent has been more mystifying than enlightening. Altogether it does seem as if there were a certain fatality of mystification laid upon the teachers of our day. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... float and bob on the current in our remote eddy of life. Nevertheless, I can follow a worthy example, even though the exemplar be only a carnivorous bloom. And, I may confess, on the afternoon of October 1st, I was in a receptive mood for such flies of information as might come to me concerning two large invading vans which had rumbled into our quiet precincts and, after a pause for inquiry, stopped before the Mordaunt Estate's newly ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an idiot or an ass—and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages; admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of literature; reverent readers, who treat ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... fell into receptive soil, and from that day the art and pleasure loving citizen of the world became an earnest man with a purpose. But as he chose his purpose mainly from selfish motives it did not become an ennobling one. He now gave double attention to business and ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the family, the city, the state. There is in every truly organized community a Common Will which is willed by those who compose that community, and who in so willing are more than isolated men and women. It is not, indeed, as unrelated atoms that they have lived. They have grown, from the receptive days of childhood up to maturity, in an atmosphere of example and general custom, and their lives have widened out from one little world to other and higher worlds, so that, through occupying successive ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and female is, then, the foundation of all religions; the heaven marries the earth, as man marries woman, and that union is the first marriage. Saturn is the sky, the male, or active energy; Rhea is the earth, the female, or receptive; and these are the father and the mother of all. The Persians of old called the sky Jupiter, or Jupater, "Ju the Father." The sun is the agent of the generative power of the sky, and his beams fecundate the earth, so that from ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Shirley, sinking back into the car, with collar high about his neck and the soft hat half concealing his eyes. He scrutinized the faces of the passers-by, photographing in that receptive memory of his the ugly features of two men, who peered into the limousine from under the visors of their black caps. The car sped up town through the bewildering maze of street traffic. The chauffeur helped him up the steps of the brownstone mansion, while Grimsby's old butler ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... her trim, small head and looked out across the bay; and Shotwell, who once had had a gaily receptive eye for ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... my dear, you have been just as spellbound before, only you don't remember it," replied Salemina promptly. "I have never seen a person more perilously appreciative or receptive than you." ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this occasion Professor Wright had a ranch more receptive and intelligent audience. For, as I have said, overhearing Dick and Bud discussing the "jaw-breaking names," as the boys termed them, the scientist approached them with a reassuring smile ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon, of loud noise, but little danger. You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the rest." "Sir," said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the very essence of genius that it educates one to find beauty and harmony where before he would only have trodden over barren sands, and the grand and poor performances of any masterpiece are not a contrast to the truly receptive, but are as steps leading from the lowest to the highest in the same temple. Because one has been awe-stricken by Niagara's torrent, are the other waterfalls of the world to be uninteresting? No; to the man whose soul has really been impressed, every tiny ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... in vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign language which would not remain in the memory. After a certain amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized—as if nauseated—with spasmodic rejections. In such a case pass the question by, but on going to bed, think it over and will to understand it on the morrow. It will often suffice to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... visited the Borghese; and I was able to explain to Flora why the circular "Madonna and Angels" was not by Botticelli. And, indeed, there was hardly a picture in Rome I was unable to reattribute to its rightful owner. In the apt Flora I found a receptive pupil. She even grew suspicious about the great Velasquez at the Doria, in which she fancied, with all the enthusiasm of youth, that she detected the handling of Mazo. I soon found that it was better ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... death. Old Professor Hay, our lecturer in psychology, explained it to us. He said the girl was in a weak state of nerves and health generally, owing to family troubles she'd had to shoulder. She was receptive to suggestion, you see. And she was too tired to think logically. Seeing the burnt woman there very peaceful, and people sorry ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... reflections which Manning was careful to pour into the receptive car of Monsignor Talbot. That useful priest, at his post of vantage in the Vatican, was more than ever the devoted servant of the new Archbishop. A league, offensive and defensive, had been established between the two friends. 'I daresay I shall have many opportunities to serve ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with her only the means of new acquisition. Meantime her mind was purely receptive. She had no ambition to propound a theory, or to write her own name on any book, or plant, or opinion. Her delight in books was not tainted by any wish to shine, or any appetite for praise or influence. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... hidden panic-stricken during the first hours after the relief, were now prowling about armed from head to foot. The vast city, which had been given over for weeks to mad disorders and insane Boxerism, was in a receptive condition for this final climax. There was no semblance of authority left; with troops of many rival nationalities always pouring in, and a nominal state of war still existing, with the possibility of a Chinese counter-advance taking place, how could there be?... There was nothing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... men's faces differed as much as their attire. Orde's worn and wrinkled around the eyes, and grizzled at the temples, was the harder and more square of the two, and it was with something like envy that the owner looked at the comfortable outlines of Pagett's blandly receptive countenance, the clear skin, the untroubled eye, and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... stress which all spiritual religions have laid upon contemplation, upon prayer and fasting. Whether it is an Indian Yogi, or a Trappist Monk, or one of our own Quakers, it is all the same. In the words of the Revivalist hymn, "We must lay our deadly doing down," and in receptive silence wait for the inspiration from on high. The Conscious Personality has usurped the visible world; but the Invisible, with its immeasurable expanse, is the domain of the Sub-conscious. Hence we read in the Scriptures of losing life that we may find ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... written in this monograph a delightful eulogium of books and their manifold influence, and has gained therein two classes of readers,—the scholarly class, to which he belongs, and the receptive class, which he has benefited.—Evening Mail and Express, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of all else must be found in a self-prompted activity or wakefulness of intellect. The time when the drifting faculties begin to feel the helm of will, when the youth passes from being merely receptive to become aggressive, marks the advent of the true human era. As in the history of our planet the first remove from the tohu va-vohu was when the Spirit of God brooded on the deep, and, obedient to the command, light ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to higher denominations. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... a wonderful teacher! The player, however, must divine how to be receptive, how to enter into the master's thought, or it may go hard with him. If he does not understand, nor grasp the master's words he may suffer terribly during the ordeal of the lessons. I have witnessed such scenes! Those who are equal to the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... "and the same phases of life recur. It is we that are in a changed receptive mood. The change that seems to be in them is in reality in us. Remain as you are now, and Dione will give you the same pleasure tomorrow that ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... public meetings, and was considered to have my share of self-possession; but I never could accustom myself to the keen, disturbing, irritating atmosphere of the Legislature. Everybody seemed wide-awake and aggressive, instead of pleasantly receptive; there were so many "points of order," and what not; such complete disregard, among the members, of each other's feelings; and, finally—a thing I could never understand, indeed—such inconsistency and lack of principle ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what expression and manner the light allowed them to see was friendly and receptive, as though he listened to brilliant suggestions. He had a nice courtesy, and Miss Hinsdale felt continually that she was cleverer than usual this evening, and no one took his silence to be churlish, though ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... judge on whom he modelled Hermiston, i.e., Braxfield, was not in Stevenson's advocate days bequeathed to the Parliament House, but he had seen it in a Raeburn Exhibition he reviewed. He recollected the outward semblance of the man in his receptive memory till he resurrected Braxfield as Hermiston. The half-told tale is in itself a monument which, unfinished though it be, shows us how clever an artificer Louis ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... in your horses when we've gone a little further. I want to ride on ahead with Jefferson. I've a word to say and I've an idea he is in a receptive mood." ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... should be deeply moved on his introduction to German literature. He went to it with an open and receptive nature, and with an earnestness of purpose which could not fail to be productive. Jean Paul, the beautiful!—the good man, and the wise teacher, with poetic stuff in him sufficient to have floated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... consulting guide-books. Years of travel fatigue us with the latter, but never with Nature in her varying moods, with the peculiarities of races, or with the manners and customs of each new locality and country. The delight in natural objects grows by experience in every cultivated and receptive mind. The rugged architecture of lofty mountains, the aspect of tumbling waterfalls, noble rivers, glowing sunsets, broad land and sea-views—each of these has a special, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... make of it, Doc?" asked the Company Commander. "Do you really think there is anything in the Kid's yarn? I mean, we know he dreamed it—but do you think it's true? I suppose that tired as he was he would be in a receptive mood for ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... opinion,) something of this kind has certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond of good eating and drinking—costly in costume as its purse can buy; and all through its best average ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with the variable sex index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to assume a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine role and vice versa, the tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... with gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after Pistol has been out Pistol'd, and the welkin rung for hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of mutual admiration. The outcry only serves to make your final union the more unexpected ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... These species are self-sterile or self-unfruitful. On the other hand all walnut, pecan, and hickory species are self-fertile and cross-fertile, but may be self-unfruitful because of dichogamy, because they may shed their pollen either before or after the stigmas of the pistillate flowers are receptive to it. In all nut species cross-pollination is generally recommended so as to assure a set of nuts. With cross-pollination a better set of nuts is to be expected than with self-pollination, as well as better filling of the kernels. It has recently been found that when the pistillate flowers of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... one sighs even in the midst of admiration, thinking that if the hand which produced them had been guided by a spark of divine genius instead of the finest talent, what glorious works they would have been! The truth is that Andrea's was a receptive, rather than an original and productive mind. His art was more imitative than spontaneous, and this forms perhaps the difference between talent and genius. The art of his time sunk into his mind, and was reproduced. He lived precisely ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... writing in careful and moderate language his not unseasonable warnings, thoughts representative of a new and deeper strain of theological feeling were passing through the mind of Samuel Coleridge. His was a genius singularly receptive of the ideas which emanated from the leading intellect of his age in England or abroad. He was probably better acquainted than any other of his countrymen with the highest literature of Germany, which found in him not only an ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... perception, is not an antithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other, so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative, formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated, receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself apart from ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... "language" may be good, I am an unsafe guide in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such matters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth; it is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking receptive surface, and in every particular, upside down. For my "language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose, obscure, and more or less feeble; and still, though I have tried hard to mend ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... confined myself to the purely intellectual side of this question. But man is not all intellect. If he were so, science would, I believe, be his proper nutriment. But he feels as well as thinks; he is receptive of the sublime and beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed, I believe that even the intellectual action of a complete man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an undercurrent of the emotions. It is vain ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and are compelled to a mood receptive to our advances. More, they are forced to seek new markets for their goods just as they are forced to buy some of ours. In this way there should come about new exports to the United States, and there should spring up ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his pillow. There were some books which he read while sitting by the fire, and some whose stirring qualities moved him to walk about as he gulped their contents; but with a godly book he must lay himself down so that he might be more receptive of its soothing influence. Then he reviewed the book in question, and did it shrewdly. With the Jewish maiden and the Roman centurion going to see the strange man perform the novel rite of baptism in the river of Jordan, he looked back upon the city ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Governor of India at Calcutta. I have friendly relations with his family, and some one there will care for all letters that come to me from Europe. Dear friend, I hope to find you the same de Marsay on my return,—the man who scoffs at everything and yet is receptive of the feelings of others when they accord with the grandeur he is conscious of in himself. You stay in Paris, friend; but when you read these words, I shall be crying ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Church of England returned; and in this condition of mind he found himself outside a small Roman Catholic church dedicated to St. Joseph, where hopeful of gaining the Divine guidance within he passed through the door. It may be that he was in a less receptive mood than he thought, for what impressed him most was the Anglican atmosphere of this Italian outpost. The stale perfume of incense on stone could not eclipse that authentic perfume of respectability which has been acquired by so many Roman Catholic churches ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... receptive period of life the poison of selfishness and self-love was steadily instilled into his nature. Before he had left the nursery he had formed the habit of disregarding the wills and wishes of others, even when his childish conscience told him that he was decidedly in the wrong. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... accomplish anything first put yourself in a concentrating, reposeful, receptive, acquiring frame of mind. In tackling unfamiliar work make haste slowly and deliberately and then you will secure that interior activity, which is never possible when you are in a hurry or under a strain. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... discovering many truths in which he had been long anticipated. Herder thought that too much reading had hurt the spring and elasticity of his mind. Doubtless we may carry our efforts to excess in this direction as well as any other, by calling into unduly vigorous and persistent action the merely receptive energies of the mind. Perhaps this was the case with Herder, as the range of his reading was truly immense; but if so, it argues with fatal effect against his claims to the highest order of intellect; if the weight of his body was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was a man of much intelligence and of sterling principle, of high moral and religious character, and his house consequently was a model home. "His house was by all accounts a home pre-eminently calculated to mould the thoughts and direct the course of an intelligent and receptive nature. There was a father's masterful will and keen perception, the sweetness and piety of the mother, wealth with all its substantial advantages and few of its mischiefs, a strong sense of the value of money, a rigid avoidance of extravagance and excesses; ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... he was precisely where he had been when he started, and he had a hopeless sense of the futility of the effort he had made. Natalie had got by with a bad half-hour, and would proceed to forget it as quickly as she always forgot anything disagreeable. Still, she was in a more receptive mood than usual, and he wondered if that would not be as good a time as any to speak about his new plan as to the mill. He took an uneasy turn or two about the room, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Nature," he said. "I sat down here in this New Forest, sat down fair and square, and looked. That was my first difficulty, to sit here quiet without being bored, to wait without being impatient, to be receptive and very alert, though for a long time nothing particular happened. The change in fact was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part. Body Senses. Muscles. Soul Feeling. Resolution. Intellect ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... kingdom of God (see p. 44). They unfold these secrets and at the same time veil them in the illustrations which are employed. These illustrations attract the attention and inquiry of those who are spiritually receptive. On the other hand, those who are unworthy or hardened do not recognize the truth. Nevertheless, the parables were such miracles of simplicity and power, were so easy to remember, and so closely connected with everyday ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... renunciation on the one side, and achievement and satisfaction on the other, was not the struggle which Byron experienced in himself or desired to depict in his mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else," not the influence of Faust on a receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh well-spring of the imagination. The motif of Manfred is remorse—eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for ever buoyed up with the hope that there ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... appendicitis, which I found myself able to do with some eloquence, reciting among other details that even though the metal dust might be of an almost microscopic fineness, it could still do a mischief to one's appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly for a photographic portrait of myself that I was unable to refuse him. The thing was a snap taken of me one morning at Chaynes-Wotten by Higgins, the butler, as I ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... conservative party, but swung more and more by degrees from his old policy as light dawned upon his mind and experience taught him wisdom. Perhaps the most remarkable characteristics of this man,—opinionated and strong-headed as he undoubtedly is,—are to be found in the receptive quality of his mind, by which he is open to new ideas, and in the steady courage with which he affirms and stands by his convictions when once he has by reasoning arrived at them. It took thirteen years ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... began rapid expostulation in fluent Ogallalla. "It's no use, young man," interposed Bruce. "Your chum there has no buffalo tongues, and he knew it. Here's some hardtack for you," and he spread one liberally with sugar and handed it to the ever-receptive paw, outstretched to grasp it. A glance over the shoulder showed that Conroy was nearly at the edge. Then, quietly, Bruce, too, began to retire. He had not got ten paces, still facing his unwelcome visitor, when the Indian gave a shrill, sudden cry ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Gray," replied Dr. Jones, "that I am more positive of than that we are constantly surrounded by, and in actual contact with, spiritual forces. And further, that if we were but in a receptive condition, or were in the attitude toward God that we should be, we might, like Elisha's servant, see the hosts of the Lord camping upon the hills round about us. But my individual belief would be of no value ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... place even in the hearts of these chosen ones. After long experience, Peter's concern was: "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?"[507] They were as children to be trained and taught; but they were mostly willing pupils, receptive of soul, and imbued with a sincere eagerness to serve. To Jesus they were His little ones, His children, His servants, and His friends, as they merited.[508] They were all of the common people, not rabbis, scholars, nor ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... frowning at him. Korvin did his best to look receptive. "Why did you land your ship on ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... capacity for work." Capacity is receptive; ability, potential. A sponge has capacity for water; the hand, ability to ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... refreshing as cold waters to a thirsty soul, while the other, hearing the same words, perceived nothing in them but incoherent and tantalizing enigmas. For the right comprehension of the parables in particular, as of revealed truth in general, a receptive heart is a qualification even more peremptorily and essentially necessary than a penetrating understanding. "If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... from books; but from this little lady's lips it took on a charm and graciousness which made it fresh to me. I listened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing the cause, that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptive attention, which comes at times to one during the performance of music when untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group of listeners was less compact; and then, as we moved from ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... has its mode of being. Hence the heart can say that it is within with the body, and without with the sun, in so far as the soul with its twin faculty, puts into operation two functions: the one to vivify and realize the animal body, the other to contemplate superior things; so that it is in receptive potentiality from above, as it is in re-active potentiality below, towards the body. The body is, as it were, dead, and as it were apart from the soul, the which is its life and its perfection; and the soul is as it were dead, and a thing apart from the superior illuminating ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... I thought it was curious,'—and then a torrent of facts, criticisms, quotations, all bearing upon the particular volume which you were supposed not to like; and so on, hour after hour. There was no limit save that imposed by the receptive capacity of the guest. It reminded one of the word spoken concerning a 'hard sitter at books' of the last century, that he was a literary giant 'born to grapple with whole libraries.' But the fine flavor of those hours spent in hearing him discourse ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... writers, troubled him not at all. Given the sensation, words in which to clothe it came instinctively, faster often than he could write them down. But first he must needs experience the sensation. This type of brain suffers from one disadvantage. In time the receptive surface of it becomes dulled, calloused, and as the confirmed drug-user requires constantly increasing or varying doses to produce effect, so such an imagination requires constantly increasing or ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... turning to the left, we saw a small temple of Siva. In the dim light everything seemed weird and unreal. The view from the top of the rock was far-reaching, gopuras and temples gleaming through the green foliage. There were sacred elephants here, as at Tanjore, standing in the usual receptive attitude; for them small coins were more acceptable than food, showing how adroitly they ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of Peacock's youth is to think of his relations with Shelley. He seems to have given more than he received: his nature was not receptive. He made the poet read Greek, and persuaded him that he was not infected with elephantiasis by quoting Lucretius "to the effect that the disease was known to exist on the banks of the Nile, neque praeterea ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... what can I do for you?" is hardly a polite way of opening an interview. The host should wait with a cordially receptive air until his guest begins, unless he is in a great hurry. Then he frankly tells the caller so and asks him to make ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... few words and no tears. The force and suddenness of his emotion and her own had overborne her into this strange unmeant confession; but her mood was unlike his,—it was merely receptive. She listened to his unavailing regrets, but told him little of her ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nights. If it's anything very dreadful, like Peggy's going and getting engaged, I point out the error, the way they're always pointing errors out to me. Of course it doesn't do any good, but that isn't my fault. It's because they haven't got what my teacher calls "receptive minds." ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... sculptor. He is to make a bust of me. What better legacy can I leave to the world than a bust of van Manderpootz, sculptured from life? Perhaps I shall present it to the city, perhaps to the university. I would have given it to the Royal Society if they had been a little more receptive, if they—if—if!" The last in ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... subject of Roman camps in general, and the girls listened with receptive faces, but minds wandering upon more modern themes. Morvyth was speculating whether it would be possible to purchase chocolates on the way home, Fauvette was planning her next party frock, and Aveline was wondering whether there would be jam or ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Spotted Woodpigeon and talked pleasantly with the villagers, who, on learning that he had never even heard of the Surrey cattle-maimings, were at great pains to pour information and theories into his receptive ear. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... field, but of the very laws of nature without understanding them. Mechanical progress has come from an humble attitude toward the powers of wind and water. Home efficiency will arrive just as soon as the home-keeper will put herself in a receptive frame of mind and be prepared to learn her limitations and the extent of her control of material things. When she will stop saying "I do not believe" and set herself to learn patiently the facts in the case, then will housekeeping take ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... heaven and by means of an angel there. The Divine in the whole heaven and the Divine in an angel is the same; therefore even the whole heaven may appear as one angel. So is it with the church, and with a man of the church. The greatest form receptive of the Divine is the whole heaven together with the whole church; the least is an angel of heaven and a man of the church. Sometimes an entire society of heaven has appeared to me as one angel-man; and it was told that it may ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... conception of a Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to worship; it is felt to be always and everywhere close at hand, thinly veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive mind, to shine in its glory even through the apparent folly and wickedness of Man. The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory: the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... To the receptive eye he was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as he bent over a piece of goods outspread before a customer, one hand resting on the stuff, the other on the yard-measure, his chest as nearly touching the counter as the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and they seemed to be partially receptive to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt had written. By the end of the fifteenth year their training had reached such a stage of perfection that a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspoken thought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, they would ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... ready any and every day to propose; it would not do to let him have the first word, and cause the first heart-beat. Coronado believed that to make sure of winning the race he must take the lead at the start. Yes, he would offer himself now; he would begin by talking her into a receptive state of mind; that done, he would say with all his eloquence, "I ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... almost trembling in her eagerness of joy. She set the flowers carefully in a vase, with tender circumspection, lest a leaf might be wronged by chance crowding or inadvertent handling. Pitt watched and read it all. He felt a great compassion for Esther. This creature, full of life and sensibility, receptive to every influence, at twelve years old shut up to the company of a taciturn and melancholy father and an empty house! What would ever become of her? There was the colonel now, on the sofa, attending only to his book; caring ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... outlook in a remarkable manner. Foreign travel, a wider acquaintance with differing types of humanity, and, above all, a newly-won acquaintance with the contemporary literature of other countries, made a deep impression upon Bjornson's vigorously receptive mind. He browsed voraciously upon the works of foreign writers. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Taine, Max-Mueller, formed a portion of his mental pabulum at this time—and the result was a significant alteration of mental attitude on a number of questions, and a determination ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... fire and turning her lump of raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitude of body was one she had caught from Grom, when he was groping for a solution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught his attitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive and receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it had been whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone head firmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... endurance, the gifts of invention and imagination, qualities proper to the child, become weak and passive. The home now is only a preparation for school. In it, young people growing up, are accustomed to receive services, without performing any on their part. They are trained to be always receptive instead of giving something in return. Then people are surprised at a youthful generation, selfish and unrestrained, pressing forward shamelessly on all occasions before their elders, crudely unresponsive in respect of those attentions, ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... through all the most sensitive and receptive years of life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... legitimate, however, to conclude from this that ignorance of the meaning was the rule in old times; those were the days when the nation's traditional songs, myths, and lore formed the equipment of every alert and receptive mind, chief or commoner. There was no printed page to while away the hours of idleness. The library was stored in one's memory. The language of the mele, which now has [Page 29] become antiquated, then was familiar speech. For a kumu-hula to have given instruction in the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... shared with Carlyle the belief that conventional views were sham views, and ought to be exposed. Ridicule, if not a test of truth, is at all events a weapon against falsehood, and has done much to clear the air of history. Froude's sense of humour was rather receptive than expansive, and he did not often display it in his writings. Tristram Shandy he knew almost by heart, and he never tired of Candide, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
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