"Perception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same point ensued when our victorious armies returned from Mexico and it devolved on Congress to provide for the territories acquired by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The great relations of the subject had now become distinct and clear to the perception of the public mind, which appreciated the evils of sectional controversy upon the question of the admission of new States. In that crisis intense solicitude pervaded the nation. But the patriotic ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... why God hides for a time, as it were, seeming to have forgotten us, suspending his grace, as they say in the schools. As in this temptation not only the spirit but also the flesh is afflicted, so afterward, when he again begins to remember us, the perception of grace which during the trial was evident only to the spirit and most faintly at that, is extended to ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... he had developed a clean-cut masculinity that was strangely reassuring. She remembered how unconsciously, during these past weeks, she had turned to him for the steadiness which others had lacked; how instinctively she had counted on him for a perception of the little things, the smaller needs, which are so often the greater ones. After all, she reminded herself, in the day by day stresses of life, it was this gift of understanding, of sympathy with the innate needs, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... were nearly obliterated. The expression upon his face resembled nothing so much as a sketch which has been done over so many times that its first design is altogether lost, and if there was any answer to the riddle, it was not the mental perception of Mrs. Lathrop that was about to seize ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Daughters." Mr. Black has written some exceedingly clever conversations, which give us verbal pictures, so to speak, of some characteristic types of American womanhood. The chapters called "With a Gym Girl" and "With a Club Woman" are specially successful. There is a perception and a sense of humour about them which make them not only delightful to read, but worth thinking about afterwards. The illustrations, which are excellent, consist mainly of portraits which would be recognised ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she was beautiful; he did not dispute that she was graceful and winning, and that in the bright dawn of her womanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he turned even this against her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the unhappy man, with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a vague yearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted picture of his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against her. The worthier she promised to be of him, the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sunlit air he stepped into the vast, cool, clear- obscure, white glory of the stately shrine,—with bared head and noiseless, reverent feet, he advanced a little way up the nave, and then stood motionless, every artistic perception in him satisfied, soothed, and entranced anew, as in his student-days, by the tranquil grandeur of the scene. What majestic silence! What hallowed peace! How jewel-like the radiance of the sun pouring through the rich stained glass on those superb carved pillars, that, like ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... any perception of these shades. He drew the long breath of ease and smiled at her again, a smile that intimated how thoroughly he approved ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... spirits. It is by no means an uninstructive fact, that with the lapse of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal disputations, and the preaching of threats and terrors visibly declined, while love for his fellow-men and catholic charity greatly increased, and he was blessed with a clearer perception of the truth that God is best served through His suffering children, and that love and reverence for visible humanity is an indispensable condition of the appropriate worship of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... crouched, creeping, creeping, creeping towards his tail. Slowly, almost painfully slowly, it drew upon him gradually, so gradually that the distance between them could scarce be seen to lessen. And soundlessly, so soundlessly that even his quick ears, trained far beyond the quickest human aural perception, could not hear it. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... fashionably dressed salesladies, all in aristocratic black, showed to these whims a smiling deference, which Sylvia knew could come from nothing but the exquisite tailoring of Aunt Victoria's blue broadcloth. This perception did not in the least lower her opinion of the value of the deference. It heightened her opinion ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... closed the eyes of my old friend Eberhard. Even he never fully succeeded in subordinating his temperament to his philosophy; but in his dying hour he rose beyond the terrible grief that broke his heart—grief for his child. He summoned the thoughts of better hours to his aid,—hours when his perception of the truth had been undimmed by sorrow or passion,—and he died a noble, peaceful death. Your Majesty must still live and labor, elevating yourself and others, at one and the same time. Permit me to remind you of the moment when, seated under the weeping ash, your ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... marked Constant-Scrappe for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner given in his honor by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a most charming man, and it didn't require a much more keen perception than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow came. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her attitude ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Baldassarre, he had said to himself that if his effort at reconciliation failed, things would only be as they had been before. The first glance of his mind was backward to that thought again, but the future possibilities of danger that were conjured up along with it brought the perception that things were not as they had been before, and the perception came as a triumphant relief. There was not only the broken dagger, there was the certainty, from what Tessa had told him, that Baldassarre's mind ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... that I cannot leave my natural perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door, in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in the East. I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of face, natural to certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... idea of value, so clearly exhibited by the inevitable distinction between useful value and value in exchange does not arise from a false mental perception, or from a vicious terminology, or from any practical error; it lies deep in the nature of things, and forces itself upon the mind as a general form of thought,—that is, as a category. Now, as the idea of value is the point of departure of political economy, it follows ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... was Dede herself that smote most sharply upon sense and perception. He had always cherished the idea that she was very much a woman—the lines of her figure, her hair, her eyes, her voice, and birdlike laughing ways had all contributed to this; but here, in her own rooms, clad in some flowing, clinging gown, the emphasis of sex was startling. He had been ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... distinction between the Artist and the Moralist. With the one Form is all in all, with the other Tendency. The aim of the one is to delight, of the other to convince. The one is master of his purpose, the other mastered by it. The whole range of perception and thought is valuable to the one as it will minister to imagination, to the other only as it is available for argument. With the moralist use is beauty, good only as it serves an ulterior purpose; with the artist beauty is use, good in and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... mate? Good sense—good humour;—these are trivial things, Dear M——, that each trite encomiast sings. But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt From every low-bred passion, where contempt, Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found A harbour yet; an understanding sound; Just views of right and wrong; perception full Of the deformed, and of the beautiful, In life and manners; wit above her sex, Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; A noble nature, conqueror in the strife Of conflict with a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... even his intellectual powers fell off through his unsystematic, excessive demands on them, night work and overwork. In his later years his work was nearly always more or less jaded, his eye failing in the perception of forms, as has so often been the case in even the greatest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... by Defoe, devoted only four chapters directly to the narrative of the conjuror's life, while four chapters and the Appendix were given over to disquisitions upon the method of teaching deaf and dumb persons to read and write; upon the perception of demons, genii, or familiar spirits; upon the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... us moving seems?" "Marvel not, if the family of heav'n," He answer'd, "yet with dazzling radiance dim Thy sense it is a messenger who comes, Inviting man's ascent. Such sights ere long, Not grievous, shall impart to thee delight, As thy perception is by nature wrought Up to their pitch." The blessed angel, soon As we had reach'd him, hail'd us with glad voice: "Here enter on a ladder far less steep Than ye have yet encounter'd." We forthwith Ascending, heard behind ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... indefatigable, darting about, with a wonderful perception who everybody was, and with whom each would like to dance. She seized upon little Devereux Aylmer for her own partner before any one else had time to ask her, and carried him about the lawn, hunting up ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... west of the Atlantic. There is plenty of human nature—of the Scottish variety, which is a very good variety—in 'The Stickit Minister' and its companion stories; plenty of humour, too, of that dry, pawky kind which is a monopoly of 'Caledonia, stern and wild'; and, most plentiful of all, a quiet perception and reticent rendering of that underlying pathos of life which is to be discovered, not in Scotland alone, but everywhere that a man is found who can see with the heart and the imagination as well as the brain. Mr. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... voice of falling water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too, the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surrounded by the prejudices and rudenesses of his age, but the spirit Spenser, discoursing to and with the universal heart of nature. Leigh Hunt, with more originality—more of the quality men call genius, but a less correct perception of what is really wanted—has done the same thing for the great Italian poets; and in his sparkling pages Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and the rest of the tuneful train, appear unfettered by the more ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... the things of the physical plane through the physical body. For it is all on the same lines: that which enables you to know is not only body—that is the medium between you and the physical world—but the Knower in you is that which enables you to know, the power of perception which is of consciousness, and not of body. When consciousness vanishes, all the organs of consciousness are there, as perfect as ever, but the Knower has left them, and knowledge disappears with him; and so, whether it be in a swoon, in a fainting fit, in sleep, or in death, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... both. The spirit definable as the immediate apprehension of the mind without reasoning—the spirit of intuition—aids us on either hand. "We are endued," as Bishop Butler tells us, "with capacities of perception"; and these enable us to accept much that lies outside the actual region of proof, because our inner consciousness tells us that we are not altogether on a false track, and that truths, if half hidden, yet, of a certainty, exist in the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... all this stillness there was no invitation to sleep. It was a stillness rather that summoned the senses to keep watch, half apprehensively, at the doorways of perception. The wide eye noted everything, and considered it,—even to the hairy red fly alit on the fern frond, or the skirring progress of the black water-beetle across the pale surface of the Perdu. The ear was very attentive—even to the fluttering ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and dreaming; and yet, if so, how wonderful for a dream to be so natural and real, and to know at the same time too that it is but a dream. I hope I shall be able to remember it all when I wake tomorrow. My sensations seem most unaccountable. I have a clear perception of everything as if I were wide awake. I am quite sure if I recollect all this tomorrow, it will appear utterly ridiculous and absurd. I have had this happen to me before. It is with the clever or wonderful things we say or hear in dreams, as with the gold which comes ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Aldus stands clearly convicted of being an extremely unsafe textual critic of Pliny's Letters."[76] "This conclusion does not depend, as that of Keil necessarily did, on any native or acquired acuteness of critical perception. The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."[77] I speak as a wayfarer, but nevertheless I must own that Professor Merrill's path of argument causes me to stumble. I readily admit that Aldus, in editing a portion of text that no man had put into ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... followers—the centre around which they had rallied; their Teacher, Brother, Master; and He would not have tantalized them by promising another Paraclete, unless He had intended to announce the advent of One who would adjust Himself to their needs with that quickness of perception, and sufficiency of resource, which characterize a personal Leader and Administrator. There were times approaching when the little band would need counsel, direction, sympathy, the interposition of a strong wise Hand—qualities which could not be furnished by the remembrance of the past, fading ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... is not the change of vegetation only, which gives to the decaying charms of autumn their finest and most golden hues, but also the atmosphere and the peculiar lights and shadows which then prevail; and there can be no doubt, on the other hand, that our perception of beauty in the sky is very much influenced by the surrounding scenery. In autumn all is matured; and the rich hues of the ripened fruits and the changing foliage are rendered still more lovely by the warm haze which a fine ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... for any emergency of drifting boat. The big Manila hawser lay coiled on the fore hatch, all ready to bend on when a small line was safely ashore. All these things Barry took in with quick professional perception. But now he was stumped. He was the last man on earth to send a man where he himself dare not go; and those filthy, suspicious logs had only too well corroborated the second ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... things. Nothing can be more really admirable than M. Taine's criticism upon Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, as great masters of language (pp. 339-361). All this is marked by an amplitude of handling, a variety of approach, a subtlety of perception, a fulness of comprehension, which give a very different notion of M. Taine's critical soundness and power from any that one could have got from his account elsewhere of our English writers. Some of the remarks are open to criticism, as might be expected. It is hard to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... time Barstow, of the Enterprise, conferred with Joseph T. Goodman, editor and owner of the paper, as to the advisability of adding the author of the "Josh" letters to their local staff. Joe Goodman, who had as keen a literary perception as any man that ever pitched a journalistic tent on the Pacific coast (and there could be no higher praise than that), looked over the letters and agreed with Barstow that the man who wrote them had "something in him." Two ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... perception of just this—the ceaseless push of event following on event, the ceaseless push of the yet unborn struggling to force the doors of life—which moved Katherine to seriousness, as she stood alone on the smooth expanse of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... turn on him for him to envelop all her little solemnities and importances in a comprehending reverence. Jack thought Imogen's face very heavenly. He was an artist by profession, as we have said, taking himself rather seriously, too, but the artistic perception was so strongly colored by ethical and intellectual preoccupations that the spontaneous satisfaction in the Eternal Now of mere beauty was rarely his. Certainly he saw the flower-like texture of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... they were bidden not only by their separate life and their habitual detachment from the politics of Europe but also by a clear perception of international duty, the states of America have become conscious of a new and more vital community of interest and moral partnership in affairs, more clearly conscious of the many common sympathies and interests and duties which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of this lack of perception, women all over the world are claiming and receiving a place in representative government because they insist that they will not cease to perform their traditional duties, simply because these duties have been taken over ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of the boys. You need their friendliness just as they need yours. You require their steadiness of purpose, their decision, their frankness, their slower judgment, their more robust endeavor, their courage and hardihood. They need your keener perception of right and wrong, your forbearance, your refinement of feeling, your encouragement, your sympathy, your patience and endurance, your tact, your gentleness and grace. The boys, you see, have the advantage of giving you more than you can give them; and you have ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... put his glasses down and looked at his watch. He looked very savage, but of course it was all pretence, and the children knew it. "If he was really cross he'd pretend to be nice," they whispered to each other, with merciless perception. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... lapsed into a sort of speechless rage. He had long been used to having his bare word accepted on any point whatever, having labored all his military years to just that end, craving that integrity of vision and perception that is so vastly more than honesty alone, that the blatant unbelief of these opinionative asses overwhelmed ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... understanding of the nature of all true vision by noble persons; namely, that it is founded on constant laws common to all human nature; that it perceives, however darkly, things which are for all ages true; that we can only understand it so far as we have some perception of the same truth; and that its fulness is developed and manifested more and more by the reverberation of it from minds of the same mirror-temper, in succeeding ages. You will understand Homer better by seeing his reflection ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... a low growl escaped his patrician lips. Sloughed from him was the last vestige of artificial caste—once again he was the primeval hunter—the first man—the highest caste type of the human race. Up wind he followed the elusive spoor with a sense of perception so transcending that of ordinary man as to be inconceivable to us. Through counter currents of the heavy stench of meat eaters he traced the trail of Bara; the sweet and cloying stink of Horta, the boar, could not drown ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... neither a magician nor a charlatan," answered Monte-Cristo, warmly, "but a physician of the utmost experience and of the highest possible attainments. He is bent beneath the weight of years and arduous study, yet his eye is as keen and his perception as acute as if he were a youth of twenty. No man knows either his age or his history. I met him long ago in Athens, where I had the good fortune to rescue him from the clutches of a howling mob of ruffians who had seized upon him and were about to slay him as a sorcerer because ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... wisp paragraphs. Clara spoke, and he stiffened, stared at the books in front of him, turned, caught sight of her profile, and stood gazing in amazement—a girl's face that was more than pretty, a face in which there was purpose, and proof of clear perception. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... walks he was like one in a dream. The whole man was engrossed in what he alone could perform; indeed, to reconcile liberty and necessity were a task for which he seemed providentially set apart. But beneath these arguments, which rise Alp on Alp, there lurked a quiet perception of humor, and the reductio ad absurdum, which he occasionally drives home, showed the keenness of Puritan wit. How he must have smiled, nay even laughed, in the midst of his abstractions at that[E] metaphysical ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... helplessness and ruin. In fact, the blood so long accumulating in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within their proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to my perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of the self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness was, luckily for me, of no very long duration. In good time came to my rescue the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the ladies there that little brunette was not only the best-looking, the sweetest, the most innocent, but also, strange to say, the funniest; by which we do not mean to say that she tried to be funny—far from it, but that she had the keenest perception of the ludicrous, and as her perceptions were quick, and little jokes usually struck her, in vulgar parlance, "all of a heap," her little explosions of laughter were instantaneous and violently short-lived. Yet her natural temperament was grave and earnest, and her habitual ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... The contrast between barter-economy and money-economy is of great and fundamental importance. It repeats itself with so much regularity in the history of every highly developed nation, that political economists gifted with perception for the historical, could not possibly overlook it. Thus, Aristotle, for instance, establishes with the utmost care and accuracy the difference between {GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON}{GREEK SMALL ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... hat in reverence of Jesus, and said to be a benefactor of the chapel." He does not say anything about the excellence of the workmanship, nor, indeed, have I heard any one, except the two sculptors, Cav. Prof. Antonini and his son, speak of the work in terms which showed a perception of its merit. If the world knows little of its greatest men it seems to know not much more about its greatest works of art, nor, if it continues to look for guidance in this matter to professional critics ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, he says, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, - all is an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him. There was a humility in his fine face that sat well with the courage written there, and smoothed away all hardness for the time, so that the girl, looking at him in the light of the revelations of the morning, could hardly believe it had been true, yet an inner fineness of perception taught her that ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... on a look of faraway concentration. "It's like looking at a very dim light," she said, "a light just at the threshold of perception. You might say that you've got to look at such a light sideways. If you look directly at it, you can't see it. And, of course, you can't see it at all if you're a long way off." She blinked. "It's not exactly like that, you understand," she ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... you let me in last night,' he said. 'Don't you think that you would have had some perception of it last night if I had been entirely unworthy? Think what an utter and abominable villain I must be to have accepted your hospitality—to have been so very happy with you——' So he went on appealing to her heart from the sentiments ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... for heaven.' In a word, I would draw somewhat more downward her fancy, raise somewhat more upward your reason. Take my advice then,—Pray. Your mental system needs the support of prayer in order to preserve its balance. In the embarrassment and confusion of your senses, clearness of perception will come with habitual and tranquil confidence in Him who alike rules the universe and reads the heart. I only say here what has been said much better before by a reasoner in whom all Students of Nature recognize a guide. I see on your table the very volume of Bacon which ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "gag" resolution, and Mr. Adams abhorred him accordingly. (p. 299) Duncan, of Cincinnati, mentioned as "delivering a dose of balderdash," is described as "the prime bully of the Kinderhook Democracy," without "perception of any moral distinction between truth and falsehood, ... a thorough-going hack-demagogue, coarse, vulgar, and impudent, with a vein of low humor exactly suited to the rabble of a popular city and equally so to the taste of the present House of Representatives." ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... pine-trees were saying to him: "Ye shall go like the Indians, but be not inhospitable to your successors, and leave them your benediction, that the great bay and its rivers may be splendid with ships and men, though ye are perished forever." A perception of the energy of his countrymen, and a pride in it, without any mean reservation, though it might involve his personal humiliation, was Judge Custis's only remaining claim to heaven's magnanimity. Still, rich in human nature, he was beloved by his ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the age of documents we find on tombstones that the person is denoted by the khu between the arms of the ka. From later writings it is seen that the khu is applied to a spirit of man; while the ka is not the body but the activities of sense and perception. Thus, in {8} the earliest age of documents, two entities were believed ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... and that is about all: it leaves us as far from the origin as ever. What does it all mean? What is behind it all? The "voice of God," says the artist, "the voice of the devil," says the man in the front row. Are we, because we are, human beings, born with the power of innate perception of the beautiful in the abstract so that an inspiration can arise through no external stimuli of sensation or experience,—no association with the outward? Or was there present in the above instance, some ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... long, but this is the truth,—that, when I rise from my prayer, I see that I have received blessings which seem too briefly described. Afterwards I fall into many imperfections, and am unprofitable and very wicked. And perhaps I have no perception of what is good, but am deluded; still, the difference in my life is notorious, and compels me to think over all I have said—I mean, that which I verily believe I have felt. These are the perfections which I feel our Lord has wrought in me, who am so wicked and so ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... comprehend a species of coloured chiaro-scuro, or the addition of colour to the broad and soft principles of light and shade, we shall be able to form a clear perception of the effects of Rembrandt's colouring. Indistinctness of tint, such as colours assume under the influence of twilight, is a strong characteristic of his manner—the shadows never so dark that a black or blue cannot tell firmly ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... he cried. "I believe you've hit on something new to psychiatry. This young man may have some unknown faculty of mind—an instinctive perception of the fourth dimension. Just as some people have an unerring sense of direction, so perhaps Harper has a sense of—of a fourth direction—the fourth dimension! I should like to examine ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,—when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is, that, in the sketch of this wild projector, Mr. Fessenden had caricatured some of his own features; and, when he laughed so heartily, it was at the perception of the resemblance. ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... become to him fortuitous, uncertain and worthless, and he had kept only his iron sense of duty incessantly active. His soul had grown up and out of the dangerous habit of alternating between warm enthusiasm and sober keenness of perception. Once he had idealized with poetic caprice some individuals, and despised the masses that surrounded him. But in the struggles of his life he lost all selfishness, he lost almost everything which was personally dear to him; and at last came to set little value upon the individual, while ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... actions actually given in experience as events of the sensible world, since causality with freedom must always be sought outside the world of sense in the world of intelligence. But things of sense of sense in the world of intelligence. But things of sense are the only things offered to our perception and observation. Hence, nothing remained but to find an incontestable objective principle of causality which excludes all sensible conditions: that is, a principle in which reason does not appeal further to something else as a determining ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the insinuations of the Toy-merchant, and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For, Tackleton was quick and sly; and he had that painful sense, himself, of being of slow perception, that a broken hint was always worrying to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct of his wife, but the two subjects of reflection came into his ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... the hall with a very determined manner. Some of the party burst out laughing, and exclaimed, 'Bushrangers again!' declaring that they would not be fooled a second time. Some of the others had an instinctive perception that this time the ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... marriage, all the means of content that were in her reach. Her incessant comparisons between her first love and her husband excited perpetual contempt and disgust in her mind for her wedded lord, and for many years precluded all perception of his good qualities, all desire to live with him upon good terms, and all idea of securing that share of domestic happiness that was actually in her power. Belinda resolved at some future moment, whenever she could, with propriety ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... that sentence has been rescinded. Go on as you have begun, without ceasing." Chia asked Mr Chen what office he filled in Heaven; to which the latter replied that he was only a fox who, by a sinless life, had finally attained to that clear perception of the truth which leads to immortality. Wine was then brought, and the two friends enjoyed themselves together as of old; and even when Chia had passed the age of ninety years the fox still used to visit him from time ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... gospels did not, however, come from any formal concert of action on the part of the churches, (as, for example, from the authoritative decision of a general council, since no such thing as a general council of the churches was known till long after this period;) but simply from the common perception everywhere of the unimpeachable evidence by which ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... as he emptied his glass. His daughters knew that he drank, not for his pleasure, but for their benefit; that he might sustain Martha Chump in the delusion that he was a fitting bridegroom, and with her money save them from ruin. Each evening, with remorse that blotted all perception of the tragic comicality of the show, they saw him, in his false strength and his anxiety concerning his pulse's play, act this part. The recurring words, "Now, Martha, here's the Port," sent a cold wave through their blood. They knew what the doctor ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... greater love for the flowers or vegetables that grow in them than for any others in the garden, because they have watched their development throughout. For them such continuous observation cannot but result in a quickening of perception and a deepening of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... reflect on its rare virtues and the benign effects it produces wherever known. Thus it lightens the toil of the weary laborer plodding along the highway of life. The student poring over musty tomes sees with a clearer perception as its fragrance accompanies him along the pathway of science and of history. The poet "as those wreathes up go" sees Helicon's fresh founts flowing clearer and purer. The musician "lord of sounds," evokes tones from his instrument never before heard by mortal ear. The warrior, "fresh ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of every sufferer from doubting folly to say to himself, "I will perform this act once with my whole attention, then leave it and turn my mind in other channels before I have dulled my perception ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... her voice choke; then clearing it with a determined effort she read on to the end of the chapter. But if she had been reading the passage in its original Greek, she herself would hardly have received less intelligence from it. She had a dim perception of the words of love and words of glory of which it is full; she saw that Mr. Rhys's "helmet" was at the beginning of it, and the "peace" he had preached of, at the end of it; yet those words which ever since the day they were spoken have been a bed of rest to every heart ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... renown! And if it be lawful for me, O Supreme Jove that wast on earth crucified for us, are thy just eyes turned aside elsewhere? Or is it preparation, that in the abyss of thy counsel thou art making for some good utterly cut off from our perception? For the cities of Italy are all full of tyrants, and every churl that comes playing the partisan becomes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the slowing down was for a long time comparative. Yet the sensation served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of amazement, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... While we pursue high excellence, we walk among precipices, and a fall is easy. Hence the Apostle says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you[14]." Again, the more men aim at high things, the more sensitive perception they have of their own shortcomings; and this again is adapted to humble them especially. We need not fear spiritual pride then, in following Christ's call, if we follow it as men in earnest. Earnestness has no time to compare itself with ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... of death. In a general way, one may say that he was a great elegist in music. Ambros, who was a very discerning and unbiassed critic, said: "Berlioz feels with inward delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable aptness. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and tender heart; he has nothing ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... were children when the Union was saved. Helpless children, when Miss Carroll, in the prime of her life and fullness of her powers, with clearness of perception, with firmness of character, with the light of genius upon her brow, devoted her time, her strength, her fortune, and her great social influence to the national cause that the men of to-day might have a country, proud, prosperous, and peaceful, to rejoice in themselves ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... he had watched for her dissolution, yet his eagerness had injured no health but his own! So short-sighted is selfish cunning, that in aiming no further than at the gratification of the present moment, it obscures the evils of the future, while it impedes the perception of integrity and honour. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... time of the microscopic changes which we recognize as occurring in the body of man. However, in adopting these views of the relations of material nature and spirit, we must continually bear in mind that matter "has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy which alone sustains them were ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... species of deception, and who would have infallibly been a secure support to him, left us at this time in order to return to his native country. Those in whose hands I left the prince were indeed worthy men, but inexperienced, excessively narrow in their religious opinions, deficient in their perception of the evil, and wanting in credit with the prince. They had nothing to oppose to his captious sophisms except the maxims of a blind and uninquiring faith, which either irritated him or excited his ridicule. He saw through them too easily, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... into two pretty distinct classes: those to whom the visible world is real and the invisible world unreal or at best a shadow of the visible, and those to whom this visible realm with all its life is mere illusion whereas the spirit alone is the eternal reality. Faith is just this perception of the illusion enwrapping all these phenomena that to those without faith seem so real; faith is the voluntary turning away of the spirit from this illusion toward the infinite reality. It is because I find among the men of to-day no perception of this illusion ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... nature now enjoys a treat." "Well, well!" the mole aloud did cry "You may see this and more, but I Can only now before me see, A very heavy mist." "Truly, Now," said the lynx, "I clearly see The difference 'twixt you and me. My eyes see with perception bright While your's are always dark as night. Go to your hold beneath the ground, While I ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... used a surprisingly good word. He evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he worked in in twice afterward, casually. It was good casual art, still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception. Without a doubt that seed can be made to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... refined impulses, and to reveal the choicest fruit of his reading and experience. His letters to them are models of their kind. They contain not only those general precepts which an affectionate parent and wise man would naturally desire to impress upon the mind of a child, but they also show a perception of the most subtile feminine traits and a sympathy with the most delicate feminine tastes, seldom seen in our sex, and which exhibits the breadth and symmetry of Jefferson's organization. One of the most characteristic of these letters is in the possession of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... hedgerows—such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us, and transform ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the facts which by general consent in the present stage of psychological science require study is the nature, and if possible the cause, of a special lucidity, a sensitiveness of perception, or accessibility to ideas appearing to arrive through channels other than usual organs of sense, which is sometimes met with among simple people[1] in a rudimentary form, and in a more developed form in certain exceptional individuals. This lucidity may perhaps be regarded ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... history, though the area of its interest is yet wider, and the depths to which it reaches more profound; all its contradictory phenomena move under one embracing law, and all its contraries shall finally be solved in the clear perception of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... looked upon as very mysterious. We shall see presently that in the light of the theory of descent it is a thoroughly natural process. The phylogenetic explanation of it is that the central nervous system is the organ by means of which all intercourse with the outer world, all psychic action and sense-perception, are accomplished; hence it was bound to develop originally from the outer and upper surface of the body, or from the outer skin. The medullary tube afterwards separates completely from the outer germinal layer, and is surrounded by the middle parts of the provertebrae ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... her with flashing eyes and quivering lips, and had speedily warned Gulian never to broach the subject to Betty again. Peter was Betty's closest friend in those stormy days. The urchin had a shrewd perception of how matters stood, and many a time had Betty hugged him for very gratitude when he made a diversion and carried her off to some boyish haunt in the city or to the Collect, thereby giving her opportunity to ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... anxiously waiting for the appearance of the personal Christ among us, and they are wondering what they shall do to welcome Him. Would that the eyes of these brethren, and our own, too, were opened to the perception of the Christ that is already here, in the persons of those needing to be helped and educated and elevated, and that their ears could hear His words, "Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these his brethren ye do it unto Christ." ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895 • Various
... to have an intuitive perception that danger was approaching; for it turned abruptly round just as the missile left the seaman's hand, and received the butt with full force close to the root of ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... dice while each new gambler handled them. I was having a good night. Of course, by that time I had handled the dice, which always improves my TK grip. Every point I had TK'd came up. For all the perception I kept on the ivories, I could sense no other TK force at work, which after all was the whole reason ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his mind was far away from her, and from all that had happened since her appearance in the house. It was impossible that a man of his fineness of perception could mistake the meaning of Horace's conduct toward him. He was questioning his own heart, on the subject of Mercy, sternly and unreservedly as it was his habit to do. "After only once seeing her," he thought, "has she produced such an impression ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... but this pride of caste dwarfs men's moral perception so that it prepares them to do a number of contemptible things which, under other circumstances, they ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... all goes well until he learns of your plans, then he strikes with his own weapons. A word here and there, a hint to the banks, and your fine castle comes tumbling down about your ears. I thought you had more perception." ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... transporting Thought of conveying them to others." His happy constitution, wrote his cousin Lady Mary, "made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty or a flask of champagne"; but behind those healthy exhilarations was, assuredly, a serenity based on a clear perception of the values of life. To a man of Fielding's happy social temperament, and who was yet also initiated into mysteries and occupied in converting ideal loveliness into 'an object of sight,' such matters as duns and pawnbrokers would seem precisely fit for oblivion in venison and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with snow, it would seem, that that action of the retina, which is called whiteness, being constantly excited in the eye, may be gradually imitated by the extremities of the nerves of touch, or rete mucosum of the skin. And if it be supposed, that the action of the retina in producing the perception of any colour consists in so disposing its own fibres or surface, as to reflect those coloured rays only, and transmit the others like soap-bubbles; then that part of the retina, which gives us the perception of snow, must at that time be white; and that which gives us the perception ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... still lived on, with firm roots well fixed in the soil that had bred him. Life had now become a series of dream pictures with him, representing every episode of his experience. His mind was clear, and his perception keen; he seldom failed to recollect every detail of a circumstance when once the clue was given, and the right little cell in his brain was stirred. To these qualities he added a stock of good sound common sense, with a great equableness of temperament, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... girl had saved me, by her own instinctive perception, a world of painful explanations, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... becoming as an abstract principle of human conduct, but Gordon carried it to an excess that made it difficult not so much for his fellow-men to understand him, as for them to hold ordinary workaday relations with him. This was due mainly to two causes—a habitual shyness, and his own perception that he could not restrain his tongue from uttering unpalatable and unconventional truths. He was so unworldly and self-sacrificing in his own actions that he could not let himself become even in a passive sense subservient ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his Majesty's judgment, firmness, and the like. "Pooh, pooh, my lord," he observed, laughing heartily, "I do not mean that—I do not mean that, but that I can—brush my own boots!" This was practical philosophy, and indicated a clear perception of the constitution of modern society, particularly on the part of one who is known to be by no means indifferent to the fortunes of his race. We believe, also, that Louis Philippe has been happy beyond most men of regal rank in the possession ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... had he relief, highly complicated by the ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his son. With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again during his boy's public school and varsity life—all that sense of not going back on what father and son expected of each other. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... But, his perception enlarging, Swedenborg presently discovered that this was in reality only an intermediate state of existence; that beyond it at the one end was heaven and at the other hell, to one or the other of which the dead ultimately gravitated according to their desires and conduct. For, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... machines. Beasts, according to your assertion, cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will, therefore, in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion, viz., that God has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter, with the faculties of sensation and perception, which you call instinct in them. But why may not God, if He pleases, communicate to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feeling, perceiving, and thinking, which we call human reason? To whatever side you turn, you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance, and the boundless power of the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... for Carley it could not be without love. Before she had gone West she might have had many of the conventional modern ideas about women and marriage. But because out there in the wilds her love and perception had broadened, now her arraignment of herself and her sex was bigger, sterner, more exacting. The months she had been home seemed fuller than all the months of her life. She had tried to forget and enjoy; she had not succeeded; but she had looked with ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... expressed mathematically. Perhaps the mathematics should have been eliminated as too "scientific" for our present attainment, but it does remain true that it is not the ACTUAL stimulus increase that is important in sensation or perception, but the RELATIVE stimulus increase. This is behind all of "getting used to things"; it removes the pain from humiliation and also the novelty from joy. It is the reason behind all of the searching ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... high and low that you have neither the code of a gentleman nor the common honesty of business affairs. It is even argued that you have not the moral perception to see your own ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Honest perception had told him that this Avice, fairer than her mother in face and form, was her inferior in soul and understanding. Yet the fervour which the first could never kindle in him was, almost to his alarm, burning up now. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... to have reference to the nates as the excretory focus, the seat of the anus. In any case it ignores any sexual attractiveness in this part of the body. Exhibitionism of this kind, therefore, can scarcely arise in persons of any sensitiveness or aesthetic perception, even putting aside the question of modesty, and there seems to be little trace of it in classic antiquity when the nates were regarded as objects of beauty. Among the Egyptians, however, we gather from Herodotus (Bk. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... duly returned to the yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens had been submitted to the old woman—Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just then—her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she received the bird ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... As has been seen, the atmosphere of Vale Leston had deepened her spiritual life, and the sermons had touched her heart to the quick, and caused self-examination, which had revealed to her the secret of her dissatisfaction with herself, and her perception was the clearer through her intercourse on entirely equal terms with persons of a high tone ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fold intensified; I feel Him nearer my heart, and deeper in my national sympathies.... And is it not true that an Asiatic can read the imageries and allegories of the Gospel, and its descriptions of the natural sceneries, of customs and manners, with greater interest and a fuller perception of their force and beauty than an European?... The more this greater fact is pondered, the less, I hope, will be the antipathy and hatred of European Christians against Oriental nationalities, and the greater the interest of the Asiatics in the teachings of Christ. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... cast his eyes more than twice in the direction of this tree, when he saw there was something peculiar about it. Caspar was a youth of quick sight and equally quick perception. In the main stem of the tree, and about six feet above its first forking, he perceived an object that at once fixed his attention. It looked like a goat's horn, only that it was more like the curving tusk of a rhinoceros ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... discovery. Darwin had long been collecting facts with regard to the variation of animals and plants. Hooker and Wallace, Asa Gray and even Agassiz, each in his own sphere, were coming closer and closer to a perception of that secret which was first to reveal itself clearly to the patient and humble genius of Darwin. In the year before, in 1856, Darwin, under pressure from Lyell, had begun that modest statement of the new revelation, that 'abstract of an essay', which developed ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... to be bravery, as in Mary's case, for example, is often but a lack of perception of the real danger. True bravery is that which dares a danger fully seeing it. A coward may face an unseen danger, and his act may shine with the luster of genuine heroism. Mary was brave, but it was the feminine bravery that did not see. Show her a danger and she was womanly enough—that is, if ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... notion of abundance of gold and precious stones, which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phacia—the land whose inhabitants were friends of the gods, a sort of heaven upon earth." ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... mixture of exaltation and fear cut me off from ordinary living. I now understood why our religion has made sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night of St John, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. A general communion of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic possesses those who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights. So I, watching, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded across the carpet. From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it. From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet grayish with age and the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst |
