Sentence Examples:
If appeals to 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.
The patient is asked by the healer to put himself in a receptive mental attitude, which means that he is to exercise his volition for the purpose of removing the barrier of his own objective personality and thus affording entrance to the mental power of the healer.
To effect these purposes we require a rich verbal memory from which to select the symbols best fitted to call up images in the reader's mind, and we also require the delicate selective instinct to guide us in the choice and arrangement of those symbols, so that the rhythm and cadence may agreeably attune the mind, rendering it receptive to the impressions meant to be communicated.
Here we have a simple basic experiment in wireless telegraphy, which, briefly considered, consists of means whereby oscillations or waves, set up in free space by means of disruptive discharges, are caused to traverse space and produce various effects in suitably constructed receptive devices that are operated by the waves as they impinge on them.
All natural conditions will then be in your favor; the passions, after the long bodily fast of the night, will be subdued, the excitements and worries of the previous day will have died away, and the mind, strong and yet restful, will be receptive to spiritual instruction.
As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to maintain unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic construction of your prepossessing language, I have engraved most of the remarks upon the receptive tablets of my mind as they were uttered.
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 they were bundles of firewood.
In this manner, 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 to produce a miscellaneous incompetence.
They had been at the uttermost verge of exhaustion when they climbed into the canoe, and perhaps physical weakness had made their minds more receptive to the belief that they were in hands mightier than their own, but even as strength came back the conviction remained in all its primitive force.
No doubt we are meant to regard him as a learned man; but his son gives us to understand distinctly and very early in the book that his crotchets were by no means those of a weak receptive mind, overladen with more knowledge than it could digest, but rather those of an over-active intelligence, far more deeply and constantly concerned with its own processes than with the thoughts of others.
The receptive graveyard to the right gives a certain pathos to it, a splendid, quiet note in contrast to the feeling of the swift, hungry river to the left, which will now receive and carry from my outstretched hand this little white floater that will float away from me.
This may be singular, for there are many inverted persons who have found satisfaction in friendships less physical and passionate than those described in Leaves of Grass, but Whitman was a man of concrete, emotional, instinctive temperament, lacking in analytical power, receptive to all influences, and careless of harmonizing them.
It will be seen how all the favoring conditions of fear, shame, and precocious sexuality were here present in an extremely sensitive child destined to become the greatest emotional force of his century, and receptive to influences which would have had no permanent effect on any ordinary child.
It is always the presence of a definite intention that distinguishes the intelligent receptive attitude of mind from a merely sponge-like absorbency, which sucks in any and every influence that may happen to be floating round: for we must not shut our eyes to the fact that there are various influences in the mental atmosphere by which we are surrounded, and some of them of the most undesirable kind.
Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace.
There has come into existence a school of journalism which would seem to have deliberately set itself the task of degrading authorship and everything connected with it; and these pernicious scribblers (or typists, to be more accurate) have found the authors of a fretful age only too receptive of their mercantile suggestions.
That the men and women so educated are too receptive, credulous, pliant and unstable; that in too large a degree they lack discrimination, judgment, and the good sense and executive talent which plan understandingly, and work without sacrifice of honor, manhood, or spiritual culture, to a true success?
Over there, although a soldier is needed who understands matters of war and knows how to regulate and direct them as they should be, yet he should be receptive of instruction; and he would learn much more there through the counsel of those who have broad experience, and through what experience can teach him, than through any knowledge that they can carry from here.
In fact, education in the higher sense of the term gave way to the mere cramming of undigested knowledge into more or less receptive brains with a view to an inordinate number of examinations, which marked the various stages of this artificial process.
The mischievous incitements of politicians would not, however, have fallen on to such receptive soil if economic conditions, for which we are ourselves at least partly responsible, had not helped to create an atmosphere in which political disaffection is easily bred amongst both teachers and taught.
As soon as such a one draws near to heaven a resistance and a strong repulsion are perceived; and for the reason that his interiors, which should be receptive of heaven, are closed up from their not being in the form of heaven, and the nearer he comes to heaven the more tightly are they closed up.
You have witnessed many, but only the playwright and the theatrical man may be said to watch plays, whether on the stage or on the screen, with every faculty alert and receptive, ready to pounce on any suggestion, any bit of stage business, any scenic effect, or any situation, that they may legitimately copy or enlarge upon for their respective uses.
This is as important as the actual increase of the number of the friends, for it means that the principles are gradually permeating the thoughts of the people and making them more ready and receptive to the full identification of their beliefs with the precepts of the Cause.
The isolated situation and gloomy architecture of this venerable mansion must have impressed the most casual observer with the thought that here was the spot for the perpetration of dark deeds, were it not for the fact that the place was brilliantly illumined with electricity, while the silence was emphasized 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 east.
Grant Allen has shown that man, when he is conscious of a superfluity of sheer physical strength, gives himself to play; and in like manner, when he is conscious of a superfluity of receptive power, which has a physical basis, he gives himself to art.
His temper was too amiable and serene for stinging wit or biting sarcasm, but he had a playful humor which kept the minds of his hearers in that receptive and compliant state which disposed them the more readily to give full and generous consideration to all the strong parts of his argument.
It would not be 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.
His circle of personal intimacy and acquaintanceship is mainly made up of artists and literary men, including especially several of those who have made themselves most prominent in these classes within the last twenty years; and this acquaintanceship shades naturally off, in a minor and moderate degree, into those circles of good social standing which are rather liberally receptive than productive of literature and art.
These differences are due in part to differences in the extent and character of the receptive powers of individuals, and are to be traced, probably, to differences in the size and constitution of the sensory areas of the brain, and are due also in part to inborn differences in the capacity for acquiring and utilizing experiences.
By special training (the yoga of the Hindus), by a particular constitution of body (sensitiveness), by certain special methods (hypnotism), or in certain maladies (somnambulism), the brain may become receptive to these vibrations, and receive from them an impression, though always an imperfect one.
Attracted by the color and fragrance of the blossom, with their implied invitation to the assured feast of nectar, the insect visited the flower, and thus became dusted with the pollen, and in creeping or flying out from it conveyed the fecundating grains to the receptive stigma, which they could not otherwise reach.
The same peculiarities that render women, as a rule, less original, are justly said to make them more receptive, more malleable, more exquisitely adjustable to the least variation of external circumstance, or difference in the intellectual caliber of their associates or masters.
If the correlative of 'the slave' is said to be 'the master', then, though all irrelevant attributes of the said 'master', such as 'biped', 'receptive of knowledge', 'human', should be removed, and the attribute 'master' alone left, the stated correlation existing between him and the slave will remain the same, for it is of a master that a slave is said to be the slave.
Novels streamed from the presses, volumes of poetry became substantial items on publishers' lists and those which failed to find a publisher were mimeographed and peddled to a receptive public, while painters working with Renascence enthusiasm turned out great canvases as fast as their brushes could spread the oils.
Gloom and savagery, passion and crime, luxury and lust, romance and adventure, adultery and divorce, self-indulgence and cynicism, the reality of foulness and decay, are so suggested as to become centers on which receptive minds will organize, and congenial ones will combine in sympathy.
Under the spreading branches of the cedar stood the big motley group of flushed and receptive children, flanked by their more staid teachers, and faced by Bung, who sat upon his tail before them, and panted serenely, with his tongue hanging out sideways nearly to the ground.
Then the great forests, the felling of the trees, the erection of the log houses and forts, the meeting of Puritans with the neighboring Indians, with their curious costumes, homes, customs and occupations, introduce other phases of life that put the child in a receptive mood for the reading of colonial history, Indian legends and stories of pioneer life.
We think it is sufficient to say that the "connecting link," or physical object, seems to carry along with it, in its inner substance or nature, the vibrations of its past environment; and that the clairvoyant, coming into receptive contact with such vibrations, is enabled with comparative ease to follow up the psychic "scent" until he establishes clairvoyant en rapport connection with the distant object, person, or scene associated with the physical object.
Al had two attitudes of welcome, according to the record of the books, one in which the hand advanced impulsively, and a smile broke from under the shaggy yellow bang and another where the hand remained in a stationary receptive cup, or sometimes caressed the limp ends of the mustache in a way most discouraging and disheartening to the delinquent debtor.
My explanation of the change is, that in the advance of civilization, the water sheds or basins of these rivers and lakes having been plowed up, the rainfall which formerly found its way quickly into the streams and lakes over the hard natural surface is now absorbed into the soft and receptive ground, and is returned by evaporation.
When strange things are discussed for a long time, in the light of a tropical moon, at the edge of a dark, whispering jungle, the mind becomes singularly imaginative and receptive; and, as I looked through powerful binoculars at the great suspended globe, the dead craters and precipices became very vivid and near.
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.
Probably it is the case that very few of your scientific men are endowed with intelligences both sufficiently advanced, and sufficiently adaptable and receptive of new ideas, to enable them to assimilate and make use of the influences thus transmitted; but still we know that some must have grasped the situation.
The one will continue to be receptive of the ideas of the person whom he esteems as well qualified to impart sound and reliable information, whilst the other will honestly endeavor to live up to his reputation, and be most scrupulously careful to make sure of the accuracy of the information which he desires to impart.
The structure and development of the flower are such that while occasionally, particularly in healthy plants out of doors, the stigma becomes receptive and takes the pollen as it is pushed out through the stamen tube by the elongating style, it is more often pushed beyond them before the pollen matures, so that the pollen has to reach the stigma through some other means.
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 stations in life, they more and more come to make their own the life of the social whole in which they move and have their being.
Into her brain, for the moment passive and receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence.
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 of their independent behavior.
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 a people shall rise.
If his tender soul warped and his fresh, receptive mind shriveled under the religious tutelage he received, no one but himself knew it, not even his fond mother, as she clasped him again in her arms when he returned home for the first summer vacation.
He was a friendly 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.
Henry did not want to be uncharitable, but he could not but think that those who used this word in this sense laid themselves open to the suspicion (in this case, at least, quite unjustified), that their minds were only receptive of one kind of suggestion, and that a coarse one.
It matters not whether a material presence already created can be receptive of a disembodied soul, or a soul unattached can have a body built up for it or around it; or, again, whether the body of a dead person can be made seeming quick through some diabolic influence manifested in the present, or an inheritance or result of some baleful use of malefic power in the past.
It seems as if the most opposite statements about him were alike true; he is so receptive, all the influences of the world and of society ceaselessly playing upon him, so that every hour in his life is unique, changed altogether by a stray word, or glance, or touch.
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.
We see it in "May it never happen to me that my heart is not readily receptive of every communication from without, as well as for every feeling within, for the head must never injure the heart, nor must the heart ever run away with the head, that is my idea of culture," and "an excitable heart and a restless nature will never let us be quite happy, but will have a beneficial influence upon our education, upon our striving after greater perfection."
He was talking with none of the fiery enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute, receptive, and antagonistic intelligence.
When the flower opens, the two stigmas are pressed together below the tube formed by the anthers, the latter split on the inside, and the pollen fills the tube; the style gradually lengthens and carries the pollen out of the anther tube, and finally the stigmas spread and expose their receptive surface which has hitherto been hidden, the two being pressed together.
During the sixteen years since he left the Island many changes have taken place, and the more receptive and enlightened attitude of the rising generation of farmers has helped to bring about various improvements, and a greater readiness has been shown to adopt modern methods.
There must be something very charming in it (that is, if one had no duties which forbade it), this full, passive, receptive enjoyment of anything delightful, a fine picture, for instance, or a beautiful view, the sunshine, the sea; even the angler's contented quiescence on a green bank was part of it.
Harvard, then five years abroad, and a return to his native city revealed him as an ambitious, receptive, intelligent young man, deeply interested in himself and his own affairs, theoretically patriotic, a good citizen by intention, an affectionate son and brother, and already a pretty good painter of the saner species.
The most preposterous inventions of its activity have been regarded in their time as the greatest feats of the human mind, and in its receptive form it has been nursed into an imbecility to which the truth is repugnant, and the fact that the beautiful resides nowhere else is inconceivable.
After a long hiatus the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a time; presently the theme would strengthen, 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.
Such I believe to be the consensus of opinion among the younger generation of critics, to whom, after all, the future belongs, as well as the opinion of those older critics who refuse to allow themselves to be pitchforked by their years into the ranks of the old fogies and who still hold themselves ever receptive to every new manifestation in music that is based on a union of mind and heart.
If a great deductive thinker and speculator like Herbert Spencer had hit upon the self-same idea of survival of the fittest, he might have communicated it to a small following of receptive disciples, who would have understood it and accepted it, on a priori grounds alone, and gradually passed it on to the grades beneath them; but he would never have touched the slow and cautious elephantine intellect of the masses.
Considering the extraordinary receptive and productive power of this richly dowered woman, there can be little doubt, had she lived a few years longer, that she would have produced a work that would have caused her to be ranked among the greatest mathematicians of the nineteenth century.
When this brave young man, this hero of twenty-one had done his day's work, he came home to his beloved Anna at his cozy home in New Bedford, and after he had his supper, the way was clear for a grand time reading "The Liberator," which William Lloyd Garrison sent out every week, and that fired the warm, receptive mind and heart of young Fred., so that his fame as a brilliant conversationalist and a well-read man, spread rapidly throughout the town.
There is no rule for measuring the character and quality of this plastic, receptive, and often very ambitious element in Canadian society, yet one may say broadly that the social position and attainments of these people have been greatly influenced by the nationality of their fathers.
Recently, indeed, there had been a moment in which even with her bodily eyes she had, as she had then believed, beheld the terrors and the torments of the damned; but as many men and women, who believe not in ghosts, have nevertheless seen these dwellers of the shades, and yet in less receptive phases of the mind have been able to dismiss their visitants to the shadows from which they were evoked, so Natalie had been able to discard belief in the reality of her vision.
The individual of a given corporeal species can exist only because the material principle, receptive of this specific form, has a natural relation to the fundamental property of corporeal things, viz. quantity, within certain more or less determinate limits.
What the formula means is that an agent cannot give to, or produce in, any potential subject, receptive of its causal influence, an actuality which it does not itself possess virtually, or in its active power: that no actuality surpassing in excellence the actual perfection of the cause itself can be found thus virtually in the active power of the latter.
It consists essentially of two parts, a basal portion forming a chamber, the ovary, containing the ovules attached to a part called the placenta, and an upper receptive portion, the stigma, which is either seated on the ovary (sessile), as in the tulip and poppy, or is elevated on a stalk called the style, interposed between the ovary and stigma.
She leaned closer over the instrument and struck into the somber strains of a composition of such grim power and beauty that it seemed to create for itself an oddly receptive attitude in the man, sensitizing his emotional nature to a point where its finest shades were brought out in detail.
Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent and impetuous girl, this quite ordinary everyday incident, which seemed to them to be touched by romance, came at a moment when both were pathetically receptive.
It is only by remembering that the Italic races, clogged by the ruins of the Roman Empire, and tardily receptive of Teutonic influences, resumed their natural activity and recognized their vocation in the Revival of Learning, that we can comprehend the radical revolution effected in all departments of thought by this event.
It was distributed gratuitously among the most prominent citizens of Philadelphia, and, as soon as he thought that their minds had been reduced to a receptive condition by its appeal, he solicited subscriptions for the establishment and maintenance of the Academy, payable in five annual installments.
Things will come to you, you know not whence; but you must prepare the way for them, by thinking and feeling and dreaming, by reading and listening and observing, with every part of you alive and receptive.
The pyramidal group of loungers, enjoying the protection of the opposite arcades, did not take their eyes from the balconies, while those who clustered under the arches of the house itself, as they lacked this expedient, entirely trusted to their ears, the receptive capacity of which they strove to increase by placing the palms of their hands behind them and doubling them forward a little.
If his receptive power is highly developed, he will see them in their completeness, and discern even the minutest details; weak persons, on the other hand, perceive nothing more than a faint, luminous or whitish appearance, mere fragmentary and embryonic visions.
The telephone must not be an ordinary telephone, capable of being influenced by any frequency, but be one which responds only to a particular note, and under these conditions the receiving arrangement is receptive only when the trains of waves arrive at certain regular predetermined intervals, corresponding with the tone to which the telephone is sensitive.
It seems as if the most opposite statements about him were alike true: he is so receptive, all the influences of nature and of society ceaselessly playing upon him, so that every hour in his life is unique, changed altogether by a stray word, or glance, or touch.
Can a passive, receptive attitude on the part of the instructor (suggesting the soldier awaiting orders from a commanding general) be avoided, unless the teacher, as a student of psychology, himself sees the reasons and import of the suggestions and rules that are proffered him?
Therefore, when a more analytical mind might have hesitated to believe that material help for a supposed hopeless affliction could come from religion, instead of from a knife or a drug, which even the most skeptical may see and handle and thus believe, Flower, by her very childishness, held up a receptive mind for the planting of the seed of an immortal truth.
The transformation of a psychic action into an ethereal movement, and the reverse, may be analogous to what takes place on a telephone, where the receptive plate, which is identical with the plate at the other end, reconstructs the sonorous movement transmitted, not by means of sound, but by electricity.
He allowed the reason to be exclusively practical, as will alone, and spontaneity alone, and apprehended its theoretical and receptive relation to the objective world as only a circumscribed activity, as a limitation prescribed to itself by the reason.
Though Leo was a man of merely pleasure-loving and receptive temperament, who left no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least how to appreciate ability, and found the height of his enjoyment in the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronized.
The action of strong alkaline substances acting quickly is more or less detrimental to keeping the gloss of the hair, while the slow action of the weak alkaline paste of the old formulas, and the gradual formation of a protective metal film on the surface of the hair, rendered the hair suitably receptive to the dye which was subsequently applied, without in any measure affecting the luster of the hair.
His pleasure was now, perhaps, more that of the lover of nature than of the true sportsman, the pastoral feast of the landscape with its blue distance of wooded hill, more to him than the expected flashing leap of a scarlet-spotted beauty; yet the attitude of receptive intentness was pleasant in all its phases, no one weary thought could become dominant while the eyes rested on the water, or were raised to such loveliness of quiet English country.
If we set aside such transcendental conditions as belong to sensibility or to the receptive phase of mind and are the presuppositions of juxtaposition of parts, the remainder are ascribable to spontaneity or understanding, to thought with its unifying, organizing or focussing function, and their elucidation is the problem of transcendental analytic.
It sang through her dreams at night and mingled with the talking of the dark lake's water, for she was restored to her place under the mountain, and now, while she waited, she had no doubt of whose footfall she expected, whose hand she wished to grasp, and, when the morning came, flashing truth on her receptive mind, she had to own her need of Alexander.
The eyes must be unsealed in youth, when the mind is alert and receptive if the man or woman is to find in later life that Nature is not only a resource and recreation but an ever faithful friend holding out comforting arms to those who are weary in soul and body.
Looking forward to what is going to happen on the next day, or within a few days, may cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we have a good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expected success or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compel ourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet and receptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake with new power for whatever task or pleasure may lie before us.
Louise, whose native shrewdness was tempered by an innate and unconquerable tendency to look upon the bright side of the world and of such of the world's people as she came into contact with, was far better acquainted with her mother than her mother was with her; which was natural enough, considering that she had the receptive mind of youth, and that her mother's major trait was a sort of all-inclusive indifference.
The painter, indeed, has a power which competes closely with the eloquence of the preacher, or the soothing rhythm of the poet; it raises the man who approaches his work with a receptive heart from his own petty self, enlarges his sympathies and his hopes, calms his troubles, and sends him back refreshed and invigorated to his struggle with the cares and troubles of his daily life.
And when I was done I illustrated my brief and eager narrative by pointing with a flirt of my thumb to Major Stone, stiffly erect on my left hand, with his chest protruded, and his head held high in a posture faintly suggestive of certain popular likenesses of the late Napoleon Bonaparte; and on his elderly face was the look of one who, having sowed good seed in receptive loam, confidently expects an abundant and a gratifying harvest.
Our babes and sucklings are no longer regaled with the soothing tales of giants, ogres, witches, and fairies; their hungry, receptive minds are filled with stories about the pursuit and slaughter of unoffending animals, of war and of murder, and of those questionable practices whereby a hero is enriched and others are impoverished.
He was evidently a free, romantic being, Latinized in temperament and mentality, receptive and creative.
Peter was delighted to acquiesce in this arrangement; for if there was one thing in the world that this most energetic of sovereigns could not tolerate, it was to sit idle with no possibility of finding food for observation for his eyes or new facts and new ideas for assimilation in his ever active and receptive brain.
In the enlightened atmosphere of his home, Marcia grew up in close companionship with his daughters, her refined nature imperceptibly acquiring that ease and grace which were ever afterwards characteristic of her, and her receptive mind readily cultivating those attributes that were to render her most attractive in conversation to such men as Hamilton, Burr, Marshall, Randolph, and Webster.
Life may be held so pure, so receptive to all high influence, so noble in its aspirations, as to furnish the right conditions for these finer promptings; or it may so degenerate into the material, the selfish, the self-centered, as to become deaf and blind and unresponsive to them.