"Perceptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perceptive powers of which we can form no conception, and may thus discern the approach of particular events as distinctly an we can now calculate the ebb and flow of the tides, or the eclipses of the sun ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... endured her airs, and bent before them like one accustomed to subjection. On the poor woman's rounded brow and delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance, were the traces of deep reflection, of those perceptive thoughts which women who are accustomed to suffer ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... by the way side to the study of psychology—the most fascinating of all studies—there is something in which all can interest themselves, but more especially for women, for to me this seems woman's kingdom. With much quicker perceptive faculties than men, they are better able to see the finer more delicate portion of nature's handiwork and mysteries. Unfortunately in small towns if a woman tries to investigate spiritualism, she is immediately called a spiritualist. If she takes an interest in ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best,—much more than ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... "It is universally considered as the best epitome we have of the first volume of 'Capital,' and as such, is invaluable to the beginner in economics. It places him squarely on his feet at the threshold of his inquiry; that is, in a position where his perceptive faculties cannot be deceived and his reasoning power vitiated by the very use of his eyesight; whereas, by the very nature of his capitalist surroundings, he now stands on his head and sees ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant's field of view will increase in the same way that a balloonist's view increases in area as he rises above the surface of the earth. To account for clairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit some perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in trance the eyes are ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... have here to consider is the part which heredity has played in forming the perceptive faculty of the individual prior to its own experience. We have already seen that heredity plays an important part in forming memory of ancestral experiences, and thus it is that many animals come into the world with their power of perception already largely developed. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... to the infinity of things. But just so far as relations can be traced between this object and all other objects, so much the more rational does the knowledge of the watch become. Rationality is the comprehending of anything in its relations. The perceptive, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the great old trees, the colours of old oak and weather-beaten tiles and warm brick, has gently undulated straight lines, and softened all sharp angles, where the very sunlight has the mellowness of old wine, to a mind perceptive of this peculiar and intimate charm of England, Dunster makes a special call, set amid the suave curves of its rich country, crowned by its ancient castle, dignified by its old, beautiful church (grown, like the castle, through Norman and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... night with an expression as definitely perceptive as if the figure in his thoughts were ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... humbly wakeful to the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had befallen her in being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, it appeared that she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the blessedness of her lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for she did not understand his casual allusion to Beauchamp's readiness to overcome 'a natural repugnance,' for the purpose of making ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... course,—as it seems to me,—is not to introduce too many appliances as aids to mental activity, but rather to see what the animal subject thinks and does by its own initiative. In the testing of memory and the perceptive faculties, training for performances is the best method ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... commemorated in Pope's letter drove them back to the house, Bolingbroke might discourse from the page which happened to be open, and Pope would try to versify it on the back of an envelope.[20] Nor must we forget, like some of his commentators, that after all Pope was an exceedingly clever man. His rapidly perceptive mind was fully qualified to imbibe the crude versions of philosophic theories which float upon the surface of ordinary talk, and are not always so inferior to their prototypes in philosophic qualities, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... beauty. It may be said, generally, that these requirements are drawn up in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason to which I have referred above. We know, however, that the idea, and, consequently, the beauty of a work of art, exist only for the perceptive intelligence which has freed itself from the domination of that principle. It is just here that we find the distinction between interest and beauty; as it is obvious that interest is part and parcel of the mental attitude ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... just what they can't do! I don't deny that you may be correct in the broad, vulgar sense, but that is not enough for me. I expect you to grasp the inner meaning. Now the real answer to this question is that there can be no answer! To a perceptive mind it would be impossible to reply without further information. It entirely depends on how the paper is cut out, and the amount of waste incurred in matching ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... form one of the main staples of conversation around the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to the store of information, and, as the very existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes depends upon the completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the adult savage are directed to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range, the directions and junctions of all the streams, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Captain's steps, coming up the stairs. Perceptive of her impatience, he had left her to herself, till he could bring word. Now she stood, listening to the nearing jingle that accompanied his footsteps, her hands clasped involuntarily against her breast in rigid tension. And when she saw his face through ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... desirable to take note of in subdivision titles. A moment's thought shows the impossibility of taking care of any large number of combined characteristics so as to provide exactly for each combination, for the reason that the limitations of space and of the perceptive faculties forbid. For a simple illustration, the imaginary classification of books for use by a bookseller may be recurred to. The dealer, it may be assumed, has books on (1) four different subjects, history, science, art, and fiction, (2) each printed ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... just because I had no money. I know all about money now, except exactly how you get it, and Tuck assures me that is really of no importance. I never told Ooma how the blue-eyed Astorian paid my bill for me, and her perceptive faculties have grown too dull to apprehend a thing she is not told. Fresh roses still come regularly every day, and of course I can do no less than express my gratitude now and then.—Oh, I don't know how often, I don't remember.—But it is ever so much pleasanter ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... gifted souls. Sometimes these have been "self-made" men, so-called, whose best powers were evoked by rare opportunities. Oftener, they have been men of thoroughly disciplined minds, of sharpened perceptive faculties, trained to analyze and to generalize; men of well-balanced judgments and power of clear ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... intellectual or verbal) shape, has its appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or difficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat which we shall deal with later. And although the various perceptive activities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as easy and uninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our mind's eye (if not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to side of a geometrical figure, or from centre to circumference, or again whenever our mind's ear ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... specifically the insanity of disease, as in acute fevers. Dementia is a general weakening of the mental powers: the word is specifically applied to senile insanity, dotage. Aberration is eccentricity of mental action due to an abnormal state of the perceptive faculties, and is manifested by error in perceptions and rambling thought. Hallucination is the apparent perception of that which does not exist or is not present to the senses, as the seeing of specters or of reptiles ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... acquaintance with what we call "suggestion," it may be observed that our perceptive activities are divided into (a) active, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... off the great-coat and pressing her hands upon her bosom to indicate herself. Then Dic, in a flood of perceptive light and returning consciousness, caught the priceless Christmas gift to his heart without ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... reflective, more religious, and with a thirst for knowledge. The pure air and the simple food of the Arabian plains keep him in perfect health; and the necessity of constant watchfulness against his foes, from whom he has no defence of rock, forest, or fortification, quickens his perceptive faculties. But the Arab has also a sense of spiritual things, which appears to have a root in his organization. The Arabs say: "The children of Shem are prophets, the children of Japhet are kings, and the children of Ham are slaves." Having ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... bag of solid shining British sovereigns—which was much to the point—in its hand. Courage and good-humour therefore were the breath of the day; though for ourselves at least it would have been also much to the point that, with Amerigo, really, the innermost effect of all this perceptive ease was perhaps a strange final irritation. He compared the lucid result with the extraordinary substitute for perception that presided, in the bosom of his wife, at so contented a view of his conduct and course—a state of mind that was positively like ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... exchanging of ideas so intimately as has happened splendidly between Picasso and Braque, which is in the nature of professional dignity among artists, there is bound to be more or less confusion even to the highly perceptive artist and this must therefore confuse the casual observer and layman. So it is, or was at that time with the painting of Robert Delaunay and Mme. Delaunay Terck; what you learned in this instance was that the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... absorbing and devastating to him that he could not believe that every one around him would not guess it. He soon discovered that his father was too cock-sure and his sister too innocent to guess anything. Now he was not himself a perceptive man; he had, after all, seen as yet very little of the world, and he had a great deal of his father's self-confidence; nevertheless, he was just perceptive enough to perceive that his mother was thinking about ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... reader will conceive himself standing at any point in a river basin, preferably beyond the realms of the torrents, he may with the guidance of the facts previously noted, with a little use of the imagination, behold the vast perceptive which the history of the river valley may unfold to him. He stands on the surface of the soil, that debris of the rocks which is just entering on its way to the ocean. In the same region ten thousand years ago he would have stood upon a surface from one to ten ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... magnificent, grand. Bourne thunders and lightens. Phelps is one great, clear, infallible argument—demonstration itself. Jocelyn is full of heavenly-mindedness, and feels and speaks and acts with a zeal according to knowledge. Follen is chaste, profound, and elaborately polished. Goodell is perceptive, analytical, expert, and solid. Child (David L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative; his lady combines strength with beauty, argumentation with persuasiveness, greatness with humility. Birney is collected, courteous, dispassionate—his fearlessness ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... gave existence to the body, do not "disappear in this way." They leave their traces, their exact images behind them impressed upon the spiritual ground-work of the world. Any one who is able to raise his perceptive faculty through the visible to the invisible world, attains at length a level on which he may see before him what may be compared to a vast spiritual panorama, in which are recorded all the past events of the world's history. These imperishable traces of everything immaterial ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... all this has been but a prelude to the play. Were it not so I should not now stand in such pressing want of the services of a confidential agent,—that is, of an experienced man of the world, who has been endowed by nature with phenomenal perceptive faculties, and in whose capacity and honour I can ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... revelation we need is the education of our own perceptive powers. Sir John Lubbock has pointed out, in a very striking passage, that the material world may convey itself through other senses than the five which we possess, that there may be innumerable other senses, and that some of these may ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... called the frontal sinus, and is sometimes half an inch wide. As there is no positive method of determining its dimensions in the living head, there must ever be some doubt concerning the development of the perceptive organs which it covers. The superciliary ridge at the external angle of the brow extends really as much as three-quarters of an inch from the brain. From this angle a ridge of bone (the temporal arch) extends upward and backward, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... sensation, impression; consciousness &c. (knowledge) 490. external senses. V. be sensible of &c. adj. ; feel, perceive. render sensible &c. adj.; sharpen, cultivate, tutor. cause sensation, impress; excite an impression, produce an impression. Adj. sensible, sensitive, sensuous; aesthetic, perceptive, sentient; conscious &c. (aware) 490. acute, sharp, keen, vivid, lively, impressive, thin-skinned. Adv. to the quick. Phr. "the touch'd needle trembles ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
