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Notion   Listen
noun
Notion  n.  
1.
Mental apprehension of whatever may be known or imagined; an idea; a conception; more properly, a general or universal conception, as distinguishable or definable by marks or notae. "What hath been generally agreed on, I content myself to assume under the notion of principles." "Few agree in their notions about these words." "That notion of hunger, cold, sound, color, thought, wish, or fear which is in the mind, is called the "idea" of hunger, cold, etc." "Notion, again, signifies either the act of apprehending, signalizing, that is, the remarking or taking note of, the various notes, marks, or characters of an object which its qualities afford, or the result of that act."
2.
A sentiment; an opinion. "The extravagant notion they entertain of themselves." "A perverse will easily collects together a system of notions to justify itself in its obliquity."
3.
Sense; mind. (Obs.)
4.
An invention; an ingenious device; a knickknack; as, Yankee notions. (Colloq.)
5.
Inclination; intention; disposition; as, I have a notion to do it. (Colloq.)
6.
Miscellaneous small objects; sundries; usually referring to articles displayed together for sale.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Notion" Quotes from Famous Books



... when poured out; and I have more than once seen a river chief, on receiving a tomahawk, point to the stream and signify that we were then at liberty to take water from it, so strongly were they possessed with the notion that the water ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... right. Whittington took a cab and gave the name of an hotel. I did likewise, and we drove up within three minutes of each other. He hired a room, and I hired one too. So far it was all plain sailing. He hadn't the remotest notion that anyone was on to him. Well, he just sat around in the hotel lounge, reading the papers and so on, till it was time for dinner. He didn't hurry any over ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... too far. I dare say you have not been half severe enough upon him," said Dr. Van Horne, who had a very high opinion of Harry. "But to speak seriously, Mr. Hazlehurst, I don't at all like a notion my son Ben ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not the information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it was the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took you, might sell ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... those poor lunatics who believe that they are Napoleon, though they have nothing of Napoleon in them but the conviction of identity. They do not know when he was born or have more than the vaguest notion of what he did, but they try to act as who he was—according to their own ideas of how Napoleon would act in their situation. This is how my she-dog would ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)

... to Coventry, as I told you—not that he's a bad sort of chap; only he came from one of those beastly board schools in the town, and we didn't know who he was or what he was, and he kept his mouth shut about his people, and so the fellows took up the notion that Torrington's would soon go to the dogs if we let that sort of cattle stay there, and so we said he must go. Well, we thought the Coventry game had done the trick for us just at first, for you never saw such an awful ass as he made of himself one morning ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie

... your notion of ten minutes. Will you turn round, with your back to the clock, and tell me when one minute has passed, after I ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... have endeavoured to express Buttmann's idea respecting the meaning of [Greek: aieton]. See Lexil. p. 44-7. He concludes that it simply means great, but with a collateral notion of astonishment implied, connecting it ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... speech instantly on seeing the tears start into Tottie's large eyes as she replied quickly—"Indeed I would, m'm. Oh! you've no notion 'ow kind father is w'en 'e's ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... It wasn't good whisky; not like ours. That reminds me—I'm not much of a business man, but I've had a happy thought. My notion is we give the boys better liquor than they want. They wouldn't know the difference if we kept ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... search of the mendicant who had stolen his wallet. He was found and brought to Aurelian, who, after drubbing him soundly for three days, let him go his way. He afterwards told Clovis all that had passed and what Clotilde suggested. Clovis, pleased with his success and with Clotilde's notion, at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to demand his niece in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, and flattered at the idea of making a friend of Clovis, promised to give her to him. Then the deputation, having offered the denier and the sou, according to the custom of the Franks, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... talks his head off," Quail said. "You know, I've a notion he was having a bit of a laugh on me when ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... master sat at the east end of the room, at one side of the door; there was a blackboard—a "newfangled notion" in 1850—at the other side of the door. Some of the older scholars, who could afford private desks with lids to them, suitable for concealing smuggled apples and maple-sugar, had places at the other end of the room from ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... over to him; he had himself six complete legions. It is said that a ludicrous thing occurred here. Some soldiers having fallen in with a treasure, as it seems, got a large sum of money. The matter becoming known, all the rest of the soldiers got a notion that the place was full of money, which they supposed to have been hid during the misfortunes of the Carthaginians. The consequence was that Pompeius could do nothing with the soldiers for many days while they were busy with looking after treasure, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Thus, while Pieron, in an interesting discussion of the question ("Les Problemes Actuels de l'Instinct," Revue Philosophique, Oct., 1908), thinks it would still be convenient to retain the term, giving it a philosophical meaning, Georges Bohn, who devotes a chapter to the notion of instinct (La Naissance de l'Intelligence, 1909), is strongly in favor of eliminating the word, as being merely a legacy of medieval theologians and metaphysicians, serving to conceal our ignorance or our lack ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... my work, but when the stream threatened a group of stanchions, so highly polished that I could not endure the notion of a speck on their brightness, I lifted them out of harm's way, and with the clatter of this movement drew the attention of the plier ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... sixteen an' I took a notion I was grown. So I got under the house right under Marster's dinin' room an' thar I stayed for three months. Nobody but the cook knowed whar I was. They was a hole cut in the floor so ever' day she lifted the lid an' give me something ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... mediaeval term for the world had its rise in the notion that earth stood midway between Heaven and Hell, the one being as far below as the ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... save once, while we were changing horses, when he produced a flask with a silver top, and, taking a sip himself, asked me if I drank brandy. On my shaking my head, with a smile caused by what appeared to me the utter wildness and desperation of the notion, he muttered:— ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... and dine with us? I said to sister I would come and scold you well. Oh, Mr. Osborne Hamley, is that you?' and a look of mistaken intelligence at the tete-a-tete she had disturbed came so perceptibly over Miss Phoebe's face that Molly caught Osborne's sympathetic eye, and both smiled at the notion. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... happy results which would have attended a plan so extensive, and commenced with so much vigor, if it could have been continued with the same zeal by his successor, and not at once destroyed, through a mistaken notion of humanity, with which, soon after the departure of Governor Basco, they proceeded to exonerate the Filipinos from all agricultural labor that was not free and spontaneous, in conformity, as was then alleged, to the general spirit of our Indian legislation. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... their portion of meat in a large deep plate, flanked by a saucer brimming full of sweet cream, "aren't you pretty cats to go off and leave me the whole afternoon? Clara was the only one to keep me company. What is the use in having four cats to amuse me, if you mean to run off whenever the notion seizes you? I want you cats to be home all the time. You, San Francisco, should have stayed here with Clara as you are the largest. I think I shall have to tie you up to-morrow. No, I believe I'll ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to sacrifice herself to a man utterly unworthy of her, and he taught himself, not to think,—but to believe it to be possible that he might save her. Those who knew him would have said that he was the last man in the world to be carried away by a romantic notion;—but he had his own idea of romance as plainly developed in his mind as was ever the case with a knight of old, who went forth for the relief of a distressed damsel. If he could do anything towards saving her, he would do it, or try to do it, though he should ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... He had no notion of where he was going; he was going nowhere in particular. For aught I know he was going to ponder on the responsibility which had been thrust upon him by the scout powers that be, of judging stalking photographs ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... importance, are often espoused with more zeal than the weighty matters of God's law. As in all points we love ourselves, so, especially, in our hypotheses. Where a man has, as it were, a property in a notion, he is most industrious to improve it, and that in proportion to the labor of thought he has bestowed upon it; and, as its value rises in imagination, he is, in proportion, unwilling to give it up, and dwells upon it more pertinaciously ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... heathen; that it accepted missionaries from different Churches, and that it did not set up any particular form of Church, but left it to the converts to choose the form they considered most in accordance with the Word of God. This agreed with Livingstone's own notion of what a Missionary Society should do. He had already connected himself with the Independent communion, but this preference for it was founded chiefly on his greater regard for the personnel of the body, and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... throughout was astonishing: I never heard him say once that his pain was great. His tranquil and happy end has made a deep impression on our friends: they say one to another, 'May my mind be as Gokool's was!' When we consider, too, that this very man grew shy of us three years ago, because we opposed his notion that believers would never die, the grace now bestowed upon him appears the more remarkable. Knowing the horror the Hindoos have for a dead body, and how unwilling they are to contribute any way to its interment, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... all that is finical and superfluous. It means a garish embroidery on the big scheme of life; a clog on the forward march of a strong and courageous nation. To such as these, the words etiquette and politeness connote weakness and timidity. Their notion of a really polite man is a dancing master or a man milliner. They were always willing to admit that the French were the politest nation in Europe and equally ready to assert that the French were the weakest and least valorous, until ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... fellow who jumped his board bill at the hotel. Say, I guess the proprietor would like to see him. He has nerve coming back to this town. I've a good notion to tell the hotel clerk he's here. Mr. Watson would be glad to know it, too, for he takes it as a reflection on the team that Wessel should claim to be one of us, and then cheat the way ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... me, and did not elate me. Without saying so to any one, I had flattered myself that the burglars had heard of my precautions, and of my excellent stock of firearms, and perhaps had got a notion that I would be an intrepid man to deal with, and it was somewhat humiliating to find that it was our baby the burglars were afraid of, and not myself. My ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton

... would tolerate. It rests on solid reason, but as the Due de Noailles has said, "Un semblable raisonnement ne ferait pas fortune aupres des republicans d'Europe, fort chatouilleux sur le chapitre de la puissance legislative. C'est que la notion de l'Etat differe d'une facon essentielle sur les deux rives de l'Atlantique."[Footnote: Cent Ans de Republique aux Etats-Unis, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... decides to take the serious step, there is a decided change in the attitude of many of them toward William Nevins. Some of the men have a vague notion that he is not sincere; that he is an agent of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... also have the rooms to-morrow.' Then he wheeled round and his eyes lit on his companion. 'Hullo! I didn't notice you before. Is that your notion of the gentle art of masquerade? What are you meant to be—a sort ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... not follow your example," observed Euphrosyne, "I don't at all like that notion of the necessity of envy to make the beauty's joy complete. Besides, I'm not at all sure beauty is not much more charming in idea than in possession. Nobody spend their lives in entering a ball-room, ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... Tom," replied his father. "I consider all this excessively diverting. Pray, Captain, does everything else go fast in the new country?" "Everything with us clear, slick, I guess." "What sort of horses have you in America?" inquired I. "Our Kentuck horses, I've a notion, would surprise you. They're almighty goers at a trot, beat a N. W. gale of wind. I once took an Englishman with me in a gig up Alabama country, and he says, 'What's this great church yard we are passing through?' 'Stranger,' says I, 'I calculate ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... of a boat is it?" said the other man. I had succeeded at last in getting the tall man to let go of my hand, and I backed a little away from him. I described the "Hoppergrass" as well as I could, and told about the Captain's notion for changing the name. ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... Cressida" is. I have met intelligent readers of Shakespeare, who thought themselves unusually well acquainted with his writings, and who were so, who understood him and delighted in him, but who yet had never read "Troilus and Cressida." They had, in one way and another, got the notion that it is a very inferior play, and not worth reading, or at least not to be read until after they were tired of all the others—a time which had not yet come. There seems to be a slur cast upon this play; the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... Equally ridiculous is the notion of a political revolution with a social soul. The revolution as such—the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old conditions—is a political act. But without a revolution, socialism cannot be enforced. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer such calls, and fellow employees are likely to "guy" the man about his "mash." The "note habit" is just ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in men's clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large boy's suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain something ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... seem to be talking about something, but I haven't the faintest notion what it is. But you can make yourself believe anything you like if you keep ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... care of little Children, do not much trouble their thoughts and clog their memories with bare Grammar Rudiments, which to them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining; because indeed to them they signifie nothing, but a mere swimming notion of a general term, which they know not what it meaneth, till they comprehend particulars, but by this or the like subsidiary, inform them, first with some knowledge of things and words wherewith to express ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius

... written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called "The Devil's Drive" the notion of which I took from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... I could move him? Perhaps some such child's notion had influenced me up to this moment. But as these words left my lips, nay, before I had stumbled through them, I perceived by the set look of his features, which were as if cast in bronze, that I might falter, but that he was firm as ever, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... easy reach. I had especially been led to read military history with critical care, and had carried away many valuable ideas from this most useful means of military education. I had therefore some notion of the work before us, and could approach its problems with less loss of time, at least, than if I had been wholly ignorant. [Footnote: I have treated this subject somewhat more fully in a paper in ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... to pass. More than ever the lad felt his appellation of The Wolf was well deserved. It seemed to him that circumstances were conspiring to make him seem to the Germans a predatory animal, and while he would have been willing and was even anxious to dispel this notion from their minds, he well understood that nothing he could do or say would be of effect in this direction. Feeling keenly the need of most careful handling of the situation, Jimmie glanced quickly and furtively about the tent. He was somewhat surprised to observe there a ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... she flushed, but she had her defence ready. "Well, you see, Mis' Slogan, she's tuck a most unaccountable dislike to Lizzie, an' a pusson like—well, some do think her trouble has sorter turned 'er brain, an' the's no rail tellin' what quar notion ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... bed in the north chamber," said Mr. Shackford, wrinkling his forehead helplessly. "According to my notion, it is not so good as a bunk, or a hammock slung in a tidy forecastle, but it's at your service, and Mrs. Morganson, I dare say, can lay an ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... heart to disillusion him of the notion that there could be something delightful apart from her, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... say, now and here, about what that bodily condition may be—about the differences and the identities between it and our present earthly house of this tabernacle. Only this we know-reverse all the weakness of flesh, and you get some faint notion of the glorious body. It is sown in corruption, dishonour, and weakness. It is raised in incorruption, glory, and power. Nay, more, it is sown a natural body, fit organ for the animal life or nature, which stands connected with this ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... kept on, I'd be in Los Angeles now,—maybe in the navy already. I've a good notion to try again. I could almost go by train, now that my 'lowance has come. Mercy says it takes twelve dollars, and I've got ten. 'T any rate, I could ride as far as that would take me, and—by George, I b'lieve I could beat my way without spending a cent! That's ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... all notion of the ancient accent;—we have lost their pronunciation;—all puzzling about it is ridiculous, and trying to find out the melody of our own verse by theirs is still worse. We should have had all ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... it were, to the discovery of its weight, and had very near attained it, but some time after Torricelli seized upon this truth. In a little time experimental philosophy began to be cultivated on a sudden in most parts of Europe. It was a hidden treasure which Lord Bacon had some notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his promises, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... It made him an Englishman once more, it improved his health, it changed the current of his thoughts. It was even useful to him as an historian. In a celebrated and characteristic sentence, he says, "The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legions, and the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless to the historian of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had been oozing away in the same ratio as she was nearing her journey's end. When she had finally arrived she was almost frightened at the notion of meeting Inspector Loup. He had threatened her with prison. He might regard her now as an escaped convict. On the whole, Fouchette was really sorry she had run away. Back again in Paris, where she had suffered so much, she realized again that there were worse places ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... passed, a declaratory Act abolished the theory which had grown up at an early stage of the conflict between the White and Red Roses, of regarding Ireland as a country where a rebel in England was a free man: a notion which had greatly facilitated the intrigues of both Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck on Irish soil. Further, besides some enactments for checking feudal customs which tended to disorder, it was ordained ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... in the cities and carefully shepherded visiting neutrals, who do not go into the country, have little notion of the terrific effort being put forward to make the fruits of Mother Earth defeat the blockade, and above all to extract any kind of oil from ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... succeeded to the highest office in the Nation, Vice-Presidents were popularly regarded as being mere phantoms without any real power or influence as long as their term lasted, and cut off from all hopes in the future. Roosevelt himself had this notion. But the Presidential conventions, with criminal disregard of the qualifications of a candidate to perform the duties of President if accident thrust them upon him, went on recklessly nominating ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... fancy we are all jealous of one another. No protests of ours can take that notion out of your heads. My dear Pen, I do not intend to try. We are not jealous of mediocrity: we are not patient of it. I dare say we are angry because we see men admire it so. You gentlemen, who pretend to be our betters, give yourselves such airs of protection, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too, with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with—people who would dance, and had no notion of walking. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... without any notice whatever, if you will excuse me for telling the truth," answered the doctor. "It certainly would not be looked upon as serious, and I fear it would not even receive the dignity of being called funny. Even the women would laugh feebly at the extravagant notion, and think no more of it. But we were talking of Mars, not of the earth, and I am exceedingly anxious to know how affairs progressed here, though there is no likelihood that they will ever be paralleled ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the notion that a woman must write ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... cried the Father. "And ye think bein' a girl is anny good reason for bein' afraid? Faith, little friend, have ye not got hold o' a wrong notion entirely about girls?" Then seeing that here was an opportunity to take the thoughts of these two harried ones away from themselves, "Children dear," he went on, "all this about girls who are afraid reminds me o' ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... was going to tell you—I thought she had told you. I remember well how warmly she spoke of your cause; how she detested the course I was pursuing—how she made me ashamed of myself—ashamed to look at her. I suppose some mistaken notion of honour held her back from telling, since it was in her service and her sister's that ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... towards fitting him for the hero of this work than all the habits of his childhood or the scenes of his earlier youth. Young people are apt, erroneously, to believe that it is a bad thing to be exceedingly wicked. The House of Correction is so called, because it is a place where so ridiculous a notion is invariably corrected. The next day Paul was surprised by a visit from Mrs. Lobkins, who had heard of his situation and its causes from the friendly Dummie, and who had managed to obtain from Justice Burnflat an order of admission. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... beyond the skin of the subject. Thus, it would be difficult to teleport anything really large unless one were able to increase the volume of attention, or awareness. However, it is difficult to express this notion mathematically." ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... to notice somebody's been here and put things to rights," she said over and over to herself. "If it looks sightly, and seems like home, mebbe he'll give out the notion of stayin' at Nancy Card's, and come and live here." She brooded on the bliss of ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... by the notion. He turned to Vanderlyn. "I can't make out," he said in a puzzled tone, "why Peggy thought of going to Marly-le-Roi by train when she might so easily have gone in ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin's the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this world. When the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... done it, but how could I? All I know is that he was a delicately brought up young Englishman, and the only clue I have is a watch with a London maker's name on it and a girl's photograph. I've a very curious notion that I shall meet that girl ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... made some observations, the only one of which that has remained being that the natives went naked; and, the wind having changed, set forth on his homeward voyage. This voyage was long and painful. The wind did not hold steady from the west; the pilot and his crew had a very hazy notion of where they were; their dead reckoning was confused; their provisions fell short; and one by one the crew sickened and died until they were reduced to five or six—the ones who, worn out by sickness and famine, and the labours of working the ship short-handed and in their enfeebled condition, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... of what was coming Betty had started off, as did the other girls. Mollie seemed to have a notion of rushing over to Alice and the others, but Grace, by a gesture, warned her ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope

... that he could feel the need for food, for rest, that ever his vital forces could wane. In the north was starvation for them, a starvation to which they drew ever nearer day by day, but irresistibly the notion obsessed them that this forerunner, the forerunner of the Trail, proved no such material necessities, that he drew his sustenance from his environment in some mysterious manner not to be understood. Always on and on and on the Trail ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... "What notion did the dog take, Uncle Amazon?" Louise asked as he halted. Sometimes he required a little urging to "get ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... move we get all our gear into shape and try to plan some way to get the plume birds hereafter without killing. That will take us until dark, I guess. Then let's quietly take our blankets and move back into the forest a ways. Our neighbors may take a notion to pay us a visit without ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... on, for a little while; and ask no questions till I've done: for we branch ('exfoliate,' I should say, mineralogically) always into something else,—though that's my fault more than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see the sort of look they have: you can easily remember that 'folium' is Latin for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called 'folia;' but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones, other things ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... secret, servile and abject manner. Oh Heaven! I am full!!! I can hardly move my pen!!! As I expect some one will try to put me to death, to strike terror into others, and to obliterate from their minds the notion of freedom, so as to keep my brethren the more secured in wretchedness where they will be permitted to stay but a short time (whether tyrants believe it or not,) I shall give the world a development of facts which ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... occasion he was offered a pipe by a jesting youth who thought thereby to shock so saintly a person. Fox says in his "Journal," "I lookt upon him to bee a forwarde bolde lad: and tobacco I did not take: butt ... I saw hee had a flashy empty notion of religion: soe I took his pipe and putt it to my mouth and gave it to him again to stoppe him lest his rude tongue should say I had not unity with ye creation." The incident is curious, but testifies to Fox's tolerance and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... "listen to me: All the money in the world couldn't make me be untrue to my salt. And if you have any lingering notion that I'm not going to collect a million dollars' worth of satisfaction for the way you've acted aboard my ship, I can only say that as a fortune-teller you'll never earn enough money to keep yourself ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... numbers which we saw collected at every village, as we sailed past, it may be supposed, that the inhabitants of this island are pretty numerous. Any computation, that we make, can be only conjectural. But, that some notion may be formed, which shall not greatly err on either side, I would suppose, that, including the straggling houses, there might be, upon the whole island, sixty such, villages, as that before which we anchored; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... different matter from sugar-coating the drill processes, under the mistaken notion that something that is worth while may be acquired without effort. I think that educators are generally agreed that such a policy is thoroughly bad,—for it subverts a basic principle of human life the operation ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... as that throwing an empty wine-flask in the fire should furnish the first notion of a locomotive, or that the sickness of an Italian chemist's wife and her absurd craving for reptiles for food should begin the electric telegraph. Madame Galvani noticed the contraction of the muscles of a skinned frog which was accidentally touched at the moment her husband ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Diomed is delighted at the notion of marrying his daughter to a nobleman, and will come down largely with the sesterces. You will see that I shall not lock them up in the atrium. It will be a white day for his jolly friends, when Clodius ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... me—me! Francois Villon! Certainly a man died or there would be no Villon now: it was either he or I, and they would have hung me." The full lips parted in a comfortable laugh and the eyes twinkled. "I appealed to Parliament in a ballad, and the humour of the notion moved the good gentlemen to mercy. 'How can we choke the breath from so sweet a singer?' said they. 'There are ten thousand hangable rogues in Paris, but only one poet amongst them!' God be praised for humour. I think it gave Francois Villon his life; but since then friendship ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Adams arrived on the scene, the situation soon changed. By one of those dramatic strokes of which he was a master, he ended the discussion by suddenly declaring, in the presence of the British plenipotentiaries, that, so far as he was concerned, he "had no notion of cheating anybody;" that the question of paying debts and the question of compensating the loyalists were two; and that, while he was opposed to compensating the loyalists, he would agree to a stipulation to secure the payment of debts. It was therefore provided, in the fourth article ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... ball-room. His figures are small, and as minutely elaborated and as highly finished as those of Meissonier himself, whose cherished pupil he was; and I could not but smile, while examining them, at the notion of an enthusiastic young Philadelphian, an almost idolatrous worshipper of Fortuny, that he could imitate this incomparable work by a rapid and free sort of sketching, and all on the faith of two pictures of the master which he had had the happiness to see at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... Clemens decided to make literature of it. He conceived the notion of writing an open letter to the Queen in the character of a rambling, garrulous, but well-disposed countryman whose idea was that her Majesty conducted all the business of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... quarter of a mile away, or thereabouts, standun up,—one end a twenty fathom out o' water, an' about a forty fathom across, wi' hills like, an' houses,—an' then, jest as ef 'e was alive an' had tooked a notion in 'e'sself, seemunly, all of a sudden 'e rared up, an' turned over an' over, wi' a tarrible thunderun noise, an' comed right on, breakun everything an' throwun up great seas; 't was frightsome for a lone body away out among 'em! I stood an' looked at un, but ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a creature whom I well knew ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... back and forth every day—for milk, or one thing or another; she's terribly interested in the farm; father's taken a great notion to her. She'll be over after supper, you'll see; and then I'll make you ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs

... at Bihorel, and a solemn oath of amnesty for all acts of violence was exacted from every one who had suffered from the outrages of the mob, and at last poor Jehan le Gras was allowed to go home to his shop, without the faintest notion of what all the uproar had been about, and very thankful to give up his royalty and be ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... I've a notion I could put my finger upon her now, if I choosed. Captain, you haven't got a coil of two-inch which you could lend me—I ain't got a topsail brace to reeve and mine are very queer just now. I reckon they've been ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... I asked myself if the bargee at the tiller, now sucking at his short black pipe, now munching onions and cheese (the little onions he pitches on the lawns by the river side, there to take root and flourish)—if this amiable man has any notion of his own incomparable position. Just some inkling of the irony of the situation must, I fancy, now and then dimly dawn within his grimy brow. To see all these gentlemen shoved on one side; to be lying in the way of a splendid Australian clipper; to stop an incoming vessel, impatient for ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... inhabitants especially, who, we suspect, on examining into their principles and habits, will have some difficulty in satisfying themselves that they have not chosen ill for their real happiness; and, for all real usefulness, a great deal worse. But the mistaken notion which most strips the country of its natural guardians, is the fallacy, on the part of young and sanguine dispositions, of believing that the motives and sphere of individual action rise in proportion to the apparent magnitude of the scene. These are the absentees ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... and leather breeches. Over the fire-place was a blunderbuss, and a hard-favoured likeness of Ready-Money Jack, taken when he was a young man, by the same artist that painted the tavern sign; his mother having taken a notion that the Tibbets had as much right to have a gallery of family portraits as the folks ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... of dead enemy chieftains, to acquire their courage; and this clergyman entered a library with the same simple notion. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... all," said Dudu. "She is away, and farther away than you or she has any notion of, even though if you went into her room you would see her little rosy face lying on the pillow. She ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... picture—better probably. The making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... been, and what the experience of his relatives had been, in the haunted hotel. He even described the outbreak of superstitious terror which had escaped Mrs. Norbury's ignorant maid. 'Sad stuff, if you look at it reasonably,' he remarked. 'But there is something dramatic in the notion of the ghostly influence making itself felt by the relations in succession, as they one after another enter the fatal room—until the one chosen relative comes who will see the Unearthly Creature, and know the terrible truth. Material for a play, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... gods. Ana the sky, is the god of Erech on the lower Euphrates. Like the Chinese, the men of Erech regarded the sky itself as the highest god, and the maker and ruler of all things. In Babylonia, however, the notion became spiritualised more than in China; at first we hear that his dwelling became the refuge of the gods during the Deluge, but in later times he is regarded as a being quite above heaven and all created beings, and even all the gods. A third great god is Bel of Nippur, not ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... occasion I forgot the cloud shadow in a strange notion to catch up with my own shadow. Standing straight and still, I began to glide after it, putting out one foot cautiously. When, with the greatest care, I set my foot in advance of myself, my shadow crept onward too. Then ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... forget not all his benefits!' is ever recurring to me. It is doubtless this continued referring all to Him that prevents this universal demonstration of kindly feeling from puffing me up with the false notion that I am anything but the feeblest of instruments. I cannot give you any idea of the peculiar feelings which gratify and yet ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... places and play about in the grass. Upon the whole they are not shy, and they allow people to approach them pretty closely. The natives call this little animal the Cui del Montes, and they believe it to be the progenitor of the tame Guinea pig. This notion is, however, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... the outfit in the morning," he said presently, glancing towards a man who sat across the room. "Do you think that fellow Clarke can hear? I've a notion that he's been ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... you understand that it cannot be? I was young myself once, and I know what it is; how one takes a notion to chase after any girl who is not ugly; but later on one reflects, he thinks about what is good and what is not good, what is proper, and in the end he does not commit a foolish deed. Have you thought it over, really, senor? That was a joke the other ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... supernal virtue from the time of Saint Jerome. It was supposed to be a state most favorable to Christian perfection; it animated the existence of the most noted saints. Says Jerome, "Take axe in hand and hew down the sterile tree of marriage." This notion of the superior virtue of virginity was one of the fruits of those Eastern theogonies which were engrafted on the early Church, growing out of the Oriental idea of the inalienable evil of matter. It was one of the fundamental principles of monasticism; and monasticism, wherever born—whether in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... are asking me at the Odeon to let them perform a fairy play: la Nuit de Noel from the Theatre de Nohant, I don't want to, it's too small a thing. But since they have that idea, why wouldn't they try your fairy play? Do you want me to ask them? I have a notion that this would be the right theatre for a thing of that type. The management, Chilly and Duquesnel, wants to have scenery and MACHINERY and yet keep it literary. Let us discuss ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... also the house of Crosse and Blackwell is a national institution, and that Mr. Justice Darling is a national institution. By all means let us count the brothers Murray as a national institution, even as an Imperial institution. But let us guard against the notion, everywhere cropping up, that such "houses" as the dignified and wealthy house of Murray are in some mysterious way responsible for English literature, part-authors of English literature, to whom half of the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... one of the phenomena about which naturalists have a difference of opinion. Some of them say there are vast beds of salt at the bottom which keep the water always impregnated. I think this notion is very childish; and they who hold it offer only childish arguments to support it. Others assert that the salt water of the ocean is a primitive fluid—that it was always as it now is—which you will perceive is giving no reason at all, more than saying, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... no notion of hiding himself thus. He was not personally afraid of Klerkon, neither did he believe that the viking would go to much trouble to secure his prize even if his horse should be successful. Olaf had heard that that horse ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... no notion of it! But, after all, that is easy enough to explain. All the telegraph cables are in the hands of the English, and it was easy for them to suppress every unwelcome despatch. The Indian newspapers are only allowed, of course, to publish what is agreeable to the Government; but I am burning with ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... her sober-coloured stuff gown, in her prim, quiet manner and a certain sanctified demureness of aspect, there was something in the first appearance of this woman that impressed you with the notion of respectability, and inspired confidence in those steady good qualities which we seek in a trusty servant. But more closely examined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps to disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the forehead, over ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... tried the external surface, which was at any rate shiny. But the ink would not 'take' on it. He made as many experiments as Edison was to make, and as many failures. Then Constance was visited by a notion for mixing sugar with ink. Simple, innocent creature—why should providence have chosen her to be the vessel of such a sublime notion? Puzzling enigma, which, however, did not exercise Mr. Povey! He found it quite natural that she should save him. Save him she did. Sugar and ink would 'take' on ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... Stumps, his mark." He had an old inscription engraved on an unused bit of pewter—it was well begrimed and well battered, then exposed for sale in a broker's shop, where it was greedily purchased by the credulous virtuoso. The notion, by the way, of the Club button was taken from the Prince Regent, who had his Club and uniform, which he allowed ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... will not approach the spiritual world in the right manner. No partiality for the "inexplicable" will ever make one qualified for discipleship of the Spirit. Indeed the pupil should utterly discard the notion that a true mystic is one who is always ready to surmise the presence of what cannot be explained or explored. The right way is to be prepared to recognize on all hands hidden forces and hidden beings, yet at the same time to assume that what is "unexplored" today will be able to be explored ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... a knowledge of WHAT they might be, in case we were permitted positively to conceive them. So we have the strange phenomenon, as Kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its strength in the real presence of a set of things of no one of which it can form any notion whatsoever. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... from the superstitious fears that would make such a place a haunt of horrors to the average youngster, the notion of sleeping alone below there did not please him, and he had still some hope of ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... time to anchor her permanent somewhere. Accordin' to his notion, he did the handsome thing too. He buys her a nice little farm about a mile outside of Tonawanda, a place with a fine view of the railroad tracks on the west and a row of brick yards to the east, and he lands mother there with a toothless old ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... impossible for a person educated according to nature to form an idea of the depraved state of society. It is easy to form a precise notion of order, but not of disorder. Beauty, virtue, happiness, have all their defined proportions; deformity, vice, and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... interest has become specially concentrated on Aristotle's work on that topic which is perhaps, at the moment, more widely read than any biological treatise, ancient or modern, except the works of Darwin. That great naturalist wrote to Ogle in 1882: 'From quotations I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... got a notion," said Rob, one morning not long after they had finished their new barabbara, "that if we were asked about this big island where we are living we couldn't tell very much regarding it. We've only been over a little strip of country around here. I don't suppose we've ever been more than five or ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... "Why, I'd a notion you wanted to! To be sure, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and 'tisn' the first time; but young Tom Trevarthen didn' seem to reckon so. There, get your prayers over and cut along; I'll make it all right with ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... disconcerted at this, for we felt that we should like to have done something—though we scarcely knew what—to mark our appreciation of her extremely important services of the preceding night. Besides, somehow, we had both taken the notion into our heads that in liberating us, she had committed an unpardonable sin against her former friends, and that when she crossed the creek and plunged into the forest with us she was virtually cutting herself adrift from her own people and casting in her lot with us. In which ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... she thought of old Blue Beard as some do of Judas, Who with this notion essay to delude us: That when he relented, And fiercely repented, He was hardly so bad As he commonly had ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... every principle of morals, that the elect will do so too. In this world a man actuated by such a spirit would be styled a devil. On entering heaven, what magic shall work such a demoniacal change in him? There is not a word, direct or indirect, in the Scriptures to warrant the dreadful notion; nor is there any reasonable explanation or moral justification of it given by any of its advocates, or indeed conceivable. The monstrous hypothesis cannot be true. Under the omnipotent, benignant government of a paternal God, each change of character in his chosen children, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... not know why we should, then, when all nature and all history contradicts the notion! Nature shows us that the lion is braver than the elephant, and history informs us that all the great generals of the world have ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... in reading letters from London: and, just about tea-time, she sent for me into her room, and said, with a look of great satisfaction, "Come here, child, I've got some very good news to tell you: something that will surprise you, I'll give you my word, for you ha'n't no notion of it." ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... when put into Practice must unavoidably cause the Righteous to perish with the Wicked; or procure the Bloodshed of any Persons, like the Gibeonites, whom some learned Men suppose to be under a false Notion of ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... the breaking up of the ministry was the resignation of Baldwin following upon the support given by a majority of the Reformers in Upper Canada to a notion presented by William Lyon Mackenzie for the abolition of the court of chancery and the transfer of its functions to the courts of common law. The motion was voted down in the House, but Baldwin was a believer in the doctrine ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... what assumption of confidence does it not overthrow? They say, that the polypus in the winter gnaws his own claws; but the logic of Chrysippus, taking away and cutting off its own chiefest parts and principles,—what other notion has it left unsuspected of falsehood? For the superstructures cannot be steady and sure, if the foundations remain not firm but are shaken with so many doubts and troubles. But as those who have dust or dirt upon their bodies, if they touch or rub the filth that is ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... in his work on the Geographical Distribution of Mammals, gives the Straits of Magellan as the extreme southern limit of the puma's range, and in discussing the above passage from Byron he writes: "This reference, however, gives no support to the notion of the animal alluded to having been a puma. . . . The description of the footprints clearly shows that the animal could not have been a puma. None of the cat tribe leave any trace of a claw in their footprints. . . The dogs, on the other hand, leave a very well-defined ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... her intent to marry Dudley, until the sober Cecil conveyed to her towards the end of that month of September some notion of the rebellion that ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... the influence of Mrs. Maldon. Mrs. Maldon made a nightly solemnity of the newspaper, and Rachel naturally soon persuaded herself that it was a fine and a superior thing to read the newspaper—a proof of unusual intelligence. Moreover, just as she felt bound to show Mrs. Maldon that her notion of cleanliness was as advanced as anybody's, so she felt bound to indicate, by an appearance of casualness, that for her to read the paper was the most customary thing in the world. Of course she read the paper! And that she should calmly look ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... the love of the be-utiful—contemplate birds—and lovely flowers and express what they mean to you,'" he quoted in a high pitched voice. "Holy smoke, I had a notion to tell her that spring flowers meant digging dandelions at five cents a thousand, when I wanted to go fishing! She might at least save 'em till the ground thaws—it's colder than ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... "I have to spin straw into gold, and haven't the slightest notion how it's done." "What will you give me if I spin it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... conception formed from notions, which transcends the possibility of experience, is an idea, or a conception of reason. To one who has accustomed himself to these distinctions, it must be quite intolerable to hear the representation of the colour red called an idea. It ought not even to be called a notion or conception of understanding. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... were. I mean what I say; no less. I do not think getting married is worth while. I would rather you went on living with your father, so that I could walk over and see you once, or maybe twice a week, as people go to church, and then we should both be all the happier between whiles. That's my notion. But I'll marry you ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... troops, upon some groundless rumor, took up the notion that the commanders on the other side would come over; and accordingly, upon their first approach, they saluted them with the friendly title of fellow-soldiers. But the others returned the compliment with anger and disdainful words; which not only disheartened those that had given the salutation, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... her father, with a smile. "You see at the time Stephenson invented his steam locomotive nothing was known of this novel method of travel. As I told you, persons were accustomed to make journeys either by coach or canal. Then the steam engine was invented and immediately the notion that this power might be applied to transportation took possession of the minds of people in different parts of England. As a result, first one and then another made a crude locomotive and tried it out ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... lucky man, at that," commented the Toy Breeds judge, with whom the Master chanced to be talking. "And he'll be still luckier if he misses the whole show. You 'small exhibitors' have no notion of the rotten deal handed to a dog-show judge;—though lots of you do more than your share toward making his life a burden. Before the judging begins, some of the exhibitors act as if they wanted to kiss him. Nothing's too good for ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... and early associations if I might take away with me the soothing conviction that my absence left a void somewhere, anywhere, that would always be a void until I came back to fill it. I had an exalted notion of fidelity and remembrance then, which has been roughly used upon the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular French tale in his time. In the ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... are made to-day to minimise or explain away moral evil—attempts with which we shall deal in greater detail at a later stage—we have to reaffirm the reality and exceeding sinfulness of sin; more particularly, in combating the preposterous notion of man's oneness with God as something already realised, we have to insist with renewed emphasis that salvation, so far from being self-understood, is a prize only to be won by a hard struggle, nor shut the door upon the dread possibility ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... banking-house in Lombard Street. Now Mr. Cockayne would as soon have thought of wearing that plaid shooting-suit and that grey flat cap down Cheapside or Cornhill, as he would have attempted to play at leap-frog in the underwriters' room at Lloyd's. He had a notion, however, that he had done the "correct thing" for foreign parts, and that he had made himself look as much a traveller as Livingstone or Burton. Some strange dreams in the matter of dress had possessed the mind of Mrs. Cockayne, and her daughters also. They were in varieties ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... to separate himself from travelling-companions whose only notion of their function was that of putting so many leagues a day behind them. His theory was that of Ulysses, who was not content with seeing the cities of many men, but would learn their minds also. And this way of taking time enough, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... fancied, but a bloodless thing; Or else too well forewarned of that commotion Which poets feign inseparable from Spring To suffer danger from a school-girl notion; Also they hoped that she might find her king, On close inspection, clumsy and Boeotian:— This was acute enough, and yet, between us, I think they thought ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... whisper of that too; but we had got a parish doctor already, and one was enough. 'Not when he never comes anigh you,' says she, 'and lets you go half way to meet your diseases.' 'I don't know for that,' says I, and indeed I haan't a notion what she meant, for my part; but says I, 'I don't want no women folk to come here a-doctoring o' me, that's sartin.' So she said, 'But suppose you were very ill, and the he-doctor three miles off, and fifty others to visit afore you?' 'That is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... statement, and with no kind of case to show that you are doing anything for India, or that you are justified in holding possession of it at all, is nothing but to receive a salary and to hold a dignity without any adequate notion of the high responsibility attaching to them. I am not blaming the right hon. Gentleman in particular; he is only doing what all his predecessors before him have done. There has been no real improvement since I ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second- hand." [Footnote: Lecture VI., p. 265.] The influence of Bergson had led him "to renounce the intellectualist method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be." [Footnote: A Pluralistic Universe, p. 212.] It had induced him, he continued, "TO GIVE UP THE LOGIC, squarely and irrevocably" as a method, for he found that ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... him. Nevertheless; should this bruit of your mislike of his Lordship's authority there come unto the ears of those people; being a nation both sudden and suspicious, and having been heretofore used to stratagem—I fear it may work some strange notion in them, considering that, at this time, there is an increase of taxation raised upon them, the bestowing whereof perchance they know not of. His Lordship's giving; up of the government may leave them altogether without government, and in worse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... inconsistent with them, and that then the State laws must yield. What sort of concurrent powers are these, which cannot exist together? Indeed, the very reading of the clause in the Constitution must put to flight this notion of a general concurrent power. The Constitution was formed for all the States; and Congress was to have power to regulate commerce. Now, what is the import of this, but that Congress is to give the rule, to establish the system, to exercise the control over the subject? And can more ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... difference between them: the points of resemblance between Purusha and Iswara; and the points of difference between them. The four considerations that cover these topics are absence of beginning and end, existence as chit and in animation, distinction from all other things, and the notion of activity. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... to bother us," she said; "and the music-master is the worst of the two. There's a notion at the hospital (set agoing, I don't doubt, by the man himself), that I crushed his fingers on purpose. That's a lie! With the open cupboard door between us, how could I see him, or he see me? When I gave it a push-to, I no more knew where his ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... you might have asked old neighbors to give you a hand, Frank. I had no notion you was in any such turrible hurry to start this here new chicken house of yourn. It don't look respectable or kindly, you acting that way, neglecting to tell ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... Of the printing press, and mentor Of the clumsy-fingered typos In a sleepy German town, Used to spread the sheets of vellum On the form, and plainly tell them That the art was then perfected, As he pressed the platen down, He had not the faintest notion Of the rhythmical commotion, Of the brabble and the clamor And the unremitting roar Of the mighty triple decker, While the steel rods flicker, And the papers, ready folded, Fall ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... grasped each other by the hand and gazed at the spot where their leader had gone down, with frenzied eagerness; while Mr. Tupman, by way of rendering the promptest assistance and at the same time conveying to any persons who might be within hearing the clearest 25 possible notion of the catastrophe, ran off across the country at his utmost speed, screaming "Fire!" with all his might ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... "I have no more notion than you how long it is to last," Holmes answered with some asperity. "If criminals would always schedule their movements like railway trains, it would certainly be more convenient for all of us. As to what it is we—Well, that's what ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Notion" :   article, presence, whim, preconceived notion, opinion, thought, feeling, ribbon, mumpsimus, whimsy, first blush, belief, suspicion, conception, concept, superstitious notion, whimsey, effect, intuition, impression, idea



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