He that will contest things apparently decided by sense and experience, or who disavows clear principles of reason, approved by general consent and the common sense of men, what other hopeful way is there of proceeding with him, than pleasantly to explode his conceits?

They are gazed on, as the doers of bold tricks, who dare perform that which no sober man will attempt: they do indeed rather deserve themselves to be laughed at, than their conceits.

Do pretty conceits or humorous talk carry on any business, or perform any work?

I hope he's far enough, and free enough, Yet these conceits, I know, delight his soul.

I cannot choose but smile at these conceits.

[170] Perhaps the earliest instance of the use of this expression, as to which see "Old English Jest-Books," 1864, iii.; "Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson," Introd.

Like all writers of the time, he is, of course, fond of antithesis, and abounds in conceits and fancies; whence he attributes a multitude of expressions to St. Peter of which never possibly could the substantial ideas have entered the Apostle's mind, or probably any other than Southwell's own.

In a poem called The Cross, full of fantastic conceits, we find the following remarkable lines, embodying the profoundest truth.

The fragment is full of unworthy, though skilful, and, for such, powerful conceits, but is especially interesting as showing how even Milton, trying to write about what he felt, but without yet having generated thoughts enow concerning the subject itself, could only fall back on conventionalities.

My reader must be friendly enough to one who is so friendly to him, to let his peculiarities pass unquestionedamongst the rest his conceits, as well as the trifling discord that the shepherds should be called, after the classical fashionill agreeing, from its associations, with Christian songTityrus and Thyrsis.

It was, moreover, full of rhetorical exaggerations, and disfigured with conceits.

[Pope's Essay on Criticism, ii. 297.] but surprising allusions, brilliant sallies of vivacity, and pleasant conceits.

All manner of civility, decency, compliment and good behaviour, plus solis et leporis, polite graces and merry conceits.

ob seminis abundantiam crebrae cogitationes, veneris frequens recordatio et pruriens voluptas, &c. an earnest longing comes hence, pruriens corpus, pruriens anima, amorous conceits, tickling thoughts, sweet and pleasant hopes; hence it is, they can think, discourse willingly, or speak almost of no other subject.

This love is the cause of all good conceits, neatness, exornations, plays, elegancies, delights, pleasant expressions, sweet motions, and gestures, joys, comforts, exultancies, and all the sweetness of our life, qualis jam vita foret, aut quid jucundi sine aurea Venere?

Many slack and careless parents, iniqui patres, measure their children's affections by their own, they are now cold and decrepit themselves, past all such youthful conceits, and they will therefore starve their children's genus, have them a pueris illico nasci senes, they must not marry, nec earum affines esse rerum

But we are far from any such strange conceits, and will permit our wives and daughters to go to the tavern with a friend, as Aubanus saith, modo absit lascivia, and suspect nothing, to kiss coming and going, which, as Erasmus writes in one of his epistles, they cannot endure.

In Johnson's review of Cowley's works, false wit is detected in all its shapes, and the Gothic taste for glittering conceits, and far-fetched allusions, is exploded, never, it is hoped, to revive again.

He talks familiarly of works that are or are not read "in our circle;" and seated smiling and at his ease in a coronet-coach, enlivening the owner by his brisk sallies and Attic conceits, is shocked, as he passes, to see a Peer of the realm shake hands with a poet.

These little conceits aren't so easy to write, after all, even when they contain no ideas.

Conceits, i. 179.

The Elizabethan sonnet sequences; studies in conventional conceits.

I might embellish this Subject with Roses and Rain-bows, and several other ingenious Conceits, which I may possibly reserve for another Opportunity.

Of all conceits it is surely the most classical.

Large hoops were worn in those days, and long ruffles, and sacks short and long, and stomachers, and hoods, and sundry other conceits, now never thought of; but Mrs. Margaret thought that all these things had a genteel appearance, and showed that those who bought them and those who inherited them had not come of nothing.