How do I know that if He said (as He but too certainly might), something which clashed seriously with my preconceived notions of what He ought to say, I should not be offended, and walk no more with Him?

These two conceptions may be considered as one; for by finality we mean the intelligent direction of means towards a preconceived end; and therefore to admit a pervading finality, is to imply a theistic origin and governme

The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our preconceived notions in watching them.

This is the work of an enlightened intelligence resulting from persistent determination to discover what truth really is irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever source derived, the determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to get our thinking done for us.

Occasionally he refers to me as "callow," and we have daily resorts to logic to prove prejudices, and history is searched to bolster the preconceived, but on the following important points we stand together, solid as one man: First.

Indeed, the conversation, as carried on by him, between the moment of betrothal and the arrival at the chemist's shop, was the one phenomenon of the engagement which corresponded with her preconceived ideas concerning such an affair.

No, it cannot be you, the husband, the father of a family, the man who is there, it is not you, that is not possible; without the prejudice of the speech of the prosecution and a preconceived idea, you would never say that M. Flaubert was the author of a bad book!

1] prejudgment, prejudication^, prejudice; foregone conclusion; prenotion^, prevention, preconception, predilection, prepossession, preapprehension^, presumption, assumption, presentiment; fixed idea, preconceived idea; idee fixe; mentis gratissimus error [Lat.]; fool's paradise.

This clause has met with the usual fate of parenthetic statements which do not quite fall in with preconceived opinions, and is dismissed as a 'manifest interpolation,' a gloss having crept into the text from the margin.

If this does not agree with preconceived opinions as to what the state of the Canon ought to have been, it is the opinion that ought to be rectified accordingly, and not plain words explained away.

Neither of the girls was thinking of the student, their neighbor; but he was not only wakened by their voices, he amused himself by comparing them and their utterances with his preconceived notions of the girls.

The Muhammedan movement at its outset was influenced not by the real Christianity of the time but by a Christianity which Muhammed criticised in certain details and forced into harmony with his preconceived ideas.

The reader who comes to Carlyle with preconceived notions based on what he has heard of the subject-matter of his books is certain to be surprised by what he finds.

In wars in which mounted forces were really effective, and not hampered in their movements by preconceived notions (as in the American War of Secession and the Boer War), their employment has been continuously extended, since the great value of their operative mobility was convincingly shown, especially in Africa, notwithstanding all modern weapons.

The demands on the fighting-efficiency of this armas is partly expressed in the regulationsmay be summed up as follows: all preconceived ideas and theories as to its employment must be put on one side, and its one guiding principle must be to support the cavalry or infantry at the decisive point.

The neighborhood of the beautiful girl had made so strong an impression on the soul of the young man, who had no variety of faces preconceived in his mind, that by degrees, on the way from the eye to the hand, nothing was lost, and both worked in exact harmony together.

Starvation brings recklessness, a desperate frenzied courage that is likely to upset all of one's preconceived notions as to the behaviour of animals.

Were the two heirs working out a preconceived plan or were they, after all, playing with the fires of spring?

The delight, arising from the whole, sanctions, nay, sanctifies, the faulty passages; and even actual improvements, like supplements to a mutilated statue of antiquity, injure our preconceived associations, and hurt, by their incongruity with our feelings, more than they give pleasure by their own excellence.

The great conception of uniform regular sequence, without partiality and without capricethe conception which is the most potent force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical form given to our sentimentscould only grow out of that patient watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science.

To those who may at first be readybecause I do not agree with all their preconceived opinionsto doubt or deny my conclusions, I would say, in the language of Themistocles, "Strike, but hear me.

He taught us to approach it with no preconceived theories, no fears, no preferences.

Contrary to our preconceived idea of northern savages, they were athletic, able-bodied men, fully up to the average height of Americans.

Cicero said of Antonius, "All his speeches were, in appearance, the unpremeditated effusion of an honest heart; and yet, in reality, they were preconceived with so much skill that the judges were not so well prepared as they should have been to withstand the force of them!"

His remarks upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely misleading a preconceived theory may be.