Word: notion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1870-1879
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
These schools correspond nearly to what are called in America common schools. Children there learn the elements of education necessary to every man, in whatever condition of life. Reading, writing, a little notion of French grammar, of arithmetic, French history, and geography, of church history and religion, - such are the elements of the instruction. Every commune must have its schools, - one for boys and one for girls, but generally entirely distinct. Mixed schools are very rare in France, while with you young men and girls to the age of fourteen or fifteen, and sometimes older, go to the same school...
...without experience. But starting from this place, the student of Harvard finds that the consideration which he receives increases in proportion to the number of miles which separate him from his point of departure; and, with this increase of consideration, he also observes that there springs up an exaggerated notion of the life he leads at college...
There are two reasons why this notion should exist, the first of which arises, through no fault of the students themselves, from a liking in other persons for contrast. This love of contrast is shown in the disposition which makes ministers' sons and deacons' daughters stand as types of youthful waywardness; while, in fact, these persons form the most unassuming portion of creation. So with the name of student, - many would be glad to make it synonymous with its antipodes...
...JOHN RUSKIN has been spending the greater portion of his life in endeavoring to free the world from an old idea, that works of art should be admired for their own apparent power, for the force with which they strike the observer. In place of this notion, he has labored to introduce a taste for art measured by definite rules and lines...
...long as these things are so, the student may study conscientiously, but his study will be a task. He may pore over the pages of his classics in the prescribed manner, but he will rise from his labor with no notion of the grandeur of the work which he has read, - only with a vague idea of disconnected subjunctives and confused optatives floating through his troubled and wearied brain...