All 27 Uses of
conscious
in
The Scarlet Letter
- But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil.
p. 9.8consciousness = awareness or concern
- So, with lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed—in their own behalf at least, if not for our beloved country—these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.
p. 16.6consciousness = awareness
- But I could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused by a trumpet's peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only slumbering—he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior.
p. 20.9
- There would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past.
p. 23.7conscious = aware
- At the Instant, I was only conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil.
p. 31.3
- But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum.
p. 31.4consciousness = awareness
- Conscious of his own infirmity—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself.
p. 31.9conscious = aware
- Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects!
p. 33.1
- From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts.
p. 44.0consciousness = awareness
- Dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses.
p. 46.5conscious = aware
- She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale, and trembled.
p. 47.2
- There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him.
p. 53.5
- Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously.
p. 59.8unconsciously = without awarenessstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unconsciously means not and reverses the meaning of consciously. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- Full of concern, therefore—but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other—Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage.
p. 69.9conscious = aware
- …and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear.
p. 84.6consciousness = awareness or concern about something
- For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause.
p. 95.2conscious = aware
- He has been conscious of me.
p. 115.4
- From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission.
p. 121.4 *conscious = done with mental awareness
- But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together—for all these reasons Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.
p. 123.3conscious = guiltily aware of something
- They were awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs.
p. 128.7consciousness = awareness or concern about something
- Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy sigh, while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor.
p. 142.0conscious = with awareness
- This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years.
p. 145.9consciousness = awareness or concern about something
- Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible.
p. 147.9conscious = aware
- Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself.
p. 160.1unconscious = unawarestandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unconscious means not and reverses the meaning of conscious. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own.
p. 163.5conscious = aware
- According to these highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying ... had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness.
p. 171.8 *
- —conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels—had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness.
p. 171.8
Definitions:
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(1)
(conscious as in: conscious after the operation) awake (not asleep or in a state similar to sleep where one is unaware of anything)
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(2)
(conscious as in: a conscious effort to lose weight) intentional (done on purpose) -- perhaps with significant effort
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(3)
(conscious as in: environmentally conscious) aware or concerned about something
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(4)
(conscious as in: the conscious mind) mental activity of which one is self-aware
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(5)
(conscious as in: conscious life on other planets) capable of thought, self-reflection, and will
- (6) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)