All 46 Uses of
conceive
in
Atlas Shrugged
- The thought of leaving Taggart Transcontinental did not belong among the things she could hold as conceivable.†
Chpt 1.3
- Yet he had and did, and there was no explanation to make it conceivable and to let her forget him in peace.†
Chpt 1.5
- Yet there was no explanation, no reason, no clue to any conceivable reason —and in all the days of ten years she had found no hint of an answer.†
Chpt 1.5
- No. It's inconceivable.†
Chpt 1.5inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- Inconceivable, isn't it?†
Chpt 1.5 *
- She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.†
Chpt 1.9
- That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality.†
Chpt 1.9inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- The words and the voice had the genuine simplicity of truth, "Dr. Akston, I ....it's inconceivable, it's ....You're ....you're a philosopher ....the greatest philosopher living ....an immortal name ....why would you do this?"†
Chpt 1.10
- If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner-check your premises.†
Chpt 1.10
- Dr. Stadler could have regarded the sentence as conceivable, had it been uttered with hatred, envy or malice; but the absence of any such emotion, the casual ease of the voice, an ease suggesting a chuckle, hit him like a moment's glimpse of a realm that could not be taken as part of reality; the thing spreading down to his stomach was cold terror.†
Chpt 2.1
- That's true," he said, thinking that only one conceivable reason, her love for him, could justify her answer.†
Chpt 2.3
- Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose ....She says that she won't let him get Ken Danagger.†
Chpt 2.3inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- If that's what you trunk he's done, or if you think that he's told me some inconceivable revelation, then I can see how bewildering it would appear to you.†
Chpt 2.3
- You, who've expended an inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite.†
Chpt 2.3
- He could not get rid of the impression, which he had kept receiving and rejecting for three months, that her vengeance was not a form of despair, as he had supposed-the impression, which he regarded as inconceivable, that she was enjoying it.†
Chpt 2.4
- And this is what I find inconceivable: no matter what you've given up, so long as you chose to remain alive, how can you find any pleasure in spending a life as valuable as yours on running after cheap women and on an imbecile's idea of diversions?†
Chpt 2.4
- He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue.†
Chpt 2.4
- The meaning of the look on his face' was the same as the tone she had caught in Francisco's voice: the advance notice of some inconceivable disaster.†
Chpt 2.6inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- A month ago, he would have considered such an injustice inconceivable; today, he knew better.†
Chpt 2.7
- No. I used to think that he gave them some inconceivable reason to make them betray everything they loved.†
Chpt 2.8
- "For twelve years," she said softly, "I would have thought it inconceivable that there might come a day when I would have to beg your forgiveness on my knees.†
Chpt 2.9
- With a sudden flash of sunlight on its wings, the plane banked into a long curve, rays dripping like water from its body-then went into the broad, smooth circles of a spiral, as if circling for a landing where no landing was conceivable.†
Chpt 2.10
- But the laws they asked me to enforce made me the executor of the vilest injustice conceivable.†
Chpt 3.1
- In some terms different from hers, in some inconceivable manner of consciousness, they knew all that she could tell them, it was useless to prove to them the irrational horror of their course and of its consequences, both Meigs and Taggart knew itand the secret of their consciousness was the means by which they escaped the finality of their knowledge, "I see," she said quietly.†
Chpt 3.3inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- He had been shaking with terror-yet she had caught a few glances thrown shrewdly at her face, which had seemed, inconceivably, to convey a touch of triumph.†
Chpt 3.5inconceivably = not able to be believedstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivably means not and reverses the meaning of conceivably. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- She, born of the industrial revolution, had not held as conceivable, had forgotten along with the tales of astrology and alchemy, what these men knew in their secret, furtive souls, knew not by means of thought, but by means of that nameless muck which they called their instincts and emotions: that so long as men struggle to stay alive, they'll never produce so little but that the man with the club won't be able to seize it and leave them still less, provided millions of them are willing to submit-that the harder their work and the less their gain, the more submissive the fiber of their spirit-that men who live by pulling levers at an electric switchboard, are not easily ruled, but men who l†
Chpt 3.5
- They are incapable of conceiving of such a thing as abstract science.†
Chpt 1.7
- ....To bring you down to things you can't conceive-and to know that it's I who have done it.†
Chpt 1.7
- A single thought cut through his mind like a spotlight, making him unable to conceive how any eyes could miss it.†
Chpt 1.7
- That future that they're all talking and trembling about-it will be as you made it, because you had the courage none of them could conceive of.†
Chpt 1.9
- In four years, a plan conceived, not by the cold calculations of the mind, but by the pure love of the heart, was brought to an end in the sordid mess of policemen, lawyers and bankruptcy proceedings.†
Chpt 1.10
- He dismissed the impression, because he could not conceive of it as possible.†
Chpt 2.2
- You're so used to purchasing whatever you wish by the simple means of your dollars, that you cannot conceive of things that are non-commercial, non-negotiable, non-subject to any kind of trade.†
Chpt 2.3
- Could one conceive of an infamy lower than to equate virtue with pain, to make virtue, not vice, the source and motive power of suffering?†
Chpt 2.4
- I cannot conceive what it is you think you can accomplish by a pretense of this kind, and I will not help you to stage it.†
Chpt 2.5
- And this is the thing that I cannot take, even were I able to take all the rest: that in order to give them an inestimable benefit, we should be made martyrs to the men who, but for us, could not have conceived of it.†
Chpt 2.9
- And then I understood the nature of the looter-in-spirit, a thing I had never been able to conceive.†
Chpt 3.1
- None of them could have begun to conceive of the first step toward the concept of your energy-transmission formula, but given that-the rest was easy.†
Chpt 3.3
- She could not conceive of his motive; she felt only that the headlight moving upon her had grown larger.†
Chpt 3.4
- That's why we're slandered and misunderstood by all the greedy profit-chasers who can't conceive of a spiritual motive or a moral ideal or ....We couldn't help it!" he cried suddenly, whirling to her.†
Chpt 3.4
- Among the thousands of d'Anconia employees, the police have found no one with any knowledge of how this monstrous plot had been conceived, organized and carried out.†
Chpt 3.5 *
- Incredulity and indifference were her only reaction: incredulity, because she could not conceive of what would bring human beings to such a state-indifference, because she could not regard those who reached it, as human any longer.†
Chpt 3.5
- The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive-a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice-no values, no standards, no judgment-those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered.†
Chpt 3.7
- You who abandon reason-were it not for us who preserve it, you would not be able to fulfill or even to conceive your wishes.†
Chpt 3.7
- Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love-the endurance that carries their burdens-the generosity that responds to their cries of despair-the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs-the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too.†
Chpt 3.7
Definitions:
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(1)
(conceive as in: conceive the idea) to originate, understand, or imagine
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(2)
(conceive as in: conceived their first child) become pregnant or fertilize an egg