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Conventional   /kənvˈɛnʃənəl/   Listen
Conventional

adjective
1.
Following accepted customs and proprieties.  "She had strayed from the path of conventional behavior" , "Conventional forms of address"
2.
Conforming with accepted standards.  Synonym: established.
3.
(weapons) using energy for propulsion or destruction that is not nuclear energy.  "Conventional weapons"
4.
Unimaginative and conformist.  "Conventional attitudes"
5.
Represented in simplified or symbolic form.  Synonyms: formal, schematic.
6.
In accord with or being a tradition or practice accepted from the past.  "The conventional handshake"
7.
Rigidly formal or bound by convention.  Synonym: ceremonious.



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"Conventional" Quotes from Famous Books



... round of conventional pleasures which the reader and his humble servant have mixed in deeply or dilettante, according to his taste or capacity for such giddy work. There was withal the usual heart-burning, heart-bartering, heart—anything ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... of artists; known them intimately, and studied their lives. One and all, they date their success from some passionate experience. From a cold and conventional existence can come nothing but cold and conventional art. You left England, broke away from the common routine, from the artificial and the respectable. That was an indispensable first step, and I have told you how ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... behaving to it as though it were not a representation but a thing. On it you fix your attention; with it you "unite." Yet, did you look at the wrong side, at the many short ends, the clumsy joins and patches, this simple philosophy might be disturbed. You would be forced to acknowledge the conventional character of the picture you have made so cleverly, the wholesale waste of material involved in the weaving of it: for only a few amongst the wealth of impressions we receive are seized and incorporated into our picture ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... Paris lay behind him, and a steamer was taking him with much unnecessary motion across a sparkling sea towards Alexandria. Gladly he saw the Riviera fade below the horizon, with its hard bright sunshine, treacherous winds, and its smear of rich, conventional English. All restlessness now had left him. True vagabond still at forty, he only felt the unrest and discomfort of life when caught in the network of routine and rigid streets, no chance of breaking loose. He was off again at last, money scarce enough ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... do not mean Etiquette. This is only a conventional set of rules adopted by what is called "good society;" and many of the rules of etiquette are of the essence of rudeness. Etiquette does not permit genteel people to recognize in the streets a man with a shabby coat though he be their ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... their own dominions, and exciting much terror of rivalry in the minds of the kings of France themselves. Their badge, or impresa, was indicative of their rude power; a couple of knotted clubs, saltier-wise, help to support a somewhat conventional figure of the steel used for striking the flint to produce fire; the whole surmounted by the crown, and intended to indicate by analogous reflection the vigour of the ducal house. As a bold defiance, a rival house adopted ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... to the reign of terror in France, to the massacres of September, to the wholesale executions of conventional times; to find the mob insulting the victims, and the executioner himself adding personal affront to the disgusting ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... that the conventional "chirrup" (7) to quiet and "cluck" to rouse a horse are a sort of precept of the training school; and supposing any one from the beginning chose to associate soft soothing actions with the "cluck" sound, and harsh rousing actions ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon

... that which is faulty, at least in others. Locke was the first to call attention to general approval as an external mark of moral action, a hint which the Scottish moralists subsequently exploited. The objection that he reduced morality to the level of the conventional is unjust, for the law of opinion and reputation did not mean for him the true principle of morality, but only that which controls the majority of mankind—If anyone is inclined to doubt that commendation ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... by any conduct of His. Therefore, as in Judea of old, He would be careful of, even indulgent to, the usages of society, as long as they were innocent. He would never outrage the code of manners, however imperfect, however conventional, which this or any other civilised nation may have agreed on, to express and keep up respect, self-restraint, delicacy, of man toward man, of man toward woman, of the young ward the old, of the living toward the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... moved. He wanted 'wisdom', and saw that Antisthenes had it to give. His aim in life was to do as his father had done, to 'deface the coinage', but on a much larger scale. He would deface all the coinage current in the world. Every conventional stamp was false. The men stamped as generals and kings; the things stamped as honour and wisdom and happiness and riches; all were base metal with lying superscriptions. All must ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... had their origin in the influence of potent libations acting on natures by no means warped by conventional thought, but which, under that influence, were stripped of the scanty robes they wore, and stood before the world naked in all the simplicity and ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... Griers in support of him. I may also mention that, for the last two or three days, Mlle. Blanche and De Griers had been making a great deal of the young Prince, under the very nose of the poor General. In short, the company, though decorous and conventional, was in a gay, familiar mood. But no sooner did the Grandmother appear than the General stopped dead in the middle of a word, and, with jaw dropping, stared hard at the old lady—his eyes almost starting out of his head, and his expression as spellbound as though he had just seen ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Ellington whom we have seen making a forlorn pilgrimage under the trees. The young man had received a queer sort of nondescript education. All the Ellingtons for a generation or two back had gone in due course to Eton and Oxford, but no such conventional training was vouchsafed to the latest of the family. The hand of the private tutor had been heavy upon him, and he was brought up absolutely without a notion of what his own future might be. He had mooned ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... seemed so purely a personal and private misfortune, that he had never dreamed of its having any public interest. And even now he was a little ashamed of what he believed was his sensitiveness to mere conventional criticism, which, with the instinct of a proud man, he ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... to Henriette. M. Dubois, always a shrewd courtier and anxious to shew off at the expense of others, lost no time in introducing him as M. Dutillot, the French ambassador. My sweetheart gave the conventional bow. The horse being all right again, we proceeded on our road after thanking the gentlemen for their courtesy. Such an every-day occurrence could not be expected to have any serious consequences, but alas! the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... allowed to the relations between man and man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and which we term moral; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to give the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are really immoral,—as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve than eat unclean food; and looks upon the marriage of adult females as ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... with the beauty and permanency of the old barns that one may see in his own country. He does this through his sincerity. He does not exaggerate an emotion to catch a public for the space of half an hour: he does not, in the more subtle way, affect a cynical or conventional disregard of the noble feelings and fine motives which do exist in man. It has been his business with patience and fidelity to seize, with skill to make enduring and comprehensible in words, the things ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... in it was as an experiment worth trying, and that it was part of the great wave of inspired thought.... We had valuable discussion on these points. All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon, out with the drawing party; I felt the evils of the want of conventional refinement, in the impudence with which one of the girls treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice; and by every day's observation of me will see that she ought not to have done it. In the evening a husking in the barn ... a most picturesque scene.... ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... cotton cloth, of native weaving, in three colors—blue, red and black. The places around Huilotepec are indicated by their ancient hieroglyphs. Several personages of the ancient time are represented in the conventional manner commonly used in Zapotec writings before the Conquest. After eating, we placed the mapa against the wall, wrote out a description of it, and photographed it. Dismay now filled the soul of the agente, and the one principal whom he had summoned for advice. They talked long ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... shouted he to a gruff Fleming, as he passed to and fro before the entrance to his prison-house; but the guard heeded him not. Dick listened; then, repeating his demand, muttered certain conventional expressions, not over-nice either in their form or application. He then began to sing, performing a series of cantabile movements in the most ludicrous manner possible; sometimes chanting a Miserere or an Ave, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... can hardly fancy my cousin Dora changed into a fine lady, and fretting herself thin over the color of ribbon, or the trail of a skirt; and I am not surprised that she finds what is called "society" puzzling and wearisome. Your life, Dora, began upon too wide a plan to bear narrowing down into conventional limits now; and I feel through my own heart the thrill with ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... Anderson's acting expressed itself in one statement—"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That quality in Mary Anderson's acting—a reflex from her spiritual nature—which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in a spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never be content with the existence of anything ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... Now that the conventional barrier of respect which hedged me round has fallen, I can open my heart to you, dear boy. Though cased in the armor of gravity, this heart is full of tenderness and devotion, which have found no object, and which no woman has divined, not even she who, from her cradle, has been my destined ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... this sarcasm is applicable to those teachers who talk so as to say nothing. A teacher ought, on the contrary, to speak only so as to be understood by the child. He ought to adapt himself to the child's capacity; to employ no useless or conventional expressions; his language ought to arouse curiosity ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... downstairs into the room in which the corpse lay, and closed the door behind him. It was a very large room, overlooking the garden on the right side of the house. Somebody had lowered the Venetian blinds as a conventional intimation to the outside world that the house was one of mourning, and the room was almost dark. For nearly a minute Rolfe stood in silence, his hand resting on the knob of the door he had closed behind him. Gradually the outline of the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... "It's conventional enough," he began. "Ghosts don't seem to have much originality. But it's firsthand, Jack, if that's what you want. I don't suppose any of you have ever heard me speak of my brother, Charles. He was my senior ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a somewhat peculiar character, who, coming unannounced to Oakdale, had at first been greatly misunderstood by the boys there, not a few of whom had fancied him an impostor and a fake Texan, mainly because of his quiet manners and conventional appearance; for these unsophisticated New England lads had been led, through the reading of a certain brand of Western literature, to believe that all Texans, and especially those who dwelt upon ranches, must be of the "wild and woolly" ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... understanding as all SS men have to be, merely said aloud the conventional "Safe Flights," but Hanlon knew he would do everything he could to ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... protection of your husband's mother was, in effect, an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the idea of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus assumed is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married state itself. If you had gone off when he died, saying, "Thank heaven, I am free!" you would, at any rate, have ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... bachelor days was never quite of the conventional sort. The Cambuslang quarters certainly were not. The house was large and old-fashioned. Originally it had been two smallish houses: the two front doors still remained side by side, but only one was used. The rooms on the ground ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... not too warmly, thinking that, from so old a friend as Vincent, these felicitations were cold and conventional. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... she suffer, compared with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth of him to whom she had given birth! ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... facilities of intercourse will easily bring the States, of which the formation in that part of our territory can not be long delayed, within the sphere of our federative Union. In the meantime every obligation imposed by treaty or conventional stipulations ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... is a movement of unquestionable importance. Until the moment when public sincerity and the public passion for excitement is stimulated, the vague art interests of America will go on in their dry and conventional manner. The very acute discernment of Maurice Vlaminck that "intelligence is international, stupidity is national, art is local" is a valuable deduction to make, and applies in the two latter instances as admirably to America as to any other ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... behind (that bay horse of John's never could walk with White Stockings), I could not help thinking how much I had misunderstood Captain Lovell's character. What a deal of feeling—almost of romance—there was under that conventional exterior which he wore before the world! I liked him so much more now I came to know him better. I was quite sorry when we had to wish him "good-night" and John and I rode thoughtfully home through the quiet ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... a protest against the theological idea that woman is the instrument of the Devil, who tempted man to his ruin. Very frank is the entire expression, all written by a Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a pure woman whom Fate had freed from the conventional, and who, wanting little and having nothing to lose, not even a reputation, was placed in a position where she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... The com-tech was answering the question Raf had almost forgotten that he had asked the moment before. Yes, the proper conventional reply. Soriki was not going to be caught out with any claim ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... those who felt that his lordship must speak at greater length than either of the counsel between whom he was to hold the scales. The address from the bench was much the shortest of the three. Less exhaustive than the conventional review of a complicated case, it was a disquisition of conspicuous clearness and impartiality. Only the salient points were laid before the jury, for the last time, and in a nutshell, but with hardly a hint of the judge's own opinion upon any one of them. The expression ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already adequately made need not therefore detain ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... if Scottish etiquette warranted anything more than a conventional reply, but he ventured to remark: "You certainly seemed to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... the most universal—the most powerful—of human passions, when venturing to offer our counsel and guidance to those of both sexes who, under its promptings, have resolved to become votaries of Hymen, but who, from imperfect knowledge of conventional usages, are naturally apprehensive that at every step they take, they may render themselves liable to misconception, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... Catherwood found herself on the way, of her own free will, to that Richmond from which she had recently escaped with so much trouble. There was no reason, real or conventional, why she should not go, as the precious pass from the Secretary removed all danger; and there in Richmond was Miss Grayson, the nearest of her blood. Helen removed the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... depression. "Once it was a profitable trade; all the pictures required used to be wrought and purchased in the land. But now the majority of the clergy buy them ready-made from Europe. That the Franks have a pretty, life-like trick is undeniable; yet I think our ancient style, stiff and conventional as they call it, is far more reverent. There is no one left to practise it, nowadays, except myself, and here and there a ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... Princesse which certainly was about her, and her especial devotion to Orleans, both to the city and the duke. A shadow of a supposed child of our own Queen Mary has also appeared in history, quite without warrant or likelihood. It is a little conventional and well worn even in the way of romance, yet there are certain fanciful ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... "Philosophie Zoologique," {235a} said truly that Lamarck's theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... prominence and her mother's popularity, had shared in the best opportunities. Moreover, Washington had never been so crowded with interesting men and women, and yet scarcely a day passed when Bettina did not whisper to herself that nothing could make her enjoy a conventional society existence. It was only because of the universal absorption in the war at the present time that society had become more endurable. But to continue the life indefinitely demanded ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook

... on to the building that seemed to belong to the place; a long two-story adobe building with the conventional two-story gallery running along the entire front, and with the deep-set, barred windows that are also typically Mexican. Every town in the adobe section of the southwest has a dozen or so buildings almost exactly like this one. The door ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... varying degrees at different times tried to paint like the Byzantine or Greek artists, but without quite the same success. So long as there was no need for an artist to paint anything but the old well-established subjects, and so long as people desired them to be painted in the old conventional manner, there was little reason why any painter should try to be original and paint what was not wanted. But in the thirteenth century a ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... to its eligibility in a mere worldly point of view. Your ancient historical title is, (to speak as a man of the world,) much more than an equivalent for my daughter's expectations. But it is not, as I said before, as a highly eligible, conventional marriage that I most desire it, but as a marriage that I feel sure will secure the happiness of yourself and my daughter, whom I shall, nevertheless, be very proud to see, some day, Duchess of Hereward. Come, now, I never saw a gallant young man hesitate ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... terms of extravagant praise, he bent his soul and mind low before her, licking the dust under her feet, abased and yet rejoicing as a Templar before the image of Baphomet. He exulted more especially in the knowledge that there was nothing of the conventional or common in his ecstasy; he was not the fervent, adoring lover of Tennyson's poems, who loves with passion and yet with a proud respect, with the love always of a gentleman for a lady. Annie was not a lady; the Morgans had ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... she said dreamily. "She is stiff and conventional, and it has never even occurred to her that anyone can disagree with her views, and still have a glimmering of right, but, at least, she is sincere. If one could burrow deep enough beneath the surface, she'd ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... retired to the bald deserts of feminine society, was usually his time of triumph. His mental stays were then unfastened. He could breathe forth his stories freely. His wittiest jokes, nude, no longer clad in the shadowy garments of more or less conventional propriety, danced like bacchanals through the conversation, and kicked up heels to fire even the weary men of society. He expanded into fantastic anecdote, and mingled many a bon mot with the blue spirals of his mounting cigarette smoke. But to-night Mr. Smith's gentle, "I never ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... As long as those men were talking about what they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said it was now "cold weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were floundering. I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "I am not conventional. I should not dream of marrying unless I found a young lady who possessed everything that I ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... descend from great things to smaller—from the huge leviathan city to one mansion far removed from the noise and bustle of conventional life, we way imagine the sort of desolation that reigned through Bannerworth Hall, when, for the first time, after nearly a hundred and fifty years of occupation, it was deserted by the representatives of that family, so many members of which had lived and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... age—Dolly—was the most commonplace member of the family. Her character seemed to be set on absolutely conventional lines, and the whole family, with the exception of her father, who did not concern himself with such mundane things, secretly hoped that she would marry a young parson who had lately "made friends with her." As is often the case with that type of young woman, Dolly was feckless about money, and ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... the chauffeur should be provided with a long coat of goat or wolf-skin, or some other suitable protection against the cold and wind. During the summer months, the chauffeur usually wears gray or brown cords, developed in the conventional style. His cap ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... what is and what is not disreputable in this conventional world. It is not considered disreputable to cringe to the vices of a court, or to accept a pension wrung from the industry of the nation, in return for base servility. It is not considered disreputable to take tithes, intended for the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... more—much more—is now demanded of him than formerly. But to those possessed of what is known as the Instinct of the Theatre, or Scenic Instinct, the gestures and attitudes of the operatic stage, being largely conventional, are soon acquired. Scenic accomplishments are undoubtedly necessary to the stage-singer, but his mimetic studies should not preclude him from making himself a thorough master of the vocal side of his art. There is a difference between ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... that such affectation is the most genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style; he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... his leave, remembering that he had already out-stayed the conventional limits of a call; and he was pleased when Mrs. Heron showed some warmth of interest in his future movements, and expressed a wish to see him again very soon. Her words showed either ignorance or languid neglect of the usages of society, but they did not offend him. He wanted to come again. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... particular letter to be apprehended by the ear, and thus a particular stroke may be the cause of the idea of a particular letter!—Quite so, we reply, but on this explanation the real is known through the real; for both stroke and conventional power of symbolisation are real. The case is analogous to that of the idea of a buffalo being caused by the picture of a buffalo; that idea rests on the similarity of picture and thing depicted, and that similarity is something real. Nor can it be said (with a ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... conventional garb. There was only the bronzing upon his fair brow and firm cheeks to suggest the open air life that was his. His slim, powerful figure was full of an ease which caught and held, and pleased Elvine van Blooren's fancy, and awoke in her more material mind something of the dreams which had driven ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... to all the maritime world, was at this time obliged to smother her resentment; only simply expostulating with Russia. But the want of the consent of a power of such decided maritime superiority as that of Great Britain, was an insuperable obstacle to the success of the Baltic Conventional Law of Neutrality; and it was abandoned in 1793 by the naval powers of Europe, as not sanctioned by the existing law of nations, in every case in which the doctrines of that code did not rest upon ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... close of the thirteenth century that figure painting began to assume so perfect a condition as to require some elaborate suggestion of landscape background. Up to that time, if any natural object had to be represented, it was done in an entirely conventional way, as you see it upon Greek vases, or in a Chinese porcelain pattern; an independent tree or flower being set upon the white ground, or ground of any color, wherever there was a vacant space for it, without the smallest attempt to imitate the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... or on her fellow workers. Nor could she be a social worker—I know of more than one woman who lost her position with social or philanthropic institutions as soon as it was discovered that she did not live up strictly to the conventional code of sex morality. Nor could she be ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... then, so much with conventional people?" he demanded. "For me it has no significance in relation to feeling. If you would only look at me instead of down at those small hands, then you would not be able to tell me these ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... the conventional mode of greeting a skunk,—and instead of hurling a stone in its direction and fleeing, place, if the opportunity present itself, bits of meat in its way evening after evening, and you will soon learn that there is nothing vicious in ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... find had no minds to think, and no hearts to feel for suffering humanity. Many of them attempted to lionise him, while others paid him the most fulsome compliments, both being things that he particularly disliked. The ordinary conventional dinner-party, where a man is condemned to take in a lady with whom he has nothing in common, and next to whom he must sit for a couple of hours or so eating and drinking things which do not agree with him, was to Gordon a special object ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... British Government, inspired by missionary influence and a general Christian sentiment, branded them as infamous and made them crimes. But now even the native sentiment of the better classes in India is greatly changed by these higher influences, and the conventional morality is rising above the teachings of the national religion. Widow-burning and infanticide belong almost wholly to the past. Child-marriage is coming into disrepute, and caste, though not destroyed, is crippled, and its preposterous assumptions ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... the zigzags, the zigzags themselves and the rosettes are ornamented with a patterning of large leaves, while the moulding below the zigzags and the cornice, or string-course, above them are covered with conventional designs, the interstices between them being filled in with very beautiful adaptations of lesser ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... of his success which he did hear would have rendered him a proud and happy painter,—but if he was, all that can be said was that he certainly did not look it. He accepted the most effusive tributes with the same ghastly and conventional smile; from feminine glances of unutterable gratitude and admiration he turned away with an inarticulate mumble and an averted eye; at times he almost seemed to be suppressing a squirm. If expression is any index to the thoughts, he was neither grateful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various

... alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll—the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... upper-arm, and shoulder pressure. He called my attention to his tone. Tone! He made every individual wire jangle, and I trembled for my smooth, well-kept action. Then he began the B-minor Ballade of Liszt. Now, this particular piece always exasperates me. If there is much that is mechanical and conventional in the Thalberg fantasies, at least they are frankly sensational and admittedly for display. But the Liszt Ballade is so empty, so pretentious, so affected! One expects that something is about to occur, but it never comes. There are the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... the stage where two young officers of Houssas sat primly side by side on the verandah sipping their coffee. Neither spoke, and the seance might have ended with the conventional "Good night" and that punctilious salute which Bones invariably gave, and which Hamilton as punctiliously returned, but for the apparition of a dark figure which crossed the broad space of parade ground hesitatingly as though not certain of his way, and finally came with dragging feet through ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... "kinship" and "alliance" express two radically distinct ideas, and rest, for both the privileges and the obligations involved in them, upon foundations essentially different. The former represents a natural relation, the latter one purely conventional,—even though it may result from the feelings, the mutual interests, and the sense of incumbent duty attendant upon the other. In its very etymology, accordingly, is found implied that sense of constraint, of an artificial bond, that may prove a source, not only of strength, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... station itself; for good manners come like an instinct to those on whom the world smiles. Insensibly she acquired self-possession and the smoothness of society; and if her child-like playfulness broke out from all conventional restraint, it only made more charming and brilliant the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty so well became her graceful abandon of manner, and who looked so unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame Devy's blondes ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this particular variety of triangle "A Bachelor Husband" will particularly interest, and strangely enough, without one shock to the most conventional minded. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... Diego, who stripped the clothing from those too ill to defend themselves. Perhaps a reason for this superiority may be found in the fact that these tribes were entirely naked, and had no desire for any conventional covering. They serenaded their new friends so loudly that sleep or rest was impossible, and offered their most delicious food and free use of canoes. They ate seeds, fruit, fish, locusts; hunted rabbit, hare, and deer; ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... Cole, who had one or two pupils when he died, there was no competent landscape painter who accepted pupils, nor perhaps one who was capable of teaching. Drawing masters there were here and there, mostly in the conventional style adapted to the seminaries for young ladies. Inman, the leading portrait painter of the day, had taken pupils, but his powers did not extend to the treatment of landscape, and my sympathies did not go beyond it. I applied ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... latest works was his excellent modern novel, 'Det Gar An' (It's All Right), a forerunner of the "problem novel" of the day. It is an attack upon conventional marriage, and pictures the helplessness of a woman in the hands of a depraved man. Its extreme views ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... She spoke a few conventional words of farewell and departed. Outside on the pavement she stood for a moment, looking carefully around. There was no sign of Richardson anywhere! She stepped into the carriage and leaned back in ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... or embodiment, has been a temporary residence only, which she has entered, lived in awhile, and made her exit from, leaving the substance, so far as I have been concerned, a corpse, worse luck! Now, there is no spiritualistic nonsense in this—it is simple fact, put in the plain form that the conventional public are afraid of. So ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... concerned with one of them; but a rough-and-ready critic imagines that it is all the same so long as nature is handled at all, and fails to draw the needful distinction between modes of handling her. But these modes are many; I will mention four of them now: there is the conventional way of handling nature, there is the faithful way of handling nature, there is the Greek way of handling nature, there is the magical way of handling nature. In all these three last the eye is on the object, but with a difference; in the faithful way of handling nature, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... in preserving his gravity at thus undertaking charge of an art school. At first he confined himself to sketching, from the models, with a burnt stick on the white paper, and in seeing that his pupils did the same. Their drawing had hitherto been purely conventional. They had always drawn a man in a certain way, not because they saw him so, but because that was the way in which they had been taught to draw him; and he had great difficulty in getting them to depart altogether ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... pillows, mattresses and blankets. The frame work of the bed was also of the Chinese blackwood and carried, especially on the posts that held the roof-like canopy, finely executed carvings with the chief motive the conventional dragon devouring the sun. By the side stood a chest of drawers completely covered with carvings setting forth religious pictures. Four comfortable easy chairs completed the furniture, save for the low oriental throne ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... habits and condescending airs were little calculated to win over her young affections, or fire her with gratitude for the anxiety displayed by this guardian to form her manners and cultivate her intellect. Nay, the result was rather to implant in her a premature dislike and distrust for conventional ideals. From the standard of culture and propriety, from the temptations of social rank and wealth held up for her preference, she instinctively turned to the simple, unrestrained affection of the despised mother, and the greater freedom ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... be a man, he shall furnish and pay for such conventional morning, afternoon and evening clothes as are customarily worn by civilians of the present day in this country, together with wigs and footwear necessarily appurtenant thereto. All other wigs, footwear, costumes, clothes, appurtenances and "properties," including those peculiar ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... classical method of education, by preference the study of natural science. Hence a realistic tendency—often verging upon the harsh and the crude—became the prevailing tone. Girls, sick of the idleness and the conventional frivolities of social life, eagerly devoted themselves to scientific pursuits, both as students at the new academies, and as subscribers to the courses of lectures which were getting into vogue. The very antagonists of the more extreme "emancipatory" ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... which is very rare, she adorns her dress with a lace collar, but without other ornament. Her working dress is usually a long gray linen or blue flannel blouse, reaching nearly from head to foot. She has learned that the conventional tight dress of women is not conducive to great mental or physical power. She is small in stature, with dainty hands and feet, blue eyes, and a noble ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... outbreak of new houses and a new sanded road, which alarmed me, being in the mind for birds and solitude, and I kept the high white road which goes round the summit of the cliffs. Woody Bay is beginning to be popular in the summer months among those less conventional folk who like to live off the beaten track during their holidays, and are not frightened by long distances or difficulties of access, but it is still quite a tiny place and has not yet suffered that exploitation of the picturesque which has ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... was not at ease with the musician or with her during dinner-time and the time that elapsed before the beginning of the music. Involuntarily I followed each of their gestures and looks. The dinner, like all dinners, was tiresome and conventional. Not long afterward the music began. He went to get his violin; my wife advanced to the piano, and rummaged among the scores. Oh, how well I remember all the details of that evening! I remember how he brought the violin, how he opened the box, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... mental as well as physical luxury in relaxation of rule and precept, permitting us a simplicity which sometimes, I think, becomes something less harmless. There is luxury in letting go of that live wire which keeps us all keyed to one conventional monotone in the North. I let go—for a moment—to-night. You let go when you said 'Calypso.' You couldn't have said it in New York; I couldn't have heard you, there.... Alas, Ulysses, I should not have heard you anywhere. But I did; and I answered.... Say good night to me, now; won't ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... was the chief actor in the foregoing scenes. The Signor Gradenigo was born with all the sympathies and natural kindliness of other men, but accident, and an education which had received a strong bias from the institutions of the self-styled Republic, had made him the creature of a conventional policy. To him Venice seemed a free state, because he partook so largely of the benefits of her social system; and, though shrewd and practised in most of the affairs of the world, his faculties, on the subject of the political ethics of his country, were possessed of a rare and accommodating ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... part of them, are the frequent synonyms so characteristic of Old English poetry. These synonymous expressions are known as "kennings." They are not to be thought of as occasional metaphors employed at the whim of the poet; they had, in most cases, already received a conventional meaning. Thus the king was always spoken of as "ring giver," "protector of earls," or "bracelet bestower." The queen was the "weaver of peace"; the sea the "ship road," or "whale ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... think that any of us will ever forget what they have done?" Regis replied. He turned toward the window and smiled rather tentatively at the man who stood there; motionless since his first conventional gesture of politeness: ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... easily carried out, when some such period is universally recognized. And so, what we may loosely term a "week," has been employed in many ancient nations. The Aztecs, using a short month of 20 days, divided it into four quarters of 5 days each. The Egyptians, using a conventional month of 30 days, divided it into 3 decades; and decades were also used by the Athenians, whose months were alternately of 29 and ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... conventional point of view, the fact seems strange that while the raising of first-rate bullocks is an occupation on which educated men willingly bestow much time and thought, the bringing up of fine human beings is an occupation tacitly voted unworthy of their ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... The conventional prejudices that shackle the movements of members of the higher classes in Britain are scarcely recognised in Canada; and a man is at liberty to choose the most profitable manner of acquiring wealth, without the fear of ridicule ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... right I reserved—the right of breaking with you when I please. Advanced views, Julia, involve advanced duties: you cannot be an advanced woman when you want to bring a man to your feet, and a conventional woman when you want to hold him there against his will. Advanced people form charming friendships: conventional people marry. Marriage suits a good deal of people; and its first duty is fidelity. Friendship suits some people; and its first duty ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw

... of hatred against England in Germany is responsible for a new form of greeting which has displaced the conventional formulas of salutation and farewell: "God punish England!" ("Gott strafe England!") is the form of address, to which the reply is: "May God ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... full riding-breeches, close-fitting at the knee, leggings, a high-buttoned waistcoat, and a coat with the conventional short cutaway tails. The hat is an alpine or a derby, and the tie the regulation stock. These, with riding-gloves and a riding-crop, constitute the regular riding-dress for ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... representative of his country on the Supreme Council, in which capacity he is even more important than as Ambassador, represents a new strain in American politics. His mental habits bewilder the President, shock the proper and somewhat conventional Secretary of State, and throw such repositories of national divinity as Senators Lodge and ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... sudden and disconcerting entrance. The young woman came into the room breathless, eager-eyed, and white to the lips. She drew herself up by the door, and made a poor pathetic effort to compose herself, to frame her plea in conventional words; but she was too ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... were a few small tables. In the centre people walked to and fro. At the bottom, at the end opposite the door, was a long table furnished with benches, which occupied the whole width of the wall, behind which sat the "bureau." "Sitting" is merely the conventional term. The "bureau" did not "sit;" like the rest of the Assembly it was on its feet. The secretaries, M.M. Chapot, Moulin, and Grimault wrote standing. At certain moments the two Vice-Presidents mounted on the benches ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... by pressing delicacies on his guests, by topical small-talk, and by earnest inquiries after members of their families not yet old enough to appear at social functions, managed to convey to them that this dinner was being run on strictly conventional lines. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... Capetown I had followed the trail of Cecil Rhodes, which like the man himself, is distinct. It is not the succession of useless and conventional monuments reared by a grateful posterity. Rather it is expressed in terms of cities and a permanent industrial and agricultural advance. "Living he was the land," and dead, his imperious and constructive spirit goes marching on. The Rhodes impress is everywhere. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... dull gold hair; her clothing followed the fashions obediently, but her fashion of dressing her hair did not vary, and the smooth parting, the carved ripples along her brow became her, though they did not become her stiffly conventional attire. Her face, though almost classic in its spaces and modelling, lacked in feature the classic decision and amplitude, so that the effect was rather that of a dignified room meagrely furnished. For these deficiencies, however, Miss Jakes's eyes might well be accepted ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... dinner was a pleasant and rather conventional meeting, and yet the more it is dwelt upon the more significant it becomes. Starting from almost the same point, with somewhat similar handicaps, we two had "arrived," though at widely separated goals. Each of our courses was characteristically American, and each was in demonstration—for ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... refreshing solace of tea and basking in the mild spring air wafted to me through my opened windows, the telephone bell rang. Arising promptly, I went to where the instrument is affixed to the wall and responded to the call in the conventional manner by placing the receiver to my ear, applying my lips to the transmitter and uttering the word "Halloa!" twice, or possibly thrice repeated. Over the wire then a female voice spoke, enquiring if this were Doctor Fibble? Upon my stating ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... celebrated by a dinner in her honour, a very fine dinner which opened with clear turtle soup and ended with her favourite ice and a birthday cake of gigantic proportions, decorated with ornate chocolate roses and tiny incandescent lamps in place of the conventional age-enumerating candles, cable-ship birthday cakes being eminently scientific and up-to-date. Other people may have had birthdays en route, for we were away from Manila many weeks, but none were acknowledged; modesty doubtless constraining those older than Half-a-Woman from making a too ostentatious ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... worldly, who never compromised himself by an ungentlemanly action, and never was guilty of a manly one; to lie smilingly asleep—for even sleep, working but little change in his dissembling face, became with him a piece of cold, conventional hypocrisy—we follow in the steps of two slow travellers on foot, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... sore trial to her parents, in that she had failed to fit into the conventional ways of polite society. Once she had shocked all Neuilly by donning man's attire and riding horseback astride. A worthy priest who had been her tutor had found her tongue too sharp for his comfort, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... Vavasor from his study of the dog-fish. His nature was a poetic one, though much choked with the weeds of the conventional and commonplace, and he had seen and felt something of what Hester intended. But he was not alive enough to understand hate. He was able to hate and laugh. He could not feel the danger of hate as Hester, for hate is death, and it ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... of bejewelled women, tastefully dressed in the soft tinted silks they so much affect, with the long graceful veils falling to the feet. This is the only head covering worn in a carriage or on the street. The men, however, usually wear the conventional European dress, but on ceremonial occasions a white costume is required, with a ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... Morris excelled. He educated the popular taste by bringing forth the beauties of the simpler forms of the floral and vegetable world; he delighted especially in displaying the acanthus in varied conventional forms. Every rug he designed bears witness to his enthusiasm for harmony. Too aesthetic, some critics declare him to have been; but no one can deny the importance of his creations, for England needed to be awakened to a knowledge of her own inability to appreciate artistic ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... gothic, and the spelling of words is not the same. Further, Stichter was possessed of some imagination and decorated his title-page with a map of a part of the island, showing ranges of hills, a harbor or mouth of a river, with conventional soundings, and two towns or settlements. As each of these issues contains only eight pages of text, the first London part only was known to the publishers. The third Dutch edition was put out by Joannes Naeranus, at Rotterdam, and in ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... slipped in when a space needed filling. There were also certain lovely ladies who might at one time play the role of attendant at a feast al fresco, at another time a character in an allegory. The weaver's hand was a little conventional when he began to execute the Raphael cartoons, but during the three years required for their execution he lost all restriction and was ready for the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... impracticable and difficult to get on with, and their antiquated notions are perpetually contrasting and conflicting with the established prejudices of polite and well-organized society—sometimes even checking the same for an instant in its easy, conventional flow. They won't see that of all ways of spending time and thought, the most absurdly unprofitable is to waste them on a memory. Yet—O mine excellent friend and cynical preceptor! to whom, for sage instruction, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... not cut, or carve, or in any way shape his gun-stock to his imagination. The stock is as smooth and as plain as polished wood can be. There is a sort of speckling on the barrels, and there is a conventional design on the lock-plate; conventional, indeed, in the most blase sense of the word—quite blase and worn out, this scratch of intertwisted lines, not so much as a pheasant even engraved on the lock-plate; it is a mere killing machine, this gun, and ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... once given cannot be recalled, even from the best motives, without subjecting the one who recalls it to the charge of being either ignorant or regardless of all conventional rules of politeness. Some years ago a lady who had been invited with her husband to a musical entertainment given at the house of an acquaintance for a mutual friend of the inviter and the invited, received, after having accepted the invitation, a note requesting her not to come, on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... overcome his deliberate resolves. She rather hoped that in spite of his promise he would venture to cross the border so that she could see and be near him, if only for a day or for an hour. The possibility frightened and yet pleased her. The conventional woman within her frowned, but her outlaw heart beat ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... of the skin, redeemed the face and gave it distinction.(3) Why did precise, complacent Miss Todd pick out so strange a man for her mate? The story that she married him for ambition, divining what he was to be—like Jane Welsh in the conventional story of Carlyle—argues too much of the gift of prophecy. Whatever her motive, it is more than likely that she was what the commercialism of to-day would call an "asset." She had certain qualities that her husband lacked. For one, she had that intuition for the main chance ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take care not to dull it. Do not forget that its value is only relative, purely conventional. It continually changes according to circumstances, the state of expectancy and the ecstasy of the mind. I will call attention to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... this, laying ground-lines for the future; forgetting Adelaide and the suitability which had hitherto been such an important factor in his calculations; forgetting his horror of Pepita, whose daughter Leam was, and his contempt for weak, fusionless Mr. Dundas, who was her father; forgetting the conventional demands of his class, intolerant of foreign blood; forgetting all but the words which said that Alick was her best friend here, and doubted his (Edgar's) ever being so good to her as that other had been. It was on his heart now to convince ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... Conventional religion had passed Daylight by. He had lived a sort of religion in his square dealing and right playing with other men, and he had not indulged in vain metaphysics about future life. Death ended all. He had always believed ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... climbing up its steep hill, is reached. The church, a landmark for many miles, was built by Lord Eldon in 1880. It was designed by Street in Early English. With its severe and lofty tower the exterior has a coldly conventional aspect not altogether pleasing. Inside, the large amount of Purbeck marble employed gives a touch of colour which, to a certain extent, relieves the austerity. Not far away is the older church built in Perpendicular ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... amiability could extend; but their heart is undoubtedly no longer their own. I am therefore on my guard against being deceived by it, and I fancy these ladies love to please so well, that they are even angry with those who respond to the attentions which are so lavishly showered on them, with conventional ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach



Words linked to "Conventional" :   unimaginative, stereotypic, nuclear, convention, formulaic, orthodox, straight, stereotyped, traditional, fine arts, button-down, square, stuffy, beaux arts, stereotypical, conservative, stodgy, buttoned-down, unoriginal, white-bread, nonrepresentational, unconventional, customary, received



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