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Train of thought   /treɪn əv θɔt/   Listen
Train of thought

noun
1.
The connections that link the various parts of an event or argument together.  Synonym: thread.  "He lost the thread of his argument"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Train of thought" Quotes from Famous Books



... pleasant train of thought when you are standing alone in the bleakness and sadness and growing chill of the dying day, with tremendous nature piled all about you, and watching your two companions as they disappear along a lonely road. But the mood was upon him and it did not cheer him when Roy, turning ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... neighbors generally, attended. How differently the gospel message affects different persons! Some are softened, others are hardened, by it. Some are stirred up to certain duties, while, under the same sermon, others are incited to an entirely different train of thought and course of action. The effect on Tom of the sermons of the preacher was to incite his feelings to revolt against his lot in life, and arouse him to the necessity of a purpose in living. He did not look forward so much to the world ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... be able to find rest on such an unusual couch. So I rose again in rather a bad humour, and looked with an evil eye on the Arabs lying on the sacks around me, who were not "slumbering softly," but snoring lustily. By way of forcing myself, if possible, into a poetical train of thought, I endeavoured to concentrate my attention on the contemplation of the beautiful landscape by moonlight; but even this would not keep me from yawning. My companion seemed much in the same mood; for he had ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... train of thought was taking shape in his brain, as yet rather indefinite and undeveloped, but quite engaging as ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... I. iv. 14, for a parallel to the train of thought on the part of Aristodemus "the little," and of Euthydemus; and for Socrates' {daimonion}, see above; ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... with your tongue, my dear Watson, but certainly with your eyebrows. So when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon a train of thought, I was very happy to have the opportunity of reading it off, and eventually of breaking into it, as a proof that I had been ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... had been thinking of his mother and her picture in the drawing-room downstairs. The train of thought suggested to him to inquire if he had ever seen his mother; for he could not remember whether they had told him yes or no, the river running very ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Editor, pursuing his train of thought, "we have to consider the personalities of the conspirators. You'll find, Stuart, if you go into newspaper work, that one of the first things to do in any big story, is to estimate, as closely as you ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... all this time I was also doing something else—that my poor brain cells, which really needed recuperation more than any other part of my body, that these brain cells were still at work, that I was all the time carrying on a more or less strenuous train of thought as exhaustive as tho I were seated in my study chair, or standing before my class in the recitation room. More than one lecture, or address, have I worked out while walking to and from ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... to another train of thought. As the philosopher, pondering on the workings of self-consciousness, recognizes that various pathways lead up to God, so the primitive man, in forming his language, sometimes trod one, sometimes another. Whatever else sceptics have questioned, no one has yet presumed to doubt ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... not only in this passage, but elsewhere in speaking to slaves, the Apostle brings in the most sublime truths relating to redemption. You will be struck with this in reading what is said to slaves, that in several cases, the train of thought proceeds directly from their condition and its duties, to the most sublime and beautiful truths of salvation. How divinely wise did these exhortations to slaves appear to me, that morning, in contrast ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... run no danger of seeing them rudely interrupted. His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the second-hand dealer's. He continued this train of thought to the results that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with which ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... contributed to the "Preussischen Jahrbuecher" for January, 1897, by Dr. Karl Camillo Schneider, assistant at the zoological Institute of the University of Vienna. This article which is entitled The Origin of Species, pursues Wigand's train of thought throughout, and whole sentences and even paragraphs are taken verbatim from his main work. This, at all events, is a very instructive indication of the present tendency which deserves prominence: and its significance ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... to sleep off the disagreeable train of thought, and as I bade him good night, his last ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the following production is briefly this:—A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject. He obeyed, and having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and, pursuing the train of thought to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth, at length, instead of the trifle which he at first ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... invited Byron "to religious meditation," the mental picture of the "spectre huntsman" pursuing his eternal vengeance on "the inexorable dame"—"that fatal she," who had mocked his woes—must have set in motion another train of thought. Such lines as these would "speak comfortably" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... herself seemed a little doubtful of the word. At any rate Mamma said it was something like that, and it meant they liked it anyway. So Mr. Winslow was left to ponder whether "antique" or "unique" was intended and to follow his train of thought wherever it chanced to lead him, while the child prattled on. They came in sight of the Smalley front gate and Jed came out of his walking trance ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... indistinct environments are as a rule considerably distant. I know, further, that considerably distant objects seem much smaller, and hence I must assume that the horse, which in spite of its imaginary distance appears to retain its natural size, is really larger than it is. The train of thought is as follows: "I see the horse indistinctly. It seems to be far away. It is, in spite of its distance, of great size. How enormous it must be when it is close to me!'' Of course these inferences are neither slow nor conscious. They occur in reflection with lightning-like swiftness ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... conceive a cause deep-hid amongst what metaphysicians would call latent associations, for a train of thought which disposed you to accept the fantastic impressions afterwards made on you by the scene in the Museum and the visionary talk of Sir Philip Derval. Doubtless, when at college you first studied metaphysical speculation ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... leg interrupts his train of thought, and he becomes aware that the child is standing at his side, his first impulse is to push her away roughly, but the little thing is looking up at him so gravely. 'Mummy says,' she begins, 'that she doesn't know who I is, I'se Baby, and got losted ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton

... remarked, that any sudden noise which the slumberer hears, without being actually awakened by it—any casual touch of his person occurring in the same manner—becomes instantly adopted in his dream, and accommodated to the tenor of the current train of thought, whatever that may happen to be; and nothing is more remarkable than the rapidity with which imagination supplies a complete explanation of the interruption, according to the previous train of ideas expressed in the dream, even when scarce a moment of time is allowed for that ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... grew excited as a strange train of thought ran through his head in connection with what he had heard tell about surgeons and their investigations, and purchases delivered in the dead ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality, and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for Englishmen to discuss Irish questions in a fresh and independent train of thought, and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and sentiments differ from ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... January, 1869. For a very exact statement, in the spirit of judicial fairness, see Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, p. 275, and pp. 379, 380. In the latter, Whewell cites the exact words of De Cusa in the De Docta Ignorantia, and sums up in these words: "This train of thought might be a preparation for the reception of the Copernican system; but it is very different from the doctrine that the sun is the centre of the planetary system." Whewell says: "De Cusa propounded the doctrine of the motion of the earth more as a paradox than as a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... And Juve, following his train of thought, pondered that he had accused this same lady of having, to save her lover, the very day the guillotine was erected on the boulevard, found means to send in his ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... While pursuing this train of thought Maurice was watching the shadow that still kept appearing and vanishing on the muslin of good Madame Desvallieres' curtain, as if it felt the lash of the pitiless voice that came to it from Paris. Had the Empress that night desired the death of the father in order ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... these accents, resolved to introduce an unusual word in the last line, or hunted for a classical allusion. But what the poet's brain does not do consciously it does unconsciously; a selective action is going on in its recesses simultaneously with the overt train of thought, and on the degree of this unconscious suggestiveness the richness and melody ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... dance with Miss Maxwell, Paula continued her train of thought to herself. Dick was not suffering so much after all. And she might have expected it. He was the cool-head, the philosopher. He would take her loss with the same equanimity as he would take the loss of Mountain Lad, as ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... can look at a king," he said once. And again, following some vague train of thought, on a crowded street: "The People's voice is a queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people's voice, old man. Only the ones that count haven't got ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... year well enough. It meant thinking about his fees of course, seeing to it that the work he undertook was profitable as well as interesting. Only, declared the man who was not Rose's husband, it was senseless—suffocating! Rodney tried, with an athletic sweep of his will, to crowd that train of thought out of his mind as, with his hand, he had swept the papers that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... on his attention. Suppose they did not believe him, what would they do to him? Would his unblemished high character count for nothing? Technically he was a burglar, beyond dispute. Following out this train of thought, he was composing a lucid apology for "this technical crime I have committed," to be delivered before sentence in the dock, when the stout gentleman got up and began walking about the room. He locked and unlocked drawers, and Mr. Ledbetter ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... must frequently depend upon our preserving the greatest possible connection between our ideas. Those who allow themselves to start from one object to another, acquire such dissipated habits of mind, that they cannot, without extreme difficulty and reluctance, follow any connected train of thought. You cannot teach those who will not follow the chain of your reasons; upon the connection of our ideas, useful memory and reasoning must depend. We will give you an instance: arithmetic is one of the first things that we attempt to teach children. In the following dialogue, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... rising, and also of taking sufficient rest, and that in order to do both she must keep to the right time of retiring to rest; and accordingly, the moment the clock struck ten, the work was put away, and the train of thought, whatever it might ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau

... on the stool next to McLeod and said something loud enough and foul enough to break the zoologist's train of thought. ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett

... her visitor, Lady Conroy walked round the room. Nearly everything on which she cast her eye reminded her of a different train of thought, so that by the time Edith was announced by the footman she had forgotten what she wanted ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... suggested Jimmie. "You've given me an idea! Your mention of the name of a certain undersea craft started a train of thought in my alleged brain. Take it easy for ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson

... his bitterest enemy, but—they were helpless and he had helped them; let it rest at that. He was really troubled, however, that they had been so easily deceived. If they had only waited! If he had only been able to advise them! For Gordon's intention was plain. He was aroused from his train of thought by a stranger whom he found standing beside his table and looking down at ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... was conscious of nodding, and waking up with a start, endeavoured to pursue my train of thought. The fire was comfortable, and my cigar was still alight; only a few moments more, and then bed. The resolution was scarcely formed before my head dropped again and I ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... A new train of thought now entered the broker's mind. This child of his old friend had been taken into his office from a kind of charitable feeling—though of very low vitality. He paid him a couple of dollars a week, and thought little more, about him or his widowed ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... came, and Beauty's eye Ne'er beam'd upon a lovelier sky; Imagination instant brought, And dash'd amidst the train of thought, Tints of the bow. The boatman stript; Glee at the helm exulting tript, And way'd her flower-encircled wand, "Away, away, to Fairy Land." Light dipt the oars; but who can name The various objects dear to fame, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... along this train of thought. He came to determine that infinitely the most beautiful thing in life was a face lighting up with the pleasure of friendship: in its apotheosis irradiating with the wonder of love. That frequent idea of his ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... nothing difficult of understanding in the psalm. The train of thought is clear and obvious. The experiences which it details are common, the emotions it expresses simple and familiar. The tears that have been dried, the fears that have been dissipated, by this old song; the love and thankfulness which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... is scarcely entitled to more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But the commentator is indebted to Livy for little more than a few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The whole train of thought ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... attention, that character consists in a great measure in habits, and that habits arise out of individual actions and individual operations of the mind. Hence the importance of carefully weighing every action of our lives, and every train of thought that we encourage in our minds; for we never can determine the effect of a single act, or a single mental process, in giving that influence to the character, or to the moral condition, the result of which shall be decisive and permanent. In the whole history ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... a weakness," I said to myself, after my friend had left, making an effort to throw off the uncomfortable feeling. But it was of no avail. Even if the new train of thought, awakened by conversation with my friend, had lifted me above the state of mind in which I was when she came, the sight of Jane's sober face, as she passed me on the stairs, would have depressed ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... through—vexatious apologies, that throw a person over just at the critical moment, when he has got his sheet prepared and his ideas all ready to pour upon paper; then splut—splut—splutter goes the pen, and away goes the train of thought. Bold is the man who undertakes to write his letters in his bedroom with country-house pens. But, to our friends. Jack and Sponge slept next door to each other; Sponge, as we have already said, occupying the state-room, with ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... subjects of thought are the least exhausting to the thinker. How many students, like Chief-Justice Parsons, have been accustomed, when fatigued with the labor of deep research, or exhausted by continued train of thought upon one subject, to relax the mind with arithmetical or geometrical problems. Isaac Newton could, month after month, spend in the profoundest problems of pure mathematics twice as many hours in the day as Walter Scott could give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... stole over her as she dwelt longest upon the "Baptism of our Savior." Then there was the family record—her own birth, and that of her brothers and sisters, were chronicled underneath that of generations now sleeping in the shadow of the village church. But this train of thought was broken, as they reverentially knelt when the volume was closed, and listened to their father's humble and fervent petition, that God would watch and guard them all, especially commending to the protection of Heaven, "the lamb now going out from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... the force of gravity to him, and by the means of the dropped fruit to illustrate how impossible it would be for a body to fall off the earth under any circumstances. He listened so intently that I thought I had made an impression, and started the train of thought that would lead him to a partial understanding of the truth. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... who would avoid the censure of competing with inequality, to consider the colouring of which particular ideas are naturally susceptible, and to discriminate properly betwixt sentiments, whose native sublimity requires but little assistance from the pencil of art, and a train of thought which (that it may correspond to the former) demands the heightening of poetic painting. The astonishing inequalities which we meet with, even in the productions of unquestioned Genius, are originally ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... the train of thought that led Forsythe at last to write to Rosa that he was coming, throwing Rosa into a panic of joy and alarm. For Rosa's father had been most explicit about her ever going out with Forsythe again. It had been the most relentless command he had ever laid upon her, spoken in a tone ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... Indians, and no particular lookout to be kept, so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and suddenly he found himself singing softly as he galloped. How the words had come to him he did not know, for no conscious train of thought had brought them; but they surely fitted to the situation, and a pleasant sense of companionship, of safety, warmed him as the swing of an old hymn carried ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... I quote too many minds and am hobbled by it. I delight just now in the companionship of men through their books. I am devoted to knowing the facts of the lives of other humans and the train of thought which their experiences have started. To lead them is like talking to them. I suspect, even dread, the "original thinker" who knows little of the experiments and failures of the thinkers of other ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... they all agreed. The wandering and uncontrollable train of thought, suggesting sudden recollections of things distant and long forgotten and remote from each other—the vague restless craving for something undefined, which nothing could satisfy—the swift flight of the minutes, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... warm from the fire was offered him, refused with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another rest. It was long before he spoke again—out of some remoter train of thought apparently. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... her feet and looked him full in the face. She seemed to be following out her own train of thought rather than taking note of ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Worn out in mind and body alike, I was perfectly incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I vaguely felt—if I left things as they were—that I could never hope to remove the shadow which now rested on the married life that had begun so brightly. We might live together, so as to save appearances. But to forget what had happened, or to feel satisfied with ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... the door, I wonder," he heard him mutter between his teeth, "just as Gudule used to do; I must tell him when he comes back, keys shouldn't be left indoors, never, under any circumstances." The entrance of Viola interrupted the old gambler's audible train of thought. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While he tried to follow his son's train of thought, he went through the list of odds and ends of plant needed by a country business, drawing David now to a hot-press, now to a cutting-press, bragging of its usefulness and ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... be for him; that would always join him who can lead it against foreign banners, and to this might be added all that part of the population which is equally powerful and easily, led in such a state of things. As if chance intended to strengthen Napoleon in this train of thought, while he was speaking the avenue of Marigny resounded with the cries of 'Vive l'Empereur!' A crowd of men, chiefly of the poor and labouring class, pressed forward into the avenue, full of wild enthusiasm, and trying to scale the walls to make an offer to Napoleon to rally round and defend him. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... it. But all speculations as to what Eve thought in that eventful hour are vain. Clarke asserts that Cain and Abel were twins. Eve must have been too much occupied with her vacillating joys and sorrows to have indulged in any connected train of thought. Her grief in the fratricidal tragedy that followed can be more easily understood. The dreary environments of the mother, and the hopeless prophesies of her future struggling life, banished to a dreary, desolate region, beyond the love and care of her ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... it is sometimes very uncomfortable to have a pleasant train of thought interrupted. The imagination is buoyant, ethereal, and elevates poor mortals up to the stars sometimes. It was so with Bobby. He was building up some kind of an air castle, and had got up in the clouds amidst the fog and moonshine, ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... often—even by Lichtenberger—been described as a philosophic work; and as abstract thought or philosophy, it is said, is foreign to art, a work which admits it must be condemned. Let us first understand what is meant by philosophy. It is surely a train of thought in the mind of the spectator, not in the object which he contemplates. Anything in the world may be the subject of philosophic thought, or may suggest it; there is plenty of philosophy to be drawn from a daisy, but we do not ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... word, and not keeping her five minutes away from that desk, where she would certainly grow humped or crooked,' could interfere with her work! She was one of those stolid persons who are the bane of authors, who think nothing of the lost idea, and the unravelling of the web, when a train of thought is broken by the 'only one word,' 'only a moment,' which scatters thoughts to the wind,—thoughts that can no more be gathered home than the thistledown that is scattered by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... out by formal inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis: all comes, or seems to come, immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance exists in his mind, as it would have existed in reality: each several train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... How quickly a train of thought can flash through the brain! Saintou asked himself if he loved the girl or the hair, and his heart answered very sincerely that the hair, divine as it was, had been but the outward sign which led him to love the inward grace of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... do right to address me on subjects which compel me, in order to give a coherent answer, to quit for a moment my habitual train of thought. The mention of your healthy-living daughters reminds me of the world where other people live—where I lived once. Theirs are cheerful images as you present them—I have no wish ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... of the butterfly on her breast, only smaller in size. The whole idea of her costume struck him as fanciful, original and charming; and then—and then—it was only a coincidence, of course; but it started a train of thought which gradually merged ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... of the officer had aroused a new train of thought in the miner's mind, he fancied the lawyer whom Bill had consulted should be informed of what ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a hammering at the outer door of his chambers, followed by the sound of loud and hilarious voices as ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... train of thought into which I fell might unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state to cope with whatever of marvelous the advancing night might bring forth. I roused myself—laid the letters on the table—stirred up the fire, which ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... Having concluded this train of thought, he also pretended that he had to go out, and, walking as far as the back, he, with low voice, called to his side Ming Yen, the page attending upon Pao-yue in his studies, and in one way and another, he made use of several ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... turn the ship inside out, and if necessary search every man clear down to his bedclothes. But the thought of that flying knife came back to him, and the combination of mystery gave him pause; there must surely be some connection between the two occurrences, and the train of thought led directly to the notion that somewhere in the dark recesses of the brigantine lurked ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... he begun to realize the beauties and perfections of the world, when sadness, suffering, pain, and torture, obtrude themselves, and the old overwhelming sense of life's tragedy takes possession of him. This train of thought, plainly discernible in Heine's poems, he also owes to his descent. A mind given to such speculations naturally seeks poetic solace in Weltschmerz, which, as everybody knows, is still ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... had aroused this train of thought had reached the big stone steps by this time, and suddenly turning to look over her shoulder, just as he passed the gate, met his gaze squarely. Gad! what eyes those were!—full ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... if he had escaped from something which he had dreaded. Half an hour ago there had been no suspicion of such an emotion among the many which had occupied his attention, but now he perceived it clearly. Half an hour ago he had felt like Lucifer hurled from heaven. Now, though how that train of thought had started he could not have said, he was distinctly conscious of the silver lining. Subconscious Self began to drive the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... much love lost between Eliza and me," he remarked, as if pursuing a train of thought that had been interrupted. "After the two boys died of the shakes, down in the Missouri Bottoms, both in one week, I kind o' lost my interest in kids. But I'd like to know she was in better hands than ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... the dispute now litigated, and that, if such a rule be not discovered, it is only that the necessary patience, knowledge, or acumen is not forthcoming to detect it. Yet the moment the judgment has been rendered and reported, we slide unconsciously or unavowedly into a new language and a new train of thought. We now admit that the new decision has modified the law. The rules applicable have, to use the very inaccurate expression sometimes employed, become more elastic. In fact they have been changed. A clear addition has been made to the precedents, and the canon of law elicited ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... wondered, "Do I really love Mr. Harding? Haven't I got over it now?" But the least thinking of him sufficed to set her heart to thumping again; and so she shrunk from that train of thought. She ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... association of ideas intensified in each generation by the continual correlation of certain groups of brain cells. It has become not only unnecessary for him to think, but almost impossible, so deeply these well-worn paths of thought have become. His intellectual processes are automatic—his train of thought can never ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... this uncomfortable train of thought, Patience Eliot was covertly watching her companion's face. The expression she saw there evidently did not please her, and with a slightly determined set of her lips and a gleam of sudden purpose in her frank eyes, she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... recalling the confession that had escaped her, the warning words which she had spoken at that past time. Necessarily incapable of understanding this, Francis looked at her in perplexity. She went on in the same dull vacant tone, steadily following out her own train of thought, with her heedless eyes on his face, and her wandering mind far ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... subject, because of his inability to comply with this suggestion, is fighting a losing battle. It is also almost impossible for the subject to concentrate only on what the hypnotist is saying. Any word the hypnotist says can start a conscious as well as unconscious train of thought. Therefore, in reality, this, too, is impossible. However, it really isn't necessary that the subject keep his thoughts concentrated solely on what is being said so long as they are kept in the general area. At times, ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... factor of all in shaping my views and directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr. W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... was clammy, and the carriages rushing through the mist, like huge-eyed, misshapen spectres, proved how eager even the poor horses were to find shelter; yet for a long while we stood on the steps of this building, and at length retraced our steps homeward. Our train of thought, although checked, was not changed, when seated by a comfortable fire. We took down a volume of Milton; but "Paradise Lost" was too sublime for the mood of the moment, and we "got to thinking" of Andrew Marvel, and displaced a volume of Captain Edward Thompson's edition of his works; and then ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... down. Stevey Todd looked at Andrew McCulloch, then he looked at the others and winked cautiously, and Pemberton winked back. But Captain Tom did not look up. Uncle Abimelech too kept his eyes on the fire. He seemed to be following his old train of thought, which Andrew McCulloch's coming had started again in his mind, for ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... you know what you are talking about, Tode?" inquired Mr. Hastings, with a curious mixture of amusement and dignity. "Because I certainly do not seem able to follow your train of thought." ...
— Three People • Pansy

... drew her chair to the table, and took up the silver spoon, eagerly. Poor woman! She had travelled all day without tasting food, and the posset took her from a very painful train of thought. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... my things," and he began to wriggle out of his knitted blue guernsey. "Also," he said, following up a previous train of thought, "let me tell you there are devil-fish about here. One came up with ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... his train of thought ended. There was the great pine ahead of him right in the back of the moonlight. There, too, was the figure of a man standing silhouetted against the great ball of golden light as it rose slowly ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... reached so far in his reasonings, his inductions, and his philosophy, which had consumed a good hour and a half altogether, when he was drawn from his train of thought by the arrival of a litter proceeding from the direction of the inn ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... spoke, and had therefore no fear of failing on that score; but he doubted he should not be received, because he was too young and well-favoured. So, after much pondering, he fell into the following train of thought:—The place is a long way off, and no one there knows me; if I make believe that I am dumb, doubtless I shall be admitted. Whereupon he made his mind up, laid a hatchet across his shoulder, and saying ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... coming up here later to stay with Miss Hatchard?" Mr. Miles went on, following on his train of thought; then, spinning about and tilting his head back: "Yes, yes, I see—I understand: that will give a draught without materially altering the look of things. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... left the door and returned to his comrades. Ellen had received her first intimation of his cowardice; and his mention of her father's gold started a train of thought that persisted in spite of her efforts to put all her mind to attending her uncle. He grew conscious enough to recognize her working over him, and thanked her with a look that touched Ellen deeply. It changed the direction of her mind. His suffering ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... In this train of thought Hypatia had taken a step in advance of her father, for he seems to have had a dogmatic belief in a few things incapable of demonstration; but these things he taught to the plastic mind, just the same as the things he knew. Theon was a dogmatic liberal. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... like him a lot, the queer little man, I mean," said Amy, evidently following out her own train of thought. "He seems kind of fussy and peculiar but he has ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... From no train of thought did these fancies come; not from within, but from without; suddenly, too, and in one throng, like hoar frost; yet as soon to vanish as the mild sun of Captain ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... returned from calling upon some of the Settlers a few evenings ago; and the consideration that there was now a landmark of Christianity in this wild waste of heathenism, raised in my mind a pleasing train of thought, with the sanguine hope that this Protestant Establishment might be the means of raising a spiritual temple to the Lord, to whom "the heathen are given as an inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... not necessary to speak particularly of the contents of the next two Sermons; except to say that the train of thought thus started conducted the author inevitably over ground which was already occupied in the public mind by a volume which had already obtained some notoriety, and which has since become altogether infamous. Enough of the contents of that unhappy production I had read to be convinced ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... the most minute organisms, we find clear evidence in their voluntary powers of motion that these creatures possess a will, and that such Will must be conveyed by a nervous system of an infinitesimally minute description. When we follow out such a train of thought, and contrast the myriads of suns and planets at one extreme, with the myriads of minute organised atoms at the other, we cannot but feel inexpressible wonder at the transcendent range ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... he proves his point, for Jackson not only knew nothing of the plan adopted by Morse, and carried by him to a successful issue, but had never suggested anything of a practical nature. At the same time Morse freely acknowledges that the conversation between them on the ship suggested to him the train of thought which culminated in the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G—, in fact, did finally arrive—the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed—I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything that had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... on would have got on," said the philosopher, following up his train of thought. "If you would just go out and get them things I spoke to you about, Mrs. Church, we ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... distinguished families of the land. She cautiously suggested this to her husband when he came to take his seat at her bedside; but to her utter astonishment she found that he had been indulging a similar train of thought, and had already destined the infant prodigy for the army. She, however, could not give up her predilection for literature, and the Colonel, who could not bear to be contradicted in his own house, as he used to say, was getting ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting, concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and epitomising the train of thought to which ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... was this prince, our readers will recollect, who, while "the immediate heir of England," was committed into custody by the Lord Chief Justice, for disturbing the court in which he sat as judge, and who afterwards, when king, so nobly commended that officer's conduct. Shakspeare has a similar train of thought with the old chronicler. ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip



Words linked to "Train of thought" :   mentation, intellection, thought process, cerebration, thinking, thought



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