"Omniscient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God? God is a Spirit, Creator, Author, and Finisher of all things, and filling all. But while omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, these are not the characteristics emphasized in the Bible. He is righteous. "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" is the grand question of the father of the faithful. And when Moses prays God ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... for otherwise the overplus would have come from nothing. So much ("objective," representative) reality contained in an idea, so much or more ("formal," actual) reality must be contained in its cause. The idea of God as infinite, independent, omnipotent, omniscient, and creative substance, has not come to me through the senses, nor have I formed it myself. The power to conceive a being more perfect than myself, can have only come from someone who is more perfect in reality than I. Since I know that ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... consider the effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements of knowledge ...
— Sophist • Plato
... reader?—in a shabby action or unworthy thought; and, therefore, it leaves upon our mind an unpleasant impression about that Mr. Mervyn, who arrived in the dark, attending upon a coffin as mysterious as himself, and now lives solitarily in the haunted house near Ballyfermot, that the omniscient Dangerfield should follow him, when they pass upon the road, with that peculiar stern glance of surprise which seemed to say,—'Was ever such audacity ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... forgot that there was another—a great Omniscient Being—who, at all events, heard him; and that every evil word he had uttered had assuredly been registered in a book whence it would never be erased till the Day of Judgment, when it would be made known to thousands and tens of thousands of astonished and mourning ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the business with an obvious impatience. Formerly he had been used to dawdle over his letters, getting through a good portion of the forenoon with them and conversations with Waters about Buckinghamshire news. Now, even with that omniscient factotum by his side, his progress was slow, simply because he was hurried. He made dives here and there, without system, without settlement. At last, looking at his watch, he jumped ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the drama—depending as it does on giving to the spectator the pleasure of feeling omniscient—precludes the possibility of "unheralded surprise." For instance, if you have a character whom the audience has never seen before and of whom they know nothing suddenly spring up from behind a sofa where he has overheard two other characters conspiring—the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... just around the corner. The Whalens are omniscient. They have a system of news gathering which would make the efforts of a New York daily appear antiquated. They know that Jenny Laffin feeds the family on soup meat and oat-meal when Mr. Laffin is on the road; they know that Mrs. Pearson only shakes out her rugs once in four ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... even had he been less prejudiced in her favor than he was fast becoming now. If he had found it pleasant before to be admonished by her there was still more delicious flattery in her perfect trust in his omniscient skill as a pilot over this unknown sea. There was a certain enjoyment in guiding her hand over the writing-book, that I fear he could not have obtained from an intellect less graciously sustained by its physical nature. The weeks ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... bitter smile as he remembered the accepted idea of Todos Santos' inviolability—that inaccessible port that had within six weeks secretly summoned Perkins to its assistance! And it was there he believed himself secure! What security had he at all? Might not this strange, unimpassioned, omniscient man already know HIS secret as he had known ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... ever be known?' And suppose (leaving the hypothesis of an omniscient absolute out of the account) that we assume that the truth is never to be known. I ask you now, brother pragmatist, whether according to you there can be said to be any truth at all about such a state of facts. Is there a truth, or is there not a truth, in cases where at any rate ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... death are invariably related to each other as antecedent and consequent. By an irrevocable law {9} death is ordained to be "the wages of sin" (Rom. vi. 23). Of ourselves we can judge that it does not consist with the power and wisdom of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator that the sinful should live for ever. But if this be so, it must evidently be true also that immortality, being exemption from death, is the consequence of freedom from sin, that is, of perfect righteousness. This is as necessary a law as ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often and so good in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that they are snatched away from possible vanities seems hardly sound; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual. But I am too unwell ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... god, and ruled heaven and earth, and was omniscient. As ruler of heaven, his seat was Valaskjalf, from whence he sent two black ravens, daily, to gather tidings of all that was being done throughout the world. As god of war, he held his court in Valhalla, whither brave warriors went after death to revel in the tumultuous ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... magnificent mansion on Carlton Terrace, while in very sight of its windows, on a plot of ground in Pall Mall, a palace was rising to receive it. It counted already fifteen hundred members, who had been selected by an omniscient and scrutinising committee, solely with reference to their local influence throughout the country, and the books were overflowing with impatient candidates of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... knew of a drive to a roadhouse and a convivial night. His chief kept an omniscient eye on everybody with ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... somebody's mind. Confronted with a scene—like Becky's great scene, once more—we forget that other mind; but as soon as the story goes off again into narrative a question at once arises. Who is disposing the scattered facts, whose is this new point of view? It is the omniscient author, and the point of view is his—such would be the common answer, and it is the answer we get in Vanity Fair. By convention the author is allowed his universal knowledge of the story and the people in it. But still it is a convention, and a prudent novelist does not ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... family. For, despite what might have been deemed a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of Puritans. And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of the Chippering Mills? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... arcana, is, to the Australian mind in general, necessary for the safety of the world. Moreover, we have heard of a lying spirit sent to deceive prophets in a much higher creed. Finally, in a myth of the Mystery of the Wiraijuri, Baiame is not omniscient. Indeed, even civilised races cannot keep on the level of these religious conceptions, and not to keep on that level is—mythology. Apollo, in the hymn to Hermes, sung on a sacred occasion, needs to ask an old vine-dresser for intelligence. Hyperion "sees all and hears all," but needs ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... by this prohibition their attention would be drawn more and more from the truth of their doctrines to their immediate practical effects, not to mention that, in the case of all but a few comprehensive minds, the natural result would be an omniscient superficiality, which would be the enemy of all real culture. For he who knows one thing well may find the whole in the part; but he who knows the whole superficially, inevitably reduces it to the level of something partial ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... aitheri naion hypsizygos], the heavenly one, or [Greek: ouranios hypatos] and [Greek: hypsistos], the highest, and at last Iupiter Optimus Maximus, a name applied even to the true God. When Zeus had once become like the sky, all seeing or omniscient ([Greek: epopsios]), would he not naturally be supposed to see, not only the good, but the evil deeds of men also, nay, their very thoughts, whether pure or criminal? And if so, would he not be the avenger of evil, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... which, thank heaven! have been implanted in the bosoms of us all, will point out to you, and all my dear relatives, that fortitude and resignation which are required of us in the conflicts of human nature, and prevent you from arraigning the wisdom of that omniscient Providence, of which we ought all to ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... religion of the Indo-European race, while still united, "recognized a supreme God; an organizing God; almighty, omniscient, moral.... This conception was a heritage of the past.... The supreme God was originally the God of heaven." So Darmesteter, Contemporary Review, October, 1879. Roth had previously written with much learning and acuteness to ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... barbarian Europeans was in many respects like that of the American Indians. They recognized a Great Spirit—omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. In the earliest times they made no representation of him under the human form, nor had they temples; but they propitiated him by sacrifices, offering animals, as the horse, and even men, upon rude altars. Though it was believed that ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... that Maud wants you, just to wait and see. Don't begin by denying the possibility of its being a transcendental thing. Just hold the facts in your mind, and as life goes on, see if your experience confirms it, and until it does, do not pretend that it does. I don't claim to be omniscient. Something quite definite, of course, lies behind the mystery of life, and whatever it is, is not affected by what you or I believe about it. I may be wholly and entirely mistaken, and it may be that life is only a chemical ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of him, I suppose, from Georgina. Georgina is prejudiced. He has come back to me, I am glad to say. An excellent servant, Higginson, though a trifle too omniscient. All men are equal in the eyes of their Maker, of course; but we must have due subordination. A courier ought not to be better informed than his master—or ought at least to conceal the fact dexterously. Well, Higginson knows this young person's name; my sister wrote to me about her disgraceful ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... contribute to human bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created. But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me, that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow paused—hovered—fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydee, my wife, was snatched from my heart, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... coalheaver, beloved of his God, but abhorred of men. The Omniscient Judge at the grand assize shall ratify and confirm this to the confusion of many thousands; for England and her metropolis shall know that there hath ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... duplicates act differently. But if, on the other hand, we look beyond the facts and methods of physics and chemistry, and even beyond the most plausible theories of genetics, we can readily explain this remarkable action of the cells as the result of the will of an ever acting, omniscient, almighty God. Certainly nothing else is adequate to explain the behavior ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... the messenger, but he knew next to nothing. A senor chaparro had sent him, was all he said. It was a ridiculous anti-climax. A senor chaparro, "El Chaparrito," "Shorty," such a one to be the omniscient guardian of the Republic! But for all that "El Chaparrito" was to be heard of again and many times, and always as an enigma to both sides alike, until the absurd word became freighted on the lips of men with superstitious awe. There ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... quality of these things within, as to be aware that some of them are not to be disclosed in their communications; which prudential caution has of course little to do with conscience, when the things so withheld are internally cherished in perfect disregard of the Omniscient Observer, and with hardly the faintest monition that the essence of the guilt is the same, with only a difference in degree, in intending or deliberately desiring an evil, and in ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... love Unite you in the grand design, Beneath th' Omniscient Eye above, The glorious architect divine! That you may keep th' unerring line, Still rising by the plummet's law, Till order bright completely shine, Shall be my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... is infinite, is to own that there can be nothing common to him and his creatures. If there be nothing common to God and his creatures, God is annihilated for man, or, at least, rendered useless to him. "God," they say, "has made man intelligent, but he has not made him omniscient;" hence it is inferred, that he has not been able to give him faculties sufficiently enlarged to know his divine essence. In this case, it is evident, that God has not been able nor willing to be known by his creatures. By what right then would God be angry with beings, who were naturally incapable ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... before, and now the county circuit was Doctor Eben's. His love of his profession was a passion, and nothing now stood in the way of his gratifying it to the utmost. Books, journals, all poured in upon him. Hetty would have liked to be omniscient that she might procure for him all he could desire. Every morning they might be seen dashing over the country with a pair of fleet, strong gray horses. In the afternoon, they drove a pair of black ponies for visits nearer ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... glad, also, for the obscurity which attends their annual coming and going. Whether they hibernate or migrate, the secret is their own; and for my part, I wish them the wit to keep it. In this age, when the world is in such danger of becoming omniscient before the time, it is good to have here and there a mystery in reserve. Though it be only a little one, we may well cherish it as ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... that a Supreme Being had chosen him for a time as an instrument, and was working through him. Like nearly all who live in the forest and spend most of their lives in the presence of nature, he invariably felt the power of invisible forces, directed by an omniscient and omnipotent mind, which the Indian has crystallized into the name Manitou, the same as ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... will examine the two classes of offenders who admit that there are Gods, but say,—the one that they may be appeased, the other that they take no care of small matters: do they not acknowledge that the Gods are omnipotent and omniscient, and also good and perfect? 'Certainly.' Then they cannot be indolent, for indolence is the offspring of idleness, and idleness of cowardice, and there is no cowardice in God. 'True.' If the Gods neglect small matters, they must either ...
— Laws • Plato
... latent in at least the popular versions of Catholic or Arminian theology, and to which Calvinism opposes a loftier view. God, on this theory, is not really almighty, for the doctrine of free-will places human actions and their results beyond His control. He is scarcely omniscient, for, like human rulers, He judges by actions, not by the intrinsic nature of the soul, and therefore distributes His rewards and punishments on a system comparable to that of mere earthly jurisprudence. He is at most the infallible judge of actions, not the universal ordainer of events ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... were none of them any good; they none of them knew what it was like to be frit. So she ran away, and left the hot, secretive, omniscient place with its fierce ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... critical omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and all, that there are ganglions in every brain—a narrow judgment which the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal common, distinguish two elements in every case—law and equity. Equity ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... being any world to know, and also of there being any lesser minds to know it. It is, indeed, possible to believe in the eternal existence of limited minds, while denying the existence of the one Omniscient Mind. That is a hypothesis on which I will say a word hereafter.[6] It is enough here to say that it is one which is not required to explain the world as we know it. The obvious prima facie view of the matter is that the minds which apparently ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... is able to confer with his rulers; to represent his wants and grievances; to ask advice, or recommend salutary changes? Have we had more than one or two organs of communication with the government, and must not they have been omniscient to have always understood the wishes of the people, and incorruptible to have always correctly represented them? Who of us feels or ever has felt any reliance or can place any confidence in governmental ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... perceived the purport of this question, after a solemn pause, during which he seemed absorbed in contemplation, delivered this response to his consulter: "Though I foresee some occurrences, I do not pretend to be omniscient. I know not to what age that clergyman's life will extend; but so far I can penetrate into the womb of time, as to discern, that the incumbent will survive his intended successor." This dreadful sentence in a moment ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... eye is upon him. He penciled his path Whose omniscient notice the frail fledgling hath. Though lightnings be lurid and earthquakes may shock, He rides on the whirlwind or ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... pyramidal hills sublime, That still, pure moon, thy radiance will reflect, And still defy the crumbling touch of Time: Who built this temple of gigantic trees, Where Nature's worshipers repair To pray the heart's unuttered prayer, Whose veiled thought the great Omniscient sees. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... interested Chicago capital to a point where a company had been formed to manufacture the type-setter in that city. Paige reported that he had got several million dollars subscribed for the construction of a factory, and that he had been placed on a salary as a sort of general "consulting omniscient" at five thousand dollars a month. Clemens, who had been negotiating again with the Mallorys for the disposal of his machine royalties, thought it proper to find out just what was going on. He remained in America less than two weeks, during which he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it during those three weeks. The things they brought up were astounding. Besides a lot of scientific apparatus and chests of chemical supplies, everything that could possibly be required, had been provided by that omniscient young man. After we had built a long, low structure, windows were forthcoming, shelves, tables, sinks, faucets, forges, burners, all cut out, fitted and ready to put together, each with its proper screws, nails, clamps, or pipes ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in all nature is found, A Power omniscient, unfailing, profound; A great Heart, that loves beauty and order and light. In the flowers, in the shells, in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... lost their powers of reason. If there were no puzzles to solve, there would be no questions to ask; and if there were no questions to be asked, what a world it would be! We should all be equally omniscient, and conversation would be ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you can't hang a "clew" for murder, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being, who, having these prerogatives, has the Supreme Good, or rather is the Supreme Good, or has all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such, that what we do not know and cannot even imagine of Him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean One who is sovereign over His own will ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... material universe. The Nous of Anaxagoras is a principle, infinite, independent (autocrates), omnipresent (en panti pantos moioa enon), the subtilest and purest of things (lepitotaton panion chrematon kaikai katharotaton); and incapable of mixture with aught besides; it is also omniscient (panta egno), and unchangeable (pas omoios esti).—Simplicius, in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... after their lusts. (19) The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair, for it is governed solely by emotions, not by reason: it rushes headlong into every enterprise, and is easily corrupted either by avarice or luxury: everyone thinks himself omniscient and wishes to fashion all things to his liking, judging a thing to be just or unjust, lawful or unlawful, according as he thinks it will bring him profit or loss: vanity leads him to despise his equals, and refuse their guidance: envy of superior fame ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the possible intervention of a power which is above nature.' How was it in my case? What was the essence of my belief? Nothing less than this: that God would have permitted the laws of nature, ordained by His infinite wisdom to fulfil His omniscient designs and pursue their natural course in accordance with His will, had not my request persuaded Him to suspend ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... you you'd become irreverent," said Harley; "nevertheless, even in your irreverence, you have expressed the idea. The writer must be omniscient as far as the characters of his stories are concerned—he must have an eye which shall see all that they do, a mind sufficiently analytical to discern what their motives are, and the courage to put it all down truthfully, neither adding nor subtracting, ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the quartermaster explained that the landlady being ill in bed, and the place run by a young girl, the house had been purposely missed. Doggie drew a breath of relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin's malady ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Freedom, Harmony, and Love, Unite you in the grand Design, Beneath th' Omniscient Eye above, The glorious Architect Divine, That you may keep th' unerring line, Still rising by the plummet's law, Till Order bright completely shine, Shall be ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... culled a garland from the flowers of song To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone, The sad disciple of a shining band Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop From his high seat to take the offering, And read it with a sigh for human friends, In human bonds, and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the mystery. We believed we were acting for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human mind is so far from omniscient! And ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... for course-correction, you float around in the blast-cubicle with damn little to do between blast-away and moon-down, except sweat out the omniscient accident statistics. If the beast blows up or gets gutted in space, a statistic had your name on it, that's all, and there's no fighting back. You stay outwardly sane because you're a hog for punishment; if you weren't, you'd never get past ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... rule and attract success is within yourself. The barriers that shut these off from you are subject to your control. You have unlimited power to think and this is the link that connects you with your omniscient source. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... anything!—Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... for a moment. It did not surprise him to learn that the omniscient Cardinal was fully acquainted with the doings in his studio, but he looked curiously at the great man before he answered. The Cardinal's small gleaming eyes met his with the fearlessness ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... a long pause, "an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee!—That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides—the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.—Go, leave me, fiend! and seek the Saxon witch Ulrica, who alone could ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... doctrine of the all-powerfulness of God seems to warrant the belief in fatalism—belief which offers a stumbling block to all theologians, all philosophers, all thinkers. If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, how and where and in what manner can be explained the necessity of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... when we meet in London. Do you consider that the successive variations in the size of the crop of the Pouter Pigeon, which man has accumulated to please his caprice, have been due to "the creative and sustaining powers of Brahma?" In the sense that an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must order and know everything, this must be admitted; yet, in honest truth, I can hardly admit it. It seems preposterous that a maker of a universe should care about the crop of a pigeon solely ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... comprehend the Deity? Can I describe the mode of his being? Can I tell you in what manner he sprang into existence? And whether he is necessarily everywhere in his works, and as it were constituting them? Or whether he has power to contract himself, and dwell apart from them, their omniscient observer, and omnipotent Lord? I know nothing of all this; the religion which I receive, teaches nothing of all this. Christianity does not demonstrate the being of a God, it simply proclaims it; hardly so much as that indeed. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... loving-kindness was infinite, because he could not be angry with the pitiable creatures haled before him, when he considered how little able they were to distinguish between wisdom and unwisdom where Helmas was omniscient: and all his doings were merciful and just, and his people praised him. Even the Queen conceded that, once you were accustomed to his ways, and exercised some firmness about being made a doormat of, and had it understood ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... didn't. I'm not omniscient, and I only ordered him to propose an hour ago. The golden hussy! the proud jade! Refuse my grand-nephew indeed! Well, there's one of your rivals disposed of, it seems,—count that to ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of it. Our equality lies in the fact that we are both claiming candidly to represent the truth. In the last analysis our equality is based on the identity of the objective content to which we appeal. As witnesses of a specific truth within the range of both, the meanest mortal alive and the omniscient intelligence are equal; and simply because the identical truth is as valid in the mouth of one as in the mouth of the other. Where it is a matter of disagreement between you and me, our equality lies in the fact that neither can do more than appeal to the object. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... "Omniscient Gotama!" he cried,—"all-seeing Tathagata! How multiform the Consolation of Thy Word! how marvellous Thy understanding of the human heart! Was this also one of Thy temptations?—one of the myriad ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... believe, marrow in our bones, and remain uncorrupted by modern luxury and effeminacy. But no one can escape the decrees of Providence. Oh, farewell, then, our father and king! Heaven grant you more faithful generals and more sagacious ministers for the remainder of your states! You are not omniscient, and you were sometimes obliged to follow them into blind paths. Unfortunately, we must also submit to what cannot be helped. God help us! We trust our new sovereign will be a father to us, and honor ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... should fear God above all things, 1. Because He is omniscient, and we cannot hide anything from Him, not even our thoughts. [Ps. 139:1, 2] 2. Because He is holy, and hates everything that is evil. [Lev. 19:2] 3. Because He is just, and will punish every ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... herself in a fountain, and lovingly extending her arms toward her own image as if to embrace it, he paints, feature for feature, the human race.—This God whom you worship, O man! this God whom you have made good, just, omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, and holy, is yourself: this ideal of perfection is your image, purified in the shining mirror of your conscience. God, Nature, and man are three aspects of one and the same being; man is God himself arriving at self-consciousness through ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... budded, practised in the technicalities of parlours, but timid because of "company"—came in to set the tea. And Miss Gailey inspected her with the calm and omniscient detachment of a deity, and said to Caroline when she was gone that Florrie seemed a promising little thing—with the 'makings of a good servant' in her. Afterwards the mistress recounted this judgment to Florrie, who was thereby apparently much ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to find my secret prayer granted by the omniscient guru. Shortly before your birth, he had told me you ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Omniscient hand, trusting in an Almighty power, cheered by that mysterious promise, which, as a star of hope shining in the hour of deepest darkness, still rose to higher brightness as it guided the long line of patriarchs, kings, and prophets, until it settled ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... For not uninterested the dear Maid I've view'd—her soul affectionate yet wise, Her polish'd wit as mild as lambent glories That play around a sainted infant's head. 25 He knows (the Spirit that in secret sees, Of whose omniscient and all-spreading Love Aught to implore[79:1] were impotence of mind) That my mute thoughts are sad before his throne, Prepar'd, when he his healing ray vouchsafes, 30 Thanksgiving to pour forth with lifted heart, And praise Him ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... we should know this world as the most perfect whole possible; and for this purpose should also know all possible worlds (in order to be able to compare them with this); in other words, we should be omniscient. It is absolutely impossible, however, to know the existence of this Being from mere concepts, because every existential proposition, that is, every proposition that affirms the existence of a being of which I frame a concept, is a synthetic proposition, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... existence. We trail after us from our whole past some sense of the continuous energy and movement both of our passionate fancies and of the phantasmagoria capriciously at work beyond. An ignorant mind believes itself omniscient and omnipotent; those impulses in itself which really represent the inertia and unspent momentum of its last dream it regards as ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and all without exception ought to know what is being said about them, to enable them to confirm or disavow these disquieting speculations. The papers simply teem with secret histories of the week, diaries of omniscient pundits and so forth, in which these rumours multiply to an extent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... natural selection was largely due to the relief it offered from the incubus of the old theological conception of the Deity as a personal agency, always interfering with the course of events,—an infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient stage manager,—a conception under which the Christian world at large lay when Darwin announced his solution of the problem. The religious world had been, up to that time, chained to the anthropomorphic conception of Deity, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... at the Star and Garter, Richmond, when Anthony Trollope, angry with me for expressing a doubt about the poetical greatness of Horace, wanted to fling a decanter at my head! It was about this time that an omniscient publisher, after an interview with me, exclaimed (the circumstance is historical), "I don't like that young man; he talked to me as if he was God Almighty, or Lord Byron!" But in sober truth, I never had the sort of conceit ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The pictures of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not the future—cannot ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... God, to whom none can be equalled, is one omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; He alone possesses all wisdom ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... proportionately discouraged.) Even Johnston, a most able and experienced soldier, although he was evidently apprehensive that Jackson's front was too extended, forbore to do more than warn. Nor was his interference the crown of Mr. Benjamin's offence. The omniscient lawyer asked no advice; but believing, as many still believe, that neither special knowledge nor practical acquaintance with the working of the military machine is necessary in order to manoeuvre armies, he had acted entirely on his own initiative. It was indeed time that he received ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... fear careth naught for troops, neither can braves affright him." "Aid thyself against him with thy father's monies and treasures." "He whom I fear will not be satisfied with wealth." "Ye hold that ye have in Heaven a God who seeth and is not seen and is Omnipotent and Omniscient." "Yes, we have none but Him." "Then pray thou to Him; haply He will deliver thee from me thine enemy!" So the King's son raised his eyes to heaven and began to pray with his whole heart, saying, "O my God, I implore Thy succour against that which troubleth me." Then he pointed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... she was not omniscient, and she never could have understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to have been an only child. If he had been ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... say swiftly, under her breath, "I'll be even with you for that, Allan Harrington!" and went on trying to console the Haveniths; for poor Mr. Havenith sat, dignified and forlorn, trying to look perfectly omniscient and satisfied and not succeeding ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... omniscient I can't see how He can let some things go on! He must be limited in power or He'd never let some things happen if He's a good God!" Wittemore's ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... mind. While Fundamentalists and Modernists differ regarding the divinity of Christ, all Christians and many non-Christians still cling to preconceived notions of the perfection of Jesus. He alone among men is revered as all-loving, omniscient, faultless—an ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... as well talk of black-whiteness and of white-blackness. A hundred generations of divines have never been able to ree the riddle; a million will fail. The difficulty is insurmountable to the Theist whose Almighty is perforce Omniscient, and as Omniscient, Prescient. But it disappears when we convert the Person into Law, or a settled order of events; subject, moreover, to certain exceptions fixed and immutable, but at present unknown to man. The difference ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... that the tale of their sorrows was known to Jesus, a messenger is sent,—the means are employed! They act as though He knew it not; as if that omniscient Saviour had been all unconscious of these hours of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... men, 'You may kill me, but you cannot hurt me.' The Christian believer can afford to be a martyr. When excited by ungodly or inhuman opposition, he naturally displays the martyr's courage. He can bear too to suffer disrepute. He can trust his reputation to his omniscient and almighty Friend. He can bear to look with patience both on the adversity of the good, and the prosperity of the bad. He knows the fate,—he sees the end,—of both. The Judge of all the earth will do right. He knows no evil but sin. He knows ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... theft, an existence which is worthless and a burden; and when, at the same time, we see a system of laws, that has carefully drawn a band of iron around every mode of human exertion; which with lynx-eyed and omniscient vigilance, has dragged every product of industry from its retreat to become the subject of a tax, can we fail in ascribing the effect to its cause, or suppress the utterance of our indignation at a policy so ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that charmed him particularly—the feeling of an almost double existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... like the majority of young girls as old as she, would be to imagine that human character is not influenced by its surroundings. She was neither a village Gretchen, such as Faust loved and ruined, nor was she the omniscient damsel of modern society. During the greater part of her existence she had lived without any companions but her mother and the faithful Berbel. But she had grown up in a wild forest country, in a huge dismantled stronghold, of which the windows looked out over the tumbling torrent, and across ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... which the central administration of the nation's military forces was pronounced to have been guilty, to the "dug-out." That the personnel of the War Office was always set out in detail at the beginning of the Monthly Army List, the omniscient Fourth Estate was naturally aware; but the management of a newspaper could hardly be expected to purchase a copy (it was not made confidential for a year). Nor could a journalistic staff condescend to study this work of reference at some library ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... We would thus have one First, and MANY SECOND CAUSES; the former supreme, the latter subordinate; really distinct, but not equally independent, since "second causes" are, from their very nature, subject to the dominion and control of that Omniscient Mind which called them into being, and which knows how to overrule them all for the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... knees of the gods, my child," answered Daddy, who often used quotations that Janice did not altogether understand, but which she thought were very fine, just the same. "I guess you mean that nobody knows unless he's omniscient," she said now. "That's a big word, Daddy, but we had it in our lesson the other day. And I guess only somebody who knows everything could guess who will work for us ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... His spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her own ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... shall call the Hisi irons, In them I shall boil and roast thee, Thus to check thy crimson flowing, Thus to save the wounded hero. "If these means be inefficient, Should these measures prove unworthy, I shall call omniscient Ukko, Mightiest of the creators, Stronger than all ancient heroes, Wiser than the world-magicians; He will check the crimson out-flow, He will heal this wound of hatchet. "Ukko, God of love and mercy, God and Master Of the heavens, Come thou hither, thou ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... vibratory scale of the finer vehicle extends far beyond that of the physical, and that the soul cannot impress on this latter vehicle all that it knows when functioning in the former. By this we do not mean that it is omniscient as soon as it has left the visible body; this opinion, a current one, is contrary to the law of evolution, and will not ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... a mode of existence in which the soul "knows even as it is known." But this involves a perception in which there is no error, and no intermission. For, the human spirit in eternity "is known" by the omniscient God. If, then, it knows in the style and manner that God knows, there can be no misconception or cessation in its cognition. Here, then, we have a glimpse into the nature of our eternal existence. It is a state of distinct and unceasing knowledge of moral truth ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... of this brochure, realizing vividly and with sympathy, humanity's sore need, has been constrained to formulate, for the benefit of those desirous to learn;—a means of enlightenment suitable and accessible to all. For although, to quote from Goethe, whose transcendent mind was almost omniscient in all ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... who remains in the background in this story, but whom we must never forget, sits in the midst of South House like some omniscient and benevolent providence, decided that something must be done to stop these mischievous wagging tongues, so she summoned her ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... was without physical defect, and then to seal it with the temple seal, thus certifying that it was fit for sacrifice and for food. Behold the Lamb of God presenting himself for inspection at the Jordan! Under the Father's omniscient scrutiny he is found to be "a lamb without blemish and without spot." From the opening heaven God gives witness to the fact in the words: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," and then he puts the Holy Ghost upon him, the testimony to ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... the quotation which was the basis of his creed—"God is immaterial, and for this reason transcends every conception. Since he is invisible He can have no form. But from what we observe in His work we may conclude that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... is manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... of Brahm[a] in the epic is most distinctly in process of subordination to the sectarian gods. He is holy and eternal, but not omniscient, though wise. As was shown above, he works at the will of Vishnu. He is one with Vishnu only in the sense that all is one with the All-god. When Vishnu 'raises the earth' as a boar, Brahm[a] tells the gods to go to him.[21] He councils the gods. His heaven ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... have been able, for the same reason, to have had from myself the whole remainder of perfection, of the want of which I was conscious, and thus could of myself have become infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, all-powerful, and, in fine, have possessed all the perfections which I could recognize in God. For in order to know the nature of God (whose existence has been established by the preceding reasonings), as far as my own nature permitted, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... the very point I most admire in our excellent Liturgy. To any particular petition offered to the Omniscient, there may be a sinking of faith, a sense of its superfluity; but to the lifting up of the soul to the Invisible and there fixing it on his attributes, there can ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... did learn that the Wieroo carried off only female babes and occasionally women of the Galus who had "come up from the beginning." It was all very mysterious and unfathomable, but I got the idea that the Wieroo were creatures of imagination—the demons or gods of her race, omniscient and omnipresent. This led me to assume that the Galus had a religious sense, and further questioning brought out the fact that such was the case. Ajor spoke in tones of reverence of Luata, the god of heat and life. The word is derived ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he reappeared among them his eye was almost grim, but nobody noticed his eye. They were looking at watches, and Johnson was being omniscient about trains. They seemed to discover Mr. Polly afresh just at the moment of parting, and said a number of more or less appropriate things. But Uncle Pentstemon was far too worried about his rush basket, which had been ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... surmounted the very last grade of that vast and laborious ascent by which he is instructed that he can 'scale the heavens,' and pluck immortal wisdom from its resplendent source: which achievement performed, he becomes a Buddha, that is, an Omniscient Being, and a Tathagata—a title implying the accomplishment of that gradual increase in wisdom by which man becomes immortal or ceases to be subject to transmigration."—The Phoenix, Vol. I., ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... fatherhood more omniscient than his own had not been misplaced. Loving hands had borne his darling safely through the waves to a home where, in an atmosphere of devotion, the beauty that had been in her from the beginning had perfected in its maturity. Even the homely surroundings of the environment into which she drifted ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... however—the poet still remaining moody, not to say positively grumpy—Senator Wrengold proposed a friendly game of Swedish poker. It was the latest fashionable variant in Western society on the old gambling round, and few of us knew it, save the omniscient poet and the magazine editor. It turned out afterwards that Wrengold proposed that particular game because he had heard Coleyard observe at the Lotus Club the same afternoon that it was a favourite amusement of his. Now, however, for a while ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... "An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him; but can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... "No," said the omniscient Bertie. "She was living in retirement with her father then; but Stafford must have known her—made her acquaintance. Don't you remember that she was present when poor Miss Falconer ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... under unqualified condemnation: for who among us has not sometimes heard windy prayers even in our Christian churches? Young clergymen are especially liable and, I might say, prone to this mockery. These, however, are but exceptions to the general Christian rule, viz.: that the Omniscient careth only for heart-service; and that, before Him, all mere lip-service or machine-service, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum |
