"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presence of food. {80} Speaking rationally, you perhaps say that he does not make these movements because he sees they would be of no use without food to chew; but this explanation would scarcely apply to the lower sorts of animal, and besides, you do not have to check your jaws by any such rational considerations. They simply do not start to chew except when food is in the mouth. Well, then, you say, chewing is a response to the presence of food in the mouth; and taking food into the mouth is a response to the stimulus of actually present food. The response ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... that we nightly visit. When we come back from the dream-realm, we can give no reasonable report of what we met there. But once across the border, we feel at home as if we had always lived there and had never made any excursions into this rational ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... of the beauty of these old beliefs—a rational smile at their absurdity—such is the tone of his "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), a passage or two from which will give his attitude very precisely; an attitude, it will be seen, which is ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Dame; the motive betrays itself in the thirteenth chapter, where Polycarp is represented as sending several of the Ignatian Epistles to the Philippians along with his own letter. This theory is at all events intelligible; and, so far as I can see, it is the only rational theory of which the ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... care not to overstrain their powers. They and he must be very thankful that their respective households were thus far unvisited by the disease; and they should all, in his opinion, favour their health by the indulgence of a little rational cheerfulness. Hester smiled, aware that never had their household been ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the Gardener's Magazine observes that "next to the existing school societies, there is nothing I am more anxious to see, or would more gladly contribute to, than a Society for promoting the Rational Amusements of the Lower Classes, the first aim of which should be to instruct itinerant teachers of music, singing, and dancing, in improved modes of imparting their arts, and thus fairly set the plan agoing, when it would soon work its own way, and might then be extended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... mode of life with many even of those who would join their comrades in an engagement. They were not reported in the return of "effectives" made by their officers, but that they often made part of the killed, wounded, and captured I have little doubt. In this way a rational explanation may be found of the larger discrepancies between the Confederate reports of casualties and ours of their dead buried ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... struggling to be cool and rational while he wrote them, and then he departed, leaving the ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... which made him at times very irritable and hasty; in other respects he was a sociable messmate. The second was a kind of nondescript; he was certainly sober, and I hope honest, fond of adventure, and always volunteered when the boats were sent on any expedition. He was sociable, and frequently rational, although too often sanguine where hope was almost hopeless. Three-and-twenty summers had passed over his head, but still there was much to correct. He was generous and open-hearted, and never could keep a ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the servants in every respect, particularly that of the women, shows how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages, though these wages are so low that necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... virtual act of abdication, or to consider even the most formal act of abdication binding against the king,-had not the great struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's office for the old superstition in behalf of the king's person, which would have protected him from the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected injuriously either his own interests or the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... proper powers assigned; Each seeming want compensated of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all? The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... soften and moderate the passions of dogs cannot be doubted, and they constantly imbibe feelings from those of their master. Thus, if he is a coward, his dog is generally found to be one. Dogs are, however, in many respects, rational beings; and some proofs of this will be given in the present work. They will watch the countenance of their master—they will understand words, which, though addressed to others, they will apply to themselves, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may "have served as household gods or personal amulets," and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby's as "the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose." He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania. "Idols and amulets were indeed universally used in prehistoric times." ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... was her only rational theory of the case! But his supposed insanity did not vindicate him to her pure and just mind. For he was not an insane man so much as an insane devil! He had only been mad in his recklessness, not in ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... flatter her and take care of her as if she were a bride in her honeymoon. My reward is that I see her thrive; her bad illness is visibly getting better. She is recovering and will, I hope, become a little rational in her old age. Just after I had received your 'Dante,' I wrote to her that we had now got out of Hell; I hope Purgatory will agree with her; in which case, we shall perhaps, after ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... best government for simians seems to be based on a parliament: a talk-room, where endless vague thoughts can be expressed. This is the natural child of those primeval sessions that gave pleasure to apes. It is neither an ideal nor a rational arrangement of course. Small executive committees would be better. But ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... letter and glanced around the room. Was he right, after all? Did women, rational, truthful, devout women, ever act in this strange manner? And if it was true, was it not in its own way as ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the ironmasters of the present day with freedom and effect, in communicating with each other on the subject of their respective manufactures. Prejudices seldom outlive the generation to which they belong, when opposed by a more rational system of explanation. In this respect, Time (as my Lord Bacon says) is the greatest ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... but that afterwards in a conversation with Mr. Almond, he declared his belief with much vehemence and agitation. This was soon after he had reached his eighteenth year. Maturer judgment "convinced him that 'zeal was to be tempered with discretion; that the service of Christ was a rational service'; that a strong assurance 'was not to be resorted to as the touchstone of our acceptance with God,' that it was not even the necessary attendant of religious life;" as more experience of his spiritual associates discovered ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... pale, scared little brothers, to add their shrieks to the general clamour. Deanie's fellow workers, poor little souls, denied their childish share of the world's excitements, gazed with a sort of awful relish. Only Johnnie, speeding down the room away from it all, was doing anything rational to avert the catastrophe. The child hung on the slowly moving belt, inert, a tiny rag of life, with her mop of tangled yellow curls, her white, little face, its blue eyes closed. When she reached the top, where ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... at those teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil: he issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation, irrespective of merit or demerit; inflicting eternal torments on innumerable souls which never could have been saved, and for whom the Son of God did not die. What any rational being must consider as the most revolting cruelty and injustice, these men called acts of pure justice executed by the hand of God. God saves blindly those whom he saves, and takes them home to his bosom, though reeking with the unrepented and unexpiated crimes ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... with a repercussion of the two last consonants. He supported this by quoting Ammianus, at which Dr. Boyster exclaimed, "Pooh! Ammianus: more dog Latin!" and appealed to Mr. Tomlinson as to whether any rational man ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father owned and cultivated a small farm; but spent the winters at the shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age, his father died and the lad soon after apprenticed himself to a ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... clearly is to expel Magic as the decisive influence among us, in favour of ordered relations of cause and effect, only to be discovered by intelligent search. The universe began to be more directly conceived as a group of phenomena that are capable of rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider the area of law, the greater is man's consciousness of his power of controlling forces, and securing the results that he desires. Objective interests and their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in his ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the Great Charter, seem to have been lulled into a fatal security, and to have taken no rational measures, in case of the introduction of a foreign force, for reassembling their armies. The King was, from the first, master of the field, and immediately laid siege to the castle of Rochester, which was obstinately defended by William de Albiney, at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... in the text are inexplicable on any rational supposition, as they seem to have again made the Rocks de la Cruz, or rather Rocky Point, said just before to be only fifteen leagues from Infante river, to which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... theory of Strauss, therefore, not less than that of Gibbon, the old and ever recurring difficulty of giving a rational account of the origin and establishment of Christianity still presents itself for solution to the infidel, as it always has done, and, we venture to say, always will do. It is an insoluble phenomenon, except by the admission of the facts ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... violence surprises me, is wholly unlooked for, and unnecessary," he remarked, mildly. "From what Mrs. Clayton has told me, I had supposed that my disinterested care and assiduity with regard to your condition were about to meet their reward in your rational submission to the necessities of your case and mine. Resume your seat, I entreat you, and let us calmly discuss a matter that seems to agitate you so unduly. Perhaps I may be able to place it before you in a better light ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... words that nothing on the part of that poor lady should have provoked from you—words that I fear may never be forgotten or forgiven! But—I know that she has a gentle and easy nature. When you are cooler and more rational, I wish you to go to her and be ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... peculiar constitution of the Asclepions, medical and priestly pursuits had, before the time of Hippocrates, become combined; and, consequently, although rational means were to a certain extent applied to the cure of diseases, the more common practice was to resort chiefly to superstitious modes of working upon the imagination. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that every sickness, especially ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... those meteors might be compared to the blazing sheaves which shoot out from fireworks." The knowledge of this fact rests upon the highly trustworthy testimony of the Count de Marbois, then living in exile at Cayenne, a victim to his love of justice and of rational, constitutional liberty. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Roger was still oracular on the bench, and after consulting his clerk, a good lawyer,—and looked up to by the neighboring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little, he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... manner that the princess could hear him,—"but I resemble that dweller in the East, who turned mad, and remained so for several days, owing to a delightful dream that he had had, but who one day awoke, if not completely cured, in some respects rational at least. The court of France has its intoxicating properties, which are not unlike this dream, my lord; but at last I wake and leave it. I shall be unable, therefore, to prolong my residence, as your highness has so ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their food, which perhaps might be beneficially followed here. They have a bucket of water put down beside their allowance of hay. It is interesting to see with what relish they take a sip of the one and a mouthful of the other alternately, sometimes only moistening their mouths, as a rational being would do while eating a dinner of such dry food. A broken-winded horse is scarcely ever seen in Norway, and the question is if the mode of feeding has not something to do with the preservation of the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... had gone hand-in-hand with an insane Callistion. Now our ways parted. She desired only to be avenged on you, and very crudely. That did not accord with my plan. I fell to bargaining. I purchased with—O rarity of rarities!—a little rational advice and much gold as well. Thus in due season I betrayed Callistion. Well, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... self-government; and, however grave the drawbacks under which in one or both it exists, the two have, among the great nations of the world, made the most effectual advances toward the true aim of rational politics. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... delight, and why not, when it was doing everything (almost everything!) within the scope of a piano, and yet the family had enjoyed weeks of good nourishing meals on what had been saved by its exertions. Also, what rational family could mourn the loss of an irregularly shaped instrument standing on three legs and played on one corner? The tall silver candle sticks gleamed in the firelight, the silver dish of polished Baldwins blushed rosier in the glow. Mother Carey played ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is an active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he resembles those naughty little boys who will not learn A, lest they should be obliged to learn B, too. He is a native of warm countries, and a useless beast in this part of the world; ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... for man two opposite exigencies, the two fundamental laws of sensuous-rational nature. The first has for its object absolute reality; it must make a world of what is only form, manifest all that in it is only a force. The second law has for its object absolute formality; it must destroy in him ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... OF POETRY, &c., by ROBERT BURNESS: a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational and irrational.—As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... these persons are well clothed, lodged, and fed; they are not overworked, and dancing, singing, and other amusements, which increase health and cheerfulness, are actively promoted. But the system is one which has for its object the transformation of reason into instinct the lowering of a rational being into a machine scarcely more intelligent in appearance than some of our own ingeniously-contrived steam-engines. Religious teaching is withheld, reading is forbidden, and the instruction of a slave ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... convinced Max would think so, even pictured to herself the one-sided smile that such nonsense would provoke. Doubtless he deemed her too sensible to waste time and thought over anything so absurd. He would even quite possibly be extremely annoyed if she ever ventured beyond the limits of rational friendship which he had marked out. Olga's sense of humour vibrated a little over this thought. He was always so scathing about her worship of Nick. He would certainly find no use for such ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had a persuasion the cult had been maligned. Anyhow she was a Lady. And rich people, too! Her machine couldn't have cost much under twenty pounds. His mind came round and dwelt some time on her visible self. Rational dress didn't look a bit unwomanly. However, he disdained to be one of your fortune-hunters. Then his thoughts drove off at a tangent. He would certainly have to get something to eat ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... an emotional mystic, and withal a cautious one. He never let go the string of his balloon. He never threw over all his ballast of common sense so as to rise above an atmosphere in which a rational being could breathe. I found in his library William Law's edition of Jacob Behmen. There were all those wonderful diagrams over which the reader may have grown dizzy,—just such as one finds on the walls of lunatic ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... cut the matter short by declaring that, on principle, he refused to disclose what had passed in private conversation; a sentiment which was actually cheered by the Committee. One sentence of common sense brought the absurd embroilment to a rational conclusion. Mr. Hill saw his mistake; begged that no further evidence might be taken; and, at the next sitting of the House, withdrew his charge in unqualified terms of self-abasement and remorse. Lord Althorp readily admitted that he had acted ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... passionate struggles had long disturbed grew serene about her. Even a wavering note of something more joyous than mere peace, a courage, a strength that promised happiness must have radiated from her to him. For Creed's eyes opened and looked full into hers with a wholly rational expression which had long been ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... consulted, "Remember, this presents but one view of the person, and does not change its position: how will this dress look when it walks, runs, rushes, kneels, sits down, falls, and turns its back?" I think an edge was added to my mother's keen, rational, and highly artistic sense of this matter of costume because it was the special hobby of her "favorite aversion," Mr. E——, who had studied with great zeal and industry antiquarian questions connected ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... present his side as strongly as he could? Now if you and sister can shake all this off by one mighty effort of your wills, do so; but if we do not wish to invite every evil we predicted, do let us be calm and rational. For one, I feel Louise's reproof keenly, and it will not do to outrage her sense of justice any longer. This officer has proved that we were wrong in our predictions before he came. If now we continue ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... are become corpulent matrons or angular maids? Or, don't you think, now, that an autumnal attachment—provided some sweet and healthy intelligence comes in contact with his own—is a capital thing in its way? The crackling fireside instead of the lovers' walk? The perfection of rational comfort subservient to, rather than dominating, his early dreams? Respectful affection, fidelity and fondest care as the conditions surrounding one's character, and upholding it in its best symmetry? Cannot the poet think better if his body is kept snug? Cannot the man of feeling remember ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... so it may be the very weakest of an author's books that, coming in the sequel of many others, enables us at last to get hold of what underlies the whole of them—of that spinal marrow of significance that unites the work of his life into something organic and rational. This is what has been done by "Quatrevingt-treize" for the earlier romances of Victor Hugo, and, through them, for a whole division of modern literature. We have here the legitimate continuation of a long and living literary tradition; and hence, so far, its explanation. When many lines diverge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he urged. "It is neither rational nor practical to attempt the impossible. Jerusalem is doomed. I would but add myself to the sacrifice did I interfere between destruction and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... reason to expect such a declaration, yet she heard it with unaffected concern, and looking at him with the utmost gentleness, said "Mr Arnott, your regard does me honour, and, were it somewhat more rational, would give me pleasure; take, then, from it what is more than I wish or merit, and, while you preserve the rest, be assured it will be ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to Balliol College of the scene of Cranmer and Ridley's martyrdom, must have turned the brain of the Regius Professor of Greek!—Let him be well assured however that not rational "Inquiry," but irrational assumption; not the modest cogitations of "a philosophical mind," but the arrogant dreams of a weak and confused intellect, are what have excited such general indignation ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Montmorin; 'but Providence has also given us the rational faculty of opposing imminent danger, and by activity and exertion obviating ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... to securing crops, live-stock, etc. But scientific subject matter is organized with specific reference to the successful conduct of the enterprise of discovery, to knowing as a specialized undertaking. Reference to the kind of assurance attending science will shed light upon this statement. It is rational assurance,—logical warranty. The ideal of scientific organization is, therefore, that every conception and statement shall be of such a kind as to follow from others and to lead to others. Conceptions and propositions mutually imply and support one another. This double relation of "leading ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the child spoke had recorded a mere delusion, the doctor told her, of the little dazed brain in the moment preceding unconsciousness; but for all that rational view, they ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... is an alarming feature of this discussion, that it has reversed, very generally, the traditional positions of the sexes: the women have had all the logic; and the most intelligent men, when they have attempted the other side, have limited themselves to satire and gossip. What rational woman can be really convinced by the nonsense which is talked in ordinary society around her,—as, that it is right to admit girls to common schools, and equally right to exclude them from colleges; that it is proper for a woman to sing in public, but indelicate for her to speak in public; ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of the married pair, in fact, ran exactly contrary to one another. John meant to bring Lillie to a sober, rational, useful family life; and Lillie meant to run a career of fashionable display, and make John pay ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... little while they had now wherewith to live; and if it seem to my reader that the horizon of hope was narrowing around them, it does not follow that it must have seemed so to them. For what is the extent of our merely rational horizon at any time? But for faith and imagination it would be a narrow one indeed! Even what we call experience is but a stupid kind of faith. It is a trusting in impetus instead of in love. And those days were ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what could it avail? The question is not "Can they reason?" nor "Can they ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... there are certain obvious objections. In the first place, in the statement of most of the cases which are adduced to support the theory reference is made exclusively to money wages, no account being taken of differences of purchasing power in different countries. In order to establish any rational basis, the relation must be between real wages or standard of living and efficiency. Now, though it must be admitted as inherently probable that some definite relation should subsist between wages and work, or, in other words, between the standard of consumption and the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... she had no fear; all that had been seemed to have passed away with her two victories over him in the struggle of wills. Moreover, the more recent apprehension—that of his madness—had also ceased. In the conversation of the last few minutes he seemed so rational, so clear, so unaggressive, that she no longer saw reason for doubt. So satisfied was she that even when he put out a hand to guide her to the steep, narrow stairway, she took it without thought in ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... army of 60,000 only, and an aggregate of half a million of people led out of Egypt, all the history becomes instantly rational and trustworthy. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... The rational policy recommended by Uncle George was carefully pursued. Everything was done to attract William to their mode of life, but no remark was made when he gave a preference to Indian customs. Still, he seemed moody, and at times ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. Much progress has also been made toward making youthful platform speaking, as well as youthful writing, more rational in form, more true in spirit, more useful for its purpose. In good time written and spoken English, conjoined with disciplinary training in thought and imagination, will both become firmly established ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... ideas were womanly rather than merely feminine. She had never been permitted to regard the world from the dormer-windows of a young ladies' seminary, in consequence of which her views of life in general, and of mankind in particular, were orderly and rational. Such indulgence as her father had given her had served to strengthen her individuality rather than to confirm her temper; and, though she had a strong and stubborn will of her own, her tact was such that her wilfulness appeared to be the most natural as well as ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... the materialistic theory is that the Christian begins with God, while the materialist begins with dull, inanimate matter. I know of no theory suggested as a substitute for the Bible theory that is as rational ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Coleridge's conservatism represents the reaction against the destructive spirit of the eighteenth century and the French revolution. To this root-and-branch democracy he opposed the view, that every old belief, or institution, such as the throne or the Church, had served some need, and had a rational idea at the bottom of it, to which it might be again recalled, and made once more a benefit to society, instead of a curse ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... trap" exists only in fiction. Even such men as General Eisenhower, or Admiral Nimitz, or for that matter, Gen. U. S. Grant, have at times deferred decision temporarily while waiting for a change in tide or circumstance to help them make up their minds. This is normal in the rational individual; it is not a sign of weakness. Rather than to cultivate a belief in one's own infallibility, the mature outlook for the military man is best expressed in the injunction of the Apostle Paul: "Let ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... that even in children, the motions and gesture, strongly paint nature; and their infantine graces are not unworthy the remarks of an artist, who will be sure to find excellence in no way more obtainable than by a rational study of her, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... human beings, men and women, depends largely on their rational solution of the sexual problem. Sex and the part it plays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals sex plays a simpler and less complex role. It is a purely natural and instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of the species. It is not complicated by the many ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... peculiar to my sex. A man with half my industry, and, I may say, abilities, could have procured a decent livelihood, and discharged some of the duties which knit mankind together; whilst I, who had acquired a taste for the rational, nay, in honest pride let me assert it, the virtuous enjoyments of life, was cast aside as the filth of society. Condemned to labour, like a machine, only to earn bread, and scarcely that, I became ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... circumstances the result will stand for its author just as his photograph stands for him. Now, this being undoubtedly true within certain limitations, how more than incontestable must be the proposition to any rational man that if, instead of a simple undeviating pen-stroke, lines that run to curves and angles and slants, and shades and loops and ticks, and enter into all sorts of combinations, such as any specimen ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... singed wings, I shall have no sympathy with which to anoint them; for, like most of your sex, I see you mistake blind obstinacy for rational, heroic firmness. The next number of the magazine will contain the contribution you sent me two days since, and, while I do not accept all your views, I think it by far the best thing I have yet seen from your pen. It will, of course, provoke controversy, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... touched her flank with her heel. Kitty responded with a forward bound. The increased speed was all too slow for the rapid thought and deadly anxiety of the girl, but she was too good a horsewoman to press the willing beast beyond a rational gait. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... this deserted child, though legally heiress to two large fortunes, must owe all her rational expectations to adoption and friendship. Yet her income will be such as may make her happy, if she is disposed to be so in private life; though it will by no means allow her to enjoy the luxury ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... reasonable and quite—quite moral! And then a sudden violent storm in the cream-jug, and we are flung into each other's unwilling arms where we cling for safety till the crack of doom when all the milk is spilt! It's no use fighting the stars, you know. It really isn't. The only rational course is to make the stars ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... in the interior of veins. Several of these folds had been observed by Fernel, Sylvius and Vesalius; and in 1547 G. B. Canani observed those of the vena azygos; but no one appears to have offered any rational conjecture on their use, or to have traced them through the venous system at large, until Fabricius in 1574, upon this hypothesis, demonstrated the presence of these valvular folds in all the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... nonsense, intrude on your walk, But rational moments of rational talk, Asserting that soiries, with jewels and dress, Make a very small part of life's happiness. Ah! this I believe, most sincerely I do, And sympathize freely, most truly with you. Now Kossuth is coming, pray what's to be done? No pageant to welcome, ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... humanity will not fall to secure the savage islander from injury or mortification; reconcile him to the restraints, and induce him to participate in the enjoyments, of civilized society; and instruct him to appreciate justly the blessings of rational freedom, whose salutary restrictions are not less conducive to individual benefit ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... sobbed out the last agony of alarm. There were no tears in her eyes; racking sobs shook her slender body; every nerve was aquiver, he could see. Patiently he waited, never taking his firm, encouraging gaze from her face. She grew calmer, more rational. Then, with the utmost gentleness, he persuaded her to rise and walk about the little room ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the old flag increased with the days. Of course none of them would ever confess regret at having drawn the sword, or cease to think of the lost cause with a sigh. At the same time a rational conviction settled down upon all its most thoughtful minds that in secession the South had been misguided. Universal was the admission that at least for the dominant race the death of slavery was a blessing. Northern people ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... a rational animal struggling against nature for subsistence. Archaeological evidence as to the reasonableness of primitive culture on its material side; doubts raised by man's irrational 'barbarities' on the social plane. Levy Bruhl's hypothesis of a 'savage logic' and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... was entirely abandoned, and since no natives lived there (how could they when they had no fresh water?) the place ceased to be a place at all in any rational sense of the word. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... it, or you suspected it. Your wife is in a sanitarium, as you have discovered. She is mentally ill—rational at times—violent at moments, and for long periods quite docile, gentle, harmless—content to be talked to, read to, advised, persuaded. But during the last week a change of a certain nature has occurred which—which, I am told by competent physicians, not only renders ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... till, by giving way to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning. I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible; in a word, to desire an honourable, and true renown for having done good in my generation, has nothing to do with that; and the more I fear and struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and divineness, and everlasting glory ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... to make a party, but then their opponents insist upon it that they do, and men shrink from enlisting (or being supposed to enlist) under Wharncliffe's banner. However, notwithstanding the violence of the noisy fools of the party, and of the women, there is a more rational disposition on the part of practical men, for Wharncliffe spoke to Ellenborough yesterday, and told him that though he knew he and Harrowby were regarded as traitors by all of them, he did hope that when the Bill came into Committee they would agree to consult ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... additional knowledge gained in the last few years, his main thesis that human life is not only unnaturally short but unnaturally burdened with physical and mental disabilities. He analyzes the causes of these disharmonies and explains his reasons for hoping that they may be counteracted by a rational hygiene. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... inferior to the rational soul," says Bacon, with his normal sound sense, "so Fiction gives to Mankind what History denies, and in some measure satisfies the Mind with Shadows when it cannot enjoy the Substance. And as real History gives us not the success of things ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... habitually amused, slightly caustic, he looked out for the good of himself and those related to him and considered that he was justified in closing his corporate regards at that point. He had no cant and no hypocrisy, no pose and no fads. A sane, aggressive, self-centered, rational materialist of the American brand, it was not only his friends who thought him a fine fellow. He himself would have admitted so much and have been ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... uncertain, they were inclined to believe him, and one of the signs by which they came to the conclusion he was dying was this so sudden and complete return to his senses after having been mad; for to the words already quoted he added much more, so well exprest, so devout, and so rational, as to banish all doubt and convince them that he was sound of mind. The curate turned them all out, and, left alone with him, confest him. The bachelor went for the notary, and returned shortly afterward with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... interposition, and formed its first dim conceptions of the relations between man and God. Why, then, he had a right to be here! He had a connection with these regions; they had a hold upon him. He was not here like an Indian Brahmin, who visits Europe from a principle of curiosity, however rational or however refined. The land which the Hindoo visits is not his land, nor his father's land; the laws which regulate it are not his laws, and the faith which fills its temples is not the revelation that floats upon his sacred Ganges. But for this ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... there are several ways to break a log—explode it, crush it, saw it, burn it.... One of the ways is to fight me until you win. Me, because there's no one else left to fight you. So—I won't fight with you. And you're too rational to attack me unless I do. That is the thing that will make it tough. If you must break, it'll have to ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... and observe disorders, without having power to apply the proper remedies. How can I be reconciled to life, when it is always a painful warfare, and when I am deprived of all the pleasures I relish? I allude to rational conversations and domestic affections. Here, alone, a poor solitary individual in a strange land, tied to one spot, and subject to the caprice of another, can I be contented? I am desirous to convince you that I have some cause for sorrow, and am not without reason ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and nation. They have hired their news-writers to repeat this lie in their gazettes so long, that they have become the dupes of it themselves. But there is no occasion to recur to this, in order to account for their arming. A more rational purpose avowed, that purpose executed, and when executed, a solemn agreement to disarm, seem to leave no doubt, that the re-establishment of the Stadtholder was their object. Yet it is possible, that having found that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 1410 And folks with a mission that nobody knows Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose; She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope Converge to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of GOD; the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest rational conception of the Personality of GOD, of His Omniscience, of His Omnipresence. Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although we ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... gay friend had advised me against being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by plodding block-heads. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a plodding block-head may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... prince, at his return to Imlac, "a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him. He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his periods. This man shall be my future guide: I will learn his doctrines, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... contagious diseases to which mortals are heir, caused by idleness and the lack of proper diversion of the mind, are soon uprooted by a good interesting letter from a fellow's most affectionate. Give soldiers full rations and regular mail, then there can nowhere be found a more rational set of men than they. But letters are sometimes like our crackers and pork, unfit for use. Such letters do no good—they are no good. There is a sheet full of writing, to be sure, but it is about something that neither interests nor concerns us. Those letters that tell us about the little ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... intelligence cannot exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited experience, propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an evil; for without premature generalizations the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... known; that her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason, and if the duration of her imprisonment was short, it was only terminated by her death.[339] Some loose effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her papers. In a letter she proposed addressing to Viscount Fenton, to implore for her his majesty's favour again, she says, "Good my lord, consider the fault cannot be uncommitted; neither can any more be required of any earthly creature ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... perspicacious, penetrating, piercing; argute^; quick-witted, nimble-witted, needle-witted; sharp as a needle, sharp as a tack; alive to &c (cognizant) 490; clever &c (apt) 698; arch &c (cunning) 702; pas si bete [Fr.]; acute &c 682. wise, sage, sapient, sagacious, reasonable, rational, sound, in one's right mind, sensible, abnormis sapiens [Lat.], judicious, strong- minded. unprejudiced, unbiased, unbigoted^, unprepossessed^; undazzled^, unperplexed^; unwarped judgment^, impartial, equitable, fair. cool; cool-headed, long-headed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the same divine thought, rules in the individual, in a people, and in humanity. Humanity has, as the individual, its stages of progress, and it unfolds itself in them. The individual as a child is not a rational being; he becomes rational. The child has not yet the mastery over himself, but his environment is his master; he belongs not to himself, but to his surroundings. The oriental peoples are the child of humanity.... Classical antiquity represents the period ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... where it is, but illustrate it so much the more. For as black sets off white, and darkness light, so error sets off truth. He that calls a man a horse, doth in conclusion but fix the belief of his humanity[9] so much the more in the apprehension of all rational creatures. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Europeans; and although in many points they must yield the palm to the latter, yet in various other respects they may with great justice be preferred to them. Here, indeed, as well as in other countries, are found both useful and pernicious establishments, both rational and absurd institutions; yet still we must admire the steadiness which constitutes the national character, the immutability which reigns in the administration of their laws and in the exercise of their ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... formed an intimate friendship lasting through many years. The failure at New Harmony convinced him that his father had overlooked the importance of the anti-social habits which the members had formed before they joined; and he concluded that those could be prevented only by applying a rational system of education to the young. These conclusions, together with the recollections of his experience at Hofwyl, led him to advocate a new system of education, which came to be ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... Further, a child has a rational soul for some time before birth, just as well as after. But it does not appear that an angel is appointed to guard a child before its birth, for they are not then admitted to the sacraments of the Church. Therefore angels ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... reassuringly that it is only a dream. This intervention seems to disconcert the inventor, who then promptly retires, while it brings sudden relief to the timid and frightened observer. It would seem then that the rational self reasserts itself, and that the two personalities, one of which has been creating and the other observing, come in like ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which we feel in distinction of any kind. We feel ourselves superior to the object at which we laugh. There is pride in much of laughter and not infrequently cruelty, a delight in the absurdities of other men because they exalt ourselves as the representatives of the rational and normal. There is often a touch of malice even in the laughter of the child. Nevertheless, the pleasure in the comic is still contemplative, and so far aesthetic, because it is a pleasure in perception, not in action. No matter how evil be the comic object, we do not seek to destroy ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical, rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desert that he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautious proficiency that mistrusts its own mastery of the machine. Maya Cara Nome, his colleague in this ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Plan your life for quiet; the greyer and more monotonous you can make the background, the better. My dear boy, do not try to fight alone against thousands; do not tilt with windmills; do not dash yourself against the rocks. And, above all, may you be spared the so-called rational life, all wild theories and impassioned talk. Everything is in the hands of God, so shut yourself up in your shell and do your best. That is the pleasant, honest, healthy way to live. But the life I have chosen has been so tiring, oh, so tiring! So full of mistakes, of injustice ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... Skipper every day, I did not forget to exercise myself in that other art of Writing, and was in time serviceable enough to be able to keep, in something like a rational and legible form the Log of The Humane Hopwood, which heretofore had been a kind of cabalistic Register, full of blots, crosses, half-moons, and zigzags, like the chalk score of an unlettered Ale-wife. And the more I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... noblest sense, and imbued with the ideas and principles of modern civilization. He never makes his heroes die in consequence of a decree of fate, but they always bear in themselves the germ of their ruin or death; it is a natural, rational death, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the true distance of the planets from the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's orbit, with the exception of Neptune. Hence there is, in the arrangmeent of the planets, as orderly a system as we have noted with reference to the leaves on a plant. Any rational man on earth, finding an orderly system of materials arranged in such relation by such means, would instantly conclude that it must be due to intelligence ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... of beer under the rules by which regimental canteens were governed. I believed, too, that the more the status of the rank and file could be raised, and the greater the efforts made to provide them with rational recreation and occupation in their leisure hours, the less there would be of drunkenness, and consequently of crime, the less immorality and the greater the number of efficient soldiers in the army. Funds having been ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... its inconsistency with the chivalrous attitude he had just taken occurred to him in time to prevent him from becoming doubly absurd. His rage with Seth Davis seemed to him the only feeling left that was genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... influence at Paris, some small Appointment in the ECOLE MILITAIRE there. He is, of all the Frenchmen Friedrich had about him, with the exception of D'Argens alone, the most honest-hearted. The above Letter, lucid, innocent, modest, altogether rational and practical, is a fair specimen of D'Arget: add to it the prompt self-sacrifice (and in that fine silent way) at Jaromirz for Valori, and readers may conceive the man. He lived at Paris, in meagre but contented fashion, RUE DE L'ECOLE MILITAIRE, till 1778; and seems, of all the Ex-Prussian Frenchmen, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the conditions whereunder the Mediums maintain that the manifestations of Independent Slate Writing are alone possible, involves the extreme difficulty, we might almost say the impossibility, of any genuine or rational investigation. Even the very spirit of investigation, or of incredulity, seems to exercise a chilling effect and prevents a successful manifestation. Indeed Mr. Hazard once told us that the true spirit in which to approach the study of Spiritualism ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... learned wisdom enough, and humanity enough, and pedagogy enough to dispense with the quasi-inquisition type of recitation, the transition to a more rational method of examination will be well-nigh automatic. Let it not be inferred that to inveigh against the question-and-answer type of recitation is to advocate any abatement of thoroughness. On the contrary, the thought is to insure greater ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... eternal characteristics as Brahman. But never, he had really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. With the body definitely not being the self, and not the spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of thoughts and learned ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... body by candles is a recognised piece of folklore. Usually the candle is stuck in a loaf of bread or on a cork, and set afloat in the river; sometimes a hole is cut in a loaf of bread and mercury poured in to weight it; even a chip of wood is used. The superstition still survives. The most rational explanation offered is that as eddies in rapid streams form deep pools, in which a body might easily be caught, so a floating substance indicates the place by being caught in the centre ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... said. "Thank goodness, I have kept clear of 'memories that bless and burn.' None of these things enter into my rational and well-ordered life, and I have ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... face the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary where love might dwell, and remain, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... this epoch; but the fashion did not come from them; the rage originated with the Peninsular troops, and was confirmed by the examples of the brilliant staffs that accompanied the Allied sovereigns to this country in 1814. It is true that the trouser did not assume its definite and rational form, such as it now has, all at once; it went through a round of vagaries indicative of a most diseased state of public taste. At one time it was all a la Cosaque, and you might have made a greatcoat out of a pair; at another, it was half up the leg, and more than two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various |
