"Skepticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any other sort within his ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... editions which we possess "must be attributed to the enterprise of the book dealers," and that one cannot speak of a direct influence of Luther on any of these editions. In opposition to this extreme skepticism, Albrecht points out that, for instance, the insertion of the explanation of the Introduction to the Lord's Prayer and the new form of confession, as well as its insertion between Baptism and the Lord's Supper, could not ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... all sides, that this government is now moving as rapidly as possible in the very direction marked out by the prophet, though these are not necessary to establish the application of the symbol to this government, they will serve to stifle the last excuse of skepticism, and become to the believer an impressive evidence of our proximity to the end; for the acts ascribed to this symbol are but few; and while yet in mid career, he is engulfed in the lake of fire of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... "favorable as they are to the cause which they defended, they sometimes let me into the secret of objections which might be made to it, and set me to scrutinizing the articles of my faith;" and she states that "this was the first step toward a skepticism at which I was destined to arrive after having been successively Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic, and Deist." By this skepticism she doubtless meant merely skepticism as to creeds, for in her memoirs, written in daily expectation of death, and in most intense self-communion, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... "science! that was a word the Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the Epistle to Timothy: 'Oppositions of science falsely so called.' I own that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with it. Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of skepticism." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fact worthy of notice, that not one of our truly accomplished geologists is an infidel, is the science of which infidelity has most largely availed itself. And as the theologian in a metaphysical age,—when skepticism, conforming to the character of the time, disseminated its doctrines in the form of nicely abstract speculations,—had, in order that the enemy might be met in his own field, to become a skilful metaphysician, he must now, in like manner, address himself ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and alluring. It promises so much that it is in danger of being missed by the ignorant to such an extent that great harm may result. This is true, not only of mental therapeutics and hypnotism, but of every other blessing we possess. Hypnotism has nothing to fear from the senseless skepticism and contempt of those who have no knowledge of the subject." He adds pertinently enough: "While hypnotism can be used in a greater or less degree by every one, it can only be used intelligently by those who understand, not only hypnotism ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... comes from the fact that men have read their fancies and theories into the Scriptures; they have read Milton's Paradise Lost but have neglected the Book of Job; they have considered the experiences of Luther instead of the Epistles of Peter and Jude. To avoid skepticism on the one hand, and ridicule on the other we must resort to the Scriptures to formulate ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... pages for myself, of late, as I transcribed them in my turn, I confess to having blamed the Philadelphian but lightly for his skepticism. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... in this light, the skepticism of trade union groups in regard to appeals for an increase of effort is easy to understand. It arises from the simple desire of the group to protect their position in industry by the only means they possess. It is an attitude strengthened in many cases by the memory of weeks without work and efforts ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... elbows on the table he tried to tell her all that he was going to do. She listened with kindly skepticism and gently pointed out that his soup was going cold. He knew that she did not hear what he was saying: but he did not care: he was talking for his ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... cordial, but the result of an unnatural predisposition, and an inflamed and diseased imagination. None the less is there an up-welling, genuine affection, that for the time, commands and absorbs woman's entire being. It is possible, that what is treated here as a jest, and there, as a matter of skepticism, may exist in some true hearts, suddenly conceived, yet ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... another donor describes himself as "simply astounded at the blessed results of prayer and faith," and many others have found this brief narrative "the most wonderful and complete refutation of skepticism it had ever been their lot to meet with"—an array of facts constituting the most undeniable "evidences of Christianity." There are abundant instances of the power exerted by Mr. Muller's testimony, as when a woman who had been ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... moment was George's forte. Indeed, there were those among his friends who felt that there were moments when George lived up to things too brightly and too beautifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his openly skeptical moments. But George even lived up to his uncle's skepticism. He accepted his remarks with charming good humor. It was his pride that he ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... superiority of history over fiction as dramatic material. The third of the three essays mentioned was a Jeremiad on the morbid self-consciousness of the age, which shows itself in religion and philosophy, as skepticism and introspective metaphysics; and in literature, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... circumstance, oral tradition takes the place of writings, charters, and puzzling trifles. One of the four sons of Bernard Guynemer, Auguste, lived to be ninety-three, retaining all his faculties. Toward the end he resembled Voltaire, not only in face, but in his irony and skepticism. He had all sorts of memories of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, of which he told extraordinary anecdotes. His longevity was owing to his having been discharged from military service at the conscription. Two of his three brothers died ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... the story of the novel is this. The heroine, who is young, but not in her first girlhood, has in her aspect and her natural disposition everything that is akin to the mystical aspirations of the saint; but, more or less desolated by the diffused skepticism of the day, she has been robbed of innocence by a man, an old family friend, and has never been at peace with herself or wholly escaped from his sinister power since. The hero, who meets her by accident ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... master Abib. Karshish meets Lazarus (him who was raised from the dead) and, regarding him as a patient, describes his symptoms,—such symptoms as a man might have who must live on earth after having looked on heaven. The physician's half-scoffing words show how his habitual skepticism is shaken by a glimpse of the unseen world. He concludes, but his doubt is stronger than his conclusion, that Lazarus must be ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a cheerful Machiavelian drunkenness which quite satisfied all my instincts of skepticism, an idea struck me. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Skepticism is much less sinful than credulity. The sloth of the man who will not examine things, will not prove them, who prefers to buy his garments of truth ready made, results in what is worse than unbelief, and that is blind belief in the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Christian standard which is more cruel and unforgiving than society's standard. But it is really definitely unchristian. Further, society is radically insincere, forgiving what can be kept secret, condoning on account of moral skepticism much general laxity, and yet breaking out into a mock moral indignation before ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... with some skepticism. "It was not the Hurons, but their rivals, the Ottawas, who would have sent you to the stake," I explained curtly. "The Hurons—those of the Baron's band—would have held you as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... sacred shield of Numa. The folly of the ancients in believing such narrations has often been the subject of remark; but, however fabulous the particular cases referred to, the moderns have been compelled to renounce their skepticism respecting the fact itself, of the actual transition of substances from celestial space to terrestrial regions; and no doubt the ancient faith upon this subject was founded on observed events. The following table, taken from the work of M. Izarn, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... prize-fight, of which France has won this round, but of which this round is certainly not the last. From the belief that essentially the old order does not change, being based on human nature which is always the same, and from a consequent skepticism of all that class of doctrine which the League of Nations stands for, the policy of France and of Clemenceau followed logically. For a Peace of magnanimity or of fair and equal treatment, based on such "ideology" as the Fourteen Points of the President, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... on the worship of money; 'Le Fils de Giboyer' (Giboyer's Boy), the story of a father's devotion, ambitions, and self-sacrifice; 'Maitre Guerin' (Guerin the Notary), the hero being an inventor; 'La Contagion' (Contagion), the theme of which is skepticism; 'Paul Forestier,' the story of a young artist; 'Le Post-Scriptum' (The Postscript); 'Lions et Renards' (Lions and Foxes), whose motive is love of power; 'Jean Thommeray,' the hero of which is drawn ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... was an elaborate skepticism in "Bob's" tone, but as the meaning of Gray's ardent gaze struck home to her, she turned her head with a lightly affected laugh. She was coloring, but she knew that her companion's agitation was so much greater than hers that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... with the writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy—I will add, deplorable. Through what faults or infirmities of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixity of the earth itself may equally outlast the notion of the fixity of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Mr. Poundstone, you might accept my solemn assurances that despite the skepticism which, for some unknown reason, appears to shroud our enterprise in the minds of some people, we have incorporated a railroad company for the purpose of building a railroad. We purpose commencing grading ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import was noncommittal and even contained a tang of skepticism troubled him not a whit. The chief thing was that he had wrested from the manager an opportunity, no matter how grudgingly accorded, to show what he was worth. He could farm and he knew it and he ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the most part he was a great hope—a sort of visible atonement for their sufferings. He at least was an achievement; he was something they had done. And he could not be undone, nor doubted—he put all skepticism to flight. In his vicinity there was no room for pessimistic philosophies, for Weltschmerz ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... nineteenth. But, in his early days, Richard Cecil was a skeptic. He called himself an infidel, but he was honest in his infidelity. He could face facts; and the man who can look facts fairly in the face is not far from the kingdom of God. Richard Cecil was not, his skepticism notwithstanding. 'I see,' he says, in telling us of the line of thought that he pursued as he lay in bed one night, 'I see two unquestionable facts.' And what were they? ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... have been making an experiment—one of those experiments which men frequently attempt, believing all the time that it is worse than child's play, and half hoping that it will prove so and sanction the wisdom of their skepticism concerning the result. When I left home I placed in your charge the key of my private desk or cabinet, exacting the promise that only upon certain conditions would you venture to open it. Those contingencies have ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... this fear has taken possession of my dreams! How many times you have appeared to me as the type of the unspeakable agony to which the spirit of inquiry has driven man! With your beauty and your sadness, your weariness and your skepticism, do you not personify the excess of sorrow produced by the abuse of thought? Have you not given up, and as it were prostituted, that moral power, so highly developed by what art, poetry, and science ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... good things into my life?" The half-emptied glasses were drained. Dickey Savage's eyes met Quentin's in a long look of perplexity. At last an almost imperceptible twinkle, suggestive of either mirth or skepticism, manifested itself in his friend's eyes and the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris, are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains, that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the coarse raillery of another young merchant, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... people,—who thought, that, after the proof which the people had given of their readiness to sacrifice the interests of the present moment to the interests of a day and a posterity that they might not live to see, it would be worse than skepticism to call it in question. But even these men might hesitate about the form of the sacrifice they called for, for they knew how often men are governed by names, and that their minds might revolt at the idea of a formal tax, although they would submit to pay it fifty-fold under the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... were other men at other places who felt less skepticism. The report from Vale went to the Military Information Center and thence to the Pentagon. Meanwhile the Information Center ordered a photo-reconnaissance plane to photograph Boulder Lake from aloft. In the Pentagon, hastily alerted staff ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Lateran Council proclaimed anew the tenet of the imperishability of the spirit of man. The Padua University adopted a system of materialism taught in the works of Alexander, of Aphrodisias. A form of pantheism known in the philosophy of Averroes soon became a center of skepticism. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... Skepticism would follow any attempt to proclaim the prince guilty because his voice sounded like that of the chief conspirator. In a matter where whole nations were concerned the gravest importance would be attached to the accusation of a ruler. Satisfying themselves as to the identity ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stood, he did look on the event with very considerable skepticism. Doctor Azol's death, in that particular form, seemed too much of a coincidence. For, beside himself, only Azol knew that another person already had suddenly and mysteriously lost consciousness on Harvest Moon. Only Azol therefore might expect that the Commissioner ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Nudimmud. Delitzsch, Babylonische Weltschoepfungsepos, p. 99, questions the identity with Ea, but his skepticism is unwarranted, though the title is also ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... views of all practical statesmen are, at the present day, directed. The little interest attached by Mr. Fox to the science of Political Economy—so remarkably proved by the fact of his never having read the work of Adam Smith on the subject—is, in some degree, accounted for by the skepticism of the following passage, which occurs in one of his animated speeches on this very question. Mr. Pitt having asserted, in answer to those who feared the competition of Ireland in the market from her low prices ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... skepticism at the large number of composers I have thought worthy of inclusion. I can only say that the fact that an artist has created one work of high merit makes him a good composer in my opinion, whether or no he has ever written another, and whether ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... of biography to maintain that even in March, 1914, the President and Colonel House foresaw the European war and wanted to arrange our own international relations by way of precaution has been generally received with polite skepticism. ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness—his many HIDDEN sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-insurrection which began with ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it derogatory to the "Majesty of heaven and earth" to conceive of him as occupied with our mean affairs, numbering the hairs of our heads, and guiding the sparrow's fall. But the blow which crushed her heart, destroyed its skepticism. She saw so clearly in this dispensation, the hand of a Father chastening his erring child; she felt so keenly that she deserved the rod, for having in a measure worshipped the gift more than the giver, that she believed, with all the strength of an irresistible conviction, that even so lowly a ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... have done the same? That would seem to be much more in harmony with the central idea of American life—the principle of self- helpfulness; but this is a skeptical epoch, and the tendency of our political institutions is toward skepticism of character and distrust of tradition. Hence we have Delia ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... church was every thing, and that every thing belonged to the church. When I told him that he was a common nuisance, and that I had to work for him like a church-warden, he laughed as though it were a joke, and seriously told me it was all right, and he didn't mind my skepticism at all. I know he was laughing at me this morning, when he made me go to church for the first time in ten years to hear that sermon which not twenty people ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... be some reason for his skepticism, for later the calm of the Mission Garden was broken upon by the monotonous tread of banded men on the shell-strewn walks, and the door of the refectory opened to the figure of Senor Perkins. A green ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... want it near at hand. Father Roland had disposed of the gloves, and introduced David to the rest of his equipment when he came from the cabin. It was very business-like, this accoutrement that was to be the final physical touch to his transition; it did not allow of skepticism; about it there was also a quiet and cold touch of romance. The rifle chilled David's bare fingers when he touched it. It was short-barrelled, but heavy in the breech, with an appearance of indubitable efficiency about it. It looked like an honest weapon to ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... I was sometimes a doubter. Rather than faith, I should have much preferred to have knowledge, exact knowledge. Often I even felt ironical when confronted with the simple faith we clergymen should surely encourage, sustain, and humbly glory in, whereas with skepticism, even when openly expressed, I always felt some part of myself to be in secret sympathy. I continued to study works, both English and foreign, on psychical research. I followed the experiments of Lodge, William James, and others. Myers's great work on human personality ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... over the skepticism of New York physicians as to the reliability of the fast that he determined to undergo a longer one under such surveillance as would enforce conviction. He was mainly actuated, however, to go through the ordeal in the interests ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... by those who only know a little; but by those who are well informed, you probably would be. The fact is, from a too ready credulity, we have now turned to almost a total skepticism, unless we have ocular demonstration. In the times of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and others,—say in the fifteenth century, when there were but few travelers and but little education, a traveler might assert almost any thing, and gain credence; latterly a traveler ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... being that, he now felt, watched him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay upon the table still; only that was gone which had made these common aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature, which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction, recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt. Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... in vital energy. One becomes blase, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. How many young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, like a sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, our vices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. What reflections upon ourselves these youths weary of life force us to make! What announcements are ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... shows that it is only imperfect culture and ignorance which can suppose any dissonance between the two. He shows that the progress of science enriches, aggrandizes, and elevates the imagination. The fourth essay is, perhaps, the most interesting of all. Its theme is, "Superstition and Skepticism in their relation to Natural Science." The notion that superstition is favorable to poesy, he dissipates with masterly conclusiveness. The true realm of beauty is the realm of reason. It is true that science deprives the poet of the use of sundry unnatural conceptions, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... hope, skepticism, doubt—come all ye trooping emotions to threaten or console; but an end has come to fairy stories and wonder tales—Master Studious is in the awful presence ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... to this simple and comforting faith, stand theological incomprehensibilities on the one hand, and scientific skepticism on the other. The former would have us believe that the soul is a mere vapor, a cloud of something ethereal, of which can be expected nothing more useful than 'loafing around the Throne,' while the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... existence; they promised them light, and we cover their eyes that they may not witness our orgies; they promised to teach them virtue and we are encouraging their vice. Instead of peace, wealth, and justice, confusion reigns, commerce languishes, and skepticism is fostered among ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... with silent skepticism. He did not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound whipping. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... aspiration towards growth, towards happiness, even when it leads to rebellion against our own standards and towards what we call sin. The sympathy, realism, and imagination of art are antagonistic to conformist morality. By making us intimately acquainted with individuals, art leads to skepticism of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... had exerted but a portion of his power, and that he could have done greatly more than he actually did, seeing that we now find him adequate to the origination of vitality and organization in its two great kingdoms, plant and animal. But, still confining ourselves with cautious skepticism within the limits of our argument, we continue to hold that, as fishes of a high and reptiles of a low order, with trees of the cone-bearing family, are the most perfect specimens of their respective classes which the producing Cause has originated, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth: Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of civilization varies directly as skepticism—the disposition to doubt, or the "protective spirit"—the disposition to maintain without examination established beliefs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... place we can only accept her words with a certain skepticism. Her story may be nothing but a fabrication. However, it is interesting because she claims to be the unwilling servant of a dreaded master. She lays stress upon the fact that she is an Oriental and does not enjoy the same freedom as a European woman. This is possible, up to a point. On the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an uneducated ranchman, ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... is no less true of some moral maladies: childhood suffers from them less than youth or maturity. Russia is still in that stage of civilization which is naturally subject to attacks of feverish and mystical religion, but one day it will emerge from it; and the precocious skepticism of a large portion of its educated classes shows plainly that no inexorable fate condemns the national character to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Lensman's query was skepticism incarnate. "It can't be done, except by an almost impossibly fortuitous accident. You yourself have been the most bitterly opposed of us all to ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... seems to please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance to the course of events marked by the stars is bound to result in confusion. And here's another striking coincidence: You mentioned casually that Isabel spoke of buried treasure in the far north. I'm overpowered by that. The sweet influences of Pleiades ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... our examinations of the testimony of the catacombs regarding the doctrine, the faith, and the lives of the Christians of Rome in the first three centuries. The evidence is harmonious and complete. It leaves no room for skepticism or doubt. There are no contradictions in it. From every point of view, theologic, historic, artistic, the results coincide and afford mutual support. The construction of the catacombs, the works of painting found within them, the inscriptions on the graves, all unite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... antiquaries have manifested a skepticism in relation to the "Cid," truly alarming. A volume was published at Madrid, in 1792, by Risco, under the title of "Castilla, o Historia de Rodrigo Diaz," etc., which the worthy father ushered into the world with much solemnity, as ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... whirled him across the city, on what this greatest thing in the world might be. And he hoped with gentle skepticism that the enthusiasm was warranted. A young man opened the car door as they stopped. His face was flushed, Eddinger noted, hair pushed back in disarray, his shirt torn open at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... and force of character to nourish an average superstition; but prophecies fulfilled will temper, though they may not shake, the smiling unbelief of the most hard-headed skeptic. Mother's moderate skepticism was not proof against the strange fulfillment of one prophecy, which ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... I heard her laugh in court," Mrs. Sylvester spoke in deep earnestness and Kent placed faith in her statement in spite of his outward skepticism. "And I heard her laugh in this corridor this morning and I placed her as the same woman. I asked Mr. Sylvester who she was, and he told me. I'd been reading this account of the Turnbull inquest, and I recollected seeing Mrs. Brewster's name, and my husband and I were just reading the ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... this meeting had revived in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, and which he thought he had buried at El Refugio four years ago. Susy's allusion to his father and the reiteration of Peyton's skepticism awoke in his older intellect the first feeling of suspicion that was compatible with his open nature. Was this recurring reticence and mystery due to any act of his father's? But, looking back upon it in after-years, he concluded that the incident ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... came to have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the poverty in the midst of which I was living and which the socialists constantly forced me to defend. My plight was not unlike that which might have resulted in my old days of skepticism regarding foreordination, had I then been compelled to defend the confusion arising from the clashing of free wills as an alternative to an acceptance of the doctrine. Another difficulty in the way of accepting this economic determinism, so baldly dependent upon ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... climate and duties, acting in conjunction with a natural taste for harmonious coloring and simple form? That dress, I will maintain, sprang as naturally from the salt sea as Aphrodite did; and the man who suspects artifice in it or invention has had his mind perverted by the skepticism ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... by him in gazing from the open window of his room on the double, faintly pierced darkness of the sea and the heavens; often in struggling under the oppressive skepticism which represented his particular lot, with all the importance he was allowing Mordecai to give it, as of no more lasting effect than a dream—a set of changes which made passion to him, but beyond his consciousness were no more than an imperceptible difference of mass ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... I don't mean any harm, and you must not think anything of my brusque speeches. As you know, there is a tinge of skepticism in me which I can not help, and my ideals are so much higher than the realities of life, that I am always painfully conscious of ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... lost faith in their deities, because they had not been able to defend them from the victorious Greeks and Romans. But the conquerors had for other reasons equally lost faith in their own gods. It was an age of skepticism, religious decay and moral corruption. But there are always natures which must possess a faith in which they can trust. These were in search of a religion, and many of them found refuge from the coarse and incredible ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... subsist, in certain provinces of France, old religious customs which are full of charming simplicity. May they endure and ever hold out against the icy breath of skepticism, the cold rules of the beautiful, and the wearisome ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... shoals to the printed offer of luna moths measuring ten and eleven inches across the wings. Letters came in by, every mail, responding variously with fervor, suspicion, yearning eagerness, and bitter skepticism to Average Jones' advertisement. All of these he put aside, except such as bore a New York postmark. And each day he compared the new names signed to the New York letters with the directory of occupants of the Stengel Building. Less than a week after the luna moth ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... our shoes when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's impossible armies? If much that we read as literal history turns out legend and myth, are we to find a painful alternative between a blind credulity and as blind a skepticism? We follow this same re-reading of Roman and Grecian story untroubled, and see the heroes of our childhood turn into races and sun-myths without calling the Muse of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... somewhere in the elaborate cosmos; his house waits for him waist deep in slow Norfolk rivers or sunning itself upon Sussex downs. Man has always been looking for that home which is the subject matter of this book. But in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which he has been now so long subjected, he has begun for the first time to be chilled, not merely in his hopes, but in his desires. For the first time in history he begins really to doubt the object of his wanderings on the earth. He has always lost his way; but ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... curiously. He was not sure that there might not be some truth in the rancher's forcible skepticism. For the moment the old man's words carried some weight, then, as he remembered the unvarnished tale the cowboy had told, he returned to his conviction. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... words of true consolation that remained with me ever after. Under his rugged ways was hidden a wonderful tenderness. I could not believe that he was actually dead. Most people for a minute or two, in the wild tumult of such a shock, have experienced the same skepticism. I insisted that the doctor should be instantly sent ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... against the hope which always rises. You cannot do that—men say—human nature is against it; human nature has always acted another way; you cannot change human nature; your hope is folly. As one listens to such skepticism he sees that men mean by human nature a static, unalterable thing, huge, inert, changeless, a dull mass that resists all transformation. The very man who says that may be an engineer. He may be speaking in the next breath with high enthusiasm about a desert in Arizona where they are ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the pacification of the Miaotze region was sent to Pekin. Some severe critics suggested that the whole arrangement was a farce, and that Hengan's triumph was only on paper; but the lapse of time has shown this skepticism to be unjustified, as the Miaotze have remained tranquil ever since, and the formidable Yaoujin, or Wolfmen, as they are called, have observed the promises given to Hengan, which would not have been the case unless they had been enforced by military success. Should they ever break out again, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... still, looking hard at him with an eager, inquisitive look and saying to myself, "I wonder whether he is the real thing, or only the bundle of eccentricities which he appears." There was in me then, as there has always been, a mingling of skepticism and of deep reverence for those who dealt with reality, and I had not had sufficient opportunity to determine whether Roosevelt was real or not. One at least of his classmates, however, saw portents of greatness in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... combined with remarkable skill; and, as the Athenaeum observes, "Here, there, everywhere, the author gives evidence of passionate and romantic power." In some of the episodes, as in that of Wolfgang Hegewisch, for example, in which are illustrated the tendency of a desperate philosophy and hopeless skepticism, we have that sort of mastery of the feelings, that chaining of the intensest interest, which distinguishes the most wonderful compositions of Poe, or the German Hoffman, or Zschokke in his "Walpurgis Night;" and every incident ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... reforms seemed to have been blighted, and ending with a whole mass of experiences of life and the literary failures and annoyances which he underwent during the second half of his life. And in this connection it must not be forgotten that the very spirit of analysis and skepticism wherewith the school of writers of the '40's is imbued, leads straight to pessimism, like any other ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... say, as he falsely insinuates."—Ib., p. 331. "Every where, any where, some where, no where."—Alex. Murray's Gram., p. 55. "The world hurries off a pace, and time is like a rapid river."—Collier's Antoninus, p. 58. "But to now model the paradoxes of ancient skepticism."—Brown's Estimate, Vol. i, p. 102. "The south east winds from the ocean invariably produce rain."—Webster's Essays, p. 369. "North west winds from the high lands produce cold clear weather."—Ib. "The greatest part of such tables would be of little use to English men."—Priestley's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... economies she had endured to enable him to receive an education, and as each and all came trooping back like so many little hands tugging at his heart-strings and moistening his eyes, he realized that there was needed in this hurrying, selfish life of ours something deeper, and something beyond the skepticism of Voltaire and the materialism of Ingersoll. And there in that dim little room, with two dozen poorly clad and simple fisher-folk singing gospel hymns to the accompaniment of a wheezy cottage organ, he realized ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... stake, as well as through voluntary exile and the relinquishment of property, thousands in every country testified to the fervor and sincerity of their religious convictions, was in truth, like the eighteenth century, one in which a prevailing skepticism or indifference paid to dead but not yet dethroned creeds its light homage of affected "adoration." Mr. Besant informs us that "to the men of culture the rival parties were but two political sides." How many men of culture could be cited in support of this assertion? We ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... basis? Doubt generally arises either from indolence, weakness, indifference, or incapacity. With many people, to doubt is to fear the trouble of examining things, which are thought uninteresting. But religion being presented to men as their most important concern in this and the future world, skepticism and doubt on this subject must occasion perpetual anxiety and must really constitute a bed of thorns. Every man who has not courage to contemplate, without prejudice, the God upon whom all religion is founded, can never know for what religion to decide: he knows not what ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... true!" cries Bobby, with boisterous skepticism, jumping up from his seat, and making a plunge at me; "it is a hoax! she has been taking us all in! Really, Nancy, for a beginner, you did not do ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... uncertainty. He that travels in the Highlands may easily saturate his soul with intelligence, if he will acquiesce in the first account. The Highlander gives to every question an answer so prompt and peremptory, that skepticism itself is dared into silence, and the mind sinks before the bold reporter in unresisting credulity; but, if a second question be ventured, it breaks the enchantment; for it is immediately discovered, that what was told so confidently was told at hazard, and that such fearlessness of assertion ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... exhibition of so-called miracles—that is, on a violation of the laws of nature,—for, if religions were founded on the demonstrated truths of science, there would be no mystery, no supernaturalism, no miracles, no skepticism, no false religion. We would have only verified truths and demonstrated facts for the basis of our belief. But this simple foundation does not satisfy the unreasoning multitude. They demand signs, portents, mysteries, wonders and miracles ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... deprive the real world of that warmth and reassurance which it so sorely needs and to which it is justly entitled; furthermore, we are left outside with a sense of dreariness, in company with that shadow which already lurks only around the corner for most of us—a skepticism of life's value. ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... wife of the marquis. Yet if there were roses, there were thorns in such a path. The village girl knew that madame la marquise must lead a life very different from any she had known. She must bear with a husband whose mind was ever in a state of unrest and skepticism, and she must ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... were worked up into a state of fear bordering on panic, but wise old Mbonga affected to feel considerable skepticism regarding the tale, and attributed the whole fabrication to their fright in the face of some ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Defended in a Series of Sermons" of President Dwight. This had the advantage over some other systems of having been preached, and thus proved to be preachable. The "series of sermons" was that delivered to successive generations of college students at Yale at a time of prevailing skepticism, when every statement of the college pulpit was liable to sharp and not too friendly scrutiny; and it was preached with the fixed purpose of convincing and converting the young men who heard it. The audience, the occasion, and the man—a fervid ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... were examined in the following bulky matters: Geometry, the Solar Spectrum, the Habeas Corpus Act, the British Parliament, and in Metaphysics they were asked to trace the progress of skepticism from Descartes to Hume. It is within bounds to say that some of the results were astonishing. Without doubt, there were students present who justified their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these studies; but the fact is also evident that others had been pushed into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bubbling, heaving contents, and coal packed in even with the covers. Try to convince a servant that the lid need not hop to assure boiling, nor the fire rise above the fire-box, and there is a profound skepticism, which, even if not expressed, finds vent in the same amount of fuel and the same general course of action ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... queer, and had tried by every means to make him conform to their ideals of thought. "I was a sort of black sheep," he declared, "because some necessity compelled me to be myself. I could never get over my skepticism about a thousand things that seemed plain to those ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... a kingbird; "and we have a bird that is called the French mocking-bird; he catches other birds." The last remark was of interest for its bearing upon a point about which I had felt some curiosity, and, I may say, some skepticism, as I had seen many loggerhead shrikes, but had observed no indication that other birds feared them or held any grudge against them. As he rode off he called my attention to a great blue heron just then flying over the swamp. "They are very shy," he said. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... have taken warning from the general skepticism we met with at Toyama, when we proposed the pass. But with the fatal faith of a man in his guidebook, we ignored the native forebodings. Besides, there were just people enough who knew nothing about it, and therefore thought it could be done, to encourage us in our delusion. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of herself, Beatrice felt that the place was charmed, and that the charm was drawing into its ban her very thoughts and emotions. She felt subdued, quieted. It was as she had said—the ages seemed to hover like ghosts about them, and her hard, worldly skepticism could make no stand against the hush and mystery of the past. Here generation after generation, amidst danger, battle and death, men had bowed down and poured out their hottest, most fervent prayers, and their sincerity ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... were thrown aside, and such theologians plainly told that the skepticism and Infidelity—if skepticism and Infidelity there be—lies all on their ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... classifications and general terms, for they are the basis of statistical measurement. That done you are fairly proof against seduction. No better popular statement of this is to be found than H. G. Wells' little essay: "Skepticism of the Instrument." Wells has, of course, made no new discovery. The history of philosophy is crowded with quarrels as to how seriously we ought to take our classifications: a large part of the battle about Nominalism turns on this, the Empirical and Rational traditions divide ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... lips on that subject forever. I have never since ventured to ask anybody any questions on that subject, but have studied it out for myself as well as I could. Soon after that the doctor preached a sermon in which he denounced skepticism in his own vigorous terms, and consigned to perdition all the great teachers of heresy, of whom he mentioned the names—before unheard, I am sure, by the great majority of cadets, thought their works were to be found in the West Point and all other public libraries. I ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... but the weight of my personal equation (whatever that might be worth) and my private attitude on the question of my guilt, which the trial had not modified, but which could be of no practical benefit to me here. The sensation of confronting everywhere a settled and hostile skepticism as to one's integrity was novel, and hard to meet with a firm countenance. And I felt how easily this sensation might crush the courage of one who was conscious of being justly condemned. How many men must ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... addressed Mr. Czenki looked up, and the living flame of wonder within his eyes flickered and died. In silence, for a minute or more, he studied the unconcealed skepticism in his employer's ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... he snorted, with a skepticism amply justified by the past. "And if you did, I shouldn't answer; I hate letters, always did. But you cable me once a fortnight to let me know you're living—and send an extra cable if you want ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Landor," published in a former number of the Magazine, by an anecdote and two or three characteristic letters which by accident escaped me when I was writing on the subject before. Here is the story: Schlegel and Niebuhr had been for some time on unpleasant terms. The historical skepticism of the latter was altogether distasteful to Schlegel; and he was wont to deny Niebuhr's claim to the title of historian. Well, Landor was dining at Bonn, and among the company immediately opposite to him at table was Schlegel. Hardly had the soup been despatched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... indeed, very like the shape of a footprint, with a hue very like that of blood. It was a twilight sort of a place, beneath a porch, which was much overshadowed by trees and shrubbery. It might have been blood; but he rather thought, in his wicked skepticism, that it was a natural, reddish stain in the stone. He measured his own foot, however, in the Bloody Footstep, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this time evidently began to scent something with regard to Tom's intuitions; at least his word implied a growing skepticism concerning their ability to find room for two passengers aboard a plane intended only for a pilot and an observer, or ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... not draw either with the Austrian Government, whose liberal tendencies are exceedingly distasteful. It relies upon that great unenlightened mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and in Austria proper, one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism. The practical fight now in Bavaria is on the question of education; the priests being resolved to keep the schools of the people in their own control, and the liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities and admit laymen to a share in the management of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... willing," Alice said, with tired skepticism. "Make me understand, then. Where'd you ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... happened during the days of the past week, had served to fill many of the people gathered there that morning, with a curious mingling of doubt, hesitancy, fearsomeness, and uncertainty, as well as an unconscious growth of a new strange skepticism, and a carelessness that almost amounted ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... juvenile terror's eyes and the earlier generations waited fearfully while skepticism and greed waged their recurrent conflict. For a time it seemed as if the veteran had blundered; but finally greed triumphed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Christianity. It had failed. On the contrary, there was a great revival of religious faith. Creeds, no. Belief, yes. Too many men were dying to permit the growth of any skepticism as to a future life. We must ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... consciousness of walls, which, though invisible, are none the less impassable, and of chains, though light as air, yet stronger than brass or iron. And everywhere is the machinery ready, though different in its frame and operation in different torture-chambers, to crush out the budding skepticism, and to mould the mind into the monotonous decency of general conformity. Foe or Fetish, King or Kaiser, Deity itself or the vicegerents it has appointed in its stead, are answerable for it all. God himself has looked upon it, and it is very good, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Schiller was concerned to portray a scoundrel who had read deeply and come to the conclusion that in a world like this there is no valid reason why a man should be virtuous. Evidently the author had himself breathed the mephitic air of eighteenth-century skepticism. His natural goodness of heart safeguarded him from corruption, but it pleased him as artist to dip his pen in the blackest ink and draw the picture of the devil with whom he had wrestled ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and fanaticism and mischief are baptized as Duty. The divinely ordained institutions of society are sacrificed, and ruin and chaos inevitably result. Having shown that Philosophy, developed in its natural form, can produce nothing better than Pantheism, Atheism, Anthropomorphism, and Skepticism, there arises an inquiry for the causes which have produced these seemingly unhappy results. And now it appears "that the Consciousness must be developed in its natural form from a natural point of view before its spiritual form can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various |
