"Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some of the speculative points of Buddhism. Its morality has been greatly, and, perhaps, unduly extolled. So much contemplation can scarcely exist without the condemnation of the more palpable sins of commission. Hence, those vices which are ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... sociological investigation have more practical importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own lives in the United States every ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a dark, drizzly, melancholy night; a fair specimen of Gravesend weather and the parts adjacent; no 'star that's westward from the pole' to point my destined path, and furnish food for speculative thought; and, after sliding five or six times up and down some twenty feet of wet deck, I groped my way to the cabin. The captain was not on board, and I found myself a stranger among men. Of all gregarious animals man is the most tardy in getting acquainted: meet them for the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... final look at the old man, who wore more the aspect of a rough fisherman than a gardener. In fact he had pursued the former avocation entirely in the past, in company with the speculative growing of fruit and vegetables in his garden patch—not to sell to his neighbours, the fishing folk of the tiny hamlet of Eilygugg, but to "swap" them, as he termed it, for fish. Then the time came when the Den gardener ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... to think and to act as if Christ were indeed absent and would not return again for thousands of years. The presence of gigantic evils in the world with no apparent available means of redressing them, the dead weight of heathenism, and the disturbing influences of speculative Oriental philosophies impressed upon the conscience of the world a despairing pessimism. In the midst of this trial there was a revival of the Platonic philosophy. The treatise of Plato that made the most profound impression upon the religious thought of the second ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them madding after shadows. The example of one stimulates ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... The rows of children filed out, every head turning for a last unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw. Then Miss Spence closed the door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at her desk, near Penrod. The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ceased to be heard—and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... pretence of giving to the world a new theory of our intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact, that it is an attempt not to supersede, but to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have been either promulgated on its subject by speculative writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of remark that a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... of grace. In fact, he himself as well as his entire reformation were products of the preaching, not of predestinarianism, but of God's grace and pardon offered to all in absolution and in the means of grace. The bent of Luther's mind was not speculative, but truly evangelical and Scriptural. Nor is it probable that he would ever have entered upon the question of predestination to such an extent as he did in De Servo Arbitrio, if the provocation had not ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... his back and sent a speculative glance at the forest around him. "'Tis long sence the thrick has been worked through," he mused, turning his plug of tobacco over in his hand, looking for a likely place to sink his stained old teeth. "Ye'll be kapin' mum about what's in yer mind, young feller, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... pleasure of glowering ferociously upon Charlie Mershone, who, failing to obtain recognition from Miss Merrick, devoted himself to his cousin Diana, or at least lounged nonchalantly in the neighborhood of the Hindoo Booth. Mershone was very quiet. There was a speculative look upon his features that denoted an undercurrent ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... as his intrusions into this province of philosophy are slighter, more careless, and more indirect. But Pope's are wilful, premeditated, with malice aforethought; and his falsehoods wear a more malignant air, because they frequently concern truth speculative, and are therefore presumably more deliberate in their origin, and more influential in the result. It is precisely this part of Pope's errors that would prove most perplexing to the unlearned student. Beyond a doubt the 'Essay on Man' would, in virtue of its subject, prove ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... this could be managed, unless the young member came to differ absolutely from his patron. Canning then frankly confessed his inability to follow Pitt in maintaining the Test Act. Equally frank and cordial was the reply, that he (Pitt) did not claim exact agreement, especially on "speculative subjects," but only "a general good disposition towards Government," which might be ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native tyrants known as the 'Slave-Dealer'. He watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave at a speculative price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... written character, and the mode of education, it will readily occur, that little progress is likely to be made in any of the speculative sciences; and more especially as their assistance is not necessary to obtain the most elevated situations in the government. The examinations to be passed for the attainment of office are principally confined to the knowledge of the language; and as far as this goes, they are rigid to the utmost ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Coombe regarding her with an expression of speculative interest. Her airy bringing forth of her glib time-worn little scraps of orthodoxy—as one who fished them out of a bag of long-discarded remnants of rubbish—was so true to type that it almost fascinated ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brought a sardonic smile to his lips. She had as yet everything to learn of the world about her. Could such learning be imparted to her free from error or hypothesis, and apart from the fiat of the speculative human mind? It must be; for he knew from experience that she would accept his teaching only as he presented every apparent fact, every object, every event, as a reflection in some degree of her immanent God, and subject to rigid demonstration. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... had enough genius to be brilliant in the civil and military arena of the world. But he had not speculative genius. That genius is another pair of sleeves, as Buffon says. We have a collection of his writings and speeches. His style has movement and imagination. And in this mass of thoughts one can not find a philosophic ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... saved me was the glimpse of a cold, speculative gleam in my tormentor's eyes. It was the mere shadow of an expression, but it acted like cold water upon my hot thoughts. I divined, suddenly, that something more than sport was behind the captain's insults. He wanted me to blow up in a great ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... however, has arisen for either relinquishing or holding but loosely the associated conclusions respecting the constitution of the photosphere and its envelope. Widely speculative as seemed these suggested corollaries from the Nebular Hypothesis when set forth in 1858, and quite at variance with the beliefs then current, they proved to be not ill-founded. At the close of 1859, there came the discoveries of Kirchhoff, proving the existence of various metallic vapours ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... sake, bring to bear upon a matter vital to the State one-half the intelligence, zeal and sense of responsibility you will throw this evening into some ambiguous question of fleeting policy of speculative finance. Here are one hundred and eighty souls to whose correction, cure and protection the State is pledged. No one of all these lives is safe a single day. In six weeks I have saved two lives that were gone but for me. I am now sick ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... that active duty is the highest good; then lapsed into the easy doctrine of Epicurean Aristippus that subjective pleasure is the only happiness. His philosophy was never very strenuous, always more practical than speculative; he played with his teachers' systems, mocked at their fallacies, assimilated ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... fortune-telling witch; 2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4. The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5. The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6. The gastronomic witch; 7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; 8. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and Plato; but he condensed and sifted the writings of the Greeks, and is the best expounder of their philosophy. Who has added substantially to what the Greeks worked out of their creative brain? I know that no Roman ever added to the domain of speculative thought, yet what Roman ever showed such a comprehension and appreciation of Greek philosophy as did Cicero? He was profoundly versed in all the learning the Grecians ever taught. Like Socrates, he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... men were awaiting a hero, a Messiah, a redeemer, it is ours. No opinion is more foolish than the one that in our age there would be no room for a prophet. But he must not be a moralist preaching repentance, not a speculative builder of systems, not a man of lamentations and warnings, but a poet in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... astronomy, which they prosecuted most assiduously for a period of four centuries. Their labours were, however, confined chiefly to observational work, in which they excelled; unlike their predecessors, they paid but little attention to speculative theories—indeed, they regarded with such veneration the opinions held by the Greeks, that they did not feel disposed to question the accuracy of their doctrines. The most eminent astronomer among the Arabs was ALBATEGNIUS (680 A.D.). He corrected the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... I had wrapped up again and sat in comparative comfort and at ease, enjoying the clear sparkle and glitter of the virgin snow. It was not till considerably later that the real significance of the landscape dawned upon my consciousness. Still there was even now in my thoughts a speculative undertone. Subconsciously I wondered what might ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... spoken of as very scourges of God. From this temper two consequences naturally flowed. In the first place, while it lasted there was no hope of an honest philosophic discussion of the great questions which divide speculative minds. Moderation and impartiality were virtues of almost superhuman difficulty for controversialists who had made up their minds that it was their opponents who had erected the guillotine, confiscated the sacred property of the church, slaughtered and banished her children, and filled ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... A. The speculative Solicitor, if he can persuade a judge and jury to agree, will get his costs, and if the journalist wins he will find that the prosecutor or plaintiff is, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the 'righteous overmuch' who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... old scholar has been protected by his definitely directed life from the temptations of this speculative equity; and I believe his writings to contain the truest expression yet given in England of the feelings with which a Christian gentleman of sense and learning should regard the art produced in ancient days, by the dawn of the faiths ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... He was really, in the main features of his political convictions and the main habits of his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of general principles and logic, and where it failed to stand this test, to reject it. The other was the sense of the complexity of existing social ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... of discontented feeling in the country arising from the actual state of society. It arises from the distress and destitution which will fall at times upon a great manufacturing population, and from the wild and extravagant opinions which are naturally generated in an advanced and speculative ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... as the Raja Bikram, to whom India owes her golden age. It was his court at Ujjain which is believed to have been adorned by the "Nine Gems" of Sanskrit literature, amongst whom the favourite is Kalidasa, the poet and dramatist. Amidst much that is speculative, one thing is certain. The age of Vikramadytia was an age of Brahmanical ascendancy. As has so often happened, and is still happening in India to-day in the struggle between Urdu and Hindi, the battle of religious and political supremacy was largely ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... is 'more matter for a May morning;' but how much of this can be published is for consideration. The Quevedo (one of my best in that line) has appalled the Row already, and must take its chance at Paris, if at all. The new Mystery is less speculative than 'Cain,' and very pious; besides, it is chiefly lyrical. The Morgante is the best translation that ever was or will be made; and the rest are—whatever you please to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... hitherto either empirical observation, or the establishment of critical rules on a false basis. I know but of one exception to this sweeping censure, and that is the essay on the Philosophy of Style, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, [Spencer's ESSAYS: SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, AND SPECULATIVE. First Series. 1858]. where for the first time, I believe, the right method was pursued of seeking in psychological conditions for the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... might almost be said that whole villages go to particular shops. You may see the agricultural labourers' wives, for instance, on a Saturday leave the village in a bevy of ten or a dozen, and all march in to the same tradesman. Of course in these latter days speculative men and 'co-operative' prices, industriously placarded, have sapped and undermined this old-fashioned system. Yet even now it retains sufficient hold to be a marked feature of country life. To the through traffic, therefore, had to be added the steady ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... or wounded by those animals. There is nothing impossible in the idea that Romulus and Remus may have imbibed wolfish traits of character from the wet nurse the legend assigned them, but the legend is not sound history, and the supposition is nothing more than a speculative fancy. Still, there is a limbo of curious evidence bearing on the subject of pre-natal influences sufficient to form the starting-point of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mind, which these new philosophers put forward as the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents itself but to the speculative enquirer in his closet. The savage never dreams of it. The active man, engaged in the busy scenes of life, thinks little, and on rare occasions of himself, but much, and in a manner for ever, of the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... a defeated army met in a more victorious mood. There was much indeed to encourage in the degree of importance to which the question had attained. It had risen from a purely speculative into a pressing political question; it had been debated during two days, and it was heartily supported by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a pleasant atmosphere of excitement behind him when he disappeared between the portieres. At once the company broke into eager, speculative whispers that soon grew to a perfect storm of shrill inquiry. Every one was guessing, and every one was guessing as loudly as possible in order to be heard above the clamour. It might have been observed that at least three or four of the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... already possessed of a constitution capable of rendering her prosperous and happy, to do with the adoration of Rousseau's speculative systems? Or why are the English encouraged in a traditional respect for the manes of republicans, whom, if living, we might not improbably consider as factious and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Bentham himself, the quackery of much that is promulgated by his followers presented, it must be owned, ample scope. Romantic, indeed, as was Lord Byron's sacrifice of himself to the cause of Greece, there was in the views he took of the means of serving her not a tinge of the unsubstantial or speculative. The grand practical task of freeing her from her tyrants was his first and main object. He knew that slavery was the great bar to knowledge, and must be broken through before her light could come; that the work of the sword must therefore precede that of the pen, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is, of course, the famous and historical debating society (the Speculative Society) of Edinburgh University, to which Stevenson had been elected on the strength of his conversational powers, and to whose meetings he contributed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculative dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British Crown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated into the reality of actual experience. "No taxation without representation," ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... and he guessed that she knew none of these smart folk, down, like himself, for the tournament; people who were chattering from table to table like a large family. That some of his girl acquaintances were interested in the young stranger he inferred from speculative and appraising eyes that were turned upon ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... go to supper. Many a chevalier d'industree and young military spendthrift has made his harvest here. Thousands were won and lost, and the ladies were generally the dupes of all those who were the constant speculative attendants. The Princease de Lamballe did not like play, but when it was necessary she did play, and won or lost to a limited extent; but the prescribed sum once exhausted or gained she left off. In set parties, such as those of whist, she never played except when one was wanted, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... history, we shall at least avoid coming to wrong positive conclusions, even if the right negative ones are pretty clearly indicated. It is better to leave unexplained matters in suspense than to base conclusions upon speculative substructures which will not carry the weight set ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Among the various speculative schemes which Balzac dreamed of, in connection with Les Jardies, and which were to make his fortune,—a dairy, vineyards which were to produce Malaga and Tokay wine, the creation of a village, etc.,—particular mention should be made ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... there would be something in it, if the selection of the true philosopher did not above all things require the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably the case, as it is now, that, if a man did not form speculative opinions in youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to do ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... need to have such inquiries made on a more wholesale and systematic scale. They are no longer of a merely speculative character. We no longer regard children as the "gifts of God," flung into our helpless hands; we are beginning to realise that the responsibility is ours to see that they come into the world under the best conditions, and at the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... rights of property and the rights of capital, to gratify ardent longings without trouble, and provide the much coveted means of enjoyment. The Titans have tried to scale the heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely speculative dogmatism sinks ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 1803 presenting to the American Congress a memoir on the construction of Iron Bridges, accompanied by several models. It does not appear, however, that Paine ever succeeded in erecting an iron bridge. He was a restless, speculative, unhappy being; and it would have been well for his memory if, instead of penning shallow infidelity, he had devoted himself to his original idea of improving the communications of his adopted country. In the meantime, however, the bridge exhibited at Paddington had produced ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the professor told him that he knew more about the latter than the former. There were not many pretty girls on the platform this morning, though he remarked one rather pleasing young person who sat idly on a pile of luggage and fixed large, speculative, innocently assured eyes upon him when he went by, while near her her mother and a tawny sister disputed bitterly with a porter. Most of the ladies who hastened to and fro seemed, while very energetic, also ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the matters of faith that they should in some measure be acquainted with and believe, that are admitted into full communion with the Church of Christ. And these and other truths must not be known and believed in a general, notional, light, and speculative manner; but heartily, powerfully, and particularly: not for others, but for themselves; otherwise their faith and knowledge will no way ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... possesses all of the factors for augmenting surplus wealth which are lacking in agricultural civilizations. Changes in the forms of industrial production are rapid; special privilege yields rich returns and is the subject of wide speculative activity; land values increase; labor saving machinery multiplies man's capacity to turn out wealth. As much surplus wealth might be produced in a year of this industrial life as could have been turned out in a generation ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... be. In making his correction the man is very likely to overdo it and strike the sand before the ball, causing a sclaff, or, on the other hand, not to correct sufficiently when the only possible result would be a topped ball and probably a hopeless position in the hazard. It is indeed a rashly speculative shot, and one of the most difficult imaginable. It comes off sometimes, but it is a pure matter of chance when it does, and the lucky player is hardly entitled to that award of merit which he may fancy ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals, according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book, in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... alleged extinction of this ancient Royal Line. Millions have been expended for that purpose. Commissions have pretended to investigate the subject after the event. Volumes have been returned of a speculative nature to authenticate a mysterious disappearance that ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... naturally turned in contrast to the war at home and the terrible death harvest of Antietam, news of which had lately reached Europe. The sense of isolation in a land of hostile opinion often oppressed me, and rarely was as despotic as on this afternoon. I turned for relief to speculative thought of the numberless dramas of the lives of the busy multitude among which I drove. I wondered how many lived simple and uneventful days, like mine, in the pursuit of mere official or domestic duties. Not the utmost imaginative ingenuity ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... rise to a discussion of the speculative value of Confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and has taken the greatest possible care of her so far as regards her physical welfare. I have no doubt she entertains that sincere affection for the child which a mother should always feel, and which no merely speculative opinions can materially affect. But, unfortunately, since her separation from her husband, Mrs. Besant has taken upon herself not merely to ignore religion, not merely to believe in no religion, but to publish and avow that ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... make myself heard. In my own way I was sort of praying for those two children. Foolish, isn't it? I'm sorry I told you. It sounds nutty to me when I stop to consider it." Pope stirred uneasily under Adoree's gravely speculative eyes. "Lorelei's ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... nor, indeed, in my opinion, does the moral world produce any thing more determinate on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal indeed, and ingenious, but still only an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes, which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... and consumer and by his control of the market assumed a commanding position. The merchant-capitalist ran his business upon the principle of a large turn-over and a small profit per unit of product, which, of course, made his income highly speculative. He was accordingly interested primarily in low production and labor costs. To depress the wage levels he tapped new and cheaper sources of labor supply, in prison labor, low wage country-town labor, woman and child labor; ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... entered more disputable territory when he declared that the Profiteering Act was not primarily intended to punish profiteers, Mr. ASQUITH did not seriously attempt to dislodge him. Indeed, the EX-PREMIER'S speech was mainly composed of truisms, his only excursion into the speculative being an assertion—with which not all economists will agree—that inflation of currency is a consequence and not a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... saying, that they "have prophesied in his name," Matth. vii. 22. There is "a knowledge that puffeth up," 1 Cor. xiii. 2. Some there are whose knowledge seemeth to be operative and practical, and not merely speculative. Some may "escape the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," and yet again become entangled therein and overcome; so that "their latter end is worse than the beginning;" see 2 Peter ii. 20, 21, 22. Knowledge, I grant, is ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... speculative work done in New York is after the most trivial plans made by some mere draughtsman or carpenter, and the "superintendence" is under the "keen" eye of the builder and owner—who is usually one and the same individual and who has made a definite failure at all the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... cadastre, which was made by the King of Sardinia, has done no sort of good, and that after all his pains a few years will restore all things to their first inequality, yet it has been the admiration of half the reforming financiers of Europe; I mean the official financiers, as well as the speculative."—Memoirs of Sir ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Wilmington, complaining that he is not allowed by government agents to transport cotton to that port, where his steamers are, in redemption of Confederate States bonds, while private persons, for speculative purposes, are, through the favor (probably for a consideration) of government officials, enabled to ship thousands of bales, and he submits a copy of a correspondence with Col. Sims, Assistant Quartermaster-General, and Lieut. Col. Bayne, who is charged with the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... you have something sensible to do; better than always calling here in your speculative way. Go to work at once, and come and communicate ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... Transylvania and caught the Austrians in the rear the defeat would almost offset that of the Russians in the west. Rumania's advent into the war is, however, still a matter of doubt, and any conclusions predicated on that assumption are entirely speculative. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... conceive of the beginners of human society as superior beings (dedivinized gods). The Hebrew tradition ascribed great age to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, on a generally descending scale; the longevity of the antediluvians is perhaps a speculative continuation of the series back of Abraham on an ascending scale, though special mythical ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love toward the individual men and women who come across our own path. The ladies of St. Ogg's were not beguiled by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their favorite abstraction, called Society, which served to make their consciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own egoism,—thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulliver, and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... more consciously speculative poets designate their philosophical creed, this belief in the infinite meaning of every object in the physical world is pure pantheism, and the instinctive poetical religion is inevitably a pantheistic one. All poetical metaphor is a confession of this fact, for in metaphor ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 'held to service' in the country—apprentices, redemptioners, and slaves. The two first classes were by no means insignificant in 1789, and the redemptioners were rapidly increasing in numbers. In that day it looked as if this speculative importation of laborers from Europe was to form a material part of the domestic policy of the Northern States. Now the negro is a human being, as well as an apprentice or a redemptioner, though the Constitution does not consider ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and possibilities of railroad lines have been recognized and numerous concessions for railroad construction have been sought and granted; but the concessionnaires have, as a rule, either been impecunious, entering the field only with speculative intentions, or have been frightened off by the internal disturbances, and in either case the concession ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... be known to Cousin Henry, was to his thinking out of the question. The subtler intellect of the other lawyer appreciating the intricacies of a weak man's mind saw more than his companion. When he found that Mr Brodrick did not agree with him, and perceived that the other attorney's mind was not speculative in such a matter as this, he ceased to try to persuade, and simply said that it was the duty of both of them to leave no stone unturned. And ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... secretly, banded themselves together into a society for that purpose. With the view to masking their real object, they took advantage of the fact that the square and compass, the plumbline, etc., were symbols of speculative masonry in the temple form of Astral worship, they publicly claimed to be only a trades-union for the prosecution of the arts of architecture and operative masonry; but, among themselves, were known as Free and Accepted Masons or Freemasons. In imitation of the ancient mysteries ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... cruel young jest flung off in the barbarous spring-time of creative energy? Either way it chiefly impressed him with its imbecility. He saw through it. He saw through most things, Himself included. He knew perfectly well that he had developed this sudden turn for speculative thought because he was baulked of an appointment with a little variety actress. That he should see through the little variety actress was not to be expected. Poppy was in her nature impenetrable, woman being the ultimate ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the wanton tide Of young luxuriance or unchastened pride; The fervid follies and the faults of such As wrongly feel, because they feel too much; Then might experience make the fever less, Nay, graft a virtue on each warm excess. But no; 'tis heartless, speculative ill, All youth's transgression with all age's chill; The apathy of wrong, the bosom's ice, A slow ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... neither Augustine nor St. Paul, still less Jesus Christ, but Plato, who in the Laws sketches out with wonderful prescience the conditions for such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take. Even in speculative thought we know that Augustine owed much to the Platonists, the Schoolmen to Aristotle, the mystics to the pupil of Proclus whom they called Dionysius. Only Greek science, and the scientific spirit, were almost completely lost, and a ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... this well-meaning cant, the Introduction concludes with the following sentence:—the writer is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongst whom—'both leaders and followers,' he says, 'may together reflect—that, upon speculative and visionary reformers,' (i.e. those of 1640) 'the severest punishment which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted—was to curse them with the complete gratification of their own inordinate desires.' ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... that in societies of this sort, too much attention is frequently bestowed on subjects barren and speculative, it may be answered, that no one science is so little connected with the rest, as not to afford many principles whose use may extend considerably beyond the science to which they primarily belong; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Nietzsche—who regarded this kind of intoxication as of great significance both in life and in art—that it gives us the consciousness of energy and the satisfaction of our craving for power.[154] To carry the inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to attempt to analyze further the joy of emotional expansion. We must be content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a widespread motor ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Vivian Grey should beware lest it outstrip him. Is neglecting to mature your mind, my boy, exactly the way to win the race? This is an age of unsettled opinions and contested principles; in the very measures of our administration, the speculative spirit of the present day is, to say the least, not impalpable. Nay, don't start, my dear fellow, and look the very Prosopopeia of Political Economy! I know exactly what you are going to say; but, if you please, we will leave Turgot and Galileo ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... evidently a little puffed up with a feeling of satisfaction at the clever way in which he had got out of the difficulty, without displaying his ignorance of astronomy, and was even venturing, in the pride of his heart, to make some speculative and startling assertions in regard to the "'eavenly bodies" generally, when Buzzby put his head up ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... discover only through one phrase on a page that he must himself have been the hero of an event he relates in the third person. This seems to be the case in the affair of Priber, which was the worst of those "damages" Adair did to the French. Priber was "a gentleman of curious and speculative temper" sent by the French in 1786 to Great Telliko to win the Cherokees to their interest. At this time Adair was trading with the Cherokees. ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... name of wisdom, but was really political sharp practice and expedients of statesmanship, which he had, as it were, inherited as a legacy from Solon. Those who in later times mixed up this science with forensic devices, and used it, not to deal with the facts of politics, but the abstract ideas of speculative philosophy, were named Sophists. Themistokles used to converse with this man when he had already begun his political career. In his childhood he was capricious and unsteady, his genius, as yet untempered by reason and experience, showing great capacities both for good and evil, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... and the lock was crowded; and, as is a common practice up the river, a speculative photographer was taking a picture of us all as we lay upon the ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... the futility and the hopelessness of voluntary emancipation, he asserted that the "Autocrat of all the Russias" would resign his crown, and proclaim freedom to all his subjects sooner than the "American masters" would voluntarily give up their slaves.[7] It is remarkable that Lincoln's speculative affirmation was followed by what he thought an impossibility, for on the day preceding Mr. Lincoln's inauguration the "Autocrat of all the Russias," Alexander II, by an imperial decree emancipated his serfs; "while six weeks after the inauguration, the proslavery element, headed by Jefferson ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... subjects of the nature discussed, I have ever read. You know how I admired your former essays, but this seems to me far grander. I like all the part after page xxvi better than the first part, probably because newer to me. I dare say you will demur to this, for I think every author likes the most speculative parts of his own productions. How superior your essay is to the famous one of Brown (here will be sneer 1st from you). You have made all your conclusions so admirably clear, that it would be no use at all to be ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... into the central exchange of Europe. The insecurity of sea-borne trade caused many of the younger merchants to deal in money securities and bills of exchange rather than in goods. Banking houses sprang up apace, and large fortunes were made by speculative investments in stocks and shares; and loans for foreign governments, large and small, were readily negotiated. This state of things reached its height during the Seven Years' War, but with the settlement which followed the peace of 1763 disaster came. On July 25 the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... been developed among the people. The contrast was one which fructified in many serious results, and among them we must rank the effect which it produced on the minds of the French lawyers. Their speculative opinions and their intellectual bias were in the strongest opposition to their interests and professional habits. With the keenest sense and the fullest recognition of those perfections of jurisprudence which consist in simplicity and uniformity, they believed, or seemed to believe, that the vices ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... difficulty The Instigator could be persuaded to leave the plough, and at one time his enthusiasm (and the engine) carried him out of sight, and those remaining at the starting-point grew speculative as to whether he would return before dark. However, a recommencement of drizzling rain apparently cooled his ardour, and restored him to the party. The nomads gladly turned their thoughts and coaches towards the section house, realising as they went ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Ent['e]l['e]chie, the country of speculative science visited by Pantag'ruel and his companions in their search for "the oracle of the Holy ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... room upside down, and then arrange it neatly," said Alice in a speculative tone. "There is nothing in the house to interest me; there is Patty in the kitchen, I have just been paying her a visit. She is as busy as a bee, and as happy as a queen. I believe poor people are happier than the rich, in such weather as ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... concentrated itself upon the decision of the question, "Into what animal or human being will the spirit of that horse pass at death?" Just at that moment, Woloda passed through the room, and smiled to see me absorbed in speculative thoughts. His smile at once made me feel that all that I had been thinking about was ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... yet. It's unfortunate that the market broke before I could get rid of them, but it may rally. I'm rather disturbed about the matter; but, after all, one has to take one's chance in buying shares. Dealing in the speculative sorts is to a large extent a ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... RINGGOLD is the Genial Artist, whose velvet coat suggests that he has recently managed a Starr opera bouffe enterprise; and Mr. STODDART is happy in the congenial character of a Clumsy Trumpeter. If any speculative manager pretends that he has a better hypothetical cast in his eye than the present cast of the Lancers, let him be given to the surgical tormentors to be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... I was a son of Van Haubitz, the rich banker of Amsterdam, which was perfectly true; adding, which was rather less so, that I was a partner in the house, and a millionaire. The effect of this information upon the speculative firm of Sendel Mere et Fille, was perfectly electric. Medusa smoothed her horrid looks, and came out at that day's dinner in cherry ribands and fresh artificials. Emilie was all smiles and suavity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... its nakedness, it seemed to Brenton more than ever like the Book of Revelation. Day after day, his enthusiasm for his theme increased its pace, threw off the bridle of hard, concrete fact, ran to the speculative limits of its course, and then ran past them. By the first of May, Brenton's lectures had made themselves one of the features of the college world; but, by the same token, they had ceased to be lectures upon chemistry, and had become harangues upon every phase of the allied sciences, harangues ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... way he derived a certain speculative excitement from this practice. If the doorway was empty he regarded himself as a winner, if some one stood sheltered in the deep recess which is a feature of the old Georgian houses in this historic thoroughfare, he would lose to the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... the weather and the ewes on his mind. "Church! Nay—I'n gotten summat else to think on," was an answer which he often uttered in a tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and "Whissuntide." But he had a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies, like ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... usually led to some suitable office created to perpetuate his folly. A man talking too much of dogs, would be made a master of the buck-hounds; or vaunting his courage, perhaps a field-marshal; and if bigoted on disputable matters and speculative opinions in religion, he was considered to be nothing less than an inquisitor. This was a pleasant and useful project to reform the manners of the Polish youth; and one of the Polish kings good-humourdly observed, that he considered himself "as much King of Baboonery as King of Poland." We have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Linkinwater; and there was, besides, a certain embarrassment in her manner, which, although it was as far from impairing its graceful character as the tinge it communicated to her cheek was from diminishing her beauty, was obvious at a glance even to Mrs Nickleby. Not being of a very speculative character, however, save under circumstances when her speculations could be put into words and uttered aloud, that discreet matron attributed the emotion to the circumstance of her daughter's not happening to have her best frock on: 'though I never saw her look better, certainly,' she reflected ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... she never understood anything until after many disappointments and vexations. It was difficult to startle her, but she was much startled by a communication that this young lady made her one fine spring morning. With her florid appearance and her speculative mind, she was probably the most innocent woman ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... every confidence in their Manager and, although he was merely a salaried employee and not an executive officer, he had been given a pretty free hand in the conduct of the Company's operations. Apparently it did not occur to him that he should consult the Board before entering the market on a speculative basis. Had the Board known what he was about to do they would have vetoed it; but when they did discover what was afoot it was too late to prevent the situation. It ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... more questionable opinions. The inquisitive mind, philosophic turn, and deep reflection of the author, indeed, are every where conspicuous; but his opinions do not equally as in the first two volumes bear the signet mark of truth stamped upon them. They are more speculative and fanciful; founded rather on contemplation of future, than observation of present effects. When De Tocqueville painted the unrestrained working of democracy on political thought and parties, as he saw it around him in the course of his residence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... where you find it. I ever thought the study of it my best entertainment and pastime, but I have no ambition nor design upon the style.' Until he accepts religion, with all its limitations and encouragements, he has not even sure landmarks on his way. So speculative a brain, able to prove, and proving for its own uneasy satisfaction, that even suicide is 'not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise,' could allow itself to be guided by no fixed rules; and to a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... are so well kept, the buildings in these miles of new streets are flimsy-looking, and evidently the work of the speculative builder. The more pretentious buildings ape a kind of Nuremberg Renaissance style, and are as effective as a castle made of cardboard. This does not imply that there are not simple and solid buildings in Berlin and, in the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... beautiful and in some places highly singular banks of the Hudson rendered a voyage both amusing and interesting, while the primitive manners of the inhabitants diverted the gay and idle and pleased the thoughtful and speculative. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... and space. We owe to Kant the release from the rule of these ideas as essential ideas. Our modern psychology is alive to the possibility of Being that has no extension in space at all, even as our speculative geometry can entertain the possibility of dimensions—fourth, fifth, Nth dimensions—outside the three-dimensional universe of our experience. And God being non-spatial is not thereby banished to an infinite remoteness, but brought ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... up especially in the republic by the doctrine of Gall, which was an attempt to materialise and localise psychic processes. Unfortunately Gall's imagination, encouraged by a widespread wave of popular sympathy, overstepped his judgment and launched him into speculative hypotheses unsupported by facts. His doctrine of Phrenology was shown to be absolutely illogical; consequently it was forgotten that he was ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... grayish sand surrounding it, seemed for once to drowse. Its solemn visage that had impassively watched ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and generations of men live and die, appeared for the moment to have lost its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense disdain—its cold eyes seemed to droop, its stern mouth almost smiled. The air was calm and sultry; and not a human foot disturbed the silence. But towards midnight a Voice suddenly arose as it were like a wind in the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... neighbourhood chanced to recover of some imaginary complaint by the use of a mineral well about a mile and a half from the village; a fashionable doctor was found to write an analysis of the healing waters, with a list of sundry cures; a speculative builder took land in feu, and erected lodging-houses, shops, and even streets. At length a tontine subscription was obtained to erect an inn, which, for the more grace, was called a hotel; and so the desertion of Meg Dods ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Andrews, threw out in his snug parlour some twenty years back, and where he used to sit smoking, with the sash up, in summer afternoons, enjoying himself, good man; and the great room, at the Swan, originally built by the speculative publican, Joseph Allwright, for an assembly-room. That speculation did not answer. The assembly, in spite of canvassing and patronage, and the active exertions of all the young ladies in the neighbourhood, dwindled away, and died at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... should go too, and hurried into my boots so as to show decision taken, in the necessary interviews. They came of course - the interviews - and I explained what I was going to do at huge length, and stuck to my guns. I am glad to say the natives, with their usual (purely speculative) sense of justice highly approved the step after reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I with the three CORPORA DELICTI; and a good job I went! Once, when our circus began to kick, we thought all was up; but we got them down all sound in wind and limb. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lacked the invaluable quality of imagination. This is the underlying defect of his history. Important and novel as are Hume's doctrines, his method was also deductive, and, like Adam Smith, he rests little on experience. After these two, Reid was the most eminent among the purely speculative thinkers of Scotland, but he stands far below them both. To Hume the spirit of inquiry and scepticism is essential; to Reid it is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... there is record, woman's dress signalized itself by extravagant and very often tasteless conceptions. In a country where, before the doctrine of popular sovereignty had been broached in any part of the world by the most speculative theorists, very vigorous and practical examples of democracy had been afforded to Europe; in a country where, ages before the science of political economy had been dreamed of, lessons of free trade on the largest scale had been taught to mankind by republican traders ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... saying that they would get much better wages at the great factory. Then Mr. Gladstone brought out his '86 bill, and the Belfast man drew in his horns. He told me that he would not risk a farthing in any speculative venture while the threat of Home Rule was held over us. He was quite right. The Ballyshannon men were relieved from the trouble of deciding how they would spend their surplus money, and they ranged themselves on the bridge or at their usual ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... method which he opposed to that system was not anything quite new. But the idea of Bacon had the most comprehensive tendency: it tended to free the thoughts and enquiries of men of science from the assumptions of a speculative theology which regulated their spiritual horizon. The most renowned adversaries of scholasticism he had to encounter in turn, because they covered things with a new web of words and theories which he could not accept. He thought to free ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Ezra Red Cotton Nightcap Country Return of the Druses, The Reverie Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli St. Martin's Summer Saisiaz, La Saul Serenade at the Villa, A Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, A Solomon and Balkis Sordello Soul's Tragedy, A Speculative Strafford Summum Bonum Time's Revenges Toccata of Galuppi's, A Too Late Transcendentalism Two in the Campagna Two Poets of Croisic Up in a Villa—Down in the City Waring Worst of it, The ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... "diggings" he was soon to desert forever. Poor, wretched, little old "diggings"! As he passed the Plaza, the St. Regis and the Gotham, he favoured the great hostelries with contemplative, calculating eyes; he even looked with speculative envy upon the mansions of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Huntingtons. She was born and reared in a house of vast dimensions. Even the Vanderbilt places were puny in comparison. His reflections carried him back to the Plaza. There, at least, was something comparable in size. At any rate, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... in all its aspects, is a microcosm of European religion. It reflects almost every phase of thought and feeling from crude magic and superstition to the speculative mysticism of Eckhart, from mere delight in physical indulgence to the exquisite spirituality and tenderness of St. Francis. Ascetic and bon-vivant, mystic and materialist, learned and simple, noble and peasant, all have found something in it of which to lay ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... every way an admirable book. As an introduction to the writings of perhaps the most remarkable speculative thinker whom England has produced in the present century, nothing could be ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... there is but one thing which that spectacle can teach us, and that is to imitate these noble martyrs, or, if we fear death, to become the abject flatterers of the powerful. Nothing hence can be so perilous as to relegate and submit to divine right things which are purely speculative, and to impose laws upon opinions which are, or at least ought to be, subject to discussion among men. If the right of the State were limited to repressing acts, and speech were allowed impunity, controversies would not turn so often ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... involuntary thrill of admiration for the bold and original mind which conceived it. "We may," said Bacon, "make no despicable beginnings. The destinies of the human race must complete the work ... for upon this will depend not only a speculative good but all the fortunes of mankind and all their power." There is the unconscious expression of one of the great minds of the world. Bacon was like one of the architects of the Middle Ages, who drew his plans for a mighty cathedral, perfect in every ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and overpowering the feeble glimmer of a small lamp which hung suspended from the pole. I remained motionless for some little time after I had opened my eyes, trying to remember where I was, and what had happened, and then wondering in a vague speculative sort of way who and what was the strange being who appeared to govern the reckless band of outlaws into whose hands I had fallen. I thought at first that I was alone in the tent, but a restless movement ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Leaving these speculative questions, however, for the present, let us return to the divisions, which are arranged along the deck, not, as formerly, by sizes, but, in the proper way, by the watch-bill. The forecastle-men, of course, come first, as they stand so in the lists by which they ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... method, and tradition, showing nothing distinctively American in their writings except the incidental subject. The first authors whom we may regard as characteristic of the new country—leaving out the productions of speculative theology—devoted their genius to politics. It is in the political writings immediately preceding and following the Revolution —such as those of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson that the new birth of a nation of original force and ideas is declared. It has been ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that the official fiat had gone forth that all Britishers within the German Empire, both resident and touring, were to be arrested. All sorts of reasons were advanced to explain this action but they were merely speculative. There is one feature about the Teuton Government which is far from being characteristic of the British authorities. The Germans never do things by halves. What they authorise to be done is carried out to the letter. What they say they mean and there is no delay in executing an order once it is ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Optica. Dialling Universall and Particular, Speculative and Practicall, London 1652, comes before his readers with ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... the expense of surveying. This they took care not to pay, or only to pay as fast as they could sell tracts to some purchasers, on which occasions they paid the surveying fee and obtained deeds for the portion they sold. In this way they have held millions of acres for speculative purposes, waiting for a rise in prices, without taxation, while the farmers in adjacent lands paid taxes." [Footnote: "Labor, Land and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Scipio Aemilianus. Panaetius of Rhodes, the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio's intimate friends in the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train and usually attended him even on journeys, knew how to adapt the system to clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers, among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the Socrates of Xenophon. Thenceforth ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... arm resting on the mantelpiece, the firelight glowing on her black dress. Her clever speculative eyes were fixed on the smouldering logs of driftwood. Lucille was moving about the room, exhibiting by her manner that impatience which the mention of my name seemed ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... it not the better rule to leave all these works to private enterprise, regulated and, when expedient, aided by the cooperation of States? If constructed by private capital the stimulant and the check go together and furnish a salutary restraint against speculative schemes and extravagance. But it is manifest that with the most effective guards there is danger of going too fast and too far. We may well pause before a proposition contemplating a simultaneous movement for the construction of railroads which in extent ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... subdivisions of Hindu philosophical thought, we may say that the Hindu philosophies may be divided into a few general classes, several of which we shall now hastily consider, that you may get a glimpse at the variety of Hindu speculative philosophy in its relation to the soul and its destiny. You will, of course, understand that we can do no more than mention the leading features of each class, as a careful consideration would require volumes for ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... nothing like the millions of which I had dreamed, but still enough. To make the most of it and to be sure that it remained, I invested it very well, mostly in large mortgages at four per cent which, if the security is good, do not depreciate in capital value. Never again did I touch a single speculative stock, who desired to think no more about money. It was at this time that I bought the Fulcombe property. It cost me about L120,000 of my capital, or with alterations, repairs, etc., say L150,000, on which sum it may pay a net two and a half ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... is peculiar to magistrates. But to speak truth, this question is of no great consequence, nor is it the province of the judges to decide between those who dispute about words; it may indeed be an object of speculative inquiry; but to inquire what officers are necessary in a state, and how many, and what, though not most necessary, may yet be advantageous in a well-established government, is a much more useful employment, and this with respect to all ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... what we are to be as preachers. We are to seek "mercy of the Lord to be faithful." [1 Cor. vii. 25.] We are not popular leaders, looking for a cry, or passing one on. We are not speculative thinkers, feeling out a philosophy, communicating our guesses at truth to a company of friends who happen to be interested in the investigation. We are "messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord." We are in commissioned charge ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... had only the bitter hate of the conquered. He cast a malevolent look upon him with eyes that were oddly narrowed—a measuring, speculative look that comprehended his strength and registered the infallibility thereof with loathing. "I wonder what happened to the serpent," he said, "when the man and woman were thrust out of ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... characteristic bust. From this man he made a terra-cotta bust which few could have pronounced to be other than a cinque-cento work, and a very fine one. Bastianini, then quite unknown and much in need of wherewithal to live, sold this bust as the work of his hands to a speculative dealer for, if I remember rightly, five hundred francs. The man who bought it carried it to a dealer in antiquities—a very well-known man in Florence whose name I could give were it of any interest to do so—and proposed to sell ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... times wearing around, providing they didn't come to mending before that," mused the "Pet," with a speculative look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, and I'll wager ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tragically clear. It was the familiar story of wealth grasping at yet more wealth, of the man whose judgment and common sense begin to play him false, when once the intoxication of money has gone beyond a certain point. Dazzled by some first speculative successes, Sir Arthur had become before long a gambler over half the world, in Canada, the States, Egypt, Argentina. One doubtful venture supported another, and the City, no less than the gambler himself, was for ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deeply differing in theological creeds as those who have been toiling for the last three months to aid and relieve the oppressed, can work in absolute harmony side by side for the one end—surely this proves that there is a bond which is stronger than our antagonisms, a unity which is deeper than the speculative theories which divide." ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... can be done to save the lost Fritz, at least the soul of him, from this horrible delusion:—hurls forth your fine Duhan, with his metaphysics, to remote Memel, as the first step. And signifies withal, though as yet only historically and in a speculative way, to Finkenstein and Kalkstein themselves, That their method of training up a young soul, to do God's will, and accomplish useful work in this world, does by no means appear to the royal mind an admirable one! [His Letter to them ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the rotation of crops, Liebig propounded a very ingenious theory, but one which was largely of a speculative nature, and which has since been shown to be unfounded on any scientific basis. It was to the effect that one kind of crop excreted matters which were especially favourable to another kind of crop. He did not say ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... the case, all eccentricity is madness; but in the case of unhappy Chatterton, that madness which arises from "hope deferred," was unquestionably endured. Three days before his death, pursuing, with a friend, the melancholy and speculative employment of reading epitaphs in the churchyard of St. Pancras, absorbed by his own reflections, he fell into a new-made grave. There was something akin to the raven's croak, the death-fetch, the fading spectre, in this foreboding accident: he ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... unspoilt country, separated by five miles of grass from the nearest point of London, and encompassed by isolated dwellings, ranging in rank and scale from villas to country houses. Most of these have fallen victims to the Speculative Builder, and have been cut up into alleys of brick and stucco, though one or two still remain among their hay-fields and rhododendrons. When I first ascended Harrow Hill, I drove there from London with my mother; and, from ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... and the truly liberal Lafitte, Are the true lords of Europe. Every loan Is not a merely speculative hit, But seats a nation or upsets a throne. Republics also get involved a bit; Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, Must get ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... obtainable by successful writers, if he had qualified by taking the oaths. But he adds, that such a change would hurt his mother's feelings, and that he was more certain of his duty to promote her happiness than of any speculative tenet whatever. He was sure that he could mean as well in the religion he now professed as in any other; and that being so, he thought that a change even to an equally good religion could not be justified. A similar statement appears in a letter to Swift, in 1729. "I ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... great systems, but still not more than 4000 feet above the level of the sea, and 1000 feet lower than the top of the western ridge we had already crossed; yet, instead of lofty snow-clad mountains appearing to verify the conjectures of the speculative, we had extensive plains, over which one may travel a month without seeing any thing higher than an ant-hill or a tree. I was not then aware that any one else had discovered the elevated trough form of the centre ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... children, the vigorous and rich life which they offer to a good man,—those are touched with keenest analysis and in festal spirit. Most thoroughly does the author possess that rare combination of mind which seeks speculative truth no less than ideal beauty; with him emotion is nothing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... half of these young ladies all dressed out with parasols and silk stockings. But as I am not aware that any worse consequence ensued, than a sudden looking-up of all the parasols and silk stockings in the market; and perhaps the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englander who bought them all up at any price, in expectation of a demand that never came; I set no great ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... convert mute discontent into political passion. From the 5th of July 1787, on the invitation of the King, who convokes the States-General and demands advice from everybody, both speech and the press alter in tone.[1207] Instead of general conversation of a speculative turn there is preaching, with a view to practical effect, sudden, radical, and close at hand, preaching as shrill and thrilling as the blast of a trumpet. Revolutionary pamphlets appear in quick succession: "Qu'est-ce ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and took from the sheaf the two papers she had spoken of. Then while the gale roared without and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him from the book-case at his back, he followed his two grandsons on their first incursion into the domain of speculative theology. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... intuition who are only intuitive cannot have the patience to reach to first principles of things speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen in the world, and which are altogether ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... values, interpretation of these variations is speculative. They indicate that the pairs of beats are combined in higher groups of four; that the differences of mean variation in the first interval are functions of an alternating major and minor accentuation, the former occurring in the second and fourth, the latter in the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... know what endless pleasure it affords. I do not doubt that to the paternal spectator it appears monotonous, unproductive, unprogressive; but then he, looking upon it from the outside, and regarding the process with a speculative compassion, and not with sympathy, so cannot know the communion into which it brings you with the baby. I remember well enough what my father has written about it in "The Seaboard Parish;" but he is ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... this is very speculative. To return to the difficulty about Language and the consideration of those early times when words adequate to the expression of religious or magical ideas simply did not exist, it is clear that the only ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... has boldly defined and authoritatively arranged. The chapters which he has written on the more involved features of the subject, as sex and the relative influence of parents, should go far toward setting at rest the wildly speculative views cherished with reference to these questions. The striking originality in the treatment of the subject is no less conspicuous than the superb order and regular sequence of thought from the beginning to the end ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... strange world!" sighed Mrs. Sallie; and then, as this was a mood far too speculative for her, she recalled herself to practical life suddenly. "If we should have to adopt ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells |
