"Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... of earth and heaven (and all that is implied therewith) originated "in the beginning," the narrative introduces to our reverent contemplation the solemn conclave in heaven, when, in a serial order and on separate days, God declared, for the guidance of the ever potentially active forces, and for materials ever (as we know) seeking combination and resolution,[1] the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Rapt CONTEMPLATION, bring thy waking dreams To this umbrageous vale at noon-tide hour, While full of thee seems every bending flower, Whose petals tremble o'er the shadow'd streams! Give thou HONORA's image, when her beams, Youth, beauty, kindness, shone;—what time she wore That smile, of gentle, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... that the Countess lowered and degraded her. Her mother's calm contemplation of the lady was more distressing than if she had expressed the contempt Rose was certain, according to her young ideas, Lady ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not, like his father, pass his old age in the busy indolence of a country gentleman's life, nor could he, as some statesmen have done, soothe his declining years by harmless and amiable literary dilettanteism. His religion was not of that complexion that he could find in contemplation, and in preparation for another life, consolation for the trials of this one. At seventy-five years of age, his intellect was as vigorous and his energy as unexhausted as they had been twenty years before; his health was improved, for he had found in Dr. Schweninger ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... purpose?' he demanded. And I replied: 'That the contemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earth with the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have as much of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead when they are three ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the conquerors of Mookerheyde. Remember Haarlem, which, although defended with the heroism which ought to have inspired respect and consideration in the hearts of the conquerors, was treated with cruelties from the bare contemplation of which the mind shrinks back with horror; then let us think of Alkmaar which so bravely and successfully resisted, and imitate the example of its citizens with the hope and confidence that we shall be equally successful in driving back the ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... pray you, bear me hence From forth the noise and rumor of the field Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts In peace, and part this body and my soul With contemplation and devout desires. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... interruption, his reverence proceeded to say he had recently learned that it had been the intention of the judges on the circuit to recommend Angus Ray, the lamented departed, as a justice for the district. This step had been in contemplation since the direful tragedy which had recently been perpetrated in their midst, and of which the facts remained still unexplained, though circumstantial evidence pointed to a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to Leicester, he never failed to keep them instructed, to the best of his ability. It must be confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of contemplation at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one central idea, VENGEANCE. "A false woman deserves death." Even this simple Sicilian mariner said so. "Go and kill her, go and kill her!" These words reiterated themselves over and over again in my ears, till I found myself almost uttering them aloud. My soul sickened at the contemplation of the woman Teresa—the mistress of a wretched brigand whose name was fraught with horror—whose looks were terrific—she, even SHE could keep herself sacred from the profaning touch of other men's caresses—she was proud of being faithful to her wolf of the mountains, whose ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and scientific knowledge generally diffused augment human greed? Do they tend to promote avarice? Most certainly they do not. The man of science can see so much beyond—so much of beauty and design that even the drudgery of toil is forgotten in contemplation of the forces which ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the oldest Indians,' says Loskiel, 'it appears that when war was in contemplation, they used to admonish each other to hearken to the good, and not to evil spirits—the former always recommending peace.' They had formerly no notion of a devil, or evil being, in the Christian or Eastern sense of the term, but readily adopted, according ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... deed. Mr. Gahan, the English clergyman connected with the prison, was permitted to see her a short time before her murder. He gave her Holy Communion at ten o'clock on the night of October 11th. To him she declared she was happy in her contemplation of death; that she had no regret for what she had done; and that she was glad to die ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... her, he had left off wandering and had buried himself in an obscure Cornish village, where he gave himself up to his work. He was not quite so successful as he had been; on the other hand, he cared less than ever about success. It was the end of the century, a century that had been forced by the contemplation of such realities as plague and famine, and war and rumors of war, to forego and forget the melancholy art of its decadence. And from other causes Durant had fallen into a state of extreme dissatisfaction with himself. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the acclivitous glades of the woods.' In the contemplation of these sprightly animals the narrator becomes quite lively. 'This beautiful creature,' says he, 'afforded us the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white painted canvas was as faithful and luminous as that ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... composed 'Reponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros,' 'Polonia,' 'Columbia,' 'Pastorella e Cavaliere,' 'Jeunesse,' and many other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys, wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders; while my poor friend, whom I heeded but little, revealed to me with a childish loquacity the lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the contrast produced by this shattered intellect ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... said, tapping him at once on the shoulder, and arresting him from the abstracted contemplation of two stylish girls in pink, who were just turning the corner of the churchyard ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... once gentle, yet strong, he stood at this time by her side. No wonder was it, therefore, that, with his support, Elise went forward successfully; no wonder was it, therefore, that from the firm conduct of her husband, and from the contemplation of the good understanding which existed between the married pair, the whispered blame, which had already begun to get abroad at their expense, died of itself, like ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... eyes of the world. Reflect how poor and minute a segment in the vast circle of eternity existence is at the best. Its sorrow and its shame are but moments. Always in my brightest and youngest hours I have wrapt my heart in the contemplation of an august futurity. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scanty locks, with his long white beard, and his hands crossed upon his breast, the King of Naples looked like one of those aged anchorites who spend their lives in mortifying the flesh, and whose souls, absorbed in heavenly contemplation, glide insensibly from out their last ecstasy into eternal bliss. Some time he lay thus with closed eyes, putting up a silent prayer to God; then he bade them light the spacious room as for a great ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... question," answered the Athenian. "I shall be delighted to make you acquainted with the past history of this woman before you enter her house. So long as we were on the Nile, I would not intrude my tale upon you; that ancient river has a wonderful power of compelling to silence and quiet contemplation. Even my usually quick tongue was paralyzed like yours, when I took my first ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sometimes prepares even for peoples capable of development, but a self-incurred and in some measure historically necessary catastrophe. The very course of the last war proves this, whether we view it as a whole or in detail. When the establishment of the foreign rule was in contemplation, only single districts— mostly, moreover, German or half-German—offered energetic resistance. When the foreign rule was actually established, the attempts to shake it off were either undertaken altogether without judgment, or they were to an undue ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... man. But let me suggest, whether you, and all present, had not better now disperse. The powers that be will soon have their eyes upon us, and I would rather not excite their jealousy, at this time, on account of certain measures we have in contemplation, which I ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of blissful contemplation he said, with a little note of regret in his voice: "I wish you had let me know about that plankin'. I'd have liked to put a little writin' under it—something sarcastic, that they could sort of meditate on when they sit there ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... general love of dogma prevailed. The cross-legged tailor plying his needle on his raised platform; the cobbler in the pauses of beating the leather on his lap-stone; and the field-laborer as he rested on his spade; discussed with serene and satisfied assurance problems, before the contemplation of which, the ripest learning and highest order of mind had veiled their faces. Dissatisfaction with the condition of things spread more and more. All, in both Church and State, was considered out of joint. The former had not sufficiently cleansed herself from ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... be perceived that I have laid out a very extensive and laborious work. But this is the great business of our lives; and, indeed, the contemplation of the glorious truths revealed in the Bible will form the business of eternity; and even that will be too short to learn the length and breadth, and height and depth, of the ways of ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... who made both him and his object the frequent subjects of their coarse ridicule—the few who sympathized in his disappointment advised him to return, and refused further assistance in what they considered so hopeless a cause. At the same time he was informed that a murderous project was in contemplation against ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so effective as the contemplation of an historical example of such surpassing moral grandeur as that which we behold in Jesus. For this reason we may look to Jesus as the ideal of goodness presented to us in flesh and blood. Yet the assertion that Jesus' historical personality altogether corresponds ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... commander of the land forces and Hyder Ali. The latter was found to be much discontented with the scanty co-operation of the French general. Suffren, however, had won his favor, and he expressed a wish to see him on his return from the expedition then in contemplation; for, true to his accurate instinct, the commodore was bent upon again seeking out the English fleet, after beating which he intended to attack Negapatam. There was not in him any narrowness of professional prejudice; he kept always in view the necessity, both political ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation of some obscure passage in the Book of Changes, and caring least of all for the idol of their unlettered brethren, except in so far as it would enable them to make more extensive purchases of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... those who are watched and wish to escape that gives them a gay, electric awareness and sparkle in the presence of an opportunity for release. Mrs. Hand had this. Cowperwood, a past master in this matter of femininity, studied her hands, her hair, her eyes, her smile. After some contemplation he decided, other things being equal, that Mrs. Hand would do, and that he could be interested if she were very much interested in him. Her telling eyes and smiles, the heightened color of her cheeks indicated after ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... plunged back into the Club together, leaving Langham to the philosophic and patient contemplation of the village green, its geese, its donkeys, and its surrounding fringe of houses. He felt that quite indisputably life would have been better worth living if, like Robert, he could have taken a passionate ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... turning-point in history. Foch's simple piety had led him into what was almost an indiscretion; he had asked for the special prayers of the faithful, the request had spread to conventual schools in England, and by the 16th it was guessed by those who knew the fact that a special effort was in contemplation. But his great counter-attack owed its importance to what had gone before and what was to follow; and victory was due to more complex and comprehensive causes than the valour of the troops engaged ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... of her thoughts upon her knees, of the pain and obloquy through which, if the worst came, she knew she must pass, and of her trust that she would be able to bear them; speaking in such terms, so simply, so bravely, and with so lofty a contemplation, that he who listened, and had been but a week before a young man as other young men, grew as he listened to another stature, and thought for himself thoughts that no man can have and remain as he was, before the tongues of ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the sense of sublimity. It seems at times to be a fulfilment of the religious impulse. The religion which balks at work, stopping at prayer and contemplation, is a ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... said no more, but stood gazing at his picture, rapt in contemplation. Jaquith was silent, too, watching him, half in amusement, half—or more than half—in something not unlike reverence. Mr. Homer was not an imposing figure: his back was long, his legs were short, his hair and nose were distinctly absurd; but now, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... was habituated to the difficult mechanism of the concentration of human forces, drew from this rich storehouse a multitude of images admirable for their reality and freshness, and which supplied him with mental nutriment through all his periods of clear-sighted contemplation." ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... read this most unobjectionable letter through, folded it up again, and placed it in his pocket. Clasping his hands, then, behind his back, a favourite attitude of his when he was in deep contemplation, he paced to and fro in the garden for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... public opinion in upon itself and have excluded from public teaching and from the formation of thought every breath of fresh air from the outside world, until at last German public sentiment, through extreme and incessant self-contemplation, has lost the calmness and simplicity which were once the strength of the German character. No man can allot the responsibility for these things, spreading as they do over generations; but assuredly the responsibility does not rest with the half-dozen Ministers for ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... A contemplation of the circumstances attending these selfish recommendations leads one to wonder whether the Commissioners suffered from the lack of a sense of humour or an undue excess of it. In North and South America, for instance, we read that the slave-pens were ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... colleague," said Phellion, "I am, as you are, annoyed with my son for neglecting, as he does, the oldest friends of his family; and though the contemplation of those great luminous bodies suspended in space by the hand of the Creator presents, in my opinion, higher interest than it appears to have to your more eager brain, I think that Felix, by not coming here to-night, as he promised me he would, shows a want of propriety, about which, I ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... that region of spiritual ideas and spiritual persons where youth is perpetual, where ecstasy is no transient mood, but a permanent condition, and where dwell the awful forces which radiate immortal life into the will. In these men, contemplation, refusing to abide in the act by which it mounts above the world, reacts with tenfold force on the world. Using human ends simply as divine means, they wield war, statesmanship, literature, art, science, and philosophy with almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... its living expressiveness. Nor is his moral earnestness inferior. The end of life is indeed nominally pleasure, [76] "dux vitae dia voluptas;" but really it is a pure heart, "At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi." [77] He who first showed the way to this was the true deity. [78] The contemplation of eternal law will produce, not as the strict Epicureans say, indifference, [79] but resignation. [80] This happiness is in our own power, and neither gods nor men can take it away. The ties of family life are depicted with enthusiasm, and though the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... worship meet, Meet the worship for the place; Contemplation's best retreat, Shrine ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... immoderation. But not quite. Briefly, it works something like this. They have a limited number of monks—I suppose you'd call them—who spend their time at whatever moves them. At the arts, at scientific research, at religious contemplation—any religion will do—as students of anything and everything, and at the governing of Shangri-La. They make a point of enjoying the luxuries in moderation and aren't a severe drain on the rank and file citizens of ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Hume, 'led into the apprehension of invisible intelligent power by contemplation of the works of Nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts to one regular system.' Referring to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Lieutenant, I understood you were in Revonde, and took the advantage of your presence to put into effect a little plan which has been for some time in contemplation. I recollect having had the pleasure of meeting you not so long ago ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... and by a complete suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.[130] Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the desert-born, the Western Indian, forms an exhibit as little suited as the improved Arab horse to discussion and award at a session fraught with that "calm contemplation and poetic ease" which ought to mark the deliberations of the judges. How are the representatives of fifty-three tribes to be put through their paces? These poor fragments of the ancient population of the Union have, if we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... gardens of Eden, of such extreme beauty that the mere act of living and breathing amongst their enchanting scenes, becomes a positive and real enjoyment. The heart seems to leap with delight, and the soul to be elevated, by the contemplation of those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... breakfast-table every minute, to the silent distress of quiet little Major O'Neill, painted all sorts of handsome portraits, and agreeable landscapes, and cloud-clapped castles, each for her private contemplation, on the spreading canvas ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pass under the gloomy gates that lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent square is now as squalid and forsaken as the Place Royale of Paris, though it dates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so instinctively revolts at the contemplation of those orgies of priestly brutality which have made the very name of this place redolent with a fragrance of scorched Christians, that we naturally assign it an immemorial antiquity. But a glance at the booby face of Philip III. on his round-bellied charger in the centre of the square ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... plants, afford instances of provisions of these and similar kinds. But as I hope I may have succeeded in leading some of my readers to see what abundant subjects of interest may be found in the contemplation of even the appendages of plants, I shall now take my leave, only strongly advising all who wish to find a country life profitable and agreeable, to endeavour to supply themselves with some simple natural pursuit, such as gardening or botany, either of which may ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... from a book which had been kept that what he gave us had been drawn chiefly from the rich experiences of his own life and the Gospels, supplemented by the writings of his favourite teacher, Schleiermacher. By contemplation, the consideration of the universe with the soul rather than with the mind, we should enter into close relations with God and become conscious of our dependence upon him, and this consciousness Middendorf with his teacher ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the scientific discoveries shall look in theistic directions just to satisfy the imperious though unconscious demands of his own soul. Some scientists are theists just because they are bound to be so, for the close contemplation of the entire situation in the material realm does not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to believe that the nice adjustments of matter and force occur without the governance of a supervising intelligence. There are too many facts which suggest skill to ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... her a sharp, sudden glance, and then fell again to the contemplation of his knotted brown hands that seemed, like all his equipment, informed with ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... process thus illustrated, and in the second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the work itself. As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of which embodies a greater number of curious truths—or of truths at least by which I find contemplation more enlivened. The thing done and dismissed has ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of looking dead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on an anxious review, the flush of life reappears. It is verily on recognising that flush on a whole side of "The ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... and neglecting the true vein of sentiment which so abounds in my heart. All my pleasure is still in mournful contemplation, but I have learned that the feelings are most refined when freed from low cares and personal discomforts. I was going to cite a letter I wrote to my oldest friend, the baron of Hohenfels. It was sketched out first in verse, but in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... without, perhaps, consciously analysing it, the company, the glow, the atmosphere which they found. One might take it, after all, as an augur of the better social order, for the things which they satisfied here, though sensory, were not evil. No evil could come out of the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber. The worst effect of such a thing would be, perhaps, to stir up in the material-minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a similarly splendid basis. In the last analysis, that would scarcely be called the fault ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... a tolerably clear conscience, so I fancied. Should I be discovered? That was the question. For what I could tell I might be entombed beneath the cargo and be unable to get out till I was starved to death. The thought was too dreadful for contemplation, and I tried to put it from me. I remembered how I had escaped from the old mill and the way I got out without any one ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... moments of her husband's departure. She stood perfectly still for some time, as though listening to his departing footsteps. Then she crossed the room and pressed the bell twice. Once more she listened. The change in her expression was wonderful. She was expectant, eager, thrilled with the contemplation of some imminent happening. Her vigil came suddenly to an end, as the door was opened and closed again a little abruptly. It was no servant who had obeyed her summons; it was Wingate who entered, unannounced ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put it on—not without some diffident contemplation of the blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... infant heedlessness too soon exchanged for deep and anxious thought. The strange and romantic scheme of her mother, might confirm and perpetuate the painful view of life, which had intruded itself thus early on her contemplation. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... poor mother, love! Yes; that is just it. Only let me have the worst placed steadily before my eyes, and the remedies, if any, proposed, or if none, the state of the case acknowledged, and I can bear the contemplation of almost any thing. I think it is not patience, but courage, that your poor mother wants, my child. Uncertainty—any thing that is vague—the evils of which are undefined, seems to swell into such terrific magnitude. I am like a poor frightened child, Catherine; the glimmering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... consequently in most cases the plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should all be chess-players—there would be none left to do the business of the world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the cabmen would go trying ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... promontory and reed-bed on the borders of a bay where a fisherman's boat is rocking on the swell. It is possible that a philosophic idea is intended to be suggested—the passage of the soul through the pleasant delights of earth to the contemplation of the infinite.'—Laurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East (1908), pp. 75-6. The section of the roll which has been chosen for reproduction here has already been reproduced in S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... compliance with the commands of Louis himself, moreover, the bodyguard were under arms; and the unwonted movement in the immediate vicinity of his apartments was so evident, and withal so threatening in its aspect, that a rumour soon spread through the palace that some serious enterprise was in contemplation. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... have come to regard a certain class of their fellow creatures as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and excruciating agonies, and when their theology directs their minds with intense and realizing earnestness to the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an indifference to the suffering of those whom they deem the enemies of their God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and however unformed or incoherent were his literary projects, he possessed, in ample measure, even at this period, the great elements of future fame; viz. the habit of vigorous industry, and the power of sustained abstraction and contemplation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... souls beyond the dark tide, over the lonely and shadowy ways, and through the fathomless abyss, to the very portals of eternal rest. She had almost forgotten the object which brought her out that morning, so absorbed was she in the contemplation of the scene she had witnessed; until on rising to leave the church after the divine rites were over, her bundle fell to her feet. She snatched it up, ashamed of her carelessness, and, slipping through the crowd, emerged once more into the street. Picking her way through snow and ice, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... this matter Master Leigh saw a way to break faith with profit. He had no conscience, but he loved as all rogues love to turn the tables upon a superior rogue. He would play Master Lionel most finely, most poetically false; and he found a deal to chuckle over in the contemplation of it. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... support under those overwhelming afflictions by which the spirit is prostrated and subdued, when unaided by the influence of a purer faith and unsustained by its confidence in a diviner power. From the contemplation of the Buddhist all the awful and unending realities of a future life are withdrawn—his hopes and his fears are at once mean and circumscribed; the rewards held in prospect by his creed are insufficient to incite ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... that the pirates would put me to death. In the former, I ran a great risk of being hung because I was a pirate; or the boat might drift out to sea, and a lingering death would be our portion. Neither alternative afforded a pleasant subject of contemplation. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... garland, these fair hands unwearied ply. To please me at the crystal mirror, here I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she Before her glass abides the livelong day, Her radiant eyes beholding, charm'd no less, Than I with this delightful task. Her joy In contemplation, as in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... conceit as if she had been standing at the mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude against them was therefore more ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... a blue-mould fancier, who by looking too long at a Stilton cheese, was at last completely overcome, by his eye exciting his appetite, till it became quite ungovernable; and unconscious of every thing but the mity object of his contemplation, he began to pick out, in no small portions, the primest parts his eye could select from ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the field is bare, Some hermit lead me to his cell, Where Contemplation, lonely fair, With blessed content has chose ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... match are thine, Lord, from thy birth, of gifts divine, And now these spells of might shall cast Fresh radiance o'er the gifts thou hast." Then Rama duly touched the wave, Raised suppliant hands, bowed low his head, And took the spells the hermit gave, Whose soul on contemplation fed. From him whose might these gifts enhanced, A brighter beam of glory glanced: So shines in all his autumn blaze The Day-God of the thousand rays. The hermit's wants those youths supplied, As pupils use to holy guide. And then the night in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... some appearance of its ancient dignity, made the dwelling and all in its vicinity wear an aspect of constraint and austerity. Festivity, joy and pleasure, seemed foreign to the purposes of its construction; silence, solemnity and contemplation were adapted to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... house had had dealings with her owners, and that he must ascertain the fate of her wares. His good lady remained in charge of the mysterious little waif, over whom her tender heart yearned more and more, while her little boy hovered about in serene contemplation of the treasure he thought he had recovered. To him the babe seemed really his little sister; to his mother, if she sometimes awakened pangs of keen regret, yet she filled up much of the dreary void of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. She felt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It was as if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been an ambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance, protection, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of all the knowledge that he had, and the constant contemplation of the cold facts of the case, it seemed to him, as on a dozen occasions before since his lapse of memory, as if life were not so real as it seemed. Somewhere, down in the very fibre of him, was an assumption that England and Catholicism were irreconcilable things—that the domination ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... proceedings as to their public affairs, and that Mr. Apes, as far as we know, has acted honest and uprightly; and that he has done his duty to his Indian brethren, as far as he could consistently. And that he has duly made known his accounts, and appropriated the monies that was in contemplation for the Indian Meeting-house, for the Pequod tribe; and we also certify that said monies shall be ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... had been hitherto either plunged in deep contemplation or in an incipient slumber, "insert, I say, these very words: 'And with the heat of the morning, and anxiety of so rapid a march, with a numerous enemy in his rear, the Emperor was so thirsty, as never in his life to think ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... careful pre-arrangement of proportions and interdependencies. But to carry beyond this point the analogy between the two arts would be fantastic and unhelpful. The one exists in space, the other in time. The one seeks to beget in the spectator a state of placid, though it may be of aspiring, contemplation; the other, a state of more or less acute tension. The resemblances between music and architecture are, as is well known, much more extensive and illuminating. It might not be wholly fanciful to call music a sort of middle term between ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... speaking and drew back a few steps to judge of the effect of his picture, becoming absorbed in contemplation for a moment, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or a pair of stays, in colour a dead green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to have thought, high as the employment was, that it was not good, either for the heart or mind of man, to be always away from that intercourse with humanity and its affairs which is calculated to awaken and sustain the sympathies of life; and therefore turned to the contemplation of Him who was meek and lowly. And no countenance has been afforded to monks and hermits who retired from the world, though it even was to spend their lives in meditation and prayer; for Heaven had warned man, at an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her own imperfect righteousness. This view of Jesus was sweet and precious. He had become, not the Savior of the world, but her own Savior; he had died, not merely for the sins of the race, but for her sins; and in this sacred contemplation her soul found sweet relief. The torturing load of fears was gone; one sight of Christ had changed the heart and taken away its grief and sin. Like a liberated slave she rejoiced in perfect freedom, and her happy soul went out in joyful thanks to Him ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... gullible audience. Sir Francis made no direct allusion throughout the week-end, but, as they sat over their wine on the first night, he enquired spasmodically how old Eric was, how much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures he had in contemplation. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... beauty, opening their souls to a confessor, revealing all their secret emotions, their hopes, their disappointments, their fears, their failings, submitting to his questions, and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest, and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check—but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... do his contemplating, and then get up and do his work, he would be in a better condition; he would be living a more normal and satisfactory life. If we in the Occident would take more time from the rush and activity of life for contemplation, for meditation, for idealization, for becoming acquainted with our real selves, and then go about our work manifesting the powers of our real selves, we would be far better off, because we would be living a more natural, a more normal life. ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes are more bright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to sterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners acquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of innumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but against the good earth; in a silent and powerful way ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... agreeable, or not, to his own experience,—a better guide, in all probability, than mere philosophy. The writer has his doubts upon the subject. But let every one judge for himself. For his part, he is convinced that frequent contemplation of death, though it certainly aids the mind in reasoning about it, does not lessen the apprehension of it, but the reverse: so that, did not some peculiar principle come to his aid, and seem indeed to acquire ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was pulled in a skiff as close to the fall as possible, and in short performed duly all the observances that have been suggested and practised by curiosity or idleness; but in all these I found no sensation equal to a long quiet contemplation of the mass entire, not as viewed from the balconies of the hotel, but from some rocky point or wooded shade, where house and fence and man and all his petty doings were shut out, and the eye left calmly to gaze upon the awful scene, and the rapt mind to ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... who had made a favorable record as comptroller of the currency. Thus only two of Mr. Lincoln's original cabinet, Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles, were in office at the date of his second inauguration; and still another change was in contemplation. Mr. Usher of Indiana, who had for some time discharged the duties of Secretary of the Interior, desiring, as he said, to relieve the President from any possible embarrassment which might arise from the fact that two of his cabinet were from the same State, sent in his resignation, which Mr. Lincoln ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and smell, and touch, and taste, that wafers and wine were actually the flesh and blood of a man that was crucified, with nails driven through his feet and hands, many hundred years ago. Then, rising into the contemplation of the divinity of the Saviour, he trampled under the feet of his eloquence a belief so contrary to the instincts and senses with which Infinite Wisdom has gifted his creatures; and bursting into ecstasy at ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and conclude the sum of my conviction in this one sentence. Revealed religion (and I know of no religion not revealed) is in its highest contemplation the unity, that is, the identity or co-inherence, of subjective and objective. It is in itself, and irrelatively at once inward life and truth, and outward fact and luminary. But as all power manifests itself in the harmony ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching; in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretchedness and unworthiness, and adores her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the contemplation appeared to cheer him, for his look was brighter, and his voice had the old joyous ring in it when he spoke again. It was after a few minutes' silence deferentially observed by Hamilton, who seemed to follow and to respect the course of his ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Never have I seen such a walking work of art. He was wont to say that had he been owned and his body cast up upon some savage land, the natives might have learned the whole of the blessed gospel from a contemplation of his carcass. Yet with sorrow I must say that the seaman's religion appeared to have all worked into his skin, so that very little was left for inner use. It had broken out upon the surface, like the spotted fever, but his system was clear of it elsewhere. He could swear in eleven languages ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dear sister, to know it gives you such great joy to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord," he replied. "Truly it is a blessed privilege to be able to lose one's self in the contemplation of holy things, and, forgetting the cares of this present life, rejoice in the hope of heaven, and be as one dead to every ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my face shoved ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... be saved, have fled from the world to that mountain, which is all full of saintly hermits who are serving the Lord, busy in diverse pursuits with most vivacious expressions. Some, reading and praying, are shown all intent on contemplation, and others, labouring in order to gain their livelihood, are exercising themselves in various forms of action. There is seen here among others a hermit who is milking a goat, who could not be more active or more lifelike in appearance than he is. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... his hands were sore, but he forgot everything in the contemplation of the magnificent fish he had captured. For as it lay there now, feebly opening and closing its gills, it was wonderfully like an ordinary gold-fish of enormous size, the orange-and-gold scale armour in which it was clad being so gorgeous that, in spite of his triumph in the capture, ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,—loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation Hercules;—and the question is, whether there is anything left for me, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... has put on "individuation" that his worshippers may escape from it. Mr. Wells's book teems with expressions—I have given many examples of them—which are wholly inapplicable to any metaphor, however galvanized into a semblance of life by ecstatic contemplation in the devotional mind. For example, when we are told that it is doubtful whether "God knows all, or much more than we do, about the ultimate Being," the mere assertion of a doubt implies the possibility of knowledge of a quite different order from any that exists ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he was too preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment Caroline Spencer came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little tray. I noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick, vaguely appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... interesting, Inspector," he declared, "even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an 'astral bell' such as we sometimes hear of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... quarter of a mile, and wisely, I think, abandoned it. To understand all its terrors, the place must be seen. Once slip, and you are gone for ever, past all human aid: the death is too frightful for contemplation.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... in the most humble objects, makes all around us resplendent and, if we refuse to see it, we are blinded by an unjust prejudice, or our minds are not open to the faculty of contemplation. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... unemployed, to come to the State for work; if in poverty, to come to the State for relief; if ignorant, to come to the State for education: but it strenuously resists the exercise by the State of its reciprocal claim on the service of the individual. It is engrossed by the contemplation of the rights of the individual and the duties of the State; it ignores the rights of the State and ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... did not run out in voice or indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival managed with the silence of contemplation. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... and then he endeavoured to reflect, like one who had a grave business in contemplation. The Santa Cruz confused his brain, but the Indian never entirely lost his presence of mind; or never, at least, so long as he could either ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it by. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which was hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for its mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one follows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint- Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The theology of the school was still less important, for the Victorians contented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as little for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... is like a bit of the Mediterranean. It takes the greys of the rain-days with a beauty and power of its own, and the mornings flash upon it. I call it the Other Shore, a structure of idealism forming upon it from much contemplation at the desk. The young people turn to it ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... It would seem that there was no faith, either in the angels, or in man, in their original state. For Hugh of S. Victor says in his Sentences (De Sacram. i, 10) that "man cannot see God or things that are in God, because he closes his eyes to contemplation." Now the angels, in their original state, before they were either confirmed in grace, or had fallen from it, had their eyes opened to contemplation, since "they saw things in the Word," according ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fakeer, and thinks the beatitude of life lies in contemplation. Men fret and fuss and fume, and are for ever in haste; the toad ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at the Bar in course of his speech began to use a simile of "the eagle soaring high above the mists of the earth, winning its daring flight against a midday sun till the contemplation becomes too dazzling for humanity, and mortal eyes gaze after it in vain." Here the orator was noticed to falter and lose the thread of his speech, and sat down after some vain attempts to regain it; the judge remarking: "The next time, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton |
