"Philosopher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left of Elixir let a yell out of it like a foghorn and bolted. It returned twenty-four hours later with its tail between its legs, a convinced pacifist. The disgusted O'Brien at once changed its name to Bertrand Russell, after some philosopher who palliates German methods of warfare, and gave it to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... name of Germany." And suppose it were even a small matter if they had lost only the great name of Germany, that the epoch of Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven had covered with glory. But with it they have vilified as well the noble role of the philosopher, of the historian, of the savant, and of the artist. In truth they have betrayed their own gods, and the professions to which they belong can no longer be honored by them—so far as the question of conscience goes, at least. And as for the sacred ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... bricklayers. They walk down the street side by side on their way to their work. From the time that the hour strikes for them to commence operations until the time comes to lay aside their trowels for the day, they are pretty much alike. The one may be a philosopher and the other a scoundrel; but these traits will have small opportunity of betraying themselves as they chip away at the bricks in their hands, and ply their busy tasks. The intellectual proclivities ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... person. Indeed, the distinction has found a recognition everywhere among men, from the ignorant savage, whose instincts and imagination shadow forth a dim world in which the impalpable images of the departed dwell, to the philosopher of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... some lectures of Galileo, because they were on a comet which had just made its appearance, the philosopher was bold enough to rebuke them for showing such a childish desire to hear him on this particular subject, when they were in the habit of neglecting the marvels of creation which daily presented themselves to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... served no trifling apprenticeship. Natural genius, experience of life, culture, and great companionship had joined to make her what she was, a philosopher both natural and developed; and, what is more rare, a philosopher with a sense of humour and a perception of the dramatic. Thus when her chance came she was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... supreme, forms us at our birth to fill different spheres; and it is not every mind which is composed of materials fit to make a philosopher. If your mind is created to soar to those heights which are attained by the speculations of learned men, mine is fitted, sister, to take a meaner flight and to centre its weakness on the petty cares of the world. Let us not interfere with the ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... of the functions of the mind," says Patanjali. The functions of the mind must be suppressed, and in order that we may be able to follow out really what this means, we must go more closely into what the Indian philosopher means by ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... her husband's hands and doubled his usefulness abroad, he generally found at home a sunny philosopher who laughed him out of half ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... our sins of commission, appears in the shape of a terrible offence when the occasion for continuing it draws to a close. The pleasant narrator in the first person is the happy bubbling fool, not the philosopher who has come to know himself and his relations toward the universe. The words of this last are one to twenty; his mind is bent upon the causes of events rather than their progress. As you see me on the page ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poet Southey was accessible, and a frequent visitor was John Wilson, later widely known as the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine. Nor was De Quincey idle; his habits of study were confirmed; indeed, he was already a philosopher at twenty-four. These were years of hard reading and industrious thought, wherein he accumulated much of that metaphysical wisdom which was afterward to win ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years lying in ruins. These addresses of the new Pericles were so far effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned formally renounced the Roman rule. So the ex-philosopher became a despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced an infamous and bloody rule; and the Piraeeus was converted into a Pontic harbour. As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a footing on the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... author of those books which roused intolerant priests and corrupt magistrates, consistories and parliaments, monarchs and philosophers, the people and their oppressors,—that he was the Archimedes that thus moved the world,—would not have been known had he not employed another philosopher, by the name of Naigeon, to carry his manuscripts to Amsterdam, and to direct their printing by Marc-Michel Rey. It was Naigeon who carried the manuscript of the LETTERS TO EUGENIA to Holland, together with a number of others by the same ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... of Florence was entering on the Golden Age of its history toward the end of the fifteenth century. Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, was head of the house of Medici, and first citizen of the proud Republic. He was himself an artist, a poet, and a philosopher; he loved the beautiful things of life, and had gathered about him a little ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... Arabs that no harm would be done him, the captured man became cheerful and communicative. Of course there are different sorts of Arabs, as there are of English or Frenchmen, and this one was a philosopher who saw no particular merit in struggling against the inevitable, and was inclined to make himself as comfortable as circumstances permitted. Indeed, he and his captor would have found much in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of Voltaire to the Christian dispensation has been compared to the enmity rather of a rival than of a philosopher. He is thought to have wished its overthrow, not so much because he entertained any solid objections to its sublime theories, or had real doubts as to the miracles by which it is attested; as because his vanity led him to think, that if he ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... and understand each other. Science, the partizan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... Philosopher as he was, Sidney arranges his thoughts in the loose order of the poet or the orator. It may be well, therefore, to give a brief sketch of his argument; and to do so without much regard to the arrangement of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... "You philosopher, you were right after all, you see. There is One who takes thought for two-legged featherless animals too. If I had known,—'Knock and it shall be opened unto you:' I should long have knocked at the door and cried, 'O Lord, let ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... outrage," said Francis Charles. "Thompson, you're beastly sober. I appeal to your better self. I am a philosopher. Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispassionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity. Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... i. 305) properly the substance which transmutes metals, the "philosopher's stone" which, by the by, is not a stone; and comes from {Greek letters}, a fluid, a wet drug, as opposed to Iksir (Al-) {Greek letters} a dry drug. Those who care to see how it is still studied will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... when they are performing acts of folly, murdering Socrates, or pelting Aristides with holy oyster-shells—all for Virtue's sake; and a "History of Dulness in all Ages of the World," is a book which a philosopher would surely be hanged, but as ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the "law and the prophets"[1121] will appeal to all students of human nature. It is a common tendency of man to reach after, or at least to inquire after and marvel about, the superlative. Who is the greatest poet, philosopher, scientist, preacher or statesman? Who stands first and foremost in the community, the nation, or even, as the apostles in their aspiring ignorance asked, in the kingdom of heaven? Which mountain overtops all the rest? Which river is the longest or the largest? Such queries are ever current. The ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... elementary instruction, renders it useful and necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in the same direction. Not yet, has "the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew" ceased to be the "incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium of the orthodox;" not yet, has "the zeal of the Bibliolater" ceased from troubling; not yet, are the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest from their fruitless toil "to harmonise impossibilities," and "to force the generous new wine of science into ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the south, came Palestine, the Land of Lands to the Christian, the country which even the philosopher must acknowledge to have had a greater influence on the world's history than any other tract which can be brought under a single ethnic designation. Palestine—etymologically the country of the Philistines—was somewhat unfortunately ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... in his easy chair one night some three weeks later, gravely engaged in rolling a cigarette. His arms were practically well, the wounds being in the fleshy parts. He was a philosopher and was disposed to take things easy, which accounted for his being in his official position for fifteen years. A gentleman at the core, he was well educated and had visited a goodly portion of the world. A book of Horace lay open ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... Philosopher. Whilst she yet lives, were stars decay'd, Their light by hers relief might find; But Death will lead her to a shade Where Love is cold and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... must penetrate the ponderous vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his system. Unless you get at that you remain forever ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... River To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. They all saw a strange light in my eye. And by and by, when I talked, they discovered What had come in my mind. Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate The subject, (I taking the negative): "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World." And he won the debate by saying at last, "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt Please answer the question of ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... and a special case. They have not the wide scope and dogmatic air and literary precision of the corresponding propositions in Rousseau. We find in Locke none of those concise phrases which make fanatics. But the essential doctrine is there. The philosopher of the Revolution of 1688 probably carried its principles further than most of those who helped in the Revolution had any intention to carry them, when he said that "the legislature being only a fiduciary ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... has so clearly stated the two forms of reasoning, by which we still explain in our days the differences of colour and features among neighbouring nations, as Tacitus. He makes a just distinction between the influence of climate, and hereditary dispositions; and, like a philosopher persuaded of our profound ignorance of the origin of things, he leaves the question undecided. "Habitus corporum varii; atque ex eo argumenta, seu durante originis vi, seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... me the book. Judge of my surprise when I found it was a volume of Leibnitz, a philosopher then very much the rage,—because one might talk of him very safely, without having read him.* Despite of my surprise, I could not help smiling when my eye turned from the book to the student. It is impossible to conceive ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of these would have attracted attention anywhere by his gigantic size. He was dressed completely in buckskin, save for the raccoon skin cap that crowned his thick black hair. The rider on his right hand was long and thin with the calm countenance of a philosopher, and the one on his left was ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was harbored against William III., and which found expression in the works even of as free-minded a writer as La Bruyere. It is during the period of the fiercest struggle between Louis XIV. and William III. that Bossuet carried on with the German philosopher Leibnitz a series of negotiations, the object of which was the return to Catholicism of Protestant Germany. We need hardly state that the negotiations ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... a tolerably correct notion as to the way in which the heavenly spheres were formed from an earlier condition of matter. This majestic conception was first advanced, in modern times at least, by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It was developed by the French astronomer Laplace, and is often known by his name. The essence of this view rests upon the fact previously noted that in the realm of the fixed stars there are many faintly shining aggregations of matter which are ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... binoculars who pays frequent and prolonged visits to the Keeling Islands. It need scarcely be said that his name is Verkimier. There is no accounting for the tastes of human beings. Notwithstanding all his escapes and experiences, that indomitable man of science still ranges, like a mad philosopher, far and wide over the archipelago in pursuit of "booterflies ant ozer specimens of zee insect vorld." It is observed, however, even by the most obtuse among his friends, that whereas in former times the professor's ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... great philosopher, but he only spoke the truth. They met Sandy coming to ask how the family had fared; he reported more favourably of the stock-yard than Paul had expected. A portion of the roof of some of the buildings had been blown off; but the strong ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... get up high somewhere and look down on every one else; every one else looks so small that it's comforting. The true philosopher has no desire; he sits down and views the world as if he were not a part of it. Perhaps it is best so. Yes, I would like four millions and a principality.... Heigho! how bracing the air is, and what a night for a ride! I've a mind to exercise Madame's horse. A long lone ride on the opposite ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... better end this message on the state of the Union than by repeating the words of a wise philosopher at whose feet I sat ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... be thought for an instant that the slight, and sometimes scornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes which a novelist of our own day would have analyzed with the airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gossip, indicates any absence in his heart of sympathy with the great and sacred elements of personal happiness. An era like ours, which has with diligence and ostentation swept its heart clear of all the passions once ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that the atheistic Lucretius has given us a most glowing description of the Olympian mansions; but perhaps the Olympus of the Epicurean poet and philosopher is somewhat higher up and more sublimated and etherealized than the Olympus of Homer and of the popular faith. In a flash of poetic inspiration, he says, "The walls of the universe are cloven. I see through the void inane. The splendor (numen) of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the contrary, so low were their capacities, they were destined by nature to obey, and to live in a state of perpetual drudgery and subjugation."[022] Conformable with this opinion was the treatment, which was accordingly prescribed to a barbarian. The philosopher Aristotle himself, in the advice which he gave to his pupil Alexander, before he went upon his Asiatick expedition, intreated him to "use the Greeks, as it became a general, but the barbarians, as it became a master; ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... fairly plentiful, though it is not very easily come by. For the most part it needs to be hunted up or fished up—those accustomed to the work will appreciate the difference between the two processes—from a considerable variety of contemporary documents. Completed biography of the poet-philosopher there is none, as has been said, in existence; and the one volume of the unfinished Life left us by Mr. Gillman—a name never to be mentioned with disrespect, however difficult it may sometimes be to avoid doing so, by any one who honours the name and genius ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... canvas the essence, as it were, or great leading features of the subject. I am now more particularly speaking of landscape scenery. In all countries and climates there are peculiarities of effect, which, however interesting to the traveller, or a source of investigation to the philosopher or man of science, yet are necessarily excluded from the recording pencil of the artist; his appeal is to mankind at large, not to the isolated few who observe but one side of the subject. The true artist looks upon nature as the chameleon, capable of giving out any variety, and yet all equally true; ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... comparison of Demonax and Johnson, there does not seem to be a great deal of similarity between them, this Dedication is a just compliment from the general character given by Lucian of the ancient Sage, '[Greek: ariston on oida ego philosophon genomenon], the best philosopher whom I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... conversation, his works with meekness of wisdom. This meekness of wisdom Elder Knowles preeminently possessed. The psalmist says, concerning such: "The meek shall inherit the land. And shall delight themselves in abundance of peace. Strike, said Diogenes, to his instructor, Antichenes, the philosopher; but you will find no staff so hard that it will drive me away from your school. I love you, and I have made up my mind to suffer anything for the sake of learning." This yearning desire on the part of the true elder after fitness for his office, ought to be willing to bear reproach for the sake ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... listened to the tipsy philosopher without understanding one word of his rigmarole; only Monsieur Tudesco struck him as a strange and alarming personage, and taller by a hundred feet than anybody he had ever ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... born in 1483. He was a learned scholar, a physician, and a philosopher. He was called "the great jester of France," by Lord Bacon. Many buffooneries are ascribed to him unjustly, and he was a greater man than certain modern writers make him ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... this century when dynasties fail like autumn leaves, and it takes much less than thirty years to destroy the giants of power; when the exile of to-day repeats to the exile of the morrow the motto of the churchyard: Hodie mihi, eras tibi? What would this Christian philosopher say at a time when royal and imperial palaces have been like caravansaries through which sovereigns have passed like travellers, when their brief resting-places have been consumed by the blaze of petroleum and are now but a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... living, and died abruptly in New York—it was supposed by his own hand. His last words—a quite unique contribution to the literature of last words—were, "I have had my cake, and ate it," which showed that the colonel within his own modest limitations was a philosopher. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Aha! Monsieur Philosopher, you come just in time with your philosophy. Come, make a little peace among ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... they are built, derive validity from the hope of interest. It is impossible to tell what kind and degree of advantages, certain sanguine specialists anticipated from the Terra Australis. Excepting the article of the prolongation of life ad infinitum, it is questionable, if the philosopher's stone, when discovered, could have accomplished more; and even with respect to that, it might have been imagined, that the soil and climate would so materially differ from any other before known, as to yield some sovereign elixir or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... himself that he is very happy if he can obtain what he then most desires. Is not now clearly enough shown to thee the form of the false goods, that is, then, possessions, dignity, and power, and glory, and pleasure? Concerning pleasure Epicurus the philosopher said, when he inquired concerning all those other goods which we before mentioned; then said he that pleasure was the highest good, because all the other goods which we before mentioned gratify the mind and delight it, but pleasure ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the youngster, who was somewhat of a philosopher. "It is wonderful how easy it is to knock a thing to pieces. It must have taken some years to have put ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... our Maiden Meditation? Doth she essay to find the philosopher's stone?—or be her thoughts of the true knight that is to bend low at her feet, and whisper unto her some day that he loveth none save her? I would give a broad shilling for the first letter ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... was with him when he spoke his last words. Dr. Manly asked the dying man, and Dr. Manly was a Christian, if he did not wish to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and the dying philosopher answered: "I have no wish to believe on that subject." Amasa Woodsworth sat up with Thomas Paine the night before his death. In 1839 Gilbert Vale, hearing that Woodsworth was living in or near Boston, visited ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... imagination such quickening suggestion was vividly apparent. We knew our world; usually it seemed to us the only one, even when we looked at the stars. But at least one other had been created, and before us appeared its visible sign,—my lord the elephant! There he was, swaying along, conscious philosopher, conscious might, yet holding his omniscience in the background, and keeping a wary eye out for the peanuts with which we simple country souls had not provided ourselves. There was one curious thing about it all. We had seen the circus ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... great expenses in glasses (beside that they breed much strife toward such as have the charge of them) are worst of all bestowed in mine opinion, because their pieces do turn unto no profit. If the philosopher's stone were once found, and one part hereof mixed with forty of molten glass, it would induce such a metallical toughness thereunto that a fall should nothing hurt it in such manner; yet it might peradventure bunch or batter it; nevertheless that inconvenience were quickly to be ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... now conversing together. For after suffering misfortunes and wrongs beyond an appropriate portion, they have now reached that period of existence when a tranquil and contemplative future is assured to them. In this manner is the sage and matured utterance of the inspired philosopher Nien-tsu again proved: that the life of every person is largely composed of two varieties of circumstances which together build up his existence—the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... observes on this subject: "The relation of the animal man to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual man, resembles that of a crystal slumbering in its native quarry to the same crystal mounted in the polarizing apparatus of the philosopher. The difference is not in physical nature, but in investing that nature with a new and higher application. Its continuity with the material world remains the same, but a new relation is developed in it, and it claims kindred with ethereal ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this, and other accounts of my travels, to the world; wherein I have been ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... about 886, that we first find the effigy of the Virgin on the coins of the Greek empire. On a gold coin of Leo VI., the Philosopher, she stands veiled, and draped, with a noble head, no glory, and the arms outspread, just as she appears in the old mosaics. On a coin of Romanus the Younger, she crowns the emperor, having herself the nimbus; she is draped and veiled. On a coin of Nicephorus Phocus (who had great pretensions ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... gives a fusty odor to the parlor air and provides a wet-sheet pack for the occupant of the "spare bed." The only way of wholly eradicating this evil, is the adoption of the suggestion of the sanitary philosopher who places the kitchen at the top of ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... write to postmasters, my letter is long enough. Every body's head but mine is full of elections. I had the satisfaction at Gloucester, where George Selwyn is canvassing, of reflecting on my own wisdom. "Suave mari maggno turbantibus aequora ventis," etc. I am certainly the greatest philosopher in the world, without ever having thought of being so: always employed, and never busy;' eager about trifles, and indifferent to every thing serious. Well, if it is not philosophy, it is at least content. I am as pleased here with my own nutshell, as any monarch you have seen ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... philosopher ever did that. But they have kept pigs. Here is Matthew Arnold writing to his mother about Literature and Dogma and poems and—"The two pigs are grown very large and handsome, and Peter Wood advises us to fatten them ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... so fit a tenement and so fitly expressed itself in motions of such exquisite grace, in melody so sweet! Did it go out like the glow-worm's lamp, the life and sweetness of the flower? Was its destiny not like that of the soul, specialized in a different direction, of the saint or poet or philosopher! Alas, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... he said to Raisky. "It is time for you to go to bed, philosopher," he said to Leonti. "Don't sit up at nights. You have already got a yellow patch in your face, and your ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Plato, a philosopher with the soul of a poet, died in the year 347 before Christ. Plutarch was writing at the close of the first century after Christ, and in his parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans, the most famous of his many writings, he took occasion ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the motives of the greatest part of mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are incited: the world, in the eye of a philosopher, may be said to be a large madhouse." "It is true," answered Harley, "the passions of men are temporary madnesses; and sometimes very fatal ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... he loved to comprehend—to comprehend as the gamester loves to game, the miser to accumulate money, the ambitious to obtain position—there was within him that appetite, that taste, that mania for ideas which makes the scholar and the philosopher. But a philosopher united by a caprice of nature to an artist, and by that of fortune and of education to a worldly man and a traveller. The abstract speculations of the metaphysician would not have sufficed for him, nor would the continuous and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... appeared to me, a sudden and continued eruption of sulphuric effluvia from the volcano; or else, by some unusually heavy gale of wind or hurricane, the trees had been drenched with salt water to their roots. One or the other of these causes must have produced the effect. The philosopher, or ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... vice versa, he is constantly out of focus. The perfect reviewer would be (and the only reviewer whose reviews are worth reading is he who more or less approximates to this ideal) the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic philosopher who is "second best in everything," who has enough special knowledge not to miss merits or defects, and enough general knowledge to estimate the particular subject at, and not above, its relative value to the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... eventful period between the death of the last Henry, and the succession of his bigoted and intolerant daughter Mary, presents a wide and fertile field for the inquiring mind both of the historian and philosopher. The interest attached to the memory of the beauteous but unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, renders the slightest event of her life acceptable to every lover of English history; while her youth and intellectual acquirements, her brief reign of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... misunderstood or misstated, and illustrations selected without discrimination or applicability. Theories do sometimes conduce to the discovery of truth, but are often obstructive; occupy the mind, like theological controversy, without advancing science; and are viewed with the same aversion by the philosopher that the political abstractions tendered to the multitude by the demagogue are viewed by the ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... Provencal nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and there were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more than a whisper had gone abroad. Of being a student of alchemy, a "philosopher"—that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's stone, which was to effect the transmutation of metals—he made no secret. But if you taxed him with demoniacal practices he would deny it, yet in a way that carried ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... scolded and called 'cross!' It's no wonder we are bald. You'd be bald yourself. It's trouble and worry that keep us bald until we can begin to take care of ourselves; I had more hair than this at first, but it fell off, as well it might. No philosopher ever thought ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Guilielmus Stephanides a moonke of Canturburie, who wrote much in the praise of archbishop Becket. Beside these, we find one Richard, that was an abbat of the order Premonstratensis, Richard Diuisiensis, Nicholas Walkington, Robert de Bello Foco, an excellent philosopher, &c. See Bale ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... man of science or a philosopher makes a discovery that'll be a benefit to the world"—she looked at him suddenly, earnest, appealing—"he gives it freely. And he gets honor and fame. Why shouldn't you do that, John?" She had ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden jar is charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical virtue in the man can be discharged ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... smiling softly, while she was fitted with gaiters. Until now evidently gaiters had not been on his list, but he had taken steps to remedy this; and, though his commission on a pair of sixty-cent gaiters could not have been very large yet, as some philosopher has so truly said, every little bit added to what you have makes just a modicum more. Indeed, the guide never overlooks the smallest bet. His whole mentality is focused on getting you inside a shop. Once you are there, he stations himself close behind you, reenforcing the combined ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... very naturally. A boy of five met two of his older companions at the school door. They said sadly and solemnly: "We have just seen a dead man!" "Well," said the little philosopher, "that's all right. We've all got to die when ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... never thought of it! What does it mean? Why, that every reasoning man in the country, whatever his social position, reads the same news, the same debates, the same arguments as the statesman, the scholar, the philosopher, the preacher, or the man of science. He bases his opinions on the same reasoning and on the same information as the Leader of the House of Commons, as my Lord Chancellor, as my Lord Archbishop himself. Formerly the working man read nothing, and he knew nothing, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Parnasset—the sweetest evening I remember. I recollect well that I thought, if one could write poetry anywhere in the world, it would be at Soroe, amidst those charming, peaceful scenes, where nature reigns in all her beauty. Afterwards we visited by moonlight the 'Philosopher's Walk,' as it was called—the beautiful, lonely path by the lake and the moor that leads towards the highway to Krebsehuset. Emil remained to supper with us, and my father and mother thought he had ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... falling in love with a man unless he falls in love with her," said Mr. Manley, in the tone of a philosopher. "Besides, women don't fall in love with men who are so feeble from illness as the Colonel seems to be. How can there be the attraction? She might, of course, want to mother him very keenly. But that's quite a different thing." He paused, then added in a tone of some anxiety: "I say, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... lord's hall there were plenty of sedentary games, and amongst these pre-eminently stands the noble pastime of chess. It is very ancient, and is supposed to have been invented by Xerxes, a philosopher in the court of Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon. It was well known in England before the Conquest, and Canute was very fond of the chessboard. King John was so engrossed in this game that when some messengers ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... across his breastplate and its star on his black velvet mantle—and made a brief speech of exhortation. The young princes Charles and James, his sons, both of them afterwards kings of England, were present at Edgehill, while the philosopher Hervey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was also in attendance, and we are told was found in the heat of the battle sitting snugly under a hedge reading a ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... over the details of Von Kempelen's confession (as far as it went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. That he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. The opinions of Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but he is by no means infallible; and what he says of bismuth, in his report to the Academy, must be taken cum ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... think that he has confined his mysticism to the book above named. In conversation he is very clear, and by no means above the small practical things of the world. He would, I fancy, know as well what interest he ought to receive for his money as though he were no philosopher, and I am inclined to think that if he held land he would make his hay while the sun shone, as might any common farmer. Before I had met Mr. Emerson, when my idea of him was formed simply on the "Representative Men," I should have thought that ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... think," says the philosopher divine, "Therefore I am." Sir, here's a surer sign: We know we live, for with our every breath We feel the fear and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... he has put runners on it, and is engaged in the pleasurable pastime of taking the ladies tobogganing down the Alps?" persisted the philosopher. ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Do you know: What you appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want to be? What would overcome your present and future difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... accommodate myself. Angria is my friend; but there are moments, look you, when the bonds of our friendship are put to a heavy strain. At those moments Angria is perhaps most himself, and I, perhaps, am most myself; which might prove to a philosopher that there is a radical antagonism between the oriental and the occidental character. Since my picture of the brighter side has failed to impress you, I propose to show you the other side—such is the sincerity of my desire for your welfare. And 'tis no empty picture—inanis ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... N. scholar, connoisseur, savant, pundit, schoolman^, professor, graduate, wrangler; academician, academist^; master of arts, doctor, licentitate, gownsman; philosopher, master of math; scientist, clerk; sophist, sophister^; linguist; glossolinguist, philologist; philologer^; lexicographer, glossographer; grammarian; litterateur [Fr.], literati, dilettanti, illuminati, cogniscenti [It]; fellow, Hebraist, lexicologist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "That is not my affair; settle that with the geologist, and when you have come to an agreement among yourselves I will adopt your conclusion." We take our time from the geologists and physicists; and it is monstrous that, having taken our time from the physical philosopher's clock, the physical philosopher should turn round upon us, and say we are too fast or too slow. What we desire to know is, is it a fact that evolution took place? As to the amount of time which evolution may have occupied, we are in the hands of the physicist and the astronomer, whose business ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... creature does not suffer to extremities,—and that to the savages who still belabor his poor carcass with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon,) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim, with the philosopher, "Lay on! you beat but upon the case ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hamstringing herself. But the rule is of universal application; without this thorough mastery of their respective tools, this determination honestly to make the best use of them, the divine, the soldier, the statesman, the philosopher, the poet—however genuine their enthusiasm, however lofty their genius—are mere empirics, pretenders to crowns they will not run for, children not men—sporters with Imagination, triflers with Reason, with the prospects of humanity, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the spot, assisted by the remarks of previous observers, Labillardiere, of all, was the most assiduous and exact. The naturalist of D'Entrecasteaux's expedition, he saw mankind with the eye of a philosopher. He was pleased to examine the passions of a race, least of all indebted to art; yet the prevailing notions of Citizen Frenchmen, perhaps, gave him a bias, when estimating an uncivilised people. He left Europe when the dreams of Rousseau were the toys of the speculative, and before they ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... poet lies not in the fact that the one fills the whole page with printed words, and the other only a part of it—but in something else. If I could put that something else into distinct words I should therein attain the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the primum mobile, the grand arcanum, not merely of criticism but of all things. It might be possible to coast about it, to hint at it, by adumbrations and in consequences. But it is better and really more helpful ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... amid the mists of error saw the light of Truth, and strove to tell men of her graces and perfections. The vulgar crowd heeded not the message, and despised the messengers. They could see no difference between the philosopher's robe and the fool's motley, the Saint's glory and Satan's hoof. But with eager eyes and beating hearts the toilers after Truth ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart, might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force, and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the child was father of the man." This philosopher, whose eye is so skilled in observing nature, and whose hand is so apt in experiments, is the boy grown up whose pictures were so good that the villagers thought him at thirteen an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature. Thus the beauty hung in woman's face was a device of the Life-force for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named as the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation of man's will. The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplation of Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at night and giving the earth ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... last book, "The Way out of Agnosticism." I advisedly use the word "ostensible," because the main purport and intention of the article were not at all to criticise a philosophy, but to sully the reputation of the philosopher, deprive him of public confidence, ridicule and misrepresent his labors, hold him up by name to public obloquy and contempt, destroy or lessen the circulation of his books, and, in general, to blacken and break down his literary reputation by any and ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?—always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a desire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to a solemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... detested sport, made a sufficiently strange phenomenon; but in Lord Houghton the astonished world beheld as well a politician who wrote poetry, a railway-director who lived in literature, a libre-penseur who championed the Tractarians, a sentimentalist who talked like a cynic, and a philosopher who had elevated conviviality to the dignity of an exact science. Here, indeed, was a "living oxymoron"—a combination of inconsistent and incongruous qualities which to the typical John Bull—Lord Palmerston's "Fat man with a white hat in ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... born of the closet. He paints history, rather than descants on it; he throws the colorings of a mind, unconsciously poetic, over all he describes. Now a soldier—now a priest—now a patriot—he is always a poet, if rarely a philosopher. He narrates like a witness, unlike Thucydides, who sums up like a judge. No writer ever made so beautiful an application of superstitions to truths. His very credulities have a philosophy of their own; and modern historians ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... wonderful that they should persist in holding this proposition to have been demonstrated: All that the individual robs from the mass is a general gain. Perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, and the squaring of the circle, are sunk in oblivion; but the theory of progress by robbery is still held in honor. A priori, however, one might have supposed that it would be the shortest lived ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... being given. Yet, in spite of my vow of frankness with Dimitri, I never told him (nor any one else) how much I should have liked to go to those dances, and how I felt hurt at being forgotten and (apparently) taken for the philosopher that ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... memory and imagination as a great citizen rather than as a great warrior; as a philosopher rather than as a general.... Washington and Bolivar have in common their identity of purpose; both aspired to the freedom of a country and the establishment of democracy. The difference between these two illustrious men in the excessive difficulty one had to conquer ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... processes with the salts of iron are all derived from the researches of Sir John Herschel. The investigations of that great philosopher are so valuable, so full of instructions that we are led to reprint them, together with those of Mr. C. J. Burnett, on the salts of uranium, etc., as an Introduction. It will be seen that the process by which blue prints are ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... did so affirm, can be seen by turning to the Timaeus of Plato, where, referring to the begetting of the Universal Soul (whom Philo, another pre-Christian philosopher, speaks of as the "Second God"; and as God's "Beloved Son," "Image," "Ambassador," "Mediator," ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... member of a state than a mere scholar, a self-pleasing student. Archimedes, though an excellent engineer, when Syracuse was lost, was found in his study, intoxicated with speculations; and another great, learned philosopher, like a fool or frantic, when being in a bath, he leaped out naked among the people, and cried, 'I have found it, I have found it,' having hit then upon an extraordinary conclusion in geometry. There is a famous tale of Thomas Aquinas, the angelical doctor, and of Bonadventure, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... hardly say that pioneer planters, who have to keep themselves and their coffee till the latter comes into bearing, cannot afford to buy anything that can be dispensed with. But after all this perhaps was no disadvantage, for, as a great moral philosopher has pointed out, nothing tends to weaken the resources of the mind so much as a miscellaneous course of reading unaccompanied (as it usually is, I may remark) by reflection. The management of people, the business of an estate, the exercise of the inventive powers, the cultivation ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... 'rithmetic. Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers? What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthful philosopher. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... of the ancient cemetery connected with the Sophien Kirche and the old Dorotheen-Stadt cemetery, in the northern part of the city, where we went to look upon the graves of Fichte and Hegel, and of several artists famous in Berlin annals. In the Sophien Kirchof lies the philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn; and in that of the Garrison Church, De la Motte ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... philosophy, and to the best of his power commended him to a nobleman of that city, Chremes by name, who was his very old friend. Chremes lodged Titus in his own house with his son Gisippus, and placed both Titus and Gisippus under a philosopher named Aristippus, to learn of him his doctrine. And the two youths, thus keeping together, found each the other's conversation so congruous with his own, that there grew up between them a friendship so close and brotherly that 'twas never broken ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... development of art and letters and science and education throughout his kingdom. Ignaz Doellinger, the theologian, Joseph Goerres, the historian, Jean Paul Richter, the poet, Franz Schwanthaler, the sculptor, and Wilhelm Thirsch, the philosopher, with Richard Wagner and a host of others basked in his patronage. When he died, twenty years later, these facts were remembered and his little slips forgotten. The Muencheners gave him burial in the Basilica; and an equestrian statue, bearing the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... a philosopher has observed, we secretly enjoy the misfortunes of others, particularly of our friends, since they are closest to us. Most persons hasten to deny this truth in its application to themselves. They do so either because from lack of clear ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... American Revolution,—a subject of unbounded enthusiasm with Frenchmen, who look upon it, to this day, as an achievement of their own. And he could boast of a scientific specialite, without which no intelligent gentleman was complete in the last third of the eighteenth century. Philosopher, American, republican, friend of humanity, savant,—he could show every claim to notice. Besides all this, and better than all, he brought letters from Franklin, the charming old man, whose fondness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of William Molyneux's communications he mentions the exhibition of 'the groaning elm-plank' in Dublin, a curiosity that attracted much attention and many learned speculations about the years 1682 and 1683. He was, however, too much of a philosopher to be gulled with the rest of the people who witnessed this so-called 'sensible elm-plank,' which is said to have groaned and trembled on the application of a hot iron to one end of it. After explaining ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind, just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it as unworldly, peaceable, philosophical; but it is mere laziness. The really unworldly philosopher is the man who is at ease in all costumes and at ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Boston would become an object of universal merriment and ridicule, that should presume to arrest and cause to be indicted any man for free speaking in old Faneuil Hall. Merriment, I say, for who would not laugh at a philosopher who would set snares for the stars, and fix his net to catch the sun, and regulate their indiscreet shining. Darkness and silence are excellent for knaves and tyrants; but the attempt to command the one or the other in the North, changes the ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher |
