"Philosophic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said about the next generation was unworthy of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he spake ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... passed and morning came and with it a certain degree of bitterly philosophic acceptance of the situation. He WAS a fool; so much was sure. He was of no use in the world, he never had been. People laughed at him and he deserved to be laughed at. He rose from the bed upon which he had thrown himself some ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of her situation, to indite her own epitaph, in the form of a pleasant distich, which Pontenelle has made the subject of one of his amusing dialogues, where he affects to consider the fortitude displayed by her at this awful moment as surpassing that of the philosophic Adrian in his dying hour, or the vaunted heroism ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... that particular moment in Oxford history, the passage from philosophic idealism to glad acquiescence in the received Christian system, was a peculiarly easy one. It was the most natural thing in the world that a young man of Elsmere's temperament should rally to the Church. The place was passing through one of those periodical ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unforeseen fruits of mere man-made laws and institutions the existing generation had inherited from a by-gone and ignorant past? Such were the questions which vaguely and indistinctly may have passed, and, as we shall see, did pass, through the active, original, philosophic and deeply religious mind of Winstanley in the quiet solitude of his ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... the man listened to the story of his wife's adventures his mind went back to the scene in Ju Penrose's saloon, and the denial he had flung so heatedly at that philosophic cynic. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... that I could train one side of my head to do these outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For Richard Greenough once told me, that, in studying for the statue of Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is the portrait of the statesman ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... superstitions of paganism had been long dying out before the more palpable and material idolatry of Emperor-worship; and the gods of the nations, unable to deliver those who had trusted in them, became one by one the vassals of the 'Divus Caesar,' neglected by the philosophic rich, and only worshipped by the lower classes, where the old rites still pandered to their grosser appetites, or subserved the wealth and importance of some ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... drink, fine clothes, luxury, laziness, wealth. If you can imagine a hog's mind in a man's body—sensual, greedy, selfish, cruel, cunning, sly, coarse, yet stupid, short-sighted, unreasoning, unable to comprehend anything except what concerns the flesh, you have your man. He thinks himself philosophic and practical, a man of the world; he thinks to show knowledge and wisdom, penetration, deep acquaintance with men and things. Poor fellow! he has exposed his own nakedness. Instead of showing that others are ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... their impositions, has been disregarded as extravagant and preposterous. The man who wishes to cheat the people, must needs found his operations upon some prejudice or belief that already exists. Thus the philosophic pretenders who told fortunes by the stars cured all diseases by one nostrum, and preserved from evil by charms and amulets, ran with the current of popular belief. Errors that were consecrated by time and long familiarity, they heightened and embellished, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... listened to you patiently and without interruption. Now listen to me. You complain of the skepticism of the age. This is one form in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents itself. Let me tell you, that another form, whichit assumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the cloud-land and dream-land ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... theirs will be with those by whom they may be succeeded on the stage of life. Every age, since books have been written and books have been read, has furnished, and we may therefore assert, every age will furnish, reason upon reason for making the remark of the philosophic author of the "Caracteres," that not to hazard sometimes a great deal of nonsense, is to manifest ignorance of the public taste—"c'est ignorer le gout du peuple, que de ne pas hasarder quelquefois de grandes fadaises." We do not wish to deny that Lady Morgan has been gifted with a modicum of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... The philosophic import of this illustrious name, having suffered temporary eclipse from the Critical Philosophy, with its swift succession of transcendental dynasties,—the Wissenschaftslehre, the Naturphilosophie, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Constance, but the feeling of dislike with which he had recently come to regard her had quite passed away. He did not love Constance, but what a capable woman she was!—and what a help she would be to him in his career! Her having detected his philosophic plagiarism seemed to him now rather a good thing than otherwise; it spared him the annoyance of intellectual dishonesty in his domestic life, and put them in a position to discuss freely the political and social views by which he was to stand. After all, Constance was the only woman ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... delicate study and one demanding both leisure and calm—and Cameron had neither. The brief minutes he could snatch from Her Majesty's service were necessarily given to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm necessary to research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse Haley's golden head bending over a sick man's cot, a snatch of song in the deep mellow tones of her voice, a touch of her strong firm hand, a quiet steady look from her deep, deep eyes—any ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... a man the idea that all men are equal. Now this idea has no foundation in experience, but is logically deduced from certain ethical or philosophic principles. But there is a disease of idealism in the world, and we all are born with it. Particularly teachers are born with it. So they seize on the idea of equality, and proceed to instil it. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... A practised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation,—criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on Shakspeare,—philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere. There was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... myself just now, in the witness-box, with a good browbeating counsel cross-examining me on this point, I would rather have to defend the position of the commonplace inquirer than the philosopher, pledged to defend the philosophy of the last fifty years, and bound hand and foot by his philosophic Athanasian Creed, and I don't know how many articles, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... consciousness), as having been proven, Newbold says: "Of all the theories developed from the point of independence, Mr. Myers' is the most comprehensive in its scope, is kept in most constant touch with what the author regards as facts, and displays the greatest philosophic insight."[101] According to the theory of duplex personality, many instincts, desires, and emotions have been crowded out of the active consciousness and have been relegated to the pseudo-dormant consciousness. This has been brought about by a "process of selection out of an infinity of possible ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... come out. If they seem determined to go away without lighting, throw sand or dust among them; this produces confusion, and causes them to settle near. The practice of ringing bells and drumming on tin, &c., is usually ridiculed; but we believe it to be useful, and that on philosophic principles. The object to be secured is to confuse the swarm and drown the voice of the queen. The bees move only with their queen; hence, if anything prevents them from hearing her, confusion follows, and the swarm lights: therefore, any noise among them may answer the purpose, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... vexation and anguish extorts the philosophic remark, "No mortal goes scathless of love." He gives over the past, seeks consolation in a new attachment—he dives, lu'u, into the great ocean, "deep waters," of love, at least in search of love. The old self (selves), the old love, he ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to the community, when we become fully cognizant of the burden of the imbecile upon the whole human race; when we see the funds that should be available for human development, for scientific, artistic and philosophic research, being diverted annually, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to the care and segregation of men, women, and children who never should have been born. The advocate of Birth Control realizes as well as all ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... that Lechler has no business to call the sentence on John Hus "ein wahrer Justizmord" (ii. 494), and then again that the burning of a heretic is a judicial murder after all (i. 552), we feel bereft of the philosophic answer. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... very hard, is it not, Messieurs?" remarked Blanquette. It seemed to be her favourite philosophic proposition. She sighed. "If Pere Paragot had only lived to play at the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... prize," because this Philosophy, which has been said in the preceding treatise to be a loving use of Wisdom, beholds herself when the beauty of her eyes appears to her. And what else is there to be said, except that the Philosophic Soul not only contemplates this Truth, but again contemplates her own contemplation and the beauty of that, again revolving upon herself, and being enamoured with herself on account of the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... close; it was a happiness nourished on no sacrifice of other men, on no eager appropriation of the goods of earth, but springing from, a single eye and a loving spirit, and wrought from those primary emotions which are the innocent birthright of all. And if it be answered that however truly philosophic, however sacredly pure, his happiness may have been, yet its wisdom and its holiness were without an effort, and, that it is effort which makes the philosopher and the saint: then we must use in answer his own Platonic scheme ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... productions, is the result of unscientific enquiry only; but unquestionably, industrious and professional research, would discover infinitely more to philosophic and commercial contemplation, and develope the arcana of nature, dormant here through ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... most masterly, we have ever seen. Those who know Emerson best will recognize him most fully in it. It represents him in his most characteristic mood, the subtile intelligence mingling with the kindly humor in his face, thoughtful, cordial, philosophic. The portrait is not more happy in the comprehension of character than in the rendering of it, and is as masterly technically as it is grandly characteristic. An eminent English poet, who knows Emerson well, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... had he seen his master so much agitated; and though himself inclined to receive these phenomena with philosophic indifference, his notions of military duty caused his countenance to reflect ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... "philosophy" or "criticism of life" is an attempt to interpret and articulate. Browning was master of more potent weapons of the strictly intellectual kind than many poets of his rank, and his work is charged with convictions which bear upon philosophic problems and involve philosophic ideas. But they were neither systematic deductions from a speculative first principle nor fragments of tradition eclectically pieced together; by their very ambiguity and Protean many-sidedness they betrayed that, however tinged they might be on the surface ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... mistaken on questions of futurity as on questions of philosophy and religion, on which the multitude called "everybody" has been largely mistaken ever since the earliest periods known to history. "Everybody" is generally pessimistic, apt to be superstitious, and never philosophic. A single good psychometric perception is worth much more than Mr. Everybody's opinion, whether upon national policy, personal character, historical truth, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... But this cool, philosophic mood did not last long. It might answer very well in regard to the pictures on the walls, but there was a magnetism about this living, breathing woman that soon caused him to long for the privilege of being near ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... nature and genesis of life is bound to be challenged by modern physical science, which, for the most part, sees in biology only a phase of physics; but the philosophic mind and the trained literary mind will find in "Creative Evolution" a treasure-house of inspiring ideas, and engaging forms of original artistic expression. As Mr. Balfour says, "M. Bergson's 'Evolution ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... antiquarian studies were formerly pursued afforded only too much ground for such accusations. But all this is now, in a great measure, entirely changed. Archaeology, as tempered and directed by the philosophic spirit, and quickened with the life and energy of the nineteenth century, is a very different pursuit from the Archaeology of our forefathers, and has as little relation to their antiquarianism as modern Chemistry and modern Astronomy have to ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... God. Below him are all the various objects out of which the world's pantheons have been manufactured: around, above—Immensity. And so also, far down the ascending plane of thought that leads from the earth towards the Infinite, the philosophic Buddhist describes, at different plateaux, the heavens and hells, the gods and demons, ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... has had the devil putting philosophic doubts into him. I have pressed him to pelt the devil with ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class (2) who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain, and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... young women earn their living. It was difficult to imagine that the sick in the hospitals could have been properly looked after, or the letters of solicitors typewritten, so great was the number of damsels who attached themselves to these attractive heroes. The philosophic observer found another curious subject for speculation in the fact that this parade of military splendour took place in a city whose population sympathized intensely with the Boer cause, and was accustomed to receive the news of a British defeat with delight. The Dublin ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... is one of the greatest productions of English poetry, for there is perhaps none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophic dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification, which is such as his contemporaries ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... life has been so replete with adventure and adversity in all its varieties, and in its future prospects so unpropitious of happiness, that existence has long ceased to be desirable; and had I not possessed a more than common portion of philosophic resignation, I must have ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... note, of any country, or of any age, from whom quotations might not be made in proof of the love with which they regarded Nature. And this remark applies as much to religious and philosophic writers as to poets,—equally to Plato, St. Francois de Sales, Bacon, and Fenelon, as to Shakespeare, Racine, Calderon, or Burns; for from no really philosophic or religious doctrine can the love of the works of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... when called, was in but low spirits. This made Oswald's and Dicky's task easier. When people are sunk in gloomy despair about one thing, they will agree to almost anything about something else. (Remarks like this are called philosophic generalizations, Albert's uncle ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... he witnessed the menacing influence over Herbert with so much fear and anxiety. The college life of Marmion Herbert, therefore, passed in ceaseless controversy with his tutor; and as he possessed, among many other noble qualities, a high and philosophic sense of justice, he did not consider himself authorised, while a doubt remained on his own mind, actively to promulgate those opinions, of the propriety and necessity of which he scarcely ever ceased to be persuaded. To this cause ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... me by an august decree but filched from my innocence by an underhand fate at the very moment when it had disclosed to my passion its warm and generous beauty. This consciousness of universal loss had this advantage that it induced something resembling a state of philosophic indifference. I walked up to the railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of wind as though I had been going to the scaffold. The delay of the train did not irritate me in the least. I had finally made up my mind to write a letter to Dona Rita; and this "honest fellow" for whom I ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... systems of thought—is a tendency which, in education also, has caused divisions and the accumulation of methods. As external consequences of the same internal change, these processes have necessarily been more or less simultaneous. The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the change has ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Chapman was young at that time, and a very fine-looking man. He had entered upon the most unprofitable line of business that he could have chosen in the England of those days, the trade in philosophic free-thinking literature of the highest class. The number of buyers was, of course, exceedingly limited, both by the thoughtful character of the works published, and by the unpopularity of the opinions expressed ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... tiresome. To the philosophic mind, Dr. Frampton, there should be no such thing as tedium, boredom, ennui, and I trust that mine is philosophic. You were much in my thoughts, sir, between the attacks of sea-sickness. By frequent perusal ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and Churchill, starting from somewhat different philosophic principles, all arrive ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... modern Pythagorean; but that was merely a nom de guerre, adopted, probably, to excite a stronger interest in the perusal of his productions. Here, however, was a man in whom the principle existed upon what he considered rational and philosophic grounds. He had gotten the philosophical blockhead's crotchet into his head, and carried the principle, in a practical point of view, much further than ever the old fool himself did ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... really lacking to-day in any large part of our race, there must be some correspondingly profound and adequate reason for it. Don't let us deceive ourselves with shallow platitudes which may do for drawing-rooms. This is philosophy, even though post-prandial. Let us try to take a philosophic view of the question at issue, from the point of vantage of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... said "Oh," and let go of her wrist. She turned and went back to the rail again, after flashing him the most de luxe smile so far. Farmer came out of a philosophic haze to notice she was ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... to see him more alive. The enemy are disarmed; three thousand of them are killed by the time Baldwin cuts his way to his uncle, to whom, as his liege lord, he makes complaint against the Saxons. The Emperor's answer contains little but philosophic comfort: 'Fair nephew, so goes war; when your day comes, know that you will die; your father died, you will not escape. Yonder are your enemies, of whom you complain; I give you leave, go and strike them.' Uncle and nephew both perform wonders. But Berard is killed by ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... of Illusion, 1, 2; Psychological treatment of subject, 3, 4; definition of Illusion, 4-7; Philosophic extension of idea, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... enthusiasm for a favourite poet is a thing to rejoice over. The years that bring the philosophic mind will not bring—they ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... With which philosophic trend of thought, and the knowledge that he could eat for at least two weeks longer, the erstwhile star amateur first baseman sought the doubtful comfort of his ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Aiyash, the Traditionist and scholar, discovered a remedy for lovers which is too simple, I fear, to commend itself to less philosophic Occidentals affected by the pains of longing. "I was suffering," he says, "from an anxious desire of meeting one whom I loved, when I called to mind the verse of Zu 'r-Rumma's: Perhaps a flow of tears will give me ease from pain; perhaps it may cure ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... recover from the kind of faint into which he had fallen and opening his eyes, looked about him. The first person they fell on was old Billali who stood stroking his white beard and contemplating the scene with an air which was at once philosophic and satisfied. This seemed to anger Umslopogaas, for ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... body, however, of what is called 'the world,' the world that lives in St. James' Street and Pall Mall, that looks out of a club window, and surveys mankind as Lucretius from his philosophic tower; the world of the Georges and the Jemmys; of Mr. Cassilis and Mr. Melton; of the Milfords and the Fitz-Herons, the Berners and the Egertons, the Mr. Ormsbys and the Alfred Mountchesneys, the Duke and Duchess of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... lowliest home. Brunelleschi of Florence left it in legacy the secret of lifting a mound of marble to the upper air as easily as a child can blow a bubble; and Giordano Bruno of Nola found for it those elements of philosophic thought, which have been perfected into the clear and prismatic crystals of the metaphysics of the Teuton and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Lettres I have no pretensions; Moral Philosophy I have studied, and think it a most important department, when kept upon its true principles, both theological and philosophic. Being, however, fifty years old, and having a feeble constitution, I do not think it would be ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... never attain his mental attitude of philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally, that he and his friends are deliberately ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... law; in the administration, in the legal distribution of property, in the conditions of industry, labour, family, and in all the relations of man with man, and man with woman: the second,—that this philosophic and social movement of democracy would seek its natural form in a form of government analogous to its principle, and its nature; that is to say, representing the sovereignty of the people; republic with one ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... tactics. The Church would have been relegated to the limbo of superstition and the hide-bound pedantry of ecclesiasticism, if new defenders on new principles had not entered the lists. Reinforcement came from a band of philosophic thinkers of whom Wordsworth and Coleridge were the pioneers. The influence of both these men was underestimated at the time. They appeared weak and ineffective, but the ideas to which they gave expression, entered the minds of stronger ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... sin is a serpent. It possesses a deadly poison. We may give it pleasant names, but we are only ornamenting death. A chemist might put a poison into a chaste and elegant flask, but he has in no wise changed its nature. And when we name sin by philosophic euphemisms, and by less exacting terminologies—such as "cleverness," "smartness," or "fault," or "misfortune," we are only changing the flask, and the diabolical ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of apparent gibberish. Back and forth along the line of the team he skips nimbly, the sweat streaming from his face. And the oxen plod along, unhasting, unexcited, their eyes dreamy, chewing the cud of yesterday's philosophic reflections. The situation conveys the general impression of a peevish little stream breaking against great calm cliffs. All this frantic excitement and expenditure of energy is so apparently purposeless and futile, the calm cattle seem so aloof and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... a man of considerable education, and though in neither force nor astuteness was he the equal of James Peake, it often pleased him to adopt towards his friend a philosophic pose—the pose of a seer, of one far removed from the trivial disputes in which the colliery-owner was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... and so as to excite rather than to subdue the vague appetite for the mysterious and the horrible which such a case, under any circumstances, is sure to awaken—but apart from this there is nothing to deter a philosophic mind from further inquiries regarding it. It is a matter entirely for testimony. [So it is.] Under this view we shall take steps to procure from some of the most intelligent and influential citizens of New York all the evidence that can be had upon the subject. No steamer will leave England ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... English bill in the Senate. Douglas, Stuart, and Broderick were the only Democrats to oppose its passage, Pugh having joined the majority. The bill passed the House also, nine of Douglas's associates in the anti-Lecompton fight going over to the administration.[667] Douglas accepted this defection with philosophic equanimity, indulging in no vindictive feelings.[668] Had he not himself felt misgivings as to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... similar to those, which compose it; one may imagine, that it might be thus increased in weight and magnitude; as the particles of oak-bark increase the substance of the hides of beasts in the process of making leather. I mention these not as philosophic analogies, but as similes to facilitate our ideas, how an accretion of parts may be effected by animal appetences, or selections, in a manner somewhat similar to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... shall not be accused of trifling with religious susceptibilities if I quote a passage from a sermon delivered and printed in 1659—a passage which shows not a departure from Christianity either through ignorance or from the result of philosophic study or contemplation, but a sheer non-advance to Christianity, a passage which shows us an English pagan ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... read The Cloud, which Dick followed by a really funny story from a magazine. They fell to talking about their own affairs, which to the young are the chief interests. It takes years "that bring the philosophic mind" to make abstractions stimulating. Finally they wafted homeward under a sky dark at the zenith and becoming paler and paler, violet, rose, wan white, with a line of intense violet along the horizon, and, as they sailed, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... forgetfulness: she wanted rather to be taught a certain fortitude—how to live and hold up one's head even while knowing that things were very bad. A brazen indifference—it was not exactly that that she wished to acquire; but were there not some sorts of indifference that were philosophic and noble? Could Lady Davenant not teach them, if she should take the trouble? The girl remembered to have heard that there had been years before some disagreeable occurrences in her family; it was not a race in which the ladies inveterately turned out well. Yet who to-day had the stamp of honour ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... matrimony is a tragedy, but in the case of spiders it is a catastrophe. Spiders are a very sour and pessimistic people who live in walls, corners of hotel bedrooms and holes generally, in which places they weave very delicate webs, and sit for a long period in a state of philosophic ecstasy, contemplating the infinite. Their principal pastimes are killing flies and committing suicide—both of which games should be encouraged. Like so many other unhappy creatures they are born with ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... they see in Him no 'beauty that they should desire Him,' and no healing to which they will trust. Paul's way of kindling penitence in impenitent spirits was not to brandish over them the whips of law or to seek to shake souls with terror of any hell, still less was it to discourse with philosophic calm on the obligations of duty and the wisdom of virtuous living; his appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the conscience ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... philosophic minds than mine have thought over the religious side of this subject and many more scientific brains have turned their attention to its phenomenal aspect. So far as I know, however, there has been no former attempt to show the exact relation of the one to the other. I feel that if ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... phases of religious history are equally realised. Caliban upon Setebos begins the record—that philosophic savage who makes his God out of himself. Then follows study after study, from A Death in the Desert to Bishop Blougram's Apology. Some carry us from early Christianity through the mediaeval faith; others lead us through the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... man's doings that would otherwise vex and pain us, and, as some say, destroy all the pleasure of our lives, not exactly as an illusion, as if we were Japanese and had seen a fox in the morning, but at all events in what we call a philosophic spirit. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... exaltation that Canadian men had proved a match for the most scientifically trained troops in Europe. As fighters Canadians had at once leaped into front rank. British, Scotch and Irish blood, with British traditions, had proved greater forces than the scientific training and philosophic principles of the Huns. It was a glorious illustration of the axiom "right is greater than might," which the German had in his pride reversed to read "might is right." It was prophetic of what the final issue of a contest based on such divergent principles ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... never changed. His conversation was not an experimental thing, an instrument of research, and this made him silent; while his essays recall events, on which one feels that he pronounces no judgment even in the depth of his own mind, because the labour of Life itself had not yet brought the philosophic generalization, which was almost as much his object as the emotional generalization of beauty. A mind that generalizes rapidly, continually prevents the experience that would have made it feel and see deeply, just ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single instance the Oriental spirit ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... of air, this congregated ball, Self-centred sun, and stars that rise and fall, There are, my friend! whose philosophic eyes Look through and trust the Ruler with his skies, To Him commit the hour, the day, the year, And view this dreadful All without ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... with quotations, which came readily to his memory. Herzl read Eugen Duehring's book The Jewish-Problem as a Problem of Race, Morals and Culture—the first and most important effort to find a "scientific," philosophic, biologic and historical basis for the anti-Semitism which was sweeping through Europe in those days (1881). Duehring saw the Jewish question as a purely racial question, and for him the Jewish race ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... wholly new, in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood: binding up the Constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... attempting to meet this demand with a philosophic air, "I'd say that the girl probably played the game on every man she thought she could impose on. Merely a part of her social technique; a stunt, so to speak, which she'd found would make us weak males sit up ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... night, and knows what he thinks and always has thought to-day; but pretty Seraphina thinks he adores her, so that no matter what she does he will never see a flaw, she is sure of that,—poor little puss! She does not know that philosophic Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will do for him to take of the stimulus without interfering with his serious and settled plans of life, which, of course, he doesn't mean to give up for her. The ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that you should ask such a thing, Marcolina. Though your philosophic views, and (if the term be appropriate) your religious views, seem to me by no means irrefutable, at least they must be firmly established in your soul—if you believe ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... and the great philosophies of humanity. Thus Mark, who was an ardent Platonist, would find himself at odds with Brother Jerome who was an equally ardent Aristotelian, while the weeds, taking advantage of the philosophic contest, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... finally achieved his masterpiece, creating a work in which vision and workmanship are both on the highest level and thoroughly worthy of each other. No "hero" in the traditional sense, no glamor of what is commonly regarded as "poetic," no broad social background, no philosophic outlook, but within a narrow, and if you will, commonplace range, the author here permits us to get same of the profoundest glimpses of human life and character. It is a story of slaters working on steep roofs and tall church ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... around combine, Amidst the store should thankless pride repine? Say, should the philosophic mind disdain That good which makes each humbler bosom vain? 40 Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,[5] These little things are great to little man; And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind Exults in all the good of all mankind. Ye ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall's Treatise on Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful thought: "In two years' time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of Berkoot and the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... degradation, and to restore them to the dignity of reason and virtue, were active and incessant; by her impassioned reasoning and glowing eloquence, the fabric of voluptuous prejudice has been shaken to its foundation and totters towards its fall; while her philosophic mind, taking a wider range, perceived and lamented in the defects of civil institutions interwoven in their texture and inseparable from them the causes of those partial evils, destructive to virtue and happiness, which poison social intercourse and ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... objective fashion that the Scripture does not possess those qualities which men had long assigned to it. It was to prove that, as a matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which the philosophic forecast, above hinted, required. It was thus actually to restore the Bible to an age in which many reasonable men had lost their faith in it. It was to give a genetic reconstruction of the literature and show the progress of the history ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the body's change, In curious philosophic range, The motion of the mind; And how from thought to thought it flew, Still hoping in each vision new The faery land of bliss to view, But ne'er that ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... moment the words, "A few days later she died," caught on his ear. So he called all the sorrow and reverence he could into his eyes, sighed, and raised his eyebrows expressing such philosophic resignation in our mortal lot as might suffice to excuse ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... butcher boys out of the trees, where they hung like a strange species of fruit; third, they had cleared a space of ten feet square in front of the house. Having done thus much, the police paused from exhaustion, and endured the jokes of the populace with philosophic disdain. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of space should prevent us from giving extracts from this most eloquent and philosophic work. Its glory is, that, breaking through the formulae of creeds and the external signs of religious faith, it has the courage to listen to the voice of God all along the devious course of human history,—hearing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... result of Winterborne's thoughts during the past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... physical pain in the manager's voice was a sodden philosophic humor which maddened the younger man. Fergus swore where he lay writhing on his stomach. Macbean chuckled ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... mysteries and witches played no small part in the old religion and survived long in popular superstition, magic was thrust into the background by the poetic and philosophic Hellenic imagination. The powers of Nature were incorporated in the grand and beautiful human forms of the Olympian gods, or in the dread shapes of the Infernal deities. But even among those of the Greeks who were raised far above the ordinary superstitions of the populace we find ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... head bent to the ground, and his legs bearing him like random instruments of whose service he was unconscious. It was a shock to Benson's implicit belief in his patron; and he was not consoled by the philosophic explanation, "That Good in a strong many-compounded nature is of slower growth than any other mortal thing, and must not be forced." Damnatory doctrines best pleased Benson. He was ready to pardon, as a Christian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... personally, it seemed; he had merely fallen wofully short of her standard. There was no more to be said. He bade her a courteous good-evening, and she turned slowly and passed up the hill, while he followed the path down the stream. One of old Hughie Cameron's philosophic remarks, which he had heard one evening on the milk-stand, was sounding in his ears: "The Almighty would be laying his bounds about every one of us—the bounds of His righteous laws. We may be dodging them on one side, oh, yes; ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... marvel at the results achieved by the efforts of so many explorers and martyrs, you will grasp the importance of their discoveries and the intimate relations between geography and all the other sciences. This is the point of view from which can best be seen all the philosophic bearings of a work to which so ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "Cats are a philosophic and thoughtful race, but they do not admit the efficacy of either water or soap, and yet it is usually conceded that they are cleanly folk. There are exceptions to every rule, and I once knew a cat who lusted after water and bathed ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... and his family only during Prince Kropotkin's stay at Hull-House, when they had come to visit him several times. The editor had impressed me as a quiet, scholarly man, challenging the social order by the philosophic touchstone of Bakunin and of Herbert Spencer, somewhat startled by the radicalism of his fiery young son and much comforted by the German domesticity of his wife and daughter. Perhaps it was but my hysterical symptom ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... has seen with his own eyes the most important phenomena of the Ice age on this continent from Maine to Alaska. In the work itself, elementary description is combined with a broad, scientific, and philosophic method, without abandoning for a moment the purely scientific character. Professor Wright has contrived to give the whole a philosophical direction which lends interest and inspiration to it, and which in the chapters on Man and the Glacial Period rises ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... Thomas Bodza was taking a walk across the fields. This was his usual promenade. Sometimes he went as far as the boundaries of the neighbouring village with a little book under his arm which he perused with philosophic tranquility. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... wondering at the extraordinary light and beauty of her face thus transfigured by an excitation of thought. Was she a secret follower of his son's theories, he wondered? Composing himself in his chair, he sat with bent head, marvelling as he heard the story of the bold and fearless and philosophic life that had sprung into the world all out of his summer's romance with a little innocent girl, whom he had found ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... had retired from his useful calling, and who frequently visited the office of my master at law, the respectable S. . ., who had the management of his property—I remembered to have heard this worthy, with whom I occasionally held discourse, philosophic and profound, when he and I chanced to be alone together in the office, say that all first-rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain; but this axiom could scarcely hold good with respect to these women—however ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... discreet admirer. He dwelt upon the illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with the Creative Spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene mood and a simple way of life. As regards the trend and results of Alcott's philosophic teaching, it must be said that, like Emerson, he was sometimes inconsistent, hazy or abrupt. But though he formulated no system of philosophy, and seemed to show the influence now of Plato, now of Kant, or of German thought as filtered through the brain of Coleridge, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the destinies of the world in the production of great men. For in that period in Italy we find Tasso, the greatest of modern epic poets; then too lived Galileo and Kepler, the astronomers; in France we find the philosophic essayist, Montaigne; in Spain the world-renowned Cervantes, the author of the immortal Don Quixote; in England both Bacon and Shakspere, beside a host of other writers, generals, admirals and artists. This same age is the most flourishing period in Mahometan India; so, too, in China, in Japan, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... time when authors, who treated of a scientific politics and of a scientific ethics internally connected with it, naturally preferred this more philosophic, symbolic method of indicating their connection with their writings, which would limit the indication to those who could pierce within the veil of a philosophic symbolism. It was the time when the cipher, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... poet, sage, He filled many a pliant page With the philosophic wisdom and refinement of his age, And his letters to his peers Through a life of smiles and tears Make me often quite forgetful ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Philosophic Period, ending with the foundation of the Alexandrian library, 320 years before Christ. This period is made ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... of middling life to which I have been accustomed and which I love." She disliked extremes, in emotion as in all things, and took what came with cheerful courage. The poem 'Life,' which the self-satisfied Wordsworth wished that he had written, expresses her serene and philosophic spirit. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... but the possession of it gives power, and that is the real object of most men's ambition: it is certainly that of the ambition of all nations, and this object is held legitimate: we account those base or wicked who seek the means; we admire those who attain the end. The philosophic historian and the poet are alike ready to condemn the man who first dug the ore from the mine: the panegyric in prose and in verse is lavished on the hero and the patron. But gold furnished the means for the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... early on March 19th, a day, at that time, to me the most melancholy in the year, but now regarded with philosophic indifference. A parting visit to the gallant "Griffons," who threw the slipper, in the shape of three hearty cheers and a "tiger," wasted a whole morning. It was 12.30 P.M. before the mission boat turned her head towards the southern bank, and her crew began to pull in the desultory ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... tall figure of a philosophic, serious adult look, which passed and repassed sedately along the street, making a turn of about sixty paces on each side of the gate of the hotel. The man was about fifty-two, had a small cane under his arm, was dressed in a dark drab-colored coat, waistcoat, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... accepted the situation with the most philosophic calm. Only one remark he ventured to make as ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... having put our finger on its deep-hidden roots. Moral law dominates man, whether he respects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one is ready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if he allege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybody will say to him, and with excellent reason: "Sir, we are men before everything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son; after that you shall return to the course of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... of the old. This new spirit may be termed sentimentalism. In prose literature it had already been stirring for about twenty-five years, changing the tone of comedy, entering into some of the periodical essays, and assuming a philosophic character in the works of Lord Shaftesbury. Its chief doctrines, rhapsodically promulgated by this amiable and original enthusiast, were that the universe and all its creatures constitute a perfect harmony; ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... contemporary science it is time to turn to past science; nothing fortifies the judgment more than this comparative study; impartiality of mind is developed thereby, the uncertainties of any system become manifest. The authority of facts is there confirmed, and we discover in the whole picture a philosophic teaching which is in itself a lesson; in other words, we learn to know, to understand, and to judge."—LITTRE: OEuvres d'Hippocrate, T. I, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... aside, Are every man his own presuming guide. The Sacred Books, you say, are full and plain. And every needful point of truth contain: All who can read interpreters may be: 110 Thus, though your several Churches disagree, Yet every saint has to himself alone The secret of this philosophic stone. These principles your jarring sects unite, When differing doctors and disciples fight. Though Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, holy chiefs, Have made a battle royal of beliefs; Or, like wild horses, several ways have whirl'd The tortured text about the Christian world; Each Jehu lashing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Mr. Viner!" he agreed smoothly. "It would appear, then, from what you say that I have been mistaken—even stupidly so, I am afraid. And in that case, I can only apologize for my intrusion, and, as you so delicately put it, get out." He slipped the papers, with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, into his inside coat pocket, and took a backward step toward the door. "I bid you good-night, then, Mr. Viner. The papers, as you state, are doubtless of no value to you, so you can, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... circumference, would require a length of millions. Are we startled at these reports of philosophers? Are we ready to cry out in a transport of surprise, "How mighty is the Being who kindled such a prodigious fire, and keeps alive from age to age such an enormous mass of flame!" Let us attend our philosophic guides, and we shall be brought acquainted with speculations more enlarged and more inflaming. The sun, with all its attendant planets, is but a very little part of the grand machine of the universe; every star, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... against attack, if its forces are well organised. It includes among its population representatives of almost every human race and religion, and every grade of civilisation, from the Australian Bushman to the subtle and philosophic Brahmin, from the African dwarf to the master of modern industry or the scholar of universities. Almost every form of social organisation and of government known to man is represented in its complex and ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... out. Yet this man was welcome in the "very best society." Alcibiades, leader of the fast, rich set, and many more of the gilded youth of Athens dogged his heels. One meets not the slightest evidence that his poverty ever prevented him from carrying his philosophic message home to the wealthy and the noble. There is no snobbishness, then, in this Athenian society. Provided a man is not pursuing a base mechanic art or an ignoble trade, provided he has a real message to convey,—whether in literature, philosophy, or statecraft,—there ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the fast disappearing type of gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a philosophic broadness ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. As to the critique upon Schmerling's figures, I find that the side view given by the latter is really about 3/10ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. Otherwise the representation ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... after all, though he is six years and a half old, and naturally wants to know why and wherefore. Somebody says something about the duty of "blind obedience," I can't expect Johnny to have more wisdom than Solomon, and to be more philosophic than the philosophers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... contest of translators as well as of minstrels, are immediately before you. It will be a tough piece of work for you, and I advise as many walks and cooling baths as possible. Fips should teach you a little philosophic patience during the rehearsals. Frau Burde-Ney told me lately when she was "starring" here, that she intended to go to Paris for a few days, in order to study Isolde with you. She has the necessary stuff ("Wupptich" they say ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... at Vienna some two years after his departure, I had occasion to read most of his dispatches, which exhibited a mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with much of the clear perception, the scholarly and philosophic tone and decided judgment, which, supplemented by his picturesque description, full of life and color, have given character to his histories. They are features which might well have served to extend the remark ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
