"Skeptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persuading and cajoling the majority of these negroes went to their cabins that night and the most skeptical stayed in my kitchen all the rest of the night. But peace and quiet reigned once more and from that day as long as these tenants remained with me I did not have any trouble with them being superstitious but each time the tenants were changed the same superstitions had to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... England and recanting all the heresy he had uttered. Young Percy replied that conscience would not admit of his doing this. The father said conscience be blanked: and further used almost the same words that were used by Professor Jowett some years later to a certain skeptical youth. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... each party in power has refused to enfranchise woman, being skeptical as to her moral influence in government, yet with strange inconsistency they alike seek the aid of her voice and pen in all important political struggles. While not morally bound to obey the laws made without their consent, yet we find women the most law-abiding class ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the start, that the words Sulphite and Bromide, and their derivatives, sulphitic and bromidic, are themselves so sulphitic that they are not susceptible of explanation. In a word, they are empirical, although, accidentally it might seem, they do appeal and convince the most skeptical. I myself balked, at first, at these inconsequent names. I would have suggested the terms "Gothic" and "Classic" to describe the fundamental types of mind. But it took but a short conversation with the Chatelaine to demonstrate the fact that ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... boyhood he had implicitly confided in, always assured him, that though expatiating all over the globe, the sea was at least margined by land. That over against America, for example, was Asia. But it is a calm, and he grows madly skeptical. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... introspection and self-scrutiny, but have never had any hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of them, and they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... document covered with slanting lines of curving Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... To convince the skeptical people of Cork, a party of them telegraphed all over the coast to see if they could not find Paul, to verify their story and from Skibbereen they learned that a man answering that description had passed through there and was now on ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... awe. The whole scene preached to his inmost soul. Doctrinal arguments and learned polemics, he could have tilted with, word for word; but here were facts, and realities and influences, which disarmed and defied all that was skeptical in his nature. The dying man—the priest of God—that young and fragile girl, illustrated by their acts a faith which, though mysterious to him, could be nothing less than divine; but Father Fabian, ignorant of the thoughts which were passing, like ripples of light, through his mind, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... households had their special Penates, to whom was due the first and the last salam of the returning or out-going host. But in spite of all this superstitious apparatus, the Arabs were never a religious people. In the old days, as now, they were reckless, skeptical, materialistic. They had their gods and their divining arrows, but they were ready to demolish both if the responses proved contrary to their wishes. A great majority believed in no future life, nor in a reckoning ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... idolatry and with the intolerant ferocity of a priest for the indifferent or the skeptical. The idol made her plaint ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of being married to a woman who demanded a nice home and nice clothes and a circle of nice friends had done a great deal toward making him a little skeptical about the soundness of his standards. But his moments of uncertainty were few and fleeting, called into life by such uncomfortable circumstances as touching old Wetherbee for money or putting his tailor off when the date for his monthly dole fell due. He had never been introspective ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of the skeptical parent is plain: to save the child by any possible means, to preach the uselessness of the sacrifice in season and out of season, and to endure patiently whatever penalty the law may indict for evasion. But the duty of the authorities is far less clear. So long ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... that there was a gigantic slave trade in women, and with a handful of people we began to fight the traders. That a system of slavery, debasing and vile, had grown to enormous proportions before our very doors seemed beyond belief, an impossibility, and even romantic. Most people were skeptical of the existence of a well defined and organized traffic in girls, and they seemed to think that those advocating the abolition of this nefarious trade were either visionists or fanatics. The struggle against this ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... spoil it all. Oh, he knew how she would spoil it. With her mocking laugh, her warped judgments, her skeptical point ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... could be touched by a child, it received a touch then. It was so plain, that what satisfied him would satisfy her. He would not give the skeptical answer which rose to his lips. Looking at the pure, wise little face which watched his, he made answer simply, not ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... in which the writer's fancy is substituted for the sober rules of criticism, and the word of God accommodated to his preconceived opinions. The rejection, open or covert, of the divine side, manifests itself in a cold, skeptical criticism, which denies or explains away all that is supernatural in the Bible; which, instead of seeking to discover and unfold that unity of plan and harmony of parts which belong to every work of God, delights rather in exaggerating the supposed ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... previously ignored, pierced him like a sword. If it were true; if Amy herself, poor pretty Amy, had indeed been there, were indeed near him now, hammering and crying out like a child shut out at night, against his own skeptical heart ... if it were indeed true that during those two hours she had had her heart's desire, and had been one with his very soul, in a manner to which no earthly union could aspire ... how had he treated her? Even at this thought a shudder of repulsion ran through him.... It was unnatural, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most skeptical.[94] ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of their ancestors, reduced in the lapse of ages to a dim, attenuated tradition. Nor would a geological revelation have fared better, in at least those periods intermediate between the darker and more scientific ages, in which ingenious men, somewhat skeptical in their leanings, cultivate literature, and look down rather superciliously on the ignorance and barbarism of the past. What would skeptics such as Hobbes and Hume have said of an opening chapter in Genesis that would describe successive periods,—first of molluscs, star-lilies, and crustaceans, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... conviction to the most skeptical. That a Greek priest could read a lie, never once entered the heads of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... soon won the Murphy family and Tom was eager to see us shoot. He had heard that we shot deer, but he was rather skeptical that our arrows could do much damage to bear. So one of the first things he did after our arrival was to drag out an old dried hide and hang it on a fence in the corral and asked me to shoot an arrow through it. It was surely a test, for the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Even the skeptical Cobden, who had damned so much in his day, could not question the lad's mastery. It did not occur to him to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... success that up till very recently the Gentile world, including the Christian clergy, knew of the Talmud only through these unfortunate perversions and caricatures. Imagine the citation of a chapter from Leviticus and one from Chronicles, of some vindictive passages in the Psalms, of a few skeptical bits in Ecclesiastes and Job, and one or two of the barbaric stories in Judges, to be offered to the world as a fair picture of the Bible, and you will understand the sort of treatment the Talmud has received ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Aiken. You see he's half crazy with grief and insomnia, and he's got it in his head that if Lucy had fewer other people to amuse her, she might get bored again and in sheer boredom turn again to him. But just use your influence with Lucy, if you've got any. I tell you on the honor of a cynical and skeptical man, that if things go on the way they are going, I think John Fulton will die of a broken heart. You see, he's had too much—more than you and I can possibly imagine—and that much he has now lost. If he isn't to get back any portion ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... who had assumed the trials and tribulations of manhood, had profited by the first disillusionments. The trusting, childlike faith was gone forever and in his new, skeptical attitude towards human nature—Toots Cortrelle excepted—he had determined to part with as few ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... would you go to work and try to live on ten dollars a month? Yet that is exactly what many of us are doing as Christians. I believe this low standard of Christian life in the Church is doing more to manufacture infidels than all the skeptical books ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... nursery when the child asks, "Why does the moon get smaller?" and the mother answers, "Because, dear, God cuts a piece off every day to make the stars with." The authorities, recognizing that their power lay in unquestioning belief, have always sanctified it and made the pious, non-skeptical type the ideal and punished the non-believer with death or ostracism. Fortunately for the race, the skeptic, if silenced, modifies the strength of the belief he attacks and in the course of time even they who have defended begin to shift from it and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... does not do away with use]. The student must have much freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals, vent his disrespect for what he can see no use in, be among strangers to act himself out and form a personality of his own, be baptized with the revolutionary and skeptical spirit, and go to extremes at the age when excesses teach wisdom with amazing rapidity, if he is to become a true knight of the spirit and his own master. Ziegler[29] frankly told German students that about one-tenth of them would be morally lost in this process, but insisted that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the fact that some of us were skeptical of the outcome. That a man of sixty-five should have a thirst for learning was not remarkable. But that a man whose life had been spent in scenes of excitement, who had been associated with deeds and events that stir ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... could have a badger, we could almost hear them say to each other in dog language, a strong, morose, savage badger! Alas! we are wasting our days in idleness, our talents rust from disuse! Finally, Uncle Jim remained the only frankly skeptical member. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... cold as a steel buckler, and had married as soon as she left the convent in which she had been to school, without any affection or even liking for her husband, whom the most skeptical respected as a saint, and who had a look of virgin purity on her calm face as she went down the steps of the Madeleine on Sundays, after ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... we have sedulously fostered the Santa Claus myth, but it doesn't meet with much credence. "Why didn't he ever come before?" was Sadie Kate's skeptical question. But Santa Claus is undoubtedly coming this time. I asked the doctor, out of politeness, to play the chief role at our Christmas tree; and being certain ahead of time that he was going to refuse, I had already engaged Percy as an understudy. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... easy-going humorist, often nowadays a column conductor, or a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, takes time to deepen his observation and to say it with real words instead of worn symbols, he makes, and does make, literature. More are doing it than the skeptical realize. The new epoch of the American essay ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... "Sam's skeptical, though," retorted Stanley. "And, as for me, I've a mine right here in San Francisco." He spoke enthusiastically. "Moving sandhills into the bay. Making a new city front out of flooded bogs! That's realism. Romance. And what's better, fortune! ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... in the Te-hua words when he tried to tell them what the peach was like, and what the pear was like, and the youth were skeptical as to peaches ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... it's up to us," the man answered. Noting the skeptical look in Gregory's face, he went on: "Don't make the mistake of trying to judge a boat from the dock, Mr. Gregory. 'You can't tell by the looks of a frog how far he can jump,' or how fast either. Barrows has ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... me to supply the want of leisure. My nights were surrendered, almost wholly, to my new pursuit. I toiled with all the earnestness which distinguished my temperament, stimulated to a yet higher degree by those feelings of pride and pique, which were resolved to convince my skeptical uncle that I was not entirely without those talents, the assertion of which had so promptly provoked his sneer. Besides, I had already learned that no such scheme as mine could be successfully prosecuted, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... a more skeptical turn. A certain Mr. Edwardes—a most amusing man—used to describe a call which he paid one Sunday afternoon to a farmer near Buckfastleigh, whom he found reading his Bible. Mr. Edwardes congratulated him on the appropriate nature of his studies. The farmer pushed the book aside, and, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... de parme you represent. If you want any advertising done, just call on me, William Canfield Brewer. I write poetry, draw pictures, make up stories, and prove to the absolute satisfaction of the most skeptical public that any article is even better than you say it is. I command a princely salary,—but I can't command it long enough. Adieu, I go, ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... "You scientific people build up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and that don't come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes—why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation of atoms ever gathered at the exact mathematical centre of Missouri, has more blind faith than a dervish, and more credulity, more superstition, than a cross-eyed smoke beating it past a country graveyard in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... of the preternatural and of popular superstitions as literary material, after a rationalizing and skeptical age, is signalized by such ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the Pharisees stood for the affirmative while the Sadducees denied.[177] Josephus avers—the doctrine of the Sadducees is that the soul and body perish together; the law is all that they are concerned to observe.[178] They were "a skeptical school of aristocratic traditionalists; adhering only ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... skeptical, but she quoted several eminent anthropologists to support her statement that the Eskimo were better developed mentally than other people, and that in simplicity of life, honesty, generosity, provision for the young and the old, in absence of brutality, murder ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... by his daughter-in-law, and passing in review before her the distinguished personages of the room, described them with that skeptical wit, that courteous irony, of which the nobles of other days were so completely the masters. He spoke like the Duke d'Ayer of old, that caustic wit, of whom a lady of the court said that she was amazed that his tongue was not torn out twenty times ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... historical Joan. So too her recognition of the King, whom she has never seen before; her reading of his mind; her wonderful influence over the French army, and much more of the kind, are part of a well-authenticated tradition with which the skeptical mind must make its peace as best it can. And the feat is not altogether easy. The modern rationalist will say, and is no doubt right in saying, that if we knew all the pertinent facts accurately from first to last, the Maid's story would ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... skeptical, capitalists were shy, and, but for the faith of Mr. Field, who worked day and night, almost without food or sleep, the whole project ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... considerable misery is undeniable: and the question is, of course, confined to that. Its exaggeration, in the ordinary estimate both of the vulgar and of skeptical reasoners, is equally certain. Paley, Bishop Sumner, as well as Derham, King, Ray and others of the older writers, have made many judicious and generally correct observations upon its amount, and they, as well as some of the able and learned authors of the Bridgwater Treatises, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... prove them, and trained to such credulity by their education and experience, by their theological doctrines, and by the law of the land in Old England, but still clothed upon with that righteousness which as it proved in the end made them skeptical as to certain alleged evidences of guilt, and swift to respond to the calls of reason and of mercy when the appeals were made to their calm judgment and second thought as to the sins of ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." Mrs Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. En revanche, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs. Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which she specially selected from all others when ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... has happened—though I know now that I didn't really expect it to happen, in spite of my prophecies. You may remember I was always skeptical on the subject of Bertram's settling down to a domestic hearthstone. I insisted 'twould be the turn of a girl's head and the curve of her cheek that he ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... school, however, and people wondered. The supervisor also wondered, and was skeptical. Several of the parents, who did not understand very well, complained to him that I kept a menagerie instead of a school. There were some, even, who did not wish to have their children taught natural history, because they came home and asked questions. They did not ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Prayer. Even Ludwig could not do otherwise than bend his knee upon the chair by which he stood, and bow his skeptical head, while the innocent maid and his ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sincerely for it. I am obliged to reply, however, that the affidavit of Messrs Miller and McKinlay astonished me very much. I cannot remember to have ever read anything of the kind anywhere and like you, I am very skeptical about it. I was in the world and a student at Amherst College in the year 1867, and was even then collecting the material for my history. I am pretty sure that I should have known of anything of this kind had it existed. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Susan was skeptical of this, even fearful. She had not forgotten Keith's frenzied avoidance of such callers in the old days. But to her surprise now Keith welcomed Mazie joyously—so joyously that Susan began to suspect that behind the joyousness lay an eagerness ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... skeptical: "If you can show me good water near here, I'll be learning something. I didn't know there was a water hole within ten miles—but I don't know this lower country as well as ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... sector, and a diversified industrial base. Over the past decade, however, the country has suffered recurring economic problems of inflation, external debt, capital flight, and budget deficits. Growth in 2000 was a negative 0.8%, as both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. The economic situation worsened in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive withdrawals from the banks, and a further decline in consumer and investor confidence. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... sacred about scrubbing the floor." Or on another day, "I wonder if it's a twist of the absurd mediaeval ascetic perversity left over?" Or again, "All it does for me is to take off the curse of belonging to the bourgeoisie." But no matter what skeptical name she called it, nor how much she minimized the reality of it, she felt some odd value in it which she would not have gone without. Once she said to herself, "It's ballast, to a person like me," although she did not know ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... People outside shook skeptical heads at this story of the cut hand. The bloody waistcoat was not to be disposed of in that easy way. It had fixed itself too strongly in their imagination. Indeed, my belief is that even could they have seen the waistcoat, its insignificant marks would have appeared murderous patches to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sincerely for Peter's recovery. We did not, as in the case of Paddy, "tack it on after more important things," but put it in the very forefront of our petitions. Even skeptical Dan prayed, his skepticism falling away from him like a discarded garment in this valley of the shadow, which sifts out hearts and tries souls, until we all, grown-up or children, realize our weakness, and, finding that our own puny strength is as a reed shaken in the wind, creep ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of worship. He is not, however, to be classed with many learned men in Roman Catholic countries, in modern times, who merely profess the papal system because it is the religion of the state, while they are real infidels; or skeptical as to the essential doctrines of christianity. It is not improbable that his intercourse with liberal and candid yet pious men is America, in his early years, served to produce in his mind charitable sentiments toward those who ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... forward again; for, indeed, he had no one else to bring forward, but he would do that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him. He would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later, choosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more skeptical about Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am convinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he falls back upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... data. No tests of the higher intellectual processes, such as the ability to analyze, to associate in terms of elements, to formulate new principles, and the like, have, been given. Some anthropologists are skeptical of the existence of any great differences, while others believe that though there is much overlapping, still differences of considerable magnitude do exist. At present we do not know how much of the differences existing between ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... young woman, and she no longer tried to ignore it and behave as if she were a little girl. With that increased independence of body there had come a change in her face; an indifference, something hard and skeptical. Her clothes, too, were different, like the attire of a shopgirl who tries to follow the fashions; a purple suit, a piece of cheap fur, a three-cornered purple hat with a pompon sticking up in front. The ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... has ever doubted French courage throughout all the centuries of her tormented history; but skeptical remarks have been made in times past of the tenacity of the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... a dawning light in Clara's eyes which showed that, though as yet a mere girl in years, she had waked to the consciousness of emotions which belong to womanhood. She was pretty, and of course she knew it, for I am skeptical of those characters who grow up to mature beauty, all unsuspicious of the fatal dower, and are some day startled by a discovery of their possessions. She knew, too, that female loveliness was an all-potent spell, and, depressing as were the circumstances of her life and situation, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Sometimes his various writings are only an expansion and application of one or two great fundamental principles. The works of Herbert Spencer, for example, are in the main an elaboration of the theory of evolution. Byron represented a skeptical reaction against the conventional manners and beliefs of his day. The essential feature of Emerson's work is found in a single sentence in "Nature." "We learn," he says, "that the Highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread universal Essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... his campaign in Egypt and Syria, he was seated one night upon the deck of the vessel, under the open canopy of the heavens, surrounded by his captains and generals. The conversation had taken a skeptical direction, and most of the party had combated the doctrine of the Divine existence. Napoleon had sat silent and musing, apparently taking no interest in the discussion, when suddenly raising his hand, and pointing at the crystalline firmament crowded with its mildly shining planets ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... old peddler still harping on his daughter. All the way home and many days afterwards Petka could think of nothing else. It seemed to him the greatest opportunity in the world to marry a girl from America. But now and then he got skeptical of his ability to get such a prize. However, he decided to try. He admitted that the whole success lay in the shaping of a strong and convincing letter and sending it to her properly. Petka knew how to write letters, but ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... our purpose to show how school instruction can be brought into the direct service of character-building. This is the point upon which most teachers are skeptical. Not much effort has been made of late to put the best moral materials into the school course. In one whole set of school studies, and that the most important (reading, literature, and history), there is opportunity through all the grades for a vivid and direct ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... downright young person, after all. And there was something about the boy that compelled candour. So, although she gathered after a time that he did not approve of chorus girls, was even rather skeptical about them and believed that the stage should be an uplifting influence, she told him ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that "it can't be." I wouldn't class myself as a "believer," exactly, because I've seen too many UFO reports that first appeared to be unexplainable fall to pieces when they were thoroughly investigated. But every time I begin to get skeptical I think of the other reports, the many reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they're looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the head of the cove in which it was the habit of the little craft to hibernate, strange sounds like that of a purring cat were ofttimes wafted shoreward. "It is only the wind in her rigging," the skeptical explained; but a suspicion still lurks in some of our minds that the Eskimo are not so far from the truth in conceding souls ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... you two—half and half. You'll find him all right to work with,—if you can only get him up in the morning,—and I've kind o' promised him something of the sort. Does that suit you?" Semple's countenance was thoughtful rather than enthusiastic. "I'm more skeptical about Lords than you are," he observed, "but if he's amenable, and understands that his part is to do what I tell him to do, I've no doubt we ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... animal to be a small one; but I am skeptical of their ever attaining the growth of a tall man, though I bear in mind that full-grown animals will probably differ as much ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... man is prone and perhaps obliged to do, from himself to another, had omitted to take account of a factor in Claudia's mind about the existence of which, even if it had been suggested to him, he would have been profoundly skeptical. Ayre had never been able, or at least never given himself the trouble, to understand how real a thing Stafford's vow had been to him, and what a struggle was necessary before he could disregard it. He would have been still more at ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s 'Antonio' G., satiate with visions of political justice, (possibly not to be realized in our time,) or willing to let the skeptical worldlings see that his anticipations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as they are and have been, wrote a tragedy. He chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish,—the plot simple, without being naked,—the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained. Antonio, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... ambassador had been taken to the quarters of Major Valdez, who claimed to be an officer of the Federals, and by him he was thoroughly cross-examined. He had heard of the breaking up of the Confederacy, but not of the capture of Mr. Davis, and was evidently skeptical of our story as to being wreckers, and connected us in some way with the losing party, either as persons of note or a party escaping with treasure. However, O'Toole baffled all his queries, and was proof against both blandishments and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... of applause greeted this announcement. They fell to embracing one another and their eyes filled with tears. Pecson alone preserved his skeptical smile. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... eyes from me and fixed them on the floor. After a pause he resumed, in emphatic accents:—"Well, I have lived to this age in unbelief. To credit or trust in miraculous agency was foreign to my nature, but now I am no longer skeptical. Call me to any bar, and exact from me an oath that you have twice been dead and twice recalled to life; that you move about invisibly, and change your place by the force, not of muscles, but of thought, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... your names at the head of a blank sheet. Why? Is the conquest of a silly, ignorant girl more flattering than that of a woman of sense, who can compare and judge? Is not your triumph a thousand times greater when a disappointed, deeply-skeptical woman lays her heart at your feet, and says—'You I will trust, you will bring me healing and happiness'—than when a young girl gives you her love because you happen to be the first man who asks for it? Other ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... skeptical, as I have considerable acquaintance there. In the army there's that fire-eating conqueror ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... skeptical. "I reckon he ain't no more gain here than he was over there," he said, and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to belong to any other than the heathen creeds, and no one had taken offence at his skeptical writings. When Euryale acted like the best of the Christian women, he could not take it amiss; and he would have scorned to blame her preference for the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... teacup. They sip this slowly and talk. I note that frequently they are saying something about "hawadje," and then they fix their eyes upon me. My dragoman tells me that he has been explaining our hard trip to Gerasa, that they were skeptical about it, but that he has ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... twenty-two, when the household removed to Coventry, and Miss Evans was there brought in contact with the family of a wealthy ribbon-maker named Bray. He was a man of some culture, and the atmosphere of his house, with its numerous guests, was decidedly skeptical. To Miss Evans, brought up in a home ruled by early Methodist ideals of piety, the change was a little startling. Soon she was listening to glib evolutionary theories that settled everything from an earthworm to a cosmos; next she was eagerly reading such unbaked works as Bray's Philosophy ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... whom I have found at length, has just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... to a young man, thin as a bamboo pole, elegantly tailored, who yawned to advertise gold inlays. I explained while he looked skeptical, bored and knowing simultaneously. "Who would tha flummox, bah ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... stood out crisp and glittering. Her straight brown hair had been coaxed by dint of two rows of curl papers to hang in shining brown curls. A silver paper star shone above her forehead and slippers covered with more silver paper made her feet things of beauty even in Katy's skeptical eyes. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... or Egypt is even the first of chess; but we may say this much, that, notwithstanding, the doubts expressed by Crawford in his history and Rajah Brooke in his journal, and the negative opposition of Dr. Van der Linde, we cannot bring ourselves to be skeptical enough to discredit the trustworthiness of the accounts furnished to us in the works of Dr. Hyde, Sir. William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes of the existence of the game called the Chaturanga at the ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... made Dr. Welwright tell her all he knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs. Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her, and said she was already ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... She was a pallid, tired woman with skeptical eyes. "Well, I'm sure that's very kind of her but I'm afraid it's no use. I've just come down from talking to her, nearly all her noon hour. She wouldn't go to the table. She's turned sullen, now. She won't take any interest in the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... to be skeptical; but at last permitted himself to be convinced that Mohammed Beyd had indeed killed himself in remorse for the death of the white woman he had, all unknown to his followers, ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. Afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... new light, Pierre and his father could say nothing. Wondering, but not believing, they exchanged stolen glances. It is probable that the abbe, in his present mood, was sincere; for in a fanatic one must allow for the wildest inconsistencies. The old sergeant, more skeptical than the Acadians, was, at the same time more polite. He hastened ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... gatherings which grew out of the study of spiritism was a lady who, like myself, was a convinced believer in the reality of the phenomena, but skeptical as to the value and personal origin of the communications made in the "circles." Her daughter, a child of seven, was in fact a hypnotic clairvoyant of singular lucidity, and my brother, Dr. Jacob Stillman, obtained from the mother permission to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... audience rose and, still standing, cheered for many minutes. I was immensely surprised and deeply touched by the unexpected tribute; but any undue elation I might have experienced was checked by the memory of the skeptical snort with which one of my auditors had received me. He was very German, and very, very frank. After one pained look at me he rose to ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... way better than those employed on the former occasion. Stores were laid in, as experience dictated, on a larger scale than before, and proclamation was made of "an expedition to Peru." But the call was not readily answered by the skeptical citizens of Panama. Of nearly two hundred men who had embarked on the former cruise, not more than three fourths now remained.11 This dismal mortality, and the emaciated, poverty-stricken aspect of the survivors, spoke ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... lived. For instance, she gave a description of the Cliff House at San Francisco, the seals on the rocks there, the high school in Des Moines, and so on. She also knew about life at army posts. The point that made us skeptical was when in mentioning the names of railroads she placed the wrong towns upon them. For instance, she told us her brother worked on the L. S. & M. S. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... [15] Since some skeptical persons are willing to discard this Book of Esther as no true history; and even our learned and judicious Dr. Wall, in his late posthumous Critical Notes upon all the other Hebrew books of the Old Testament, gives none upon the Canticles, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... skeptical. He and another village functionary, of whom we have spoken before, the grave-digger, are always the daring spirits of the neighborhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which these malicious spirits are capable, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... report that by reason of several very flattering offers to engage in mercantile pursuits, as well as failing health, he had decided to resign. As his voice, and the apparent desire to use it upon any and all possible occasions, showed no cessation of energy, a few skeptical ones were inclined to doubt that his health was seriously affected, and as it was over a year before he accepted any of the flattering offers, they believed he must have had hard work to find them. For the rest the town resumed the old-time even tenor of its way, though there had been ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... attention—especially among men who, daily trained to the labors of the chase, might appear well acquainted with the sagacity of a horse—but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp—times when the young Metzengerstein turned pale and shrunk away from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... believed it had, which was all the same to me. They made the customary promise not to forget me, but credulity must stop somewhere, and at this point I must confess my easy faith gave out, and left me skeptical. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... demand of the moment was George's forte. Indeed, there were those among his friends who felt that there were moments when George lived up to things too brightly and too beautifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his openly skeptical moments. But George even lived up to his uncle's skepticism. He accepted his remarks with charming good humor. It was his pride that he ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Maybe, maybe not, fellows!" called out the ever-skeptical Jack Eastwick, as he watched the rapidly nearing figures. Jack was on the regular team, ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... East of which it has been said that "Patriotism is its only religion"; or, in other words, that it lives only for the Soul of the Hive. When at long intervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid or skeptical, and mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to pour them westward like a dark movement of matter, in such cases it has been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice or incessant armies of locusts. The Eastern armies were indeed like insects; in their ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... listen to 'Miriam the prophetess,' as we called her, and the wonder with which we remarked that her prophecies invariably were fulfilled. But, as I grew older, my awe and wonder diminished in proportion, and, being of a very practical turn of mind myself, and very skeptical of spiritual agencies, mesmerism, and clairvoyance, and indeed of anything out of the ordinary course of events, I put no faith whatever in any of Miriam's visions and prophecies; especially as I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of amazement and horror broke out when he had finished. Only the chief sat regarding him in silence, a skeptical pucker lifting the corner of ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of the Inauguration passed, and Washington was itself again—an old-fashioned Southern town of sixty thousand inhabitants, no longer asleep perhaps, but still aristocratic, skeptical, sneering in its attitude toward ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... you need give nothing—only your stubborn will, your skeptical doubts, and the heart that will never know rest till ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... of the nations to Christianity; the many anti-christian corruptions of the Gospel; the idolatry, tyranny and persecution of the Roman hierarchy, etc. What prescience does all this imply—prescience no where to be found but in God! "Let now the infidel or the skeptical reader meditate thoroughly and soberly on these predictions. The priority of the records to the events admits of no question. The completion is obvious to every competent enquirer. Here, then, are facts. We are called upon to account for those facts on rational and adequate ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... gasping to bed, and shivered for hours with my head under the clothes, after an evening spent in listening to this authentic and fantastic family tale. How the candlesticks walked out into the air from the mantelpiece, and back again; how the chairs of skeptical visitors collected from all parts of the country to study what one had hardly then begun to call the "phenomena" at the parsonage at Stratford, Connecticut, hopped after the guests when they crossed the room; how the ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... while. Any delay would be a point gained. He shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, the day after the irrevocable vows had been taken, the treasure might come to light, and all their life be spent in vain regrets. Graciella was skeptical about the lost money. Even Mrs. Treadwell, whose faith had been firm for years, had ceased to encourage his hope; while Miss Laura, who at one time had smiled at any mention of the matter, now looked grave if by any chance he let slip a word in reference to it. But he ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... not imagine that, because the term Rationalism has been frequently employed within the last few years, it is of very recent origin either as a word or skeptical type. The Aristotelian Humanists of Helmstedt were called Rationalists in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and Comenius applied the same epithet to the Socinians in 1688.[1] It was a common word in England two hundred years ago. Nor was it imported into the English ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... here set up seemed to give the lie direct to the skeptical seaman; but he went on deliberately, though with a glazed eye and a deathlike pallor ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... With skeptical smile the magistrate looks at that felonious, would-be kidnaper of a juvenile innocent, and asks ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... philistine, in particular, is far from settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has possessed the plain man's joyless fidelity for years, and he has never discovered any charm in her. The poet possesses a peculiar power of insight which reveals in goodness hidden ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... skeptical enough to think that it is not the spontaneity of the grandmother but the art of Beranger which enhances the effect of the story told in ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... amused that distant America, supposedly so scientifically modern, should be yielding to superstition worthy only of the Middle Ages. The accounts from Bermuda were more difficult to explain. And England, with Bermuda involved, was not skeptical; as a matter of fact, the British authorities were astonished. Warships were starting for Bermuda; and that morning of May 16th, with the passenger lines in New York not sailing for Bermuda, American warships ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... which Raoul spoke were not without effect. Could Sir Frederick have had his way, the prisoner would have been acquitted on the spot. But Lyon was skeptical as to the story of love, a sentiment about which he knew very little; and there was a spirit of opposition in him, too, that generally induced him to take the converse of most propositions that were started. The prisoner was dismissed, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... skeptical mind, accustomed to undervalue what does not happen to come within the range of his pet idols or pursuits, the observation of a single day's multifold research in a great library might be in the nature of a revelation. Hither flock the ever-present ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was skeptical. "I wish I could believe it. I feel as if I were playing with a rattlesnake. He's treacherous! I think we'd better watch ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... passionate devotion to the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater gains, better food, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... forced to smile, not at the earnestness—she liked that, but there was her party, and she rapidly reviewed them—Marion, with her calm, composed, skeptical views, indifferent alike to the Christian or unchristian way of doing things; Eurie, who lived and breathed for the purpose of having what in wild moments she called "a high time;" Flossy with her dainty wardrobe, and her dainty ways, and her indifference to everything that demanded ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... hot and cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine that their senses present to different men different images of things this skeptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even that skeptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... that the conspirators would kill him. The lord treasurer communicated the result of his inquiries to the king, and urged the affair upon his attention as one of the utmost possible importance. The king himself, however, was very skeptical on the subject. He laughed at the lord treasurer's earnestness and anxiety. The lord treasurer wished to have a meeting of the council called, that the case might be laid before them, but Charles refused. ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... I have been to Caprera, and I have come over to see her and you. Italy is ready for the move, and is only waiting for the great man. He will not act without the Savoyard; he believes in him. I will not be skeptical. There are difficulties enough without imagining any. We have no money, and all our sources of supply are drained; but we have the inspiration of a sacred cause, we have you—we may gain others—and, at any rate, the French are ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the present spokesmen of Socialism are, like Kautsky, somewhat skeptical as to the necessity of an alliance between the working class and this section of the middle class, others accept it without qualification. If, then, we consider at once the middle ground taken by the former group of Socialists, and the very ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... this gay free-thinker was not only somewhat skeptical in his religious notions, but, moreover, a hard-hearted, good-for-nothing fellow—one who, had he lived in our time, would unquestionably have brought himself within the sweep of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Duke ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... case. After the Americans had triumphed, he went abroad to aid the French, saying, "Where Liberty is not, there is my home." He died in America in 1809. He is unfortunately more remembered for his skeptical Age of Reason than for his splendid services ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck |
