"Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... monk, Grishka Otropiev, by others to have been a son of Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. I am not aware that the theory that he was both at one and the same time has ever been put forward, and whilst admitting that it is speculative, yet I claim that no other would appear so aptly to fit all the known facts of his career or to shed light upon ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Therefore neither lapse of time nor multiplicity of trials could ever quench in Athanasius the pure spirit of hope which glows in his youthful work. Slight as our sketch of it has been, it will be enough to show his combination of religious intensity with a speculative insight and a breadth of view reminding us of Origen. If he fails to reach the mystery of sinlessness in man, and is therefore not quite free from a Sabellianising view of the Lord's humanity as a mere vesture of his divinity, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... drank tea with us at our inn, after which the professors went away; and I, having a letter to write, left my fellow-traveller with Messieurs Foulis. Though good and ingenious men, they had that unsettled speculative mode of conversation which is offensive to a man regularly taught at an English school and university. I found that, instead of listening to the dictates of the Sage, they had teazed him with questions and doubtful disputations. He came in a flutter to me, and desired I ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... another, and Rousseau in a third, just as in the practical order, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many methods. Rousseau was the most directly revolutionary of all the speculative precursors, and he was the first to apply his mind boldly to those of the social conditions which the revolution is concerned by one solution or another to modify. How far his direct influence was disastrous in consequence of a mischievous method, we shall have to examine. It was so various that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic ...
— Philebus • Plato
... rectitude. The heart of criminal psychology is here; and not only that, but I would conclude with a most earnest personal protest against the current methods of teaching and studying ethics in our academic institutions as a speculative, historical, and abstract thing. Here in the concrete and saliently objective facts of crime it should have its beginning, and have more blood and body in it by getting again close to the hot battle line between vice and virtue, and then only, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... with the question as best suited his own views. But with one feature of his treatment we quarrel determinately. He speaks of this most popular (and, we venture to add, most wise and beneficial) maxim, which arms men's suspicions against all that is merely speculative, on the ground that it is continually at war with the truth of practical results, as though it were merely and blankly a vulgar error, as though sans phrase it might be dismissed for nonsense. But, because there is a casual inaccuracy in the wording of a great truth, we are not at liberty ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... them from worrying the flock The institution of convents abroad, seems in one point a strain of great wisdom, there being few irregularities in human passions, which may not have recourse to vent themselves in some of those orders, which are so many retreats for the speculative, the melancholy, the proud, the silent, the politic and the morose, to spend themselves, and evaporate the noxious particles, for each of whom we in this island are forced to provide a several sect of religion, to keep them quiet And ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... "The financial position of the company depends entirely upon the value of a large quantity of speculative bonds, but as there was only one clerk employed, it was impossible to get at any figures. Hilditch declared that Jordan had only a small share in the business, from which he had drawn a considerable income for years, and that he had not ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... perception, memory, and even reasoning; this is the order of nature.[16] In proportion as a creature endowed with sensation becomes active, it acquires discernment suited to its powers, and the surplus of strength needed to preserve it is absolutely necessary in developing that speculative faculty which uses the same surplus for other ends. If, then, you mean to cultivate your pupil's understanding, cultivate the strength it is intended to govern. Give him constant physical exercise; make his body sound and robust, that you may make him ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the teacher to the pupil who has difficulties about the words of the law: at once like and unlike the old Tannaitic Midrash; like in that they deal with difficulties in the literal text of the Bible; unlike in that the reply of Philo is Agadic more usually than Halakic, speculative rather than practical. In these books,[90] as has been pointed out, there are numerous interpretations which Philo shares with the Palestinian schools. A few specimens taken from the first book will illustrate Philo's plan, but it should be mentioned that ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... many speculative individuals around that town who were constantly endeavoring to discover deposits of ore. One day one of these speculators was standing on a street corner, when a solemn-faced Indian came along, stopped in front of the man, and, after looking around in all directions to make ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... although not a chief, rose to power by the force of a superior intellect and a strong will. He was well-known in Grahamstown, having been in the habit of paying it frequent visits, on which occasions he evinced great curiosity on all subjects, speculative as well as practical. ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... modernist wandering in the wilderness of speculative theology looking for the Truth which the traditionalist, safe, warm, and secure of eternal life, keeps whole and undefiled in ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... there might be a general sack. So as I was certain that the French must go before long, and I got all these goods at a bargain, I have bought freely. Then I have not done badly with goods run in by French ships that managed to slip through the blockade, and which were laden with speculative cargoes of luxuries for the army. As we are almost the only European house open, and I was able to pay cash, I bought things up largely, and realized very good profits by supplying the native shops here and the officers of the garrison, and also sent a great deal ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... ballyhoo ourselves back to prosperity. I am going to be honest at all times with the people of the country. I do not want the people of this country to take the foolish course of letting this improvement come back on another speculative wave. I do not want the people to believe that because of unjustified optimism we can resume the ruinous practice of increasing our crop output and our factory output in the hope that a kind Providence will find buyers at high ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... with the vessel and its uses. But I have to do here with the forms taken by motives, with their morphology rather than with their signification, as the latter must, with reference to archaeologic material, remain greatly speculative. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... behind the veil of phenomena; at every step our friends vanish into the abyss of ever present mystery. To all such thoughts the writers of the eighteenth century seemed to close their eyes as resolutely as possible. . . The absence of any deeper speculative ground makes the immediate practical questions of life all the more interesting. We know not what we are, nor whither we are going, nor whence we come; but we can, by the help of common sense, discover ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... could do for them. The other, lean and languid, looked up from a newspaper, in which he had been scanning a flaming circus advertisement, as he stood smoking a cigar. He said nothing, but concentrated an intent speculative gaze on the face of Valeria, who had pulled off her faint green sunbonnet and in a flush of eager hopefulness ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... should lead reflective men to abjure the former, or that their aversion to it should increase in proportion as their views of Divine truth are extended and enlarged. Not a few have yielded, in early youth, to the charm of speculative inquiry, and fondly embraced the idea of "unisubstancisme," who have lived to exchange it for a more Scriptural faith. For just in proportion as men are brought under the influence of serious views of God, of the soul, and of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... maintain to be necessary to the production of the end, nay using such as are of a directly opposite nature, these men presume to talk to us of impossibilities! We may rather contend that they furnish a fresh proof of the soundness of our reasonings. We lay it down as a fundamental position, that speculative knowledge alone, that mere superficial cursory considerations, will be of no avail. Nothing is to be done without the diligent continued use of the appointed method. They themselves afford an instance of the truth of our assertions; and while they supply no argument against the efficacy ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... idiot a man makes of himself when he leaves a calling in which he has been eminently successful to embark in a calling which is, at best, uncertain, and of which he knows nothing. Once for all, let me admonish you: If you would succeed never enter outside operations, especially if they be of a speculative nature. Select a calling, and if you stick to your calling, your calling will stick ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... occasion felt in his heart the ancient affections of his nature returning with a compassionate horror. Yet even in this they were true to the Covenant; for it was not to be hidden that the English parliament, in doing what it did in that tragical event, was guided by a speculative spirit of political innovation and change, different and distinct, both in principle and object, from the cause which made our Scottish Covenanters have recourse to arms. In truth, the act of bringing kings to public condign ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... addition of the name of John Blake to the roll of British Chivalry, a book on Mars came their way—it was one by a speculative astronomer which suggests that the red planet is the home of reasoning beings akin to humanity. Isobel read it and was not impressed. Indeed, in the vigorous language of youth, she opined that it was ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... honourable, what is fair, what is becoming, what is noble, what is generous, takes possession of the heart, and animates us to embrace and maintain it. What is intelligible, what is evident, what is probable, what is true, procures only the cool assent of the understanding; and gratifying a speculative curiosity, puts ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... beautiful in his outward appearance, was sauntering about the great hall of the gambling-house at Monte Carlo, in the kingdom or principality of Monaco, the only gambling-house now left in Europe in which idle men of a speculative nature may yet solace their hours with some excitement. Nor is the amusement denied to idle ladies, as might be seen by two or three highly-dressed habituees who at this moment were depositing their shawls and parasols with the porters. The clock was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... which hides the imperfect ironwork of its elevators does not hide the fact that they groan like lost souls, and tremble and jerk and threaten to fall. The Septimus Building is typical of at least one half of a large city. It was "run up" by a speculative builder for a "quick turn-over." It is semi-fire-proof, but more semi than fire-proof. It stands on Nassau Street, between two portly stone buildings that try to squeeze this lanky impostor to ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm, in the present period of excitement, to preach a little moderation, even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled, but it cannot be put down, nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit of speculation, upon which, indeed, commerce itself is based. We have, therefore, no sympathy for that numerous class ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... party spirit which originate in speculative opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their nature transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions, adverse interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life are more permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which gives inestimable ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... generous family and scant provision for it being the mode in Fairfield, however, Mallston may not have seen his desperate position, especially with summer and harvest wages coming. Just now he was out of a job, having finished a ditching contract, and his black, speculative eyes looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory but I must observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That the northern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can be little doubt, and if so it is but natural ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... civilities of Capt. McClellin, he gave us Some Buisquit, Chocolate Sugar & whiskey, for which our party were in want and for which we made a return of a barrel of corn & much obliges to him. Capt. McClellin informed us that he was on reather a speculative expedition to the confines of New Spain, with the view to entroduce a trade with those people. his plan is to proceede up this river to the Entcrance of the river platt there to form an establishment from which to trade partially with the Panas & Ottoes, to form an acquaintance ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... course the mountains are wonderful enough; but they make me feel that humanity plays a very trifling part in the mind and purpose of God. I do not think that if I were a preacher of the Gospel, and had a speculative turn, I should care to take a holiday among the mountains. I should be beset by a dreary wonder whether the welfare of humanity was a thing very dear to God at all. I should feel very strongly what the Psalmist said, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" It would take the wind out ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... up its tremors to her long-lashed eyes, and a wild, speculative something throbbed in her slender wrists and beat in the little jacket that was moulded to her swelling form: the first sight of freedom in the wild ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the first emotion of reunion between the couple had passed, Jolliffe explained the delay as owing to a small speculative contract, which ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... treatise, which in our Bibles is utterly devoid of order or sequence, falls naturally, in its restored form, into two distinct halves: a speculative and a practical, distinguished from each other by characteristics proper to each, which there is no mistaking. The former, for instance, contains but few metrical passages, whereas the latter is composed of poetry and prose in almost equal proportions. The ethical part ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of business. He was ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... objects, some of which only entertain our speculation, others also employ our actions, so the understanding, with relation to these, not because of any distinction in the faculty itself, is accordingly divided into speculative and practical; in both of which the image of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... down-country home, and his toilsome journey into the woods, arrival, and purchase, and poor, hard life of toil and deprivation: here was his all. He sketched the plaintiff as a well or ill-to-do gentleman, of a speculative turn of mind, whose eye coveted the rich bottom-lands of the defendant; and finding him helpless and poor, searched out the weak place in his title, hunted up obscure relatives, and procured for a song sung by themselves, their signatures to a deed of property of which they had never heard; ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... miracles, and write that you possess information of those things of which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by any instance from nature. And you fancy you have wrought miracles when you spoil a work of some speculative mind, and do not perceive that you are falling into the same error as that of a man who strips a tree of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves mingled with the scented blossoms or fruit....... [Footnote 48: Givstino, Marcus Junianus Justinus, a Roman historian of the second ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... get magic and the devil to help him, and walk through the fire after all?" said Spini, with a grimace intended to hide a certain shyness in trenching on this speculative ground. "How do you know there's nothing in those things? Plenty of scholars believe in them, and this Frate is ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... had those special troubles which haunt nervous temperaments and speculative minds, when under the solemn influence of religion. What the great Luther called, without describing them, his 'tribulations'—those dreadful doubts and apathies which at times menace and darken the radiant fabric of faith, and fill the soul with nameless horrors. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the old civilization, when the intellect was trained to the highest point which it could reach, and on the great subjects of human interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art, even on religion itself and the speculative problems of life, men thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired and struggled after the same objects. It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... he was to embrace the ecclesiastical life. But though his mistress's heart was in this calling, his own never was much. After that first fervor of simple devotion, which his beloved Jesuit priest had inspired in him, speculative theology took but little hold upon the young man's mind. When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints and virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than ardor; ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... good final look at the old man, who wore more the aspect of a rough fisherman than a gardener. In fact he had pursued the former avocation entirely in the past, in company with the speculative growing of fruit and vegetables in his garden patch—not to sell to his neighbours, the fishing folk of the tiny hamlet of Eilygugg, but to "swap" them, as he termed it, for fish. Then the time came when the Den gardener happened to be enjoying himself ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... full parliamentary convention representing the whole society. The reasons upon which they decided may be found at large in the parliamentary proceedings of the times; and may be matter of instructive amusement for us to contemplate, as a speculative point of history. But care must be taken not to carry this enquiry farther, than merely for instruction or amusement. The idea, that the consciences of posterity were concerned in the rectitude of their ancestors' decisions, gave birth to those dangerous political heresies, which so ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... into the speculative mood as one reflects on these little birds and their remarkable habits. Why do they, of all birds, choose the highest mountain peaks for their summer homes? Might the cause be physiological? Are their lungs, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... was not so picturesque a youth as Parsons. He lacked richness in his voice, and went about in those days with his hands in his pockets looking quietly speculative. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... some excuse for being more speculative than others of my condition, I desire your lordship's pardon, while I am doing a very foolish thing, which is, to give you ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... in his own. His name is Hugo Stinnes. Mackenzie is a bigger man and a higher type than Stinnes; but each man regards his country as a commercial asset to be developed; each is a wizard of a species of applied finance. For years Mackenzie was of speculative interest in Canada to people who had never even seen his photograph. He was the man who had a second headquarters in Ottawa and a branch office in every provincial legislature except Prince Edward Island. We almost had Provincial Premiers ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... warn him that our company was made up of hard-headed lawyers not apt to be impressed by fairy tales and ghost stories, and to suggest that he cut the spiritualism in case the conversation fell, as was likely, into the speculative. I forgot, or something hindered, and, sure enough, the question of second sight and mind reading came up, and I said to myself: "Lord, now we'll have it." But it was my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, who led off with a clairvoyant ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the chansons is also shown by the fact that Rother is made grandfather of Charlemagne and King of Rome. Whether he had anything to do with the actual Lombard King Rother of the seventh century is only a speculative question; the poem itself seems to be Bavarian, and to date from about 1150. The story is one of wooing under considerable difficulties, and thus in some respects at least nearer to a roman ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... neither see nor understand. In fact, his intellectual abilities did not exist in an analytical and separated form; but in a combined and concrete state. They "moved altogether when they moved at all." They were in no degree speculative, but only practical. They could not act at all in the region of imagination, but only upon the field of reality. The sympathies of his intelligence dwelt exclusively in the national being and action. Its interests ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... intended both for irrigation and for protection, and far more marvellous in its completeness than the boldest speculative minds among our astronomers had ever dared ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Among the various speculative schemes which Balzac dreamed of, in connection with Les Jardies, and which were to make his fortune,—a dairy, vineyards which were to produce Malaga and Tokay wine, the creation of a village, etc.,—particular mention should be made of his plans for the cultivation ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Canaan Company, the Tigmores, can without doubt be made to pay from one hundred to five hundred per cent, on any investment within the first year. The Canaan Company will not have to depend upon shallow sheets of mineral against dead rock, as do many of the speculative enterprises of the mining section. The Canaan Company will not cut blind. It knows its field, it knows its chances, it knows its future'—and so on, and so on—how do ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... preposterous as at least worthy of discussion. The absconder is often too inarticulate and ill at ease to give a clear picture of what was in his mind when he went away. If he was out of work, it may have been a perfectly sincere belief that he would find work elsewhere, or perhaps only a speculative hope that he might. (These are not in the beginning genuine desertions, but often become so later on.) It is possible that, beset by irritations and perplexities, the thought of cutting his way out at one stroke from all his difficulties made an appeal too strong to be resisted. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... manner, when the natural softness and amiability of the Hindoo character yield to the temptations of luxury and dominion, the individual grows into a tyrant as cruel and odious as any of those depicted in history. This apparent discrepancy has given rise to many speculative mistakes; but, in our opinion, it is as certain that the mass of the Hindoos are gentle and kindly in their nature, as it is that the mass of women are so. It is a curious thing to see the gallant sepoy on a march, attended by his pet lambs, with necklaces of ribbons and white shells, and ears ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps—for ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... danger of disappearing, as, for example, by drowning or being consumed in fire, the nature of the circumstance would have been different. As the matter exists, however, there is every appearance that the far-seeing Chang-ch'un will soon reap the deserved reward of his somewhat speculative enterprise, and to that end this person will immediately procure a wooden barrier and the services of four robust carriers, and proceed to the scene ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... vaguely of the mental plane, the moral plane, and so on; and this vagueness has led many people to suppose that the information on the subject which is to be found in Theosophical books is inexact and speculative—a mere hypothesis incapable of definite proof. No one can get a clear conception of the teachings of the Wisdom-Religion until he has at any rate an intellectual grasp of the fact that in our solar system there exist perfectly definite planes, each with its own matter ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... absurdities and contradictions, he compares the scores of constitutions that have been engulfed in the convulsions of the Latin peoples with that of England, and points out that the latter has only been very slowly changed part by part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of speculative reasoning. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals, according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book, in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The fourth book, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... be said, is very speculative, but the fact remains that celestial bodies appear to be the only places in which the complex elements may be in actual process of formation from their known source—hydrogen. At least we may see what a vast variety of physical conditions these cosmic crucibles afford. At one end ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... soon after the return of the Washburn-Langford party, two printers at Deer Lodge City, Montana, went into the Firehole basin and cut a large number of poles, intending to come back the next summer and fence in the tract of land containing the principal geysers, and hold possession for speculative purposes, as the Hutchins family so long held the Yosemite valley. One of these men was named Harry Norton. He subsequently wrote a book on the park. The other one was named Brown. He now lives in Spokane, Wash., and both of them in the ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... for has not yet come to Court, as I said that day," his Grace went on, and now he was grave again, and had even fallen into a speculative tone. "But it struck me once that I heard of her—though she is no fit companion for you yet—and Heaven knows if she ever will be. The path before her is too full of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... infliction of torture without any comment. When Spence and Carstairs were tortured with the thummikins, he describes them as 'ane ingine but lately used with us,' and possibly he had some misgiving. The subjects of astrology and witchcraft had an attraction for his inquiring and speculative mind.[26] He believed in the influence of the heavenly bodies, and more firmly in witchcraft, for which many unhappy women were every year cruelly put to death. These trials at times evidently gave him some uneasiness. But usually, with regard to both topics, his doubts ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... it is truly subversive of the doctrine of Christ. Her grand central doctrine of the "allness" of mind and the unreality of matter is a true copy of the "fantastic idealism" of the Gnostics. Gnosticism was based on "speculative knowledge." So is Mrs. Eddy's theory. Gnosticism denied the "true humanity of the Redeemer, and made his person a mere phantom, and his work a mere illusion." So does Christian Science. Although Mrs. Eddy clamours ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... solar system much speculation is rife as to the existence of human creatures on the several larger planets. Theories of all kinds have been advanced; some speculative or absurd, others so plausible as to give rise to interesting questions, such as communicating with Mars, and perhaps of taking a journey to the Moon. These suggestions, while fanciful, awaken our interest and excite our curiosity. Can any one predict the excitement ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... to the real sure and easy. All the Greek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face the arches are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from the brow,—hence the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderance of the speculative intellect over ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... strives to attain a regular process of investigation. We see this in the Topica, the De Finibus, and the Tusculanae Disputationes, in all of which he was greatly assisted by the Academic point of view which strove to reconcile philosophy with the dictates of common sense. A purely speculative ideal such as that of Aristotle or Plato had already ceased to be propounded even by the Greek systems; and Roman philosophy carried to a much more thorough development the practical tendency of the later Greek schools. In the Hortensius, a work ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with so much warmth, and accompanied by looks so expressive of affection and grateful sensibility, that I plainly saw it proceeded from something more than mere speculative approbation. Lamont declared, that he was well convinced of the justness of what Miss Mancel had said; at first it appeared rather a sentiment uttered in sport than an opinion which could be proved by argument; but that ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... vivacity, loud laughter, and perhaps even coarse words; that his uncompromising idealism may have been disturbed by the discordance of literary squabbles, intrigues, and business transactions; that his peaceable, non-speculative, and non-argumentative disposition may have been vexed and wearied by discussions of political, social, religious, literary, and artistic problems. Unless his own art was the subject, Chopin did not take part in discussions. And Liszt tells us ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to the middle of the nineteenth century, and later, through different lines, ending in Emmons of Franklin, Taylor of New Haven, and Finney of Oberlin, and is represented among the living by the venerable Edwards A. Park, of Andover, who adds to that power of sustained speculative thinking in a straight line which is characteristic of the whole school, a wide learning in the whole field of theological literature, which had not been usual among his predecessors. It is a prevailing trait of this ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... itself from the shifting influence of speculative trading, by taking the business out of the hands of middlemen at home, the Exchange found it quite as important to maintain the control of its own ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... essentially distinct and perfectly separable: nor is it to be doubted that they were equally separable in the learned languages."—Walkers's Observations on Gr. and Lat. Accent and Quantity, Sec.20; Key, p. 326. In the speculative essay here cited, Walker meant by accent the rising or the falling inflection,—an upward or a downward slide of the voice: and by quantity, nothing but the open or close sound of some vowel; as of "the a in scatter" and in "skater," the initial syllables of which words ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he had only the bitter hate of the conquered. He cast a malevolent look upon him with eyes that were oddly narrowed—a measuring, speculative look that comprehended his strength and registered the infallibility thereof with loathing. "I wonder what happened to the serpent," he said, "when the man and woman were thrust out ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the truly liberal Lafitte, Are the true lords of Europe. Every loan Is not a merely speculative hit, But seats a nation or upsets a throne. Republics also get involved a bit; Columbia's stock hath holders not unknown On 'Change; and even thy silver soil, Peru, Must get itself discounted ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... make his discoveries the basis of their teaching believe they are teaching the science of voice production. The scientist says: "Have I not studied the voice in action? I have seen, therefore I know." But the element of uncertainty in what he has seen makes his knowledge little more than speculative. But suppose he is sure of what he has seen. Of what importance is it? He has seen a vocal organ in the act of producing tone under trying conditions, for one under the conditions necessary to the use of the laryngoscope is not at all likely to reach his ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... inscriptions are not in all respects identical with those found in Landa, and that Landa's list, especially when tested by the inscriptions, is incomplete. There is not absolute certainty in regard to the name Kukulcan; nevertheless, M. de Charencey makes this speculative ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... matters respecting the Church, where heresy, which the Emperor held, or affected to hold, in great horror, appeared to him to lurk. Nor do we discover in his treatment of the Manichaeans, or Paulicians, that pity for their speculative errors, which modern times might think had been well purchased by the extent of the temporal services of these unfortunate sectaries. Alexius knew no indulgence for those who misinterpreted the mysteries ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... very desirable little archipelago, not far from the Saguenay, has already offered to give the property outright if a suitable sanctuary can be made out of the whole. This is all the more encouraging because such a gift involves the refusal of an offer from a speculative purchaser. May others be moved to ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... the accepted prejudices which one does not meddle with at nineteen. "Youth is conservative because it is afraid." Moya, for all her fighting blood, was traditionally and in social ways much more in bonds than Paul, who had inherited his father's dreamy speculative habit of thought, with something of the farm-hand's distrust of society and its ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... which have a mere speculative importance, there is no danger in giving rein to speculation; but on those of such real and intense practical importance as the security against hostile aggression of the great city and port of New York, it is not admissible to set aside ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... no speculative question, but with the practical problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the situation, urges his thought along the lonely path of prophecy. The love for the old King, which prompted him to try all the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Robinson were surprised at the growing intimacy between them now. Robert presented the note with a grave and courtly Virginia bow, then withdrew to a little distance and respectfully awaited her answer. Over at the Gordons' a group of ladies, old and young, watched the scene with curious and speculative eyes. Everybody knew that Miss Forrest had declined to see Dr. Bayard during her illness. Everybody had noted that, while the entire feminine element of the garrison flocked to inquire for Nellie in her invalid state, nobody went to see ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... with a speculative eye as he worked, and thought he had never looked quite so unattractive as he did with an eight-days' growth of beard, his shirt stained with paint and petrol. His hands were grimy and nobody would have recognised in this scarecrow the elegant habitue ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... myself, and when I got to bed, I'm so sleepy I'm off before my head touches the pillow. Besides I like to be a great deal with my Aunts—I'm a great bore, aren't I, Aunt Emma?" (she smiled at old Mrs. Paley, who with head slightly drooped was regarding the cake with speculative affection), "and father has to be very careful about chills in winter which means a great deal of running about, because he won't look after himself, any more than you will, Arthur! ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... revolt. Pompey was still in Spain. The only man at home of any military reputation was the praetor Crassus, who had amassed an enormous fortune by buying up property at famine prices during the Proscription of Sulla, and in speculative measures since. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... leading laws which govern this most intricate question the author has boldly defined and authoritatively arranged. The chapters which he has written on the more involved features of the subject, as sex and the relative influence of parents, should go far toward setting at rest the wildly speculative views cherished with reference to these questions. The striking originality in the treatment of the subject is no less conspicuous than the superb order and regular sequence of thought from the ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... thinkers and statesmen have occupied than by following the devious turnings of political events and the tangle of party controversy. The point of view naturally affects the whole method of handling problems, whether speculative or practical, and to the historian it serves as a centre around which ideas and policies that perhaps differ, and even conflict with one another, may be so grouped as to show their underlying affinities. Let us then seek to determine the principal ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... neighbors, and questions of local government were about the only community bond. When new sections of the country were opened up by railroads and with the growth of cities farm lands increased rapidly in value, there was an era of speculative farming, which Dr. Warren H. Wilson has called the era of the "exploiter."[18] A farm was bought with an idea of its improvement and resale at a good profit, and many farmers moved from one section to another in search of new land which was both fertile and cheap.[19] The era of land speculation ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... slovenly household gods in one of those dreary thoroughfares which speculative builders love to raise upon some miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous town. Brigsome's Terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of building that was ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... of breeding and that she was really very good to have put herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint's advent quickened the speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... During this speculative inventory, Warburton's face was gravely set; indeed, it pictured his exact feelings. He was grave. He even wanted Pierre's approval. He was about to pass through a very trying ordeal; he might not even pass through it. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... knowledge of evil brought a sardonic smile to his lips. She had as yet everything to learn of the world about her. Could such learning be imparted to her free from error or hypothesis, and apart from the fiat of the speculative human mind? It must be; for he knew from experience that she would accept his teaching only as he presented every apparent fact, every object, every event, as a reflection in some degree of her immanent God, and subject to rigid demonstration. Where ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... regeneration of society by a group of radicals would hardly have given him much practical concern, had it not fallen in with some peculiarities of his private position. Something, it is true, is to be allowed for the infection of the time, which would touch a morally speculative mind such as Hawthorne's to some degree; he would have observed these dreamers, breaking out new paths in the hardened old world of custom and inheritance, and would have followed the fortunes of the dream in its effects on individual lives, for ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... supreme sway in the last movement of speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and on the other a sheer atheism. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... lectures on La Nature de l'Ame delivered at London University, Oct. 21, 1911. From report in The Times for Oct. 23, 1911, p. 4.] In order to think Change and to see it, a whole mass of prejudices must be swept aside—some artificial, the products of speculative philosophy, and others the natural product of common-sense. We tend to regard immobility as a more simple affair than movement. But what we call immobility is really composite and is merely relative, being a relation between movements. If, for example, there are two trains running in the same ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... eyes half closed in a narrowed, speculative gaze upon some knotty point in his calculation. This long, sideways look happened to fall upon Lydia, and she turned cold before the profound unconsciousness of her existence in those eyes apparently fixed so piercingly upon her. She had a quick fancy that the blank ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... had time and could move my library around with me during our summer tour, I might monkey with speculative science and expose the plan of creation, but as it is now, I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... girl sat by the little table, gazing intently on the picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was something absent-minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not speak until Esther played the last number on ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... what he is saying, as bad and obscure as in his famous Dissertation on Parties: Von must know the man, to guess his meaning. Not to mention the absurdity and impracticability of this kind of system, there is a long speculative dissertation on the origin of government, and even that greatly stolen from other writers, and that all on a sudden dropped, while he hurries into his own times, and then preaches (he of all men!) on the duty of preserving decency! The last treatise would ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... stare at O'Keefe with a new and curiously speculative interest. Lugur's eyes grew hellish; he raised his arms as though to strike her. Larry's pistol prodded him ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... recovered himself quickly. He was watching his inquisitor now with a faintly speculative frown. When Cueto had finished, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... case into his pocket, he glanced about on the floor and something just within the negative room caught his eye. Once more he bent down. With a speculative expression he picked up the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Helen of Kirkconnell. Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the Leonine Elegiacs, in Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in Unity with Itself, an unlucky title of a remarkable ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... smuggling rose to a very high pitch, and in which the position of Excise Officer was sometimes dangerous. He was remarkable for his activity and boldness in contests with smugglers, and made many seizures. Ann Airy, the mother of George Biddell Airy, was a woman of great natural abilities both speculative and practical, kind as a neighbour and as head of a family, and was deeply loved and respected. The family consisted of George Biddell, Elizabeth, William, and Arthur ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... in very truth, imbued with little of mere sentiment. He gave little time to discussions belonging solely to the realm of the speculative or the abstract. He was in no sense a dreamer. What Coleridge has defined wisdom—"common sense, in an uncommon degree"—was his. In phrase the simplest and most telling, he struck at once at the very core of the controversy. Possibly no man was ever less inclined ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... prejudice hath been | infinite that both divine and human | knowledge hath received by the | intermingling and tempering of the one | with the other; as that which hath filled | the one full of heresies, and the other | full of speculative fictions and | 18. similarly: A.L. Sp.III, 350,I.24 Vanities{18}. | seq. (D.A. Sp. I, 545, I.35 swq.) | John Channing Briggs (""Bacon's But now there are again which in a | science and religion", in: THE contrary extremity to those which ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... only twelve months old, those who were bound together to take care of my interests separated my father from me, giving as an excuse that he was of too speculative and adventurous a spirit to be entrusted with ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... rest and recreation, with plenty of refreshments thrown in to boot. So he got on a long and continuous spree, and went to the bad, until his wife had to divorce him and turn him out to "root hog or die." Then, after a while, he began to rally and reform; and a grand, speculative idea striking him, he traded his faithful squirrel dog and his old shot gun for a warrantee deed for one hundred acres of land in the upright region of Cleveland County. Then, as Wesley began to prosper, he found himself ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... vehicle while the vulgar populace on the curb identified them by pointing with their grimy fingers. Each guest looked forward to the fulfilment of some cherished dream and Dr. Emma Harpe saw a picture, too, as she gazed at Symes with speculative, contemplative eyes. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... "A speculative country, that is true," said Planchet,—"a country that I know well. What sort of an affair, monsieur, without too ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... that my brief and rather speculative answers to your questions, reasoning as I did, from Mr. Donnelly's point of view, may prove at least in a ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... were unheard of at that time: 'I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.' 'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within their reach; she flies from public places; it is on ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the centuries we find no time in which Christendom was left wholly devoid of mysteries. "It was probably about the end of the 5th century, just as ancient philosophy was dying out in the Schools of Athens, that the speculative philosophy of neo-Platonism made a definite lodgment in Christian thought through the literary forgeries of the Pseudo-Dionysius. The doctrines of Christianity were by that time so firmly established that the Church could look upon a symbolical ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the moment when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at P.D. and Wrath of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... for the energies of the boys, whose abilities could be directed into useful channels. Commercially the island was of immense value, if properly used. So long as John and the Professor were there no wrong speculative efforts would dare to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... habitually spoken of as very scourges of God. From this temper two consequences naturally flowed. In the first place, while it lasted there was no hope of an honest philosophic discussion of the great questions which divide speculative minds. Moderation and impartiality were virtues of almost superhuman difficulty for controversialists who had made up their minds that it was their opponents who had erected the guillotine, confiscated the sacred property of the church, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... one simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... them had come an appraising, speculative glint. He nodded. "You've got her right," he admitted gruffly. "But if you knowed why didn't you slope?" He looked at Hollis with a half sneer, as though unable to decide whether Hollis was a brave man or ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in his Horologiographia Optica. Dialling Universall and Particular, Speculative and Practicall, London 1652, comes before his readers with these remarks on ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... which made William Penn speak of his colony on the banks of the Delaware as the "Holy Experiment." In his testimony to George Fox, he says, "He was an original and no man's copy. He had not learned what he said by study. Nor were they notional nor speculative, but sensible and practical, the setting up of the Kingdom of God in men's hearts, and the way of it was his work. His authority was inward and not outward, and he got it and kept it by the love of God. He was a divine and a naturalist, ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... intellect must explore for itself, and not take on the authority of others. When this answer was reported through Phoebe, Robert shrugged his shoulders, alarmed at the hot-bed nurture of intellect and these concessions to mental independence, only balanced by such loose and speculative opinions as Miss Fennimore had lately manifested to him. Decidedly, he said, there ought to be a change of governess ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the decanters placed on the table, Mr. Oldbuck proposed the King's health in a bumper, which was readily acceded to both by Lovel and the Baronet, the Jacobitism of the latter being now a sort of speculative opinion ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... practice round him; but he is the only example even approximating to the heroic type. Coriolanus—Caesar—Antony stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities;—Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... shown that the anticipation of some speculative persons, that the course of the Gulf Stream, and consequently the climate of Western Europe, might be altered by cutting through the isthmus, and thus connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was altogether erroneous. No change whatever in the direction, rate of motion, or temperature of the great ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... I go to church," said Udell thoughtfully; "Well, Mr. Wicks, I'll tell you why I don't go to church. Just because I've got too much to do. I make my own way in the world and it takes all the business sense I have to do it. The dreamy, visionary, speculative sort of things I hear at meeting may be all right for a fellow's soul, but they don't help him much in taking care of his body, and I can't afford to fill my mind with such stuff. I am living this side of the grave. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... a man lurking near and moving as they moved, with a speculative air. Writs were out against Raikes. He slipped from his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... also be well to point out the great importance of anthropogeny, in the light of the biogenetic law, for the purposes of philosophy. The speculative philosophers who take cognizance of these ontogenetic facts, and explain them (in accordance with the law) phylogenetically, will advance the great questions of philosophy far more than the most distinguished thinkers of all ages have yet succeeded in doing. Most certainly ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... race has asked, "What is the origin of the material world, what is the origin of life, and what is the origin of sin?" In general the philosophers held (and most of what science says concerning these matters is not science but speculative philosophy) that matter was eternal and simply asked how it came to its present state. One group, the materialists, held that an active principle inherent in the matter working through long ages, brought about the ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... native taste for luxury and magnificence which was fostered by delicate health, he steadily looked for advancement through the influence of Burghley and the smiles of the Queen. But Burghley had no sympathy with speculative thought, and distrusted him for his confidences concerning his higher studies, while he probably feared in Bacon a dangerous rival of his own son; so that with expressions of kind interest, he refrained from giving his nephew practical aid. Elizabeth, too, suspected that a young man who ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... never forget that it was considered by nearly all the later philosophers as of overwhelming importance compared with the first. Philosophy was emphatically defined as the art of conduct (ars vivendi). All speculative and non-ethical doctrines were merely estimable as supplying a basis on which this practical art could be reared. This is equally true of the Pyrrhonian scepticism and of the dogmatism of Zeno and Epicurus. Their logical and physical doctrines were mere outworks or ramparts within which ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... might appeal to his brethren, and this resemblance is made still more striking by the oratorical flights or prayers with which she interrupts her argument to address her Creator. Moreover, the book is throughout, as Leslie Stephen says, "rhetorical rather than speculative." It is unmistakably the creation of a zealous partisan, and not of a calm advocate. It reads more like an extempore declamation than a deliberately written essay. Godwin says, as if in praise, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... true he did not originate, like Socrates and Plato; but he condensed and sifted the writings of the Greeks, and is the best expounder of their philosophy. Who has added substantially to what the Greeks worked out of their creative brain? I know that no Roman ever added to the domain of speculative thought, yet what Roman ever showed such a comprehension and appreciation of Greek philosophy as did Cicero? He was profoundly versed in all the learning the Grecians ever taught. Like Socrates, he had a contempt for physical science, because science in his day was based on imperfect ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... heart and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James |
