"Theist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that which happens without any one's direct intention; a chance that which happens without any known cause. If the direct cause of a railroad accident is known, we can not call it a chance. To the theist there is, in strictness, no chance, all things being by divine causation and control; but chance is spoken of where no special cause is manifest: "By chance there came down a certain priest that way," Luke x, 31. We can speak of a game of chance, but not of a game of accident. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Montaigne's manner. In sum, his philosophy is just Montaigne's, turned to the needs of a broken spirit instead of a confident one—to the purposes of a chagrined and exhausted convertite instead of a theist of the stately school of Cicero and Seneca and Plutarch. Without Montaigne, one feels, the Pensees might never have been written: they represent to-day, for all vigilant readers, rather the painful struggles of a wounded intelligence to fight down ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... materialist, so far as natural science is concerned, stands upon logical ground, but no less logical is the foundation of him who believes in human free-will and immortality. The decision as to the correctness of the beliefs of the materialist or of the theist must be reached by other data than those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist or a pantheist, a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer. The one thing on which most of these good people were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was to defend and strengthen the Christian religion by relieving it of those peculiar doctrines which to the freethinkers of his time were a stumbling-block and an offence. And, in spite of Lessing's own declarations, he endeavours to show that he was an ordinary theist,—a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing's own confession to Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot well be argued away. In that remarkable conversation, held toward the close of his life, he indicates ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of Voltaire are less important than his negations, for the work of this great writer was mainly to destroy. He was a theist, of wavering and doubtful faith. He was well aware that any profession of atheism might be dangerous, and likely to injure him at court and with some of his friends. He thought that belief in God and in a future life were important to the safety of society, and is said to have sent the servant out ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... necessity of his own nature, and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, [78] are firmly held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic theist might subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans; [79] a creed too sublime, perhaps, for our present faculties. What object remains for the fancy, or even the understanding, when we have abstracted from the unknown substance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... satisfactorily not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies [526] of the Nights, but also angel and devil. Both Arbuthnot and Payne regarded him as a Mohammedan. Another friend described him as a "combination of an Agnostic, a Theist and an Oriental mystic." Over and over again he said to his cousin, St. George Burton, "The only real religion in the world is that of Mohammed. Religions are climatic. The Protestant faith suits England." Once he said "I should not care to go to Hell, for I should meet all my relations there, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... away over thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on some spot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afar off, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily, as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied in woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation which philosophers will not believe because they do not understand—"the blinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson |
