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Contemplate   Listen
verb
Contemplate  v. t.  (past & past part. contemplated; pres. part. contemplating)  
1.
To look at on all sides or in all its bearings; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study. "To love, at least contemplate and admire, What I see excellent. " "We thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate."
2.
To consider or have in view, as contingent or probable; to look forward to; to purpose; to intend. "There remain some particulars to complete the information contemplated by those resolutions." "If a treaty contains any stipulations which contemplate a state of future war."
Synonyms: To view; behold; study; ponder; muse; meditate on; reflect on; consider; intend; design; plan; propose; purpose. See Meditate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contemplate" Quotes from Famous Books



... The hatred which could contemplate a vengeance so long drawn out was on his dark face; yet, it is but justice to say, that he sincerely believed it to be a holy hatred. The foes of the church, he regarded as the foes of God; and his anger as a just zeal for the honor of the Lord of Hosts. Beside which, it included ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... cannot contemplate the case of either of these ladies without feelings of pity rather than of envy. They were both nobly born, and nobly married; and yet the elder was joined to a man, who, to say the very least, shared his love for her with another; and the younger, though requiring, every ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... near, they again gathered around the pits, and saw that food was waiting for them at the bottom of both. They could contemplate their victims unharmed, and this made them courageous enough to think of an attack. The human voice and the gaze of human eyes had lost their power, and the pack of wild hounds, counting several score, began to think of taking some steps ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... the religious, the benevolent, or the literary institutions of the Northern States—whether I contemplate the beauty of their cities, or the general aspect of their fine country, in which nature every where is seen rendering her rich and free tribute to industry and skill—or whether I regard the general ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... * "The agitation, the frenzy, the sorrow of the times, reacted upon the human intellect, and FORCED men into meditation. Their own nature was held up before them in a sterner form. They were compelled to contemplate an ideal of man, far more colossal than is brought forward in the tranquil aspects of society; and they were often engaged, whether they would or not, with the elementary problems of social philosophy. Mere danger forced a man into ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... present commerce of that city, from the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser of January 10, 1846, by which it will be seen that in the year 1845 the increase of vessels trading with it was enormous, and that by the Welland Canal, or an American ship canal, round the Falls of Niagara, they already contemplate a direct trade ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... do it like men driven desperate. Never was there a greater peril than that I am now in. Time, at its own pleasure, will untie this knot; or Destiny, if there is one, determine the event. The game I play is so high, one cannot contemplate the issue with cold blood. Pray for the return of my good luck."—Two days hence, the poor young Kur-Baiern, deaf to the French seductions and exertions, which were intense, had signed his "Peace of Fussen" (22d April 1745),—a finale ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the eighth inning the score remained one to nothing in Harvard's favor. It looked as if Yale would receive a shut out, and that was something awful to contemplate. The "sons of Old Eli" were ready to do anything to win a score ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... with what Fechner calls the "indirect''—-includes all that imaginative activity adds to our enjoyment when we contemplate an aesthetic object. It may consist first of all in recalling concrete experiences firmly associated with the object, as when the sight of wild-flowers in a London street calls up an image of fields and lanes. In order that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the matter was alarming to contemplate. She clung closer to her father, and said, in a half-frightened tone, that she never would be carried off. It quite reconciled her to the fact of not ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... contemplate the fact of this one objective; this tremendous unity of intention in the book, you have an overwhelming demonstration of the unity of its inspiration. Whether the inspiration be a true or a false one, it is beyond all question one ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... position among the volunteers, and in great state attending the convention held in Dublin in November 1783. Carried away by his position and his popularity he talked loudly of rebellion, and his violent language led the government to contemplate his arrest. Subsequently he took no part in politics, spending his later years mainly on the continent of Europe. In 1798 he was imprisoned by the French at Milan, remaining in custody for eighteen months. He died at Albano on the 8th of July 1803, and was buried in Ickworth church. Varying ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... or Madam, for this melancholy deterioration in the DABCHICKS you are entirely responsible. I am saddened as I contemplate it, and I appeal to you. Scarify Dukes and Duchesses, make vain and useless social prigs as miserable as you like, but leave the DABCHICKS of this world alone. They are simple folk, and really I cannot think that the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... instance of a whole people's uniting to form governments for themselves, and their posterity, I have thought it would not be unacceptable to the philosophic mind of the Empress of all the Russias, to contemplate the first rudiments of these governments, which may hope after the example of her own dominions, by an assiduous application to the arts of peace and war, to obtain an elevated station among the nations of the earth. I have, therefore, directed to your care, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... heretofore been said concerning the motion and function of the heart and arteries must appear obscure, inconsistent, or even impossible to him who carefully considers the entire subject, it would be proper to look more narrowly into the matter to contemplate the motion of the heart and arteries, not only in man, but in all animals that have hearts; and also, by frequent appeals to vivisection, and much ocular inspection, to investigate and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... the whole ill-natured, yet such is human nature that this idea was actually the first that had given her satisfaction for many hours. How sorry Mr. Bates would be, when he found her dead, that he had dared to speak so angrily to her! It was, in a way, luxurious to contemplate the pathos of such an artistic death for herself, and its fine effect, by way of revenge, upon the guardian who had ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... rejoiced he was when he had parted with this dangerous temptation, and when he had received seventeen guineas in hand, instead of anxious hopes! How different were his feelings at this instant from those of many that were near him! He stood to contemplate the scene. Here he saw a poor maid-servant, with scarcely clothes to cover her, who was stretching her thin neck across the counter, and asking the clerk, in a voice of agony, whether her ticket, number 45, was come ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... a distance when one is approaching Toledo. It is upon a bleak height. As you come out of the broad portals of the Alcazar (Al-casa-zar, the czar's house), you walk to the edge of the precipitous rock upon which it stands, and contemplate the view across the far-reaching plain, gloomy and desolate, while at the base of the rock rushes past the rapid Tagus. This whole valley, now so dead and silent, once teemed with a dense population, and sent forth armies, and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... deriving a sort of acrid comfort from the knowledge that henceforth none should know the burden of his misfortunes save himself. There was no deprecation of Kellogg's goodness in his mood, simply determination no longer to be a charge upon it. To contemplate the sum total of the benefits he had received at Kellogg's hands, since the day when the latter had found him ill and half-starved, friendless as a stray pup, on the bench in Washington Square, staggered his imagination. He could never ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... this Congress are great opportunities. With them come great responsibilities. The power confided to us increases the weight of our obligations to the people, and we must be profoundly sensible of them as we contemplate the new and grave problems which confront us. Aiming only at the public good, we cannot err. A right interpretation of the people's will and of duty cannot fail to insure wise measures for the welfare ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... only women; it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some shame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor—it was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was dirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate than any actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was an atmosphere wherein birth and marriage and ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... season a sort of despair seemed to nerve her trembling frame. Mrs. Watson had been among the first to leave the city. Madam St. Cymon had disbanded her school; and, as only her three daughters continued to take music lessons, Beulah had ample leisure to contemplate the distressing scenes which surrounded her. At noon, one September day, she stood at the open window of her room. The air was intensely hot; the drooping leaves of the China trees were motionless; there was not a breath of wind stirring; and the sable plumes of the hearses were still ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... citizenship, dishonor God in whose grace he is standing (Rom. 5:2), and give the enemy occasion to accuse the brethren before God; for Satan judges the Christian on the basis of the heavenly ideals rather than the standards of earth. No one can contemplate these impossible responsibilities without a sense of utter helplessness ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... a sharpshooter out of an ambuscade. Her right to go out alone had now only the value of a mere pretext for far more extensive independence. The ultimate extent of these independences, she still dared not contemplate. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... liking than the morose and savage Walter Butler, whom he somewhat feared. Wyatt was perhaps the least troubled of all those present. Caring for himself only, the burning of Oghwaga caused him no grief. He suffered neither from the misfortune of friend nor foe. He was able to contemplate the glowing tower of light with curiosity only. Braxton Wyatt knew that the Iroquois and their allies would attempt revenge for the burning of Oghwaga, and he saw profit for himself in such adventures. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... "declare the glory of God". Look on the sun and the stars; look on the alternation of the seasons, and the changes of day and night; look again at the earth bringing forth her fruits for the use of men; the multitude of cattle; and man himself, made as it were to contemplate and adore the heavens and the gods. Look on all these things, and doubt not that there is some Being, though you see him not, who has created ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... riders appeared almost touching. The head of the chief was bent forward and downward; while his hand appeared extended outward, as if holding that of the huntress! It was a fearful tableau for a lover to contemplate—even at a distance; and the white lips, clenched teeth, and quick irregular beating of Wingrove's heart—perfectly audible to me as I stood beside him—told with what terrible emotions the sight was inspiring him. I was myself puzzled at the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... is a mistake, for in the society we desire money would be abolished, consequently there would no longer be any exchange of products, but exchange of services. Besides, in order that such a social revolution as we contemplate can have been accomplished we must assume that a certain evolution of ideas will have taken place in the mind of the masses, or, at the least, of a considerable minority among them. But if the workers have been sufficiently ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... AT ONCE. Mir ist als ob ich die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt'—[They turn and look reproachfully at each other—the girls contemplate them with injured surprise.] ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... story, we bring it under particular notice. It resembled a large sentry-box, and the willow-clad knoll on which it stood was close to the river. Being elevated slightly above the rest of the country, a somewhat extended view of river and plain was obtainable therefrom. Samuel Ravenshaw loved to contemplate this view through the medium of smoke. Thus seen it was hazy and in accord with his own idea of most things. The sun shone warmly into the smoking-box. It sparkled on the myriad dew-drops that hung on the willows, and swept ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. His business is only to be seen, and he performs ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Heselton leaned back to gaze at the stars and contemplate the vastness of the universe, compared to which even Big Joe was ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik

... perhaps could have agreed to that. But to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate. Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... was concluding his very eloquent Preface, Johnson's mind appears to have been in such a state of depression[871], that we cannot contemplate without wonder the vigorous and splendid thoughts which so highly distinguish that performance. 'I (says he) may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... which the opportunities were demanded than we should give every cab-horse in London a chance of winning the Derby by allowing it on Derby Day to go plodding over the course at Epsom. On the contrary, by inducing all to contemplate the same kind of success, we should be multiplying the sense of failure and dooming the majority to a gratuitous discontent with positions in which they might have taken a pride had they not learned ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... not to go out to-day, not on any account. I will sit in this tower room of this palace and write and draw, and will shut these jalousies that open west and south and north-east, and offer distracting views, and I will contemplate the distempered walls in the shade till I have recalled all I saw yesterday. If I go to the window, or outside, there will be too many new things to see. I maintain that for one day of new sights, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... could tend to diminish the pain with which I contemplate separation from you in public life, it would be the kind terms with which you accompany your tender ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... startling level. A large proportion of people, including the writer, are familiar with the momentary visions beheld with shut eyes between waking and sleeping (illusions hypnagogiques). The waking self is alert enough to contemplate these processions of figures and faces, these landscapes too, which (in my own case) it is incapable of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... the edges of the table, and look down on the floor, where the Dee, the Avon, the Lui, and many other streams, are seen like silver threads, while their forest banks resemble beds of mignionette or young boxwood. There are at several points prodigious precipices, from which one may contemplate the scene below; but we recommend caution to the adventurer, as ugly blasts sometimes sweep along ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... often eloquent, a close student who fully mastered his subject, and withal a man of generous impulses, kind and cheerful nature, a true friend, and a faithful public servant. This all can be said truly and without exaggeration of Mr. Cox. He did not contemplate death when I saw him last. His untimely death was the first news I received on my arrival in New York from a journey abroad. I am told that he met the common fate of all with patient confidence and an assured hope and belief in the doctrines of the Christian faith and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an honest digestive apparatus, a lively temperament, a cheerful acceptance of the place in life assigned to one by nature and circumstance,—these are conditions under which life may be quite comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to contemplate. All these conditions were united in Paolo. He was the easiest; pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a companion. His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and openness, made ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... self-conceit, but, in a certain sense, something entirely opposed to it. I feel a lassitude, a debility and abandonment of the will so great—I am so ready to weep for tenderness when I see a little flower, when I contemplate the ray, mysterious, tenuous, and swift, of a remote star—that it almost makes ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... each in his own retirement, as if mountains and seas cut off brother from brother? Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... we are about to paint a few years—a reign of feebleness, which was like an eclipse of the crown between the splendors of Henri IV and those of Louis le Grand—afflicts the eyes which contemplate it with dark stains of blood, and these were not all the work of one man, but were caused by great and grave bodies. It is melancholy to observe that in this age, still full of disorder, the clergy, like a nation, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... completed, we hastened, by a shorter than the customary route, through fields and pastures, and across a portion of the meadow, to the particular spot on the river-bank which I had paused to contemplate in the course of my afternoon's ramble. A nameless presentiment had again drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot's pulpit. I showed my companions where I had found the handkerchief, and pointed to two or three footsteps, impressed into the clayey ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... forcible ejectment of a tenant when his right of possession is in dispute. It is a trespass, an assault, a riot, or a crime, according to the result of the force. It is strange the President can contemplate such a thing, when Stanton is already stripped of power, and the courts are open to the President to try his right of removal. The President is acting very badly with respect to you. He creates the impression that you acted disingenuously ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... to enter by the window, but paused a moment to contemplate the group before him. On a large ottoman sat Isabel, with Amy on her knee, one arm encircling Alice, who was standing thoughtfully by her side, her head resting on Isabel's shoulder, while behind was Rose, half smiles, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings

... undertaking, as I said, full of profit and pleasure now to contemplate with our minds, as with open eyes, that happy age, in which so many patriarchs lived contemporaneously, nearly all of whom, except Noah, had seen and known ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... of gentleness, I believe," said Peter. "She was at the topmost top. He—well, at all events, he knew his place. He had too much humour, too just a sense of proportion, to contemplate offering ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... and so further to extend certain chains of thought. The summit or sum of these states of mind we happily express with the word interest. For in reality the feeling of self appears between the various stages of the process of apperception (inter esse); with one's whole soul does one contemplate the object of attention. If we regard the acquired knowledge as the objective result of apperception, interest must be regarded as the subjective ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... existence of a "candidate." The old laws direct that the representative shall be freely and indifferently chosen by the electors. The choice was of their own motion, and the person elected was passive. Even at the present day, the law does not contemplate his asking for votes, and therefore does not allow, after the issuing of the writ, sufficient time for a regular canvass. The term "candidate" had its derivation from the person being candidatus, clothed in white, as symbolical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... that time I was busily engaged with Carr in reefing the mainsail, and she passed me by without so much as a glance of recognition. Meanwhile Fairfax and Sanchez paced restlessly back and forth, conversing earnestly as they smoked, only occasionally pausing to contemplate the shore past which we were gliding in silence, the only sound the ripple of water at ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... Quelled by the woes of school and the critical development of his physical constitution, he became thoughtful, dreamed of feeling, and caught a glimpse of new sciences—positively masses of ideas. Checked in his career, and not yet strong enough to contemplate the higher spheres, he contemplated his inmost self. I then perceived in him the struggle of the Mind reacting on itself, and trying to detect the secrets of its own nature, like a physician who watches the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... to fill the important offices of Government in the United States, I was naturally led to contemplate the talents and dispositions which I knew you to possess and entertain for the service of your country; and without being able to consult your inclination, or to derive any knowledge of your intentions from your letters, either to myself or to any other of your friends, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,—a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... achieved in two short years. She blushed as she thought how dear to her he had become in those busy months which swiftly passed. How much she should miss him and his fascinating love letters, if by evil chance anything should happen to take him away from her! She could not contemplate such a possibility without a shudder. Now that her studies were finished and her plans perfected, why not send for him to come to Fenwick Hall for a week's vacation? He had certainly earned the privilege which he would prize so much. The opportunity to ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... voice of Ireland is freely heard—then there is no need to indulge in speculations, always dangerous, upon a possible remedy which may never be necessary, and which, while the inhabitants of England and Ireland are still fellow-citizens of one State, it is painful even to contemplate. On the whole, then, it appears that whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... upon him at the imminent hazard of tripping him up; to see him gradually expend the painful force he had put on at first, and turn slowly round on the slide, with his face towards the point from which he had started; to contemplate the playful smile which mantled on his face when he had accomplished the distance, and the eagerness with which he turned round when he had done so, and ran after his predecessor, his black gaiters tripping pleasantly through the snow, and his eyes beaming cheerfulness and gladness through ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... help us much towards the true knowledge of a people to scan their frames or study their facial angle, or even to contemplate the outer aspect of their daily life. We want to know their thoughts, their innermost feelings, their hopes, their fears—in a word, their belief. Nothing tells the character of a people so much as their religion; and we are only ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... 1st of October, the anniversary of the action of Lepanto, and on a glorious autumnal day of golden sunshine, that, towards evening, he ordered the curtains of his tent to be drawn aside, that he might contemplate for the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... which he got his forces in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a greater armament: ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... miles an hour is a very great speed any one, I think, will admit who has stood upon the platform of a country station while one of the great mail trains has dashed past. But are not the immensities of space appalling to contemplate, when one realises that a body moving incessantly at such a rate would take so long as 10,000 years to traverse merely the breadth of our solar system? Ten thousand years! Just try to conceive it. Why, it is only a little more than half that time ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... regulation buff vest, called the Convention to order, and said: "I have been asked by several persons, why no provisions have been made for women to speak, and vote, and act on committees, in these assemblies?" My answer is, "Be hold yonder beautiful pilaster of this superb hall! contemplate its pedestal, its shaft, its rich entablature, the crowning glory of the whole. Each and all the parts in their appropriate place contribute to the strength, symmetry, and beauty of the whole. Could I aid in taking down that magnificent entablature ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... that she might leave them, if he continued to force his attentions on her, held his peace. The thought of losing even the sight of her about the house wrung his heart. He could not bear to contemplate the long winter days uncheered ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... accomplished towards society. But it is in reality a much more complicated operation than we are apt to think. The evildoer, unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an act takes an ugly aspect when ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... but very imperfectly smothered in the decent language of conjectural propositions. A sounder philosophy than his own would have told Dr H. in the words of Bacon, that "the prerogative of God extendeth as well to the reason, as to the will of man;" and that therefore it became him humbly to contemplate what God has done, rather than to speculate as to what he might have done. In nothing, however, has he so monstrously blundered, as in hinting, that if an event is natural, therefore Providence is out of the question in effecting it; and that, on the other hand, if it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... It's amazing." she said, drinking me in once more. "To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot—certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... enough to meet plot by counterplot, to suborn, to deceive, to undermine. But here all the great games of life seem to be played with the cards upon the table. We are hopelessly out of place. I cannot think, Prince, what ill chance led you to ever contemplate ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... spoken to, and that spoken of.(78) Some mystics argued the necessity of three persons in the Deity for the sake of a divine society and mutual love.(79) Lessing argues that "God from eternity must have contemplated that which is most perfect, but that is himself; but to contemplate with God, is to create; God's thought of himself, therefore, must be a being, but a divine being, that is, God, the Son God; but these two, God the thinker and God the thought, are in perfect divine harmony, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... read his thoughts he only answered them with that smile of his cold eyes which was more awful than the frown of any mortal man. Turning his head slowly he began to contemplate Dick ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... cannot read his book, unique in the history of Pagan philosophy, without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and the gentleness of Fenelon. We must pause before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to contemplate ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, to see the moral delicacy to which profane doctrines have attained—how they laid down their pride, and how penetrating a grace they have found in their new simplicity. To make the example yet more striking, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... is a Temple, from whose pillared mazes Murmurs confused of living utterance rise; Therein Man thro' a forest of symbols paces, That contemplate ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... Don Juan himself was perfectly heart-whole. Of course no grandee of Spain could ever descend so low as really to contemplate marriage with a mere caballero's daughter, and of a heretic country; that was out of the question. Moreover, there was a family understanding that, a dispensation being obtained, he was to marry his third cousin, Dona Lisarda ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... campaign against the marauder so suddenly fell through. That so individual a beast should have its career cut short by an angry settler's bullet, to avenge a few ordinary pigs or sheep, was a thing he could hardly contemplate with patience. To scatter the pack would be to rob the Quah-Davic solitudes of half their romance. He determined to devote himself to a study of the great wolf's personality and characteristics, and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... she very kindly called her in to perform some trifling duty in the ward, so that I might have an opportunity of seeing her. She is a middle-sized woman, with a slight graceful figure. There is an air of hopeless melancholy in her face which is very painful to contemplate. Her complexion is fair, and must, before the touch of hopeless sorrow paled it, have been very brilliant. Her eyes are a bright blue, her hair auburn, and her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little daily things that men and women living ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the Falls of Niagara, is in the simple ejaculation of Mrs Butler; for it is almost useless to attempt to describe when you feel that language fails; but if the falls cannot be described, the ideas which are conjured up in the mind, when we contemplate this wonderful combination of grandeur and beauty, are often worth recording. The lines of Mrs Sigourney, the American poetess, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... contemplate—especially after he entered into his sacred calling—the mercies of Almighty God, the immortality of the soul, and the joys of heaven: and would often say in a kind of sacred ecstacy—"Blessed be God that He is God, only and ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... look upon her quiet and utterly respectable old age—when I contemplate her pathetic grey hair and conventional lace cap—when I view her clothed like other people and in her right mind, I am very glad indeed to remember I had no second thought about that sovereign, but gave it to her—with all the veins of my ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... the lowest level to the highest. But why there was advance at all, why the primitive microbe climbs the scale of being, during millions of years, until it reaches the stature of humanity, seems to many a profound mystery. The solution of this mystery begins to break upon us when we contemplate, in the geological record, the prolonged series of changes in the face of the earth itself, and try to realise how these changes must have impelled living things to fresh and higher adaptations to their ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... sweetest expression of a well-informed and well-meaning mind, which every where diffuses tenderness and delicacy, sweetens the relations of life, and gives a zest to the minutest duties of humanity, let us contemplate every perceptible operation of nature, the twilight of the evening, the pearly dew-drops of the early morning, and all that various growth which indicates the genial return of spring. The same principle from which all that is soft and pleasing, amiable or exquisite, to the eye or to the ear, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... also the laver among the barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some foundation for instruction and preparation for what is to follow. In the great mysteries concerning the universe nothing remains to be learned, but only to contemplate and comprehend with the mind nature and things. We shall understand the more of purification by confession, and of contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion, beginning with the properties ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... England Puritanism—was a divinely chartered and precious privilege of mankind long before the founding of Rhode Island colonies or the birth of Roger Williams. The vagaries and fantasies of freedom, its excesses, outrages, and crimes, are something fearful to contemplate, but freedom is, has been, and must ever continue to be, the essential condition of human power and excellence. It has ever been the madness of men—and madness that could not claim the poor excuse of method—to think of cutting down the tree of liberty, and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... spend the summer there; they did not contemplate an attack before the hot weather set in. Three well-concealed lines of trenches had been prepared, on small hills and amongst deep nullas, with the water-supply of the Dujail running through the centre. Advanced redoubts and strong points made ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... us to contemplate more in detail the correlation between structural affinity and barriers to free migration. Such barriers, of course, differ in the cases of different organisms. Marine organisms are stopped by land, unsuitable temperature, or unsuitable depths; fresh-water organisms by sea ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... any other sense than Hamilton's, it is irrelevant. Can Mr. Mill really have believed that Schelling thought it necessary to invent an intellectual intuition out of time and out of consciousness, in order to contemplate "an ideal limited quantity," such as the complete purity ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... Lyric Poet on the other hand took a more diversified and extensive range, and his imagination required a strong and steady rein to correct its vehemence, and restrain its rapidity. Though therefore we can conceive without difficulty, that the Shepherd in his poetic effusions might contemplate only the external objects which were presented to him, yet we cannot so readily believe that the mind in framing a Theogony, or in assigning distinct provinces to the Powers who were supposed to preside over Nature, could ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... then, of all your fathers have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy young learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our life has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that which is still unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your descendants will pass on you. Think of this, and learn to respect all those who, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Owen—with what emotions did she contemplate the possibility of that dread event the actual occurrence of which became more probable every day? She went about her duties like one in a dream. What would it mean to her if he were to die? She would lose a great benefactor, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... Day," Mrs. Watkins said with decision, interrupting him. "I could not contemplate for a moment occupying the girl's room. Why you might want it ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... months even their names are forgotten. There seems to be an innate dread among us to seek the causes that lie at the bottom of these distressing symptoms of our present social regime. We prefer, it seems, to become like that we contemplate. We seek to terrorize them, as they seek to terrorize us. As the anarchist believes that oppression may be ended by the murder of the oppressor, so society cherishes the thought that anarchism may be ended by the murder of the anarchist. Are not our methods in truth the same, and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... things which make for righteousness, rather than the things of this world. His piety was an ever-present influence in his life, and was practically manifested in his daily walk and conversation. As we contemplate the fifty-four years which made up the measure of his earthly span, we cannot fail to be impressed by its uniform consistency, its thorough conscientiousness, its devotion to high and noble objects. It is a grand thing to acquire ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... understanding, because it is the most immediately subservient to general safety and comfort. There is not, in my opinion, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertions of a succession of wise men through a long course of ages; withdrawing every case as it arises from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less pleasure than his life. His ode on Spring has something poetical, both in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have nothing new. There has, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... was, the boy could not contemplate his probable fate without misgiving. Nothing was visible in all the white illimitable plain save a hummock here and there, with a distant berg on the horizon. He could not expect the level character of the ice to extend far. Whither ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... patellae—with what tenacity they cling to save themselves from being washed into the deep water, and being devoured by the fishes that are playing in its chasms! What a source of endless amusement, what a field for deep reflection, is there in the investigation of this one little rock! When you contemplate the instinct of the different species, the powers given to them, so adapted to their wants and their privations—is not the eye delighted, is not the mind enlarged, and are not the feelings harmonised? Study the works of the creation, and you turn a ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the brewer, "iss someding I shall tell you." He paused to contemplate his cigar. "We want you bickoss you are der best man fer ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... created images and likenesses of Himself to whom He could communicate His divine? What would He exist for, otherwise, except to make this and not that or bring something into existence but not something else, and this merely to be able to contemplate from afar only incidents and constant changes as on a stage? What would there be divine in these unless they were for the purpose of serving subjects who would receive the divine more intimately and see and sense it? The divine ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... to contemplate that contingency, though in all obedience, she exposed her daughter to the infection. He was expected on that afternoon, bringing his sister with him, for he had not withstood the united voices that ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... other was distinctly brought home to the agents of the sitting members. As to bringing bribery home to Mr. Griffenbottom himself;—that appeared to be out of the question. Nobody seemed even to wish to do that. The judge, as it appeared, did not contemplate any result so grave and terrible as that. There was a band of freemen of whom it was proved that they had all been treated with most excessive liberality by the corporation of the town; and it was proved, also, that a majority of the corporation were supporters of Mr. Griffenbottom. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... about it. What an interest I take in all I see. These little shops, which display at regular intervals their motley assortment of wares, fill me with delight. Here especially is one which I cannot forbear stopping to look at. What I chiefly delight to contemplate there is a decanter with lemonade in it. The decanter reflects in miniature on its polished sides the trees around it and the women that pass by and the skies. It has a lemon on the top of it which gives it a sort ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... do not contemplate making marriage obligatory; you do not contemplate the suspension of the faculties of those who ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... Paris in triumph; and it was necessary to apply to the Assembly for an order, directing that he should be allowed to proceed to Switzerland. He obtained this permission, and retired to Coppet, "there," says M. Thiers, "to contemplate at a distance, a revolution which he was no longer qualified to observe Closely Or ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... find this work valuable in furnishing fresh and useful suggestions. All who contemplate building or improving homes, or erecting structures of any kind, have before them in this work an almost endless series of the latest and best examples from which to make selections, thus saving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... cruelly, the swift decline of her stern, broken-hearted father. The thought of the half-grown boy following the betrayers of his sister across the continent, his life dedicated for years to vengeance, was a dreadful thing to contemplate. It shocked her sense of all that was fitting. No doubt his mission had become a religion with him. He had lain down at night with that single purpose before him. He had risen with it in the morning. It had been his companion throughout the day. From one season to another he had cherished ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... contemplate, the expenses of this entertainment. They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe three hundred; and three hundred dollars is more than the year's income of many a person in this room. There are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Sous-prefet and sometimes the Public Prosecutor—and who would listen with every sign of impatience or uncivil absence of mind. As the turrets of La Baudraye are visible from the Mall, many a younger man came to contemplate the abode of Dinah while envying the ten or twelve privileged persons who might spend their afternoons with ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... help there is for what is fixed by fate, And much of danger to foresee the blow; If it must fall, defence is then too late, And he who most forestalls doth most foreknow. Hard law! Stern rule! Dire fact to contemplate! That he who thinks to fly doth nearer go. Thus by the very means that I employed, My country ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... shoulders was graceful, and the whole contour of his body was regular and pleasing. Such was the general effect of his shape, that though his advance was hesitating and respectful, it was impossible to contemplate his person without the ideas being suggested of velocity and swiftness. His presence and air had the appearance of frankness, ingenuousness, and manly confidence. The natural fire and haughtiness of his eye were carefully subdued, and he seemed, at least to a superficial ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... To be sure it is impossible that Lord B. should seriously contemplate, or, if he does, he must not expect us to encourage, this mad scheme. I do not know what in the world to say, but presume some one has been talking nonsense to him. Let Jim Perry go to Venezuela if he will—he may edit his 'Independent Gazette' amongst ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... nearer the great red heart of Hell than are the people of other lands. What is true of one is true in greater or less degree of every city throughout the world. We will suppose the city we are to examine to contain a million inhabitants. We will pause to contemplate its miles of broad streets and magnificent buildings; its imposing schools and scores of costly churches that rear their symmetrical spires far into the empyrean and fill the great dome with their melodious chimes; its marble fountains and costly plants which ravish ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... floorings: out of doors a blizzard is raging that would flay a rhinoceros. And the wind of Gafsa has this peculiarity, that it is equally bitter from whichever point of the compass it blows. Let those who contemplate the supreme madness of coming to the sunny oasis at the present season of the year (January) bring not only Arctic vestment, eiderdowns, fur cloaks, carpets and foot-warmers, but also, and chiefly, efficient ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... over the pages of his life history, scanned them with a gloomy and critical eye, and cast them with decisive finality into the waste basket. He was about to begin a new book, the book of the future. It was pleasant to contemplate what he and Doris Cleveland together would write on those blank pages. To hope much, to be no longer downcast, to be able to look forward with eagerness. There was a glow ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... into action is sometimes a costly sacrifice; but whatever Mr. Muller's fidelity to conviction cost in one way, he had stupendous results of his life-work to contemplate, even while he lived. Let any one look at the above figures and facts, and remember that here was one poor man who, dependent on the help of God only in answer to prayer, could look back over threescore ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... is the foundation upon which the Christian religion rests. Although the truths of God's Word are not reduced to a regular system in the Bible, yet, when brought together, they make the most beautiful and perfect of all systems. It is proper, therefore, that we should contemplate them in a body, as they appear with the most perfect symmetry, in the plan of God's moral government. There is a disposition, at the present day, to undervalue doctrinal knowledge. Many people think it of little consequence what they believe, if they are only sincere, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... Stella and I loafed guiltily on the pavement, pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous officiousness of people in the foreground of hotel advertisements. Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I recollect, was an undertaker's, with ready-printed expressions of grief for sale on white porcelain disks. We had time to read them all. The next was a butcher's. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay

... sweet and blessed littleness, where thou livest by grace alone. Contemplate with delight the holiness and goodness in God, which thou dost not find in thyself. How lovely it is to be nothing when ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... there so bright, so ready, eager, daring, was capable of so much! What had she done to usurp the functions of conscience, and assume the voice of duty? She had done what she could not revoke, and yet could not contemplate without a sort of terror,—as if to atone, to make amends for disloyalty, which, coming even as from herself, a crime in which she had chief concernment, was not to be atoned for by repentance merely, nor by any sacrifices less than the costliest. She had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... idea of her, waiting for me in vain, then wandering off, perhaps to fall under a bush and die alone, was too appalling to contemplate. That we must keep together, at all costs, was like a point of honour, like an article of faith with us—confirmed by what we had gone through already. It was like a law of existence, like a creed, like a defence which, once broken, would let despair upon our heads. I am sure she ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... "We reiterate our firm belief that our confessional basis [of 1864] is adequate and satisfactory." (58.) Again: "The confessional resolutions referred to [of 1895 and 1901] are not alterations of the constitution, and contemplate no alterations; they are simply explanations of the meaning of the General Synod's confessional basis. Therefore, it is not necessary to submit them to the District Synods of the General Synod" (for adoption). (58.) The Report of Dr. L.S. Keyser, delegate ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... and slow of heart, if you think of nothing but Christ, and do not set yourselves to do his words! you but build your houses on the sand. What have such teachers not to answer for who have turned your regard away from the direct words of the Lord himself, which are spirit and life, to contemplate plans of salvation tortured out of the words of his apostles, even were those plans as true as they are false! There is but one plan of salvation, and that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that is, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... and self government, over the too imperfect state of political civilization, found in every part of the other hemisphere. In this august place, which bears the most venerable of all ancient and modern names, I have, sir, the pleasure to contemplate, not only a centre of that constitutional Union so necessary to these States, so important to the interests of mankind; but also a great political school, where attentive observers from other parts of the world may be taught the practical science ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... boarding with very little loss, as Sir Robert by this time had broken their courage, and made the assault easy for the rest. Having disarmed the Portuguese, and bestowed them for better security as prisoners into the other ships, Sir Robert had now time to contemplate the proportions of this vast carak, which did then, and may still provoke the admiration of all men not accustomed to such a sight. But though this first view afforded our men sufficient admiration, yet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr



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