"Universe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact, records which may indeed be misread, but which cannot well be forged or falsified. These will show us that in the earliest times the religious sentiment of the Phoenicians acknowledged only a single deity—a single mighty power, which was supreme over the whole universe. The names by which they designated him were El, "great;" Ram or Rimmon, "high;" Baal, "Lord;" Melek or Molech, "King;" Eliun, "Supreme;" Adonai, "My Lord;" Bel-samin, "Lord of Heaven," and the like.[0116] Distinct deities could ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Press itself; and even to convert this newly-discovered instrument of human freedom into one which might serve to perpetuate that system of passive obedience which had so long enabled modern Rome to dictate her laws to the universe. It was thought possible in the subtlety of Italian astuzia and Spanish monachism, to place a sentinel on the very thoughts as well as on the persons of authors; and in extreme cases, that books might be condemned to the flames as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... works, devoted to his denomination and to total abstinence,—the same internally, but externally—what a change! Gone was the downcast eye, the bated breath, the solemn, non-natural voice, the watchful gait, stepping as if he felt responsible for the balance of the moral universe! He walked with a stride, an uplifted open countenance, his face covered with beard, whiskers, and mustache, his voice strong and natural;—and, in short, he had put off the New England deacon and become ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and shrieking, exerting the powerful and unique charm of infancy, was the miraculous sequel! Another individuality; a new being; definitely formed, with character and volition of its own; unlike any other individuality in the universe! Something fresh! Something unimaginably created! A phenomenon absolutely original of the pride and the tragedy of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... glance. "I've thought lately sometimes that I'd like to; but he's so far away, on the outest edge of the universe." ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... their doctrines in regard to the omnipotent power of Will and Life; both these powers being fundamentally identical; both being merely different modes of actions, or functions, of that universal, eternal, and divine Central Power of the universe, which is beyond the conception of mortals, and which the latter ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... intellectual vision and led them to adopt many of the ideas of their Greek conquerors. In their literature it is easy to recognize the influence of the more logical Greek methods of reasoning and of the scientific attitude toward the universe. It was during this period that the wise were transformed into scribes, and the rule of the scribal method of thinking and interpretation began. The struggles through which the Jews passed intensified their love for the law and the temple services. Duty was more and more defined in the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... render it what it is—not merely a means of commercial enterprise for man and a home for fish, but also a great purifier and revivifier of the earth and sweetener of the atmosphere. God is the great first cause of all that is and that operates in the universe. It were an act of presumption to inquire into what we may term the first acts of the Almighty's power. But there is no presumption—on the contrary there is propriety, as well as the highest gratification of which the human mind is capable—in penetrating through the paths of knowledge ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... and imperfect enough, but which was still almost, like the great ecclesiastical conception itself, a conception of life as a whole. Morality, positive law, social order, economics, the nature and limits of human knowledge, the constitution of the physical universe, had one by one disengaged themselves from theological explanations. The final philosophical movement of the century in France, which was represented by Diderot, now tended to a new social synthesis resting ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... permanently and forever. Within the past week we have received here Hon. William Beaver, one of the first men of Great Britain and Ireland, a statesman, an orator, a soldier and an extensive traveller. He has come to Bone Gulch as the best spot on the face of the everlasting universe. It is needless to say that our prominent citizens have received him with great cordiality. Bone Gulch is not like Deadhorse. We know a gentleman ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... for the future, he is not so—"Backward I am in agreement with the materialists, forward not"—a statement which impels Engels to examine the materialism of the eighteenth century, which he finds purely mechanical, without any conception of the universe as a process, and therefore utterly inadequate for the philosophic needs of the period at which Feuerbach wrote; for by that time the advance of science, and the greater powers of generalization, arising from patient experimentation, and ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... understanding and resolve; then floats up the mystic twilight eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay of compelled progress, when, bidding farewell to that which is behind, the soul is driven toward that which is before, grasping at it with all the hunger of the new birth. The story of God's universe lies in the growth of the individual soul. Kirsty's growth had been as yet ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... twice with the old gas and once with the new, and I've had my share. Would I like to go home now? Say, I'd rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago than the whole electric light system in all the rest of the universe!" ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... and stood beside the others, gazing upon her with still, cold eyes, expressing only a pale quiet. She bowed her face on her hands, and would not regard him. Even if he were alive, her heart was past being moved. It was settled into stone. The universe was sunk in one of the dreams that haunt the sleep of death; and, if these were ghosts at all, they were ghosts ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... nature? The victim of passion cannot be a contemplator at the same moment, and I may frankly admit to you, Hera, that during the period of my infatuation for Psyche, there were complaints from every province of the universe. It was said that unless my attention could be in a measure diverted from that admirable girl, there would be something like a stagnation of general vitality. Phoebus remarked one day, that if the ploughman became the ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... If Self-made, why fare so far to fare the worse "Sufficeth not a world of worlds, a self-made chain of universe? ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... moccasined feet penetrated wa-koniya—"the place where water is born"—the springs that gushed forth to give life, and refreshing to all the earth. Canhotka ska—the "white frost"—became the priest's robe as he petitioned at the sacrament of winter. The universe to him became a sounding-board of every emotion that thrilled his being. He found in its phenomena an answer to his longings and the high expression of every fervour of his soul. We cannot understand this, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... temptation to selfishness and arrogance will be severe, the provocations to deal harshly with weaker peoples will be many. All of these are embraced in the opportunity for true greatness. They will be overbalanced by cooperation by generosity, and a spirit of neighborly kindness. The forces of the universe are taking humanity in that direction. In doing good, in walking humbly, in sustaining its own people in ministering to other nations, America will work ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... could see through it you'd understand, you'd see that this body, made of the radiant dust of the universe, is a two-fold medium, transmitting the splendour of the universe to us, and our splendour to the universe; that we carry about in every particle of us a spiritual germ which is not the spiritual ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... in peace and success, and had all that life could give him, it would not have lasted long, seventy years or so, and what were they after they were past? No, there was something beyond or it all wouldn't have been made—this universe with the carefully thought out details working harmoniously one with another. It wouldn't have been worth while otherwise. There would have been no reason ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... things, the limits of intellectual powers, the relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit, the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of study and discovery of the truth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... of my own free will and accord, in the presence of the Supreme Architect of the Universe, and these witnesses, do hereby and hereon most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, that I will always hail, forever conceal, and never reveal, any of the secret arts, parts, or points of the mysteries appertaining to this Order of Knight ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of a cavern like bees clustering at the entrance to a hive. On a nearer approach he identified them as a posse of demons besetting a hermit. Words cannot describe the enormous variety of whatever the universe holds of most heterogeneous. Naked women of surpassing loveliness displayed their charms to the anchorite's gaze, sturdy porters bent beneath loads of gold which they heaped at his feet, other shapes not ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the captain's ears faintly. However, he waited quietly till the officer came in and reported it; then he burst out, "Absurd! there is no such creature in the universe. What do you say, Dr. Staines?—It is ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... desolating sense of loneliness that oppressed me. But it was in vain; I could not pray: there was something in the scene that mocked at faith, and seemed in harmony with the dreary creed of the atheist. The horrible idea of a godless universe came upon me, bidding me relinquish, as a fond illusion, the belief ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... offer you a companionship that signifies absolute freedom and perfect understanding. Half of all I have—and the world lies in my grasp—is yours. I offer a throne set upon the Seven Mountains of the Universe. Look into my eyes and ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... this swift stream of song,— Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky; Be it love, light, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... has a knowledge of men and he knows only Frenchmen; his town is always full of foreigners, but he considers every foreigner as a strange phenomenon which has no equal in the universe. You must have a close acquaintance with the middle classes of that great city, you must have lived among them, before you can believe that people could be at once so witty and so stupid. The strangest thing ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the far, far future. Perchance the dream is true, and he does indeed possess what for convenience is called an immortal soul, that may manifest itself in one shape or another; that may sleep for ages, but, waking or sleeping, still remains itself, indestructible as the matter of the Universe. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... grandeur sprang from the divine desire with which they had glowed, the desire which moulds and regulates the world. They were like a sacred temple in which the god had fixed his abode, they were animated by the inextinguishable fire with which the universe ever burns for the work of continual creation. Their radiant beauty under their white hair came from the light which yet filled their eyes, the light of love's power, which age had been unable to extinguish. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The universe and man are the spiritual phenomena of this one infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena never converge toward aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are spiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... but they are not of the same kinde,[1] for this were needlesse, and would argue an improvidence, since one would have no more perfection than the other; not of divers kinds, for then one of them could not be called the world or universe, since it did not containe universall perfection, I have cited this argument, because it is so much stood upon by Iulius Caesar la Galla,[2] one that has purposely writ a Treatise against this opinion which I now deliver, but the Dilemma is so blunt, that it cannot cut ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... eager assent. "He often showed me the ingenious wheelwork of his Nuremberg clocks. Once—I still hear the words—he compared the most delicate with the thousandfold more sublime works of God, the vast, ceaseless machinery of the universe, where there is no misplaced spring, no inaccurately adjusted cog in the wheels. Oh, that glorious intellect! What hours were those when he condescended to point out to a poor girl like me the eternal chronometers above ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pale, and eyes aghast, Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death— A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good; Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Obominable, inutterable, and worse Than ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... pound so long as I know that without it there wouldn't be a membrane in this community? Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you'll believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful universe will worship the memory of the first milkman who ever had a pump and who doctored his milk with chalk. It will, unless justice is never ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... think much of all that," said Mr. Punch. "In our part of the Universe we generally manage to get a little ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... the worth of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's "Paradise Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from an upper to a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the centers of other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... distinctly marked rank in the Occult Hierarchy; He is a being who has attained what is called "liberation" in the East, what is called "salvation" in the West; a being whose soul and Spirit have become unified, who lives consciously on the highest plane of our own universe—the fivefold universe—and whose centre of consciousness is on the atmic, sometimes called the nirvanic, plane. Living in full consciousness on that plane, He has no sense of bondage in any form with which He may ally Himself. He has passed ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... that, Human government is derived from the Divine government, and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows certain evils to take place in the universe, which He might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might be forfeited, or greater evils ensue. Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... drivers that rose and fell like a diapason. Perhaps Breckenridge, who was also under a strain that night, was fanciful, but it seemed to him there was hidden in the medley of sound a theme or motive that voiced man's domination over the primeval forces of the universe, and urged him to the endurance of stress, and great endeavour. It was, for the most part, vague and elusive; but there were times when it rang exultingly through the subtly harmonious din, reminding him of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... doubtless. You trace it in art:— The Greek Psyche,—that's beauty,—the perfect ideal. But then comes the imperfect, perfectible real, With its pain'd aspiration and strife. In those pale Ill-drawn virgins of Giotto you see it prevail. You have studied all this. Then, the universe, too, Is not a mere house to be lived in, for you. Geology opens the mind. So you know Something also of strata and fossils; these show The bases of cosmical structure: some mention Of the nebulous theory demands your attention; And so on. "In short, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... default of this, prays before a sacred fire in his temples; but he does not worship the sun, nor any gods or idols. His temples are bare, only the sacred fire of sandalwood burning in one corner. The Parsee recognizes an overruling god, Ahura-Mazda, the creator of the universe; he believes that Nature with its remarkable laws could not have come into being without a great first cause. But he believes that the universe created by Ahura-Mazda was invaded by a spirit of evil, Angra-Mainyush, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... and embarrassments result from people expecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them after they have got them. A nation which labours, and takes care of the fruits of labour, would be rich and happy though there were no gold in the universe. A nation which is idle, and wastes the produce of what work it does, would be poor and miserable, though all its mountains were of gold, and had glens filled with diamond instead ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... obviously two main points which the Christian reader requires to have made clear. The first is that, the modern theory of evolution being admitted, the constitution of matter in the universe and the principles of development in organic life, which that theory establishes, not only do not exclude, but positively demand, the conception of a Divine artificer and director. The second point, which is perhaps of still greater weight with the believer, is that where revelation (which is his ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... violence to a Persian woman, was to incur certain death from her husband or guardian. Even their kings, though the most absolute in the universe, could not alter the manners or customs of the country, which related to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... one else. What one says of oneself is always poetical. To fancy that the small details of one's own life are worth recording is to be guilty of very petty vanity. A man writes such things in order to transmit to others the theory of the universe which he carries within himself. The form of the present work seemed to me a convenient one for expressing certain shades of thought which my previous writings did not convey. I had no desire to furnish information about myself ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... phenomena and his experiments in the art of living are certainly not doctrinal in form, and if they are in substance it didn't disturb Thoreau and it needn't us... "In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost; that is where they should be, now put the foundations under them." ... "Then we will love with the license of a higher order of ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... mathematical demonstration. But some day, my friend, you will learn that beyond the arid abstractions of the schoolmen, beyond the golden dreams of the poets, there is a truth in this matter, faintly discerned now as the most dim of yonder stars, but as surely a link in the chain which suspends the Universe to the throne of God. However, your incredulity is commendable, for doubt is the avenue to knowledge. I admit that no testimony is conclusive save that of the senses, and such witness I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bringing them to bear upon Maurice. Of course, they were thrown away, just so many wasted words; the angry impatient longing that was in the young man's heart would have been strong enough to overthrow all the arguments in the universe. Only one reason would have been strong enough to keep him—his father's unfitness for travel; and that could not fairly be urged, for Mr. Leigh was actually in better health than he had been for years, and would not himself listen to a word on ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... much stress upon the humanity side of national life? Do you tell me money is the great question of this country, tariff the great question? Bring me the Bible and what do I find? Only a very few pages given to the creation of the material universe, with all its gold and silver, suns and systems, but I find page after page, chapter after chapter, and book after book, given to the healing of the lame, the halt and the blind, teaching a kindred spirit of sympathy to meet the common woes ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... and tickled him under the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back again—the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... here and there, all sins, misdemeanours, and crimes are forgiven, and their punishment cancelled." It is generally on the occasion of the proclamation of a new pontificate at Rome that such great papal absolutions are extended over the whole universe. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Cynthia's son did nothing but loaf,—whole days when he went off by himself into the still corners of his world and let the whole wide universe talk and sing to him and ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up—he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... world, till now we are ready to anticipate that even in regions where chance and confusion appear still to reign, a fuller knowledge would everywhere reduce the seeming chaos to cosmos. Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... let New York divorce laws decide what they will, provided always that the fallen Julius had not bidden farewell to this lower earth before his loyal Louise plighted her faith to her Southern gallant. Death is the Alexander of the universe. There is no retying ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... interesting and vital subjects of consultation; and even when they fought, as they usually did, they were likely to fight to some purpose. But beyond their quarrels Catholic Christians comprised one universe of discourse. They were somehow responsible one to another; and their mutual ties and responsibilities were most clearly demonstrated whenever a peculiarly unscrupulous and insistent attempt was made to violate them. As new and comparatively strong states began ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... be astonished by nothing that happened, and to make up his mind in any danger. He had even now the will of an emperor and an overawing manner. 'His dignity and loftiness of soul are such,' says a contemporary writer, 'that he seems to hold the universe under his feet.'" Charles's position in Germany was as strong as the man himself; he was a German, a duke of Austria, of the imperial line, as natural a successor of his grandfather Maximilian at Frankfort as of his grandfather Ferdinand at Madrid. Such was the adversary, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not to mention it to his sister just yet, in case it should disquiet her. 'And I wouldn't, Tom,' he said, with a little hesitation, 'I wouldn't have a shadow on her happy face, or an uneasy thought in her gentle heart, for all the wealth and honours of the universe!' Really John was uncommonly kind; extraordinarily kind. If he had been her father, Tom said, he could not have taken a greater interest ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... discovery which, if I can be the first to profit by it, will bring me a recompense beyond all money computation, and secure me a position such as has not been attained by more than some fifteen or sixteen persons, since the creation of the universe. But to this end I must possess myself of a considerable sum of money: neither do I know how to get it, except by interesting the public in my story, and inducing the charitable to come forward and assist ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... laws in Nature. One of them is this: the powers of darkness (to employ a conventional and significant phrase) cannot triumph over the powers of Will. Below the Godhead, Will is the supreme force of the Universe. Resist! You must ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... talked for nearly an hour about the passing of time—and how a ship could circle the universe at the speed of light—and upon returning it might find its home-port nothing but dust and memories. For while their hearts were beating once a month out there in space tide after tide of years had flowed over their ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... gods; for they are, according to him, only forms of nature. Zeus is the atmosphere. Poseidon is the sea. Necessity rules the universe. Duty, once the will of the gods, is now a voice within ourselves bidding us renounce pleasure, and giving us no inducement to ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... are now dominant tend to become still more dominant by leaving many modified and dominant descendants. But by steps hereafter to be explained, the larger genera also tend to break up into smaller genera. And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... avoiding beaten tracks, my only comrades a few books, belonging to no age, no country. My worries fell from me, the personal affairs of Paul Kelver ceasing to appear the be all and the end all of the universe. But for a chance meeting with Wellbourne, Deleglise's amateur caretaker of Gower Street fame, I should have delayed yet longer my return. It was in one of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. I was sitting under the lindens on the grass-grown quay, awaiting a slow, crawling boat ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... tried to give Jane some idea of the state of my affections. It was a part of the speech which I had prepared and delivered to Mary in Jane's hearing, as you already know. I had said to the princess: "The universe will crumble and the heavens roll up as a scroll ere my love shall alter or pale." It was a high-sounding sentence, but it was not true, as I was forced to admit, almost with the same breath that spoke it. Jane had heard it, and had stored it away in that memory of hers, so ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... calculations have irrefutably proved the existence of imponderable ether which gives rise to the phenomena of light and electricity, so the successive investigations of the ingenious Hermann, of Schmidt, and of Joseph Schmatzhofen, have confirmed beyond a doubt the existence of a substance which fills the universe and may ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... is more evil in the world than good. Their mistake is due to the fact that they make the experience of the individual man the arbiter in this question, thinking that the universe was made for his sake. They forget that man is only a small fraction of the world, which is made by the will of God. Even so man should be grateful for the great amount of good he receives from God, for many of the evils of man are ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the veering of his mood from joy in things to disgust with them, and the paragraph in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE in which Montaigne sets against each other the splendour of the universe and the littleness of man. Here the thought diverges, Shakspere making it his own as he always does, and altering its aim; but the language ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... progress of Science is a perpetual instruction in the character which God has impressed on His works. That He has put Order in the very first place may be a surprise to us; but it can only be a surprise. In the great machinery of the Universe it constantly happens to us to find that that which is made indispensable, is nevertheless not the highest. The chosen people were not the highest in all moral or even in all spiritual characteristics; if we refuse the explanation given by Goethe that they were chosen for their toughness, ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... said Kate. "I always have. I think there is a God, and that Father is facing Him now, and finding out for the first time in his experience that he is very small potatoes, and what he planned and slaved for amounted to nothing, in the scheme of the universe. I can't imagine Father being subdued by anything on earth, but it appeals to me that he will cut a pathetic figure before the throne of an ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... This being the case, we are still left with the problem, Is the outward and visible not intended to be a sign of something deeper? Here it is not a sign. Why not? Will it ever be so? To put the case in its short, simple, concrete form, how can a 'flirt' exist when by all the laws of the universe beauty should surely be a sign not of instability, insipidity, unspirituality, worldliness, shallowness, hypocrisy, but of ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... night's budget was posted to you only this morning early, when Jack and I were going out to discover what every (other) man and woman knows about the Hub of the Universe. All day long we were so busy seeing and doing things in this delightful, intimate personality that I lost my Stormy Petrel emotion in a crowd of other emotions. Usually when we stop anywhere, and are not in the car most of the day, Mrs. Shuster finds work for Peter to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... under him, and buried his head in his arms. His brain was full of changing, hurrying visions, of storm and death, of human beings helpless in a universe coldly and indifferently ruled by a will that ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... in the distance the sheeny grey rocks of the harder Devonian promontories gleam like watered satin in the slant rays of the afternoon sun. Altogether a very sleepy little old-world place is Calcombe Pomeroy, specially reserved by the overruling chance of the universe to be a summer retreat for ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... if you care to hear. I cannot go home until the Easter holidays, and so I want to send something to my mother by way of celebration. Would you select it for me?" and the big fellow swept the shop with an indefinite sort of gaze, as if buying candy for the universe would but feebly express ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... abounding moment at which to be taken into partnership for the carrying forward of the universe. Half the globe, as we are intimate with it to-day, was then unknown, and North-West Australia was a no-man's land, saving to the Aborigines. It was believed by geographers that a big river, artery to an immense area of Australia, must here drain into the ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... very earnest. But she would be altogether honest. "Perhaps you wouldn't call it 'belief unto righteousness,' as your Uncle Silas would say. I've never thought much about such things—in the way he says we ought to think about them. They seem to me to be true, like the—well, like the stars and the universe. You don't think about the universe all the time; but you know it is there, and that you are a little, tiny ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... water, while now and again dragon-flies dart through the sleepy hum of insect life, like bright thoughts flashing across a reverie. Now, isn't that nice? I really don't know how I do it. But to resume. No one knew of our turning aside—no one will see us return. For us the universe is standing still. And there's the tea. Come, madam wife, sit by my side, and let the world slip; we shall ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... display portraits of their ancestors in their halls, and set up in the entrance to their houses the pedigree of their family drawn out at length, with many complicated collateral branches, are they not notorious rather than noble? The universe is the one parent of all, whether they trace their descent from this primary source through a glorious or a mean line of ancestors. Be not deceived when men who are reckoning up their genealogy, wherever an illustrious name is wanting, foist in that of a god in ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... manifest out of the unseen. By what means the will had gained this ascendancy, the terrible disfigurements of their remnants of bodies told only too well, and he who ran could read the utter prostration before the power which in their lives had been the greatest and most terrible in the universe. Again, far off in a distant corridor of the building, slowly rumbled to them: "knock, knock—knock; knock, knock—knock," and the twelve unfortunates, like so many automatons, gave token of their obedience. They had been warned to ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... this earth in magnitude, are not empty bodies, created only to be carried in their motion round the sun, and to shine with their scanty light for the benefit of one earth only; but that they must have a nobler use. He who believes, as every one ought to believe, that the Deity created the universe for no other end than the existence of the human race, and of heaven from it (for the human race is the seminary of heaven), must also believe that wherever there is an earth there are human inhabitants. That ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... And all a universe of nameless messengers From unknown distances may whisper fear, And it will imitate immortal permanence, And stare and stare ahead and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... as men, with minds to grasp Within the sphere of thought The boundless universe, and clasp The good the wise ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... there came a change in the weather. High winds, gloom, and rain succeeded that brilliant cloudless summer-time, which had become, as it were, the normal condition of the universe; and Lady Laura's guests were fain to abandon their picnics and forest excursions, their botanical researches and distant-race meetings—nay, even croquet itself, that perennial source of recreation for the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... sun, the moon, the host of stars, in blood! Not see thee more! then may they work my shroud, And cull the flowers to strew my maiden corpse. Without thee, Gaspar, I should surely die! Wert thou the ruler of the universe, Commanding all, I could not love thee more! Wert thou a branded slave from bondage 'scap'd,— 'Tis now too late,—I could not love ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... displayed all the semblance of clear-sighted composure and explanatory discrimination. While Mr. Ferdinand remained by the wall, with his face to it and his large white hands spread out upon his shut eyes, the lady's maid advanced upon Madame, and, addressing herself apparently to some hidden universe in need of information, remarked in rather ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... confront a council of the Church. An Apostolic Church has a graver work than discussion about its name or the amending of its canons and rubrics. I fear that some of this unbelief is a revolt from a caricature of God. These mechanical ideas about the universe are the outcome of a mechanical theology which has lost sight of the Fatherhood of God. There is much honest unbelief. In these yearnings of humanity, in its clubs, brotherhoods, and orders, in their readiness to share all things ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... that more than one independent power, or governing mind, exists in the whole universe, is absolute Polytheism, against which the denunciations of all the Jewish and Christian canonical books were directed. And if there be but ONE directing MIND, that mind is God! operating however, in three persons, according to the direct and uniform declarations of that inspiration which 'brought ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... communication with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and assured me he had arrived all "hunky doory", that Huldah, who was out on an errand, was "hunky doory", and that the kids were all "hunky doory." In fact, his cheerful tone indicated that the whole universe was in the beatific state described ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a class of men—especially Englishmen—who are deeply imbued with the idea that the Universe in general, and our world in particular, has been created with a view to afford them ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... grow out of these moods. Gazing from steamer deck into lighted canopy he soliloquizes: "What vigils are those old guards commissioned to keep over this sail? Even if cares of universe now absorb divine solicitude, has there not been, in long ages of the eternal past, ample time to assign watchers over a few afloat on ocean's fickle domain? May not that kindly indulgent Sense, missing no carrion note of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably lived a person who was in herself more completely a reductio ad absurdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, by items of face ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... written by Saint Paul's church, as by me: for it is the mere motion of my muscles and nerves; and these again are set in motion from external causes equally passive, which external causes stand themselves in interdependent connection with every thing that exists or has existed. Thus the whole universe co-operates to produce the minutest stroke of every letter, save only that I myself, and I alone, have nothing to do with it, but merely the causeless and effectless beholding of it when it is done. Yet scarcely can it be called a beholding; for it is neither an act nor an effect; but ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... upon her aunt, her pocket-handkerchief rolled tightly in her hand. Her soul was full of the sense of disaster. She had made her first fight for dignity and freedom as a grown-up and independent Person, and this was how the universe had treated her. It had neither succumbed to her nor wrathfully overwhelmed her. It had thrust her back with an undignified scuffle, with vulgar comedy, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Pedants lordless. Free Fools, unlanded Fools, and Fools incommensurable, and Pedants displayed and rampant of the Tierce Major. Fools incalculable and Pedants irreparable; indeed, the arch Fool-pedants in a universe of pedantic folly and foolish pedantry, O ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... to be sitting here in solitude listening to the music of one of Nature's mighty harp-strings. Her grand symphonies peal forth through the endless ages of the universe, now in the tumultuous whirl of busy life, now in the stiffening coldness of death, as in Chopin's Funeral March; and we—we are the minute, invisible vibrations of the strings in this mighty music of the universe, ever changing, yet ever the same. Its notes are worlds; one ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the principles of all things, solitude for the meditating child is the Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude of millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, under secret griefs, have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... so that no art can wash it off, and besides the indelible stain it leaves, gives so strong a scent that it may be smelt many miles off, if the wind be in one's face as one comes from the fresh air of the country." Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century, called Paris "the beastliest town in the universe." ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and protected them when they were helpless infants. So it is no wonder to find a law there against cursing parents. The notion of the Being of one Supreme Author of nature arises from natural reflection on the visible harmony and uniformity of the universe and seeing that men and things did not produce themselves. The reverence due to this stupendous Being is only of a pious and rightly amazement, dread and respect. The testimony was everywhere uniform that where Europeans or Mahometans had not ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the lives in the universe and the future of her soul were at stake, did she struggle to free herself from his grasp—but in vain; every fibre, every muscle of her body was completely at his will. On and on he pushed her, until foot by foot, inch by inch, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell |
