"Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... formerly Roman, "records of humanity more eloquent than books," and which revealed to him the only method of learning and actually re-living history: for he saw in knowledge not merely a means of gaining his bread, but "something nobler; the means of raising the spirit in the contemplation of the truth, of isolating it at will from the miseries of reality, so to find, in these intellectual regions, the only hours of happiness that we may be ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... came to be pictured crowned with heron plumes, the symbol of silence—the silence of the lonely marshes where the heron stands in mutest contemplation—a tall, very stately, very queenly, wholly beautiful woman, with a bunch of keys at her girdle—symbol of her protection of the Northern housewife—sometimes clad in snow-white robes, sometimes in robes of sombre ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... existence. The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrowful contemplation. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... way through the galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He made the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom descended among common men from those loftier realms where the contemplation of endless masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings. He admired, copied, filled his soul with the glowing beauty of Italian landscape and Italian art. But one day, without reflection, without knowledge, without foresight, he was rash enough to fall in love with a girl of noble birth ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... overcame him. Like the Cassandra of AEschylus, he panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a trifle. The contemplation of Freddie's enviable lot brought with it the inevitable contrast with his own. A little home in the country . . . ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew nettles. Somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he spoke. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... in contemplation deep, With half a dozen wrinkles on his brow, This fly began, around himself to peep, And question whence the building rose, and how? No maker of this work can I perceive, Quoth he—and that there is one, scarce believe; For who should such a maker be? "Art," said a spider ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... though he suffers from impatience of postponement, yet he ceases not to insist upon the truth. He expostulates, perhaps, with deceived and degraded humanity in too much bitterness of sarcasm; but how profound his reverence for Christ and for humanity, how pure his love for man, and how sublime his contemplation of the destiny of man in the scale of higher and higher beings up ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the weight of the crosses that they have borne in the right spirit. These souls are a joy to their Creator, and are the heirs of Him in heaven. The ceaseless, sleepless activity that must obtain in both paradise and hades, and that must make the hearts of the godless grow faint at the contemplation, is also a boundless promise to those who have Him who is all in all. "Where is now thy Saviour? where is now thy God? the unjust man has asked in his heart when he saw his just neighbour struggling and unsuccessful. Both the righteous and the unrighteous man are dead. The one has found his ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... contemplation of the elephant jumping the fence, when a youthful voice called from across the street, "Look at it good, kid. I guess it's about all ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... laws is intellectualistic, as the foregoing account shows. And it is natural that it should be. The prevailing trend of thought in the middle ages, alike among the Arabs, Jews and Christians, was of this character. Aristotle was the master of science, and to him intellectual contemplation is the highest good of man. The distinction of man is his rational faculty, hence the excellence and perfection of this faculty is the proper function of man and the realization of his being. This alone leads to that "eudaimonia" or happiness ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... which hitherto had taken place chiefly for religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now employed by lords of high standing—for the first time by Lucius Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in contemplation—for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a contribution from the public. Presents were specially placed under legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name to take regular tribute from their clients. But the retinue of clients was above all serviceable ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of the library I was at once impressed with the immense value of the periodical literature on our shelves and the great importance of making it more readily accessible, and have had in contemplation for some time the beginning of a card index to all our periodicals on the same general plan as that of Rieth's Repertorium. I have, however, been unable to obtain sufficient force to cover the whole ground, but have selected about one hundred and fifty journals, notably those upon the subjects ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... emancipation at once, and it is a significant fact that not a single State has done the like since. So far as peaceful voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of a free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... string of fine carriages with the lamplit multitude peering, Amanda in a thousand bright settings, in a thousand various dresses. She had had love; it had been glorious, it was still glorious, but her love-making became now at times almost perfunctory in the contemplation of these approaching ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... in Siam, next to the temple in front of which the corpses of people too poor to be burned were laid out, after surgical preliminaries, to be devoured by vultures, and how the vultures, when gorged, would flap to the roof of his house and sit there in contemplation. And the companion on my left would tell how, when he was unfamous and on his beam-ends, he would stay in bed with a sham attack of influenza, and on the day when a chance offered itself would get up ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... an end. When the news was confirmed, and events which no one believed could ever happen had apparently occurred and seemed likely to be permanent, I gave the whole thing up like a riddle which it was beneath me to unravel, and turned away in disgust from the contemplation of this puzzling world. As a playful reminiscence of our hopes of the year 1852, I suggested to Uhlig that in our correspondence during that year we should ignore its existence and should date our letters December '51, in consequence of which this said month of December ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... within the circle of our contemplation the mothers of a civilized nation, what do we see? We behold so many artificers working, not on frail and perishable matter, but on the immortal mind, moulding and fashioning beings who are to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... what he proposed to do with Rustum Khan's prisoner, smiled cynically and ordered him searched by two of the Zeitoonli standing guard. Rustum Khan was standing just out of low ear-shot absorbed in contemplation of the lie of the country. I noticed that Fred began to look nervous, but he did not say anything. Will was too busy fussing with Gloria's wound, making a new bandage for it and going through the quite unnecessary motions ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... trade is that of king!" said this man, so completely absorbed in contemplation that he stopped in the middle of his road, leaving the cortege to file past. "Now, there is, in good truth, a prince all bespangled over with gold and diamonds, enamelled with flowers like a spring meadow; he is about to plunge his empty hands into the immense coffer in which his now ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him was when, coming down from the high regions to which a moment before he had soared, he became once more the simple child adorned with goodness and every grace; taking an interest in all things, as if he were really a child. It was impossible then to refrain from the contemplation of this placid beauty, which, without taking away in the least from the admiration which it inspired, drew one toward him, and made him more accessible to one, and more familiar by lessening a little the distance which separated one from him. But, above ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in pursuance of an agreement or combination by two or more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, not be actionable unless the act, if done without any such agreement ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of Shylock's character,—his deadly and inexorable malice,—would be too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double source of interest and contemplation. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... pictures; while the central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a wide horizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only a margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation sat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which rose on long necks above the others. One of the heads Paul perceived, was ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... to an account of the laws, customs, and manners of the people of the island it is necessary that I should say something of the different languages spoken on it, the diversity of which has been the subject of much contemplation ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... particular monastery, but also of the "general" of the whole order. Like a soldier, he was liable to be sent by his commander upon any mission that the work of the order demanded. The friars indeed regarded themselves as soldiers of Christ. Instead of devoting themselves to a life of contemplation apart from the world, like the earlier monks, they were accustomed and required to mix with all classes of men. They must be ready to dare and suffer all in the interest of their work of saving not ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ye understand maun The three best things which this Mary chose, As outward penance and inward contemplation, And upward bliss that never shall cease, Of which God said withouten bees That the best part to her chose Mary, Which ever shall endure and never decrease, But with ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... true; but there is no reason, we thought, why we should not look cheerfully towards the future, and pray that it may be a bright world for others, if not for ourselves;—the greater our enjoyment in the contemplation of the happiness of our fellow-creatures, the nearer we ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Cathewe just as long, but he did not make two or three selections of this or that before finding what he wanted. He was engrossed most of the time in the sober contemplation of the rubber flooring or the running ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... at this time by her side. No wonder was it, therefore, that, with his support, Elise went forward successfully; no wonder was it, therefore, that from the firm conduct of her husband, and from the contemplation of the good understanding which existed between the married pair, the whispered blame, which had already begun to get abroad at their expense, died of itself, like a flame ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... flickering star in her heart—a creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy was lost in contemplation ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... native country, he had married, and entered on a life which promised him competence and domestic happiness; yet his mind yearned for a repetition of those scenes and adventures to which he had lately been accustomed. No sooner, therefore, did he learn that another mission to Africa was in contemplation, than he set his inclination on undertaking it, if it were offered to him. This it was: he accepted the offer; and on the 30th of January, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... charm that unites so many suffrages? It is that in the lightest hours, and in the most degraded scenes which he has portrayed, there has been a reforming object and a moral tone, not formally thrust into the canvas, but infused into the spirit of the picture, with those natural touches whose contemplation never tires. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... young form disappear through an open doorway, and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant sea, lying still and glass-like in the moonlight. He was looking to the north, and it happened that from that same point of the compass there was coming towards him the good steamer Bellver, on whose deck stood a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... contemplation is the alternation of land and water upon the surface of this globe. It is only in knowing this succession of things, that natural appearances can be explained; and it is only from the examination of those appearances, that any certain knowledge of this operation is to be obtained. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... thy favourite garden of the Tierbar, where, gazing on the bright moon, and listening to the voice of the bul-bul, you will await in pleasing contemplation the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper. But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... He was repaid for his effort by the edifying spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had never before seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with the King? Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me in their true light; and I shrink with horror from the contemplation. The thought of them is with me day and night. I sit down to table; but I cannot eat. I throw myself on my bed; but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to brave every thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be free from the misery of a wounded spirit." If ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into Latin, and together with a treatise on The Daily Communion was printed with this title: A Spiritual Manual, releasing the soul and leading it along the interior way to the acquiring the perfection of contemplation and the rich treasure of internal peace. In the preface Molinos writes: "Mystical theology is not a science of the imagination, but of feelings; we do not understand it by study, but we receive it from heaven. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... or mass in form. There is a feeling of being lifted out of one's puny self to something bigger and more stable. It is this splendid feeling of bigness in Michael Angelo's figures that is so satisfying. One cannot come away from the contemplation of that wonderful ceiling of his in the Vatican without the sense of having experienced something of a larger life than one had known before. Never has the dignity of man reached so high an expression in ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... wilderness she perceived at the end of the walk, in the most remote part of the garden, a kind of a bower, open on all sides, and went towards it; when she was near, she saw a man lying on the benches, who seemed sunk into a deep contemplation, and she discovered it was the Duke de Nemours. Upon this she stopped short: but her attendants made some noise, which roused the Duke out of his musing: he took no notice who the persons were that disturbed ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,—loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation Hercules;—and the question is, whether there is anything left for me, the Professor, to suck out of creation, after ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... be reconciled. He dates every joyful and profitable event in his life to the days of the buffalo. In the assembly of chiefs at the last Great Council the buffalo was the burden of every reminiscence. These veteran chiefs studied with melancholy eyes the old buffalo trails, and in contemplation of the days of the chase they said, as they thought backward, "My heart is lonely and my spirit cries." So much did they love the buffalo that the Indian children played hunting the buffalo. The animal furnished ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... side of the bay window a huge buttress cast its mass of shadow. There was something in the appearance of the whole place that invited to contemplation and repose,—something almost monastic. The gayety of the teeming spring-time could not divest the spot of a certain sadness, not displeasing, however, whether to the young, to whom there is a luxury in the vague sentiment of melancholy, or ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The contemplation of this possibility so raised Martin's spirits, that, in spite of the disappointment he had experienced in finding the booty so far below what he had anticipated, he became quite cheerful, especially after Smith produced a bottle of whiskey, and asked him ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... splendour. It is the first awaking of Adam, and an eloquence withal, a skill of expression, and a thorough insight into the most mysterious affinities of nature, such as high mental culture and mature contemplation can alone bestow. When he compares the most remote objects, the greatest and the smallest, stars and flowers, the sense of all his metaphors is the mutual attraction subsisting between created things by virtue of their common ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Montana there is an over-thrust of the Cambrian rocks upon the late Cretaceous, of seven or eight miles, carrying with it what is now called "Chief Mountain," which has been carved out of the extreme end of the over-thrust. The contemplation of such things gives one a sense of power in Nature beyond anything else I know of. The shrinking of the globe as a whole makes its rocky garment too big for it, and this titanic wrinkling and folding results. When the strata snap ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... said afore time, sitting by a river's side is the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, and being out and along the bank of Styx with my tackle this sweet April morning, it came into my humor to send a word of greeting to you American anglers. Some of your fellows, who have come by ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... based as it is upon an ample supply of all material goods, a seemly and intelligent interest in things ideal and spiritual is also to be found. Everything in the room was in its place, and had been in its place for years. Sir James got no help from the contemplation ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Such a contemplation would make some people blue but it gives me a feeling of something basic and secure and eternal in all this strange puzzle of life. It was a beautiful day up there on the tip-toe of Nob Hill. What a beautiful view they must have had from the mansion windows. The same sky ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... countries, and carries men in crowds in its tracks. Olopen, a man of Ta-Thsin, and of a lofty virtue, bearing Scriptures and images, has come to offer them in the Supreme Court. After a minute examination of the spirit of this religion, it has been found to be excellent, mysterious, and pacific. The contemplation of its radical principle gives birth to perfection and fixes the will. It is exempt from verbosity; it considers only good results. It is useful to men, and consequently ought to be published under the whole extent of the heavens. I, therefore, command the magistrates to have a Ta-Thsin ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... to wipe that horrid frown off your forehead, Daddy," she would say blithely, if Doctor Toland confessed to a misgiving in the contemplation of any one of his seven, "and stop worrying about Richie! His bad old hip is going to get well, and he'll be walking just like any one else in no time!" And in the same tone she said to Barbara: ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... for me at this period, if well it were for me to live at all, that from any continued contemplation of my misery I was forced to wean myself, and suddenly to assume the harness of life. Else under the morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans called desiderium, (the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable face,) too probably ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... better than God's precepts, or strange things better than his own: while they thus preached that more fruit, more devotion cometh of the beholding of an image, though it be but a Pater-noster while, than is gotten by reading and contemplation in scripture, though ye read and contemplate therein seven years' space: finally, while they preached thus, souls tormented in purgatory to have most need of our help, and that they can have no aid, but of us in this world: of the which two, if the one be not false, yet at the least it is ambiguous, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... made of no "penetrable stuff." There is something in the character of Christ too (leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the Disciples' feet the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... furthermore, as Betty lost her temper over Helen's girdle, which would go up in front and down behind, completely spoiling the effect of an otherwise pretty evening dress, she was in a position to realize that trying to help is by no means the soul-inspiring thing that it sometimes seems in contemplation. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... touch or to eat. There is a tree which grows in our times, whose fruit, when eaten by some, produces unrest, discontent, rebellion against God, unsatisfied desires, a revelation of unrealized miseries, the mere contemplation of which is enough to drive to madness and moral death. Yet of all the other trees of life's garden may woman eat,—those trees that grow in the boundless field which modern knowledge and enterprise have revealed to woman, and which, if she confine ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... present, for he felt sure now that she loved him, and that gave him a certain happiness. It was like having a beautiful secret,—a secret whose delight would be doubled if it might be shared with the world, but nevertheless a secret which gave joy in mere solitary contemplation. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... and interfused with the qualities of the other than it lies within the resources of pictorial skill to effect. Mirth has an undertone of gravity, and melancholy of cheerfulness. There is no antagonism between the states of mind depicted; and no rational lover, whether of contemplation or of recreation, would find any difficulty in combining the two. The limpidity of the diction is even more striking than its beauty. Never were ideas of such dignity embodied in verse so easy and familiar, and with such apparent absence of effort. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... received a message to say we were near the Bay of Biscay and as there was a very pretty sea, we should do well to come up and look at it. "Come up and look at it?" that showed at once that no shipwreck was in contemplation. But how to get up? that was the question. The message, however, was dispatched round to the different berths, with the additional one, "that the mother was going immediately," that being my title amongst ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... her abode with her sisters, and Lionel visited her, just as other men visit the young ladies they may be going to marry. The servants at Verner's Pride were informed that a mistress for them was in contemplation, and preparations for the marriage were begun. Not until summer would it take place, when twelve months should have elapsed from ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... attitudes of tender languishment! Nor can I get from him the name of her Hath turned him from a stock into a fool. He hems and haws, now titters, now looks grave! Begins to speak and halts! takes off his eyes To fall in contemplation on a chair, A table, or the ceiling, wall, or floor! I'll plague him worse and ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... reading, he indulged in an additional hour of thoughtful contemplation, arranging in their proper sequence the meager facts which his men had discovered, and trying to draw from each bit of new evidence its true relation to ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the Mongol? he wondered. But there was no time for idle contemplation. The scene inside the ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was a matter of much labor, and only a few plucky pedestrians were out to enliven the quiet shrouded streets. Olive plunged rapidly along with her head down and seemed more engrossed with her own thoughts, than with any contemplation of the weather, for she whisked the impudent flakes aside and seemed to be looking down at something that was neither of earth, earthy, or of snow, snowy, but quite beyond the realm of either. She was ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... first morning at school, she seated herself at her desk and looked forth from the golden cloud of her curls, her eyes full of innocent contemplation, her mouth corners gravely drooping. She knew one little girl who sat not far from her. The little girl's name was Floretta Vining. Floretta was built on the scale of a fairy, with tiny, fine, waxen ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... be an enlivening effect upon individuals under the higher intensities of illumination. Mankind chooses a dimly lighted room in which to rest and to dream. A room intensely lighted by means of well-designed units which are not glaring is comfortable but not conducive to quiet contemplation. It is a place in which to be active. This is perhaps one of the factors which makes for ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in a contemplation of my deliverance; making a thousand gestures and motions, which I cannot describe; reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned, and that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... armchair reformer to watch a farmer walking across the "home meadow" whence he can see a good way over his land. One can feel the slow wisdom working in his head. A halt, a look this way and that, a whistle, the call of some instruction so vernacular that only a native could understand; the contemplation of sheep, beasts, sky, crops; always something being noted, and shrewd deductions made therefrom. It is a great art, and, like all art, to be learned only with the sweat of the brow and a long, minute attention to innumerable ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... respect himself, he will stop short of it. Such men as those to whom you allude feel renovated by their meal, and return to their intellectual pursuits with increased alacrity, but the veritable gourmand divides his existence between the contemplation of what his dinner shall be, the pleasure of eating, and the labour ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... trespass marred that close retreat; Privileged were the few that went Pacing its walks with measured beat On legal contemplation bent; And Inner Templars used to say: "How well our garden ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... suddenly been taken with a further happy thought. Contemplation of those gorgeous tricoloured posters had turned his brain, and, armed with an amateur paste-pot and a ladder, he had sallied forth at midnight to stick them about the silent streets, so as to cut down the publishing expenses. A policeman, observing him at work, had told him ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... room above, however, where he enjoyed to the full the pleasures of contemplation and quietude. Here, he tells us, he had installed his library, in what had previously been regarded as the most useless part of his mansion. The position had certain advantages. 'I can see beneath me my garden and my poultry-yard, and can look into the principal ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... exceeding eight or nine weeks at short allowance, so that between ten and twelve thousand men must have been left to perish with the extremity of cold and hunger. I must confess the melancholy contemplation of this (had it happened) strikes me with horror; for how dismal must it have been to have beheld the seas and earth locked up by adamantine frosts, and swoln with high mountains of snow, in a barren and uncultivated region; great numbers of brave men famishing with hunger, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... have ever felt the force Of those enchanting passions, to my lyre Should throng attentive, and receive once more 380 Their influence, unobscured by any cloud Of vulgar care, and purer than the hand Of Fortune can bestow; nor, to confirm Their sway, should awful Contemplation scorn To join his dictates to the genuine strain Of Pleasure's tongue; nor yet should Pleasure's ear Be much averse. Ye chiefly, gentle band Of youths and virgins, who through many a wish And many a fond pursuit, as in some scene Of magic bright and fleeting, are allured 390 By various Beauty, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... manufacturing interests as will re-act on every other interest in the country; and by diminishing the prices of the articles of consumption and the cost of living, will, in a pecuniary point of view, compensate you for your present sacrifices; whilst you will be, at the same time, relieved from the contemplation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... factory, and I sit down under a lamp, prepared to contemplate, until dinner time, the wild beauty of the scene. This idea does not get carried out; in the twinkling of an eye I am stung all round the neck, and recognise there are lots too many mosquitoes and sandflies in the scenery to permit of contemplation of any kind. Never have I seen sandflies and mosquitoes in such appalling quantities. With a wild ping of joy the latter made for me, and I retired promptly into a dark corner of the verandah, swearing horribly, but internally, and fought them. Mr. Hudson, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... study man by the contemplation of his body. "I know not," said a mother to her children in the Holy Writ, "how you were formed in my womb." Nor is it, indeed, the wisdom of the parents that forms so compounded and so regular a work. They have no share in that wonderful art; let us therefore leave them, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... got quietly away. The complete details of the most important society event of the season were at her fingers' ends. She closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy the satisfaction which success leaves in its train, and when she opened them again found Lord Donal in his old posture, absorbed in the contemplation of her undeniable beauty. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... expressive of anger. The thought of Bessie made me impatient, and following the example of the little deformed man, I also commenced pacing the room, but on the opposite side of the table, meeting and exchanging glances with him in the center. The maps upon the walls furnished me themes for contemplation in my sallies; and I read and reread the exact latitude and longitude of the South Shoal, as it appeared on the charts. Then I paused at a front window, and peered out into the starlight night, and saw the tree tops in a little square ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... piano, singing. She heard him shut the door, looked round, nodded prettily, and then went on with her singing. He came and sat down on a low chair some two paces from her, placing himself in such a position that he could see her face, which indeed he always found a wonderfully pleasant object of contemplation. Ida was playing without music—the only light in the room was that of a low lamp with a red fringe to it. Therefore, he could not see very much, being with difficulty able to trace the outlines of her features, but if the shadow thus robbed him, it on ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Charles had issued his warrant to the lord mayor for levying 1,000 men—"part of 10,000 to be raised by our dear father's gracious purpose, according to the advice of both his Houses of Parliament, in contemplation of the distress and necessity of our dear brother and sister."(293) He thought that if he could only gain a victory it would serve to draw a veil over his delinquencies. The City was to be assisted by the county of Middlesex in raising the men,(294) and an ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Father in heaven is perfect, and to look forward, by that help which Plato had no warrant to look for, to attain the perfect measure of the fulness of Christ. Although Plato believed and taught that man ought to strive after and devote himself to the contemplation of the One, the Eternal, the Infinite, he was humbly conscious that no one could attain to the perfection of such knowledge; that it is too wonderful and excellent for human powers. Man's incapacity for apprehending this knowledge he attributed to the soul, during ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... labours as far as he would permit her to do so, submitted to all his caprices, and, with a dark presentiment that his ambition would one day cast her aside, continued to centre the whole of her existence in the contemplation of his glory. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... righteousness. This view of Jesus was sweet and precious. He had become, not the Savior of the world, but her own Savior; he had died, not merely for the sins of the race, but for her sins; and in this sacred contemplation her soul found sweet relief. The torturing load of fears was gone; one sight of Christ had changed the heart and taken away its grief and sin. Like a liberated slave she rejoiced in perfect freedom, and her happy soul went out in joyful thanks ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... very well contented with his own insignificant person, very self-complacent, to be continually occupied with himself and his own thoughts. To say the least, a city life makes one more tolerant and liberal in his judgment of others. One is not eternally wrapped up in self-contemplation; which, after all, is only a ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... above. Wherefore it is no wonder if here the one Spirit says Yes, and there the other Spirit says No. Then in the stanza where it says, "A sweet voice of tenderness," a thought is meant which was born of my deep contemplation; wherefore it is to be known that by Love, in this Allegory, is always meant that deep contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured. Then when ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... that the pathos of his story, and the virtues which he has in contemplation, are entirely beyond the power of language, what method can he take but that of leaving off abruptly: that he may suffer the imagination to perform an office to which any other effort is inadequate? As Mr. Evelyn lived so he died. To ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... (Gen. ad lit. ii): "Since the angels were created, in the eternity of the Word, they enjoy holy and devout contemplation." Now a contemplating intellect is not in potentiality, but in act. Therefore the intellect of an ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... oaths? There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind. Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men from certain offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes: the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual ...
— English Satires • Various
... also be a branch of the Bureau, and a Home For Domestic Servants out of situation is also in contemplation. In this and other matters funds alone are required to commence operations. All communications, donations, etc., should be addressed as above, marked "Labour ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... me; and, by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showing us that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... has a more important place in life than aesthetic theory has ever taken in philosophy. The plastic arts, with poetry and music, are the most conspicuous monuments of this human interest, because they appeal only to contemplation, and yet have attracted to their service, in all civilized ages, an amount of effort, genius, and honour, little inferior to that given to industry, war, or religion. The fine arts, however, where aesthetic feeling ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world's wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... people called a prodigy of learning. In your circumstances a commonplace child might have been both. I subsequently came to contemplate your existence with a pleasure which I never derived from the contemplation of my own. I have not succeeded, and shall not succeed in expressing the affection I feel for you, or the triumph with which I find that what I undertook as a distasteful and thankless duty has rescued my life and labor from waste. My literary travail, seriously ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... year the subject of an overland journey from Moreton Bay to Port Essington has again been mooted by the Legislative Council of New South Wales, I do myself the honour of applying to you for information as to whether the Executive Government have any such expedition in contemplation during the present year. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... supernatural domain. . . . Teresa goes deeper than any like writer into the unexplored regions of the soul. She is the geographer and hydrographer of the sinful soul. She has drawn the map of its poles, marked its latitudes of contemplation and prayer, and laid out all the interior seas and lands of the human heart. Other saints have been among those heights and depths and deserts before her, but no one has left us so methodical and so scientific ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... knife which stabs my conscience; but it comes too late. I can no longer pray, father. Heaven and Ferdinand divide my bleeding soul, and I fear—I fear—(after a pause). Yet no, no, good father. The painter is best praised when we forget him in the contemplation of his picture. When in the contemplation of his masterpiece, my delight makes me forget the Creator,—is not that, father, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... purpose of strengthening him in his resolve to present a firm front that for the time being could do no harm, and of keeping his opponent waiting. The effect did not quite come off. Under that enforced attendance, the Prime Minister had turned his back on the door, and wrapt in contemplation of the book-shelves stood as though unaware that the Primate had made his state entry. It was a pity that he should ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... discomfort in the very thought, and no one feels inclined to jest about that for the moment. Those jests will come all right to-morrow when the night is safely past, but this evening it is anything but a cheery subject of contemplation. There is no help for it, however, and each of us prepares to take another man in so far ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... be on my guard against the first symptoms. I shave every day and will continue to do so. Shaving is a symbol. I will keep my person and my house as trim as if I expected her to visit me hourly. Half of each day I'll spend in useful manual labour of some kind, and half in reading and contemplation. The power is mine to build or destroy myself with my thoughts. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... said, tapping him at once on the shoulder, and arresting him from the abstracted contemplation of two stylish girls in pink, who were just turning the corner of the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and now succeeded by another toiling swarm, building anew each time out of ruin, undaunted by the certainty of destruction, taught nothing by the fate of their precursors. From the profound sense of despair which the contemplation of the uselessness of human effort, and the waste of human life, produces on the scholar's mind, it was a relief to him to watch the gladness of its river, the buoyancy of its currents, the foam of white blossom on its acacia and syringa thickets, the gold sceptres and green ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... and not the resting-place of man, than is that of the Brahmin, ever seeking to abstract himself from the Christian's conflicts of action and desire, and to carry into its extremest practice the aesthetic theory, of basking undisturbed in the contemplation of the most absolute beauty human thought can reflect from its ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impossible without capital or credit. The colony had neither. Under these circumstances took place the General Election of October, 1897. The assets of the colony were not before the electorate, and there was no reason to suppose that financial proposals of an extraordinary kind were in contemplation. The result of the election placed Sir James Winter in power. In six months the famous "Reid Contract" had been entered into—a contract which must be described at some length in these pages, partly because it throws a vivid light upon the constitutional relations between the Mother ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... carries with him into middle-age the zest and aims of a clean boyhood. There is something invigorating, almost inspiring, in the contemplation of Baden-Powell's meridian of life. The fifties which gave him birth seem now to belong to a remote and benighted era; and the blindest of his unknown adorers, if she has bought a hatless photograph, cannot deny that Time's effacing ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... one another with sparkling eyes, their compressed lips slowly making an amorous grimace. This, indeed, must have been the manner in which they expressed their love, for they had not even stretched out their hands in greeting. Rosalie, however, all at once ceased her contemplation, and began to lament at sight of the vegetables on the floor. Such a nice mess! and it was he who had caused it all! Madame ought to have made him wait on the stairs! Scolding away as fast as she could, she dropped on her knees ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have been ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... two small tables in front. At one of these tables a man was already sitting, so I took possession of the other and called for a bottle of wine. I then sat there, slowly sipping, with my eyes on the chateau, hoping that by contemplation thereof, or perhaps by some occurrence thereabout, I might arrive at some idea of how to proceed. The drawbridge was not up, but the gates were closed. From where I sat, I could see the gate towers, a ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... from me," he said presently, "to discourage such high-level contemplation. Bill, what's ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... cures for melancholy, and he would not have recommended railway speed or even a fast coach to sad and timid men. His advice presupposed sober progress, gliding down rivers, patient winding round lofty hills, contemplation by woodsides and in green meadows, relaxation not tension of nerve and brain. "No better physick," he says, "for a melancholy man than change of aire and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions. Leo Afer speakes of many of his countrymen so cured without all other physick. No ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... its plume of cock feathers falling back from the brilliance of her face, she once more attracted all the attention available; from the two savants who, after a morning in the Chateau, were lunching at a farther table; from an American family of all ages reduced to silence by sheer wonder and contemplation; from the waiters, and, not least, from the hotel dog, wagging his ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Mr. Jefferson's political career, and we gladly turn to a contemplation of his character in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... other passion were Holt, a Southerner and of late the close ally of Davis; Cass, whom Lowell had pilloried as the typical weak-kneed Northerner who suffered himself to be made the lackey of the South; and Taney, who had denied that, in the contemplation of the American Constitution, the Negro was a man. It was Black, an old Jacksonian, who in the moment of peril held the nerveless hands of the President firm to the tiller. It was Dix, another such, who sent to New Orleans the very Jacksonian order: "If any man attempts ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of the engraving is first due to its value as a likeness; for it is only when the heart rests from a full and satisfied contemplation of the face endeared to us all, that we can regard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various |
