"Philosophical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had found it simple to account for in that their denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were logically degenerating into atrophy. What better proof of the barrenness of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than the spectacle of other ministers—who tarried awhile on starvation salaries —reading them and preaching ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... last the attitude is the same, the outlook on life the same, the conception of God and man, of the world and nature, always the same. This unity, though it may be deduced from, or at least accommodated to, a system of philosophical thought, is much more the outcome of a natural and inevitable bent. No great poet ever constructed his poems upon a theory, but a theory may often be very legitimately discovered in them. Browning, in his essay on Shelley, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... in the extreme for me to question Professor Loeb's scientific conclusions; he is one of the most eminent of living experimental biologists. I would only dissent from some of his philosophical conclusions. I dissent from his statement that only the mechanistic conception of life can throw light on the source of ethics. Is there any room for the moral law in a world of mechanical determinism? There is no ethics in the physical order, and if humanity is entirely in the grip of that order, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... happened one day to be witness of their fear. He inquired the cause, and yet again was his enlightened soul vexed by the persistency with which the shadows of superstition still hung about his lands. Had he been half as philosophical as he fancied himself, he might have seen that there was not necessarily a single film of superstition involved in the belief that a savage roamed a mountain—which was all that Mistress Mac Pholp, depriving ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... proper training for it, I always thought he would have made a great metaphysician. His conversation was often profound, and always original, always drawn from the workings of his own mind, and was always occupied with great philosophical and religious themes. It was born of struggle, more, I think, than any man's I ever talked with. For he had a great moral nature, and great difficulties within, arising partly from his religious education, but yet more from the contact with actual life of a very ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... he said I apperceived that he was of quite a different genius from those Schoolmen who first arose, namely, that he hatched what he wrote from his own thought, and from the same source produced his philosophical system, so that the terms which he invented, and applied to subjects of thought, were forms of expression by which he described interior things; also that he was excited to such pursuits by a delight ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... vexations to which he had exposed himself. He had taken over a business which he did not understand, and naturally found the technicalities troublesome, for though, as has been seen, his own tendencies were literary, he had not soared so high as a philosophical romance, while his scholarship, more brilliant than profound, was not always equal to the 'unseen passages' from out-of-the-way authors with which ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... to continue his observations along this philosophical line, when the manager appeared in much perturbation, approaching the landlord, who, at the same time, had entered the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... rounded knowledge of actual life which alone, it would appear, teaches how to guide these forces into the more useful channels. Then as to capacity, he had the fine sensibilities of a poet, the facile introspection of the philosophical cast of mind, without the mental power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which appear necessary to heroism. In mockery ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... enjoy their hour,—which I am not at all prepared to admit. In my opinion they are very dissatisfied creatures,—no sooner on one flower than off they go to another. Very like human beings after all! But I imagine they never worry themselves with philosophical or religious questions." ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... years since he appeared on the arena of great reforms, but till then, he lived, entirely secluded, in a jungle, like the ancient gymnosophists mentioned by the Greek and Latin authors. At this time he was studying the chief philosophical systems of the "Aryavartta" and the occult meaning of the Vedas with the help of mystics and anchorites. All Hindus believe that on the Bhadrinath Mountains (22,000 feet above the level of the sea) ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... acceptable to the distributor. In the mean time it is to be wished that the moralize, and homilizers who prate of "principles" may have a little damnation dealt out to them on account. The head that is unable to entertain a philosophical view of the situation would be ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... miseries of human life come either from wanting to be married, or from married cares and troubles—you think that you will improve your chance of doctoring your flock rightly by avoiding carefully the least practical acquaintance with the chief cause of their disease. Philosophical and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... he had written this letter, considered that it had been cold, calm, and philosophical. He could not go to America for three years without telling her of his purpose; nor could he mention that purpose, as he thought, in any language less glowing. But Florence, when she received it, did not regard it in ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... without some solution, is conclusive evidence that the mind has an instinctive belief, a proleptic anticipation, that such knowledge can be attained. There must unquestionably be some mental initiative which is the motive and guide to all philosophical inquiry. We must have some well-grounded conviction, some a priori belief, some pre-cognition "ad intentionem ejus quod quaeritur,"[564] which determines the direction of our thinking. The mind does not go to work aimlessly; it asks a specific question; it demands the "whence" and the "why" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... had swept from under the stove those lengths of clothesline. With more philosophical wags of the head, Johnnie fastened them end to end with weaver's knots, and rehung the rope, knowing as he worked that he could never again bear to telephone along that ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... discourse, and by adroit digressions he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. The poetry—religious and profane—and the abrupt eloquence of that period had a grand opening in this vast theory, wherein the Doctor had amalgamated all the philosophical systems of the ancients, and from which he brought them out again classified, transfigured, purified. The false dogmas of two adverse principles and of Pantheism were demolished at his word, which proclaimed the Divine Unity, while ascribing to God and His angels ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... of much interest takes place. We live very comfortably in our bachelor establishment on a cold shoulder of mutton, with ham and smoked beef and boiled eggs; and as to drinkables, we had both claret and brown sherry on the dinner-table to-day. Last evening we had a long literary and philosophical conversation with Monsieur S——. He is rather remarkably well-informed for a man of his age, and seems to have very just notions on ethics, etc., though damnably perverted as to religion. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and therefore, for want of sufficient evidence, he was set at liberty. He added, that he thought himself in such danger, that he would gladly have compounded for banishment. Yet, he said, he should never be so ready for death as he then was. There is philosophical truth in this. A man will meet death much more firmly at one time than another. The enthusiasm even of a mistaken principle warms the mind, and sets it above the fear of death; which in our cooler moments, if we really think of ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... sea, an event, which the evidence afforded by the limestone fossils of St. Vincente (on the north side of the island) associates with the tertiary epoch. See Paper by Dr. J. Macaulay in Edinburgh New Philosophical ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... two travellers make much difference to the horses, if we took them with us?' asked his mistress, offering no reply to the philosophical inquiry, and pointing to Nell and the old man, who were painfully preparing to resume their ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of his own superior soul, jewels to adorn his age and enrich the world: He mixes an impossible plot with a little pessimism, adds a dude and a woman whose moral character has seen better days, spills the nauseous compound on the public as a "philosophical novel" and works the press for puffs. Indeed we're progressing; going onward and upward— like the belled buzzard dodging a divorce scandal. Greece had her Pericles, but it was left for us to produce a Parkhurst. Rome had her Cicero and her Caesar, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Mikah said, leaning forward, stabbing with his finger. "Truth is a philosophical abstraction, one of the tools that mankind's mind has used to raise it above the beasts—the proof that we are not beasts ourselves, but a higher order of creation. Beasts can be true—but they cannot know Truth. Beasts can see, but they cannot ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... the method universally employed. At the first glance it does not appear the most rational—dynamics being more complicated than statics, and precedence being natural to the simpler. It would, in fact, be more philosophical to refer dynamics to statics, as has since been done." Sundry discoveries are afterwards detailed, showing how completely the development of statics has been achieved by considering its problems dynamically; and before the close of the section M. Comte remarks that "before ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... a cottage, with one maidservant, two cats, and a footboy, bounded the circle of her acquaintance. Her mother was so indifferent to dress; she herself had found so many other ways of spending money!—but Evelyn was not now more philosophical than others of her age. She turned from muslin to muslin—from the coloured to the white, from the white to the coloured—with pretty anxiety and sorrowful suspense. At last she decided on the newest, and when it was on, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... design, what power was it that drew those stony, oaken, and wild people into cities but flattery? For nothing else is signified by Amphion and Orpheus' harp. What was it that, when the common people of Rome were like to have destroyed all by their mutiny, reduced them to obedience? Was it a philosophical oration? Least. But a ridiculous and childish fable of the belly and the rest of the members. And as good success had Themistocles in his of the fox and hedgehog. What wise man's oration could ever have ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... most women, you have little power of keen philosophical argument. Perhaps not; but there is in you a spiritual sense that may even transcend knowledge. I once heard—was it not you who said so?—that the poet who 'reads God's secrets in the stars' soars nearer Him than the astronomer who ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... artistic ideals. Almost alone of the foreign artists then resident in Rome, he was unaffected by the pseudo-classicism which prevailed. In part a product of emasculated academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical speculations, upon which the discoveries at Pompeii and the excavations then taking place in Rome had had a strong influence, it was an attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct study of nature. Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... spent days among the Irish Home Rulers without having once heard of the Union of Hearts. The phrase serves well enough to tickle the simple souls of the long-eared but short-headed fraternity of pseudo-philosophical-philanthropists across the water, but it has no currency ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and whatever is gifted in Russia, for a time speaks only through them; lastly comes realism with an intensity unparalleled elsewhere, and everybody writes in prose, and only one kind of prose at that,—fiction. Not a drama, not a history, not an essay, not a philosophical treatise has yet grown on Russian soil; all the energy of Russia has gone into fiction, and Russia is not the country to produce, when it does produce masters, only one at ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... philosophical mind, may be thrown on pious ceremonies, it must be confessed that, during a very religious age, no institutions can be more advantageous to the rude multitude, and tend more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they are subject. Even the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the Attorney-General's place was vacant, and Essex, who in that year became a Privy Councillor, determined that Bacon should be Attorney-General. Bacon's reputation as a lawyer was overshadowed by his philosophical and literary pursuits. He was thought young for the office, and he had not yet served in any subordinate place. And there was another man, who was supposed to carry all English law in his head, full of rude force and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... a footnote to his lecture, his experience with a little mechanical model of the Peaucellier linkage at an earlier dinner meeting of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society. The Peaucellier model had been greeted by the members with lively expressions of admiration "when it was brought in with the dessert, to be seen by them after dinner, as is the laudable custom among members of that eminent body in making known to ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... declin'd the undertaking; and, not knowing another at that time suitable for such a trust, I let the scheme lie a while dormant. I succeeded better the next year, 1744, in proposing and establishing a Philosophical Society. The paper I wrote for that purpose will be found among ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and about to make a general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses. This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing us from his window (I can't imagine where he lives), describes one or two social monstrosities—with false complexions, hair, figure,—and morals; brazen in manner, defiant in walk—female intellectual all-in-alls. His model drives, hunts, orates, passes resolutions, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... stockings, waded through the heaps of fallen leaves with the delight of a child paddling in the sea; Gertrude picked her steps carefully, and the rest tramped along, chatting subduedly, occasionally making some scientific or philosophical remark in a louder tone, in order that Miss Wilson might overhear and give them due credit. Save a herdsman, who seemed to have caught something of the nature and expression of the beasts he tended, they met no one ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... feet high, and the Holed Stone, which is really an ancient cross, but you will be told that the cruel Druids used to tie their human victims for sacrifice to this stone, and you would shudder at the memory if you did not know that the Druids were very philosophical folk, and never did ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... from their political and religious opinions to the moral and philosophical principles which regulate the daily actions of life and govern their conduct, we shall still find the same uniformity. The Anglo-Americans *d acknowledge the absolute moral authority of the reason of the community, as they acknowledge the political authority of the mass of citizens; and they ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... charms. While Mme de La Fayette was gaining the plaudits of the urbane world for the delicatesse of "La Princesse de Cleves" and the eccentric Duchess of Newcastle was employing her genius upon the fantastic, philosophical "Description of a New World, called the Blazing World" (1668), women of another stamp were beginning to write fiction. With the advent of Mme de Villedieu in France and her more celebrated contemporary, Mrs. Behn, in England, literature ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... without forming any theories. The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object, only the traits which favor that theory. But it is too early to form theories on those antiquities. We must wait with patience till more facts are collected. I wish your Philosophical Society would collect exact descriptions of the several monuments as yet known, and insert them naked in their Transactions, and continue their attention to those hereafter to be discovered. Patience and observation may enable us, in time, to solve the problem, whether those who formed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... "Whatever your philosophical beliefs may be, Miss Churton, you have the true Christian spirit," he said—saying perhaps too much. "I am glad for your sake that Miss Affleck has come to reside with you. Your life ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... diverse organisms, and which discovers, as far as may be, the principles which govern the growth and development of organized bodies, and which finds functional analogies and structural homologies, is denominated philosophical or transcendental anatomy. (This statement, though strictly true, is not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... latter expressly as a representative symbol of the former. At the time I could not refute this transcendentalist opinion. Later, largely through the influence of Professor D. S. Miller (see his essay 'The meaning of truth and error,' in the Philosophical Review for 1893, vol. 2 p. 403) I came to see that any definitely experienceable workings would serve as intermediaries quite as well as the absolute mind's intentions would.]] All feeling is for the sake of action, all feeling results in action,—to-day no argument is needed to prove these truths. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... at last, its black face gradually turning pink, its first gasping breaths changing the color of its blood, its tiny fists opening and closing—reaching out for nourishment already, its face tying itself into the first philosophical, cosmos-interrogating knot. Its feet turn inward and its legs are crooked. Its head is so shapeless as to discourage any one but a mother; it has three years of gurgling, ten years of childhood, ten years of foolishness, ten years of vanity—and possibly a few years of ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... says that no family is quite civilized unless it possesses a copy of some encyclopaedia and a telescope. The English gentleman uses both for amusement. If he is a man of philosophical mind he soon becomes an astronomer, or if a benevolent man he perceives that some friend in more limited circumstances might use it well, and he offers the telescope to him, or if an ostentatious man he hires some young astronomer ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... over the world in our day a great wave of intellectual and {100} spiritual discouragement and despondency. What with philosophical pessimism and social agitations and literary decadence and political corruption and moral looseness, a great many persons are beginning to feel that the end of the century is an end of faith, and are not able to ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... solemnly at Ruth as she arose from the table. Miss Sallie was sure to be in a good humor when she talked in this philosophical fashion. ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... into a philosophical discussion, while the camera is secretly made ready,—when, from the side we have come, enter also another peasant, an old man this time, quite as good-humored and quite as characteristic as the first comer. He has dispensed with jacket ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... was crude and uncritical. In proportion as men learnt to reflect upon their experience, it was bound to be modified, and to submit to reactionary influences. Such was the case at the very beginning of philosophical and scientific enquiry—and such was the case also at the opening of the "modern" era. Speaking generally, it may be said that as knowledge of natural law extended, the idea of mental activities in external nature was ousted. Mechanical views of the universe ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... that weakness bordering on the ridiculous, to which less skillful flights of pathos are prone. "The Two Springs" is a pleasant moral sermon in verse by Margaret Ellen Cooper. Concluding the issue is "The Under Dog in the Fight", a vigorous philosophical poem by Andrew Stevenson. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... men of the highest genius and accomplishments, even by Lord Bacon himself. It was established by the convocation of bishops, and preached by the clergy. Dr. Henry More, of Christ's College, Cambridge, in addition to his admirable poetical and philosophical works, wrote volumes to defend it. It was considered as worthy of the study of the most cultivated and liberal minds to discover and distinguish "a true witch by proper trials and symptoms." The excellent Dr. Calamy has already been mentioned in this connection; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... states that at a special meeting of the South African Philosophical Society held on August 2, a lecture on the above subject was delivered by Mr. A.P. Trotter, Government Electrician and Inspector. Toward the end of the lecture the lecturer rang up the Capetown Telephone ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... now make up for lost time, promising himself to enjoy to the full the advantages offered by his daughter's establishment. He embraced his daughter with the liveliest pleasure imaginable, taking upon himself all the credit for her great reputation as due to his efforts and to his philosophical training. He was flattered at the success of his lessons and entered upon a life of joyous pleasure with as much zest as though in the bloom of his youth. It proved too much for a constitution weakened by the fatigues ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... wind, cold. In camp all day. Bad head wind. George and I scouted. All restless at inactivity but George. He calm, philosophical, cheerful, and ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Microscopical Society was formed in January, 1858. The first meeting of the Midland Union of Natural History, Philosophical, and Archaeological Societies and Field Clubs was held at the Midland Institute, May ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... article by Dr. Lauder Lindsay on "The Dyeing Properties of Lichens." The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, July to ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... stream I go a-fishing in." Hasn't that a very philosophical, detached, Lord of the Universe sound? It comes from Thoreau, whom I am assiduously reading at present. As you see, I have revolted against your literature and taken to my own again. The last two evenings have been devoted to "Walden," a book as far ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... episode of the Mahabharata, in the sixth—or "Bhishma"—Parva of the great Hindoo epic. It enjoys immense popularity and authority in India, where it is reckoned as one of the "Five Jewels,"—pancharatnani—of Devanagiri literature. In plain but noble language it unfolds a philosophical system which remains to this day the prevailing Brahmanic belief, blending as it does the doctrines of Kapila, Patanjali, and the Vedas. So lofty are many of its declarations, so sublime its aspirations, so ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... "locum," Mr. Neckitt. Never mind. The having such a time to look back to in the future was quite as much as one general practitioner, with a duty to his mother, could in reason expect. Was Dr. Conrad aware, we wonder, how much the philosophical resignation that made this attitude of thought possible was due to the absence of any other visible favoured applicant for Miss Sally, and the certainty that he would see her once or twice a week ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... again and again to his mind's eye. They were a wonderful people, these Valley folk, descendants of the Huguenots and Cavaliers who had taken the wilderness trail across the mountains and settled here "in the hollow" of old Harpeth's hand. They were as interesting scientifically from a philosophical standpoint as were the geological formations which lay beneath their blue-grass and clover fields. They built altars to what seemed to him a primitive God, and yet their codes were in many cases not only ethically but economically and democratically sound. The men he had found shrewd and as ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... present moment so strong a pretension set up in many constituencies to dictate to the members whom they send to Parliament as if they were delegates, and not representatives, that it is worth while to refer to the opinion which the greatest of philosophical statesman, Edmund Burke, expressed on the subject a hundred years ago, in opposition to that at a rival candidate who admitted and supported the claim of constituents to furnish the member whom they returned to Parliament with "instructions" ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... since the principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the philosophical disquisitions and hair-splitting criticisms which it evoked from men who should have known better in the Home ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... which are ex traduce, and dying with them vanish into nothing. To whose divine treatises, and to the Scriptures themselves, I rejourn all such atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato's Phaedon. Or if they desire philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic. Faventinus' tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus in digress: sup. 3. de Anima, Tholosanus, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolet's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... scraps—indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest relatives; jabbering, half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in their mouths and philosophical acceptance on their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Why not be quite frank, Mr. Sinclair, and say that he is just a little tiny bit jealous of his staff. All editors are, you know." Miss Howe shook her head in philosophical deprecation of the peccadillo, and Mr. Sinclair cast a smiling, embarrassed glance at his smart brown leather boot. The glance was radiant with what he couldn't tell her as a sub-editor of honour about those cruel prejudices, but he gave ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... extended to all that concerned them, and nothing that Voltaire wrote escaped us. The inclination I felt for these performances inspired me with a desire to write elegantly, and caused me to endeavor to imitate the colorings of that author, with whom I was so much enchanted. Some time after, his philosophical letters (though certainly not his best work) greatly augmented my fondness for study; it was a rising inclination, which, from that time, has never ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... his lips. 'It may have been his unfortunate destiny. He may have been the child of circumstances. It is always possible that he had, and has, good in him if one did but know how to find it out. Philosophical philanthropy teaches—' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... still visible, awe-inspiring, divine. The firmest pantheist questioned not the advisability of propitiating the sun-god, however much he might regard this god as but a part of one that was greater. Belief in India was never so philosophical that the believer did not dread the lightning, and seek to avert it by praying to the special god that wielded it. But active veneration in later times was extended in fact only to the strong Powers, while the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... philosophers, and attempts to memorize the philosophic system developed by each thinker. Such a course imposes a heavy burden on retentive power, for no little effort is required to remember the distinctive philosophical systems advocated by the respective writers. To the students these philosophers represent a group of peculiar people differing one from the other in their degrees of "queerness." One system is as far removed as another from the life that the student ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words "literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital and imaginative use of language which is the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... proving to prove that to my—dissatisfaction I should say; and more failure besides, I can tell you, than there will be time for in this world. If it were proved, however—don't you see it would disprove both suppositions equally? If such a philosophical spirit be unattainable, it discredits both sides of the alternative on either of which ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Schlegel merely a critic? No He was a philosopher also, and not a vulgar one; and herein lies the foundation of his fame. His criticism, also, was thoroughly and characteristically a philosophical criticism; and herein mainly, along with its vastness of erudition and comprehensiveness of view, lies the foundation of its fame. To understand the criticism thoroughly, one must first understand the philosophy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... auld bitch next?' [Tradition ascribes this whimsical style of language to the ingenious and philosophical Lord Kaimes.] said an acute metaphysical judge, though somewhat coarse in his manners, aside to his brethren. 'This is a daft cause, Bladderskate—first, it drives the poor man mad that aught it—then ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... poetry, ennobled by such genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline in this country in the brightest era of its literary, philosophical, and political achievements, is one of those singular and melancholy circumstances of which it seems impossible at first sight to give any explanation. Since the deep foundations of the English mind were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Germany, Persia from Egypt, Constantinople from Amsterdam. This has induced other writers to propose a third method and to trace Influences, to indicate that, whereas Rabbinism may be termed the native product of the Jewish genius, the scientific, poetical, and philosophical tendencies of Jewish writers in the Middle Ages were due to the interaction of external and internal forces. Further, in this arrangement, the Ghetto period would have a place assigned to it as such, for it would again mark the almost complete sway of purely Jewish ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... of the ladies present, in view of this fact, to discover whether women dress more for the eyes of women or for effect upon men. It is a very important problem, and has been a good deal discussed, and its solution would form one fixed, philosophical basis, upon which to estimate woman's character. We are inclined to take a medium ground, and aver that woman dresses to please herself, and in obedience to a law ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... The philosophical apparatus consists of miniature machinery: the spring, the simple and compound lever, the wheel, the cog, the cam, etc., even to the miniature engine are brought into use, and the pupils examine them by themselves, and in their various applications ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... been denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled metal worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and his habit silence. But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door. What I saw took all philosophical speculation out ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... not long be delayed now, and Cuthbert, being built along the lines of a patient and philosophical lad, felt ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Molyneux," as he was called by his contemporaries, a distinguished philosopher, whose life was almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits. Molyneux is, or ought to be, a very interesting figure to any one who cares, even slightly, about Ireland. He was one of the chief founders of the Philosophical Association in Dublin, which was the parent both of the present Dublin Society and of the Royal Irish Academy. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a friend of John Locke, with whom he constantly corresponded. Both his letters, and those of his brother, Dr. Thomas Molyneux, show the most ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... to work with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually short course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias and philosophical notions. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... as a father myself, I cannot but help feeling how careful we should be, how we inculcate anything like abstract and philosophical ideas to youth. Allowing them to be in themselves correct, still they are dangerous as sharp instruments are in the hands of a child;—allowing them to be erroneous, they are seized upon with an avidity by young and ardent minds, and are not to be eradicated without ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... a small town of Virginia. My father was a physician, more respected than employed; for it was generally supposed, and justly, that he was more devoted to chemical experiment and philosophical speculation than to the ordinary routine of his profession. It was quite natural, that, in course of time, another physician should come to dash by, with fine turnout, my father's humble gig; and such, indeed, was the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... not said discontentedly; Nancy's mood seemed to be singularly calm and philosophical. She propped her chin on her hand, and gazed at ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... pig, "there is nothing so godlike as Intellect, and nothing so ecstatic as intellectual pursuits. I must hasten to perform this gross material function, that I may retire to my wallow and resign my soul to philosophical meditation." ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... on metaphysics and morality appeared in the course of this reign, and a philosophical spirit of inquiry diffused itself to the farthest extremities of the united kingdom. Though few discoveries of importance were made in medicine, yet that art was well understood in all its different branches, and many of its professors distinguished themselves in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and her low-spoken "I don't know" sounded like a wail of despair. Did she know anything, Guy wondered, and feeling some curiosity now to ascertain that fact, he plied her with questions philosophical, questions algebraical, and questions geometrical, until in an agony of distress Maddy raised her hands deprecatingly, as if she would ward off any similar ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond. The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... We stacked arms on the levee, and the next morning, November 7th, left St. Louis on the steamer "Jennie Brown," headed down stream. So here we were again on the broad Mississippi, duplicating our beginning of March, 1862, and once more bound for "Dixie's Land." By this time we had become philosophical and indifferent in regard to the ups and downs of our career. If we had been ordered some night to be ready the next morning to start to California or Maine, the order would have been treated with absolute ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... of view, and invites various study and comment. In our limited time we must select one only. We have heard a great deal about the power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press. The time has come for a more philosophical treatment of it, for an inquiry into its relations to our complex civilization, for some ethical account of it as one of the developments of our day, and for some discussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on the education of the people. Has the time come, or is it near ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... your worsteds. You are a fool if you buy a colour you don't want. But we can never match our worsteds for that other piece of work, but are obliged to take any colour that comes,—and therefore it is that we make such a jumble of it! Here's mamma. We must not be philosophical before her. Mamma, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... can find any thing in your philosophical budget, to console me in the midst of these distresses and apprehensions, pray let it ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... tied up to her knees, the floor swimming in water which she was flinging about with a handful of shucks i. e., corn-husks! It would be easier to keep house in a small country house at home and do my own work (minus the washing) and live better than we do here. However, I am very philosophical, and ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... left her home, through Cadman's villainy, was akin by her mother's side to Mistress Precious. But he had another matter to discuss with her now, which caused him some misgivings, yet had better be faced manfully. In the safe philosophical distance of York from this strong landlady he had (for good reasons of his own) appointed the place of meeting with Sir Duncan Yordas at the rival hostelry, the inn of Thornwick. Widow Precious had a mind of uncommonly large type, so lofty and pure of all petty emotions, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his endowments. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second duel as well as in his first; as it was, the civilian placed a ball and a part of Mac's gold repeater in his stomach. A remarkable circumstance attended this shot, an account of which I sent home to the "Philosophical Transactions:" the surgeon had extracted the ball, and was going off, thinking that all was well, when the gold repeater struck thirteen in poor Macgillicuddy's abdomen. I suppose that the works must have been disarranged ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this, a fatal proceeding, for afterward came a great sob, and the tears came down in good earnest. Philosophical Tom always professed great contempt for tears, and he knew that Erica must be very much moved indeed to cry in his presence, or, indeed, to cry at all; for, as he expressed it: "It was not in her line." But somehow, when for the first time he saw her cry, he ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... dramatic presentation of points of view, for his way of reconstructing history was, on the surface, very sympathetic. He too, like M. Bergson, proceeded from learning to intuition, and feigned at every turn to identify himself with what he was describing, especially if this was a philosophical attitude or temper. Yet in reality his historical judgments were forced and brutal: Greece was but a stepping-stone to Prussia, Plato and Spinoza found their higher synthesis in himself, and (though he may not say so frankly) ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... constitute Nature came into existence, but when they came into existence, and in what order. This is as strictly a historical question as the question when the Angles and the Jutes invaded England, and whether they preceded or followed the Romans. But the question about creation is a philosophical problem, and one which cannot be solved, or even approached, by the historical method. What we want to learn is, whether the facts, so far as they are known, afford evidence that things arose in the way described-by Milton, or whether they do not; and, when that question ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... alluded to the painfulness of Raffaelle's treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents. Fuseli affirms of it, that, 'in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and terror.' If this be so, I think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it; but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... therefore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... visit his sister at Halifax, his head still in a whirl with revolutionary fervours. He was wandering about among his friends with no certain dwelling-place, no fixed plan of life, his practical purposes and his opinions, political, philosophical, and religious, all alike at sea. But whatever else might remain unsettled, the bread-and-butter question, as Coleridge calls it, could not. The thought of orders, for which his friends intended him, had been abandoned; law he abominated; writing for the newspaper ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... no passage be found in St. John's Gospel, where not without parallel, but to a remarkable degree, extreme simplicity of language, even expressed in alternative clauses, clothes soaring thought and philosophical acuteness? True, that he quotes St. John v. 37 as an instance of Conflation by the Codex Bezae which is anything but an embodiment of the Traditional or 'Syrian' Text, and xiii. 24 which is similarly ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost every page of William James's writing. There is an impatience of authority, an unwillingness to condemn widespread prejudices, a tendency to decide philosophical questions by putting them to a vote, which contrast curiously with the usual dictatorial tone of philosophic writings.... A thing which simply is true, whether you like it or not, is to him as hateful as a Russian autocracy; ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... of the scripture on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers must have borrowed their ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... The philosophical views current in Germany during the period in which the psychology of Locke was in fashion in France and before the genius of Kant opened a new path, were based on the system of Leibnitz. We might therefore expect to find a theory of Progress developed there, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... carefully distinguished from the reasons which make it true. No logic of discovery. Many religious ideas have occurred in a spontaneous or apparently intuitive way to particular persons, the truth of which the philosopher may subsequently be able to test by philosophical reflection, though he could not have discovered them, but they are not necessarily true because they arise in a spontaneous or unaccountable manner, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall |
