"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conduct cannot be explained upon any rational principles—but he is one of the Glonglims, of which I have spoken to you; and examples are not wanting on our planet, of conduct as irreconcilable to reason. This man is making an article which is scarce, as well as useful, in this country, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... matter, which comes in all vegetal bodies developed under sunlight, next deserves a place by itself, because it is one of the few organic bodies of which no rational analysis has ever been pretended. Though we can not state the constitution of this chlorophyl, we know that, except by turning acid in the stomach, it remains inert on the human system, as one might ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... forgiveness for it while the tears rained down his fevered face, she had professed that his suffering sickened her so she could not stay. Thereafter she had contented herself with inquiring at his door each day—until the day when they told her that the sickness was broken; that he was again rational and doubtless would soon be well. After that she went no more; which was not unnatural, for Elder Pixley was about to return from his three years' mission abroad, and there was much to do in the community-house in ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was a grassy, briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side. Here they wandered apart, and after an interval ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... or a hungry swine's. Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, and after consulting his clerk, a good lawyer,—and looked up to by the neighboring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little, he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and of a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... with rotten eggs when preaching in the open air near Christchurch. While itinerating for Lady Huntingdon, Clayton became acquainted with Sir H. Trelawney, a young Cornish baronet, who became a Dissenting minister, and eventually joined the "Rational party." An interesting anecdote is told of Trelawney's marriage in 1778. For his bride he took a beautiful girl, who, apparently without her lover's knowledge, annulled a prior engagement, in order to please her parents by securing for herself a more splendid station. The spectacle was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that the nature of a thing is chiefly the form from which that thing derives its species. Now man derives his species from his rational soul: and consequently whatever is contrary to the order of reason is, properly speaking, contrary to the nature of man, as man; while whatever is in accord with reason, is in accord with the nature ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... that time see an insult in every benefit and hatred in all friendship, did not show him likewise the courtesan in the loving woman, and wantonness instead of love? I have always suspected it. I defy any rational man to recompose, with a semblance of probability, the character Rousseau gives to the woman he loved, from the contradictory elements which he describes in her. Those elements exclude each other: if ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all? The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... men. To found an ancient order those devote Their time—with ritual, regalia, goat, Blankets for tossing, chairs of little ease And all the modern inconveniences; These, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites And go to church for rational delights. So all are suited, shallow and profound, The prophets prosper and the world goes round. For me—unread in the occult, I'm fain To damn all mysteries alike as vain, Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon The Revelations of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... space constrains us to leave unfinished these few desultory remarks—slender contributions towards a subject which has fallen sadly backward, and which, we grieve to say, was better understood by the king of Siam in 1686 than by all the philosophers of to-day. If, however, we have awakened in any rational mind an interest in the symbolism of umbrellas—in any generous heart a more complete sympathy with the dumb companion of his daily walk—or in any grasping spirit a pure notion of respectability ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she should follow. Hundreds of times before we had reasoned together upon the faults of the Government, and the misfortunes that resulted from them. What we had to do was to avoid those faults, educate the young King in good and rational maxims, so that when he succeeded to power he might continue what the Regency had not had time to finish. This, at least, was my idea; and I laboured hard to make it the idea of M. le Duc d'Orleans. As the health ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a physical influence to lift these people into a more decent and prosperous way of living? She had thought of herself as working with him to a common end. But for him now to turn upon her, absolutely ignoring the solid, rational, and scientific ground on which he knew, or should know, she stood, and to speak to her as one of the "lost," startled her, and filled her with indignation. She had on her lips a sarcastic reply to the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... aunt, 'that's lucky, for I should like it too. But it's natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... entailed a burden of misery which will call forth eternal curses on his name, in spite of all the brilliancy of his splendid administration. But if the glory and welfare of nations consist in other things—in independence, patriotism, and rational liberty; if it was desirable, above all material considerations, to check the current of revolutionary excess, and oppose the career of a man who aimed to bring all the kings and nations of Europe under the yoke of an absolute military despotism, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the Religions now profess'd in the World, but diffuses it self among all. We have known Jews, Turks, nay, some Papists, (which I own to be a great Rarity) very great Lovers of the Constitution and Liberty; and were there rational Grounds to expect, that any Numbers of them cou'd be so, I shou'd be against using Severities and Distinctions upon Account of Religion. For a Papist is not dangerous, nor ought to be ill us'd by any body, because he prays to Saints, believes Purgatory, or the real Presence in the Eucharist, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... rewarded. Without prejudice and without partiality, by an honest presentation of facts drawn from what I regard as reliable sources, I have tried to unfold the story of the struggle of five millions of human beings for right living and rational thinking, in the hope of throwing light on the ideals and aspirations and the real character of the largely ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... of God, and the result of his infinite wisdom, to create a world, and for the glory of his majesty to make several sorts of creatures in order and degree one after another; that is to say, angels, or pure immortal spirits; men, consisting of immortal spirits and matter, having rational and sensitive souls; brutes, having mortal and sensitive souls; and mere vegetatives, such as trees, plants, &c.; and these creatures so made do, as it were, clasp the higher ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... Duke of Lorraine, celebrated in the annals of the time for his unsteadiness of character, his vain projects, and his misfortunes, ventured to raise a weak arm against the Swedish hero, in the hope of obtaining from the Emperor the electoral dignity. Deaf to the suggestions of a rational policy, he listened only to the dictates of heated ambition; by supporting the Emperor, he exasperated France, his formidable neighbour; and in the pursuit of a visionary phantom in another country, left undefended his own dominions, which were instantly overrun by a French army. Austria ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... or "Ladder of the Mind," is the rational application of the Organum to all problems. By it the mind should ascend step by step from particular facts and instances to general laws and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... finally come back to Jaroslav to be finished, simply because the different factories which worked upon it, though widely scattered, happened to be under one control. Nationalization has made possible the rational regrouping of factories so that the complete process is carried out in one place, consequently saving transport. There are twenty-three complete groups of this kind, and in the textile industry generally about ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens'd to the children of men, but this inward law ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... character, wherein the passions were so happily expressed, and the whole story so intelligibly told by a mute narrative of gesture only, that even thinking spectators allowed it both a pleasing and a rational entertainment." This was certainly a ballet of action, and it is remarkable that the production involved but a small outlay; the managers, distrusting its reception, did not venture "to decorate it with any extraordinary expense of scenes or habits." Great success, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... impossible that scenic exhibitions might be made a most powerful means of instruction to the young, and tend to promote virtue and happiness, as well as be a means of rational amusement, but as they now exist, their extirpation ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... iron-making, which is used by many of the ironmasters of the present day with freedom and effect, in communicating with each other on the subject of their respective manufactures. Prejudices seldom outlive the generation to which they belong, when opposed by a more rational system of explanation. In this respect, Time (as my Lord Bacon says) is the greatest of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... likelihood. "Peace coming?" It is strange how long Friedrich clings to that fond hope: "My Edelsheim is in the Bastille, or packed home in disgrace: but will not the English and Choiseul make Peace? It is Choiseul's one rational course; bankrupt as he is, and reduced to spoons and kettles. In which case, what a beautiful effect might Duke Ferdinand produce, if he marched to Eger, say to Eger, with his 50,000 Germans (Britannic Majesty and Pitt so gracious), and twitched Daun by the skirt, whirling Daun home ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with disgust. "If you can be rational for one moment, I wish you would tell me why that man Sullivan called me ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rational, substantial, consistent, indisputable, reasonable, true, demonstrable, indubitable, sagacious, undeniable, demonstrated, infallible, sensible, unquestionable, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... must be given to the thing which impels us to action, otherwise action is impossible (25). The doctrines of the New Academy would put an end to all processes of reasoning. The fleeting and uncertain can never be discovered. Rational proof requires that something, once veiled, should be brought to light (26). Syllogisms are rendered useless, philosophy too cannot exist unless her dogmas have a sure basis (27). Hence the Academics have been urged ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... man descends from the dignity of his nature, and makes that being which was rational, merely vegetative; his life consists only in the mere increase and decay of a body, which, with relation to the rest of the world, might as well have been uninformed, as the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... all, reason was called to decide upon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire of religion ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... My son, I now think myself the happiest of all men, since I find that you have returned to a rational mode ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... characteristic. 'Religion' may be used in a far wider sense, corresponding to a philosophy of the universe, whether that philosophy does or does not include this particular doctrine. But 'Philip Beauchamp's' assumption is convenient because it gives a rational reasoning to the problem of utility. Religion is taken to be something adventitious or superimposed upon other beliefs, and we can therefore intelligibly ask whether it does good or harm. Taking this definition for granted, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... his mind, even to germination. Already a delicate root had penetrated the soil, and was extracting food therefrom. Oh! why did he not instantly pluck it out, when the hand of an infant would have sufficed in strength for the task? Why did he let it remain, shielding it from the cold winds of rational truth and the hot sun of good affections, until it could live, sustained by its own organs of appropriation and nutrition? Why did he let it remain until its lusty growth gave sad promise of an evil tree, in which birds of night find ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... has delayed to claim her debt. She has suffered thrice seven years to elapse beyond the period usually assigned for payment, and he indulges in wild fancies of a Statute of Limitations. In his most rational moments he talks of nothing but Old Parr. He burns his will, marries his housemaid, hectors his son-and-heir, who is seventy, and canes his grand-child (a lad of fifty) for keeping late hours. I called on old S—g ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... waves of forgetfulness and confusion, so that the spirit comes into captivity to the body, and is put into the condition of growth; but little by little, it goes on digesting, so as to become fitted for the action of the sensitive faculty, until, through the rational and discursive faculty, it comes to a purer intellectual one, so that it can present itself to the mind, without feeling itself befogged by the exhalations of that humour, which, through the exercise of contemplation, has been saved from putrefaction in the stomach and is ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Alarm, wherein he again reverted to his Mossgiel period, he displayed all his former force of satire, as well as his sympathy with those who advocated rational views in religion. Dr. Macgill had written a book which the Kirk declared to be heretical, and Burns, at the request of some friends, fought for the doctor in his usual way, though with little hope of doing him any good. 'Ajax's ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... as well as the clergy. The former do not go to such extremes as the latter, but make it a practice not to eat food after sunset or before sunrise, owing to the danger of swallowing insects. Now that their beliefs are becoming more rational, however, and the irksome nature of this rule is felt, they sometimes place a lamp with a sieve over it to produce rays of light, and consider that this serves as a substitute for the sun. Formerly they maintained animal hospitals ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... to ride With a white lambkin nestling at his side, Called it his daughter, had it richly clothed, And did his best to get it well betrothed, The law would call him madman, and the care Of him and of his goods would pass elsewhere. You offer up your daughter for a lamb; And are you rational? Don't say, I am. No; when a man's a fool, he's then insane: The man that's guilty, he's a maniac plain: The dupe of bubble glory, war's grim queen Has dinned away ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... reverence of religion; a reverence which cannot endure that so holy a thing should be defiled, by being brought in any contact with such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad government, on the intellectual and moral state of the people. The advocate of schemes for the improvement of their rational nature may, it seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on religion, for enforcing on individuals the duty of promoting such an object. In the name and authority of religion he may press on their consciences with respect to the application of their property and influence; and he ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... comparison of Shakespeare's sentiments or expression with those of ancient or modern authors, or from the display of any beauties not obvious to the students of poetry; for, as he hopes to leave his author better understood, he wishes, likewise, to procure him more rational approbation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... either into fantastic groupings divorced from reality, or into new, possible, rational groupings not yet experienced. So imagination is of two kinds, the fantastic and the constructive. Fantastic imagination, or fantasy, gives us gnomes, fairies, giants, and flying horses, and all the delights of fairy tales. Constructive imagination is the basis for invention, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... a madness, having heaven's wisdom in it—a spark. But even when it is driving us on the breakers, call it love: and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and Victor had drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever the directions of the rational mind. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Descartes, then, all the functions which are common to man and animals are performed by the body as a mere mechanism, and he looks upon consciousness as the peculiar distinction of the "chose pensante," of the "rational soul," which in man (and in man only, in Descartes' opinion) is superadded to the body. This rational soul he conceived to be lodged in the pineal gland, as in a sort of central office; and, here, by the intermediation of the animal spirits, it became aware of what was going on in the body, or ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... achieve the protection, scientific study, and rational use of Antarctic seals, and to maintain a satisfactory balance within the ecological ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not a gospel of despair, but of hope and high expectation. Out of many tribulations mankind has pressed steadily onward. The opportunity for a rational existence was never before so great. Blessings were never so bountiful. But the evidence was never so overwhelming as now that men and nations must live rationally ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... not being able to see these in the mind, I thought I could not see my mind. And whereas in virtue I loved peace, and in viciousness I abhorred discord; in the first I observed a unity, but in the other, a sort of division. And in that unity I conceived the rational soul, and the nature of truth and of the chief good to consist; but in this division I miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of irrational life, and the nature of the chief evil, which should not only be a substance, but real life also, and yet not ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... same stall, and dropped, with a smile and a nod, upon the opposite seat. "I wouldn't intrude, Sir," he said, "but every other place is filled. It's wonderful how Boston gives itself up to oysters on Saturday nights,—all other sorts of rational ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... told Grace of this purpose, she felt it was in keeping with all the rest. It might mean what was on the surface; it might mean more. It might be a part of the possible impulse that had driven him into the Vermont woods, or the natural and rational step he would have taken had he never seen her. At any rate, she felt that he was daily growing more remote, and that by a nice gradation of effort he was consciously withdrawing himself. And yet she could scarcely dwell on a single word or act, and say: "This proves it." His ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... country. The manner of ascending a high hill going out of the city would now strike engineers as stupid to the last degree. The passenger cars were pulled up by a train, loaded with stones, descending the hill. The more rational way of tunneling through the hill or going around it had not yet dawned on our Dutch ancestors. At every step of my journey to Troy I felt that I was treading on my pride, and thus in a hopeless frame ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his food, to sail his craft, to find his way—things that the animals know "from the jump." The animal inherits its knowledge and its skill: man must acquire his by individual effort; all he inherits is capacity in varying degrees for these things. The animal does rational things without an exercise of reason. It is intelligent as nature is intelligent. It does not know that it knows, or how it knows, while man does. Man's knowledge is the light of his mind that shines on many and widely different objects, while the knowledge of animals ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... waters for me, Mary," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not an authority on telepathy, or whatever you call it. But I've no belief in such theories. In fact, I think they are all nonsense. I'm sure you must think so too in your rational moments." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have still continued the same course of medecine; she is free from pain clear of fever, her pulse regular, and eats as heartily as I am willing to permit her of broiled buffaloe well seasoned with pepper and salt and rich soope of the same meat; I think therefore that there is every rational hope of her recovery. saw a vast number of buffaloe feeding in every direction arround us in the plains, others coming down in large herds to water at the river; the fragments of many carcases of these poor anamals daily pass down the river, thus mangled I pesume in decending those immence ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... careful to maintain the balance of truth. He shows us that among the sharks and harpies of Wall Street there are phases of honor and generosity—that the arrogance or coldness of a bank-officer may have a rational foundation—that feelings as intense are awakened in common business pursuits as in the most dramatic and erratic lives. In this just treatment of character,—this avoiding of the old saint and angel system of depicting men,—KIMBALL is truly pre-eminent, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... who believe in Purgatory, to pray for the dead is as natural and rational as to pray for the living. Next, as to this doctrine of Purgatory itself—which has so long been a stumbling-block to the whole Protestant world—time goes on, and the view men take of it is changing. It is becoming fast recognized on all sides that ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... in the so-called "Dark Age," nations would fight for the human, rational, but impracticable principle of orthodoxy. To-day we are fighting for the inhuman, for the equally impracticable and immoral principle of race antagonism. Germans fight because through their veins courses the red blood of the Teutons of Tacitus. They are fighting because they are ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... it was as much in sympathy for Beulah's happiness, as from any other cause. The marriage in other respects, was simple, and without any ostentatious manifestations of feeling. It was, in truth, one of those rational and wise connections, which promise to wear well, there being a perfect fitness, in station, wealth, connections, years, manners and habits, between the parties. Violence was done to nothing, in bringing this discreet ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... gone hand-in-hand with an insane Callistion. Now our ways parted. She desired only to be avenged on you, and very crudely. That did not accord with my plan. I fell to bargaining. I purchased with—O rarity of rarities!—a little rational advice and much gold as well. Thus in due season I betrayed Callistion. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... this infallible foresight, it is most easy and rational to conclude, and that positively, the infallible overthrow of every such creature. Did I infallibly foresee that this or that man would cut out his heart in the morning, I might infallibly determine his death ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... suggestion appears rational, having at least this to recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... I didn't believe that," the Admiral said. "Because it was an obvious lie. I tried to show some of the officers, but I'm afraid they weren't being too rational just then. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am prepared. I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my moustache and hurl defiance ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... sacrifice, a complete cleansing from all sin, and then turning to those who deny that they are sinners, he exclaims, and if we say that we have no sin, and therefore do not need this cleansing, and can do without this atonement, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. How much more rational is such an interpretation than the exposition which makes one verse contradict the other, and represents the apostle as first assuring us that we may be cleansed from all sin, and then declaring in effect. "But be sure to remember that this cleansing is never really affected, ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of representative government? The other day I glanced at a newspaper and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the great Police Surgeon, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... sound of many waters. Would to God we could get men, now-a-days, so concerned about their sins and their souls, that they should thus cry out. It would be a happy day for religion and for the world if it were so. If these things are realities, I contend that this is the most sane, rational, and philosophical way of dealing with them; and I say that the ordinary, cold, heartless, formal way (and, if it is not so, it has that ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... for Psychical Research, of England, started by giving a broad definition of Telepathy, as follows: "Telepathy is the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized channels of sense." They took the rational position that the actual distance between the projector and the recipient of the telepathic message is not material; and that all that is required is such a separation of the two persons that no known operation of the senses can bridge the space between them. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... say that he does not make these movements because he sees they would be of no use without food to chew; but this explanation would scarcely apply to the lower sorts of animal, and besides, you do not have to check your jaws by any such rational considerations. They simply do not start to chew except when food is in the mouth. Well, then, you say, chewing is a response to the presence of food in the mouth; and taking food into the mouth is a response to the stimulus of actually present food. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... sides; we have abundant proof that whatever can be said as to the progress of the disease, its anomalies, &c., in the former country, have been also noted respecting it in the latter; and Dr. Hawkins, when he put forth his book, had most assuredly abundant materials upon which to form a rational opinion. It is by no small effort, therefore, that I can prevent all the respect due to him from evaporating, when he declares, at page 165, that "the disease in India was probably communicable from person to person, and that in Europe it has ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... of my power to determine, or even to conjecture on any rational grounds, which, of a certain three-score of archbishops of Rouen, the figure represents; but, if I were to choose between Maurice, the fifty-fourth archbishop, who died in 1235, and William, of Durefort, the sixty-first, who died in 1330, from the comparative ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... with his fellow-men he manifested in the various ways in which it has been usually exhibited by statesmen. He possessed a ready eloquence—sometimes impassioned, oftener argumentative, always rational. His influence over his audience was unexampled in the annals of that country or age; yet he never condescended to flatter the people. He never followed the nation, but always led her in the path ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a preference for the Familiar, under the misleading notion of adherence to Nature. If the words Nature and Natural could be entirely banished from language about Art there would be some chance of coming to a rational philosophy of the subject; at present the excessive vagueness and shiftiness of these terms cover any amount of sophism. The pots and pans of Teniers and Van Mieris are natural; the passions and humours of Shakspeare and Moliere are natural; the angels of Fra ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... look at ear-rings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings nestled ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... be found among all classes and all conditions. In the kind of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the Unitarian Ministry) would appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amusements. The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only means of excitement excepted; and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, the ladies resort ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Even strike at your old associates and your own party if you will and when you can, without harming causes you hold dear. But for the duty of this hour, consider if there is not a common meeting-ground and instant necessity for union in a rational effort to avert present perils. This, then, is my appeal. Disagree as we may about the past, let us to-day at least see straight—see things as they are. Let us suspend disputes about what is done and cannot be undone, long enough to rally all the forces of good will, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... empire, or queen over the females, and all are said to be placed under her control and direction: but whatever may be the nature and object of the training to which she subjects them, it is certain that it is not intended to make the wife the rational companion and confidential friend of her husband; for if an Ashantee wife is detected in listening to a conversation of her husband, her curiosity is sure to cost her an ear; and if she betray a secret with which she has by any means become acquainted, her incensed husband ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... nerves and blood that fed her action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her conscience. But something she yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men kept the only oil; and who ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... attempt to prove it at present," said the Doctor; "but the evidence is so strong and so conclusive that no rational man, who will study the subject, can fail to be ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... monarch has had four figures attached to him, like a picture in an exhibition. Yet was there ever a man stopped in the streets of London, and suddenly confronted with the question, "What year did Henry VIII. come to the throne?" Certainly not. A man would be considered insane who expected any rational being to burden his mind with such trivialities. Yet the small boy is caned if he doesn't know. The only consolation I can offer the unfortunate small boy of to-day is that it will be ever so much worse for the small boy born 3000 years from ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on his upturned face. Day came—a gray day and no sun. It had ceased raining. The keenness of his hunger had departed. Sensibility, as far as concerned the yearning for food, had been exhausted. There was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach, but it did not bother him so much. He was more rational, and once more he was chiefly interested in the land of little sticks and the ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... smelling, or possession, by conquest, inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of Iowa, of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human race, except water. This measure was approved by all the rational people in the State; but not by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... The tests of alcohol as a tonic, as a food, as a stimulant, as a retarder of waste, are all negative. There is no reliable evidence to support these claims, but a constant accumulation of facts to indicate the danger from the use of spirits. To give alcohol or any other drug without some rational theory in accord with the scientific researches of to-day is unpardonable."—DR. T. D. CROTHERS, Hartford, Conn., Editor ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... beast give one any rational advice?" thought the king's son, and let fly at the fox, but missed him, and he stretched out his tail and ran quick into the wood. Then the young man went on his way, and towards evening he came to the village, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... form it comes to this: that the one true antagonist and triumphant rival of all fear is faith, and faith alone. There is no reason why any man should be emancipated from his fears either about this world or about the next, except in proportion as he has faith. Nay, rather it is far away more rational to be afraid than not to be afraid, unless I have this faith in Christ. There are plenty of reasons for dread in the dark possibilities and not less dark certainties of life. Disasters, losses, partings, disappointments, sicknesses, death, may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... times very irritable and hasty; in other respects he was a sociable messmate. The second was a kind of nondescript; he was certainly sober, and I hope honest, fond of adventure, and always volunteered when the boats were sent on any expedition. He was sociable, and frequently rational, although too often sanguine where hope was almost hopeless. Three-and-twenty summers had passed over his head, but still there was much to correct. He was generous and open-hearted, and never could keep a secret, which often got him into a scrape with ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... strong government. 'Yes,' said the Savoyard exile, 'but be quite sure that, to make the monarchy strong, you must rest it on the laws, avoiding everything arbitrary, too frequent commissions, and all ministerial jobberies.' We may well believe how unsavoury this rational and just talk was to people who meant by strong government a system that should restore to them their old prerogatives of anti-social oppression and selfish corruption. The order that De Maistre vindicated was a very different thing from the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... Petulengro, "catch at words, and very naturally, as by so doing they hope to prevent the possibility of rational conversation. Catching at words confined to pothouse farmers, and village witty bodies! No, not to Jasper Petulengro. Listen for an hour or two to the discourse of a set they call newspaper editors, and if you don't go out and eat grass, as ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... say that! How can I drop them? You know how many different ideas there are in the world! O Lord! They're such ideas that set your head afire. According to a certain book everything that exists on earth is rational." ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said, "Good-bye," as if it were a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strangers; for my part, I found them sociable and communicative in the extreme. A few hours after I had embarked on board the steamboat I found myself quite at home. I was much pleased to observe the rational manner in which the passengers amused themselves. Little groups were formed, where religion, politics and business matters were discussed with excellent sense and judgment. These seemed to be the common topics ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... residence. Of the three governors-general whose opinion had been invited the governor-general of Vilna was the only one who thought that the present situation needed no change. His colleague of Kiev, Count Vasilchikov, was, on the contrary, of the opinion that it would be a rational measure to transfer the surplus of Jewish artisans who were cooped up within the Pale and had been pauperized by excessive competition to the interior governments where there was a scarcity of skilled ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... this that the proposal of Home Rule for Ireland had come upon this country with entire freshness, and had never before been discussed among rational men. Filled with this impression he might perhaps be surprised if he obtained the chance of hearing the "still, small voice" of truth through the clamour and the uproar, to discover that this plan of Home Rule was not born yesterday, but no less than twenty-five ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... thoughtful people in America, than the question of the Education of Girls. We may answer it as we will, we may refuse to answer it, but it will not be postponed, and it will be heard; and until it is answered on more rational grounds than that of previous custom, or of preconceived opinion, it may be expected to present itself at every turn, to crop out of every stratum of civilized thought. Nor is woman to blame if the question of her education ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... to the secular life, from its compulsory despiritualisation, is great, the loss to religion, from the secularisation of so much of Man's rational activity, is greater still. The very distinction between the secular and the religious life is profoundly irreligious, in that it rests on the tacit assumption that there is no unity, no central aim, in human life; and the fact that official religion is ready to acquiesce in the distinction, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feeling should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men." ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... therefore, the earth must be as devoid of any movement of translation as it is devoid of rotation. Thus it was that Ptolemy convinced himself that the stability of the earth, as it appeared to the ordinary senses, had a rational philosophical foundation. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Almond, he declared his belief with much vehemence and agitation. This was soon after he had reached his eighteenth year. Maturer judgment "convinced him that 'zeal was to be tempered with discretion; that the service of Christ was a rational service'; that a strong assurance 'was not to be resorted to as the touchstone of our acceptance with God,' that it was not even the necessary attendant of religious life;" as more experience of his spiritual associates discovered to him ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... men is certainly, and I suppose truly, stated. Yet the whole case, as presented, fails to convince me that General Schofield, or the enrolled militia, is responsible for that suffering and wrong. The whole can be explained on a more charitable, and, as I think, a more rational hypothesis. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... was wrong, a horror and a nightmare. But even the capitalist victims of the competitive struggle, which awarded supremacy to the knave and the trickster, went to their doom praising it as the only civilized, rational system and as ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... at first, and is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually subsides. Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise; the passions of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees the more rational life comes: the life is changed—the pleasures of the senses are forsaken for those ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... means of mounting to the topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole long ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds, and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age such reflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step of your rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down this minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a page before the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare, and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know you will die, that Shakespeare ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... You and your wife, Mr. Guts, may be one flesh, because ye are nothing else; but rational creatures have minds that ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... with a rational Constitution might be a fair termination of the French follies; but Louis Napoleon, with the Communists, will probably destroy the last chance of order and tranquillity. A ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... he afterwards hears of a distinction between personally and absolutely he seems almost struck dumb with astonishment, and says he had never heard of the distinction before. Now altho' the public will make all rational allowance for the judge's want of distinction where Mr. Thompson is concerned, yet I suspect they could hardly account for his present lack of apprehension, unless he took that statement upon tick, ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... with the ideas and principles of modern civilization. He never makes his heroes die in consequence of a decree of fate, but they always bear in themselves the germ of their ruin or death; it is a natural, rational death, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning, darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded on the ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... said Porthos, who went to execute the orders, casting all the while looks behind him, to see if the bishop of Vannes were not deceived; and if, on recovering more rational ideas, he would not recall him. The alarm was sounded, trumpets brayed, drums rolled; the great bronze bell swung in horror from its lofty belfry. The dikes and moles were quickly filled with the curious and soldiers; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... perfectly rational, but there was another possibility. The other possible explanation was—considering everything—more probable. And it seemed to offer even more ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the profession he makes in the close of his Discourse, he being ready to be better inform'd, so he expects either to be indeed inform'd, or to be let alone. For Though if any Truly knowing Chymists shall Think fit in a civil and rational way to shew him any truth touching the matter in Dispute That he yet discernes not, Carneades will not refuse either to admit, or to own a Conviction: yet if any impertinent Person shall, either to get Himself a Name, or for ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... an animal before he was provided with a rational soul, he must, in accordance with the elementary requirements of the philosophy in which Mr. Mivart delights, have possessed a distinct sensitive and vegetative soul, or souls. Hence, when the "breath of life" was breathed into the manlike animal's nostrils, he must have ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... think that any silly boy can do it, to whom it is probably nothing but a disadvantage and the silliest of pastimes, and that he, a reasonable man with a good income, and arrived at a time of life when it is becoming and rational to marry, could not do it, let him try as he would! There was something ludicrous in it, when you came to think, as well as something very depressing. Mothers who wanted a good position for their daughters divined him, and many of them were exceedingly ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the class of authorities with which Justin shows the strongest affinity, and he goes on to add; 'Now it may be said without extravagance that no set of Scriptural records affords a text less probable in itself, less sustained by any rational principles of external evidence, than that of Cod. D, of the Latin codices, and (so far as it accords with them) of Cureton's Syriac. Interpolations as insipid in themselves as unsupported by other evidence abound in them ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... The theorist scoffs at forms which have survived their meaning, at privilege which will bear no examination, at compromises which sound ludicrous, at submissions which seem contemptible; but let him put forward his practical scheme for making all men rational, consistent, just. Englishmen, I imagine, are not endowed with these qualities in any extraordinary degree. Their strength, politically speaking, lies in a recognition of expediency, complemented by respect for the established ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... asked, would his happiness consist, since a rational being must have something besides a mere shelter from the storm and a tree to shade him from the sun to ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... you there? That's the cue international, Henceforth we'll hope, and we trust it may lead To colloquies pleasant, relations more rational. May "saucers" and tubes telephonic succeed In setting the world "by the ears," in a fashion Not meant by the men who invented that phrase. May nail-biting nagging and rancorous passion ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... Roswell Johnson remarks ("The Evolution of Man and its Control," Popular Science Monthly, January, 1910): "While it is undeniable that love when once established defies rational considerations, yet we must remark that sexual selection proceeds usually through two stages, the first being one of mere mutual attraction and interest. It is in this stage that the will and reason are operative, and here alone that any considerable elevation ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... flattery," muttered Kaunitz, following just after the princely pair, "he shall not succeed with me. What fine things, to be sure! But flattery indiscriminately bestowed leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. He wishes Loudon for his neighbor, forsooth, as if a man could have any rational intercourse with such an ignorant, ill-bred, awkward dolt ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ever give the secret away, though that afternoon, leaning back in his stateroom on the Twentieth Century, his shoes off, and feet on a chair, he chuckled long and heartily. New York remained forever puzzled over the affair; nor could it hit upon a rational explanation. By all rights, Burning Daylight should have gone broke, yet it was known that he immediately reappeared in San Francisco possessing an apparently unimpaired capital. This was evidenced by the magnitude of the enterprises he engaged in, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... declaring that he had broken off from the writer of the letters forever, but its inconsistency with the chivalrous attitude he had just taken occurred to him in time to prevent him from becoming doubly absurd. His rage with Seth Davis seemed to him the only feeling left that was genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoundrel's touch. Perhaps he had read them and left them to be picked up by others. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... terrible association; it being after called Hurly Hacket, from James V. and his nobles there playing at that game, which consisted in sliding down the steep banks on an inverted cutty stool. This was, at least, more rational than cutting off heads. Next is Abbey Craig, a rock upon which Wallace defeated the English; Dollava, a village on a gloomy rock, almost insulated by two streams, whose Celtic names signify the glens of care and the burns of sorrow; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... met that day. There was no need to go behind the evidence of the constable, the only companion of the murdered man and first discoverer of the body. The fact that he, on the ground floor, had slept through the struggle and the report, made the obliviousness of the couple in the room above a rational sequence. The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... in August, 1813. With it ended the era of birthday songs and New-Year's verses. The King was mad; his nativity was therefore hardly a rational topic of rejoicing. The Prince Regent had no taste for the solemn inanity of stipulated ode, the performance of which only served to render insufferably tedious the services of the two occasions in the year when imperative custom demanded his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... guns, and had frightened the authorities out of their wits. Every citizen that could possibly get out of the place was grabbing his valuables and fleeing the city on every train. The Cabinet officers were running hither and thither, not able to form a sensible or rational idea. Had it been possible to have evacuated the city, that would have been done. A Confederate prison or a hasty gibbet stared Staunton in the face, and he was sending telegrams like lightning over the land. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes ways as odd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk on two legs, and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful white greyhound, Mayflower,* for instance, is as whimsical as the finest lady in the land. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection for a most hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six months ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... rational branch of the science of healing, ignorantly termed "unorthodox," have devised a means of preventing disease and curing it, when encountered, in a natural way, with materials that regenerate and invigorate the blood, and this method ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of life. The schoolboy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him; and I observe with reassurance that you occasionally do the same, in your prime, with ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... and he doubted whether they had ever been restored to perfect sanity. It was still hoped that this agitation of spirits might pass away as they proceeded; but, on the contrary, it grew more and more violent. His comrades endeavored to divert his mind and to draw him into rational conversation, but he only became the more exasperated, uttering wild and incoherent ravings. The sight of any of the natives put him in an absolute fury, and he would heap on them the most opprobrious epithets; recollecting, no doubt, what he ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... some of the American cave-animals, as I hear from {139} Professor Dana; and some of the European cave-insects are very closely allied to those of the surrounding country. It would be most difficult to give any rational explanation of the affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other inhabitants of the two continents on the ordinary view of their independent creation. That several of the inhabitants of the caves of the Old and New Worlds should be closely related, we might expect from the well-known ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... leaf, gathered before sunrise, was his specific for ague. Alexander appears at times to have doubted the efficacy of such remedies as amulets, for he explains that his rich patients would not submit to rational treatment, and it was necessary, therefore, to use other methods ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... humanity and encouraging to humanity's undertakings. Then, abandoning for a few hours her orderly and kindly ways, Nature runs amok, raving and shrieking. Her transient irresponsibleness and mischievousness are then cited as everyday, persistent vices. Not so. Nature is rational even in her most passionate moments. Vegetation, rank and gross as in an unweeded garden, requires vigorous lopping and pruning. These twenty-year-interval storms comb out superfluous leaves and branches, cut out dead wood, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... not originating in his will, had caused this. His attitude became fatalistic—he was being moved about by a ruthless hand without regard to his own volition. He might as well close his eyes and his mind and submit, for Bonbright Foote VII did not exist as a rational human individual, but only as a checker on the board, to be moved from square to square with such success or error as ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's Tales[21] of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws—a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. That I should commemorate all is more than I can hope or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... young limbs into growth, she is called Amva. For bringing forth a child possessed of courage she is called Virasu. For nursing and looking after the son she is called Sura. The mother is one's own body. What rational man is there that would slay his mother, to whose care alone it is due that his own head did not lie on the street-side like a dry gourd? When husband and wife unite themselves for procreation, the desire cherished with respect to the (unborn) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... citizens, did the kind hand of over-ruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues and dangers, to Independence and Peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events, which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes us, on this day, in consideration of the great things, which the LORD has done for us, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... in "intensified personality" (which, of course, must mean your own), And the "rational" abolished and "sincerity" demolished, you will find that you have grown With a "colour-sense" fresh handselled (whilst the moral ditto's cancelled) you'll develop into—well, What Philistia's fools malicious might esteem a vaurien vicious (alias "hedonic swell"). And every one ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... master-piece—a TOUR DE PASSE—it was perfect legerdemain—and to be a madman after all!—I doubt greatly, my lord" (shaking his head), "that I must allow him, notwithstanding his relationship to your lordship, the privileges of a rational person, and either batoon him sufficiently to expiate the violence offered to my person, or else bring it to a matter of mortal arbitrement, as becometh an ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... America—to what extent are its members controlled by reason, and to what extent by feeling and by the fixed sentiments growing out of feeling? Ratiocination does not influence one of their actions in a million. There is not within my knowledge a single instance where a purely rational conception has been the basis of practice, in ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... out his hand, and put it into Satan's hand; when Satan said to him, "Say, now—So true as God is living, rational, and speaking, who raised the stars in heaven, and established the dry ground on the waters, and has created me out of the four elements*, and out of the dust of the earth—I will not break my promise, nor renounce ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... there is nothing in itself wrong, or unworthy a rational being, in a certain degree of attention to the fashion of society in our costume. It is not wrong to be annoyed at unnecessary departures from the commonly received practices of good society in the matter of the arrangement of our toilet; and it would indicate rather an unamiable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... beautiful Establishment here fitted up for the accommodation of the scoundrel-world, male and female! As I said, no Duke in England is, for all rational purposes which a human being can or ought to aim at, lodged, fed, tended, taken care of, with such perfection. Of poor craftsmen that pay rates and taxes from their day's wages, of the dim millions that toil and moil continually ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... recognized immediately such an ability to take care of my own interests as argued an ability to protect those of his firm. But this alone would not have induced the average business man to employ me under the circumstances. It was the common-sense and rational attitude of my employer toward mental illness which determined the issue. This view, which is, indeed, exceptional to-day, will one day (within a few generations, I believe) be too commonplace to deserve special ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... anything true or noble in it, until phrenology came and asserted that the brain's proportional parts could be known, and that the mind could be outwardly ascertained, and then men said: "Oh, this phrenology is a humbug! Physiognomy is rational; we can see how a man can judge that way; there is something in physiognomy." So they swallowed physiognomy in order to be strong enough to combat phrenology. Animal magnetism, I believe, came up next; and the people ridiculed it as they had ridiculed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. Much progress has also been made toward making youthful platform speaking, as well as youthful writing, more rational in form, more true in spirit, more useful for its purpose. In good time written and spoken English, conjoined with disciplinary training in thought and imagination, will both become firmly established in their proper place ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the servants in every respect, particularly that of the women, shows how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages, though these wages are so low that necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders them false and boorish. Still the men stand ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... The rational policy recommended by Uncle George was carefully pursued. Everything was done to attract William to their mode of life, but no remark was made when he gave a preference to Indian customs. Still, he seemed moody, and at times sad. He carried within ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... emphasizing thereby the supremacy of the logical framework to the observations. In 1620, Digby's last year of study at Oxford University, Fienus published a work, De Formatrice Foetus, designed to demonstrate that the human embryo receives the rational soul on the third day after conception and to discuss at length such subjects as the efficient cause of embryogeny and the proposition that the conformation of the fetus is a vital, not a natural, action. Various expressions of Aristotelian and scholastic biology were clearly abroad ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... arise; let her make herself mistress of her own territory; then, the victory once gained, let her freely decide who shall reap the fruits. Monarch or People, we will submit ourselves to the power she herself shall organize. Is it possible that so moderate and rational a proposition should be the object of such false interpretations, in a country which reveres the idea of right and of self-government? Is it possible that its leaders should be the object of so ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... falling in with the same necessity, think of the same contrivance, and meet for the first time in a newspaper war, or a duel of pamphlets, for the credit of its authorship. A dozen widely scattered philosophers as quickly hit upon the self-same idea as if they were in council together. A more rational development of some old doctrine in divinity springs up in a hundred places at once, as if a theological epidemic were abroad, or a synod of all the churches were in session. It has also another peculiarity. The thought which may occur at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... but just to say, that imperfect as were their views of the rights of conscience, they were nevertheless far in advance of the age to which they belonged; and it is to them more than to any other class of men on earth, the world is indebted for the more rational views that now prevail on the subject of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... venture to hope that in serving my own need I may also serve the need of a rapidly growing public when I set down for rational consideration the temptations surrounding multitudes of young people and when I assemble, as best I may, the many indications of a new conscience, which in various directions is slowly gathering strength and which we may soberly hope will at last successfully array itself against this ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... abounding in wild Game, turkeys so numerous that it might be said there appeared but one flock Universally Scattered in the woods ... it appeared that Nature in the profusion of her Bounties, had Spread a feast for all that lives, both for the Animal & Rational World, a Sight so delightful to our View and grateful to our feelings almost Induced us, in Immitation of Columbus in Transport to Kiss the Soil of Kentucky, as he haild & Saluted the sand on his first setting his foot on the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... not seeking to state its artistic reason why. Which is, that such plantings are mere eruptions of individual smartness, without dignity and with no part in any general unity; chirping up like pert children in a company presumably trying to be rational. ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that was vouchsafed her. If it was not love, it was too shameful. It could be nothing else than love. She loved the man whose arms were around her and whose lips were pressed to hers. She pressed more, tightly to him, with a snuggling movement of her body. And a moment ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... scraps by the way, just because nobody who had charge of me ever thought it worth while to teach, a girl. But I have a mind!—an intelligence!—even if I am a woman; and there is all the world to know. Marriage? Yes!—but not at the sacrifice of everything else—of the rational, civilised self." ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... through a chaos of canyons and divides which did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan. It was as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker. In vain he sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the McQuestion and the Stewart. Then came a mountain ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was the naked truth of it: hot weather, agitation, want of sleep, want of food; not aversion to the Hereditary Prince, nothing of that. Rather the contrary, indeed; and, on better acquaintance, much the contrary. For he proved a very rational, honorable and eligible young Prince: modest, honest, with abundance of sense and spirit; kind too and good, hot temper well kept, temper hot not harsh; quietly holds his own in all circles; good discourse in him, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... given by Ben Brace to his protege was simple, as it was also rational. The sword-fish had been charging into a shoal of albacores. Partly blinded by the velocity of its impetuous rush, and partly by its instinct of extreme voracity,—perhaps amounting to a passion, it had seen nothing of the raft until its long weapon struck the plank, piercing ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid |
