"Sceptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to make of it. Was the man a charlatan, or a "crank?" There were no signs of craziness or humbug in his frank and simple sentences. Had he really found out a way of crossing the celestial spaces? In these days it is better not to be too sceptical as to what science will accomplish. It is, in fact, wise to keep the mind open and suspend the judgment. We are standing on the threshold of the Arcana, and at any hour the search-light of our intellect may penetrate the darkness, and reveal to our wondering gaze the depths ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... sources of the maiden Paula, of the family Dei Mansi (Anawim), the daughter of Abraham, and later the wife of Yechiel dei Mansi, who, in 1288, copied her father's abstruse Talmudic commentary, adding ingenious explanations, the result of independent research. But one grows somewhat sceptical over the account, by a Jewish tourist, Rabbi Petachya of Ratisbon, of Bath Halevi, daughter of Rabbi Samuel ben Ali in Bagdad, equally well-read in the Bible and the Talmud, and famous for her beauty. She lectured on the Talmud to a large number of students, and, to prevent their falling in love ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... loathsome mire of the slums of crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious communion of deathless love and prescient guardianship, stir her soul to oppose her mother's scheme? Sceptical and heedless Tarquins are we all, whom our patient Sibylline intuitions finally abandon to the woes which ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... put more of the substance on the flagging than I need to have done. A few drops would have answered quite as well, but I wanted to make sure. You were very sceptical, you know." ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... sand-bank on which their vessel will run aground if they don't mind. Lamartine, there is not doubt, would make an excellent legislator for a nation of Lamartines—but where is that nation? I hope these observations are sceptical and cool enough.—Believe me, my dear sir, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... ideal specimen of the village Sunday-school child. Blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, thick-legged, with her straight brown hair tied into a hard bunch with a much-creased, cherry- coloured ribbon. A glance at the girl would have satisfied the most sceptical as to her goodness. Without being in any way smug she was radiant with self-satisfaction and well-doing. A child of the people; an early riser; a help to her mother; a good angel to her father; a little mother to her brothers and sisters; cleanly in mind and body; self-reliant, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... great teacher, but he has the power to ask awkward questions so characteristic of Andreev, Artsybashev, and indeed of all Russian novelists. We cannot answer him with a shrug of the shoulders or a sceptical smile. He shakes the foundations of our fancied security by boldly questioning what we had come to regard as axioms. As the late M. de Vogue remarked, when little children sit on our knee and pelt us with questions that go to the roots of our philosophy, we get rid of the bother of it by telling ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... planned the character, the face was every thing, and the lengthened, dull, and inexpressive visage of the subject was too strictly ministerial to be lost; and the author would, as he said, "defy him to go wrong," Still his friend was sceptical; nor were his doubts removed by Sheridan's assuring him that the representative of Lord Burleigh "would have only to look wise, shake his head, and hold his tongue;" and he so far persisted as to lay a bet with the author that some capital blunder would nevertheless occur. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... he has left the one life-like portrait of Thoreau—better than a photograph—that now exists. He surveys them both in rather a critical manner, and takes note that Thoreau is the more substantial and original of the two; and he is also rather sceptical as to Channing's poetry, which Emerson valued at a high rate; yet he narrowly missed making a friend of Channing, with whom he afterward corresponded in a ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of his own, to read the paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is pictorial—by, at any rate, his own idea of the effects he wishes to create. He cares absolutely nothing for what ordinarily we understand by the real, the actual, so far as its reality is concerned; he sees nothing else, to be sure, and is probably very sceptical about anything but colors and shapes and their decorative arrangement; but he sees what he likes in reality and follows this out with an inerrancy so scrupulous, and even affectionate, as to convey the idea that in his result he himself counts for almost nothing. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... upon me and said, "Whom are you doubting?" And suddenly it dawned upon me that I was doubting Him who said I was possessed of everlasting life because I believed on the Son and on the Father who had sent Him, and in spite of this possession and His sure Word of promise concerning it, I was sceptical. But as I sat there beside him I saw it all. Then he said, "Read it again." And I read it the third time, and talking to me as gently as a mother would to her child he said, "Do you believe this?" I said, "Yes, indeed I do." Then he said, "Are you ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... that her father was "the victim of foul play"—the black brows sank yet another degree—and that she wished him privately to investigate the matter. He of course would know far, far better what to do than she, but she would suggest that he keep an eye upon Blake. At first Mr. Stone appeared somewhat sceptical and hesitant, but after peering darkly out for a long and ruminative period at the dusty foliage of the Court House elms, and after hearing the comfortable fee Katherine was willing to pay, he consented to accept the case. As he left ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... biographers, indeed, Clarke and M'Arthur, say, that at this time the treatment he received disgusted him with his profession, and that he had even determined never to set his foot again on board a king's ship, but resign his commission at once. But Sir Harris Nicolas very justly is sceptical as to the truth of this anecdote, from the fact, that there is no allusion to any intention of the kind in his correspondence. And from what we see of his disposition in all his letters, we feel assured that a thought of leaving the navy never entered his mind, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... taken such pains were objects of special derision. It appeared that they were all wrong—measurements, preparation, soil, manure, everything that could be wrong, was. Certainly the only crop we had from them was weeds. But I began about half way through the week to grow sceptical, because on comparing their criticisms I found they seldom agreed, and so took courage again. Finally I chose a nice, trim young man, with strikingly intelligent eyes and quick movements, who had shown himself less concerned with the state of chaos existing than ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... efforts, over the telephone a strange voice offered to deliver the murderer, Rumson was sceptical. He motioned the girl to switch to ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... Washington there was a wild scramble for the extras containing the latest news from the front. The people stood for hours in front of the newspaper offices, but definite news was so long in coming, that despair once more seized their hearts and they again became sceptical ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... inwardly akin and to whom he draws near by his own spiritual effort. In this movement, to which we learn that members of the lay aristocracy and even women of intellectual distinction made important contributions, and which may have appeared in its beginnings as a sceptical revolt against their own system, the Brahmans yet took part, and the works in which the record of it is contained became a part of revelation. The "Upanishads" or "communicated doctrines," form the third branch of the sacred knowledge, and much of this literature belongs ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the Commune, I was sent to the South. The Superior thought my cheeks were ominously hollow, and suspected threats of consumption in my cough. So I was to go to the Mediterranean, and try its milder air. I liked the change. Paris, with its gloss of noisy gayety and its substance of sceptical heartlessness, was repugnant to me. Perhaps it was because of this that Brother Sebastian had been mured up in the capital two-thirds of his life. If our surroundings are too congenial we neglect the work set before us. But no matter; to the coast ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... means for those who are acquainted with the structural defects common to natural corundum gems is to seek for such defects in any specimen that is in question, and if no such defects can be found, to be very sceptical as to the naturalness of the specimen, inasmuch as perfect corundum gems are very rare in nature, and when of fine color command exceedingly high prices. No jeweler can afford to risk his reputation for knowledge and for ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist; especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... until now he had been spared them; a true son of peasants, he victoriously resisted Paris life as the destroyer of the intellect. But the time had come to undertake an examination and to try a treatment that would give him rest. He was not a sceptical doctor, and he believed that what he ordered for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all, and that even physical science is as full of contradictions as theology. Such enterprises, conducted with whatever ingenuity, are, as I believe, hopeless; but at least they are fundamentally and radically sceptical. That, under whatever disguises, is the true meaning of the Catholic argument, which is so persuasive to many. To prove the truth of Christianity by abstract reasoning may be hopeless; but nothing is easier than to persuade yourself to believe it, if once you will trust instinct in place ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Various sceptical theories, to which much importance was attached for a time, are now almost forgotten. The Mythical theory fails to account for the immediate effect produced by belief in the Resurrection. Myths require time for their growth and development, but ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... A SCEPTICAL man, conversing with Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing that he did not understand. Dr. Parr, replied, "Then young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... that Cronje had surrendered, yet the evening saw the garrison again reduced to quarter rations. This was only a precautionary measure, for Buller had helioed 'everything progressing favourably.' But the man in the street was sceptical. If favourable, why reduce the ration? Thus it was that Tuesday, Majuba Day—although on that date the tide of fortune had turned in our favour—marked the lowest pitch of despondency into which the garrison was ever plunged during the 118 days ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... enginery that effected the Rattleborough miracle—the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed, the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity among the Rattleburghers and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames all the carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a body as it hath pleased him; he can do the same with regard to that part of man's nature which is committed for a while to the earth. Let not the natural difficulties connected with this subject make us sceptical. There are no more difficulties connected with a grave than with a grape vine. Those distant twigs, on that dry vine, begin to bud and blossom; grapes form upon them; it is filled with clusters. Is there any thing in the resurrection more strange than ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... grandfather, already lay buried beneath their expansive heraldries: at times the whole world almost seemed buried thus—made and re-made of the dead—its entire fabric of politics, of art, of custom, being essentially heraldic "achievements," dead men's mementoes such as those. You see he was a sceptical young man, and his kinsmen dead and gone had passed certainly, in his imaginations of them, into no other world, save, perhaps, into some stiffer, slower, sleepier, and more pompous phase of ceremony—the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... relief tests us too. If we give it believing that, in itself, it can carry any blessing to the poor, we are taking a grossly material view of human life. If, on the other hand, our knowledge of the mischief done by reckless giving makes us morbidly sceptical of all material assistance, we are losing a valuable tool; for relief at the right time, and given in the right way, may be made an incentive to renewed exertion, and a help to a higher standard ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... sneer at some of the most respected dogmas in mousedom. From her very infancy she doubted, for example, the widely accepted theory that the moon was composed of green cheese; and this heresy was the first intimation her parents had of the sceptical turn of her mind. Of course, her parents were vastly annoyed, for their maturer natures saw that this youthful scepticism portended serious, if not fatal, consequences. Yet all in vain did the sagacious couple reason and plead with their ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... spring from the old fancy, that the other phenomena are not natural. The fog of itself may be; but what brings it on, just then, at a crisis, when they were speculating about the character of the chased vessel, some doubting her honesty, others sceptical of her reality, not a few boldly pronouncing her as a phantom? If an accident of ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... allusions, of Lucian's Vera Historia. Prototypes of the majority of the stories may either be found in Lucian or in the twenty volumes of Voyages Imaginaires, published at Paris in 1787. In case, however, any reader should be sceptical as to the accuracy of this statement he will have no very great difficulty in supposing, as Dr. Johnson supposed of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of such stuff if he would only consent to abandon his mind to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... into the land of perplexity and shadow. From the truths of astronomy he wandered into astrological fallacy; from the secrets of chemistry he passed into the spectral labyrinth of magic; and he who could be sceptical as to the power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as to the power ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... this man of genius. In the eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century, this sceptical century, this century!—etc. They calumniated his purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up to him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are uttered on this great century ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... were regarded by the world, and treated by historians, as the mere ebullition of frenzied fanaticism—as a useless and deplorable effusion of human blood. It may be conceived with what satisfaction these views were received by Voltaire, and the whole sceptical writers of France, and how completely, in consequence, they deluded more than one generation. Robertson was the first who pointed out some of the important consequences which the Crusades had on the structure of society, and progress ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the belief in Demetrius was gaining ground in Russia with the people. The nobles might still be sceptical, but Boris knew that he could not trust them, since they had no cause to love him. He began perhaps to realize that it is not good to rule ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... bright or sinister, ordinarily invisible. Here were softness, impetuosity, romantic imagination, and tender fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago. Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... not an ordinary being; one look at the rounded forehead which shone over dark eyebrows and the unfathomable eyes would convince the most sceptical. The mysteries had a charm for her, and now that she had been taught the hidden secrets of Nature, she craved to understand the powers which worked the will, to dive deeply into the sympathies governing the soul, and to become skilled in the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... satisfactorily; though this honest farmer still had a great many doubts about the great gate which Samson carried away, and about the foxes with the firebrands between their tails. In other respects, however, the man seemed not to be either uninformed or sceptical. ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... practised in Wall Street. Early on the following afternoon, while returning from there, he sat wedged between a gunman and a Hun. He was unconscious of either. The uncertain market; the slump, momentarily undiscernible, but mathematically inevitable; customers, credulous or sceptical, but always avid; the pulse of the feverish street which the ticker indifferently registered; the atmosphere of tobacco and greed; the trailing announcements; "Steel, three-fourths; Pennsy, a half," these things were ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... them. Milton became more and more a stern republican, or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracy which, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even more than royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism. Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of 375 men in general for power, became more and more attached to the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity in general, Milton seems to have ended in an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application to the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... sure, some sceptical persons told the whole story very differently. According, to their account, Miss Sarah had been the mistress of M. de Kergrist, and, seeing him utterly ruined, had sent him off one fine morning. They stated, that, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the crowd singing about the Trojan horse, and jesting about priests. The fact that it was a priest on whom the snakes had fastened seemed to afford especial delight to the sceptical ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Mr. Shine looked sceptical. "Well," he said after a moment's reflection, and with studied politeness,—having already offended at the outset, "all I got to say is, you talk like a woman, that's all ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... that a reader the most credulous would at times be startled with doubts upon what seems so unvarying a tenor of danger and lawless violence. But, on the other hand, it is also undeniable that a reader the most obstinately sceptical would be equally startled in the very opposite direction, on remarking that the incidents are far from being such as a romance-writer would have been likely to invent; since, if striking, tragic, and even appalling, they are at times repulsive. And it seems evident that, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is fulfilled. Sceptical, fluid and shrinking as he is by nature, he stands for this hour at least, a strong wall and a fortress, by his clear conscience, his simple courage, and his full surrender to whatever be in store for him. How bravely ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... point of view must shift with each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs go in or out of fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To one age Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his opinions, but his poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his ideas; whatever may be the fate of the ideas of Tennyson ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... rather sceptical about the virtue of the drug which was eventually produced to us, but, after a little discussion, we purchased the tablets and asked for some water ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Walpole, Mrs. Inchbald, Opie, &c., with the Scotts, Loughborough, and most of the divines and lawyers, besides a few shorter hints of authors, and a few lines about a certain 'noble author,' characterised as malignant and sceptical, according to the good old story, 'as it was in the beginning, is now, but not always shall be:' do you know such a person, Master Murray? eh?—And pray, of the booksellers, which be you? the dry, the dirty, the honest, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... brother, and she resigned or rather abandoned herself to her destiny. Her better feelings had been brought out for the moment in her conversation with Agellius; but they were not ordinary ones. True, she was tired, but she was the slave of the world; and Agellius had only made her more sceptical than before that there was any service better. So at least she said to herself; she said it was fantastic to go elsewhere for good, and that, if life was short, then, as her brother said, it was necessary to make the most ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... The crowds, terrified, inquisitive, sceptical, and speculative, gathered. Officials swept them out and took possession. Hallowell and ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... to representing the faith of the age in the dialogue of his personages; that he did not content himself with marvels related only in the imitated conversation of superstitious persons. The most sceptical of men admit the reality and fervour of superstitious beliefs; and in depicting them in all their vitality, the poet is still adhering rigidly to truth: it is for the reader to sympathize with them or not at his pleasure. But Schiller having resolved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... dogmas of the muscular Christians and their rivals the muscular agnostics, his whims and fancies were superficial and involved no intellectual confusion. He compelled no one to build on unproved hypotheses, nor would he suffer himself to be compelled. Though sceptical about progress and mistrustful of democracy, to the end of his life he disliked the Conservative party; and perhaps his finest flights of sarcasm occur in "The Misfortunes of Elphin," where he ridicules Canning's florid rhetoric ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... and the modifications it must suffer, we shall see later; as well as the new theories which have largely displaced it. It will be better first to survey the universe from the evolutionary point of view. But I may observe, in passing, that the sceptical remarks one hears at times about scientific theories contradicting and superseding each other are frivolous. One great idea pervades all the theories of the evolution of worlds, and that idea is firmly established. The stars and their planets are enormous aggregations of cosmic dust, swept ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... though he was some low dago or Sicilian,—why, that was simply and utterly incredible. None the less she was relieved and rejoiced, as were all Waring's friends, when the full purport of poor Doyle's dying confession was noised abroad. Even those who were sceptical were now silenced. For four days her comfort and relief had been inexpressible; and then came the hour when, with woe and trouble in his face, her husband returned to her from Waring's bedside with the incomprehensible tidings that he had utterly ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... his thick fingers with a contemptuous look for the women folk. He had just worked off his five years' government naval service; and it was as master-gunner of the fleet that he had learned to speak good French and hold sceptical opinions. He hemmed and hawed and then rattled off his latest love adventure, which ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... channels, from above downwards and from below upwards: it is reached through the reason and through the imagination and senses. By the latter channel it often receives evil impressions, undoubtedly, but not unfrequently by the former also. Reason may be inconsiderate, vain, haughty, mutinous, unduly sceptical. The abuse is no justification for closing either channel. Now the channel of the senses and of the imagination is the wider, and in many cases affords the better passage of the two. The will that is hardly ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Jewish traders his success was less decided. They admitted that it would be a great misfortune, were Warsaw taken by the Swedes, but, as Poles, they retained their confidence in the national army, and were altogether sceptical that a few thousand Swedes could withstand the host that could be put in ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... Indian question requires that we deal with the issues arising out of the peculiar relations of the aboriginal tribes of the continent to the now dominant race, in much the same spirit—profoundly philanthropic at bottom, but practical, sceptical, and severe in the discussion of methods and in the maintenance of administrative discipline—with which all Christian nations, and especially the English-speaking, nations, have learned to meet the kindred difficulties of pauperism. It is in no small degree the ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... subjection of women. So far the thing was acceptable enough. But over against the world Miss Miniver assembled a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light—people she described as "being in the van," or "altogether in the van," about whom Ann Veronica's mind was disposed to be more sceptical. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... which those who practise them believe. You cannot fail to discover that the beliefs which to you are self-evident to the foreigner are absurd. The year in Germany, the long stay in Paris, had prepared Philip to receive the sceptical teaching which came to him now with such a feeling of relief. He saw that nothing was good and nothing was evil; things were merely adapted to an end. He read The Origin of Species. It seemed to offer an explanation of much that troubled him. He was like an explorer now who has reasoned that certain ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills?... Nothing of the sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills, he does not believe in giants ... but he would not have attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism.... But in negation, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... practical elements in Scott's mind ran together, side by side, without mixing, as evidently as the waters of the Alleghany and Monongahela at Pittsburg. Scarcely ever a man had so much relish for the supernatural, and so little faith in it. One must confess, however, that the most sceptical might have been overcome at Glamis Castle, for its appearance, by all accounts, is weird and strange, and ghostly enough to start the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... believe in Dr. Argure quite as fully as some less sceptical members of his congregation do, Deacon Goodsole believes in him most implicitly. Deacon Goodsole is a believer—not I mean in anything in particular, but generally. He likes to believe; he enjoys it; he does it, not on evidence, but on general principles. The deacons ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... Madame du Deffand, sceptical, sarcastic; feared and hated even in her blind old age for her scathing criticisms. When the celebrated work of Helvetius appeared he was blamed in her presence for having made selfishness the great ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... intermittent encouragement from the sovereign pontiffs, both the secular interests of their government and the vindication of the Church's dogmatic teaching afforded the most profitable exercise for talents which sceptical humanists sold, as readily as did the condottieri their swords—to the best paymaster, regardless of their personal convictions. There consequently came into existence in Rome a new ceto or class, equally removed from the nobles of feudal traditions and the ecclesiastics of the Curia, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Griffiths was not unaware of the prophecy which was to be fulfilled in his generation. He would occasionally refer to it when among his friends, with sceptical levity; but in truth it lay nearer to his heart than he chose to acknowledge. His strong imagination rendered him peculiarly impressible on such subjects; while his judgment, seldom exercised or fortified by severe thought, ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have listened till evening, no matter what became of the neighbor's dinner, if Topandy had not interrupted him with the sceptical remark that this lengthened steel wire has far more soul than a certain two-footed creature, who affirms that he was the image ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... of philosopher, partly visionary and partly sceptical, who sees what is concealed from all others. He describes the being and unfolds the nature of souls and spirits, and knows both what is, and what is not. From the acuteness of his sight, the metaphysician cannot discern what ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... its extinction. This argument, if it had any weight at all, would only induce persons either to pretend to be Christians when they were not, or to refrain from assailing Christianity, or to avoid all inquiries which might possibly lead to sceptical conclusions. It is therefore, perhaps, a good argument to address to believers, because it may induce them to suppress doubts and avoid lines of thought or social relations likely to beget doubt; but it is an utterly futile argument to address to those ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... complaints and counter-complaints, entreaties for help and what were for the most part incredible assurances of everlasting fidelity, there was no course for the king and his councillors to take but either to order a military expedition on a large scale, or to turn a sceptical ear to all alike and confine their attention simply to the tribute. Pride and weakness combined led them to take the dangerous middle course and send inadequate bodies of men singly into the disturbed districts. A certain amount of ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... the basking limb, And hidden birds are practising a hymn To sing when petals fall among the leaves. And yet in life there is an interim So dull that stagnant loneliness bereaves Beauty of tenderness, and hope deceives Until the eyes grow sceptical and dim. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... Schiller in a new, and to us more interesting point of view. Julius and Raphael are the emblems of his own fears and his own hopes; their Philosophic Letters unfold to us many a gloomy conflict that had passed in the secret chambers of their author's soul. Sceptical doubts on the most important of all subjects were natural to such an understanding as Schiller's; but his heart was not of a temper to rest satisfied with doubts; or to draw a sorry compensation for them from the pride of superior acuteness, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... was many times brighter than the blazing Dog-star. It is interesting in the history of science, as having led Hipparchus to draw up a catalogue of stars, the first on record. Some moderns, being sceptical, rejected this story as a fiction; but Biot examining Chinese Chronicles[32] relating to the times of Hipparchus, finds that in 134 B.C. (about nine years before the date of Hipparchus's catalogue) a new star was recorded as having ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Gioberti is erased from the corners of the streets to which it was affixed a year ago; he is stripped of all his honorary degrees, and proclaimed an unworthy son of the country. Mazzini is the idol of the people. "Soon to be hunted out," sneered the sceptical American. Possibly yes; for no man is secure of his palm till the fight is over. The civic wreath may be knocked from his head a hundred times in the ardor of the contest. No matter, if he can always keep the forehead pure and lofty, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... vallies. You ask me what I think of this book. I find in it many interesting facts brought together, and many ingenious commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning, These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader, therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes more use of fact, than any other writer on a theory of the earth. But I give one answer to all these theorists. That is as follows. They ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is amritham, eternal. This it is in us which makes us sceptical of death, even when the fact of death cannot be doubted. In reconcilement of this contradiction in us we come to the truth that in the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... days when his happiness made him sceptical; he would say: "Is it then really happiness? Am I happy? If so, why is it that I do not feel my happiness more ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... seldom absent for long together. The general note, indeed, of the Heptameron is given by more than one passage in Brantome—at greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightly quoted, at the same time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbe's determination to see in it little more than a piece of precieuse mannerliness (though, indeed, the Precieuses were not yet). Yet even Sainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out quite strongly enough how entirely this ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry, wore his red calico base-ball clothes, and went through keg-hoops in a dozen different ways. In the streets of the town the youngsters appeared disguised as ordinary boys. They revelled in the pictured visions of the circus, but were sceptical about the literal fulfilment of some of the promises made on the bills. Certain things advertised were eliminated from reasonable expectation: for instance, the boys all knew that the giraffe would not be discovered eating off the top of a cocoanut-tree; nor ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... and get the better of the other fellow if he can. Dryfoos couldn't keep the boom out of has own family even. His wife was with him. She thought whatever he said and did was just as right as if it had been thundered down from Sinai. But the young folks were sceptical, especially the girls that had been away to school. The boy that had been kept at home because he couldn't be spared from helping his father manage the farm was more like him, but they contrived to stir the boy up—with the hot end of the boom, too. So when a fellow ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... knows that...." he continued, with a sceptical laugh. "Is it not written ... in the society papers? But it has always ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... and down the windy platform, where the porter abandoned himself to the contemplation of occasional rooks, and was sometimes surprised by the arrival of a train for which he had waited so long as to have become sceptical as to the existence of such things as trains in the scheme of the universe. The station was a terminus, and the line was a loop, for which very few people ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Moriches in company with three children and a cat in a basket, eyed him with a curiosity that she made no attempt to conceal. Two girls in a neighbouring seat leaned forward eagerly to hear all. This was because one of them had told the other that Elizabeth was Mary Pickford. Her companion was sceptical, but ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... that in every action of his life he is governed by the counsels received from the spiritual world through a medium. I did not inquire whether this medium (who is a small boy) had suggested his visit to me. My remarks to him were quite of a sceptical character in regard to the faith to which he had surrendered himself. He has formerly lived in America, and had had a son born there. He gave me a pamphlet written by himself, on the cure of consumption and other diseases by antiseptic ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmercifully," said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. "She is quite sceptical as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and proves the truth of the story he has afterwards to tell by producing the goblet, "which remained in the boy's family for generations, though unfortunately it is no longer forthcoming for the satisfaction of those who may still be sceptical." A like origin has been suggested for the celebrated "Luck of Edenhall," and the "Horn of Oldenburg," and other like relics); the Carinthian girl, who, climbing a mountain during the noon-hour, entered through ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... questions—unless he can answer the questions. Asking questions is already the fashionable and aristocratic sport which has brought most of us into the bankruptcy court. The note of our age is a note of interrogation. And the final point is so plain; no sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. "Am I a boy?—Why am I a boy?—Why aren't I a chair?—What is a chair?" A child will sometimes ask questions of this sort for two hours. And the philosophers of Protestant Europe ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... puffs of wind that now and then swept through the compound caused the wood fire to flare up and flicker, casting fitful and fantastic shadows around. Moonshee stared, with fixed eyes, expecting every moment the reappearance of the supernatural poultry; but I, being as yet sceptical, descended the stairs, followed by my trembling household, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... other hand there were some favouring conditions, the importance of which our studies of the human problems already discussed will have made my readers realise. Isolated, the Irish farmer is conservative, sceptical of innovations, a believer in routine and tradition. In union with his fellows, he is progressive, open to ideas, and wonderfully keen at grasping the essential features of any new proposal for his ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... Dick, after a sceptical pause, during which he watched the lambent light as it played about in a slow fantastic way, just as if it were a softly-glowing lantern carried by a short-winged moth, which used it to inspect the flowering plants ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... That's just what I object to in those men. If they would confess themselves companions of the sceptical writers whom I have read and speak from a Free Thinkers' platform, I would have some respect for them. What do they believe that they did not? They respected the life and teachings of Jesus, but did not believe in His inerrant knowledge nor assumption of divinity. I ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... additional honor of causing it to be burned in the streets of Paris by the public executioner. But the prudence of the author protected his life. He attributed the book to a dead man, who had been known to entertain sceptical views. It was entitled CHRISTIANITY UNVEILED, and bore on its title page the name of BOULANGER. This was d'Holbach's first contribution to Infidel literature, and the second similar work written by him was the LETTERS TO EUGENIA. These were the preludes ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... explanation shall I give of the wonderful facts which I have set forth? Why, none, absolutely none. I do not explain facts, I relate them. Growing daily more sceptical of the interpretations suggested to me and more hesitating as to those which I myself may have to suggest, the more I observe and experiment, the more clearly I see rising out of the black mists of possibility ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... my life. Father Lewin's death had thrown me into an extraordinary dejection, which seemed to have taken from me all the joy of my faith; but at Louvain I came very near to losing it altogether. It came, I think, from the reading of some French sceptical books the first year I was there; but I went through a horror and anguish. Often I used to wander for a whole day along the Scheldt, or across lonely fields where no one could see me, lost in what seemed to me a fight with devils. The most horrible blasphemies—the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... further than the eye can trace them. Should nothing intervene to prevent it, the Governor intends, shortly, to explore their summits: and, I think there can be little doubt, that his curiosity will not go unrewarded. If large rivers do exist in the country, which some of us are almost sceptical enough to doubt, their sources must arise amidst these hills; and the direction they run in, for a considerable distance, must be either due north, or due south. For it is strikingly singular that three such noble harbours as Botany Bay, Port Jackson, and ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... hymn I said, "Boys, I am going to tell you the story of my father's conversion." For I had to convince my padre friend that they were not sceptical. I took them to the gipsy tent and told them of my father and five motherless children, and of how Jesus came to that tent, saving the father and the five children and making preachers ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... has even, for the purposes of study, taken prints of the fingers of monkeys at the Zoo. Many times has he given evidence as an expert in cases where finger-prints have formed part of the evidence. His cold, scientific analysis has always convinced the most sceptical, and always a ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... wrote turgid, involved, twisted and breakneck sentences, each noun with as many verbs as Brigham Young had wives. Then followed a romantic craze, and everyone struggled to combine religion and romance, with frequent punches at religion, and we prided ourselves on being sceptical and independent in our literary tastes. My advice was simply to make up one's mind what to read, and then read it. Life is short, and books are many. Instead of making your mind a garret crowded with rubbish, make it a parlour, substantially furnished, beautifully ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... them badly.[80] It is in the highest degree improbable that they attached any importance to his few slips. He speaks of having a naturally weak memory which, so he declares, had grown worse while he was in prison,[81] and he was frankly sceptical as to the possibility of any man's recalling every incident in squabbles that happened years before.[82] As it happens, his memory seems to have been excellent. No doubt it failed him now and then; ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... the sceptical reader sneer, and ask where she got, or who brought the swords and pistols. Some kind deity, willing to assist the purposes of her just revenge, interposed and brought her arms. Surely Horace would allow that this was "dignus vindice ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... (and Major Upgrove is trying to persuade me to come with him to find it—he has a theory) it will be found to be a secret isle in some great estuary or arm of that ageless Eastern river suspected by the major. Surely that mysterious Apple (of whose powers Margarita was once so sceptical) never grew on any vulgar, easily-to-be-come-at mainland! No, it lurks to-day in its own island Paradise, and the angel with the flaming sword cut the land apart from all common ground so that the furrows smoked beneath it as the floods raced in. If we ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... away soon, and not after all with the feeling of going for good. In his sceptical young mind, fed by Clare's malice, was growing a comforting doubt ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the testimony ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... still sceptical. Then to Gwendolyn, after a moment's reflection. "Let me close up your dictionary for you, pettie. Jane never likes to see one of your fine books lyin' open that way. It might put a ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... believe you have anything wrong with you. The nerves business made me sceptical. This is straight talking. It's horrid, I know. But it's best to get through with it once and ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... villages, they retired towards the east, while the Oraons, being good beasts of burden and more accustomed to subjection, remained." In view of the fine physique and martial character of the Larka or Fighting Kols or Mundas, Dalton was sceptical of the theory that they could ever have retired before the Oraons; but in addition to the fact that many villages in which Oraons now live have Mundari names, it may be noted that the headman of an Oraon village ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... any of the dates given in Japanese annals. Kaempfer and even Rein were content to endorse the chronology of the Chronicles—the Records avoid dates altogether—but other Occidental scholars* have with justice been more sceptical, and their doubts have been confirmed by several eminent Japanese historians in recent times. Where, then, is collateral ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... dreaming; I certainly heard strange music, and entrancing voices. But in acknowledging your powers over something unseen, I must explain to you the incredulity I at first felt, which I believe annoyed you. I was made sceptical on one occasion, by attending a so-called spiritual seance, where they tried to convince me ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... of your faith more heartily than I do. I merely confess that to celebrate these rites so frequently requires a sustention of enthusiasm which is beyond me. In fine, I have not your fervent temperament, I am more sceptical. You may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong: but still, at the same time—! That is how I feel about it, my precious, and that is why I find, with constant repetition of these ceremonials, a certain lack of firmness developing in my responses: and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... coming; and odd or marvellous as it may seem, this signal of the little fly, which never misleads you—this signal which falls upon your ear just at the proper and precise moment, is as certain as that two and two make four. Be not sceptical, and imagine that this is chance; no such thing. Go when you will to the chasse a l'affut, station yourself in whichever part of the forest you like, be assured the fly will be there; it was never otherwise. The question is, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... supposed argument from evolution, viz., from man's lowly origin, as furnishing a strong presumption against his immortality. This plea, familiar enough in sceptical discussions of the subject, has been put forward with great poetic force by Mr. William Watson; after graphically describing {228} "the gibbering form obscene that was and was not man," as lower in many ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... kind of man whose vanity and simplicity are too easily overwhelmed by the obvious. He saw nothing in a European crisis except a war with France; and nothing in a war with France except a repetition of the rather fruitless glories of Agincourt and Malplaquet. He was of the Erastian Whigs, sceptical but still healthy-minded, and neither good enough nor bad enough to understand that even the war of that irreligious age was ultimately a religious war. He had not a shade of irony in his whole being; ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... purgatory: and nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical biographer decide? Audley seems ever to have been weak when ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... made no pretension to Webster's magnificent oratory; yet Webster never put more truth in portable form for popular guidance. He possessed Benjamin Franklin's immense common sense, and gift of terse proverbial speech, but none of his lusts and sceptical infirmities. The immortal twenty-line address at Gettysburg is the high water mark of sententious eloquence. With that speech should be placed the pathetic and equally perfect letter of condolence to Mrs. Bixby ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... course. That leaves a large margin for error. So if they felt doubtful they got a plummet, greased it, and dipped it overboard. When it was hauled up they inspected whatever might be sticking to the tallow, and at once announced our position. At first I felt sceptical. It was as though one who had got lost with you in London might pick up a stone in an unknown thoroughfare, and straightway announce the name of that street. That would be rather clever. But I discovered my fishermen could do something ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... him forward. The collie gave one very loud cry, and died. Then George became mysteriously cold, and presently he saw a lady standing among the shrubs. She waved to him, and he saw that her eyes were white; then she moved through the trees and passed away. The sceptical shepherd said that the collie had eaten some phosphorus which had been spread for the rats, but Mary never gave this prosaic explanation. She and George believed that the dog died of fright, and that the grave organist had seen the lady from the tower, so many youths grew up believing ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... linen—while all these people were thus quietly and peaceably engaged, an event was brewing which was destined to produce some very remarkable results. And lest the justification of ordinary possibility should be required by the sceptical hereafter, I will at once state that the greater part of what follows is a matter of history, well known to many living persons; and that in writing it down I wish it to be understood that I am submitting to the judgment ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... room these gentlemen go to work with the most serious mien; at the opera they deem it becoming to put on a nonchalant, sceptical, cleverly-frivolous air. They concede with a smile that they are not quite at home in the opera, and do not profess to understand much about things which they do not particularly esteem. Accordingly, they are very accommodating and complaisant towards ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... took them into her thoughts made even the most sceptical of them lean back and smile. If they felt like questioning the genuineness of her feeling it could only be explained on the ground of consummate art and either way it was something ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and forced me through those gateways? Surely on his head and not on mine should rest the burden of my deeds; yet he prospered all his life, and I have been told that his death was happy and painless. This man's career furnishes one of the few arguments that to my sceptical mind suggest the existence of a place of future reward and punishment, for how is it possible that so great a villain should reap no fruit from his rich sowing of villainy? If it is possible, then verily this world is the real hell wherein the wicked are lords ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of quite another Power. The Dowager Countess de Villanera—rather improbably, but not quite impossibly—accepts this, being, though proud, willing to derogate a little to make sure of an heir to the House of Villanera with at any rate a portion (the sceptical would say a rather doubtful portion[424]) ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... spot without a tree, without a mine, and without a manufacture, could never have possessed solid wealth under the languid industry and wild rapine of an Arab population. When we recollect, too, how long the Turks were masters of this corner of Arabia, we may well be sceptical of the opulence of periods when the sword was the law. No memorials of its prosperity remain; no ruined temples or broken columns attest the magnificence or the taste of an earlier generation. Its only hope of opulence must be dated from its first possession by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... of an approaching crowd of people—a crowd that uttered not a word. Then suddenly the chanting of the Church broke the stillness, calling up the confused thoughts that take possession of the most sceptical minds, and compel them to yield to the influence of the touching harmonies of the human voice. The Church was coming to the aid of a creature that knew her not. The cure appeared, preceded by a choir-boy, who bore the crucifix, and followed by the sacristan carrying the vase of holy ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Equally important is the evidence of Tatian. This remarkable Syrian wrote a harmony of the Gospels near A.D. 160. Allusions to this harmony, called the Diatessaron, were known to exist in several ancient writers, but until recently it was strenuously maintained by sceptical writers that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that the Diatessaron was composed of our present Gospels. It was suggested that it might have been drawn from other Gospels more or less resembling those which we now possess. This idea has now been dispelled. A great Syrian father, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... for instance, admit his sceptical friends, who laughed at the existence of virtue and religion, to the society of his daughter, with the exception of Lord Dunroe, to whose vices his unaccountable ambition for her elevation completely blinded him. Neither did ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... man with Vere was a lover. This was a blow which, somehow, he had not expected. The girl in the white boat had looked enchantingly young. When he had played the seal for her she had laughed like a child. He—even he, who believed in no one's simplicity, made sceptical by his own naughtiness so early developed towards a fine maturity!—had not expected anything like this. And these English, who pride themselves upon their propriety, their stiffness, their cold respectability! ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... often been regarded as a fairy story by ultracivilized men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own savage forebears have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar practices. Captain Cook was rather sceptical upon the subject, until, one day, in a harbour of New Zealand, he deliberately tested the matter. A native happened to have brought on board, for sale, a nice, sun-dried head. At Cook's orders strips of the flesh were cut away and handed to the native, who ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... an illustration of the certainty with which the Prescott brothers could indicate the location of electrical attraction, Mr. Jenks gives a well-authenticated incident which took place at Amesbury not long ago. Several old citizens were sceptical as to the accuracy of the conclusions supposed to have been reached, and determined on a severe test. Taking twenty or more citizens as witnesses, they requested the Prescott brothers to accompany ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... gives, and consecrates. Crusader, baron, knight, priest, peasant, all resort to the church for benedictions. Women too are there, and in greater numbers; and they linger for the confessional. When the time comes that women stay away from church, like busy, preoccupied, sceptical men, then let us be on the watch for some great catastrophe, since practical paganism will then be restored, and the angels of light will have left ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... particularly sceptical. He and another rustic functionary, of whom we shall speak presently, the grave-digger, are always the esprits forts of the place. They are so much in the habit of talking of ghosts, and are so well acquainted with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... questioning was a logical mode of procedure. The meeting of individuals in conversation was a method of arriving at the truth of ethical conduct and ethical relations. It was made up of induction and definition. No doubt the spirit of his teaching was sceptical in the extreme. While having a deeper sense of the reality of life than others, he realized that he did not know much. He criticized freely the prevailing beliefs, customs, and religious practice. For this he was accused of impiety, and forced to drink the hemlock. With an irony ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... two could not be in the same room without quarrelling. It was only with care that (as the Jesuit had coldly observed) they could exist in the same world without clashing. Never was the Vicomte d'Audierne so cynical, so sceptical, as in the presence of his brother. Never was Raoul d'Audierne so cold, so heartless, so Jesuitical, as when meeting his ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious: he appears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shown ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... be otherwise, inasmuch as the art of writing must have been quite unknown in Greece until after the alleged age of the traditional Homer, whose date had been variously estimated at from 1000 to 800 B.C. by less sceptical generations. It had come to be a current belief that the Iliad was first committed to writing in the age of Peisistratus. A prominent controversialist, F.A. Paley, even went so far as to doubt whether a single written copy of the Iliad existed in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... to-day; it was so in the eighteenth century. In England a Professor may easily become a fossil; in Germany he often guides the thought of the age. For some years that scoffing writer, Voltaire, had been openly petted at the court of Frederick the Great; his sceptical spirit was rapidly becoming fashionable; and now the professors at the Lutheran Universities, and many of the leading Lutheran preachers, were expounding certain radical views, not only on such vexed ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... indication in the treatment is that of applying a counter-irritant as near to the diseased parts as possible. Regarding its efficacy we must confess to being somewhat sceptical. The treatment has been constantly practised and advised, however, and we feel bound to give it mention here. A smart blister may, therefore, be applied to the whole of the coronet, and need not be prevented from running into ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Susan had been coming to the age that is sceptical about Santa Claus, but she could ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and disregard for the sanctions of religion had long been making its appearance in the literature of the time. The highest speculations which can occupy the attention of man were touched with a recklessness and power, a brilliancy of touch and a bitterness of satire, which forced the sceptical productions of the day upon the notice of all who studied, read, or delighted in literature;—for those were the days of Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, and the great men ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... than "to teach in an Irish Catholic University," or have "gambled away my reason," or adopt "sophistries," or have published "sophisms piled upon sophisms," or have in my sermons "culminating wonders," or have a "seemingly sceptical method," or have "barristerial ability" and "almost boundless silliness," or "make great mistakes," or am "a subtle dialectician," or perhaps have "lost my temper," or "misquote Scripture," or am "antiscriptural," or "border very closely on the Pelagian heresy."—Pp. 5, 7, 26, 29-34, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... many interesting facts brought together, and many ingenious commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning. These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes more use of fact, than any other writer on a theory of the earth. But I give one answer to all these theorists. That is as follows. They ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... De la Certitude, (Upon Certainty), by A. JAVARY. It makes an octavo of more than five hundred pages, and for originality of ideas and illustrations, and cumulative force of logic, is almost unrivalled. The sceptical speculation of the time is reduced by it to powder, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a material, sceptical age, when many pride themselves on their want of faith, quite forgetting that to believe too little is as clearly an indication of mental weakness as to believe too much. God suddenly raised up a man in our midst ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... some unlucky trick! We are here astonished at the ingenuity of a disciple of Pyrrho, who in his inquiries, after having exhausted all human evidence, seems to have demonstrated what he hesitates to believe! Perhaps the truth was, that the sceptical Bayle had not entirely freed himself from the traditions which were then still floating from the fireside to the philosopher's closet: he points his pen, as AEneas brandished his sword at the Gorgons and Chimeras that darkened the entrance of Hell; wanting the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Legation—"the stoical, sceptical, ill-informed British Legation," as S—— of the American Legation calls it—is wringing its hands with annoyance, and were it Italian, and therefore dramatically articulate, its curses and maladette would ascend to the very heavens in a menacing cloud like our Peking dust. For on England ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to be subdued by Yoga, i.e., by regulating the wind within the body. Doubt is to be dispelled by certainty; this implies that certain knowledge should be sought for by driving off doubt. The commentator thinks that this means that all sceptical conclusions should be dispelled by faith in the scriptures. By 'fear,' in this verse, is meant the source of fear, or the world. That is to be conquered by the conquest of the six, i.e., desire, wrath, covetousness, error, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the British forces, asked General Joubert to see the famous Penkop Regiment. The Boer General gave an order that the regiment should be drawn up in a line before his tent, and when this had been done General Joubert led General Wood into the open and introduced him to the corps. Sir Evelyn was sceptical for some time, and imagined that General Joubert was joking, but when it was explained to him that the youths really were the much-vaunted Penkop Regiment he advised them to ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... preserve him from the prevailing illnesses. At last, we are told, the poor fellow fell sick, and it is mentioned, evidently in praise of his docility, that he became as good a swallower of physic, as a man born in Paris! The inference from this is somewhat dubious, but not to be sceptical, valeat quantum valere potest. Aotourou's remembrance of the evils of Batavia was such, as prompted him, whenever he named it, to call it, in the language of his country, enoua mate, "the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... present instance, it is hardly possible to offer more than here and there a probable conjecture; or to pronounce how much may be true, and how much fictitious, in the accounts presented to us. For, it is to be observed that this case is much more open to sceptical doubts even than some miraculous histories; since some of them are of such a nature that you cannot consistently admit a part and reject the rest; but are bound, if you are satisfied as to the reality of any one miracle, to embrace the ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... knew what South Africa really was could only agree with her that the miserable places there were anything but pleasant residences, but the fuss which she made as to these trivial details could only make one sceptical as to the genuineness of the other scenes which she described at such length. No one who had had occasion to watch the development of the war or the circumstances which had preceded it could bring himself to believe with ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... be called a game, save perhaps with the chief player, who was not more or less sceptical than most public men with whom he had acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a public man in England that altogether believes in his party? Is there one, however doubtful, that will not fight for it?) Young Frank was ready to fight ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Christians to employ them in the name of religion alone. Local or political jealousies are at the bottom of those troubles which still occur from time to time in Turkey: the traveller hears no insulting epithet, and the green-turbaned Imam will receive him as kindly and courteously as the sceptical Bey educated in Paris. I have never been so aggressively assailed, on religious grounds, as at home,—never so coarsely and insultingly treated, on account of a presumed difference of opinion, as by those who claim descent from the Cavaliers. The bitter fierceness of some of our leading reformers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Berry' in a very antagonistic frame of mind, determined beforehand that the whole thing was a swindle (italics are recent), accompanied by friends who were even more sceptical than myself, if that were possible." I go on then to describe the usual cabinet, and pass on to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates |
