"Skeptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... motley garb of theorists. Their flag may be seen wandering to and fro, hither and thither, up and down, swayed by every breath of popular caprice; so it move to the mere cry of "Progress!" its followers are content. To-day, in the hands of the skeptical philosopher, it assaults the heavens. Tomorrow it may: float over the mire of Mormonism, or depths still more vile. It was under the flag of progress that, in the legislative halls of France, the name of the Holy Lord God of Hosts, "who inhabiteth eternity," was legally blasphemed. ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... unwonted bulk of her correspondence diverted her mind from its immediate duty. She failed to catch the instructor's eye, and the recitation proceeded without her assistance. Priscilla watched her from the back seat as she read the Yale letter with a skeptical frown, and made a grimace over the blue and the yellow; but before she had reached the Hotel A——, Priscilla was paying attention to the recitation again. It was coming her way, and she was anxiously forming an opinion on the ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... were enamored by the Misses Bimpa were skeptical of this, and affirmed that it was a "humbug," but this question will be settled in the evening. Meanwhile, the commotion around the circus is increasing each moment. From among the long, low wooden buildings surrounding the canvas circus there comes the roar of the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... geography, which from boyhood he had implicitly confided in, always assured him, that though expatiating all over the globe, the sea was at least margined by land. That over against America, for example, was Asia. But it is a calm, and he grows madly skeptical. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... words Sulphite and Bromide, and their derivatives, sulphitic and bromidic, are themselves so sulphitic that they are not susceptible of explanation. In a word, they are empirical, although, accidentally it might seem, they do appeal and convince the most skeptical. I myself balked, at first, at these inconsequent names. I would have suggested the terms "Gothic" and "Classic" to describe the fundamental types of mind. But it took but a short conversation with the Chatelaine to demonstrate ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... Julius had a previous understanding with Malcolm Murchison by which he was to drive us round by the long road that day, nor do I know exactly what motive influenced the old man's exertions in the matter. He was fond of Mabel, but I was old enough, and knew Julius well enough, to be skeptical of his motives. It is certain that a most excellent understanding existed between him and Murchison after the reconciliation, and that when the young people set up housekeeping over at the old Murchison place, Julius had an opportunity to ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the gate of the Marvin mansion to the avenue, and as Harry turned to Pauline with a skeptical reply on his lips, the approach of a young man ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the social gatherings which grew out of the study of spiritism was a lady who, like myself, was a convinced believer in the reality of the phenomena, but skeptical as to the value and personal origin of the communications made in the "circles." Her daughter, a child of seven, was in fact a hypnotic clairvoyant of singular lucidity, and my brother, Dr. Jacob Stillman, obtained from the mother permission ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Lord's Prayer. Even Ludwig could not do otherwise than bend his knee upon the chair by which he stood, and bow his skeptical head, while the innocent maid and his dying servant ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... their inability to understand beauty on the ground that beauty is too subtle a thing for thought. How, they say, can one hope to distill into clear and stable ideas such a vaporous and fleeting matter as Aesthetic feeling? Such men are not only unable to think about beauty, but skeptical as to the possibility of doing so,—contented ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... purchased, larger and every way better than those employed on the former occasion. Stores were laid in, as experience dictated, on a larger scale than before, and proclamation was made of "an expedition to Peru." But the call was not readily answered by the skeptical citizens of Panama. Of nearly two hundred men who had embarked on the former cruise, not more than three fourths now remained.11 This dismal mortality, and the emaciated, poverty-stricken aspect of the survivors, spoke more eloquently than the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the skeptical people of Cork, a party of them telegraphed all over the coast to see if they could not find Paul, to verify their story and from Skibbereen they learned that a man answering that description had passed through there and was now on his ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs. One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... I'm coming to that," said Miss Daggett firmly. "As I was telling you, this work is a complete library in itself. A careful perusal of the specimen pages will convince the most skeptical. Turning to page four ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... are the floods of flattery poured by modern people on that energetic nation of the Far East of which it has been said that "Patriotism is its only religion"; or, in other words, that it lives only for the Soul of the Hive. When at long intervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid or skeptical, and mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to pour them westward like a dark movement of matter, in such cases it has been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice or incessant ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Even the skeptical Cobden, who had damned so much in his day, could not question the lad's mastery. It did not occur to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... as skeptical as Schloss had intimated the public would be. "Yes," he replied, "there's been an epidemic of robbery with the dull times—people who want to collect ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Bolsheviks, astonishingly credulous of "secret" news from Moscow, and skeptical of every one's opinion but their own, were bolsheviking Marxian Utopia beneath a screen of such arrogant innocence that even the streetcorner police constables suspected them. And Mustapha Kemal, in Anatolia, was rumoured to be preparing ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... listening in silence. He had a naturally skeptical face; his present expression mightn't really mean that he didn't believe what he ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... Wilson hated to be reminded of them by Lloyd George, in the case of Dantzig and the Polish corridor. The dawn of a better world grew dubious. The ardor of mankind cooled. They were at first incredulous, then skeptical. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... and scholars, Whittier and Lowell and Emerson; and of our greatest President, the Martyr of Emancipation. So wonderful are those scenes named Gettysburg, Appomattox, and the room where the Emancipation Act was signed, that even the most skeptical have felt that the issues of liberty and life for millions of slaves justified the entrance of a Divine Figure upon the human battle-field. This Unseen Leader and Captain of the host had dipped His sword in heaven, and carried ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... passionate devotion to the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... human fossil of the Quaternary period seemed then to be incontestably demonstrated, and even to be admitted by the most skeptical. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... voice, full of a peculiar sympathy that gave color to every word. He seemed as though he felt that the experience of the poet was somehow a prophecy of his own life; and it was. He himself became a skeptical man in religious thought, but returned to the simple faith of his ancestors amid ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... emulation soon enabled me to supply the want of leisure. My nights were surrendered, almost wholly, to my new pursuit. I toiled with all the earnestness which distinguished my temperament, stimulated to a yet higher degree by those feelings of pride and pique, which were resolved to convince my skeptical uncle that I was not entirely without those talents, the assertion of which had so promptly provoked his sneer. Besides, I had already learned that no such scheme as mine could be successfully prosecuted, unless by a stern resolution; and this implied the constant presence of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... thought otherwise, being of a skeptical turn on very many points, but his doubts did not break forth in active denial, and he was rather disaffected than rebellious, At one period, this gentleman had taken a part in active life at home, and possibly might have been eager to share its rewards; but in latter ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... cheerfulness, while depression grew heavier within, as if she had eaten soggy cake. Her father knew nothing whatever of the stage, and she was aware of his ignorance, yet for some reason his innocently skeptical amusement reduced her bright project almost to nothing. Something like this always happened, it seemed; she was continually making these illuminations, all gay with gildings and colourings; and then as soon as anybody else so much as glanced at them—even her father, who ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... revival of Greek literature gave to the cultivated class a "renaissance," a rebirth, of speculative thought, of intellectual beauty, of delight in human activities for their own sake. It was a new birth in some of the old pagan sensuality, skeptical of heaven or hell; worse than the old sensuality because it trampled down the finer purity which Christianity had bred. In others it was a new birth to the pursuit of moral and social good, inspired by the master spirits of Judaism and early Christianity. Then came the invention ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... draw out just as you wanted: would you go to work and try to live on ten dollars a month? Yet that is exactly what many of us are doing as Christians. I believe this low standard of Christian life in the Church is doing more to manufacture infidels than all the skeptical books that ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... prayers of all good Christians. The audience felt that human hearts are the same the world over, and that the Holy Ghost had been given unto them, "even as unto us." The address of Low Quong would convince the most skeptical of the power of the gospel to purify the heart, illumine the mind and elevate the life and character of the Chinamen as well as others. He spoke in good English, and by his clear putting of the gospel truth, touched ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... little skeptical about the matter when it was mentioned to him, but he agreed that there was something in the idea, after all, and that it was rather odd for the mysterious man to remain so long in the vicinity of Oak ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... they are as simple as children when you see their innocent picnicking along the boulevards and in the parks with their whole families, yet you dare not trust yourself to hear what they are saying. Believe that they are cynical, and fin de siecle, and skeptical of all women when you hear two men talk, and the next day you hear that one of them has shot himself on the grave of his sweetheart. Believe that politeness is the ruling characteristic of the country because a man kisses your hand ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... done," said the admiral. Outwardly he was still skeptical, but a doubt was forming ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... to say, that it seems to me that the supernatural, in order to call forth those sensations, terrible to our ancestors and terrible but delicious to ourselves, skeptical posterity, must necessarily, and with but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in mystery. Indeed, 'tis the mystery that touches us, the vague shroud of moonbeams that hangs about the haunting lady, the glint on the warrior's breastplate, the click of his unseen ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of vodka to the success of the plan and left the old peddler still harping on his daughter. All the way home and many days afterwards Petka could think of nothing else. It seemed to him the greatest opportunity in the world to marry a girl from America. But now and then he got skeptical of his ability to get such a prize. However, he decided to try. He admitted that the whole success lay in the shaping of a strong and convincing letter and sending it to her properly. Petka knew how to write letters, but the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... "I see you are skeptical—you doubt the practical and practicable value of my invention. But you shall be convinced—you shall be my fellow passenger on my first voyage ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... soon won the Murphy family and Tom was eager to see us shoot. He had heard that we shot deer, but he was rather skeptical that our arrows could do much damage to bear. So one of the first things he did after our arrival was to drag out an old dried hide and hang it on a fence in the corral and asked me to shoot an arrow through it. It was surely a test, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... have come so many works of art. The traveler, Paul Lucas, discovered in the necropolis of Cyrene, in 1714, many antique vases, both in the tombs and in the soil. One of them is still preserved in the Museum at Leyden. The Arcesilaus, who is represented on this vase, is not the celebrated skeptical philosopher of that name; it is Arcesilaus, King of Cyrenaica, who was sung by Pindar, and who was vanquished in the Pythian games under the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... spirit signifies poise between hypothesis and verification, between statement and proof, between appearance and reality. It is inspired by the impulse of investigation, tempered with distrust and edged with curiosity. It is at once avid of certainty and skeptical of seeming. It is enthusiastically patient, nobly literal, candid, tolerant, hospitable." This is the statement of a man of letters, who had found in science "a tonic force" ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... other institutions fought one another for the political control of the city. The newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political influence, especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a skeptical humor, believing the journals either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else striving to forward the personal ambitions of their owners. The control of the city lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of negroes gin-money, and by other largesses. The revenues of ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the lessons taught in his journal may well startle the incredulous and unbelieving spirit of our skeptical day. Those who doubt the power of prayer to bring down actual blessing, or who confound faith in God with credulity and superstition, may well wonder and perhaps stumble at such an array of facts. But, if any reader ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... bureaus of the Government and to the general experience of mankind. A physician who disbelieved in vaccination would not be the right man to handle an epidemic of smallpox, nor should we leave a doctor skeptical about the transmission of yellow fever by the Stegomyia mosquito in charge of sanitation at Havana or Panama. So with the improvement of our rivers; it is no longer wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of men who fail to grasp the essential relations between navigation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Divine Condescension guiding and inspiring and aiding human effort, so convincingly clear and transparent in its smallest details and in its general effect as to seem outside the pale of all possible mutilation and misinterpretation by malice or skeptical analysis. Natural reaction against sinful excess, thwarted ambitions, disappointed hopes, meek conformity with environment, ecclesiastical manipulation of pliant material, tame acquiescence in family traditions and arrangements, these and all the other stock "explanations," with which a groveling ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... had to dread were the revolution which is held up as a specter to terrify us! Since I cannot imagine a society more detestable than ours, I feel more skeptical than alarmed in regard to that which will replace it. If I should have to suffer from the change, I should be consoled by thinking that the executioners of that day were the victims of the previous time, and the hope of something better would help us to endure the worst. But it is not that ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... day. It is no longer the world of Mme. de Rambouillet that confronts us with its chivalrous models, its refined platonism, and its flavor of literature, but rather that of the epicurean Ninon, brilliant, versatile, free, lax, skeptical, full of intrigue and wit, but without moral sense of spiritual aspiration. Literary portraits and ethical maxims have given place to a spicy mixture of scandal and philosophy, humanitarian speculations and equivocal bons mots. It is piquant and amusing, this light play of intellect, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... take a more skeptical turn. A certain Mr. Edwardes—a most amusing man—used to describe a call which he paid one Sunday afternoon to a farmer near Buckfastleigh, whom he found reading his Bible. Mr. Edwardes congratulated him on the appropriate nature of his studies. The farmer pushed the book aside, and, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... physicians, upon medical professors, my learned colleagues, upon eminent lawyers or divines, upon strong-minded farmers or hunters, entirely unacquainted with such subjects, and incapable of psychological delusion, or upon persons of very skeptical minds who would not admit anything until the phenomena were ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... might again provide him with some genuine excitement. It could be simply his imagination working overtime, but it wasn't going to do any harm to find out. Mind humming with pleased though still highly skeptical speculations, Barney went back to the boat station and inquired when the party boat was ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... and, as regards opinions, so perfectly skeptical, that I should never be astonished at anything he did, in one sense or the other. He was not always like that, at least not so much so. I have known him to be more credulous and more republican than I was then. He was thin and pale, and gentle; how people change! His talent, his ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... story and had been inclined to welcome him as a fellow wanderer. Whicher declared that he had murdered his wife and children in the East and he was seeking a refuge from the officers of the law. But Jesse's comrades were skeptical, and when they found on Whicher a pistol bearing Pinkerton's mark, they started with him for Kansas City intending to leave him dead in the street there. Shortly after they crossed to the Independence ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... it would add to human safety if the ships were fitted with search lights so that at night objects could be seen at a greater distance. The testimony so far along this line had been conflicting. Some of the witnesses thought it would be no harm to try it, but they were all skeptical as to its value, as an iceberg would not be especially distinguishable because its bulk ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... the easy-going humorist, often nowadays a column conductor, or a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, takes time to deepen his observation and to say it with real words instead of worn symbols, he makes, and does make, literature. More are doing it than the skeptical realize. The new epoch of the American essay ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... power has refused to enfranchise woman, being skeptical as to her moral influence in government, yet with strange inconsistency they alike seek the aid of her voice and pen in all important political struggles. While not morally bound to obey the laws made without their consent, yet we find women the most law-abiding ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the bank of L2,335, and we, as a matter of policy, wanted to have our capital ready at hand. The bank has a rule that a depositor must never have less than L300 to his credit. My friends were somewhat skeptical as to whether the bank did not regard their new customer, F. A. Warren, with some suspicion and as a depositor to be watched. My personal relations with the bank people convinced me everything was all right, but to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... this slowly and talk. I note that frequently they are saying something about "hawadje," and then they fix their eyes upon me. My dragoman tells me that he has been explaining our hard trip to Gerasa, that they were skeptical about it, but that he has convinced them ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... poor Mr. Peaslee, and he was hardly reassured by the skeptical smile of Squire Tucker, and his remark that he would believe that Lamoury was hurt when he saw him. The squire had small faith in either Lamoury or Hibbard. He knew ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... as far as he could see to left or right. There were places here and there where he believed that a man could climb to the top with the aid of his hands as well as his feet, but for the horses he was extremely skeptical; and as for a certain big red automobile.... His eyes swung from the brown rampart and rested grievedly upon the impassive face of Luck, who was just then reaching forward to spear another slice of bacon from the ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and that don't come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes—why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation of atoms ever gathered at the exact mathematical centre of Missouri, has more blind faith than a dervish, and more credulity, more superstition, than a cross-eyed smoke beating it past a country graveyard in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... mistake to suppose that when reaction follows collapse, in cases in which alcohol has been given, this result is always due to the alcohol. I have seen so many cases of severe collapse recover without alcohol that I cannot but be skeptical as to its necessity, and even as to its value. I was much struck many years ago by a case of post partum hemorrhage which was so severe that convulsions set in. I should then have given brandy if there had been any to give, but there was none in the house and none to be got. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... no doubt a character," admitted the skeptical Thad, as though he begrudged acknowledging even this much; "but I still believe him to be a fake. Keep right on telling me ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... ignorant at once of the heart of man and of history to preserve the slightest doubt on this point. I add that those who, like me, have had in their hands the documents of our colonial slavery, have become terribly suspicious, and are likely to look with a skeptical eye on these Arcadian descriptions, the worth of which they ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... Billie sat Nicholas, and Reginald was in the back with Elinor. Every laddie had a lassie that morning, and Billie, who was a bit skeptical over Nancy's headache, wondered vaguely if this could have been the reason for her staying at home. But she put the thought away from her at once as being unworthy. Billie sighed and gave herself an impatient little shake. ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... living in the body of a young woman, and she no longer tried to ignore it and behave as if she were a little girl. With that increased independence of body there had come a change in her face; an indifference, something hard and skeptical. Her clothes, too, were different, like the attire of a shopgirl who tries to follow the fashions; a purple suit, a piece of cheap fur, a three-cornered purple hat with a pompon sticking up in front. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... If you are skeptical, let me beseech you to join the children in a Free Kindergarten, and play with them. You will be convinced, not through your head, perhaps, but through your heart. I remember converting such a grim female once! You know Henry James says, "Some women are unmarried by choice, and ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... met my questions and objections remarkably well," went on Mr. Evringham. "I am willing and glad to admit truth where I once was skeptical, and I hope to understand much more. One thing I must say, however, I do object to—it is this worship of Mrs. Eddy. I know you don't call it that, but what does it matter what you call it, when you all give her slavish obedience? I should like to take the truth she has ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... himself indomitably skeptical. But he said, "Ah! That's the precognition you mentioned on Kandar—that the fleet wouldn't be wiped out ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... respect is easy to understand but difficult to describe, since the words which must be used convey such different ideas to different persons. Thus, to say that he had the religious temperament, though he was skeptical as to all the divine and supernatural dogmas of the religions of mankind, will seem to many a self-contradiction, while to others it is entirely intelligible. In his boyhood one gets a flavor of irreverence which was slow in disappearing. When yet a mere child he suggested ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... trouble and recoil, while the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal vis medicatrix which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the Unknowable, it is only with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... existence. He was, in many things, as simple as a child: as credulous, as unsophisticated. Yet the utmost cunning of the wily savage—all the strategy of Indian warfare—was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all, you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable and outrageous fictions, without fear of contradiction or of unbelief. He never questioned the superior ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... them, and who, when he did read, moved book or paper back and forth in front of his spectacles in a droll, owlish, improbable way, instead of letting his eyes travel across the lines of print, was skeptical at first. He suspected Bonbright of being a youth scratching the itch of a sudden and transient enthusiasm. But he became interested. Bonbright compelled his interest, for he was earnest, intense, not enthusiastic, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... that "it can't be." I wouldn't class myself as a "believer," exactly, because I've seen too many UFO reports that first appeared to be unexplainable fall to pieces when they were thoroughly investigated. But every time I begin to get skeptical I think of the other reports, the many reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they're looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... our purpose to show how school instruction can be brought into the direct service of character-building. This is the point upon which most teachers are skeptical. Not much effort has been made of late to put the best moral materials into the school course. In one whole set of school studies, and that the most important (reading, literature, and history), there is opportunity through all the grades ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... about the purity and sanctification of the Temple. He was the author of the ordinance forbidding any one to ascend the Temple mount whose term of uncleanness had not expired, even though he had taken the ritual bath. (29) His implicit trust in God made him a complete contrast to his skeptical father. He turned to God and implored His help when to human reason help seemed an utter impossibility. In the war with the Arameans, an enemy held his sword at Jehoshaphat's very throat, ready to deal ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Peter looked skeptical. "Why should I? I've decided that life is pretty sweet, after all! Why haven't Jen and his gang broken in here? Why is he waiting? Have you ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so very "moral" that they have no working contact with ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... the argument the skeptical friend called the office of the Philharmonic. Mr. Toscanini had been right about the Beethoven Concerto and had correctly remembered the purely ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine that their senses present to different men different images of things this skeptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even that skeptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the agreement ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... like a man. Both Pat and Waring knew that the hobo was wanted in Stacey. They had agreed to say nothing about the tramp's whereabouts just so long as he made himself useful about the ranch. They would give him a chance. But, familiar with his kind, they were mildly skeptical as to Waco's sincerity of purpose. If he took to drinking, or if Buck Hardy heard of his whereabouts, he would have to go. Meanwhile, he earned his keep. He was a good cook, and a good cook, no matter where or where from, is a power ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... outside—Simon Lake, discouraged on every hand, finally decided to build a boat himself, and did build one, with his own hands—a boat fourteen feet long and constructed of rough pine timbers painted with coal-tar—in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. With this boat Lake demonstrated to a skeptical world for all time that he was neither a visionary nor a dreamer, but a practical doer among ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... forgotten that English drainers tell us of tools and their use, whereby drains may be open twenty inches lower than the feet of the workman; but we have never chanced to see that operation, and are skeptical as to the fact that work can thus be performed economically, except in very peculiar soils. That such a crack may be thus opened, is not doubted; but we conceive of no means by which earth, that requires the pick, can be moved to advantage, without the workman ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... way, the expected has happened—though I know now that I didn't really expect it to happen, in spite of my prophecies. You may remember I was always skeptical on the subject of Bertram's settling down to a domestic hearthstone. I insisted 'twould be the turn of a girl's head and the curve of her cheek ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... of interpretation, in which the writer's fancy is substituted for the sober rules of criticism, and the word of God accommodated to his preconceived opinions. The rejection, open or covert, of the divine side, manifests itself in a cold, skeptical criticism, which denies or explains away all that is supernatural in the Bible; which, instead of seeking to discover and unfold that unity of plan and harmony of parts which belong to every work of God, delights rather in exaggerating the supposed inconsistencies ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... few months earlier whether the man who had, as Courthorne had done, cast away his honor and wallowed in the mire, could come forth again and purge himself from the stain, her answer would have been coldly skeptical, but now with the old familiar miracle and what it symbolized before her eyes, the thing looked less improbable. Why this should give her pleasure she did not know, or would not admit that she did, but the fact ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Fraser was closeted with Brandt and Hilliard. He told them his story— or as much of it as he deemed necessary. The prosecuting attorney heard him to an end before he gave a short, skeptical laugh. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... self-scrutiny, but have never had any hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of them, and they rather ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... description was bound to reassure the most skeptical mind, and M. Segmuller breathed again: "Now that I am easy on that score," said he, "I should like some information about another prisoner—a fellow named Chupin, who isn't in the secret cells. I want to know if any visitor ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... I'm going to try!" and Tom, after a further talk with his father, began work in earnest on the big problem. That it was a big one Tom was not disposed to deny, and that it would be a valuable invention even his somewhat skeptical father admitted. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... Prince and the subsequent events were exciting, but it was only when Russia sent that one word "Mobilize" to Serbia that we suspected serious results. Even the summer visitors from the States exhibited signs of excitement, yet they were skeptical of the chances of war; that is, war that would really affect us! My newspaper in Montreal wired for me to come down to do war cartoons and I left my father and ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... this sort of thing," he repeated, "and I mean it. I've tried everything on the face of the earth to find an interest—but one—and Florence Baker represents that one. I hope against hope that I'll find what I'm searching for there, but I am skeptical. I have been disappointed too many times to expect happiness now. This is my last trump, old man, and I'm playing it deliberately and carefully. If it fails, Florence will probably return; but before God, I never will! I have thought it all out. I will leave ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... into the harness again. Then he bade all of his employees a touching farewell, packed his golf clubs, and disappeared in the general direction of Southern California. He was away so long that eventually even the skeptical Mr. Skinner commenced to wonder if, perchance, the age of miracles had not yet passed and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... world as though their young creator knew that God gave him but a day. His whole active life was scarcely more than a decade and a half, and yet in that time, without wealth, friends, or influence, in the face of perhaps the most critical and skeptical and least imaginative civilization of the modern world, he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... interior or a character in one of their novels, to find the plot which embodies them an absurd melodrama! Evanescence is the law of Parisian felicities,—selfishness the background of French politeness,—sociability flourishes in an inverse ratio to attachment; we become skeptical almost in proportion as we are attracted. If we ask the way, we are graciously directed; but if we demand the least sacrifice, we must accept volubility for service. Thus the perpetual flowering in manners, in philosophy, in politics, and in economy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... enlivened by an incident that created much interest among the natives. The Italians were somewhat skeptical as to the abilities of the cowboys to tame wild horses, believing the bronchos in the show were specially trained for their work, and that the horse-breaking was a ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... seen anything clearly. Several of the blacks averred that they too had obtained a good view of the creature but their descriptions of it varied so greatly that Jenssen, who had seen nothing himself, was inclined to be a trifle skeptical. One of the blacks insisted that the thing had been eleven feet tall, with a man's body and the head of an elephant. Another had seen THREE immense Arabs with huge, black beards; but when, after conquering their nervousness, the rear guard advanced upon the enemy's position ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He looked astonished, skeptical, then pained. It was during the days, I think, of my "probation," and into his anxious heart had come the thought, Was I "running well"? But he dismissed the doubt and promised to walk over in ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... be like her you need give nothing—only your stubborn will, your skeptical doubts, and the heart that will never know rest till at the ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... revealing them, for fear that the conspirators would kill him. The lord treasurer communicated the result of his inquiries to the king, and urged the affair upon his attention as one of the utmost possible importance. The king himself, however, was very skeptical on the subject. He laughed at the lord treasurer's earnestness and anxiety. The lord treasurer wished to have a meeting of the council called, that the case might be laid before them, but Charles refused. ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... to call upon the ispravnik or Russian governor, and in course of conversation mentioned the "Anadyrski bol," and related some of the stories which we had heard from Paderin. The ispravnik—skeptical upon all subjects, and especially upon this—said that he had often heard of the disease, and that his wife was a firm believer in it, but that in his opinion it was a humbug, which deserved no other treatment ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... eccentricities first, and for worse afterwards. Thus, probably, it was that she got over the shock of that wedding-drive, and was again the bright, affectionate, trusting and winning woman whom he had described before and was to describe again to his skeptical friend Moore. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... answer, "a treatise of Aristotle concerning which we had a discussion one day? Its subject was the hypnotic power possessed by the eyes of certain reptiles. I laughed the idea to scorn; you maintained that it was possible. Well, I agree with you; and I'd like to have about a dozen of our modern skeptical scientists in this cave with ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... himself a good fellow. Elder Fox had strenuously opposed intimate relationships between the club and former ministers, but he made no attempt to interfere with Mr. McGowan, although he remained skeptical as to the wisdom of such secular tendencies. Sim Hicks, the keeper of the Inn, did not like the minister, and declared he would oust him from the community if it were the last act of ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... history, a very little observation of life, will suffice to prove that no learning, no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors on subjects relating to the invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two of the most skeptical of mankind, turned Catholics from sincere conviction. Johnson, incredulous on all other points, was a ready believer in miracles and apparitions. He would not believe in Ossian; but he was willing to believe in the second sight. He would not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... moderns that we are incredulous when told that he has again exercised his function. That is the reason why the story of a poet's part in leading the Italian people toward their decision is received by Americans with such skeptical humor. And Gabriele d' Annunzio in the role! A poet who is popularly supposed to be decadent, if not degenerate, gossipingly known for his celebrated affair with a famous actress, whose novels and plays, when not denounced for their eroticism, are very much ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... swallowed by mouth could dissolve stones in the bladder seemed a priori unlikely. Yet there was considerable authority that this took place; many persons had reported that this was a fact. Boyle kept an open mind. He might be highly skeptical in regard to the claims for any particular medication, but he did not deny the principle involved. The possibility that some fluid, when swallowed, could have a particular specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through the ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... place at the British Embassy. The two representatives of the Entente, though only too glad to talk the matter over, were more skeptical about the attitude of Bernstorff than Mr. Bryan ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... long after the boy had darted away into the east they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. Afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... by any means the worst man that the world can produce. He was, or fancied himself to be, a skeptic. Like many a young man, wise in his own conceit, he had no very distinct idea of what he was skeptical about, nor to what hights of illogical nonsense his own supposed views, carried out, would lead him; like many another, too, he had studied rhetoric, and logic, and mathematics, and medicine, thoroughly and well; he would have ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... spokesmen of Socialism are, like Kautsky, somewhat skeptical as to the necessity of an alliance between the working class and this section of the middle class, others accept it without qualification. If, then, we consider at once the middle ground taken by the former group of Socialists, and the very positive and friendly attitude ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... shall always remember it—was when I came in from the college one day, still skeptical of change, yet hoping it might ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... which the invalid had never heard expressed before; but still somewhat skeptical, she asked, "Do you feel that ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... measure in a settled country would have been a sensible economic pressure, the Archangel government set a date when not forty-eight but fifty-six roubles might be exchanged for forty new roubles. Then a date for sixty-four, then for seventy-two and then eighty. Thus the skeptical peasant and the suspicious soldier saw his old roubles steadily decline in exchange value for the new roubles. Of course they had always grabbed all the counterfeit stuff and used it in exchange with no compunctions. That ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... queer light in the eye of the Irishman. I observed him narrowly—expectantly. Often I had read of this phenomenal art of improvised ballad-singing, but had always remained a little skeptical in regard to the possibility of such a feat. Even in the notable instances of this gift as displayed by the very clever Theodore Hook, I had always half suspected some prior preparation—some adroit forecasting of the sequence ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... French courage throughout all the centuries of her tormented history; but skeptical remarks have been made in times past of the tenacity of ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne |
