"Speculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he wrung my hand, and said in a husky voice, "You know all about it, my dear boy; you'll do well, and we shall have you back here, hearty and strong, with information successfully to guide Garrard, Janrin and Company in many an important speculation; and, moreover, I hope, to lay the foundation of your own fortune. Good-bye, good-bye; heaven bless ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... people. This is true. Such recognition by no means annihilated the literati, but it illustrates the decisive influence exercised by the Emperor and the court. We have, on the one side, a learned official class, custodians of the best national ideals but inclined to reject emotion and speculation as well as superstition: on the other, two priesthoods, prone to superstition but legitimately strong in so far as they satisfied the emotional and speculative instincts. The literati held persistently, though respectfully, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... admitted to have been the most eminent and important of that interesting group of thinkers whom the overthrow of old institutions in France turned towards social speculation. Vastly superior as he was to men like De Maistre on the one hand, and to men like Saint Simon or Fourier on the other, as well in scientific acquisitions as in mental capacity, still the aim and interest of all his thinking ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... or two, however, we beg to offer. We look upon a good book on agriculture as something more than a lucky speculation for the publisher, or a profitable occupation of his time for the author. It is a gain to the community at large,—a new instrument of national wealth. The first honour or praise in reference to every such instrument, is, no doubt, due to the maker ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Battle of the Nile, even though the mishap of so great an officer as Troubridge left him on the wrong side. St. Vincent, positive as he was, had shrunk from distinguishing by name even Nelson at the battle which had won for himself his title. This naturally suggests the speculation whether the joint presence of St. Vincent and Troubridge at the Admiralty was not the cause of this futility; but nothing ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by the unconscious ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... His reason for that speculation was the dance now being performed in the center of the hall—their fight with the gorp being enacted in a series of bounds and stabbings. He was sure that he could no longer trust his eyes when the claw knife of the victorious dancer-hunter ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... line of reasoning, or speculation, let us say, would lead us beyond the firm basis of human reason; it would escape the grasp of intellect, to which I am compelling this course of instruction to bend, but it would never take us beyond the real limits of the universe; yet, not to extend our investigations, we would ever ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... no punishment equal to a granted prayer." Du Meresq was wrapt in speculation as to whether they had really succeeded in getting a wild turkey for supper, which the Mess President was in maddening ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the condition at which a highly intellectual people may arrive, among whom thought and speculation were restricted by religious prohibitions. Perhaps the chief interest in its study lies in the fact that we may see today the persistence of views about disease similar to those which prevailed in ancient Egypt and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... the hand." Still his brother-authors held similar views on the subject. They, too, disliked the overplus system, while the managers as resolutely favoured it. So that, apart from the consideration that poverty clings to certainty because it cannot afford speculation, and that, to the literary character especially, a present payment of a specified sum is always more precious than possible undefined profits in the future, we may conclude that the overplus system generally told to the advantage of the managers. In the end the labourers ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... tell us all in good time," rejoined the other, "and now instead of wasting speculation on something we are bound not to find out till we do find it out, let's go aft to the wireless room and polish up ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... The press in reality has made every government, in its spirit, almost democratic. Without it the great, the first movements in this Revolution could not, perhaps, have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now for the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be restrained at will. There was no longer any means of arresting a principle in its course. When Louis XVI., under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up two. When he meant to take away half the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... words, the two left the bunk-house. But as they headed for the kitchen Buck's eyes narrowed slightly and he flashed a momentary glance at his companion which was full of curiosity and thoughtful speculation. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... should ever have written a book such as the Phases of Faith; for though it is undeniably clever, yet it is not convincing; and very much of it is very painful reading for those who do not care to wander out of the way in the wilderness of religious speculation and doubt. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the cook she could not find kept her for nearly forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... up her hand, took mine in hers, and pressed it feebly. I could not understand her quick transition from bitter contempt to friendly warmth. Evidently something in my words had startled her and had changed her viewpoint. But I put speculation aside until some more opportune time. The imperative thing for me was to minister to her needs, mentally ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... an eye slowly. "Ah, M'sieur Bang—Bingle, may I not leave the question of sex to the child itself? What could be more beautiful than to present to your notice a perfect example of humanity, without uttering a single word to aid you in your speculation as to the gender, and then to sit calmly back and relish the joy you will reveal when you find that you have guessed correctly the very first time, as the boys would say? That would be the magnificent ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... me no more. I had early learned from Bolingbroke a love for the converse of men, eminent, whether for wisdom or for wit: the graceful badinage, or the keen critique; the sparkling flight of the winged words which circled and rebounded from lip to lip, or the deep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled wonders of man, of Nature, and the world; the light maxim upon manners, or the sage inquiry into the mines of learning, all and each had possessed a link to bind my temper and my tastes to the graces and fascination ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the province of Mazarandan) was the embodied ideal of a Bābī chief such as the primitive period of the faith produced—I mean, that he distinguished himself equally in profound theosophic speculation and in warlike prowess. This combination may seem to us strange, but Mirza Jani assures us that many students who had left cloistered ease for the sake of God and the Bāb developed an unsuspected warlike energy under the pressure of persecution. And so that ardour, which ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... a piece of ground "on speculation?" To build its banking-house on? Could a county lend money if it had a surplus? State the general powers of a corporation. Some of the special powers of ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... "there is not a farmer in the British dominions but would, if he at present had all the rats have deprived him of within the last ten years, this moment declare himself a wealthy man." If the real truth could be found out, it would be a safe speculation to back the statements of the rat-hater against the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... dripping densities of the fog, his face shining like marble with the pervasive moisture, his pistol in his hand, declaring that there was absolutely nothing astir. But indeed there was more than kind consideration in Mrs. Briscoe's look; there was question, speculation, an accession of interest, and he was quick to note an obvious, though indefinable, change in Mrs. Royston's eyes as they rested upon him. She had spent the greater portion of the evening tete-a-tete with her hostess, the men being with the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... after, my thoughts were occupied with a business speculation which all my calculations assured me would be extremely profitable. The plan was to produce on silks, by means of printing, the exquisite designs which are produced at Lyons by the tedious process of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... crisis was at hand, and the truth could not long be concealed. Eudosia was permitted to cloak and get into the carriage unaided by any beau, a thing that had not happened to her since speculation had brought her father into notice. The circumstance, more than any other, attracted her attention; and the carriage no sooner started than the poor girl gave ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... soberest, steadiest bank cashiers I ever knew, who lived plainly and frugally, and was considered by all to be a model man, wrecked the man he was connected with—a small country banker—and is now serving a term in State's prison. The cause was Wall Street speculation. This is more dangerous even ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... something simple. Attachment to Christ was a simple personal reality, illustrated by the tie which binds the bride, as a chaste virgin, to the bridegroom. It was not an ingenuity, nor a subtilty, nor a ceremony. It involved no speculation or argument. Its essence was personal and emotional, and not intellectual. The true analogy of religion, in short, is that of simple affection and trust. Subtilty may, in itself, be good or evil. It may be applied for a religious no ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... Men and Women are the product of diligent speculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very seldom laboured in vain.... The Characters of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper thought, and exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful.... In the women's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... act drove home with great force the stark fact that he was face to face with his business at last. Peter, holding out his hand to say good-bye, was struck to speculation by the look of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... could have been expected. Davie was troubled that he might not go and see him, but he would have been full of question, remark, and speculation! For what he had himself to do in the matter, Donal was but waiting till he should be strong enough ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... many ruffled feelings and Virginians were "once more a happy people." Unfortunately it was a false prosperity. The old economic problems reappeared in 1773. Overproduction of tobacco, overextension of credit by British merchants, speculation in lands and tobacco, and inflated prices caused the tobacco economy to collapse. The crisis first appeared when several leading Glasgow merchants failed. They were unable to pay their own creditors and unable to call in money from Virginia. Several large ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... ability, not to have been the subject of versified prophecies of this sort. One expression by a poet of belief in heredity may, however, detain us. At the beginning of Viola Meynell's career, it is interesting to notice that as a child she was the subject of speculation as to her inheritance of her mother's genius. It was Francis Thompson, of course, who, musing on Alice Meynell's poetry, said to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... was eighteen or so. Kept on writing off and on for almost twenty years. Of course, Robertson's thermo-nuc formula came along in '75, and after that everything went to pot. It knocked out the chances of future war, but it also knocked out the interest in speculation or escape-fiction. So I moved over into television for a while, and stayed with it. But the old science fiction was fun while it lasted. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... independency is incarnated in Emerson. Emerson is the type of the nineteenth-century Puritan, in life pure, in temperament saintly, in spirit detached from the earth, blazing a path for himself through the wilderness of speculation, seeing things from the centre, working for the reconstruction of Christian society and the readjustment of the traditional religion. An enfranchised Puritan is a Puritan still. Of such is Holmes, who shot his flashing arrows at all shams and substitutes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dinner, and two for the purpose of sending up signals to Captain Clinton. As his replies, which were promptly made, came from the same place, Bob became satisfied that the captain was waiting for him. Of course this caused much speculation among the troopers. Had the captain given up the pursuit, or had he overtaken and scattered the thieves and recovered Mr. Wentworth's stock? Bob was inclined to hold ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the discerning Secretary of State, who, having been a friend of the father, offered the son a berth in the diplomatic corps. A consulate in a South American republic, during a revolutionary crisis, where he had shown consummate skill in avoiding political complications (and where, by a shrewd speculation in gold, he had feathered his nest for his declining years), proved that the continual incertitude of a journalistic career is a fine basis for diplomatic work. From South America he had gone ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Sunday church parade, for we all felt that we were a rather vulnerable body in any determined attack that might be made upon us by the German navy. Now and then vessels would be sighted on the horizon and there was always much excitement and speculation as to what they might be. We could see the cruisers making off in the direction of the strangers and taking a survey of the ocean at ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... amounted to when compared with the gain in much- needed habits of method and regularity, and—more valuable than all to an intellect like Coleridge's,—in the constant reminder that human life is finite and the materials of human speculation infinite, and that even a world-embracing mind must apportion its labour to its day? There is, however, the great question of health to be considered— the question, as every one knows, of Coleridge's ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... darker?); the sense of fate driving life on—the fate of a temperament that restlessly longs for new impressions and intense emotions, without the vigor of action that cuts the Gordian knot of fancy and speculation with the swift ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... in assent, and whacked an egg viciously with his spoon. "What's your scheme?" he said. "Is your idea to help the lady for her own sake—sort of a philanthropic snap—or as a speculation? We might make it pay as a speculation. You see nobody knows about her except you and me. We might form her into a sort of stock company and teach her to dance, and secure her engagements and then take our commission out of her salary. Is that what ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... was always thinking of Hope Wayne, and befooling himself with the mask of art, actually hiding himself from himself: and not perceiving that when a man's sole thought by day and night is a certain woman, and an endless speculation about the quality of her feeling for another man, he is simply a lover thinking of ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... period vary from element to element, in a way which is, broadly and on the whole, like the variation of the properties of those in other periods. This fact suggests the supposition—it might be more accurate to say the speculation—that the elements mark the stable points in a process of change, which has not proceeded continuously from a very simple substance to a very complex one, but has repeated itself, with certain variations, again and again. If such a process has occurred, we might reasonably expect to find ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... came a day when the hermit was to have a neighbor, and the town buzzed with excited speculation ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... respecting his correspondence with the British Commissioners, his descendants have managed, so far, with tolerably general success, to thrust into the ranks of the Carrolls and Hancocks, the Putnams and Warrens of the Revolution, a "traitor," who entered into the struggle as a matter of speculation; and who, from the date of his appointment, in 1774, as one of the Committee of Correspondence of Philadelphia, down to the detection of the fact, some years after, that he was engaged in a correspondence with the British ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... Commune, "I have done my best, it seems to me. Thanks to Jourde,[70] who throws Law into the shade, and to Dereure,[71] the shoemaker —Financier and Cobbler of La Fontaine's Fable—I pocket daily the gross value of the sale of tobacco, which is a pretty speculation enough, since I have had to pay neither the cost of the raw materials nor of the manufacture. I have besides this, thanks to what I call the 'regular income from the public departments,' a good number of little revenues which do not cost me much and bring me in a good deal. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the chronic liar growing up in a household where grave sex and other delinquencies are habitual occurrences. Should his lying be compared with these major anti-social transactions? Indeed, it might be a field for speculation as to whether, given certain qualities of mind, imaginative powers, etc., pathological lying may not play the part of a vicarious delinquency—being to the delinquent apparently less pernicious than more objective offenses. In our case ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... find persons willing to join them; a fourth states that respectable persons having not less than L100 are wanted to complete a party; and a fifth, that a "seafaring man is ready to go equal shares in purchasing a schooner to sail on speculation." What number may be found to answer those appeals it is impossible to conjecture. Common sense would say not one, but experience of what has been practised over and over again reminds us that the active parties on the present occasion are not calculating too largely ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... "how much they are worth until they are cut, for there may be flaws in them that cannot be detected. Now, if I were to buy them like this, I could not give more than a hundred rupees each. If they are all flawless, they would be worth much more; but it would be a pure speculation, and I will not ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... calamities. Oftener, now, are the well-combed whiskers and moustaches of Skye Dog to be recognized, dropping over the drawing-room window-sill, or framed, like a portrait by Landseer, in the panelled sash of the barouche, out of which he gazes pensively with the impressive speculation of the true flneur;—yea, for as men of fashion are, so are their dogs; and so also of the fighting butcher, who ever has his counterpart in the fighting bull-dog that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the first instance, from confused to unconfused sensation; with a sort of prophetic seriousness, a great claim and assumption, such as we may understand, if we anticipate in this preliminary scepticism the ulterior scope of his speculation, according to which the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one true being—that constant subject of all early ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... them. Some of his party associates were more outspoken, and the opinion was advanced over the Tuscarora House bar that, the loss to literature aside, the young man's taking-off could not but simplify the political situation. The Hon. Seneca Bowers, being of the old school, quaintly declined both speculation and discussion. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... devoted to the study of spiritualism for thirty years," he exclaimed; "but I have never been present at so wonderful a seance as this. I grow dizzy when I think of the field of speculation which it opens up. The spirits of our past selves—? And yet why not, why not? Like all great discoveries it seems most simple when once brought to light. It accounts, no doubt, for the throng of unknown spirits of which mediums are so often conscious, and for the ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... "Ah, by Jove! many and many's the fine gal I've done my best to attract the notice of, while I was serving her in the shop—that is, when I've seen her get out of a carriage! There has been luck to many a chap like me, in the same line of speculation: look at Tom Tarnish—how did he get Miss Twang, the rich pianoforte-maker's daughter?—and now he's cut the shop, and lives at Hackney, like a regular gentleman! Ah! that was a stroke! But somehow it hasn't answered with me yet; the gals don't take! How I have set my ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... letter of thanks to the promoters of the new speculation, and have declined their offer! This decision has restored my peace of mind. I stopped singing, like the cobbler, as long as I entertained the hope of riches: it is gone, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... This, like many similar embarrassments, has been occasioned by the error of ascribing to the mental condition of an unformed society a faculty which pre-eminently belongs to an advanced stage of intellectual development, the faculty of distinguishing in speculation ideas which are blended in practice. We have indications not to be mistaken of a state of social affairs in which Conveyances and Contracts were practically confounded; nor did the discrepance of the conceptions become perceptible till men had begun to adopt ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... an end to speculation, the hard facts were these: we had the Wadi, the Turks still had Gaza—and intended to keep it. Inside of a fortnight, moreover, they had concentrated six divisions for that purpose. Also, they fortified an important ridge, east of Gaza, from ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... parties. It has been shown that other Indians, not yet encountered, were in the vicinity, and it was not absolutely certain that they were not the criminals. The thought, however, opened the illimitable fields of speculation, and the hunter was wise in determining to hold to his original belief until assured it ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... your letter as usual, I sat down to write to you on speculation yesterday, but lapsed in my uncertainty into Dombey, and worked at it all day. It was, as it has been since last Tuesday morning, incessantly raining regular mountain rain. After dinner, at a little after seven o'clock, I was walking ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Speculation had not turned out as profitable as those who had come to practice it had expected. Outside of the anxiety of Jerry Boyle and others to get possession of the apparently worthless piece of land upon which Dr. Slavens had filed, there were no offers for the relinquishment of homesteads. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... been in great straits in Paris, when Sabine had heard of her through one of her many American acquaintances. Stupid speculation by an over-confident, silly French husband just before his death in Nevada had been the reason. Madame Imogen had the kindest heart and the hardest common sense, and did credit to a distant Scotch descent. She adored Sabine, as indeed she had reason to do, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Osman Digna had been successfully carried out a few miles north and south of Berber. At the moment General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... non-intervention. My present purpose in this chapter is a critical one; it is not to solve problems but to set out various currents of thought that are flowing through the general mind. Which current is likely to seize upon and carry human affairs with it, is not for our present speculation. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... It follows, then, that if children gather their sensations, images, concepts, ideas, and thoughts, directly from the phenomena of that universe, they will acquire a kind of knowledge, so real, so superior, that it will stand the test of an eternity. It is actual knowledge! There is no theory, no speculation, no guesswork ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... self-interest, however enlightened, which brings a dividend to stockholders, is opposed to the high impartiality and absence of individualism which should characterize a true Government. Individuals and corporations may trade and grow rich,—Government may not; they may embark in constant speculation, while it cannot; they must either insensibly measure their dealings by consequences, as affecting gain, or be suspected of doing so, while the interest of Government is not individual, but collective; its duty being, to give facility to the acquirer, security ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... expansion of population and the development of agricultural interests, and hence they have been invariably restricted to settlers. Actual residence and cultivation are made indispensable conditions; and, to guard the privilege from abuses of speculation or monopoly, the law is rigid as to the mode of establishing claims by adequate testimony, with penalties for perjury. Mining, trading, or any pursuit other than culture of the soil is interdicted, mineral lands being expressly excluded from preemption privileges, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... to be made hideous with Salvation Army howls? On all sides of me were great girls and little girls, matrons and maids, in Salvation Army straws. I turned sick and faint with dismay. In the city of S. Mamertius, of S. Avitus and of Ado—"General" Booth's great Religious Speculation! It was not so, however, I was rejoiced to find, only all the women had been buying straws in the fair of the Salvation Army shape that were selling cheap, and having bought them ran home, trimmed them, and then out they popped again ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... only killed three fish in all that time. Got jammed up here in the ice all last winter. I stayed in hopes of doin' something in the sealing line, and only got some three hundred skins after all. It's been a bad speculation for me. An old friend of mine came this way the year before last, and, the season being an open one and not much ice about, he reached as far north as Baffin's Bay and through Jones' Sound, fillin' his ship with oil and bone in a single season. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... had first reigned in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, after King Louis Philippe had granted him the title of Baron—remained one of the recognized heroes of modern finance by reason of the scandalous profits which he had made in every famous thieving speculation of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, such as mines, railroads, and the Suez Canal. And he, the present Baron, Henri by name, and born in 1836, had only seriously gone into business on Baron Gregoire's death soon after the Franco-German ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, Dr. Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart aldermen vanished, his sheriffs, alas! and alas! in gaol! Another design shows that Rigdum, if a true, is also a moral and instructive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or rather in a vision; the cunning demon, Speculation, blowing a thousand bright bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, a knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has coiled safe round his feet, and will in a trice ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the too optimistic Owenson unfortunately took it into his head that it would be an excellent speculation to build a summer theatre at Kilkenny. Lord Ormond, who took an interest in the project, gave a piece of land opposite the castle gates, money was borrowed, the theatre quickly built, and performers brought at great expense from Dublin. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Peggy's house, and wondered if the old woman was better off in another world than she was in this; but she checked the forbidden speculation. And next she thought of Jupiter, and with this recollection came another remembrance of Bacchus and his antipathy both to the mistress and her cat. All at once she recalled Bacchus's determination to kill Jupiter, and the strange ferocity the animal evinced whenever Bacchus went near ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... We neither serve, attempting to serve both, I could not doubt a moment which to choose, And which in common reason to refuse. Invented oft for purposes of art, Born of the head, though father'd on the heart, This grand love of the world must be confess'd A barren speculation at the best. 270 Not one man in a thousand, should he live Beyond the usual term of life, could give, So rare occasion comes, and to so few, Proof whether his regards are feign'd, or true. The love we bear our country is a root Which never fails to bring forth golden fruit; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the men of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed philosopher who, no doubt, has given it very much countenance, by seeming to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... could still draw from him the tribute of a sigh that rose from the depths of his being. All they had thought, first and last, rolled over him; the past seemed to have been reduced to mere barren speculation. This in fact was what the place had just struck him as so full of—the simplification of everything but the state of suspense. That remained only by seeming to hang in the void surrounding it. Even his original fear, if fear it as had been, had lost itself in the desert. "I judge, however," he ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... come back from speculation to the facts of popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff in his hand. His business is to ask if the children have been "good," ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of New Guinea above alluded to, which had often afforded us the materials of interesting speculation, also formed part of the survey of Captain Blackwood, who writes as follows: "On the coast of New Guinea we found a delta of fine rivers, and a numerous population, all indicating a rich and fruitful country. It is true that we found the inhabitants very hostile; but it must be considered ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... every verse must be something of a pause; and it is but seldom that a sentence begins in the middle. Though this seems to be the advantage of blank verse over rhime, yet we cannot entirely condemn the use of it, even in a heroic poem; nor absolutely reject that in speculation, which. Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope have enobled by their practice. We acknowledge too, that in some particular views, what way of writing has the advantage over this. You may pick out mere lines, which, singly considered, look mean and low, from a poem in blank verse, than from ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... ornaments of elegant form, and wrought in the purest gold, were tastefully arranged over the mantel-piece; some, from their form, indicating their use, and others only affording matter of ingenious speculation to the antiquary, but all bearing evidence of early civilisation. The frontlet of gold indicated noble estate, and the long and tapering bodkin of the same metal, with its richly enchased knob or pendent crescent, implied the robe it once fastened could ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the courts of law in England from the first drew a distinction between a wager and a contract founded on the principle of indemnity, which principle runs through and underlies the whole subject of insurance. Lord Mansfield denominated insurance "a contract upon speculation," and it has universally been considered as a contract of indemnity against loss or damage arising from some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... purpose in the succession of events] Chance. 2 — N. chance &c. 156; lot, fate &c. (necessity) 601; luck; good luck &c. (good) 618; mascot. speculation, venture, stake, game of chance; mere shot, random shot; blind bargain, leap in the dark; pig in a poke &c. (uncertainty) 475; fluke, potluck; faro bank; flyer*; limit. uncertainty; uncertainty principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... understanding to pay your imperial lackeys the sum of three bits? Is it not enough that your soldiers and retainers should hawk old clothes through the markets of the Riadi for a decent living, without making a small speculation out of the beds and wash-stands in which your noble fathers slept and (possibly) ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... whether an Enfield had it. The rebels were getting good arms from England. It might be that some man over there had a Whitworth telescope rifle; if so he had detected us perhaps—a telescope would enable him to do it. I said nothing of this speculation, but watched. Rebel bullets continued to fly over. I saw a man as low as his waist and fired; almost at the same moment my sand-bag was struck—the second one on my right, which protected that flank, and which the bullet, coming from the ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... accomplished young lady. But alas! she had been qualified for a station which fate seemed determined not to let her occupy; for just at this important period of her life, her father became involved in an unfortunate speculation, that ended in ruin, dishonor, and his own bodily confinement in prison for debts he could never discharge. Naturally high spirited and proud, this misfortune and persecution proved too much for his philosophy—and what was more, his reason—and in a state of mental ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... France is a rich country; and its riches are much more evenly divided than is the case in Great Britain, Germany, or the United States. There are fewer large fortunes, and fewer cases of poverty. The average Frenchman is a small, but extremely thrifty proprietor, who abhors speculation and is always managing to add something to his accumulations; and the French economic system is adapted to this peculiar distribution of wealth. The scarcity in France of iron and coal has checked the tendency to industrial organization on a huge scale. The strength of the French industrial ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... chickens etceatera, etcaeterorum. To come to the point: Papa and aunt talk, by fits and starts, of our—id est, Emily, Anne, and myself—commencing a school! I have often, you know, said how much I wished such a thing; but I never could conceive where the capital was to come from for making such a speculation. I was well aware, indeed, that aunt had money, but I always considered that she was the last person who would offer a loan for the purpose in question. A loan, however, she has offered, or rather intimates that she perhaps will offer in case pupils can be secured, an eligible situation obtained, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... their better crop, but unavoidable in the circumstances. With all this, the difficulty in the way of exportation so cheapened articles in the United States as to maintain a considerable disproportion in prices there and abroad, which kept alive the spirit of speculation, and maintained the opportunity of large profits,[251] at the same time that it distressed the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Europe inform us of M. Necker's resignation and removal, which occasions much speculation, as to the causes which produced this event. I should be glad to hear from ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... immethodical disputants of any that has fallen under my observation."—Spect., No. 476. "When you have once got him to think himself made amends for his suffering, by the praise is given him for his courage."—Locke, on Ed. Sec.115. "In all matters where simple reason, and mere speculation is concerned."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 136. "And therefore he should be spared the trouble of attending to any thing else, but his meaning."—Ib., p. 105. "It is this kind of phraseology which is distinguished by the epithet idiomatical, and hath been originally the spawn, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... with the Brezacs; he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the ocean of commerce,—his intense business interest keeping him in the still, though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on the green table of speculation. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... said:—"Had I a man of clearly developed character (clear, sincere within its limits), of insight, courage, and real applicable force of head and of heart, to search for; and not a man of luxuriously distorted character, with haughtiness for courage, and for insight and applicable force, speculation and plausible show of force,—it were rather among the lower than among the higher classes that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and Biot. This is a moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in question; and I could not help thinking that the subject admitted room for doubt and great latitude for speculation. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the war there was much speculation as to the response the Lion's cubs would make to the call for help. Britain, herself, never doubted that her children, now fully grown and very strong, would rally to the old flag as in the earlier days of their greater dependency. But Britain, England, is of the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... has been done and much speculation has been indulged regarding the tap root. One writer disposes of the whole subject ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology, now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... advice well; and, was it forced upon him, nine times out of ten a certain inborn contrariness drove him to do just the opposite. Besides, he had not yet learned to look with lenience on the rage for speculation that had seized the people of Ballarat; and he held that it would be culpable for a man of his slender means to risk money in the great game.—But was there any hint of risk in the present instance? To judge from Ocock's manner, the investment ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and accepted my offer for a bear speculation. We agreed that from time to time we should communicate with each other in cipher. Telegrams were to be forwarded ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there was some appearance of a scarcity in England; and many farmers set an unusual quantity of potatoes, in hopes that they would bear a high price the ensuing season. Goodenough, who feared and hated every thing that was called a speculation, declared that, for his part, he would not set a drill more than he used to do. What had always done for him and his should do for him still. With this resolution, he began to set his potatoes: Marvel said to him, whilst he was at work, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of this great author have provoked such diversity of criticism as "Zanoni." To some, this book represents a temporary aberration of genius without definite purpose. To others it represents surpassing, bold and original speculation, profound analysis of character and thrilling interest; but to the one who knows, every character in this book is recognized by a familiar sign and symbol which, though hidden, is nevertheless patent to ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... golden pieces streamed from her lovely surprised mouth, and her lifted hands. And her eyes—I could have sworn—were the living eyes of Jack Harkaway! Had she a brother, I wondered. Yet my mind was too dazzled and confused with her nearness to pursue the speculation. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... were both sold; the wife one day and he the next. She brought eleven hundred and twenty-five dollars, and he eight hundred and thirty-five dollars; thus they were sold and resold as a matter of speculation, and husband and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... gave himself up for two months of the year to the summer people. If his association with them was a business rather than a social affair, it was, none the less, interesting. The occupation of Nantucket by "off-islanders" was a matter of infinite speculation and amusement. Into the serenity of his life came restless men and women who golfed and swam and rode and danced, who chafed when it rained, and complained of the fog, who seemed endlessly trying to get something out of life and who were endlessly bored, who wondered how Tristram could stand ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... for the true Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and practised by the people called in scorn Quakers," and his "Treatise on Christian Discipline." The purchase of these lands was not made in the interest of either religion or liberty, but as a speculation. Barclay governed the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Tea Trade of the East India Company.—In 1668, the East India Company ordered "one hundred pounds weight of goode tey" to be sent home on speculation. A taste for the Chinese herb was created and carefully fostered; the invoice was increased from year to year, until it now amounts to 30,000,000 pounds weight (notwithstanding the excessive duty of 100 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... early history of Georgia have been under the impression that the speculation known as the Yazoo Fraud had its beginning in the efforts of General Elijah Clarke and his followers to settle on the Indian reservation lying west of the Oconee River; but this is not the case ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... insurance company who was visiting him one afternoon, and thought he would improve the occasion by pointing out that, after all, crime was a bad speculation, he replied: 'Sir, you City men enter on your speculations, and take the chances of them. Some of your speculations succeed, some fail. Mine happen to have failed, yours happen to have succeeded. That is the only difference, sir, between my visitor and me. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... in my mind, I crossed to England, and forgot criticism and speculation in the gleam of the white cliffs, in the trim hedgerows and fields, in the sound of English voices and the sight of English faces. In London it was the same. The bright-cheeked messenger boys, the discreetly swaggering chauffeurs, the quiet, competent young ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the beasts were unloaded, the Gurgis or wigwams pitched, and all was prepared for repose. A caravan so extensive being an unusual event,—small parties carrying only grain come in once or twice a week,—the citizens abandoned even their favourite game of ball, with an eye to speculation. We stood at "Government House," over the Ashurbara Gate, to see the Bedouins, and we quizzed (as Town men might denounce a tie or scoff at a boot) the huge round shields and the uncouth spears of these provincials. Presently they entered the streets, where we witnessed their ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Kunkel and a derisive smile always curved her lips as she attempted to picture her in a worldly setting and the smile grew when she tried to imagine Symes's sensations while presenting her to his friends. She indulged, too, in speculation as to the outcome of the marriage, but could not venture a prophecy since it was one of those affairs to which no ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... and plants sprang from the earth by means of germs carried in the atmosphere which gave fecundity to the earth. Aristotle held opinions not very unlike those of our own day. All of which goes to show that speculation about the origin of the universe and the why and wherefore of living things did not come into existence with the Darwinian hypothesis and that the doctrine of descent with modification as an explanation of all biological phenomena ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... me is too a reaping. Your shadow to my living purpose leaps, And that is wonderful. But as you spoke Some David hidden from the man that slew Goliath listened also, and is now With us for ever. And he that wrought this life Is you, Jonathan of doubts and speculation, The man who sits there plainly now, the mere Jonathan when the shadow is forgotten. Now do I know my purpose magnified, Sure as of old, but learning in its flight, Of pity and the sad heart of man from you, And how the jealous and unmerciful, Being stricken down, are but poor sorrows too. ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... from this radical change in the basis of citizenship were numerous and weighty. Nor were those consequences left subject to construction or speculation. They were incorporated in the same section of the Amendment. The abuses which were formerly heaped on the citizens of one State by the legislative and judicial authority of another State were rendered ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... interposed less than no check at all to the speculators. Hundreds of thousands of acres were bought each year. The revenue of the Provincial Council rose to half a million; the country road-boards hardly knew how to spend their money. Speculation, extravagance, reaction—such were the fruits the last years of Wakefield's system bore there. Not that the fault was Gibbon Wakefield's. It rests with the men who could not see that his system, like every other devised for a special purpose, wanted to be gradually changed along with ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... who could talk all about matters and things with grown-up persons could talk so sensibly about marbles, and hoops, and skates, and all sorts of little-boy matters; and I will say, by the by, that the same sort of speculation has often occurred to the minds of older people in connection with her. She knew the value of varied information in making a woman, not a pedant, but a sympathetic, companionable being; and such she was to almost every ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... speakes of many of his countrymen so cured without all other physick. No man, saith Lipsius, in an epistle to Phil. Lanoius, a noble friend of his, now ready to make a voyage, can be such a stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities, towns, rivers, will not affect. For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kinde of prisoner, and pity his case, that ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... instances not a few; but even that may not be without its side of charm, at least amongst the younger votaries. Some few eventually returned "Home," mostly those who had been shipwrecked in the troubled sea of early-time speculation. But most of them have remained to take their various and full part in colonial society, not a few taking the very highest positions. Thus we had the Stawells and Barrys, the Leslie Fosters, Sladens, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... did not know where he was. We were both entertained by the incident, I that my father had been "lost in his own timber" so that various cords of wood must have escaped his practiced eye, and he on his side that he should have become so absorbed in this maze of youthful speculation. We were in high spirits as we emerged from the tender green of the spring woods into the clear light of day, and as we came back into the main road ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... to have a good time, there is far more reason to suppose that one who comes of a family which has made a specialty of this pursuit for several hundred years is better endowed by Nature for that purpose than one who has made a million dollars out of a patent medicine or a lucky speculation in industrial securities. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the guard that afternoon he had grown weary of his own company and of fruitless speculation and was pacing up and down. The second guard proved even less communicative than the first, up to the point when, to lessen his ennui, King began to whistle. Because a Secret Service man must be consistent, the tune was not English, but a weird minor one to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... disgorge their wealth as freely as Calvinists. The rich were made to contribute all their abundance, and the poor what could be wrung from their poverty. Neither paupers nor criminals were safe. Captain Caspar Ortis made a brilliant speculation by taking possession of the Stein, or city prison, whence he ransomed all the inmates who could find means to pay for their liberty. Robbers, murderers, even Anabaptists, were thus again let loose. Rarely has so small a band obtained in three days' robbery so large an amount of wealth. Four or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... father walked with him again, calm, serene, and elevated, his thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging the fields of lofty speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and poets, holding up to his gaze again lofty ideals; practising, without a thought of reward, the very gospel of universal ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... dens, and licensed ones too. Shocking as it may appear, these houses are regularly licensed by the Government; and medical men visit them once every week for sanitary purposes. The defilement of the marriage-bed is little or nothing thought of. Marriage here is generally a money speculation, and is very frequently brought about through means of regular brokers or agents, who receive a per centage on the bride's dowry. A woman without a pretty good dowry has very little chance of a husband, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... of one's favourite is idle. So I lately took a really effective way of proving the surprising fertility of the work and of its power of engendering speculation and illustration. I set about collecting all that has been done, written, and drawn on the subject during these sixty years past, together with all those lighter manifestations of popularity which surely indicate "the form and pressure" of its influence. The ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... had fettered and frozen the intellect of man. An all-invading spirit of inquiry, analysis, skepticism, became rife. An unappeasable hunger for facts, facts, facts, took possession of the general intellect. It was felt that abstraction was disease, was death,—that speculation had to be vitalized and enriched from experience and experiment. This tendency was inevitable and sublime, no doubt. But it remains for modern times to emulate Nature and carry on analysis and synthesis at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... school sufficiently large to enable me to meet the rent, and also to support myself and children. The small sum left them by their father I determined to invest for their future use. I unwisely intrusted it to one who betrayed the trust, and appropriated the money to some wild speculation of his own. He says that he did this in the hope of increasing my little property. It may be so, but my consent should have been asked. He failed and there is little hope of our ever recovering more, than ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... and poured forth in the lava of a heated imagination. At such moments, the change in the whole man was wonderful. His meager form would acquire a dignity and grace; his long, pale visage would flash with a hectic glow; his eyes would beam with intense speculation; and there would be pathetic tones and deep modulations in his voice, that delighted the ear, and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Much speculation was on foot in political and journalistic circles as to the author of the articles signed "Justus." ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the creation of the world, the deluge and the re-peopling of the earth, is a singular mixture of truth and fiction. If anterior in its origin, to the arrival of the whites on this continent, it presents matter of curious speculation. The following account of it, entitled the Cosmogony of the Saukee and Musquakee Indians, is taken from Doctor Galland's Chronicles of the ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... is doubtful. General Conway has been ill since Friday; this morning St. Anthony's fire broke out in his legs. Mr. Townshend will move the Commons to adjourn. The whole political system is now in such confusion, that speculation ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... first ship from Earth made a landing on Venus, there was much speculation about what might be found beneath the cloud layers obscuring that planet's surface from the ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... of it all, Mr. Charles R. Sterling, stood before an open grate fire smoking a cigar. He had made his money in grain speculation and railroad ventures, and was reputed to be worth something over two millions. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Winslow of Raymond. She had been an invalid for several years. The two girls, Rose and Felicia, were the only children. Rose was twenty-one years old, fair, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon |
