"Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time, except for dust combined with heat or cold, the physical condition of a journey may be comparatively easy. Ease of mind, however, can only be attained by the philosopher who, putting away all thought of unseemly haste, shares the Easterner's pleasures of observation, contemplation, and ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... buried himself in an obscure Cornish village, where he gave himself up to his work. He was not quite so successful as he had been; on the other hand, he cared less than ever about success. It was the end of the century, a century that had been forced by the contemplation of such realities as plague and famine, and war and rumors of war, to forego and forget the melancholy art of its decadence. And from other causes Durant had fallen into a state of extreme dissatisfaction ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... in weariness of body and spirit, he stumbled a few feet aside from the road, and, sinking down upon a convenient rock, gave himself again to the contemplation of that scene which lay before him. And there was that in his movement now that seemed to tell of one who, in the grip of some bitter and disappointing experience, was yet being forced by something deep in his being to reach out in the strength of his manhood to take that which ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... reading people. This conclusion is nothing less than the elimination of the idea of design in nature. This phenomenon demands our attention. Heretofore, the proof of plan, design, and end in nature, at large and in detail, was looked upon as the most beautiful blossom and fruit of a thoughtful contemplation of nature; it was the great and beautiful common property, in the enjoyment of which the direct, the scientific, and the religious contemplation of nature peacefully participated. Now this view ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... absorbed in contemplation, and did not really awake till I found myself in a ravine between two lofty mountains. Stepping forward I reached a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, and in the distance a fine church, attached to a pile of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts and depressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments of exaltation were sensual—of the flesh, and born of the girl's presence—while his depression came from his sane contemplation of the fate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over with Mrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She frankly advised him to break the engagement and to go ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... shore and the boat safely moored, Sam Twitty began to jump about like a collie dog in charge of a flock of sheep. He had said little in the boat, but his mind had been busily at work with the contemplation of great possibilities. There was much to be done, and but little time to do it in, but Sam's soul warmed up to its work. Casting a rapid glance around, he singled out Captain Abner, and, dashing into ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... looked at the scene, they forgot for the moment their own happiness in the contemplation of ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... monks and brethren (whose blood, it is feared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will require at your hand) have relaxed the measure and form of religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation, and all regular observances; hospitality, alms, and those other offices of piety which of old time were exercised and ministered therein have decreased, and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect and deed, do daily decrease more and more, and cease to be regarded—the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... in contemplation the whole winter the movement by land to a point below Vicksburg from which to operate, subject only to the possible but not expected success of some one of the expedients resorted to for the purpose of giving us a different base. This could not be undertaken until the waters receded. I did ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... gloss put on an old heathen rite; it would hardly occur to the simple mind of an English bumpkin, who, though he may be stupid, is not naturally cruel and does not conceive of a divinity who takes delight in the contemplation of suffering. To his thinking God has little or nothing to do with the murrain, but witches, ill-wishers, and fairies have a great deal to do with it. The English farmer who burned one of his lambs alive said that he did it "to save his flocks from spells which had been cast on them"; and the Scotch ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... landscapes which create A fund for contemplation.—to admire Is a brief feeling of a trivial date; But something worthier do such scenes inspire: Here to be lonely is not desolate. For much I view which I could most desire, And, above all, a lake I can behold Lovelier, not dearer, than our own ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... took a new turn, and the fun grew fast and furious around Hunt, who sat puffing his pipe, absorbed in contemplation. At about half-past nine, when things were getting hilarious, he beat a retreat, followed by the reproaches of the fellows. He was determined to administer the first dose of Potts's painless cure to his interesting patient that very evening, if she had not already retired. He was in high ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... The quiet contemplation of the old buildings in such towns as Pont Audemer, Lisieux, and Bayeux, must, we should think, convince the most enthusiastic admirers of the archaic school, that the mere isolated reproduction of these houses in the midst of modern streets (such as we are accustomed ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... off the subject of Madame Gilbert, and directed his mind towards the contemplation of his own exploits. When handled judiciously he will talk freely and frankly, giving away official secrets with both hands. But his confidences always relate to the past, to incidents completed. When ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... his hands were sore, but he forgot everything in the contemplation of the magnificent fish he had captured. For as it lay there now, feebly opening and closing its gills, it was wonderfully like an ordinary gold-fish of enormous size, the orange-and-gold scale armour in which it was clad being ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... of Abernethy, his biographer, Dr. Macilwain, refers to experiments upon living animals, "WHICH ARE SO REVOLTING FROM THEIR CRUELTY, that the mind recoils from the contemplation of them." This, too, is a noteworthy utterance, coming from one who was a distinguished London surgeon and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In a subsequent work entitled "Remarks on Vivisection," published some seventeen years before the date ascribed by Professor Bowditch ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... who appears first reading Hervey's "Meditations," and throws away the book as soon as he is out of sight of the company. But when Andrew is found by Frank "perched up like a statue by a range of beehives in an attitude of devout contemplation, with one eye watching the motions of the little irritable citizens, and the other fixed on a book of devotion," you will please observe, suspicious reader, that the devout gardener has no expectation whatever of Frank's approach, nor has ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... open, and that there was a female figure leaning out. He knew that it could be no other than his Amine, and, after he crossed the little bridge, he proceeded to the window, instead of going to the door. Amine (for it was she who stood at the window) was so absorbed in contemplation of the heavens above her, and so deep in communion with her own thoughts, that she neither saw nor heard the approach of her husband. Philip perceived her abstraction, and paused when within four or five yards of her. He wished to gain the door without being ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... extraordinary attraction toward the window. She did her best to look the other way, but she was often unconsciously impelled to glance up at the lattice. Once she fancied she saw the curtain move. Determined to verify her impression, she suddenly raised her eyes, after a prolonged contemplation of the pavement, and caught a momentary sight of a girl's face, which as instantly disappeared, but not before Jasmine had been able to recognise that it was one ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... black teeth, which a nervous trembling of the jaws made to chatter. But soon he crossed his arms upon his heaving breast, bowed his forehead, and murmured some mysterious words, which sounded like an invocation or a prayer. Immediately after, he returned to the contemplation of the dead body. The hyena and the tiger-cat, who, before devouring, crouch beside the prey that they have surprised or hunted down, have not a wilder or more sanguinary look ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... three objects in contemplation: an invasion of Germany, another of Italy, and the subjugation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... themselves compelled to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are not troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws, that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be written down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that order the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the absolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... of Epicurus, wholly unused to such subtle ideas as the passage of divine influence into the mind by means of religious contemplation, this lame attempt to bring apathetic gods into relation with human life must have been quite meaningless. Cicero well expresses the common sense of a Roman at the very beginning of his treatise on the Nature of the Gods.[764] "If they are right who deny that the gods have any interest in human ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... movement the better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story of Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the contemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are upraised to the disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not extravagant to affirm that when act or thought ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... matters in the city, William?" he said, removing his hand from his brow, where it had rested in contemplation for ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... effect of the dose upon me was to induce a rather morbid contemplation. I recalled the happy times when I was once, even as you are, a barrister who rose at 8.30 A.M. (an incredibly late hour), did next to nothing all day and, when I wanted to go away, just went. I used in those gentle days to take off my hat to ladies (a long-forgotten habit), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... solutions to be impossible, he might have given forcible expression to the corresponding emotions. He might have uttered the melancholy resignation and the confident hope incited in different minds by a contemplation of the mysterious world. He might again conceivably have written an interesting work, though it would hardly have been a poem—if he had versified the arguments by which a coherent theory might be supported. Unluckily, he was ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... of the giraffe, measuring upwards of eighteen feet in height. I stood for nearly half an hour engrossed in the contemplation of his extreme beauty and gigantic proportions; and if there had been no elephants, I could have exclaimed, like Duke Alexander of Gordon, when he killed the famous old stag with seventeen tine, "Now I can die happy." But I ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... dreams. Thoughts of heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have been ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... moment when, thinking his wife asleep, Jules kissed her softly on the forehead; then after long contemplation of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Youth's hitherto vacant features, at thus encountering a strong-looking man, in the prime of life, who had never been to sea, and a healthy, sturdy boy, whose parents did not mean that he ever should! He had no more to say; every faculty was, for at least an hour, devoted to the contemplation of these lusus naturae, thus presented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the perfect calm and caution with which he was conducting an affair involving millions of money, a possible indictment for high treason, and the key-note of the Afghan question, while I knew that his whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of a beautiful picture ever before him, sleeping or waking. Whatever I might think of his bargaining for the possession of Shere Ali, he had a great, even untiring, intellect. He had the elements of a leader of men, and I fondly hoped he might ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the studio he found Madame d'Aragona absorbed in the contemplation of a piece of old tapestry which hung opposite to her, while Gouache was drawing in a tiny Hercules, high up in the right hand corner of the picture, as he had proposed. The conversation seemed to have languished, and Orsino was immediately conscious that the atmosphere had changed since ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... gather about the camp-fire, and then the doings of the gods are recounted in many a mythic tale. I have heard the venerable and impassioned orator on the camp-meeting stand rehearse the story of the crucifixion, and have seen the thousands gathered there weep in contemplation of the story of divine suffering, and heard their shouts roll down the forest aisles as they gave vent to their joy at the contemplation of redemption. But the scene was not a whit more dramatic than another I have witnessed in an evergreen ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... I can only tell of a new and shining world above us, but not relate the riches and glories of the place. 'Tis therefore that I have already waved the subject of your greatness, to resign myself to the contemplation of what is more peculiarly yours. Greatness is indeed communicated to some few of both sexes; but beauty is confined to a more narrow compass: 'tis only in your sex, 'tis not shared by many, and its supreme perfection ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the truth. The prospect of going down to Deadborough served, of course, to revive the painful memory of our humiliating defeat. Looked at in the perspective of time, our enterprise stood out in all its essential folly. But I have frequently found that the contemplation of a past mistake has a strange tendency to cause its repetition; and it was so in this case. For it suddenly occurred to me that this "harvest home" might give us an opportunity for a flank attack on the soul of Snarley Bob, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... and amusing sights that met our gaze in that singular forest; insomuch that on several occasions I neglected my peculiar duty of watching Jack, and was only made aware of my carelessness by hearing him shout, "Hallo! Bob, look alive!—I'm over!" when I would suddenly drop my eyes from the contemplation of the plumage of a parrot or the antics of a monkey, to behold my friend leaning over at an angle of "forty-five." To leap forward and catch him in my arms was the work of an instant. On each of these occasions, after setting him upright, I ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices. The sages of Greece and Rome, who had elevated their minds to the contemplation of the existence and attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this philosophical devotion. They were far from admitting the prejudices of mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... beautiful, everything mysterious. She was like one who had gone to sleep on the sea, with only the unattainable horizon round about, and awakened in harbour in a strange land that was warm and lovely and full of sunshine. She closed her eyes again, so that nothing might disturb the contemplation of the mystery. She folded her round arms as a pillow behind her head, her limbs dropped back of their own weight, and her mouth broke into a happy smile. Oh, miracle of miracles! The whole ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... "Thou art my master and my author. It is from thee I learnt the beautiful style that has done me so much honour," with its reiteration of the rhythmic syllables of "honour," opens up a salutary field of aesthetic contemplation. His quotations, too, from the Psalms, and from the Roman Liturgy, become, by their imaginative inclusion, part of his own creative genius. That "Vexilla regis prodeunt Inferni!" Who can hear it without the same thrill, as when Napoleonic ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... did Florence speak of her early years—of her self-formed and solitary mind—of her youthful dreams and reveries. Nothing around her to excite interest or admiration, or the more romantic, the higher, or the softer qualities of her nature, she turned to contemplation and to books. It is the combination of the faculties with the affections, exiled from action, and finding no worldly vent, which produces Poetry, the child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... degree absurd—nevertheless here I am,—though here I do not remain, as it is my fixed intention to- morrow at daybreak to depart straightway from hence en route for the supposed site and ruins of Babylon. Yes,—Babylon! why not? Perished greatness has always been a more interesting subject of contemplation to me than existing littleness—and I dare say I shall wander among the tumuli of the ancient fallen city with more satisfaction than in the hot, humanity-packed streets of London, Paris, or Vienna—all destined to become tumuli ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... He could no longer anticipate his grandson's coming, no longer hope for deliverance. His fate was sealed. Death awaited him. He must anticipate his slow but inevitable stroke, enduring all the grinding horrors of starvation. The contemplation of such an end was madness, but he was forced to contemplate it now; and so appalling did it appear to his imagination, that he half resolved to dash out his brains against the walls of the sepulchre, and put an end at ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... moments of blissful contemplation he said, with a little note of regret in his voice: "I wish you had let me know about that plankin'. I'd have liked to put a little writin' under it—something sarcastic, that they could sort of meditate ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... been seated for some time in mutual contemplation of each other, he asked me in a dialect which I understood tolerably well, to eat. I did not think it prudent to refuse any offered civility, and therefore accepted the offer; and in a little time, a young woman who was in the back part of the hut, set before me some broiled fish and parched ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... distinguish the attitude of the Frenchman in the face of violent and critical action from the equally brave and effective attitude of other races. He has the habit, not common elsewhere, of analyzing conduct and of stripping off from the contemplation of it those voluntary illusions which drop a curtain between ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... qualities. That was the elementary base of Schreiber; and the superstructure, or Corinthian decoration of his frontispiece, was, that Schreiber cultivated one sole science, namely, the science of taking snuff. Here were two separate objects for contemplation: one, bright as Aurora—that radiant Koh-i-noor, or mountain of light—the eight hundred thousand pounds; the other, sad, fuscous, begrimed with the snuff of ages, namely, the most ancient Schreiber. Ah! if they could have been divided—these twin yoke- fellows—and that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... crossed legs in an easy chair. He had utterly recovered from the momentary irritation caused by Audrey's attack on Strauss, and his perfect beaming satisfaction with himself made a spectacle which would have distracted an Indian saint from the contemplation of eternity and nothingness. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt, seated as far as was convenient from one another on a long sofa, their emaciated bodies very upright and alert, gazed with intense expectation at Musa. Musa stood in the middle of the room, tuning his violin with little twangs and listening to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... You must not go back, you must not think of doing that; that life of vision, of contemplation, is a terrible life, for it has far more of temptation in it than the common life. Perhaps it would have been best for you to stay under ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... invention, if one may call it so, was one of the very highest moment in art. Those lovely creations, so precisely drawn up to a certain point, so elusive beyond it, raised the feeling for pure beauty into a wholly ideal plane. The deepest longings of men were satisfied by the contemplation of a paradise in which we should be even as they. In that mystical portraiture of the invisible world an answer—perhaps the only answer—was found to the demand for an ideal of beauty. That remarkable ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... of talents and acquisitions as the late King of Sweden; and by the Empress of Russia, whose extraordinary abilities, information, and magnanimity, astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. BOSWELL. In The Spectator, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist (often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are an incurably ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... ourselves, in which we individually form the centre of its creative energy. To realize this is to specialize the Principle of Life. The logic of it is simple. We have found that the originating movement of Spirit from which all creation proceeds can only be Self-contemplation. Then, since the Original Spirit cannot change its nature its self-contemplation through our own minds must be as creative in, for, and through us as it ever was in the beginning; and consequently we find the original creative process repeated in ourselves and ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... benedictions, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things of that kind, from apostolical tradition and discipline, in order that the majesty of so great a sacrifice might be displayed, and the minds of the faithful might be excited by these visible signs of religion and piety to the contemplation of those sublime things which are concealed in this sacrifice". Session XXII, c. V.—These words lead us to treat briefly of the mass, the principal act of divine worship during holy-week as at all other seasons of the year. This we do now the more readily, that we may not afterwards be obliged ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... C, however, uses the knife. Professional reputation at stake. Success attends the operation. Death of another young miner, who fell into mining-shaft. His funeral. Picturesque appearance of the miners thereat. Of what the miner's costume consists. Horror of the author aroused in contemplation of the lonely mountain-top graveyard. Jostling of life and death. Celebration of the anniversary of Chilian independence. Participation of a certain class of Yankees therein. The procession. A Falstaffian leader. The feast. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... No one has so well revealed its true design as E.A. Hitchcock, who, in his delightful work entitled "Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists," says, "The genuine Alchemists were religious men, who passed their time in legitimate pursuits, earning an honest subsistence, and in religious contemplation, studying how to realize in themselves the union of the divine and human nature, expressed in man by an enlightened submission to God's will; and they thought out and published, after a manner of their own, a method of attaining ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... too, perhaps (and here its influence has been unmixedly good), at the bottom of that more reverent contemplation of nature which has caused the success of our modern landscape painting, which inspired Wordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is to become an instrument of intellectual education, must first be infused into ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ghostly effect than such a silent, lonely contemplation of that mysterious image of ourselves which seems to look out of an infinite depth in the mirror, as if it were our own soul beckoning to us visibly from unknown regions. Those eyes look into our own with an expression sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... regarded above their Mirth and Recreation. I allow, that the Talents of these ingenious Men are very much to be esteem'd in their proper place; that is, as they unbend the Mind, relieve the Satiety of Contemplation and Labour, and by the Delight which they give, refresh the Spirits and fit them for the Returns of Study and Employment: But then it must be granted, that, as I have said, this is the meanest, as being the least beneficial Province in which our intellectual Faculties can be engag'd; ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... that he could not agree with much of the Solicitor's speech, that it was the right of the subject to petition, but that the particular petition before the Court was improperly worded, and was, in the contemplation of law, a libel. Allybone was of the same mind, but, in giving his opinion, showed such gross ignorance of law and history as brought on him the contempt of all who heard him. Holloway evaded the question of the dispensing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of 'that picture.' It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers—irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy. A friend of Lord Hollybridge ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... face, with the crimped fringe drawn down to the eyebrows, resembled that of a Madonna—with her children round her, Lord Newhaven as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, handsome, devoted, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the contemplation of ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the room above, however, where he enjoyed to the full the pleasures of contemplation and quietude. Here, he tells us, he had installed his library, in what had previously been regarded as the most useless part of his mansion. The position had certain advantages. 'I can see beneath me my garden and my poultry-yard, and can look into ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... differed from each other as much as they differed from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss Farish's heart was a fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's a precise register of facts as manifested in their relation to herself. She had sensibilities which, to Lily, would have seemed comic in a person with a freckled nose and red eyelids, who lived in a boarding-house and ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the knowledge of the most excellent truths; the contemplation of the most glorious objects, and the hope of the most ravishing pleasures, and the practice of such duties as are most servicable to our happiness, our peace, our health, our honor, our prosperity, and our ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughs at me." A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible that some of her reckless escapades have froisse'd her mother? She goes off into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Come along, Jeremiah," and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... that of the grave, into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate. Of course, the general heart-quake of the country long ago knocked at my cottage-door, and compelled me, reluctantly, to suspend the contemplation of certain fantasies to which, according to my harmless custom, I was endeavoring to give a sufficiently lifelike aspect to admit of their figuring in a romance. As I make no pretensions to statecraft or soldiership, and could promote the common weal neither by valor nor counsel, it seemed ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Then, "Oh, pshaw!" and the sound of a closing door. Then Lizzie would drag downstairs again, and Susan would return to her silent contemplation of the street. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... was a good Catholic, a zealous daughter of the Church; and she let him know her desire to retire from both lovers into a convent, and so, freed from the world and its temptations, yield up her soul entire to celestial peace and divine contemplation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... been the nature of his reading, and however unformed or incoherent were his literary projects, he possessed, in ample measure, even at this period, the great elements of future fame; viz. the habit of vigorous industry, and the power of sustained abstraction and contemplation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... period the celerity of his movements had been such that his little host appeared to be almost ubiquitous, and men knew not where to look for his descent, or how to anticipate the blow, which he evidently had it in contemplation to deliver. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... in his life an instant and absolute need of money, Kirk found himself singularly lacking in resource; and a period of sober contemplation brought him no helpful thought. Perhaps, after all, he decided, his best course would be to seek relief from the Cortlandts. Accordingly, he strolled into the offices of the steamship company near by and asked leave to telephone. But ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... most beautiful town in France, has never been as beautiful as now. Coming back to it last evening from a round of ruins one felt as if the humbler Sisters sacrificed to spare it were pleading with one not to forget them in the contemplation ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... which we have to investigate this evening resolves itself into a question of the formation of mud. You may think, perhaps, that this is a vast step—of almost from the sublime to the ridiculous—from the contemplation of the history of the past ages of the world's existence to the consideration of the history of the formation of mud! But, in nature, there is nothing mean and unworthy of attention; there is nothing ridiculous or contemptible in any of her works; ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... his, and again the feeling that this man was only a mere acquaintance passed into her being, as she looked into his eyes. She turned her lips away. But Florian, as the feeling of strangeness impressed her, lost it himself in the contemplation, brief but irresistible, of the upturned lips with their momentary invitation so soon withdrawn. The primal man in him awoke. His arm tightened about the lissome waist; the divine form in the creamy silk, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... my hands under the clothes. I wished it were not high noon, but dark night; that Clifton would only arise or turn his eyes away; that something or anything might happen to give me an instant of solitary contemplation, without the threatening possibility of beholding my thoughts and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death. When we learn in Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, 276:21 thought is turned into new and healthy channels, - towards the contemplation of things immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, includ- ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... suttinly is curious." Such was his opening remark, following the water application. "An' also, dey suttinly do git up some mouty curious laws." He paused a moment as though in a still slightly dazed contemplation of the statutory idiosyncrasies of the Caucasian, and then added the key words: "F'rinstance, now, dey got a law dat you got to keep lions an' tigers in a cage. Yassuh, da's de law. Can't no circus go 'bout de country widout de lions an' de tigers an' de highyenas ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... standing at the mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude against them was therefore ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... which they witnessed, and the society with which they mingled, as to have eventually been converted and saved, a consummation which may possibly have escaped the observation of most readers, who, absorbed in their contemplation of the great dramatis personae, seldom give thought as to what the effect on the minor characters must have been. It is worth observing that our author is thoroughly earnest in his exhortations—at times almost naively so. If he be often rather ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... his place by President Gurgoyle's side, and the President in the name of his Majesty the King declared the temple to be hereby dedicated to the contemplation of the Sunchild and the better exposition of his teaching. This was all that was said. The reliquary was then brought forward and placed at the top of the steps leading from the apse to the nave; but the original intention of carrying it round the temple was abandoned for fear ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... glow that came over his features. I could almost see the halo. No language can describe such a marked and rapid change of countenance. His whole soul seemed wrapt in a delightful vision. I cannot say how long this continued, as I was lost in admiration, as he was in contemplation. I spoke, but he seemed not to hear. At last his muscles relaxed, and he began to breathe as if greatly fatigued. He wiped the perspiration from his brow, and said, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... I began with the contemplation of the beauty and terror of the thunderbolt—"God's autograph," as one of our poets (Joel Benton) said, "written upon the sky." Let me end with an allusion to another aspect of the storm that has no terror in it—the bow in ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... countenance from absolute plainness. Mary Queen of Scots, we are told, had gray eyes; and even she, poor lady, owned not more speaking or history-telling orbs than did this little unknown gossip in gray. But our attention was diverted from the contemplation, by the entrance of another actor on the stage, to whom Annie Mortimer darted forward with an exclamation of delight and welcome. The new-comer was a slender, elderly gentleman, whose white hairs, pale face, and benignant expression presented nothing remarkable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... Corilla, as if absorbed in spiritual contemplation, continued to stand immovable there, began the low notes of a harp, which, gradually becoming fuller and stronger, at length resounded in powerfully rushing and exultant tones. From Corilla all eyes were now turned upon Carlo, who, in the light dress of a Greek youth, his harp ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... joined her husband; and the awful peril through which he and her daughter had passed awakened in her a deeper sense of real life. In contemplation of the immeasurable loss which she might have sustained she learned to value better what she possessed. By Estelle's tact it was arranged that she could often see Marian without embarrassment. So far as her nature permitted she shared in her ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of that same day Antonia, having concluded, as she considered, an arduous campaign, stood for a moment in earnest contemplation. "There's only the ring," she said to herself. "I must get the ring for poor Annie before I go. Now, who will lend me thirty shillings? I'll ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and conversation with wonderful ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back with a handful of roses, she found Lizzie absorbed in admiring contemplation of her new boots, as she ate sponge-cake in a blissful ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... could not but feel, in getting up Thucydides and Xenophon for the examinations. Everything not actually devotional seemed to him at these times under a ban, and it is painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment. When, at another time, he had to examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... abreast, led to the upper chambers, bedrooms, and boudoirs, which looked out of old mullioned windows upon the lawn and gardens that surrounded the house, affording picturesque glimpses of water, hills, and forests far enough off for contemplation, and yet near enough to be accessible by a short ride ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ought to stop; but a solicitude for your welfare, which can not end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments, which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be afforded to you with the more freedom, as you can ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... of which meant nothing to such appetites as their out-door living had aroused, they sat on the porch, the men over their cigarettes and Dorothy quite content in the contemplation of the sweetness ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... maintained and perpetuated, or broken and dissolved, the light of liberty shall beam upon the hopes of mankind, or be forever extinguished, amid the scoffs of exulting tyrants and the groans of a world in bondage. Rising, then, above all minor considerations, and lifting our souls to the contemplation of that lofty eminence on which Heaven itself has vouchsafed to place the American people, as the only guardians of the hopes and liberties of mankind, let us act as becomes the depositaries of that sacred fire which burns on the altars of the American Union, and resolve ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... shape; for the faces were at first sight all alike, brown, small-featured, with large dark eyes, and dark curly hair—Mercy, with the largest and most impetuous eyes, and Salome with a dreamy look, more like her mother. Fanny was in a different style, and much prettier; but her contemplation ended in alarm and inclination to cry, whereupon Kitty embraced her, and consoled her like a most efficient guardian; then seeing Mercy becoming rather rude in her familiarities with her aunt, held up ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woman had the desired effect, which was, as she afterwards said, to divert her husband's mind as much as possible from the contemplation of Connor's fate, and to fix it upon the consideration of those duties in which she knew his conscience, now touched by calamity, would tell him he ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... would have added murder to horse larceny, and to-day the town might be mourning the death of a valued citizen instead of felicitating itself over the taking-off of a villain whose very bumps indict and convict him with every fair and enlightened intelligence that is brought to their contemplation. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... it. She refused to think of it. She put the number out of her mind and slammed the door on it—on that hideous number beginning with f. At such times she was given to contemplation of her own photographs—and was reassured. Her intelligence told her that retouching varnish, pumice stone, hard pencil, and etching knife had all gone into the photographer's version of this clear-eyed, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... death" (Prov 14:27). It is a fountain, or spring, which so continually supplieth the soul with variety of considerations of sin, of God, of death, and life eternal, as to keep the soul in continual exercise of virtue and in holy contemplation. It is a fountain of life; every operation thereof, every act and exercise thereof, hath a true and natural tendency to spiritual and eternal felicity. Wherefore the wise man saith in another place, "The fear of the Lord ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as our conceptions of many things have been revolutionized in the past, those which we hold to-day of the cosmic processes may have to be remodeled in the future. The men of fifty years hence may laugh at the circumscribed knowledge of the present and shake their wise heads in contemplation of what they will term our crudities, and which we now call progress. Science is ever on the march and what is new to-day will be old to-morrow. We cannot go back, we must go forward, and although we can never reach ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... love went back with certainty, clear in its authority and worshipping the ground of its justification. When she bowed her head it was he whom she heard in the language of his invocations; his doctrine rode, for her, on a spirit of wide and sweet philosophy; in his contemplation of the Deity she saw the man. He had those lips at once mobile, governed and patient, upon which genius chooses oftenest to rest. As to this, Advena's convictions were so private as to be hidden from herself; she ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... he often receives a quite irrational sentence in a police court by saying he will do it on his head. So, under Pitt's coercionist regime, a man was sent to prison for saying that George IV. was fat; but we feel he must have been partly sustained in prison by the artistic contemplation of how fat he was. That sort of liberty, that sort of humanity, and it is no mean sort, did indeed survive all the drift and downward eddy of an evil economic system, as well as the dragooning of a reactionary epoch and the drearier menace of materialistic social science, as embodied ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the students still, I am told, keep their hand in by studying the classical layout on a cheese board. One booklet recommends the following for freshman contemplation: ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... will that you should lead the life of contemplation, but I don't believe it is. I don't see what right you've got to believe it is. As to not living altogether for God here, that's His affair. Mind you, I don't undervalue the difficulties, and it's uncommon ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... now, in their desolation and ruin, their great size renders them impressive; and there are times and states of atmosphere under which they fill the beholder with a sort of admiring awe, akin to the feeling which is called forth by the contemplation of the great works of nature. Rude and inartificial in their idea and general construction, without architectural embellishment, without variety, without any beauty of form, they yet affect men by their mere ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Wade were busy men with large responsibilities: Terry found ample material for reverie in contemplation of what was opening up before him. The incident served to stifle further conversation. The four settled comfortably into the long rattan chairs drawn up near the railing, each content in the mere association with friends and occupied ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... phase of Shelley's thought, this identification of the ancient and the modern faiths was derogatory to both. The letter which he had written in 1812 for the edification of Lord Ellenborough revelled in the contemplation of a time 'when the Christian religion shall have faded from the earth, when its memory like that of Polytheism now shall remain, but remain only as the subject of ridicule and wonder'. But as time went on, Shelley's views became less purely negative. Instead ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... endured. I soon grew as poor as a rat, and, having a wife and children to provide for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and I spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most convenient method of putting an end to my life. Duns, in the meantime, left me little leisure for contemplation. My house was literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began to rave, and foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of his enclosure. There were three fellows in particular who worried me beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and threatening ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the evident struggle to support some appearance of its ancient dignity, made the dwelling and all in its vicinity wear an aspect of constraint and austerity. Festivity, joy and pleasure, seemed foreign to the purposes of its construction; silence, solemnity and contemplation ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... has reached the other shore in both laws, in restraint and contemplation, all bonds vanish from him ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... glance dwell on him with a contemplation that was half contemptuous amusement, half ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... XIV. would never make peace with England unless the author was given up as a sacrifice to the national resentment. Accordingly, when the congress for the negotiation of the Peace of Utrecht was in contemplation, the terrified Dennis waited on the Duke of Marlborough, who had formerly been his patron, to entreat the intercession of his Grace with the plenipotentiaries, that they should not consent to his surrender to France being made one ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the chancel down the church. On the furze and bracken-clad slope above the cliffs, not far distant, is the hut that Hawker himself constructed, building it of wreckage; this was the sanctuary to which he loved to retreat for contemplation and literary work. It was here that he wrote his Sangraal poem, and the strong picture of its close might apply to this scene as forcibly as it does to ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon |
