"Metaphysical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a rock from which he might gaze on his ungrateful country, he renewed his studies in philosophy and theology." There, too, in that calm retreat, he commenced his Paradiso, the subject of profound meditations on what was held in highest value in the Middle Ages. The themes are theological and metaphysical. They are such as interested Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, Anselm and Bernard. They are such as do not interest this age,—even the most gifted minds,—for our times are comparatively indifferent to metaphysical subtleties and speculations. Beatrice ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... then, of the two classes of laws which regulate the progress of mankind the mental class is more important than the physical. The laws of the human mind will prove to be the ultimate basis of the history of Europe. These are not to be ascertained by the metaphysical method of studying the inquirer's own mind alone, but by the historical method of studying many minds. And this whether the metaphysician belongs to the school which starts by examining the sensations, or to that which starts with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the judge in the latter trial gave about one hundred instructions on the subject of reasonable doubt—quite intelligible, I dare say, to an American jury; but, I must confess, somewhat beyond me in their metaphysical refinements. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... the change must have seemed not only unimportant, but imperceptible. Unaccustomed to that accuracy of thought, which is too often sneered at by Gibbon as 'metaphysical subtlety,' all of which they would have been aware was the change of a few letters in a creed written in an unknown tongue. They could not know, (Ulfilas himself could not have known, only two years after the death of St. Athanasius at Alexandria; while ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... mountebanks than of the servants of the Almighty. The fourth, the most heretical of all, would make us believe that they live in eternal communion with supernatural powers; and whilst they put on a patched and threadbare garment, affect to despise the goods of this world, and keep themselves warm by metaphysical meditations, which neither they nor any one else understand. No distinction of clean or unclean (may they enjoy the eternal grills!) stands in their way; lawful and unlawful is all one to them; they eat and drink whatever they choose, and ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... become a Theosophist. Any person of average intellectual capacities, and a leaning toward the metaphysical; of pure, unselfish life, who finds more joy in helping his neighbor than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom for their own ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... with a grave shake of his head,—"Judged by the very finest lines of metaphysical argument, you cannot really be sure whether you behold in me a Person or a Phantasm! You THINK you see me,—I THINK I see you,—but after all it is only an IMPRESSION mutually shared,—an impression which ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his M.D. degree at Edinburgh, just as he was rapidly acquiring the highest professional reputation, contracted a cold that led to a partial deafness. This made it impossible for him to go on practising with safety, and retiring to his study he turned from physical to metaphysical pursuits. In spite of his deafness, as severe an embargo on social reputation as can well be laid, Dr. Leighton is said to have been equally noted among his friends for his keen intellectual ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... Burke in his later years of apostasy from so-called Liberal opinions. Burke was all his life through a passionate maintainer of the established order of things, and a ferocious hater of abstractions and metaphysical politics. The same ideas that explode like bombs through his diatribes against the French Revolution are to be found shining with a mild effulgence in the comparative calm of his earlier writings. I have often ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... from all others in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in itself, was HIS work. But the very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra CREATED the most portentous error, MORALITY, consequently he should also be the first to PERCEIVE that error, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and in many another passage that I might quote; but as a general thing I should characterise the more metaphysical of our author's short stories as graceful and felicitous conceits. They seem to me to be qualified in this manner by the very fact that they belong to the province of allegory. Hawthorne, in his metaphysical ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman always wants some one ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Irish Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Haldane, yawning with all his Hegelian abysses, who appeared to me as I must have appeared to a neighbour in a local debating club when he dismissed metaphysical depths and pointed at me saying: "There is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his sport therein." . ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... subject of this and the preceding chapter, problems of very difficult solution present themselves, a full and comprehensive elucidation of which would involve questions of deep moral and metaphysical interest with regard to the structure, the cultivation and training, the associations and habits of the human mind. Upon the merits of those problems in their various ramifications the Author has no intention to venture; and probably few persons would pronounce unhesitatingly how far ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... scientific and a metaphysical teleology. Statement of the latter in legitimate terms. Criticism of this statement legitimately made on the side of Atheism as being gratuitous. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... (462. II. 696). Of the ancient Hindu god Agni, Letourneau (100. 315) observes: "After being for a long time fed upon melted butter and the alcoholic liquor from the acid asclepias, the sacred Soma, he first became a glorious child, then a metaphysical divinity, a mediator living in the fathers and living again in the sons." It was the divine Soma that, like the nectar of the Greeks, the elixirs of the Scandinavians, conferred youth and immortality upon ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... came into the world in 1756, at Wisbech, in the Fen country, with the moral atmosphere of a dissenting home for inheritance. His father and grandfather were Independent ministers, who taught the metaphysical dissent of the extreme Calvinistic tradition. The quaint ill-spelled letters of his mother reveal a strong character, a meagre education and rigid beliefs. William was unwholesomely precocious as a boy, pious, studious and greedy for distinction and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept the wildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to note also, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come to conclusions on inadequate evidence—a disposition usually due to one-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... freest passages of Don Juan, associated either the one or the other with sensual images. The extravagance of Shakespeare's Juliet, when she speaks of Romeo being cut after his death into stars, that all the world may be in love with night, is flame and ecstasy compared to the icy metaphysical glitter of Byron's amorous allusions. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the moment on the scent of illustrations for the philosophy of Kant, said, "Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding." Rabelais himself, in the fourth book of his romance, written in the last years of his life, defines the spirit ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... lately that the kindergarten people had a certain stock of metaphysical statements to be aired on every occasion, and that they were over-fond of prating about the "being" of the child. It would hardly seem as if too much could be said in favor of the symmetrical growth of the child's nature. These ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... action led him along a 'strange diagonal.' He would be at once a painter and a metaphysician. Some eight years of artistic labour convinced him that he could not be a Titian or a Raphael, and he declined to be a mere Hazlitt junior. His metaphysical studies, on the contrary, convinced him that he might be a Hume or a Berkeley; but unluckily they convinced himself alone. The tiny volume which contained their results was neglected by everybody but the author, who, to the end of his days, loved ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... true, that a woman's glances are not always her own property. The old proverb, that "a Cat may look at a King," goes a-begging when applied to a woman; and this enables us to present to the Sorosis a subject for examination, at least as metaphysical as the philosophy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... equal by repentance. Hence equality is no longer a vain word, for we can be, we are, all equal through feeling. From the formless fetichism of savages to the graceful inventions of Greece, or the profound and metaphysical doctrines of Egypt and India, whether taught in cheerful or in terrifying worship, there is a conviction in the soul of man—that of his fall, that of his sin—from which comes everywhere the idea of sacrifice and redemption. The death of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... and important sense, repetitory of, or correspondential with, Musical Tones or the Elements of Music, as well as with Chemical Elements, and these again with the Elements of Numerical Calculation, of Form, or the Science of Morphology, and, in fine, with the Prime Metaphysical Elements of Being, or the first Categories of Thought, perhaps we may by such speculations catch a glimpse of the possibilities of a great lingual discovery, having the attributes here indicated. Why should not the Elements of Speech ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upon, five miles away—with Boers creeping round them, perhaps using them as a screen for attack! Britons never, never will! The Mayor hesitated, the Archdeacon was eloquent, the Scotch proved the metaphysical impossibility of the scheme. Amid shouts and cheers and waving parasols the people raised the National Anthem, and for once there was some dignity in that inferior tune. Everybody's life was in danger for "The Queen." The proposal to leave the town was flung back with defiance. ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had, in Two successive Papers, I think Two, communicated to the Academy a Discovery of Metaphysico-Mathematical or altogether Metaphysical nature, on the Laws of Motion;—Discovery which he has, since that, brought to complete perfection, and sent forth to the Universe at large, in his sublime little Book of COSMOLOGY; [In La Beaumelle,—Vie de Maupertuis—(Paris, 1856), pp. 105-130, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... things"). In general, the Bab's doctrines most closely resembled those of the Isma'ilis and Hurufis. In the hands of Baha the aims of the sect became much more practical and ethical, and the wilder pantheistic tendencies and metaphysical hair-splittings of the early Babis almost disappeared. The intelligence, integrity and morality of the Babis are high, but their efforts to improve the social position of woman have been much exaggerated. They were in no way concerned (as was at the time falsely alleged) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Minister of a monarch in retirement, his own had been utter defeat. His last step conducted him out of the kingdom. The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the ancient regime in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors, and confused in terms the state of nature and the state ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... language the obsequies of the Phoenix and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life by the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be a mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it may be of allegorical import; but whether it bear relation to pending ecclesiastical, political, or metaphysical controversy, or whether it interpret popular grief for the death of some leaders of contemporary society, is not easily determined. {184} Happily Shakespeare wrote nothing else ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... severe accident in your childhood which permanently undermined your constitution; excuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the criminal; but they cannot for one moment be listened to by the ear of justice. I am not here to enter upon curious metaphysical questions as to the origin of this or that—questions to which there would be no end were their introduction once tolerated, and which would result in throwing the only guilt on the primordial cell, or perhaps even ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... failure—the rest is silence. We know not what new form of the family the society of the future, in which men and women will be alike economically free, may evolve and which may be generally adopted therein. Meanwhile, we ought to combat by every means within our power the metaphysical dogma of the inherent sanctity of the monogamic principle. Economic development on the one side and the free initiative of individuals on the other will do ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... know."[12] Surely it is much better to say at once, "I cannot explain this to you," than to attempt an imperfect or sophistical reply. Fortunately for us, children, if they are not forced to attend to studies for which they have no taste, will not trouble us much with moral and metaphysical questions; their attention will be fully employed upon external objects; intent upon experiments, they will not be very inquisitive about theories. Let us then take care that their simple ideas be accurate, and when these are compounded, their complex notions, their principles, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past, whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual man included. Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little. They are recruited in part from the working-class, of which they have enlisted but a very small fraction representing, however, its most educated and solid elements. In its present form, Socialism can never become the common ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... a solemn day for me to pass from the humble tenement where Coleridge lived, at Nether Stowey, before the cloud of sad habit had darkened his horizon, and turned him away from the wells of poetry into the deserts of metaphysical speculation, to find, if he could, some medicine for his tortured spirit. I walked with a holy awe along the leafy lanes to Alfoxden, where the beautiful house nestles in the green combe among its oaks, thinking ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sound ones, for so regarding them. The educated classes had given up any honest and literal worship of the old gods. They were trying to excuse themselves for their lingering half belief in them, by turning them into allegories, powers of nature, metaphysical abstractions, as did Porphyry and Iamblichus, Plotinus and Proclus, and the rest of the Neo-Platonist school of aristocratic philosophers and fine ladies: but the lower classes still, in every region, kept up their own local beliefs and worships, generally ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... employed in composing for the second edition of Wollaston's "Religion of Nature." Some of his reasonings not appearing to me well founded, I wrote a little metaphysical piece in which I made remarks on them. It was entitled "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." I inscribed it to my friend Ralph; I printed a small number. It occasion'd my being more consider'd by Mr. Palmer as a young man of some ingenuity, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... vegetable history; its mineral history; its social history; its moral history; its political history; its scientific history; its literary history; its musical history; its artistical history; above all, its metaphysical history. She must begin with the Chinese Dynasty, and end with Japan. But first of all she must study Geology, and especially the history of the extinct races of animals—their natures, their habits, their loves, their hates, their ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... which circulate as sap and blood through the sphere. We cannot touch any object but some spark of vital electricity is shot through us. Every creature is a battery, charged not with mere vegetable or animal, but with moral life. Our metaphysical being is fed from something hidden in rocks and woods, in streams and skies, in fire, water, earth, and air. While we dig roots, and gather nuts, and hunt and roast our meat, our blood is quickened not in the heart alone. Deeper currents are swelled. The springs of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... majority of five. It was considered as an index of their dispositions on that subject, though some voted both ways on other ground. It is most evident that the anti-republicans wish to get rid of Blount's impeachment. Many metaphysical niceties are handing about in conversation, to show that it cannot be sustained. To show the contrary, it is evident, must be the task of the republicans, or of nobody. Monroe's book is considered as masterly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I may pour my spirits in thine ear; And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... with the system of universal government in this world, the next seems of but little importance. There may be a miscarriage of justice (that is, a thwarting of our particular wishes) even there. Perhaps Mrs. Yorke was aware that her son's clouded face did not portend religious or metaphysical speculation, for she abruptly changed ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... native influences which, operating as antagonism or as inspiration upon the minds of Coleridge, Carlyle, and others, produced finally these great and memorable results. It is but justice, however, to recognize Coleridge as the pioneer of the new era. His fine metaphysical intellect and grand imagination, nurtured and matured in the German schools of philosophy and theology, reproduced the speculations of their great thinkers in a form and coloring which could not fail to be attractive to all seeking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... an excessively fine lady; and the four daughters pretty, accomplished, fashionable-looking girls, from twenty-two—their mamma said seventeen—upwards, who judiciously came out in different lines; for Miss Blackmore was metaphysical, Miss Caroline sentimental, Miss Maria fast, and Miss Clementina musical. Between the last mentioned and Charles Lacy a strong and not discouraged flirtation was in progress, which afforded Harry better than ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy and unsubstantial, in his mode of development, to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to a satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual, or possibly an ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... on the side of the minister and the Parliament who had imposed the tax. But he is not worthy of the name of statesman who conceives absolute rights and metaphysical distinctions to be the proper foundation for measures of government, and pays no regard to custom, to precedent, to the habits and feelings of the people to be governed; who, disregarding the old and most true adage, summum jus summa injuria, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... They expected the ordinary Conservative confession of faith—a rosy sketch of foreign affairs, and a little gentle Socialism, and the old rhetoric about Church and State. Instead, they are put off with epigrams and excellent stories, and a few speculations as to the metaphysical basis of politics. Believe me, Lewie, it is only the very general liking for your unworthy self which keeps them from going over in a body to Stocks." And Wratislaw lit a cigar and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... temperament allowed him to follow Revolutionism to its utmost limits. Comte had imparted unshakable convictions to him in the sphere of intellectual questions, and he contented himself with the clear and decisive logic of Positivism, rejecting all metaphysical hypotheses as useless, persuaded as he was that the whole human question, whether social or religious, would be solved by science alone. This faith, firm as it had remained, was, however, coupled with secret bitterness, for nothing seemed to advance in a sensible manner towards its goal. Comte ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... will always know where those keys are." Then he teetered it again and says, like he was lecturing on a platform: "This is an ideal problem for the metaphysical mind. Here, veritably, is life itself. We pick it up, we shake it, and we hear the tantalizing key to existence rattle plainly just inside. We know the key to be there; we hear it in every manifestation of life. Our problem is to think ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Idealism must be read by all who believe themselves capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment of Turgot, which Emerson quotes: "He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." The most essential statement ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.' But the dialectic parts of the Epistle puzzled and confused me. Such metaphysical ideas as 'laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works' and 'crucifying the Son of God afresh' were not successfully brought down to the ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... muttered these metaphysical and philological reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... commonly a certain confusion of the intelligence, a difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly as I sat on my stile that presently I had the clearest doubts of my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical questionings. "If this be I," I said, "then how is it I am no longer madly seeking Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing—and all my wrongs. Why have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? Why does not the thought of Verrall quicken ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... friendly conference. I have (being hurried) briefly mentioned these circumstances, which took a long time to settle, as the Dyaks are very fond of speechifying, which they do sitting, without action or vivacity, but with great fluency, and using often highly metaphysical and elegant language. It was a great nuisance having fifty naked savages in the house all night, extended in the hall and the anterooms. They finished a bottle of gin, and then slept; and I could not avoid remarking that their sleep was light, such as temperance, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... were exulting in the breasts of both the other two, together with his own. But we shall leave such disquisitions, as too deep for us, to those who are building some favourite hypothesis, which they will refuse no metaphysical rubbish to erect and support: for our part, we give it clearly on the side of Joseph, whose happiness was not only greater than the parson's, but of longer duration: for as soon as the first tumults ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... nature of the mnemic engraphia of external agents in the living substance is still unknown. When we are able to connect the laws of life with the laws of inert nature, we shall only have before us a single great metaphysical mystery, that of the tendency of mundane energy to the differentiation of details and the production of complicated forms. What is important here is to know that engraphia and selection are capable of considerably modifying species in a positive or negative manner, for good or evil, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... acute, electric perceptions of the great German or the industry and amiable vanities of that De Sevigne among philosophers, Cousin, he presented, by fierce dashes of his crayon, black, blunt, and bluff, to the hitherto ignorant British public, some phases of the great metaphysical bearings of the age upon Literature and Art, as developed in Teutonic poetry and prose. In a word, he familiarized his readers with the AEsthetik of Germany. He published in 1830 his Sartor Resartus, which, clothing the man ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Minister who is also a Scotsman. What wonder is it that Canada thrives when the only change in her future is that she falls from the hands of one Scotsman into that of another? Our countrymen are fond of metaphysical discussion, and are apt to seek for subtle reasons for the cause of things. Here it is unnecessary for them to do more in inquiring the reasons of the prosperity of the country, than to look around them and to note the number of their countrymen, and the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... myself a hundred times more indebted to phrenology than to all the metaphysical works that I ever read. . . . I look upon phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true phrenology is a ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... Feuerbach, which I studied at the same time. What fascinated me so enormously about Schopenhauer's work was not only its extraordinary fate, but the clearness and manly precision with which the most difficult metaphysical problems were treated from the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... who have attained very general conceptions. Furthermore, the strong liability of confounding this speculative or logical unity with the concrete notion of individuality, or mathematical unity, has been, as I shall show hereafter, a fruitful source of error in both religious and metaphysical theories. Pure logic deals with quality ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... hardiesse et qu'on aurait admises sans peine si elles avaient t prcdes de l'histoire des faits." He carried over this inductive method into realm of history, which he thought had been approached from the wrong side, i.e., the metaphysical, "par consulter les lumires de la raison" (p. 8). He continues, "j'ai pens qu'il devait y avoir quelques circonstances particulires. Un fait et non une spculation mtaphysique m'a toujours sembl devoir tre et tribut ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... more it is examined, the more extensive does it appear to be incorporated in some shape in the Indian mythology. If interpreted agreeably to the metaphysical symbols of the old world, it would appear to be distilled from the same oriental symbolical crucible, which produced an Osiris and a Typhon—for the American Typhon is represented by the Mishikinabik, or serpent, and ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Guardian-angel, watch over me;—have pity upon my weakness; lie down on my little bed with me: follow me whithersoever I go." ...The prayers are always said in French. Metaphysical and theological terms cannot be rendered in the patois; and the authors of creole catechisms have always been obliged to borrow and explain French religious phrases in order to make ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the history of the Mahayana is uncertain, its teaching fanciful and its scriptures tedious, yet it has been a force of the first magnitude in the secular history and art of China, Japan and Tibet and even to-day the most metaphysical of its sacred books, the Diamond Cutter, has probably more readers than Kant ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... politicians establish that the revolted States are not out of the Union. The States are no abstractions, no metaphysical notions, but geographical and political entities. They are States because they are peopled with individuals, free, intelligent, and who, to give a legality to their rebellion, claim to be sovereigns. It is not the soil constituting a State that represents a sovereignty, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... spirits by prayers and sacrifices, which resulted, however, neither in deification nor polytheism. But, as the European mediaeval schoolmen have done with the Bible, so, after the death of Confucius the Chinese scholastics by metaphysical reasoning and commentary, created systems of interpretation which greatly altered the apparent form and contents of his own and of the ancient texts. Thus, the original monotheism of the pre-Confucian documents has been completely obscured by the later webs ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... energy and then become slavishly superstitious. He said a curious thing of the Esquimaux, namely, that their language is a most complex and highly artificial one, calculated to express the most delicate metaphysical subtleties, yet they have no literature, nor are there any traces of their ever having had one—a most curious anomaly; hence he simply argues that you can ill judge of a ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... this metaphysical atmosphere, Mr. World conducted his companion to the adjoining hall devoted to the "Literature ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... not wonderful that teaching of this sort should seem to many unendurable, and that the multitude should desert the preacher with the cry, "This is an hard saying; who can hear it?" The young and gay were wearied by the dryness of metaphysical discussions which to them were as unintelligible as a statement of the last results of the mathematician to the child commencing the multiplication-table. There remained around him only a select circle,—shrewd, hard thinkers, who delighted in metaphysical subtilties,—deep-hearted, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... by word-lore. The Greeks and Romans played with etymology in a somewhat metaphysical fashion, a famous example of which is the derivation of lucus a non lucendo. Medieval writers delight in giving amazing information as to the origin of the words they use. Their method, which may be called learned folk-etymology, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... we find a less metaphysical pair than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with the mystery of her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Iroquois are varied, but with accidence differing from the Aryan and Semitic variations, some of the distinctions being more subtle, and, so to speak, metaphysical. The dual is expressed by prefixing the particle te, and suffixing ke to the noun; thus, from kanonsa, house, we have tekanonsake, two houses. These syllables, or at least the first, are supposed to be derived from tekeni, two. The plural, when it follows ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... phase of Hellenic philosophy was religious. It aimed to combine the principles of many schools of the earlier period and to present a metaphysical system that would at once give a theory of being and also furnish a philosophical basis for the new religious life. This final philosophy of the antique world was Neo-Platonism. It was thoroughly eclectic in its treatment ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... away in America while the Conference sat, it was evident that, if dual ownership was to be abolished, our choice was confined to two courses. We could, on the one hand, pursue, under the guise of purchase, the metaphysical and costly distinctions between landlord-right and tenant-right, which Mr. Gladstone had established under the guise of rent-fixing; or else, as the only alternative, we had "to cut the cackle" and get to business. Under this head the House of Commons—Mr. Dillon ingeminating ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... identification between the inner life of the soul and the outward order of society, which is the basis and justification of politics. 'It is justice', he says, using the word in a strict, not a platonic or metaphysical sense, 'which is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, i. e. the determination of what is just, which is the principle of order ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... end—he had to take it out in something—he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice—but now he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her—he possessed her—she lived under his roof—she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... were now of great importance in the world; and no poet or philosopher, even in ancient Greece, where they were treated with most respect, had ever reached equal applause and admiration with those wretched composers of metaphysical polemics. The German princes told the king, that they could not spare their divines; and as Henry had no hopes of agreement with such zealous disputants, and knew that in Germany the followers of Luther would not associate with the disciples of Zuinglius, because, though ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Mitra, originally the physical sun, is naturally associated with Varuna, but in the Rig-Veda occupies a generally subordinate position, though he appears sometimes to have the attributes of his associate; the two together embody a lofty ethical conception. In accordance with the Hindu fondness for metaphysical abstractions and generalizations the nature god Varuna in the course of time yielded the primacy to Prajapati, 'lord of beings,'[1266] who in his turn gave way to the impersonal Brahma. In the popular cults as well as in philosophical systems Varuna sank (or perhaps returned) ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... was singular. He was just as far removed from adopting the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting—and in his biography important—on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his position and to state a ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... a little before proceeding with the work of destruction. They were strange products, most of these poems of his; mirroring vague metaphysical moods, unseizable mystic fancies; incomprehensible save to one whose own inwardness they suggested, or to one of infinite emotional sympathy. A blurred, shapeless spirit brooded behind these melodious masses of words, these outpourings of disconnected ideas—a spirit invisible for ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the surface by the passions and fancies of men, and soon breaks by contact with the hard facts of daily life. It is a thing which bears but little handling. The German Wieland, who was a great disciple of love, was of opinion that "its metaphysical effects began with the first sigh, and ended with the first kiss!" Plato was not far out of the way when he called it "a great devil"; and the man or woman who is really possessed of it will find it a very ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of the whole collection, who had been expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation of lord Bolingbroke's metaphysical works, which is said to be equally ingenious, and orthodox; but, in the mean time, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance, for having blasphemed in an ale-house on the Lord's day. The Scotchman ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... protagonists in the realms of philosophy, and is ardently defended by Berkeley. In the dialogues of Hylas and Philonous, the latter speaks of the "absolute impossibility" of matter, which has no existence apart from spirit. But Mrs. Eddy succeeded in giving this purely metaphysical conception a concrete value in the affairs of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... a forced smile, and took up the spare gun with an expression of countenance which a metaphysical rook, impressed with a foreboding of his approaching death by violence, may be supposed to assume. It might have been keenness, but it looked remarkably like misery. The old gentleman nodded; and two ragged boys who had been marshalled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... which has been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the Liturgy, which was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... infilling, and is not endowed with either after that experience. John's intensity which would call down fire to burn up supposed foes is not removed but turned into another channel, and burns itself out in love. Jonathan Edwards retains and develops his marvelous faculty of metaphysical reasoning and uses it to influence men for God. Finney's intensely logical mind is not changed but fired and used in the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... all the young ladies who the next day passed in review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in her eyes and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Fay mocked. "Everything that has a material side has a mental side," he chanted. "Everything that's a body is also a spirit. Gussy, that dubious old metaphysical dualism went out ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to follow the old metaphysical maxim "If facts do not agree with my theory, so much the worse for the facts." He piles up pages of evidence which show conclusively that these Greeks knew nothing of the higher traits and symptoms of love, and then ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... classified everything. They were, in the scholastic sense—which so oddly contradicts the modern use of the word "Realists." They believed classes were REAL and independent of their individuals. This is the common habit of all so-called educated people who have no metaphysical aptitude and no metaphysical training. It leads them to a progressive misunderstanding of the world. It was a favourite trick of Altiora's to speak of everybody as a "type"; she saw men as samples ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can't be satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn't got puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one's nose, without going a-field after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I'm wrong,—not going a-field,—anything one has to go a-field for is all right. What a fellow meets outside himself he isn't responsible for, and must do the best he can with. But to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in it—did not say a word of Adonais[13], though he was loud in his praise of Prometheus, and (what you will not agree with him in) censure of The Cenci.' (To Horace Smith, 14 September,) 'I am glad you like Adonais, and particularly that you do not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid it was. I was resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured dead; but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the effect that I should produce.' (To Ollier, 25 September.) 'The Adonais, in ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... back from the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... was always longing for violence of sentiment and sudden changes of emotion, found herself condemned to a dull, level life. Desborough would talk to her about poetry, but their tastes did not agree. He would even tease her with futile metaphysical talk until she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... impersonal dreams. It was just as she entered Berkeley Square that she met Mrs. Mallison, that aunt of Gerald's who had struck her, some weeks ago, as so disconcerting, with her skilfully preserved prettiness and her ethical and metaphysical aspirations. This lady, furred to her ears, was taking out two small black pomeranians for an airing. She wore long pearl ear-rings, and her narrow, melancholy face was delicately rouged and powdered. Althea's colour rose painfully; she had seen none of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a very metaphysical treatise on theories of government and the duties of citizens to the law, each other, and themselves. Theoretical politics are little in favor with thinking men of this day; and the social difficulties of our age will have to be solved by practical wisdom founded on ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... rule of their predecessors, whose thoughts were on justice and liberty, and whose works breathe forth a wholesome quality, a large number of the present writers have been gradually attracted by metaphysical questions, which fill their works with a veritable chaos of morbid conceptions and disenchantment. Some express with acuteness man's unconquerable fear of life or death; others treat of the divine or satanic principles in man; still others study, with a sickly passion, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... is that man passes through three mental periods—the Theological or fictitious; the Metaphysical or abstract; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... of things which decreed that about the time Herod, brother to no man, died, Jesus, brother to all men, should be born; and that Rabelais, moral jester, should see light the very year that orthodox Louis XI passed on, by that same metaphysical scheme reduced to its lowliest, Essman's drop-picture machine, patent applied for, was completed the identical year that, for Rudolph Pelz, the rainy-day skirt slumped from a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Lepany, "to define the Ideal—in other words, to define the indefinite, which alas! whether from a metaphysical, a philosophical, or an aesthetic point of view, is a task transcending immeasurably my circumscribed ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... really they were both wrapped in the great joy of a glorious hour and disinclined to dwell upon fancies about a woman who had died five hundred years ago, or on metaphysical speculations. Also the fear of what might follow upon that hour haunted them more vividly than any hovering ghost, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... whiskey," said MacShaugnassy; "and don't be so complicatedly metaphysical. You make ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... accordingly destroy himself? The metaphysician will point out that master denotes a relation, that every relation has two terms, that consequently a man cannot be his own master any more than he can be his own father; and that, not owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To take your own life is to usurp the dominion of God. It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But none is wronged against his will: God is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... be-epitheted, would make a pompous work, and make one's fortune; at sixpence a number, one should have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers: whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity. Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded "Cleopatra and Pharamond," and approve "The Pleasures ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... debased by its connection with matter, the aim of human action is to regain the spiritual life. The first step is the practice of the cardinal virtues: the next the purifying virtues. Happiness is the undisturbed life of contemplation. Correspondence of the Ethical, with the Metaphysical scheme. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble savages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... out already that you are only looking at a chaplet of cameos, with just enough of story to string them together. Under these circumstances, the right thing of course to do is to work out each character by the rules of metaphysical mathematics, and then to reverse the process and "prove" the result. But I never tried to extract the square root out of any thing without failing miserably, and one can only speak, and act, and write according to one's ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... century it surely is, in the sense that all the known evidences of its existence were gathered in that epoch. True dreamers of all ages have, for metaphysical reasons, imagined the existence of intangible fluids in space—they had, indeed, peopled space several times over with different kinds of ethers, as Maxwell remarks—but such vague dreamings no more ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to the very top of his and their bent; and even Churchill, restrained by a more critical atmosphere, has not come quite near his confused and only half-intelligible jumble of indictments for indecent practices and crude philosophy of the moral and metaphysical kind. A vigorous line or phrase occasionally redeems the chaos of rant, fustian, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to the metaphysical conception of human happiness," he replied. "In itself it is a vile life. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... must realize is that now there isn't any NUMBER of crew members, but a 'something else' that is different than a number, corresponding to an INTERVAL of numbers. It is real. It's a metaphysical basic for this part of space ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... toward what is most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetry and moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progeny is perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest truth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a varied and tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is what makes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order of novelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been credited ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... subtle and discriminating analysis of the visible forms. Here it may suffice to quote Brunn's own words from the Introduction to that work: "The spiritual effect produced on us by a work of sculpture cannot be comprehended as a moral or a metaphysical peculiarity, completely independent of corporeal phenomena; it can become intelligible to us only by means of tangible sculptural forms, as the exponents of spiritual expression." And again: "The spiritual understanding of ideal artistic ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... folio, and would comprise fifty or sixty volumes octavo. The work contains three, and, according to some manuscripts, four parts, entitled Speculum naturale (Mirror of Natural Science), Speculum historiale (Mirror of Historical Science), Speculum doctrinale (Mirror of Metaphysical Science), and Speculum morale (Mirror of Moral Science). M. Daunou, in the notice he has given to it [in the xviiith volume of the Histoire litteraire de la France, begun by the Benedictines and continued by ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... metaphysical discourses that Mr. Beecher delivered, none are so well remembered as those giving his illustrations of life, his anecdotes. Much of his pulpit utterance was devoted to telling what things were like. So the Sermon on the Mount was written, full of similitudes. Like a man who built his house ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... only determined to preserve these monuments, but had consented to copy them for the use of another; for the use of one whose present and eternal welfare had been the chief object of his cares and efforts. Thou, like others of thy sex, art unaccustomed to metaphysical refinements. Thy religion is the growth of sensibility and not of argument. Thou art not fortified and prepossessed against the subtleties with which the being and attributes of the Deity have been assailed. Would it be just ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... for me. I have never been puzzled for any demonstration yet, but I am still searching for more knowledge. Yours for investigation...." I may say that this is a feature common to most of my correspondents of this metaphysical ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... better stake of liberty every people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it more. These are the cords of man. Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... powers and beings, and were very superstitious and childlike in many respects, so that their philosophy of non-survival was evidently rather the result of temperament and pursuit of material things than a height of philosophical reasoning or metaphysical thought. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... intelligence. She clearly recollected and comprehended what had taken place. She recalled the past, compared incidents, weighed circumstances, sifted and balanced the impressions that now crowded upon her consciousness. It is difficult to describe each link in the metaphysical chain which at length connected the mind of Venetia Herbert with her actual experience and precise situation. It was, however, at length perfect, and gradually formed as she sat in an invalid chair, apparently listless, not yet venturing on any occupation, or occasionally amused for a ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... are, the 'Preface[456],'[dagger] the 'Parliamentary Debates,'[dagger] 'Considerations on the Dispute between Crousaz[457] and Warburton, on Pope's Essay on Man;'[dagger] in which, while he defends Crousaz, he shews an admirable metaphysical acuteness and temperance in controversy[458]; 'Ad Lauram parituram Epigramma[459];'[*] and, 'A Latin Translation of Pope's Verses on his Grotto[460];'[*] and, as he could employ his pen with equal success upon a small matter as a great, I suppose him to be the authour of an advertisement ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with the Church. Theological hair-splitting reminded them only of the mediaeval scholasticism from which they had been emancipated by classical culture. They were less interested in questions touching the salvation of the individual or the exact nature of the sacraments, than in metaphysical problems suggested by the study of antique philosophers, or new theories ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... pensions; national property, senatories, knighthoods, and palaces; but he is, nevertheless, not supposed one of our Emperor's most dutiful subjects, because many of the late changes have differed from his metaphysical schemes of innovation, of regeneration, and of overthrow. He has too high an opinion of his own deserts not to consider it beneath his philosophical dignity to be a contented subject of a fellow-subject, elevated into supremacy by his labours and dangers. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... nor could all men be judged by formal canons, but a true human heart was in the breast of every really great artist. He had the greatest detestation of anything approaching to cant in respect of art; but, after long investigation of the historical evidence, as well as of the metaphysical laws bearing on this question, he was absolutely certain that a high moral and religious training was the only way to get good fruits from our youth; make them good men first, and only so, if at all, they would become good artists. With regard to the points mooted respecting ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and said easily: "Yes, thanks to my husband, utterly heartless." Then calmly drawing a chair near to his, she said in an amused tone: "And let me tell you how this interesting metaphysical ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... was wrong. The captain himself was sometimes given to metaphysical speculation, and even HE was puzzled to know if his heart had a whit more feeling than any other pumping-engine. Women he looked upon as frivolities of vanity to which he could not reconcile his stern nature; and men ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... growing daily weaker, and one morning the announcement thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of mourning. In a few months I should be preparing to enter the university. I was by degrees emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of one—a tendency to metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me much injury in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... human freedom. This God has from the earliest times revealed himself to some privileged men, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus (Isa). To the last is due the honor of having been the reformer of degenerate Judaism. He is not, as the Christians of Mohammed's time taught, the Son of God in a metaphysical sense, much less God himself,—Allah is one, he neither begets nor is begotten,—but a prophet of human descent. The greatest and last prophet is Mohammed himself, in whom prophetism reached its fulfillment. Along ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... which reached me but a short time ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder, and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world for conducting ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more "material" and solid the appearance, the ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant |
