"Skeptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust"; and Mr. Bluphocks shows himself amusingly familiar with Bible facts and phrases. Mr. Sludge, "the Medium," thinks the Bible says the stars are "set for signs when we should shear sheep, sow corn, prune trees," and describes the skeptic in the magic circle of spiritual "investigators" as the "guest without the wedding-garb, the doubting Thomas." Some one has taken the trouble to count five hundred Biblical phrases or allusions in "The Ring and the Book." Mrs. Browning's ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Julie hates the whole business. I think she'd be convinced, though, except for Mr. Thorpe. He's such a skeptic that ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... penalties) called for special ethics and casuistry. The case of Abelard (1079-1142) shows what tragedies were caused. He claimed to be, and to some extent he was, a champion of reason and common sense, and he was a skeptic as to the current philosophy. He was vain, weak, and ambitious. He selected the loveliest woman he knew, and won her love, which he used to persuade her to be his concubine, that she might not hinder him in his career.[499] The treatment ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... passing a rope through a button-hole of each gentleman's coat, the ends to be held by a trusty person—assigning, as a reason for that arrangement, that it would then be known no one in the circle could assist in producing the manifestations. The plan did not always work well, however; for a skeptic would sometimes cut the rope, and then pounce upon "the spirit"—that is, if he didn't happen to miss that individual, on account of the darkness and while trying to avoid a collision with ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of the Syracuse Journal:— If it would not be asking too much, I would beg leave to say a few words through the columns of your paper. In Saturday's issue of the Standard I notice a letter written by "Skeptic," which that paper calls "silly," and charges the writer with being "lacking in the upper story." This is a misfortune, truly; but I have taken some trouble to investigate these reports and find them vouched for by highly respectable parties. There are, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... that which had ridden and hunted and passed so buoyantly through life should become but a few dry bones, a handful of dust. He was of his time, and its laxness of principle and conduct; if he held within himself the potential scholar, statesman, and philosopher, there were also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine. He followed the fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died to-night his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He wondered, somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed it round—pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take a taste ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... of reverence with which he gradually accustomed himself to regard religious things. His father's habit, in the long graces which preceded each meal, rather wearied the temper of his son. The precocious young skeptic, with characteristic irreverence, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... where they are cited in the text. Some spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... infirmities and extravagances, the book remains a superior, perhaps a great work. The writer can look at a human existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... "that is how you believe in the royal virtues. Ah, skeptic, St. Thomas was credulous, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Finally, take the utter skeptic into the kindergarten and let the children convert him. It commonly is a "him" by the way. The mother-heart of the universe is ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... back upon our hands once more! but I cannot send her to your Excellency. Is it from living among these peasants and fishing-folk, or is it because, as people pretend, a skeptic is always superstitious? I could not muster courage to send you Dionea, although your boys are still in sailor-clothes and your uncle, the Cardinal, is eighty-four; and as to the Prince, why, he bears the most potent amulet against Dionea's terrible powers ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... promise, thus sworn to, to be dishonoured even in the least particular? Were not the half-believing church and the unbelieving world looking on, to see how the Living God would stand by His own unchanging assurance, and would He supply an argument for the skeptic and the scoffer? Would He not, must He not, rather put new proofs of His faithfulness in the mouth of His saints, and furnish increasing arguments wherewith to silence the cavilling tongue and put to shame the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... "How, ye skeptic? Luk at 'em. Scratch 'em, and they won't bleed. Shoot 'em, and they'll pick out the bullets and paste ye wid 'em. Reason wid 'em, and they'll insult ye. Refine 'em, Jawn! Ye're crazy. Luk at thot felly down there under the hatch. He's here on his weddin' trip, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... is in opposition to first appearances, how must it fare with those which are conformable to appearances familiar from the first dawn of intelligence, and of the conclusiveness of which, from the earliest records of human thought, no skeptic has ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... from the depths of his great chair, with that everlasting dry, wrinkled smile on his lips, that smile a la Voltaire, which made people take him for a terrible skeptic. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 1776) was a celebrated Scotch historian and essayist. His most important work is "The History of England." He was a skeptic in matters of religion, and was a ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... conversation of our elders. Every new stage of our educational training provides some additional testimony on its behalf. Newspapers and novelists, orators and playwrights, even if they are little else, are at least loyal preachers of the Truth. The skeptic is not controverted; he is overlooked. It constitutes the kind of faith which is the implication, rather than the object, of thought, and consciously or unconsciously it enters largely into our personal lives as a formative influence. We may distrust ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! 'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee, Then the proud scoffer humbly bends the knee; Feels in this darksome hour there's much to do— Earth fading fast, Heaven's portals far from view. Oh, what a hopeless wretch this man must be! His very soul weeps ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... not believe in the millennium, and people say that you are a skeptic. You want to cheat us out of what you think a valuable piece of property. And you'll find yourself at the last judgment with the weight of this sin on ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... sorrowful, if not scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man, who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is driven by the rocks (of hard doctrine) and the thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of the wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed of snow, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the great German skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), appears in some of Shaw's dramas, as well as in the novels of Wells; but the poets of this age seem to have more faith than Swinburne or Matthew Arnold or some of the minor versifiers of the last ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... A lone skeptic had little chance to beat back the wave of excitement created by the young Robinson's stories. His success prompted him to concoct new tales.[12] He had seen Lloynd's wife sitting on a cross-bar in his ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... so easily and well that his early desertion of fiction is surprising. His mocking spirit has often suggested comparison with Voltaire, whom he studied and admired. He too is a skeptic and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... what HE says," cried Raby, with a sudden fury that made Grace start and open her eyes. "I know the puppy. He is what is called a divine nowadays; but used to be called a skeptic. There never was so infidel an age. Socinus was content to prove Jesus Christ a man; but Renan has gone and proved him a Frenchman. Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever. The right reverend father in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament: the Oxford doctors are ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... done?" questioned a young skeptic, running his tongue into his cheek in a skillful way, and distorting his whole face with a disagreeable leer. He began to suspect that he was being cheated into listening to ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... heavily, and especially abandoned its chance to become the party of progress. Luther himself was not only disappointed in the disaffection of Erasmus, but was sincerely rebelled by his rationalism. A man who could have the least doubt about a doctrine was to him "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." He went so far as to say that the great Dutch scholar's primary object in publishing the Greek New Testament was to make readers doubtful about the text, and that the chief end of his Colloquies was to mock all piety. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... from Paris, worth thousands of dollars, And all as to style most recherche and rare, The want of which leaves her with nothing to wear, And renders her life so drear and dyspeptic That she's quite a recluse, and almost a skeptic, For she touchingly says that this sort of grief Cannot find in Religion the slightest relief, And Philosophy has not a maxim to spare For the victims of such overwhelming despair. But the saddest, by far, of all these sad features, Is ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... alone, and therefore the gratitude of the princes of this electorate could not and never would be extinguished toward the royal house of Prussia. Frederick received these overflowing acknowledgments with the calmness of a philosopher and the smile of a skeptic. He understood mankind sufficiently to know what to expect from their oaths; to know that in the course of time there is nothing more oppressive and intolerable than gratitude, that it soon becomes a burden which they would gladly throw off their bent shoulders ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... left the Coast, I flew to New York. Ken Purdy called in John DuBarry, True's aviation editor, to hear the details. Purdy called him "John the Skeptic." After I told them what I ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... rejoined the skeptic, and with his eyes still on the tail of the disappearing Exposition car, ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... beyond words. I liked Emerson's essay on "Friendship" better than his, but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without believing that there is something ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a "tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease demanded ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... commonly considered to have exercised a great influence on Rossetti, in my opinion had none that was permanent. He was Rossetti's antithesis, and in himself as inconsequent as Rossetti was logical. He was severely and uncompromisingly rationalistic; with the conscience of a Puritan he was an absolute skeptic, with a profound contempt for all religious matters, while Rossetti, with all his irregularities, never could escape from his religious feeling, which was the part of his constitution he possessed in common with his sisters. Brown had, of the purely artistic qualities, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... always had the luck to be performed when nobody but Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Carroway was capable of wondering. Her power of judgment was not so far lost as it is in a dream—where we wonder at nothing, but cast off skeptic misery—and for the moment she seemed to be brought home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her children kissing a man who was hunting in his pocket ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Terry's mildly flavored shafts of sarcasm, he made no enemies and his kind heart and sterling honesty were respected far and near. He was considered a doubter and skeptic, and though seldom seen at church, as he had originally contributed his share when that edifice was built, his lack ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... shakes the small hand he has drawn within his arm; but he is so far a philosopher that he tells himself it is but a little thing in her life; she can bear it; she will recover from it; "and in time forget that she had been ever ill," says this good-natured skeptic to himself. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... no adequate body of data by which we may predict the birth of a genius, they have, on the other hand, given us most minute descriptions whereby we may recognize the husk containing the poetic gift. The skeptic may ask, What has the poet to do with his body? since ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... once hopeless and impious; and there is no doubt that, whatever additions may have been made to the circumstances by ignorance and a too easy belief, the views of Julian were frustrated by the occurrence of some very extraordinary event, which still finds a place even in Roman history. The skeptic may smile when he reads in the pages of a Christian Father, that flakes of fire which assumed the form of a cross settled on the dresses of the artisans and spectators; that a horseman was seen careering amid the flames; and that, when ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam. But it all depends on what you want to be filled with. Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam. But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the proper object of their trust. Like the Israelites of old, they succeed at length in escaping from the hands of oppression and tyranny, but only to wander in a desert land throughout the length of their days. This is the region where dwell the pessimist, the skeptic and the cynic—miserable mortals that have wasted on creatures the talents they should have given to their Creator, or that have otherwise failed in their conception of life, and have left unmultiplied the ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... the Academy, in which he himself had studied, and that of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.) founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics were developed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education; but these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances, which, even the skeptic must confess he is not. So long as a man has the power to change one habit, good or bad, for another, so long he is responsible for his own character, and this responsibility continues with ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth—the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... skeptic to try the goggles on and read by the light of the lamp. He knew little of the psychology of salesmanship, but with what might be called Platonic shrewdness, he sensed that once the prospect had experienced the joys of using the magic articles, he ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... Max, though of course that skeptic of a Bandy-legs had to let his eyebrows go up in an arch as he listened; but then Bandy-legs would doubt anything that savored of the uncommon. Max simply frowned at him and paid no ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... no religious scoffers, among those soldiers seriously awaiting the zero hour. In the rear areas and rest billets, the profane and irreligious word might often have been heard; but face to face with Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, the skeptic was silenced. Boys who might have been hitherto negligent in approaching the Sacraments were now the first to call to me, "Father, I want to go ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... text the worst in the Bible. Huxley thought it the best. Huxley was, as everybody knows, the Prince of Agnostics. We need not stop to ask why. Nobody who has read the story of John Stuart Mill's boyhood will wonder that Mill was a skeptic. And nobody who has read the story of Thomas Huxley's boyhood will wonder at his becoming an agnostic. As Edward Clodd, his biographer, says, 'his boyhood was a cheerless time. Reversing Matthew Arnold's ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... world. Although I had chosen the career of a clergyman,—alas! I looked upon the church, I suppose, as little more than a career!—I was not a very faithful man. I had many doubts which, as clergymen must, I concealed. By nature I suppose I had rather an incredulous mind. Not that I was a skeptic, but I was sometimes a doubter. Rather than faith, I should have much preferred to have knowledge, exact knowledge. Often I even felt ironical when confronted with the simple faith we clergymen should surely encourage, sustain, and humbly glory ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... lad, with a serious face;—but with a mocking voice," commented Don Ruy. "Tell me truly if the life of a page in the palace of the Viceroy teaches you so much of politics and holy orders that you combine the two and grow skeptic to each?" ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... not risk the chance of rebuff. How could she foretell what was in his mind and heart, how probe the depths of his feeling toward her? Perhaps he would receive her protestations in skeptic spirit. Heaven knew he had cause to! Dared ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance |
