"Skeptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment there was silence in the room, then with a skeptical note of ridicule and challenge the hunchback demanded: "Why didn't ye go ter ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... no difference with me now," said I. "I am just as skeptical as if I hadn't a chance of conversion. Why, Doctor,—well, come now,—I'll argue the case with you. In the first place, all Church history is against you. There isn't a respectable author who upholds the doctrine of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... skeptical at first about the wisdom of entrusting such power as this to a subordinate but I put my case to him squarely. I said in brief that I was sure I could pick a gang of fifty men who would do the work of seventy-five. I told him that for a year now I had been making ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... The Secretary looked skeptical. "Your discoveries were remarkably ... apt. And it does seem clear that they made the appearance of hunting you, while going to some pains not to catch you. Mr. Coburn, how can ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... pretty far gone, and all the more inclined to be skeptical. Mr. Walraven saw it, and knew that appearances were dead against him, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... effectually what to the times seemed evil. Who would now think of designating a parcel of serious savages "the praying Indians of Natick"? And yet there is a sound and a power about the words that would go far to convert the skeptical aborigines in their own despite. Why, there was something rich and nervous in the talk of the very lawmakers. "The accursed sect of the Quakers,"—what a fine spirit such an accusative case gives to the dry formula of a legal enactment! the beat of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this, rectification could never occur—one belief opposes the other or drives it away. This ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... little about Thibet. Foreigners are not permitted to enter the country, and only a few venturesome explorers have endured the hardships and faced the dangers of a visit to that forbidden land. Indeed, it is so perilous an undertaking that a skeptical public frequently takes the liberty to doubt the statements of the men who have gone there. But all agree that it is the hermit of nations, and its people are under the control of cruel and ignorant Buddhist priests, who endeavor to prevent them from acquiring ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... "Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forced to admit that even though I had traveled a long distance to place Bowen Tyler's manuscript in the hands of his father, I was still a trifle skeptical as to its sincerity, since I could not but recall that it had not been many years since Bowen had been one of the most notorious practical jokers of his alma mater. The truth was that as I sat in the Tyler library at Santa Monica I commenced ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sanctification of the Temple. He was the author of the ordinance forbidding any one to ascend the Temple mount whose term of uncleanness had not expired, even though he had taken the ritual bath. (29) His implicit trust in God made him a complete contrast to his skeptical father. He turned to God and implored His help when to human reason help seemed an utter impossibility. In the war with the Arameans, an enemy held his sword at Jehoshaphat's very throat, ready to deal the fatal blow, but the king ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of the preternatural and of popular superstitions as literary material, after a rationalizing and skeptical age, is signalized by such ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... pile of work which lay before me. Then my eyes turned to an open quarto book. It was the late Professor Deeping's "Assyrian Mythology," and embodied the result of his researches into the history of the Hashishin, the religious murderers of whose existence he had been so skeptical. To the Chief of the Order, the terrible Sheikh Hassan of Aleppo, he referred as a "fabled being"; yet it was at the hands of this "fabled being" that he had met his end! How incredible it all seemed. But I knew full well how ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... a new heaven and a new earth. The revival of Greek literature gave to the cultivated class a "renaissance," a rebirth, of speculative thought, of intellectual beauty, of delight in human activities for their own sake. It was a new birth in some of the old pagan sensuality, skeptical of heaven or hell; worse than the old sensuality because it trampled down the finer purity which Christianity had bred. In others it was a new birth to the pursuit of moral and social good, inspired by the master spirits of Judaism and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... not be, allowed any longer, if public opinion, or the public conscience, was once roused. Let people laugh at Celtic monuments as much as they like, if they will only help to preserve their laughing-stocks from destruction. Let antiquarians be as skeptical as they like, if they will only prevent the dishonest withdrawal of the evidence against which their skepticism is directed. Are lake-dwellings in Switzerland, are flint-deposits in France, is kitchen-rubbish ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... disposed to look upon it as a "yarn;" but the souvenir which Jake carried on his face was evidence that could not be doubted, and Cummings soon convinced the skeptical sailing master that the Chan Santa Cruz really had ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where bronze-brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing loveliness disported themselves on the long white beaches, or loitered the lazy days away beneath the palms. But I went there skeptical at heart, for, ever since I journeyed six thousand miles to see the women for whom Circassia has long been undeservedly famous, I have listened with doubt and distrust to the tales told by returned travelers of the nymphs whom they had found, leading an Arcadian existence, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... I only hope that state of things will last." And Winifred smiled and sighed at once, as if she were skeptical concerning of the ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... somnolent cattle. The sky was cloudy, and only here and there a few stars gleamed diamond-like in the heavens, but threw insufficient light to aid the eyes which sought to penetrate the surrounding gloom. The old hand threw himself back on his pillow in skeptical irritation. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression—the copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Austrian Crown Prince and the subsequent events were exciting, but it was only when Russia sent that one word "Mobilize" to Serbia that we suspected serious results. Even the summer visitors from the States exhibited signs of excitement, yet they were skeptical of the chances of war; that is, war that would really affect us! My newspaper in Montreal wired for me to come down to do war cartoons and I left my father and hiked to ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... offers to engage in mercantile pursuits, as well as failing health, he had decided to resign. As his voice, and the apparent desire to use it upon any and all possible occasions, showed no cessation of energy, a few skeptical ones were inclined to doubt that his health was seriously affected, and as it was over a year before he accepted any of the flattering offers, they believed he must have had hard work to find them. For the rest the town resumed the old-time ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... destroy fair-minded scholarship—the very essence of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe—More in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself—remained Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen, did not become Protestant but adhered to the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the other side of the world, surrendered to Newman's influence. It is uncertain if they had ever spoken to each other at Oxford; yet that subtle pervasive intellect which captured for years the critical and skeptical mind of Mark Pattison, and indirectly transformed the Church of England after Newman himself had left it, now, reaching across the world, laid hold on Arnold's son, when Arnold himself was no longer there to fight it. A ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... generalities will fall into dust before the wand of a magician who has some eminently particular business with you. You have sounded the depths, and found them shallow; you have tested values, and they are less than nothing, and vanity; you have emptied the pincushion, and only bran is there. My skeptical friend, a sharp needle is there yet, and it will prick your finger: there are depths that you know nothing about, and heights too, it may be: there are thrills of life that will go through all your veins, and show you that you are not as near dead as ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the animal to be a small one; but I am skeptical of their ever attaining the growth of a tall man, though I bear in mind that full-grown animals will probably differ as ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but giants of false belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom he looked with the greatest favor, could he have acquired his burning ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... I was skeptical, but she quoted several eminent anthropologists to support her statement that the Eskimo were better developed mentally than other people, and that in simplicity of life, honesty, generosity, provision for the young and the old, in absence of brutality, murder and wars, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... from me and fixed them on the floor. After a pause he resumed, in emphatic accents:—"Well, I have lived to this age in unbelief. To credit or trust in miraculous agency was foreign to my nature, but now I am no longer skeptical. Call me to any bar, and exact from me an oath that you have twice been dead and twice recalled to life; that you move about invisibly, and change your place by the force, not of muscles, but of thought, and I ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... ribald buffoonery of LUCIAN, who first invented this species of burlesque. His object was to make the gods ridiculous. Whether the spirit which moved him was a mocking, skeptical spirit, like that of Voltaire, or whether, as we think more probable, he was a bitter satirist made bitter by the earnestness of his conviction, and ridiculing the gods only as a reductio ad absurdum of their pretensions, the fact is indubitable, that he ridiculed them in a polemical spirit, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... much practise in the Te-hua words when he tried to tell them what the peach was like, and what the pear was like, and the youth were skeptical as to peaches big as ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... be a very great mistake to suppose that when reaction follows collapse, in cases in which alcohol has been given, this result is always due to the alcohol. I have seen so many cases of severe collapse recover without alcohol that I cannot but be skeptical as to its necessity, and even as to its value. I was much struck many years ago by a case of post partum hemorrhage which was so severe that convulsions set in. I should then have given brandy if there had been any to give, but there was none ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... If you are skeptical, let me beseech you to join the children in a Free Kindergarten, and play with them. You will be convinced, not through your head, perhaps, but through your heart. I remember converting such a grim female once! You know Henry James says, "Some women ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the fact that some of us were skeptical of the outcome. That a man of sixty-five should have a thirst for learning was not remarkable. But that a man whose life had been spent in scenes of excitement, who had been associated with deeds and events that stir the blood when we read ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the prisoner's distress genuine, but, somehow, Coquenil was skeptical; he himself had eaten nothing since midday, he had been too busy and absorbed, and he was none the worse for it; besides, he remembered what a hearty luncheon the wood carver had eaten and he could not quite believe in this sudden exhaustion. Several times, furthermore, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... bulk of her correspondence diverted her mind from its immediate duty. She failed to catch the instructor's eye, and the recitation proceeded without her assistance. Priscilla watched her from the back seat as she read the Yale letter with a skeptical frown, and made a grimace over the blue and the yellow; but before she had reached the Hotel A——, Priscilla was paying attention to the recitation again. It was coming her way, and she was anxiously ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Susan was skeptical of this, even fearful. She had not forgotten Keith's frenzied avoidance of such callers in the old days. But to her surprise now Keith welcomed Mazie joyously—so joyously that Susan began to suspect that behind the joyousness lay an eagerness to welcome anything ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... may have thought otherwise, being of a skeptical turn on very many points, but his doubts did not break forth in active denial, and he was rather disaffected than rebellious, At one period, this gentleman had taken a part in active life at home, and possibly might have been eager to share its rewards; but in latter days he did not seem to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sides, exclamations of amazement and horror broke out when he had finished. Only the chief sat regarding him in silence, a skeptical pucker lifting the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... speculations, to use the resources of the Third National to carry a part of his loans and to furnish capital at such times as quick resources were necessary. In the beginning the old gentleman had been a little nervous and skeptical, but as time had worn on and nothing but profit eventuated, he grew bolder ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... for worse afterwards. Thus, probably, it was that she got over the shock of that wedding-drive, and was again the bright, affectionate, trusting and winning woman whom he had described before and was to describe again to his skeptical ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... I was skeptical as to this special brand of philanthropy, but I was touched by the grief of her disappointed hopes. I knew the particular sting. At the same time my hand twitched to shake her for going into this thing in so impractical a way. Teaching ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... put in Harding. "But not a forger," retorted Kent firmly. Harding's only rejoinder was a skeptical smile as he turned ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... a force en echelon: one line may get into trouble and recoil, while the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal vis medicatrix which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the Unknowable, it is only with the butt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... there is often a deep reverence for Him. Thousands have seen the cross of Christ standing among the ruins in the villages of Belgium and Northern France, when all about seems to be battered and wrecked. The old skeptical theories and captious criticisms of pre-war days are little heard during this awful time. Generally speaking, the facts of the gospel narrative are not disputed. They believe in Christ as the revelation of God. They have no difficulty with the doctrine of the divinity ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... was during this interval, so dismal to many, that to the amazement of all hands, ten men were reported by the master-at-arms to be intoxicated. They were brought up to the mast, and at their appearance the doubts of the most skeptical were dissipated; but whence they had obtained their liquor no one could tell. It was observed, however at the time, that the tarry knaves all smelled of lavender, like ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... agent on that score was not again to be the fate of China Aster; for, not being of that skeptical spirit which refuses to trust customers, his third venture resulted, through bad debts, in almost a total loss—a bad blow for the candle-maker. Neither did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs. One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was besought to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... skeptical. "I wish I could believe it. I feel as if I were playing with a rattlesnake. He's treacherous! I think we'd ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... expedient of introducing pagan personages. A fair young priestess of the temple of Neith, in the sacred city of Sais—where people of all climes collected to witness the festival of lamps— becoming skeptical of the miraculous attributes of the statues she had been trained to serve and worship, and impelled by an earnest love of truth to seek a faith that would satisfy her reason and purify her heart, is induced to question minutely the religious tenets ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... was the nurse of whom he had heard, setting her down as probably some attractive, sympathetic girl whom the soldiers, sentimental and wounded, endowed with imaginary virtues. He was not sentimental and, beholding her in this caf, although evidently held in respect, he was inclined to be skeptical regarding her virtue. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... kind, Rutherford! No, no... we must go back of all that! It is in the hearts of the people that we must erect our defenses. It is the spirit of this godless and skeptical age that is undermining order. We must teach the people the truths of religion. We must inculcate lessons of sobriety and thrift, of reverence for constituted authority. We must set our faces against these new preachers of license and infidelity... we must go back to the old-time faith... ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... for the blissful young Jenisons. The letters from the far West were full of promise. Even the skeptical David was compelled to admit to himself that the silver lining was discernible against the black cloud that Mary Braddock had so deliberately ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Successful Farming was at one time skeptical as to the use of dynamite in tree planting, but has been convinced from personal observation of its use in large commercial orchards, and from letters from various subscribers, that it is an important and valuable ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... devotion to the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater gains, better food, and stricter medical ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... were realities. He asks me 'What does M. Renan make of sin?' Eh bien, je crois que je le supprime." But it is just because Amiel is profoundly sensitive to the problems of evil and responsibility, and M. Renan dismisses them with this half-tolerant, half-skeptical smile, that M. Renan's "Souvenirs" inform and entertain us, while the "Journal Intime" makes a deep impression on that moral sense which is at the root ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in Clara's eyes which showed that, though as yet a mere girl in years, she had waked to the consciousness of emotions which belong to womanhood. She was pretty, and of course she knew it, for I am skeptical of those characters who grow up to mature beauty, all unsuspicious of the fatal dower, and are some day startled by a discovery of their possessions. She knew, too, that female loveliness was an all-potent spell, and, depressing as were the circumstances ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... land. If only we could have a badger, we could almost hear them say to each other in dog language, a strong, morose, savage badger! Alas! we are wasting our days in idleness, our talents rust from disuse! Finally, Uncle Jim remained the only frankly skeptical member. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... thus primarily inquiring and skeptical. It queries the usual; it tries, as we say, to penetrate beneath the surface. Common sense, for example, gives suction as the explanation of water rising in a pump. But where, as at a great height above ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the conduct of her countrymen. At first she believed them; but there was occasionally a general, who was obliged to do justice to his enemy in order to obtain justice for himself; and Frances became somewhat skeptical on the subject of the inefficiency of her countrymen. Colonel Wellmere was among those who delighted most in expending his wit on the unfortunate Americans; and, in time, Frances began to listen to his eloquence with great suspicion, and sometimes ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pharisees stood for the affirmative while the Sadducees denied.[177] Josephus avers—the doctrine of the Sadducees is that the soul and body perish together; the law is all that they are concerned to observe.[178] They were "a skeptical school of aristocratic traditionalists; adhering ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... does not eventually become skeptical of the whole human race, it is because his experience has shown him that honor and vice may walk side by side without contamination; that virtue and crime may be closely connected, and yet no stain be left upon the white ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... or insignificant, but he wore a rather battered aspect; there were deep lines running from the corners of his mouth, and crowsfeet had started under the gray eyes which, in their turn, looked more skeptical than ardent, rather mocking than eager. Yet when he smiled, his face became not merely pleasant, but confidentially pleasant; he seemed to smile especially to and for the person to whom he was talking; and his voice was notably agreeable, soft and clear—the voice of a high-bred man, but ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... the philistine, in particular, is far from settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has possessed the plain man's joyless fidelity for years, and he has never discovered any charm in her. The poet possesses a peculiar power of insight which reveals in goodness hidden ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and imagination to wit and understanding. The serious, exalted mood of the Civil War and the Commonwealth had spent itself and issued in disillusion. There followed a generation of wits, logical, skeptical, and prosaic, without earnestness, as without principle. The characteristic literature of such a time is criticism, satire, and burlesque, and such, indeed, continued to be the course of English literary history for a century after the return of the Stuarts. The age ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... would sometimes take a more skeptical turn. A certain Mr. Edwardes—a most amusing man—used to describe a call which he paid one Sunday afternoon to a farmer near Buckfastleigh, whom he found reading his Bible. Mr. Edwardes congratulated him on the appropriate nature of his studies. The farmer pushed the book aside, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... one of relief. She did not know what she had expected to see when she turned; certainly something more dire and terrible than Tom Chavis. But when she thought of his past actions, of his cynical, skeptical, and significant looks at her; of his manner at this minute; and reflected upon the fact that she was alone, she realized that chance could have sent ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "They sounded y^e harbor & founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into y^e land & found diverse cornfeilds & little running brooks, a place fitt for situation: at least it was y^e best they could find." The Pilgrims, then, were quite oblivious of the rock, the historians are entirely skeptical concerning it, and the following generation so indifferent to the tradition which was gradually formulating, that in the course of events it was half-covered with a wharf, and used as ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... it's up to us," the man answered. Noting the skeptical look in Gregory's face, he went on: "Don't make the mistake of trying to judge a boat from the dock, Mr. Gregory. 'You can't tell by the looks of a frog how far he can jump,' or how fast either. Barrows has been at the game long enough to quit guessing. When he tackles a proposition like ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... etc.; but to our great pleasure each page corresponding closely, save in orthography and syntax, with a page of the new manuscript, and the page numbers of the old running higher than those of the new! Here was evidence which one could lay before a skeptical world that the transcriber had not expanded the work of the original memoirist. The manuscript passed into my possession, our Creole lady-correspondent reiterating to the end her inability to divine what could be ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... attitude," said Krech, "was that of a polite but skeptical child listening to a bedtime story. I soon convinced him of its importance, though. He says ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... he got an explanation of the existence of the Welsh language among these "Doegs," or sought to know any thing in regard to their traditional history, he omits entirely to say so. Without meaning to doubt his veracity, one feels skeptical, and desires a more intelligent and complete account of ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... supernatural, and that, to the accompaniment of considerable gibing by the men, he told a ghost story that set the women to looking back over their shoulders into the dark corners beyond the zone of candle-light. All of us, I remember, except Sperry and Mrs. Dane, were skeptical as to the supernatural, and Herbert Robinson believed that while there were so-called sensitives who actually went into trance, the controls which took possession of them were buried personalities of their own, released during trance from ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... evening. One of them with a skeptical mind had just rejected the Bible because it did not tell him the things that he would know. He insisted on knowing how the worlds were made, and demanded that he should be told concerning the origin of heaven and why God permitted it, and because ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... skeptical, he returned to the excavation and scooped out yet another collection. This time there could be no mistake. Nature's own alchemy had fashioned a veritable ingot. There were small lumps in the ore which would need alloy at the mint before they could be issued as ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... existed alongside of ancestor worship from the earliest times. At any rate, we find their worship growing rapidly within the period of authentic history and undermining the domestic worship, while at a still later period skeptical philosophy undermined both religions. Along with the decay of ancestor worship went many economic and political changes which marked the dissolution of the patriarchal family. Let us see what some of the steps ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... was no southern Wilberforce that would have arisen, no southern Grant, Macaulay or Sharpe, who, like the English philanthropists, would have stood the fierce beating of angry billows, and by patience, kindness, arguments, facts, eloquence, and Christian love, convinced the skeptical, enlightened the ignorant, excited the benevolent, and finally have carried the day at the South, by the same means and measures, as secured the event in England? All experience is in favour of the method which the Abolitionists ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... man of the court, to the yet worse position of an absentee creditor.[2303] Thus, as to the clergy, it had almost separated the head from the trunk by superposing (through the concordat) a staff of gentleman prelates, rich, ostentatious, unemployed, and skeptical, upon an army of plain, poor, laborious, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... penetrated the ovary of the young lady, and, with some spermatozoa upon it, had impregnated her. With this conviction he approached the young man and told him the circumstances; the soldier appeared skeptical at first, but consented to visit the young mother; a friendship ensued which soon ripened into a happy marriage, and the pair had three children, none resembling, in the same degree as the first, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... are kept profoundly hidden from public scrutiny, and when the evidences of success are presented in the doubtful form of specimens which the public has no means of tracing directly to the process, the public is apt to be skeptical, and to express skepticism often in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... to like this place almost as well as the one under the cascade," remarked Will, who had been rather skeptical all along. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... of this ignorance and disbelief, and it works whether he believes it or not. Just so the skillful operator in Cosmic Therapeutics can generate, control and direct the power of the Cosmic consciousness which he understands, and it brings its results whether the skeptical mind ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... the gentleman to whom I am indebted for the above narrative if there were no skeptical surmises in regard to the origin of the disturbance. He replied, that he had heard but one,—namely, that the administrator of the deceased Baron's estate might, from motives of interest and to have the field to himself, have resorted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and selfish and had grown careless and neglectful of their duty. Their interpretation of the glowing prophecies of the exilic and pre-exilic prophets had led them to expect to realize the Messianic kingdom immediately upon their return. They were, therefore, discouraged and grew skeptical (2:17) because of the inequalities of life seen everywhere. This doubt of divine justice had caused them to neglect vital religion and true piety had given place to mere formality. They had not relapsed into idolatry ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now cease ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... true that there is a great distrust of the priests amongst the Italians. The young men hate them—or think they do—or say they do. Most educated men in middle life are materialists, and of course unfriendly to the priests. There are even women who are skeptical about religion. But I suspect that the largest number of all those who talk loudest against the priests are really subject to them. You must consider how very intimately they are bound up with every family in the most solemn relations ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... was triumphant. Even the skeptical Cobden, who had damned so much in his day, could not question the lad's mastery. It did not occur to him ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... I ask, are we not fascinated by the ghost story because, no matter what may be the scientific or skeptical bent of our minds, in our inmost souls, secretly perhaps, we are as full of superstition as an obeah man—only we don't let ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... feet tall, burdened by the weight of rank and the ripe old age of twenty-four or twenty-five years, and was somewhat skeptical of McGee's judgement. He wondered, vaguely, what this youthful, freckle-faced, five-foot-six Royal Flying Corps lieutenant could know about nice work. Why, he couldn't be a day over eighteen—in fact, he might be less than that. A ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... agricultural sector, and a diversified industrial base. Over the past decade, however, the country has suffered recurring economic problems of inflation, external debt, capital flight, and budget deficits. Growth in 2000 was a negative 0.8%, as both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. The economic situation worsened in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... retrospectively and is parallel to the Voices of the historical Joan. So too her recognition of the King, whom she has never seen before; her reading of his mind; her wonderful influence over the French army, and much more of the kind, are part of a well-authenticated tradition with which the skeptical mind must make its peace as best it can. And the feat is not altogether easy. The modern rationalist will say, and is no doubt right in saying, that if we knew all the pertinent facts accurately from first to last, the Maid's story would fit perfectly into our scheme of scientific ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... seeing behind the scenes. And always the friendly nods from everyone, even though the waiters especially looked ready to expire in pools of perspiration. At Monsieur Le Bon Chef's counter some sticky waiter had ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The heat had made him skeptical. "Call that beef?" The waiter next him glared at him with a chuckle. "An' must we then always lead in the cow for you to see?" A large Irishman breezed up to my Bon Chef. "Two beef a la modes. Make it snappy, ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... peculiarly skeptical. He and another village functionary, of whom we have spoken before, the grave-digger, are always the daring spirits of the neighborhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which these malicious spirits are capable, that they ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the Bremen steamer was carrying me to New York. Day after day passes and all you see about you is an unbroken waste of water, an unrelieved, a hopeless monotony of water. You know that a change will come, but this knowledge is confined to your brain. Your senses are skeptical ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... first night we camped in the Kasai I had begun to think I never would see one, and I went ashore both skeptical and discouraged. We had stopped, not at a wood post, but at a place on the river's bank previously untouched by man, where there was a stretch of beach, and then a higher level with trees and tall grasses. Driven deep in this beach were the footprints of a large elephant. They looked ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... an exclamation of skeptical impatience, and the door below slammed with a bang. Laura quietly closed her door, through which Mrs. Farley's angry mutterings could still be heard indistinctly. Laura sighed, and, walking to the table, sat down again. Annie looked at her a ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... mouth could dissolve stones in the bladder seemed a priori unlikely. Yet there was considerable authority that this took place; many persons had reported that this was a fact. Boyle kept an open mind. He might be highly skeptical in regard to the claims for any particular medication, but he did not deny the principle involved. The possibility that some fluid, when swallowed, could have a particular specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... thinks he can scare me into leaving his Indians alone." Her lips trembled and tightened. "I am a woman, and I'll show him what a woman can do. He has lived among the Indians until he thinks he owns them. He is hard, and domineering, and uncompromising, and skeptical. And yet—" What gave her pause was so intangible, so chaotic, in her own mind as to form itself ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... she must have taken at least a few lessons in pronunciation from some of the leading members of WALLACK'S company. Still, her way of walking blindly into the table, and falling over casual chairs, ought to convince the most skeptical person that her English accent is not yet what it should be. And in general, her walk and conversation in this scene demonstrate that even the most carefully simulated somnambulism may not resemble in all respects the most approved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... conviction to the most skeptical. That a Greek priest could read a lie, never once entered the heads of these ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Mauclerc has no story, and his Marcolf is a punning clown rather than a cunning sage. Marcolf, who is Solomon's brother in a German version, has no trust in a woman even when dead. So, in another version, Marcolf is at once supernaturally cunning, and extremely skeptical as to the morality and constancy of woman. But it is unnecessary to enter into the problem more closely. Suffice it to have established that in Zabara's "Book of Delight" we have a hitherto unsuspected adaptation of the Solomon-Marcolf legend. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... serve by stealth their respective governments; but never, it was true, a woman of the caste of Cecelia Brooke; unless, indeed, this were an actress of surpassing talent, gifted to hoodwink the most skeptical and least ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... world. A statement from you will carry more weight with the girls than anything I could possibly tell them. It will convince the doubters, you know. There are sure to be some who will insist on being skeptical." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... moral principles which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so very "moral" that they have no working contact with the average affairs of every-day ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be sure. But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more on the way here from wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we know some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... a minute; I'm coming to that," said Miss Daggett firmly. "As I was telling you, this work is a complete library in itself. A careful perusal of the specimen pages will convince the most skeptical. Turning to page four hundred and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... the Englishman applauded, perfunctory and skeptical. "Bli'me if you didn't mike me forget where I was—'ad me thinking I was in 'Yde Park, you did, listening to a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... for the young man. They took him to a tavern at the corner of Third Street, and there over the Madeira the governor proposed that Benjamin should start an independent shop, promising in this case to give him the government printing. Benjamin was skeptical, but at last it was decided that he should go to Boston and seek help of his father; and in April, 1724, with a flattering letter from the governor, he set out for his old home. Benjamin's father, however, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... they showed themselves skeptical about our future, they proved most sympathetic over our past. Our description of the Friday footprints especially brought out much fellow-feeling. They knew the spot well, they said, and it was very bad. In fact it was called the Oni ga Jo, or place of many devils, for its ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... had already learned, was as skeptical as myself in regard to Madre Moreno's spells, for the laughing manner in which she had spoken of her aunt's charms and witcheries, when we were on the hill and even in the presence of the Madre herself, convinced ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... "Don't be skeptical!—Look at that pink mustache-cup over there on that little table! Who do you suppose had a mustache and drank out of that cup? It couldn't have been Sophronisba herself? I insist that it was a black-mustached Confederate with a red sash around ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... tell her all he knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs. Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her, and said she was already in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... skeptical: "If you can show me good water near here, I'll be learning something. I didn't know there was a water hole within ten miles—but I don't know this lower country as well ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... author airs some cynical and skeptical views in religion and ethics which are not of great critical interest. His ideas about "sentimental unbelievers" and "political chastity," his simulated disapproval of contemptuous references to the clergy, the attack on John Hill's Inspector ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... present spokesmen of Socialism are, like Kautsky, somewhat skeptical as to the necessity of an alliance between the working class and this section of the middle class, others accept it without qualification. If, then, we consider at once the middle ground taken by the former group ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... accident to Mr. Watrous, who proved skeptical, though the Spy was forced to admit that the hand ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and these factors dry the heart as surely as they impoverish the scalp. Consequently, juries (in bulk, be it understood; individual jurors may, perhaps, retain the emotional equipment of a Chatterton) are skeptical when asked to accept the vagaries of the artistic temperament in extenuation ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... herself, however, remained skeptical; she alone treated the matter lightly, and although she did finally consent to lie down, it was merely to please the others ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... spread over the depressing mustard yellow paint of the woodwork with its obviously false graining and deepened the blackness of the fireplace. Throughout the reading of the Scripture Edward Dunsack never shifted his slumped position; his face, with smudged closed eyes, seemed fixed in a skeptical smile. The hollows of his temples were green. The reading ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of applause greeted this announcement. They fell to embracing one another and their eyes filled with tears. Pecson alone preserved his skeptical smile. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... equally astonished to see Jovita's red rose crest and black mantilla glide by, and followed her unvarying smile and jesting salutation up to the shadow of the crumbling portal. At vespers nearly all Buckeye, hitherto virtuously skeptical and good-humoredly secure in Works without Faith, made a point of attending; it was alleged by some to see if Jovita's glossy Indian-inky eyes would suffer aberration in her devotions. But the rose-crested head was never lifted ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... forgotten that English drainers tell us of tools and their use, whereby drains may be open twenty inches lower than the feet of the workman; but we have never chanced to see that operation, and are skeptical as to the fact that work can thus be performed economically, except in very peculiar soils. That such a crack may be thus opened, is not doubted; but we conceive of no means by which earth, that requires the pick, can be moved to advantage, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... forms of currency, which measure in a settled country would have been a sensible economic pressure, the Archangel government set a date when not forty-eight but fifty-six roubles might be exchanged for forty new roubles. Then a date for sixty-four, then for seventy-two and then eighty. Thus the skeptical peasant and the suspicious soldier saw his old roubles steadily decline in exchange value for the new roubles. Of course they had always grabbed all the counterfeit stuff and used it in exchange with no compunctions. That ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... and more especially in the organic world, inferred, by induction, the existence of God from what has seemed to them the wonderful adaptation of the different organs and parts of the animal body to its, apparently, designed ends! Imagine a mind of this skeptical character, in all honesty and under its best reason, after finding itself obliged to reject the evidence of revelation, to commence a search after the Creator, in the light of natural theology. He goes through the proof for final cause ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Augustus Schlegel (1767-1845) was rather comprehensive than endowed with original and creative genius. His poems are elegant, but not remarkable. Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), like his brother, was opposed to the skeptical character of some of the philosophical theories of his day, and after entering the Catholic Church he expressed his religious and polemical opinions in his works on literature. His lectures on "The Philosophy ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... conventional piety, no doubt sincere so far as it goes; and he always took a strong intellectual interest in the problems of medieval theology; but he became steadily and quietly independent in his philosophic outlook and indeed rather skeptical of all ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... on the largest scale, and our pay-roll is, naturally, the largest. It furnishes the biggest incentive. In addition, the Dixie Queen is the farthest out from town, and there are many excellent spots for a holdup between town and the mine. Oh, don't look skeptical. I've tried trusted messengers by roundabout trails, and guards and all that. They even held up a convoy on one occasion. I've set traps. I've done everything. But now I've a new idea, ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts |
