"Skepticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the education of the deaf was received with scarcely concealed skepticism, and despite the enthusiasm of the promoters and despite the cordial interest manifested in many quarters, there were not a few doubters. Efforts to educate the deaf were even declared quixotic and absurd. When the state of Illinois was erecting a building to be used as a school, it was ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... grant—not by those who only know a little; but by those who are well informed, you probably would be. The fact is, from a too ready credulity, we have now turned to almost a total skepticism, unless we have ocular demonstration. In the times of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and others,—say in the fifteenth century, when there were but few travelers and but little education, a traveler might assert almost any thing, and gain credence; latterly a traveler hardly ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circumstances so wondrous after five years of separation. Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... phrenzy phrensy pinchers pincers plow plough poney pony potatoe potato quere query recognize recognise reindeer raindeer reinforce re-enforce restive restiff ribbon riband rince rinse sadler saddler sallad salad sceptic skeptic sceptical skeptical scepticism skepticism segar cigar seignor seignior serjeant sergeant shoar shore soothe sooth staunch stanch streight straight suitor suiter sythe scythe tatler tattler thresh thrash thwak thwack tipler tippler tranquility tranquillity tripthong triphthong trissyllable trisyllable valice valise vallies ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... take a great deal of this on faith; in fact, none of it was susceptible of proof; but I have not been able since to experience all the skepticism which usually replaces the impression left by sympathy with such supposed occurrences. The thing was not quite what we call uncanny; the people were so honest, both of them, that the morbid character of like situations was ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... to make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import was noncommittal and even contained a tang of skepticism troubled him not a whit. The chief thing was that he had wrested from the manager an opportunity, no matter how grudgingly accorded, to show what he was worth. He could farm and he knew it and he had no doubt that he could demonstrate the fact to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... never known the miraculous picture to be uncovered during a drought, without the desired result immediately following. In cases of long continued rains, its intervention has been equally happy. I have heard several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous qualities of the picture, hint that the barometer was consulted on these occasions; else, say they, why was not the picture uncovered before the mischief had gone so far? What an idea is ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... successful steam locomotion in England, and a discussion began as to the comparative merits of railways and canals. For several years horse-power was proposed to be employed, but before actual work began the superiority of steam had been demonstrated. In the face of indifference, skepticism, and active opposition, which brought about discouraging delays, the road was built, and the first railroad train entered Pittsfield May 4, 1841. That week occurred the first accident. An old man jumped off ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the opposite pole from credulity is an unwarrantable historical skepticism. The story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh, that when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and was engaged in writing his History of the World, he heard the sounds of a fracas in the prison-yard. On inquiry of those who were concerned ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... expected by the farmers of the State, but gradually their confidence waned. As they saw the new professor walking over the farm in a dilettantish way, superintending operations with gloved hands, and never touching any implement, doubts arose which soon ripened into skepticism. Typical were the utterances of our farm manager. He was a plain, practical farmer, who had taken the first prize of the State Agricultural Society for the excellence of his own farm; and, though he at first indulged in high hopes regarding the new professor, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... institution, had for the Scripture lesson in the chapel the "Resurrection." When he had made it plain and simple for the comprehension of the new pupils, some of the ideas, brought out by the lesson caused great astonishment, and even consternation among them. The little fellows shook their heads in utter skepticism at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... hour to pass, the city reads. Crimes, scandals, horrors, holocausts, burglaries, arsons, murders, deceptions. The city reads with a vague, dull skepticism. Who are these people of the newspaper columns? Lusting scoundrels, bandits, heroes, wild lovers, madmen? Not in the streets or the houses that tick-tock through the night.... Somewhere else. A troupe of mummers wandering unseen behind ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is a classic example of discordant personality. You all remember his half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan, his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own weakness of will when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown off the shackles of sensuality and dedicated ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had been brought to God at one of our meetings. She was converted at the same time. She had brought two of her daughters to the meeting, desiring that they too should know Christ. I said to the mother: "How is it with your skepticism now?" "Oh," said she, "it is all gone." When Christ gets into the heart, atheism must go out; if a man will only come and take one trustful, loving look at the Saviour, there will be no desire ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... Sudermann the novelist. Sudermann the dramatist is a mere mechanician.)... The younger men in all countries, in so far as they challenge the current sentimentality at all, seem to move irresistibly toward the same disdainful skepticism. Consider the last words of "Riders to the Sea." Or Gorky's "Nachtasyl." Or Frank Norris' "McTeague." Or Stephen Crane's "The Blue Hotel." Or the ironical fables of Dunsany. Or Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt." Or George Moore's ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... so the march of mankind in general is taken in the direction of the hidden forces of nature. Doctors are now compelled to join the ranks of students in psychology and follow their patrons into the broader field of mental therapeutics. There is no time for lingering, no time for skepticism or doubt or hesitation. He who lingers is lost, for the entire race ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... of the true relations of skepticism to affirmative and negative belief, the philosophical reader must be ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... other as easily as across the lines of adjoining farms. In this respect he resembled many a normal youth, except that this impression had lingered with him a little longer than was usual; for faith is always instinctive, while skepticism is the result of experience and reflection. Having as yet only wandered around the edges of the sacred groves of wisdom where these pitiless teachers break the sweet shackles of their pupils, he still thought the thoughts of childhood and instinctively obeyed the injunction of Emerson, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... But skepticism aroused Blaze's indignation. With elaborate sarcasm he retorted: "I reckon that's why my best team of mules run away and dragged me through a ten-acre patch of grass burrs—on my belly, eh? It's a wonder I wasn't killed. I reckon I smoked so much that I give a tobacco ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out straight in front of him. Shy away from these things that end in an ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain in ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... it a century or two too late, for by the eighteenth century skepticism had begun to undermine those firm foundations of belief which Mr. Hughes still possesses. For him a straight line is the shortest distance between two points,—Einstein ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's impossible armies? If much that we read as literal history turns out legend and myth, are we to find a painful alternative between a blind credulity and as blind a skepticism? We follow this same re-reading of Roman and Grecian story untroubled, and see the heroes of our childhood turn into races and sun-myths without calling the Muse of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... President of the Society of Antiquaries, brought out his own "edition" of the poems, with a commentary providing extensive historical proof of what Bryant "ascertained."[8] The remarks of Warton and Tyrwhitt suddenly seemed hasty and superficial. Warton had clearly outlined his reasons for skepticism, but he offered to show "the greatest deference to decisions of much higher authority."[9] Tyrwhitt had also hesitated to be dogmatic. He saw fit to suggest that, since Chatterton had always been equivocal, the authenticity ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... life he used to lock the outer doors of his house twice a day and then engage in private prayer; on the other hand, friends of Burton who knew him and were with him almost to the last have received this statement with skepticism. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... are unlikely to serve as a panacea, given the extent to which export success depends on higher quality standards and other factors. The economy remains vulnerable to higher fuel prices, poor agricultural weather, and the skepticism of foreign investors. Also, the presence of an illegal separatist regime in Moldova's Transnistria region continues to be a drag ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... workmanship of God. But as the current of its doctrines is so entirely opposed to our natural inclinations, as to render a moral renovation indispensable to a perception of the glory of revealed truth; all such ground of skepticism is removed. ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... stood, he did look on the event with very considerable skepticism. Doctor Azol's death, in that particular form, seemed too much of a coincidence. For, beside himself, only Azol knew that another person already had suddenly and mysteriously lost consciousness on Harvest Moon. Only Azol therefore might expect that the ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... imagination. None the less is there an up-welling, genuine affection, that for the time, commands and absorbs woman's entire being. It is possible, that what is treated here as a jest, and there, as a matter of skepticism, may exist in some true hearts, suddenly conceived, yet persevered ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... greatly more than he actually did, seeing that we now find him adequate to the origination of vitality and organization in its two great kingdoms, plant and animal. But, still confining ourselves with cautious skepticism within the limits of our argument, we continue to hold that, as fishes of a high and reptiles of a low order, with trees of the cone-bearing family, are the most perfect specimens of their respective classes which the producing Cause ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... them if, out of interest, they will conform to yours. An exercise of authority on this point amounts, in my opinion, to an act of tyranny, and it can only tend to promote insincerity, and, perhaps, engender skepticism in its object. Nothing is, indeed, so dangerous as to unsettle the faith of the lower classes, who have neither time nor opportunity of fairly considering subjects of ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... But there was a kind of reassurance in such hearty skepticism. With each passing minute, that huge ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... was in a condition of spiritual deadness. Bishoprics and livings were sold and given to political favorites. Clergymen, like Swift and Lawrence Sterne, were worldly in their lives and immoral in their writings, and were practically unbelievers. The growing religious skepticism appeared in the Deist controversy. Numbers of men in high position were Deists; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, and Pope's brilliant friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the head of the Tory ministry, whose political writings had much influence upon his young French acquaintance, Voltaire. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair of thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They yearned for magnificence, and instinctively comprehended splendor. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... delicate, and they say that he never entirely recovered from the shock. He died before he was twenty, and my father, then a child of seven years old, became the heir. It was partly, no doubt, owing to this calamity having thus occurred before he was old enough to feel it, that his comparative skepticism on the whole subject was due. To that I suppose, and to the fact that he grew up in an age of railways ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... modern Science on your Earth, based on the scientific method of investigation, its devotees adopted a spirit of skepticism concerning all problems of human activity not susceptible to measurement with the foot-rule, or analysis with the test tube, with the result that the newer Science of Psychology was invented to supply a reasonable and material explanation for the subtle ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... For, as skepticism is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discontent is the mother of progress. The man is comparatively of little use in the ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... power to return and govern at any moment. She found it fighting loyally for what intelligence and wisdom told her was only her romantic conception of a cowboy. She reasoned: If Stewart were the kind of man her feminine skepticism wanted to make him, he would not have been so blind to the coquettish advances of Helen and Dorothy. He had once been—she did not want to recall what he had once been. But he had been uplifted. Madeline Hammond ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... was the first to recover from the surprise occasioned by Britz's revelation. He became aware of a growing skepticism that refused to accept so obvious an explanation of the puzzling circumstances surrounding the merchant's death. Surely the same solution would have suggested itself to him ere this were it possible for twenty hours to have elapsed ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... hurt. I saw that I had made some impression upon the hard skepticism with which the world had incased a naturally generous nature, and pressed my advantage. I poured out a torrent of eloquence, reasoning, prayers, entreaty. I wrestled with him as for the salvation of a soul; the night waned on our hot conversation, and finally, toward three o'clock, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... to be some reason for his skepticism, for later the calm of the Mission Garden was broken upon by the monotonous tread of banded men on the shell-strewn walks, and the door of the refectory opened to the figure of Senor Perkins. A green silk sash across his breast, a gold-laced belt, supporting a light dress-sword and a pair ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... all the editions which we possess "must be attributed to the enterprise of the book dealers," and that one cannot speak of a direct influence of Luther on any of these editions. In opposition to this extreme skepticism, Albrecht points out that, for instance, the insertion of the explanation of the Introduction to the Lord's Prayer and the new form of confession, as well as its insertion between Baptism and the Lord's Supper, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... have often seen lawyers, whose profession requires of them a good deal of combativeness, shrewdness, a certain degree of skepticism, and a large amount of hard-headed determination to win, no matter what the cost, handicapped by extreme sensitiveness, sympathy, generosity, non-resistance, credulity, humility, and self-consciousness. Physically, they were wonderfully capable of success as lawyers. Intellectually, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Defended in a Series of Sermons" of President Dwight. This had the advantage over some other systems of having been preached, and thus proved to be preachable. The "series of sermons" was that delivered to successive generations of college students at Yale at a time of prevailing skepticism, when every statement of the college pulpit was liable to sharp and not too friendly scrutiny; and it was preached with the fixed purpose of convincing and converting the young men who heard it. The audience, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, and which he thought he had buried at El Refugio four years ago. Susy's allusion to his father and the reiteration of Peyton's skepticism awoke in his older intellect the first feeling of suspicion that was compatible with his open nature. Was this recurring reticence and mystery due to any act of his father's? But, looking back upon it in after-years, he concluded ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Jan's skepticism was amply justified. In the thirty-five-day trip thus begun—which should have been completed in sixteen days—Jan was given as striking an example of the effects of man's muddle-headed, slack-minded incompetence as that which Jean had furnished him of the effects ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... condition of religion to-day. There is much in evidence a body of doubt which clouds the outlook of multitudes upon religion generally. Beyond debate a kind of eclipse of faith began to draw across the Western world so early as the middle of the last century. The militant skepticism of the brilliant group of younger poets who sang their defiances in the first two decades of the nineteenth century to a world which professed itself duly shocked, is wholly different from the sadness with which ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... such a place. I presume those visitors who call at the school-rooms, go over a part of the house, and leave with the impression that the convent is a nice place, will never believe my statements about this room. Nor can we wonder at their skepticism. It is exceedingly difficult for pure minds to conceive how any human being can be so fearfully depraved. Knowing the purity of their own intentions, and judging others by themselves, it is not strange ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... of transformation or to demonstrate the great principle of a spiritual ascension from our decayed bodies, of those seraphic hosts, who are to stand as ministering angels around the majesty of Heaven, through all the never ending cycles of eternity, no matter what objections skepticism may urge of the impossibility of conceiving how the dead can be raised up to a newness of life. Our faith receives it as a revealed fact, and our hearts rejoice in the glorious hope, because we know that our Redeemer liveth, and that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... human knowledge to experience, and thus avoids the errors which beset the dogmatist. But then, as Hume seemed to have shown, empiricism must run out into skepticism. If all our knowledge has its foundations in experience, how can we expect to find in our possession any universal or necessary truths? May not a later experience contradict an earlier? How can we be sure that what has been will be? Can we know that there is anything ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... course thinking of the true Christian standard. There is a conventional Christian standard which is more cruel and unforgiving than society's standard. But it is really definitely unchristian. Further, society is radically insincere, forgiving what can be kept secret, condoning on account of moral skepticism much general laxity, and yet breaking out into a mock moral indignation before ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... show much more concerning the skepticism of Franklin; and that the time came when he saw the folly of such unbelief, and gave his adherence to the Christian religion. At the same time, he learned from experience the danger of reading infidel publications, and warned the young ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the story of the novel is this. The heroine, who is young, but not in her first girlhood, has in her aspect and her natural disposition everything that is akin to the mystical aspirations of the saint; but, more or less desolated by the diffused skepticism of the day, she has been robbed of innocence by a man, an old family friend, and has never been at peace with herself or wholly escaped from his sinister power since. The hero, who meets her by accident and with whom she is led into a half-reluctant ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... 'brand from the burning,'" Such a faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion, but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and measure of such a conviction, what matters ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... on that subject forever. I have never since ventured to ask anybody any questions on that subject, but have studied it out for myself as well as I could. Soon after that the doctor preached a sermon in which he denounced skepticism in his own vigorous terms, and consigned to perdition all the great teachers of heresy, of whom he mentioned the names—before unheard, I am sure, by the great majority of cadets, thought their works were to be found in the West ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... mind, at times betrayed him into skepticism—he has doubted if there be a Providence! I have heard him say, "God has built a brave world, but methinks he has left his creatures to bustle ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... with such vividness, such abundance of colour, and such verisimilitude to a drunkard's life as a drunkard's life should be, that had Miss Spence possessed the rather chilling attributes of William J. Burns himself, the last trace of skepticism must have vanished from her mind. Besides, there are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. And in every sense it was a moving picture which, with simple but eloquent words, the virtuous ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... room-mate that he had landed. He had given his word to her father not to write; but she knew that in some way she should hear. And sure enough! The following morning brought a nameless bunch of violets. There had been doubters before—but at this tangible proof of devotion, skepticism crumbled. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... unafraid, strong in his own belief,—yes strong enough to make others believe in him. Without doubt or skepticism, himself he ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... thought of penetrating the inland forests behind the range, or of even entering the nobler bay beyond? Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as wild and unsupported as the "marvells" of the other volume? Pomfrey had the skepticism of the scientific, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... don't know how we're going to handle this. They only suspect that you are their deity. As it stands, now, we're on trial, here. And I get the impression that logic, not faith, seems to be their supreme religious virtue; that skepticism is a religious obligation instead of a sin. That's something else that's practically unheard of. ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... something to do with his moral improvement. He confessed that, along from 1725 to 1730 he was immoral, and was sometimes led astray; but his conscience made him much trouble, and, finally, it asserted its supremacy, and he came off conqueror over his evil propensities. A change from skepticism or deism to a decided belief in the Christian Religion, no doubt exerted the strongest influence in making him ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... contented? Are you quite convinced of your folly? ... and do you acknowledge that a fair Dream is as much of a lie and a cheat as all the other fair- seeming things that puzzle and torture poor human nature? Return to your former condition of reasoning and reasonable skepticism,— aye, even atheism if you will, for the materialists are right, ... you cannot prove a God or the possibility of any purely spiritual life. Why thus hanker after a phantom loveliness? Fame—fame! Win fame! ... that is enough for you in this world, ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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 outlines of men and things; and these ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... master Abib. Karshish meets Lazarus (him who was raised from the dead) and, regarding him as a patient, describes his symptoms,—such symptoms as a man might have who must live on earth after having looked on heaven. The physician's half-scoffing words show how his habitual skepticism is shaken by a glimpse of the unseen world. He concludes, but his doubt is stronger than his conclusion, that ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... persuasion, faith; conviction, assurance, confidence; tenet, dogma, creed, opinion, doctrine, cult, view, principle; intuition; superstition, fanaticism. Antonyms: doubt, disbelief, skepticism, misgiving, incredulity. Associated Words: credulous, incredulous, credulity, credibility, incredibility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the other, somewhat nettled by the purchaser's skepticism, "I reckon it'll last ez long ez ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... childhood—his feeling of strangeness amid persons who had thought him very queer, and had tried by every means to make him conform to their ideals of thought. "I was a sort of black sheep," he declared, "because some necessity compelled me to be myself. I could never get over my skepticism about a thousand things that seemed plain to those ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Turkey still enjoys considerable military prestige here. Tens of thousands of Egyptians continue to regard her one of the great powers. They never believed the news of her defeat in the Balkans and the reoccupation of Adrianople confirmed them in their skepticism. At the same time, a secret German propaganda for some years before the war did much to spread abroad the doctrine of German invincibility. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a section of the population holds entirely erroneous views as to the present balance ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in the legend myself, and in so doing have profited much from the examples of divers grant-claimants, who have often jostled me in their more practical researches, and who have my sincere sympathy at the skepticism of a modern hard-headed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... without the wicked rich! But as he ages, as the bitter days Approach with perorations: O ye vipers, The engine in him changes all the world, Reverses all the wheels of thought behind. For Nietzsche comes, and makes him superman. He dumps the truth of Jesus over—there It lies with his youth's textual skepticism, And laughter ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... He laughed with skepticism, but plied his paddle again. He was not as concerned about the launch as he pretended, of course; at the worst it probably meant that Stinson had been entertaining some of his friends on the sly. He had no intention of handing his mysterious passenger to the police. But was he to let ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... among themselves, and went over to the Sufis, the pietists and mystics of the Mohammedan faith. There are a number of resemblances between Gazali and Halevi as Kaufmann has shown, and there is no doubt that skepticism in respect of the powers of the human reason on the one hand, and a deep religious sense on the other are responsible for the point of view of Gazali as well as Halevi. But there is this additional motive in Halevi ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... with the belief that his outspoken skepticism was the cause of this lack of advancement, and that he was in some sort a martyr to freedom of thought; but one may be excused for discrediting this in the face of so many contrary instances. Capable men are too scarce to throw ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... writings, charters, and puzzling trifles. One of the four sons of Bernard Guynemer, Auguste, lived to be ninety-three, retaining all his faculties. Toward the end he resembled Voltaire, not only in face, but in his irony and skepticism. He had all sorts of memories of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, of which he told extraordinary anecdotes. His longevity was owing to his having been discharged from military service at the conscription. Two of his three brothers died before maturity: one, Alphonse, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... donor describes himself as "simply astounded at the blessed results of prayer and faith," and many others have found this brief narrative "the most wonderful and complete refutation of skepticism it had ever been their lot to meet with"—an array of facts constituting the most undeniable "evidences of Christianity." There are abundant instances of the power exerted by Mr. Muller's testimony, as when a woman who had been an infidel, writes him that he was ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound whipping. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... soon plunge himself into the mire of unbelief. Difficulties and objections should be candidly considered, and allowed their due weight; but they must not be suffered to override irrefragable proof, else we shall soon land in universal skepticism: for difficulties, and some of them too insoluble, can be urged against the great facts of nature and natural religion, as well as of revelation. To reject a series of events supported by an overwhelming weight of evidence, on the ground of unexplained difficulties connected with them, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Beginning is the Word, and the Word in logic formulated Speech, the spoken Reason; the Word is in God, and is God Himself, manifested to the Intelligence. Here is what is above all the philosophies. This we must believe, under the penalty of never truly knowing anything, and relapsing into the absurd skepticism of Pyrrho. The Priesthood, custodian of Faith, wholly rests upon this basis of knowledge, and it is in its teachings we must recognize the Divine Principle of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance to the course of events marked by the stars is bound to result in confusion. And here's another striking coincidence: You mentioned casually that Isabel spoke of buried treasure in the far north. I'm overpowered by that. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... who are assembled in a tavern at Paris, are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains, that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... be superfluous to remark that precisely the members of our party's military organization assumed in October an attitude of extraordinary caution and even some skepticism toward the idea of an immediate insurrection. The closed character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... general tendency to deny that ideal forces have any practical power. But there have been several thinkers whose skepticism has an opposite direction. "We can not," they say, "attribute external reality to the sensations we feel." We need not wonder that this theory has failed to convince the unmetaphysical common-sense of people that a stone post is merely a stubborn thought, and that the bite of a dog is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... on matriculation, without any attempt to understand them. "Our venerable mother," says the great historian from whom we have already quoted, "had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference"; and these blended influences, which led Gibbon first to Rome, and then to skepticism, proved no doubt to the average mind a mere narcotic to all spiritual life. Gibbon is not the only great writer who has recorded his testimony against Hanoverian Oxford. Adam Smith in that work which has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... going back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a cheerful Machiavelian drunkenness which quite satisfied all my instincts of skepticism, an idea ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... is the prevelancy of skepticism. A class of scientists have discovered that there is no God! What the fool said in his heart they ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... worshipers assembled in devotion at the spot sanctified by the visions of Bernadette Soubirons. And what shall we say of her? Her professed visions cannot be set aside as impostures against the voice of thousands whose skepticism, as great as ours, has been abashed. It could not have been in the nature of this artless child, unencouraged and alone, to have been an impostor. Such would have been a role thoroughly foreign to her character. Perhaps there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... had nothing to do with her. Her beauty too? It was gone. So was something that had obscured his judgment of her. He had doubted her over and over again, unwillingly at first, willfully at the end; but he knew now that if for one instant she had justified his skepticism he would have ceased to love her. It was the paradox of her purity, dimly discerned under all his doubt, that had tormented and fascinated him; and she held ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was the very last man to understand or sympathize with any phase of life through which he had not himself passed. He had never been troubled with religious doubts; skepticism seemed to him monstrous and unnatural. He met the confession, which his son had made in pain and diffidence, with a most deplorable want of tact. In answer to the perplexing questions which were put to him, he merely replied testily that Luke had been overworking himself, and that he had no business ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... upon her knees at last beside her bed. No Madigan of this generation had been taught to pray, an aggressive skepticism—the tangent of excessive youthful religiosity—having made the girls' father an outspoken foe to religious exercise. But to Sissy's emotional, self-conscious soul the necessity for worded prayer came ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... car whirled him across the city, on what this greatest thing in the world might be. And he hoped with gentle skepticism that the enthusiasm was warranted. A young man opened the car door as they stopped. His face was flushed, Eddinger noted, hair pushed back in disarray, his shirt torn ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... distrust, indecision, question, suspicion, hesitancy, irresolution, scruple, unbelief, hesitation, misgiving, skepticism, uncertainty. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... outrage Thee, they will be, sooner or later, baptized in tears; grant that they may cease to believe in any other shelter from the tempest, than Thy love, and spare them the severe lessons of unhappiness. Our wisdom and skepticism are in our hands but children's toys; forgive us for dreaming that we can defy Thee, Thou who smilest at Golgotha. The worst result of all our vain misery is that it tempts us to forget Thee. But Thou knowest that it is all but a shadow, which a glance ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately by God himself—the phenomena of the creation of life—have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of supernatural works as ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... is hardly one where a person would prefer to see a ghost, even if one knew it was but an optical illusion; but one evening, some years ago, when a bright moon was mounting high and swinging well around to the south, a young girl who lived near by and who had a proper skepticism for the marvels of the gossips passed this house. She was approaching it from an opposite sidewalk, when, glancing up at this belvedere outlined so loftily on the night sky, she saw with startling clearness, although pale and misty in ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the night, he seemed to find it hard to say exactly. How could a man of no education define for them his own but half-denied misgivings about the Law, his sense of oppression, constraint and awe, of being on the defensive, even, in an abject way, his skepticism? About his wanting, come what might, to "keep ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Morris, and Swinburne—as representative of the minor poets of the age; but there are many others who are worthy of study,—Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold,[239] who are often called the poets of skepticism, but who in reality represent a reverent seeking for truth through reason and human experience; Frederick William Faber, the Catholic mystic, author of some exquisite hymns; and the scholarly John Keble, author of The Christian Year, our best known book of devotional ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the old man be whom we saw with them?" asked Harry eagerly, his mind no longer containing an ounce of skepticism to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... journal Engineering, in an article otherwise friendly to the inventor, expressed some skepticism as to the real merit of ...
— Introduction of the Locomotive Safety Truck - Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Paper 24 • John H. White
... voice rose several notes above normal pitch; in fact, she nearly screamed. "I am very certain you are misinformed." But her skepticism barely covered her real chagrin because her nephew was a cadaverous nonentity, with little to recommend him to a title hunter. As she looked at the girl in question, however, there was a decided relish in her ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... delicate and elfin, with a shy perplexity on her face. It was difficult to speak even to Mother about wood-ladies without a pretence of skepticism. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... absence of records it is always possible to calmly assume that the facts are not so bad as for other schools which do report their recorded facts. The prevailing unfamiliarity with statistical methods may also favor a skepticism as to their proper application to education, since it is not an exact science. But the fact remains established that it is always possible to measure qualitative differences if stated in terms ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... able to say no to Ray, but even he looked dubious at the small gray fellow's voluble outpouring of pseudo-scientific jargon. Ray, made sensitive by years of open skepticism on the part of many listeners, caught the look and insisted on a demonstration of ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... the arguments on both sides are defective, and to throw back the tenet into its former uncertainty, is the sport of wanton or malevolent skepticism, delighting to see the sons of philosophy at work upon a task which never can be decided. I shall suggest an argument hitherto overlooked, which may ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... thorns in such a path. The village girl knew that madame la marquise must lead a life very different from any she had known. She must bear with a husband whose mind was ever in a state of unrest and skepticism, and she ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... of my brain, all the while, was some shadow of doubt, of skepticism, of reiterated self-warning that it was all too good to be true. It wasn't until I looked over the well-gnawed top rail of Slip-Along's broken manger and saw that blessed boy there, by the light of Whinnie's lantern, saw that blessed boy of mine half buried in ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... out in the middle of the room, and the linen, naturally clinging, outlined the form vaguely, but showing its stiff, bony thinness. The face already had large purple spots, which showed the urgency of completing the embalming. Despite the skepticism with which Don Juan was armed, he trembled as he uncorked the magic phial of crystal. When he stood close to the head he shook so that he was obliged to pause for a moment. But this young man had allowed himself to be corrupted by the customs of a dissolute ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... breast of my misgivings and reservations on the subject of lovers and landscape, I will now confess that the whole of my doubts do not weigh much against my unreasoned faith in romantic love. At heart I am no infidel, but a most obstinate believer and devotee. My seasons of skepticism are transient. They are connected with a torpid liver and aggravated by confinement to a sedentary life and enforced abstinence from angling. Out-of-doors, I return to a saner ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... sufficiently show that everyone judges of things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination. We need no longer wonder that there have arisen all the controversies we have witnessed, and finally skepticism: for, although human bodies in many respects agree, yet in very many others they differ; so that what seems good to one seems confused to another; what is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on. I need not further enumerate, because this is not the place to treat the subject at length, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... one." Mr. Heatherbloom explained his plan quickly. Francois listened, at first with open skepticism, ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... operative among men is not to be discarded. It is doubtless impossible to estimate with entire correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge in The Friend quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... almost thought it derogatory to the "Majesty of heaven and earth" to conceive of him as occupied with our mean affairs, numbering the hairs of our heads, and guiding the sparrow's fall. But the blow which crushed her heart, destroyed its skepticism. She saw so clearly in this dispensation, the hand of a Father chastening his erring child; she felt so keenly that she deserved the rod, for having in a measure worshipped the gift more than the giver, that she believed, with all the strength of an irresistible conviction, that even so ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... them may have existed before, and traces of them may be detected in the literature of the ancient world, and even in the writings of mediaeval times; nay, it might not be too much to affirm that in the systems of Oriental Superstition, and in the Schools of Grecian Skepticism, several of them were more fully taught in early times than they have yet been in Modern Europe, and that the recent attempts to reconstruct and reproduce them in a shape adapted to the present stage of civilization, have been poor ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... rather than for good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth: Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of civilization varies directly as skepticism—the disposition to doubt, or the "protective spirit"—the disposition to maintain without examination established ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... skepticism, doubt—come all ye trooping emotions to threaten or console; but an end has come to fairy stories and wonder tales—Master Studious is in the awful presence ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... no illusion, and in 1881 Schiaparelli added to the astonishment created by his original discovery, and furnished additional grounds for skepticism, by announcing that, at certain times, many of the canals geminated, or became double! He continued his observations at each subsequent opposition, adding to the number of the canals observed, and charting them ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground for skepticism may lie in our assumption that Plato is the central figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the student may discover. Frequently the quarrels ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... believe anything," said Daisy. Randolph's skepticism excited Winterbourne to further hilarity, and he observed that Giovanelli was coming back to them. Daisy, observing it too, addressed herself again to her countryman. "Since you have mentioned it," she said, "I AM engaged." * * * Winterbourne ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... comes of long repose; like the new wine, too, originality should shyly hide itself in dark places until maturity warrants its appearance in the light of day. That kind of originality which is strikingly new does not always stand the test of time, and should be regarded with cautious skepticism until it has proved itself to be more than the passing fashion or novelty of a season. There is a kind of sham art very conspicuous at the present time, which was at quite a recent date popularly believed to be very original. It seems to have arisen out of some such impatient craving ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts and accomplished the most gigantic talk ever attempted by skepticism. He passed over everything with his mocking spirit, and left everything empty. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry portions of his thought, in spite of themselves, in their ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Berkeley's position an impregnable citadel of skepticism. He accepted Berkeley's conclusion that we know nothing of matter, and then attempted to show that inferences based on ideas might be equally illusory. Hume attacked the validity of the reasoning process itself. He endeavored to show ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the battle of personal monotheism against impersonal pantheism, of religious faith and revelation against arrogant rationalism, and of idealism against materialism. Hostile as he is to the Stoic intellectual dogmatism, Philo is none the less opposed to its converse, intellectual skepticism and agnosticism. Man, he is convinced, has a Divine revelation[111] which he may not deny without ruin. He holds with Pope ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... some skepticism. "It was not the Hurons, but their rivals, the Ottawas, who would have sent you to the stake," I explained curtly. "The Hurons—those of the Baron's band—would have held you as a hostage,—perhaps as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... "favorable as they are to the cause which they defended, they sometimes let me into the secret of objections which might be made to it, and set me to scrutinizing the articles of my faith;" and she states that "this was the first step toward a skepticism at which I was destined to arrive after having been successively Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic, and Deist." By this skepticism she doubtless meant merely skepticism as to creeds, for in her memoirs, written in daily expectation ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Knupf said. There was interest in his mind, overlaid with skepticism, of course, but interest all the same. That, Jonas thought, was a better sign than he had dared ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris) |
