"Speculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of speculation. Babbitt was elephantishly uneasy. Paul was bold, but not quite sure about what he was being bold. Now and then Babbitt suddenly agreed with Paul in an admission which contradicted all his defense of duty and Christian patience, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... thou takest credit to thyself in a matter which is beyond my perception. But, O monarch, I will ascertain it by the direct evidence of my senses, by cutting down the Vibhitaka. O king, when I actually count, it will no longer be matter of speculation. Therefore, in thy presence, O monarch, I will hew down this Vibhitaka. I do not know whether it be not (as thou hast said). In thy presence, O ruler of men, I will count the fruits and leaves. Let Varshneya hold the reins ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... share. On returning to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie; but when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partnership in speculation, and besought William MacGillivray to go on {381} the open market and buy against Selkirk to defeat the plans for settlement. What with shares owned by his wife's family of Colville-Wedderburns, and those he had himself purchased, Selkirk now owned a controlling interest ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... as he wrung my hand, and said in a husky voice, "You know all about it, my dear boy; you'll do well, and we shall have you back here, hearty and strong, with information successfully to guide Garrard, Janrin and Company in many an important speculation; and, moreover, I hope, to lay the foundation of your own fortune. Good-bye, good-bye; ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone, we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we account for those ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... from her mother. I feared at first that it was one of your cousin Charles's friends, but there seems more reason to suppose that one of the musical people at your concert at the castle may have thought her voice a good speculation for ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the purpose of examining into the social condition of the poorer classes. Says Mr. Kay: "You cannot address an English peasant, without being struck with the intellectual darkness which surrounds him. There is neither speculation in his eye nor intelligence in his countenance. His whole expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting too in the erect and independent bearing of a man. As a class, our peasants ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... aeroplane has been circling over us with a loud buzz. The sergeant called up to me to put the lights out. We saw her light. There is much speculation as to who and what she was; she was not big enough for our big "'Bus," as she is called, who belongs to this place. No one seems ever to have seen ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... with pleasure to the addresses of his rival, who was no novice in the art of making love. She even affected uncommon vivacity, and giggled aloud at every whisper which he conveyed into her ear, insomuch that she, in her turn, afforded speculation to the company, who imagined the young soldier had made a conquest of the bridegroom's sister. Pickle himself began to cherish the same opinion, which gradually invaded his good-humour, and at length filled his bosom ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with great gaiety and splendour, and were those two persons whom many of the old slanders at Bath remembered for many years after to have made such an eclat, but nobody could, at the time, conjecture who they were, which was the occasion of much speculation and many false surmises. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... knowledge of physical science. And especially must the student of history have a system of mental philosophy; but often, no doubt, his system is too crude for general notice. Every historian connects the events of his narrative by some thread of philosophy or speculation; every reader observes some connection, though he may never develop it to himself, between the events and changes of national and ethnological life; and even the observer whose vision is limited by his own horizon ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... proceedings of a meeting of the Natives of King Williamstown, who, it was alleged, approved of the Bill. When the author reached King Williamstown, during this visit, he found the King Williamstown Natives disgusted with what they said was Reuter's speculation upon their feelings. But Reuter's agent on the spot, whose office we also visited, knew nothing about the meeting. The only meeting ever held in the place, we were told, was one of nineteen persons presided over by Mr. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing speculation which often ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... ancient of the ancients, grey and bent, has spent so many years among his sheep that he has lost all notice and observation—there is no "speculation in his eye" for anything but his sheep. In his blue smock frock, with his brown umbrella, which he has had no time or thought to open, he stands listening, all intent, to the conversation of the gentlemen who are examining his pens. He leads a young restless collie by a chain; the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... wrong*, there are matters of business in which there seems to be no such intermediate territory, but in which what is fair, honorable, and even necessary, is closely contiguous to dishonesty. Thus, except in the simplest retail business, all modern commerce is speculation, and the line between legitimate and dishonest speculation is to some minds difficult of discernment. Yet the discrimination may be made. A man has a right to all that he earns by services to the community, and these earnings ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Him for this quiet country life which we lead here, free from ambition, and rash speculation, and the hope of great and sudden gains. All know, who have watched the world, how unwholesome for a man's soul any trade or occupation is which offers the chance of making a rapid fortune. It has hurt the souls ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... kind? "Kinetogenesis" was ruled by will, The conscious thought goes with it still, And as conscious thought erst "ruled the roast," Why may it not become a ghost? But as ghosts are like a vapor mixed, All speculation is lost betwixt The possible this, and the possible that, And so ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... preclude the possibility of our ever enjoying a luxury as great, and yet as reasonable as this; and if, by chance, some lucky individual should find the means to embellish his own abode and his neighbourhood, in this way, some speculation, half a league off, would compel him to admit an avenue through his laurels and roses, in order to fill the pockets of a club of projectors. In America, everybody sympathises with him who makes money, for it is a common pursuit, and touches a chord that vibrates through the whole community; ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of wheat which he had bought upon speculation and which was then lying idle in a Philadelphia storehouse. This he had sold at public sale and at a very great sacrifice; he realized barely one hundred pounds upon it. The financial horizon looked very black to him; nevertheless, Levi's five ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... fragments were pretty well used up, if all the finery in this house is paid for," said Agnes, with a scornful laugh. "Even as a speculation, my own ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... of removing her sorrow, by an attempt in which he succeeded. These two letters discover the true character of Etherege, as well as of the noble person to whom they were sent, and mark them as great libertines, in speculation as in practice. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... in a daughter of Israel. Noemi was guarded by two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say nothing of an advanced-guard, a Polish Jew, Abramko by name, once involved in a fabulous manner in political troubles, from which Elie Magus saved him as a business speculation. Abramko, porter of the silent, grim, deserted mansion, divided his office and his lodge with three remarkably ferocious animals—an English bull-dog, a Newfoundland dog, and another of the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... tragical events which succeeded, disgusted Moray more and more at the court; with these the public are well acquainted: The murder of Darnly, and Mary's after-marriage with the assassin of her husband, has occasioned too much speculation of late years, not to be known to every one in the least acquainted with the Scottish history. Moray now found it impossible to live at a court where his implacable enemy was so highly honoured; Bothwel insulted him ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... employments, are engaged in business of little difficulty, but of great importance, requiring rather assiduity of practice than subtilty of speculation, occupying the attention with images too bulky for refinement, and too obvious for research. The right is already known: what remains is only to follow it. Daily business adds no more to wisdom, than daily lesson to the learning of the teacher. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... to progress; it was old-fashioned, and primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled the place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded the population ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ideas, bears the principal responsibility for its growth; and if it is French thought that will persistently claim our attention, this is not due to an arbitrary preference on my part or to neglect of speculation in other countries. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... every street was to be named after a French province, and all should converge in a handsome square to which La France should stand godmother. The Quartier de l'Europe was a revival of the same idea; history repeats itself everywhere in the world, and even in the world of speculation. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... us against the fists, as in the past. Labor is the slave of speculation, and violence is the slave of wisdom. Who will deny that cunning is the distinctive ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... you have tasted the joys of speculation, you will think and care for nothing else. The click of the Tape Machine is music to you. I have one going all night ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... it is pride—ambition too inwrought with fairest qualities to show as such,—security of your self of selves too absolute. Perhaps I mistake and your blood doth run as healthfully as a child's. But you are of those who ever breed in others speculation, wilding fancies.... When a man doth all things too well, what is there left for God to do but to break and crumble and remould? If I do you wrong, blame, if you will, my love, which is jealous for you—friend whom I value, soldier and knight ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... and connected the strenuous present with the heroic past; and the Old Comedy, the most complete embodiment of the very genius of democracy, afforded a feast of wit and fancy for his lighter hours. If he had a taste for higher speculation, he might hear Anaxagoras discoursing on the mysteries of the spiritual world, or Zeno applying his sharp tests for the conviction of human error. And when the assembly was summoned to discuss matters of high imperial policy, he felt all the greatness and majesty ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... Philistines caused by the long continued slanders of the clergy against the word materialism, even if without consciously doing so. The Philistine understands by the word materialism, gluttony, drunkenness, carnal lust, and fraudulent speculation, in short all the enormous vices to which he himself is secretly addicted, and by the word idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal humanitarianism, and a better world as a whole, of which he boasts before others, and in which he himself at the very most believes, only ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... complimentary. He told me that the earth was to the moon what the sun is to the earth, and that the Selenites desired very greatly to learn about the earth and men. He then told me no doubt in compliment also, the relative magnitude and diameter of earth and moon, and the perpetual wonder and speculation with which the Selenites had regarded our planet. I meditated with downcast eyes, and decided to reply that men too had wondered what might lie in the moon, and had judged it dead, little recking of such magnificence ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Princess was not present at the coronation of King William and Queen Adelaide, and her absence, as the heir-presumptive to the throne, caused much remark and speculation, and gave rise to not a few newspaper paragraphs. Various causes were assigned for the singular omission. The Times openly accused the Duchess of Kent of proving the obstacle. Other newspapers followed suit, asserting that the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... great lady went on in a serious tone, "conjugal happiness has in all times been a speculation, a business demanding particular attention. If you persist in talking passion while I am talking marriage, we shall soon cease to understand each other. Listen to me," she went on, assuming a confidential tone. "I have been in the way of seeing some of the ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... idea, that they are likely to obtain better security, or more permanent advantages, such a transfer of their property is allowable. But if any were to make a practice of buying or selling, week after week, upon speculation only, such a practice would come under the denomination of gaming. In this case, like the preceding, it is evident, that money would be the object in view; that the issue would be hazardous; and, if the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... ourselves in the form of questions which will bring out some of the current conceptions of religion. Is religion a form of belief? Is it a form of experience? Is it the corporate life in an institution? Is it a relationship to God? They all lead us to speculation and to abstractions. Or if we ask similarly does religion depend on knowledge, on emotion, on sacramental connection with God, or on mystical detachment from the world, again we are led to try to find religion off by itself, where it may be weighed and measured ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... the child that she brought back with her from the little cupboard. They had adopted him, fed him, educated him, wrapped him round with love; and he had lived to break their hearts. Possibly there was some gipsy blood in him that defied their nurture. But the speculation is not worth going into. I only know that I felt the better that afternoon as I watched his figure diminishing on the road back to Drakeport. He had a crown of mine in his pocket, and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... possessing greater art and better tools than the primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids; but the type and purpose is all the same.... How far anterior to the Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its brethren on ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... the Duke to be not quite so bad as it might have been. Any speculation as to results were very different from an expressed opinion as to propriety. Were he to tell the truth as to his own mind, he might perhaps have said the same thing. But one is not to relax in one's endeavours to prevent that which is wrong, because one fears that the wrong may be ultimately ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... is a virile American novel and treats of the elemental forces of Western life and the results of the great fever of speculation in land. The prairies and forests of the West are the scenes which the author has chosen for a novel which is full ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... which she had come and the wicket which had let her in and by which Mr. Rhys had gone out; but in good truth, as often as she turned her eyes to the scene within, she had such a sense of being herself an object of observation and perhaps of speculation, that she was fain to seek the garden again. And it was true, that while Mrs. Balliol plied her needle she used her eyes as well, and her thoughts with her needle flew in and out, as she surveyed Eleanor's figure in her neat fresh print dress. And the lady's eyebrows grew ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... while the affair was in suspense, and everything secured when it was determined that the lodgings should be taken for another fortnight. What this additional fortnight was to produce to her beyond the pleasure of sometimes seeing Henry Tilney made but a small part of Catherine's speculation. Once or twice indeed, since James's engagement had taught her what could be done, she had got so far as to indulge in a secret "perhaps," but in general the felicity of being with him for the present bounded her views: the present ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... friends disapproved, he dropped away from them, and they, being bored with his egotism and high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let him do so. Of course, he said nothing about his speculations—indeed, he hardly knew that anything done in so good a cause could be called speculation. At Battersby, when his father urged him to look out for a next presentation, and even brought one or two promising ones under his notice, he made objections and excuses, though always promising to do as his father desired ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... celebrated 'Secret of Nature Displayed.' ('Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im Baue und in der Befruchtung der Blumen.' Berlin, 1793.) The book impressed him as being "full of truth," although "with some little nonsense." It not only encouraged him in kindred speculation, but guided him in his work, for in 1844 he speaks of verifying Sprengel's observations. It may be doubted whether Robert Brown ever planted a more beautiful seed than in putting such a book into ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Many are the weary hours they have wiled away wondering whether, at the next backward jerk of the head of the sleeping statesman, his hat would tumble off, or whether catastrophe would be further postponed. In HARTINGTON's place sits CHAMBERLAIN, much too wide awake to afford opportunity for speculation on ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... garment which so disfigured him that morning has been the occasion of much false speculation on the part of those whose business it was to inquire into the crime with which it is in a most unhappy way connected, I may as well explain here and now why so fastidious a gentleman as Randolph Stone came to wear it. The gentleman called Howard ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... happens in such cases and under similar circumstances, in the absence of positive knowledge, we have been abundantly supplied with conjecture and speculation; what observation has failed to discover, hypothesis has endeavored and professed to supply. It is quite unnecessary even to enumerate the different substances to which malaria has been referred. Amongst them are all of the chemical products and compounds possible ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... your mind what this is all about? The Hammersmith to Maida Vale thoroughfare was an uncommonly good speculation. You and I hoped a great deal from it. But is it worth it? It will cost us thousands to crush this ridiculous riot. Suppose ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... His speculation perceives the dead as a crowd of slowly vanishing phantoms, clustering in their ineffectual longing round the footsteps of those through whom alone they continue to exist. This conception has inspired Mr. Hardy with several wonderful visions, among which the spectacle of "The ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... themselves. That she had timed her entrance well, all admitted; though in reality she had thought nothing about it—chance had favored her, that was all. Interesting though the subject under discussion had become, there was little time left the company for further speculation before Juan Ramon, the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... claims upon him; every one requires his advice, submits to and obeys him. From all parts of the world come letters to be answered, and, when at last, late in the evening, he remembers he is something besides the king on 'Change, the man of speculation, he is so tired and exhausted, that he has only a few dull words for his child, who lives solitary in the midst of all this wealth, and curses the millions ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... their views; the Baroness was acquiring more and more influence over her husband, who seemed to be growing older every day. M. de Nailles had evidently much, very much upon his mind. It was said in business circles that he had for some time past been given to speculation. Oscar said so. If that were the case, many of Jacqueline's suitors might withdraw. Not all men were so disinterested ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... walking-stick. The negroes dread it, and with much reason; for it is powerful, and uses its power with great harshness whenever they meet. I believe you may see a chimpanzee in the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park. We will go some day on speculation, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... and would be the better for a blood-letting. The difficulty lay in making the opportunity. He was beginning to wonder if he could lure the Captain aside with some tale of hidden treasure, when this untimely interruption set a term to that interesting speculation. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... A Comparison Speculation Parade Flower Preferences Parental Advice Song for a Child Watching Clouds Problem Garden Musings My Garden Tracks Chanticleer Rainbow Windmill Cat-Fish Visiting ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... he would consider it, has rankled in his wicked, scheming brain, and all his life he has longed for vengeance, but never seen his chance. During the last year or two things have gone against him—secret speculation, I think—and he finds himself in a bad way. He determines to swindle his creditors, and for this purpose he pays large cheques to a certain Mr. Cornelius, who is, I imagine, himself under another name. I have not ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "supplications"—"Pray for God's ancient people of Israel." "Does this mean the Jews?" said we to an elderly man near us, whilst we were scrutinizing with a plaintive eye, the pulpit, and he replied, "Bleeve it does." That, we thought, was a bad speculation for a chapel containing two subscription boxes for "sick and needy scholars." The man who wrote out that exhortation in the interests of Petticoat-lane men and their kindred, and the patriot who drove with a fierce virtue the four nails into it didn't, we are afraid, know clearly how much ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... desultorily, as the meal was prepared—fragments of traveler's news and gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come upon each other in the silent places. Ever the speculation grew in his face as he made away with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... whether he's a mine owner or a soldier. He has his men to keep in hand, to win their confidence, and make them follow him, and to set them a good example, Gwyn. But I can't say anything for certain. It's all a speculation, and I never shut my eyes to the fact that it may turn out a failure. If it does, we can go back to the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... exceptions, lords, That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants, Who in unnecessary action swarm About our squares of battle, were enow To purge this field of such a hilding foe, Though we upon this mountain's basis by Took stand for idle speculation, But that our honours must not. What's to say? A very little little let us do, And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket sonance and the note to mount; For our approach shall so much dare the field That England shall crouch down ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance of the presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan felt the eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances, except Gulden's. The giant studied her with slow, cavernous stare, without curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman was a new and strange creature to him and he was experiencing unfamiliar sensations. Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze—for she avoided it as much as possible—she shuddered with sick memory of a story ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... brothers-in-law which could not fail to prove fatal to the interests of the Duc d'Anjou, who, in the event of the decease of Charles IX, was the rightful heir to the throne. Nor was that decease a mere matter of idle speculation, for the health of the King, always feeble and uncertain, had failed more than ever since the fatal night of the 24th of August; and he had even confessed to Ambroise Pare,[9] his body-surgeon, that his dreams were haunted by the spectres ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... diffused on a sudden over the whole of Europe has caused an economic crisis. Commerce, like industry, is transformed and altered. New ways are opened, new mediums arise, new wants are created, luxury increases, and the eagerness to make a fortune rapidly by speculation, turns the heads of many. If Venice from a commercial point of view be dead, the Dutch are about to constitute themselves, to use a happy expression of M. Leroy-Beaulieu, "the carriers and agents of Europe," and the English are ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... It might be a curious speculation, how far the purer morals of the genuine and more active Christians may have compensated, in the population of the Roman empire, for the secession of such numbers into ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... can the reader help wishing that? Yet would it have been better for the world if the Peruvians had succeeded in expelling the Spaniards, or would it have been worse? These questions afford matter for interesting speculation. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... joy of strenuous living was added, for Roosevelt, the satisfaction of knowing that the speculation in which he had risked so large a part of his fortune was apparently prospering. The cattle were looking well. Even pessimistic Bill Sewall admitted that, though he would not admit that he had changed his opinion of the region as a ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... were aching; a queer emptiness in his chest caused him long and perplexing speculation. There were shouting voices aloft, and a gleaming black wall slowly took form above him. He made out the pointed heads ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... as if you were an investment. If you are bent on marrying, find an older man who has an assured position and is half-way on his career. A widow's marriage ought not to be a trivial love affair. Is a mouse to be caught a second time in the same trap? A new alliance ought now to be a good speculation on your part, and in marrying again you ought at least to have a hope of being some day addressed ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he said. "Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fortunes which frequently never existed, might better be compared to a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre-Dame de Lorette quarter, far fewer houses would be built in Paris. Pioneers in fresh stucco, they have gone, towed by speculation, along the heights of Montmartre, pitching their tents in those solitudes of carved free-stone, the like of which adorns the European streets of Amsterdam, Milan, Stockholm, London, and Moscow, architectural steppes where the wind rustles innumerable papers ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... speculation fails to keep pace with the advance of truth, for there is no death, in the sense in which Professor Ayrton refers to it here, as a state of unconsciousness which no message can reach, and from which no reply can come. On the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... the most pleasing subjects for speculation. With the blood-hound we were to track the footsteps of the midnight marauder, who should invade the sanctity of our fold. The spaniel was to aid in procuring a supply of game for the table; and I bestowed so much pains upon his education during the voyage, that ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Mrs. Partington's against the rising tide of woe and want and fruitless toil, each wave only the forerunner of mightier and more destructive ones, while the world has gone its way, casting abundant contributions toward the workers, but denying that there was need for agitation or speculation as to where or how the next crest might break. There were men and women who sounded an alarm, and were in most cases either hooted for their pains, or set down as sentimentalists, newspaper philanthropists, fanatics, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... been for several months resident with his father, had not nearly so many visitors as before; nor did presents of salmon and haunches of venison come at all so often the way. Immediately after the final discomfiture of Napoleon, an extensive course of speculation in which he had ventured to engage had turned out so ill, that, instead of making him a fortune, as at first seemed probable, it had landed him in the Gazette; and he was now tiding over the difficulties of a time of settlement, six hundred miles from the scene ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Essex; land going begging; worth nothing a year, encumbered up to the eyes, and loaded with first rent-charges, jointures, settlements. Money, indeed! poor Kynaston! It's my brother Marmaduke's I mean; lucky dog, he went in for speculation—began life as a guinea-pig, and rose with the rise of soap and ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... throughout the length and breadth of North America. As some of these sculptured animals from the mounds have excited much interest in the minds of archaeologists, and have been made the basis of much speculation, their examination and proper identification becomes a matter of considerable importance. It will therefore be the main purpose of the present paper to examine critically the evidence offered in behalf of the identification of the more important of them. If it shall prove, as is believed to be ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... that Sobber has little or no money, and that Martin Snodd has taken the case on speculation, Sobber to allow him half of whatever he gets out of it. Snodd's reputation is anything but good, so I am afraid he will have a lot of evidence manufactured to order. I have recommended a firm of first-class lawyers to Mrs. Stanhope ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... is impossible not to feel some interest about the autograph of any celebrated individual, and some tendency to compare its leading characteristics with our preconceived notions regarding him. A still wider field for speculation than that which grows out of the handwriting, is afforded by a device like the monogram, which, being in a great measure arbitrary, may naturally be expected to exhibit more decidedly the workings of the judgment, the fancy, or perhaps ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... Ceylon at that time belonged, and whence or at what period the island was originally peopled, the Buddhist chronicles furnish no reply. And no memorials of the aborigines themselves, no monuments or inscriptions, now remain to afford ground for speculation. Conjectures have been hazarded, based on no sufficient data, that the Malayan type, which extends from Polynesia to Madagascar, and from Chin-India to Taheite, may still be traced in the configuration, and in some of the immemorial customs, of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... speech told ever more eloquently of the charm with which beauty draws the soul unto itself, for to the poet beauty is nearer than truth. It is the persuasion with which he sets forth this charm, rather than his speculation, which has fastened upon him the love of later ages. He was the first to discern in truth and beauty equal powers of one divine being, and thus to effect the most important reconciliation ever ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... tending to show that when civilization reaches a certain point, the master's self-interest leads to emancipation. In Russia, where there are seventy-five persons to the English square mile, it seemed to him that serfdom was still a good economic speculation. In western Europe, where there were one hundred and ten persons to the square mile, freedom, in all relations of master and servant, he considered more advantageous to all parties. Emancipation began in England in the fourteenth century, when that country had a population of forty ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... please the popular palate, it would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to another to extol these remedies, so famous in speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess them, that I have no sort of reliance upon either a Triennial Parliament or a Place-bill. With regard to the former, perhaps, it might rather serve to counteract than to promote ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... to myself; for you will grumble at a sheet of speculation sent so far: I am here still, as Rob Roy was on Glasgow Bridge, biding tryste; busy extremely, with work that will not profit me at all in some senses; suffering rather in health and nerves; and still with nothing like dawn on any quarter of my horizon. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... covered with horsehair, which Harry called the "funeral coach:" it might have been called anything, for it was so dingy, so battered, so broken, that its raison d'etre had come to be a matter of speculation. Into this seat I now inducted our visitor. He was as shabby as the funeral coach itself, but had kept up more gentility in his decay. I had not seen him for four years, and the lack of any change in his appearance surprised me. There he was, as well shaven, as threadbare, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Eve was Adam's second wife was a common Rabbinic speculation. Certain commentators on Genesis adopted this view, to account for the double account of the creation of woman, in the sacred text, first in Genesis i. 27, and second in Genesis xi. 18. And they say that Adam's first ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... some Speculation; and the King's Physician debarr'd the King from tasting the Pudding, not knowing but that Sir John ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... to the cheap money; there were still plenty of difficulties to overcome. If they got on, it would not be long before private speculation ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Garcia. "I shall have need of money presently. That journey was a great cost—a terribly bad speculation," he went on, shaking his mottled, bluish head wofully. "Not ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation In those eyes ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... to a considerable amount of speculation among the members of the party; and they were still discussing the matter when a knocking was heard at the door, and, in obedience to Captain Staunton's stentorian "Come in," ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... things, but they did not have a conception of the possibility of indefinite progress ... Progress of man from the earliest time till the opening of the 17th century almost altogether unconscious.... Fundamental weakness of Hellenic learning. It was an imposing collection of speculation, opinions, and guesses, which, however brilliant and ingenious they might be, were based on a very slight body of exact knowledge, and failed to recognize the fundamental necessity of painful scientific research, aided by apparatus. There was no ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... been whispered through the teepee village that Uncheedah intended to give a feast in honor of her grandchild's first sacrificial offering. This was mere speculation, however, for the clear-sighted old woman had determined to keep this part of the matter secret until the offering should be completed, believing that the "Great Mystery" should be met ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... doctrine of the best possible world, is the theory of the "Thodice." Our limits will not permit us to analyze the argument of this remarkable work. Bunsen says, "It necessarily failed because it was a not quite honest compound of speculation and divinity." [31] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... forth fruit meet for him whose gospel it is; 'Takes no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart' (2 Kings 10:31). But counteth that the glory of the gospel consisteth in talk and show, and that our obedience thereto is a matter of speculation; that good works lie in good words; and if they can finely talk, they think they bravely please God. They think the kingdom of God consisteth only in word, not in power; and thus proveth ineffectual this fourth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... We must add, however, that Sir William Hamilton's dissertations, though abundant, are not yet completed. Yet, in spite of this drawback, the work is one which ought to wipe away effectually from our country the reproach of imperfect learning and shallow speculation; for in depth of thought, and extent and accuracy of knowledge, the editor's own contributions are of themselves sufficient to bring up our national philosophy (which had fallen somewhat into arrear) to a level with that of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... that which is of little or no practical concern to self, sight-seeing, theatre-going, novels, poetry, art, scenery, as well as speculative science and high literature. A certain speculative interest is mixed up with all practical work: the mind lingers on the speculation apart ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... may be felt by this systematic omission in the narrative. I should, however, mention that, in this stage of his career, the two of his earliest pictures, which attracted the greatest share of public attention, were the Orestes and Pylades, and the Continence of Scipio. He had undertaken them on speculation, and the applause which they obtained, when finished, were an assurance of his success and reward. His house was daily thronged with the opulent and the curious to see them; statesmen sent for them to their offices; princes to their bedchambers, and all loudly ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... surprised to find a long pistol of very curious and outlandish fashion, which, from its rusted condition, and its stock being worm-eaten and covered with barnacles, appeared to have been a long time under water. The unexpected appearance of this document of warfare occasioned much speculation among my pacific companions. One supposed it to have fallen there during the revolutionary war. Another, from the peculiarity of its fashion, attributed it to the voyagers in the earliest days of the settlement; perchance ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... enter into a speculation concerning the nature and origin of those agreeable emotions which are so generally produced by the sight of objects that suggest the ideas of decay and desolation. It is happy for us, that, by the alchemy of poetry, we are able to turn some of our misfortunes into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and remarkably full account of the main currents of speculation. Scholarly precision ... genuine tolerance ... intense interest in his subject—are ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... or wrong in establishing the colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation. You cannot have both by the same authority. To join together the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly with an universal internal and external taxation is an unnatural union,—perfect, uncompensated ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of land beyond the Atlantic, which was not discredited by some of the most enlightened ancients, [9] had become matter of common speculation at the close of the fifteenth century; when maritime adventure was daily disclosing the mysteries of the deep, and bringing to light new regions, that had hitherto existed only in fancy. A proof of this popular belief occurs in a curious passage of the "Morgante Maggiore" of the Florentine poet ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... that the primary object of the traveller is not speculation in the pecuniary value of the antiquities that he may acquire, although he may be not unreasonably inclined to recover some of his expenses by disposing of objects which do not appeal to him. Should that be so, although the authorities of public museums obviously cannot be agents or valuers in ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... Establishing a Political Academy, and I my self having received Letters from several Virtuosos among my Foreign Correspondents, which give some Light into that Affair, I intend to make it the Subject of this Days Speculation. A general Account of this Project may be met with in the Daily Courant of last Friday in the following Words, translated from the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... at each other, and the period of speculation was followed by a momentary interregnum of silence, which would in due course be succeeded by a desire to act, to do something, if nothing happened in the meantime. Something did happen, however. The door bell rang violently. They looked up and listened. The hall door was opened. Footsteps ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... an income of 8,000 pounds. He has the great railroad cases which come before the House of Lords. . . . On Tuesday came a flying report of a revolution in Berlin, but no one believed it. We concluded it rather a speculation of the newsmen, who are hawking revolutions after every mail in second and third editions. We were going that evening to a SOIREE at Bunsen's, whom we found cheerful as ever and fearing no evil. On Monday the news of the revolution in Austria produced ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... did not waste much time in speculation as to the spending of that "check for her immediate needs"; such would have been truly idle dreaming. Miss Eliza would spend it. She would attend to the providing of a wardrobe for the visit, and that wardrobe would be utilitarian ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... grave seniors lay their hands with conventional encomium and speculation, look older than they are immediately, and Willoughby looked older than his years, not for want of freshness, but because he felt that he had to stand eminently ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than consent to relinquish his study. He might have regretted his indifference afterwards, especially if he had arrived at no satisfactory conclusion in regard to the unhappy woman; but in the fervor of scientific speculation, minor considerations of safety were forgotten. Cutter is not a bad man, though he is ruthless. He would be incapable of doing any one an injury from a personal motive, but in comparison with the importance of one of his theories the life of a man is no more to him than the life of a dog. I said ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... cluttering round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the philosopher for speculation. One would not therefore, on a flight and cursory inspection, suspect this of being a painter's country, where no prominence of features arrests the sight, no expression of latent meaning employs the mind, and no abruptness of transition tempts fancy to follow, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... no letter at all. It simply encloses a circular, with her love, and asks me to send it on to you. If it is in your power to make inquiries in the right quarter, I am sure you will not hesitate to take the trouble. There can be little doubt, as I think, that Lord Harry is engaged in a hazardous speculation, more deeply than his wife is ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... unlikely, there would accrue, on the most favourable showing, a net profit of 200,000l. per annum to Glasgow, if nothing be allowed for the cost of management.[690] The possibility that that gigantic speculation might prove a failure is not even considered. On the contrary, it is assumed as certain that Glasgow will greatly profit by the growing value of land. Now if through natural economic development, or through the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... spreading abroad of the rays of knowledge. He does not assert, as some moderns have crudely asserted, that morality is of the nature of a fixed quantity; still he hints something of the kind. 'Morality,' he says, speaking of Greece in the time of its early physical speculation, 'though still imperfect, still kept fewer relics of the infancy of reason. Those everspringing necessities which so incessantly recall man to society, and force him to bend to its laws, that instinct, that sentiment ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... north of the former. It comprises an estate of 6400 acres on the shores of Lake Michigan. This land—some of the best in Illinois—was let out in lots, on long lease, by Dowie to his followers, and brought in thousands of dollars yearly. At the same time that he created this principle of speculation in land, he was also engaged in founding a special industry, whose products were sold as "products of Sion." His choice fell upon the lace industry, and thanks to very clever management he was able to establish large factories modelled on those of Nottingham, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... steamer "Hudson" made the run from White River to Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This was the source of much talk and speculation among parties directly interested. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is a large field for speculation and inquiry, and embraces many things which, though true enough in themselves, are unfit to be incorporated with any system of practical grammar, however comprehensive its plan. Many authors have erred here. With what is merely theoretical, such a system ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Vicar had evaporated in the mists of speculation; Fontelles had no mind to lose his complaint against me in any such manner, but he was a man of ceremony and must needs begin again with me much as he had with the Vicar. Thus obtaining my opportunity, I cut across ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Saumur. De Lescure and Henri made the most minute inquiries—but in vain; had he destroyed himself, or hid himself in the town, his horse would certainly have been found; it was surmised that he had started for Paris on some mad speculation; and though his friends deeply grieved at his misconduct, his absence, when they had so much to do and to think of was in itself, felt as ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... brought forth, This rugged issue, might have been more worth, If he had lick'd it more. Nor doth he raise From the ambition of authentic plays, Matter or words to height, nor bundle up Conceits at taverns, where the wits do sup; His muse is solitary, and alone Doth practise her low speculation. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... seek recruits for the maintenance of some idea, to exploit some political, educational, or moral theory. This irresistible impulse has left its trail over German fiction. The men who wrote novels, as soon as they began to observe, began to theorize, and the results of this speculation were inevitably embodied in their works. They were men of mind rather than men of deeds, who minimized the importance of action and exaggerated the reflective, the abstract, the theoretical, the inner life of man. Hettner,[12] with fine insight, points to the introduction to "Sebaldus Nothanker" ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... line of speculation! I was deep in it when, above the regular shots of the fellow in the funk hole nearest me, came a rattle of pistol explosions some distance away. "One of the runners," I thought. "Hope he was as lucky as I." Munson told me later that he had run into a boche near a railway ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... slave-trade; when no department of literature or science was adorned by original genius; and when England had no broader statesman than Walpole, no abler churchman than Warburton, no greater poet than Pope. There was a general indifference to lofty speculation. A materialistic philosophy was in fashion,—not openly atheistic, but arrogant and pretentious, whose only power was in sarcasm and mockery, like the satires of Lucian, extinguishing faith, godless and yet boastful,—an Epicureanism such as Socrates attacked and Paul rebuked. It found its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... it' was as potent then as now, probably more potent still. It was an age of wild speculation accompanied by all the usual evils that follow frenzied ways. It was also an age of monopoly. Both monopoly and speculation sent recruits into the sea-dog ranks. Elizabeth would grant, say, to Sir Walter ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... quit the service of the Company. In the course of his voyages to India, and in the Indian seas, he made what he thought an important discovery relative to the southern whale fishery: he communicated it to a mercantile house upon his return, and was employed by them in the speculation. He now, however, became unfortunate for the first time: his ship was wrecked off the island of Olaheite, and the crew and himself compelled to remain for two or three years on that barbarous but ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... Laura Filbert superseded, as doubtless often before, by an orthodox consideration. Duff Lindsay drove away in his cart; and still, for an appreciable number of seconds, Miss Howe stood leaning over the bannisters, her eyes fixed full of speculation on the place where he had stood. She was thinking of a scene—a dinner with an Archdeacon—and of the permanent satisfaction to be got from it; and she renounced almost with a palpable sigh the idea of the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a leaf, not a cloud, over which light is not felt to be actually passing and palpitating before our eyes. There is the motion, the actual wave and radiation of the darted beam—not the dull universal daylight, which falls on the landscape without life, or direction, or speculation, equal on all things and dead on all things; but the breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and receives, and rejoices, and acts—which chooses one thing and rejects another—which seeks, and finds, and loses ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and it is on the ground of life rather than that of thought that they made their plea to the Gentiles. In their struggle for existence, threatened on every side by official persecution and popular fury, they had no opportunity for speculation on fundamentals—they pleaded merely to be allowed to live the life to which they were pledged. With the Eastern training, which most of them had had, so foreign to the ideals of Greek philosophy, and so tenacious of the idea of God, and with the person of Christ ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... prevent peculators and large corporations from fraudulently securing control of land intended for the bona fide or genuine settler. Within the last quarter of a century our land laws have been reorganized, with the double aim of doing justice to this type of settler, and of suppressing speculation and monopoly. As the result of Land Office investigations in 1913, more than 800,000 acres were returned to the public domain, on the ground that they ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... merely expressing a commonplace of primitive mental experience, transformation stories being of the essence of Polynesian as of much primitive speculation about the natural objects to which his eye is drawn with wonder ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... strange, helpless, whimsical being who now contemplated an emigration to Canada. How he succeeded in the speculation ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... finding out nothing which could give any countenance to suspicion that treachery was intended. They had agreed to work separately, and each mingled among the groups of citizens and soldiers, where the council was the general topic of conversation. There was much wonder and speculation as to the object for which the governor had summoned it, and as to the terms which he might be expected to propound, but to none did the idea of treachery or foul play in any way occur; and when at night they left the town and sent off their message to Archie, the lads ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... first general glance at affairs in the diamond-fields, I doubt whether we should have been inclined to suspect that John Gordon and Fitzwalker Tookey would have been likely to come together as partners in a diamond speculation. But John Gordon had in the course of things become owner of the other two shares, and when Fitzwalker Tookey determined to come home, he had done so with the object of buying his partner's interest. This he might have done at once,—only that he suffered under the privation ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope |
