"Philosopher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Greek medical philosopher was Pythagoras (about 580 B.C.). He was born at Samos, and began life as an athlete, but a lecture which he heard on the subject of the immortality of the soul kindled enthusiasm for philosophical study, the pursuit of which led ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... this is not by some condition or means that is so high and difficult that we cannot perform our part, but it is simply "in believing "—something which the little child or the aged philosopher, the poor man and the rich man, the ignorant and the learned can do. ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... Phil the philosopher was still another sort of person. She had spoken in her usual tone and he looked at her wonderingly. It was a new experience to hear life reduced to the simple terms Phil used. She seemed to him like a teacher who keeps a dull pupil after class, and, by eliminating ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... "she's bundled off. Father has borne it like a philosopher. I believe in his heart he is rather pleased that I should have turned her neck and crop off the premises. It was high time. She had mastered the old man, and could make him do what ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the relish of what is decent, just and amiable, perfects the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. And the study of such a taste or relish will, as we suppose, be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... respect to his Parts and Qualities, she paid him all the Complaisance she could, and which was due to him, and so must be confess'd. Tho' he had a stiff Formality in all he said and did, yet he had Wit and Learning, and was a great Philosopher. As much of his Learning as Atlante was capable of attaining to, he made her Mistress of, and that was no small Portion; for all his Discourse was fine and easily comprehended, his Notions of Philosophy fit for Ladies; and he took greater Pains with Atlante, than any ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... was affected; he promised to obey her, and told St. Aubert, somewhat abruptly, that there was nothing to expect. The latter was not philosopher enough to restrain his feelings when he received this information; but a consideration of the increased affliction which the observance of his grief would occasion his wife, enabled him, after some time, to command himself in her presence. Emily was at first overwhelmed with the intelligence; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... where there is no death? Beloved, there is nothing nearer you at this moment than paradise, if you incline that way. God beckons you back into paradise at this moment, and calls you by name to come. Come, He says, and be one of My paradise children. In paradise,' the Teutonic Philosopher goes on, 'there is nothing but hearty love, a meek and a gentle love; a most friendly and most courteous discourse: a gracious, amiable, and blessed society, where the one is always glad to see the other, and to honour the other. They know of no malice ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... mysterious dispensation of the Divine Being, is wonderfully compounded of the most diverse elements and classes, corresponding to the various needs and requirements of human life. And it is an ancient theory, supported by the authority of great names, by Plato, my revered master, the poet-philosopher, by Aristotle, the founder of political science, that the problem of a statesman is so to adjust these otherwise discordant elements as to form once for all in the body-politic a perfect, a final and immutable harmony. There is, according to this view, one simple chord and one only, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... however, mean to say, that if the reader be a youth hot from Oxford, he may not be able to prove, by a very refined and ingenious argument, that Titmouse was, in what he did above, a fine natural logician; for I recollect that some great philosopher hath demonstrated, by a famous argument, that there is NOTHING ANYWHERE: and no one that I have heard of, hath ever been able to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... that gentlemanly philosopher from Sweden, a great friend of the Governor, you know. But, alas, I might as well have tried to fascinate an iceberg! I do not believe that he knew, after a half-hour's conversation with me, whether I was man or woman. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Dyaks saw him. All were intent on the sensational prize they had secured, a young and beautiful white woman so contentedly roaming about the shores of this Fetish island. With the slow speed advised by the Roman philosopher, the backsight and foresight of the Lee-Metford came into line with the breast of the coarse ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... modern philosopher of grace, so-called. He looks down compassionately, and says, "Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for you. Too bad you should have gotten down there. Let me help you a bit, my brother." So he puts some flowering plants down in the slime of ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... Had some great philosopher entered, he would have been greeted with respect but would not have aroused anything like so much interest or enthusiasm as did the victorious gladiator. Even the boys in the streets knew his name and tried to ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... satisfaction of the poet Evenus, what has induced him to do so. Socrates explains his reason, and concludes by bidding him tell Evenus to follow him as soon as he can. Simmias expresses his surprise at this message, on which Socrates asks, "Is not Evenus a philosopher?" and on the question being answered in the affirmative, he says that he or any philosopher would be willing to die, though perhaps he would not commit violence on himself. This, again, seems a contradiction to Simmias; but Socrates explains it by showing that our souls are placed in ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... centuries since Plato gave to the world his magnificent treatise on the State. The dream of the Greek philosopher of equal rights for all intelligent citizens, among whom he includes women, has in large part been realised; but much is yet wanting to bring society to the standard of the Ideal Republic. In not ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. Thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been instinctive ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the battle of Jena, the Prussian monarchy had been crushed and the king was despairing even of the existence of his realm, he planned the foundation of the University of Berlin, by the advice of Fichte, the philosopher. It was inaugurated the very year that the despondent monarch returned to his capital. Since that time it has been the greatest glory of the Prussian crown, and has made Berlin ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... all the patience of his great forebear. If Germany had left him alone he would to-day have been a good citizen, who would never have permitted futile dreams to enter his head, and who would have contemplated his greatness with the smile of a philosopher. And who can say where this will end? It ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... blent in him with poetry—his imagination had romanticized the acquisitive instinct, as the religious feeling of the Middle Ages turned passion into love. And yet his could never be the abstract enjoyment of the philosopher who says: "This or that object is really mine because I'm capable of appreciating it." Neave wanted what he appreciated—wanted it with his touch and his sight as ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... as much of a philosopher as anything, I think. I think he could have done a great deal in this direction if he had studied while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter what; in a great many such directions he has greater ability than ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... letter, a book, a battle. How little to justify his unique fame! How invisible his performance among the illustrious events of his prodigious age! Yet is not the instinct of the human heart true; and in the stately society of his time, if Bacon were the philosopher, Shakespeare the poet, Burleigh the counsellor, Raleigh the soldier, Drake the sailor, Hooker the theologian, Essex the courtier, and Gresham the merchant, was not Philip Sidney as distinctively the gentleman? Heroes stood beside him in clusters, poets in constellations; all the illustrious ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... relief to me. Five-and-twenty years was a long respite. The boy might die—a thousand things might happen before then. At any rate, I was enough of a philosopher to seal down that secret page in my history, and to live as though it had ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... illustration and proof:—it has contributed to preserve the health of the human race, by the introduction of the most valuable drugs employed in medicine. It has removed ignorance and national prejudices, and tended most materially to the diffusion of political and religious knowledge. The natural philosopher knows, that whatever affects, in the smallest degree, the remotest body in the universe, acts, though to us in an imperceptible manner, on every other body. So commerce acts; but its action is not momentary; its impulses, once begun, continue with augmented force. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... in fencing to his cousin Sigismund, the son of Madame de la Roche-Jugan; then shut himself up in the library until the evening, which he passed at bezique with the General. Meantime he viewed with the eye of a philosopher the strife of the covetous relatives who hovered around their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they were imperfect works preceding the period of solid knowledge which produced the "Open Entrance." Again, so little was he consulted over the appearance of the "Sophic Mercury" that the printer represents it as the work of an American philosopher, whence it has been ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... (singer) El conde (count) La condesa (countess) El diacono (deacon) La diaconisa (deaconess) El duque (duke) La duquesa (duchess) El elector (elector) La electriz (electress) El emperador (emperor) La emperatriz (empress) El filosofo (philosopher) La filosofesa (philosopher) El gallo (cock) La gallina (hen) El heroe (hero) La heroina (heroine) El poeta (poet) La poetisa (poetess) El principe (prince) La princesa (princess) El profeta (prophet) La profetisa (prophetess) El rey (king) La reina (queen) El sacerdote ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the most. There are exceptions, of course, but with the vast majority the strain is too great and the rewards are too small. They cannot retire in time. I have a friend who, after a brilliant and active career, has withdrawn to the communion of nature and become a philosopher. He insists that all men should be retired by law at forty-five and condemned to spend the rest of their days tilling the soil gratis for women and the rising generation. The outdoor life would restore a ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... follower of Jesus of Jerusalem,—an Archbishop in the church of Christ. He gave himself up to dreams; to the illusions of fancy; to the vast desires of the human soul. He sought after the impossible. He sought after the Elixir of Life,—the Philosopher's Stone. The wealth, that should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles. Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas! was ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said—although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... found by his henchman necessary to make him drunk in order to get him away. In 574 a Ts'u general was found drunk when sent for by his king to explain a defeat by Tsin troops. In 560 the Ts'i envoy—the philosopher Yen-tsz—was entertained by the Ts'u court at a wine. In 531 the ruler of Ts'u first made drunk, and then killed, one of the petty rulers of orthodox China. In 537 it had already been explained to the King of Ts'u that on the occasions of ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... and the ice for Nero and the ale for Doctor Johnson, appeared as Shakespeare spoke. The philosopher bowed stiffly at Doctor Johnson, as though he hardly approved of him, extended his left hand to Shakespeare, and stared coldly ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... hoping-cap—for if a man who is no philosopher may have an opinion, we do not always wish and hope for the same thing—could have done no more for me than the chance of Fate; for at the moment the duke's voice called "Sampson!" loudly from the house. I ran in obedience to his summons. ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... humours again. Ennui was upon him. This goodly promontory, the earth—particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... called Montaigne 'un pur pyrrhonien'; but Pascal himself has been accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence like Montaigne with a horror of creeds, he was no philosopher of the God-denying sort. Moreover, notwithstanding his doubting moods and his fondness of the words 'Que sais-je?' he upheld the practice of religion in his own home, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... on a moment; and the caprice of passion might equally determine the seditious legion to lay down their arms at the emperor's feet, or to plunge them into his breast. Perhaps, if this singular transaction had been investigated by the penetration of a philosopher, we should discover the secret causes which on that occasion authorized the boldness of the prince, and commanded the obedience of the troops; and perhaps, if it had been related by a judicious historian, we should find this action, worthy of Caesar ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... senior day-room to a man condemned Sheen. The junior day-room was crimson in the face and incoherent. The demeanour of a junior in moments of excitement generally lacks that repose which marks the philosopher. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... same virtue to wish to do a thing and to have a prompt will to do it, for the object of each of these acts is the same. For this reason the Philosopher says[82]: "Justice is that by which men will and perform just deeds." And it is clear that to perform those things which pertain to the Divine worship or service comes under the virtue of religion. Consequently ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... taking up pieces like the -Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once apparent. The sharpest arrows are everywhere—and that partly in passages which can be proved to have been inserted(44)—directed against faith ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth[75] the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the point of view which the universal ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Babylonian Tables, and the hieroglyphs of Egypt, witness to an astronomy that had made considerable advance even in those remote epochs. Our actual constellations, which are doubtless of Babylonian origin, appear to have been arranged in their present form by the learned philosopher Eudoxus of Cnidus, about the year 360 B.C. Aratus sang of them in a didactic poem toward 270. Hipparchus of Rhodes was the first to note the astronomical positions with any precision, one hundred and thirty ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp'd short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... indulged in good living to the injury of his digestion, he was said to do so because the prince lived ill, and he was suspected. If virtuous and austere in his manners, he was thought to censure the court, and he was suspected. Was he philosopher, orator, or poet; it was unbecoming to have more celebrity than the government, and he was suspected. Lastly, if any one had obtained a reputation in war, his talent only served to make him dangerous; it became necessary to get rid of the general, or to remove him speedily ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Balance was published weekly by "Democritus the Younger, a lineal descendant of the Laughing Philosopher." It was established, March 20, 1817, by George Helmbold, the first editor of the Tickler and late of the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... form your god! Poor buttoned-up philosopher" [the Boy shifts his feet] "inbred to the point of cretinism, and founded to the bone on fear of ridicule [the Boy breathes heavily]—you ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a fragment which breaks off in the middle of a sentence. It was designed to be the second part of a trilogy, which, like the other great Platonic trilogy of the Sophist, Statesman, Philosopher, was never completed. Timaeus had brought down the origin of the world to the creation of man, and the dawn of history was now to succeed the philosophy of nature. The Critias is also connected with the Republic. Plato, as he has already ...
— Critias • Plato
... famous Italian astronomer and philosopher, and the contemporary of Kepler and of Milton, was born at Pisa on ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... mass paralyzed for the moment, but every way capable of effort. And the inspiration now fell, happily for the army, upon one in whom a full measure of soldierly strength and courage was combined with the education of an Athenian, a democrat, and a philosopher.[34] ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... station or provincial workhouse in the end. He had foreseen Stevie arrested, and was not afraid, because Mr Verloc had a great opinion of Stevie's loyalty, which had been carefully indoctrinated with the necessity of silence in the course of many walks. Like a peripatetic philosopher, Mr Verloc, strolling along the streets of London, had modified Stevie's view of the police by conversations full of subtle reasonings. Never had a sage a more attentive and admiring disciple. The submission and worship were so apparent that Mr ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of the whole thing? It all comes down to a worthless little Montmartroise? For a little thing of rien du tout, the artist, the philosopher, the English public school man will throw over his friend, his partner, his signed word, his honour? Mon Dieu! Well go—I can easily—No, I'll not say what I have ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... trouble to apply to him. In the succeeding year, in which Sylla and Pompey were Consuls, as Sulpicius, who was elected a Tribune of the people, had occasion to speak in public almost every day, I had an opportunity to acquaint myself thoroughly with his manner of speaking. At this time Philo, a philosopher of the first name in the Academy, with many of the principal Athenians, having deserted their native home, and fled to Rome, from the fury of Mithridates, I immediately became his scholar, and was exceedingly taken with his philosophy; and, besides the, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... If a philosopher were set to describe the best and the worst of life, he would certainly have a considerable choice before him. But amongst the best he would have to set down love, and amongst the worst he would have to set down love's disillusion. The ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... caverns, black as Erebus, that some of the choicest marbles and bronzes that now adorn the Museum at Naples were originally extracted. From a villa at Herculaneum also was taken the famous collection of 3000 rolls of papyrus, chiefly filled with the writings of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, perhaps the greatest "find" of ancient literature that has yet been made, although the contents of this damaged library, deciphered with equal toil and ingenuity, have not proved to be of the value originally set upon them by expectant scholars. But much of the city itself ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... region, Richard of St. Victor was supreme in contemplation, and also a psychologist far in advance of his time. We are apt to forget the mystical side of Aquinas; who was poet and contemplative as well as scholastic philosopher. ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... controversy, so carried out of himself that his very visions of Beelzebub acquired all the vividness of reality. Yet there are times when another spirit is upon him, when his reasoning is cool and colourless as that of a Greek philosopher. The misfortune of Luther is that he could not, as a Melancthon in large measure could, amalgamate the best elements ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... counsel with herself that night as to what she should do about this extraordinary "guide, philosopher, and friend" whom the Fates had provided for Clover. She saw that her father, from very over-anxiety, had made a mistake, and complicated Clover's inevitable cares with a most undesirable companion, who would ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... introduced on the stage: he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented; he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his part to offer any compromise ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... of that peculiar homage which ignorance paid to knowledge. There were, here and there, individuals, the record of whose eccentricity opens up for us vistas into the marvellous domain of magic and mystery which cast its glamour of romance over the old world of the alchemist in pursuit of the philosopher's stone. One of the most remarkable of latter-day disciples of Peter Woulfe, of whom some interesting particulars are given in Timbs' Modern Eccentrics, has a peculiar claim to notice here, if only for having for many years ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... declares that I have become a philosopher in my old age, and perhaps she is right. Now that I am forty, and a trifle less elastic in my movements, with patches of gray about my ears which give me a more venerable appearance, I certainly ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... is the Japanese pronunciation of the name of the Chinese philosopher Kung Ts[u], or Kung Fu Ts[u], ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the nomenclature of the streets also continues. The Boulevard Prince Eugene is to be called the Boulevard Voltaire, and the statue of the Prince has been taken down, to be replaced by the statue of the philosopher; the Rue Cardinal Fesch is to be called the Rue de Chateaudun. The newspapers also demand that the Rue de Londres should be rebaptised on the ground that the name of Londres is detested even more than Berlin. "If Prussia" (says one writer) "wages ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... "Faust"; but before dealing with Goethe's masterpiece, it is worth while to say something of the history of the story on which it is founded—the most famous instance of the old and widespread legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. The historical Dr. Faust seems to have been a self-called philosopher who traveled about Germany in the first half of the sixteenth century, making money by the practise of magic, fortune-telling, and pretended cures. He died mysteriously about 1540, and a legend soon sprang up that the devil, by ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the world more glorious, my gentle dames, than to listen to the deeds of others; nor was it without reason that the great philosopher placed the highest happiness of man in listening to pretty stories. In hearing pleasing things told, griefs vanish, troublesome thoughts are put to flight and life is lengthened. And, for this reason, you see the artisans leave their workshops, the merchants their country-houses, the lawyers ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... sower of wild oats. Had you and I been in his place at his age, who knows whether we might not have done as he did, unless indeed your fastidiousness had saved you from the empress Catherine. Byron was as little of a philosopher as Peter the Great: both were instances of that rare and useful, but unedifying variation, an energetic genius born without the prejudices or superstitions of his contemporaries. The resultant unscrupulous freedom of thought made Byron a greater poet than Wordsworth just as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... sand you, trample upon has a deeper significance than a series of lectures by your verbal philosopher whom you respect. It contains within itself the whole history of the earth; it tells you what it has seen since the dawn of time; while your philosopher simply plays on abstract terms and empty words. What does his Absolute, or One, or Substance mean? ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... day when he had to pay four or five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried about with him a most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not only rubbing elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did. A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances: the difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very disagreeable cud in that way. His ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... which can be had for a small sum. The type is large, the paper good and there are many notes to help one over the rocky places. There is no doubt of the truth of the saying that a man who reads Shakespeare consistently and with understanding needs no other education. Like the philosopher Emerson he boiled down the world's thoughts into terse sentences and one goes into a new universe when reading any of the plays. It is a good thing to learn parts of them by heart so that we can apply them to our own lives. They strengthen the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... paid for a few books of Leusippus, the philosopher, three Attick talents, which is about $3,000. Ptolemy Philadelphus is said to have given the Athenians fifteen talents, an exemption from tribute and a large supply of provisions for the MSS. of aeschylus, Sophocles ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... never saw; who, at every one of their meetings, which were so rare, kissed her, calling her "darling," and babbled; who, plain yet seductive, almost ridiculous, yet wholly exquisite, lived at Fiesole like a philosopher, while England celebrated her as her most beloved poet. Like Vernon Lee and like Mary Robinson, she had fallen in love with the life and art of Tuscany; and, without even finishing her Tristan, the first part of which had inspired in Burne-Jones dreamy aquarelles, she ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the criminal mob. A somewhat similar crisis recurred shortly afterwards when Spinoza returned from a visit to the hostile French camp. The object of his mission is not unequivocally known. Some think it was to meet the Prince of Conde solely in his private capacity of philosopher. It is certain Spinoza was advised the French King would acknowledge a dedicated book by means of a pension—an advice Spinoza did not act upon. Others think his mission was political. His reputation as a distinguished man would have made him a very likely ambassador. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the language of a nation than all other books," and the man who first supplied our young nation with a spelling-book has undoubtedly affected its spelling habits more than any other single person. But Webster was a moralist and a philosopher as well as a speller. He was by no means restricted in his ambition to the teaching of correct spelling; he aimed to have a hand in the moulding of the national mind and the national manners. In his preface to "The ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... tribulations [old P. concluded his story].—You will agree with me, gentlemen, as a matter of course, that I had a right to call him reckless; but you will probably also agree with me that he did not resemble the reckless fellows of the present day, although we must suppose that any philosopher would find traits of similarity between him and them. In both cases there is the thirst for self-annihilation, melancholy, dissatisfaction.... And what that springs from I will permit precisely that ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Beyond that is a white road with a wall on one side, along which I see peasant women walking with large baskets balanced on their heads. The road runs down the river to Neuenheim. Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards; and a winding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along for a mile or more, giving delightful views of the castle and the glorious woods and hills back of it. Above it is the mountain of Heiligenberg, from the other side of which one looks off toward Darmstadt and the famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in all generations. Continue my dear child to make virtue thy chief study. Canst thou expect thou betrayer of innocence to escape the hand of vengeance? Death the king of terrors chose a prime minister. Hope the balm of life sooths us under every misfortune. Confucius the great Chinese philosopher was eminently good as well as wise. The patriarch Joseph is an ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... philosopher, who contemplating this subject thinks it not impossible, that the first insects were the anthers or stigmas of flowers; which had by some means loosed themselves from their parent plant, like the male ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... been finished. The laboratory is closed. The philosopher, his task all done, has retired to his needed rest. Thinking men, even thinking Frenchmen, can live contented. Chocolate is sold—and paid for. And a score and a half of daily theatres are open at the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Jones. I docket it neatly at the secretaire, JONES, and I put it into pigeonhole J. It's the next thing to a receipt and is quite as satisfactory to ME. And I very much wish, Mortimer,' sitting on his bed, with the air of a philosopher lecturing a disciple, 'that my example might induce YOU to cultivate habits of punctuality and method; and, by means of the moral influences with which I have surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... him the truth. And if he were a philosopher of the eristic and antagonistic sort, I should say to him: You have my answer, and if I am wrong, your business is to take up the argument and refute me. But if we were friends, and were talking as you and I are now, I should reply in a milder strain and more in the ...
— Meno • Plato
... Will," as the boy began to speak. "Don't let's talk any more about it to-night. After all, a deal of storms go by—and it's a wise man who can read Time's order-book." He rose from the table. "It's like the fable. The King may die, the Ass may die, the Philosopher may die—and next Christmas maybe the peacefullest on record! I'm going to ride to Lauderdale for a little while, and, if you like, I'll ask about that ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... chess attributed to the last is amplified a little further on. The legend that Palamedes invented a game of this kind at the siege of Troy is emphatically rejected by our author, who pins his fame on Xerxes, a Greek philosopher! This became the received opinion, as may be gathered from the unhesitating language of Polydore Vergil in a passage which is thus rendered by John Langley:—"The chesse were invented the year of the world 3635, by a certain Wise man ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... write about the Plays and Shows, but how would he like to do it himself, with the thermometer at 103 degrees, and the Fourth of July only just over? And then, inasmuch as I am not a white-hatted philosopher, writing of "What I know about Farming," how can I be expected to write of things which have no existence? For, with the exception of the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN, and one or two minor places of amusement, there are no plays and shows at present in this ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... for the declarations of a lover, not the reasonings of a philosopher,' cried Julia passionately.—'Thou man of ice, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... this matter as quiet as possible, bearing the loss like a philosopher, and forming a resolution in my mind never again to be taken in by a New York general. I observed, however, that two bearded vagabonds (such at least I took them for) in hats of priests, came suspiciously up, for the discovery made some stir, and took down all that was said. And this was, by these ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Mysteries, five years' probation between the Lesser and the, 432-l. Greatest good of greatest number can legitimately affect ideal justice, 836-l. Grecian Choruses, the Strophe and Ante-Strophe connected with the Stars, 462-m. Grecian philosopher, saying of Socrates, the, 170-u. Grecian Temples destroyed by Persians under Xerxes and fire chapels erected, 610-m. Greed, commercial, deadens the nerves of sympathy, 298-l. Greek history shows the One God and then a worship of Nature, 619-l. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... being by a process analogous to that which the people whom he addressed called "making" or "creating"; and I think that, unless we forget our present knowledge of nature, and, putting ourselves back into the position of a Phoenician or a Chaldaean philosopher, start from his conception of the world, we shall fail to grasp the meaning of the Hebrew writer. We must conceive the earth to be an immovable, more or less flattened, body, with the vault of heaven above, the watery abyss below and around. ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of a philosopher for me, Miss Raymount," said Vavasor with a smile. "But just answer me one question. What if a man is too ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... lectures of Zeno, of Elea, on natural philosophy, in which that philosopher followed the method of Parmenides. Zeno moreover had made an especial study of how to reduce any man to silence who questioned him, and how to enclose him between the horns of a dilemma, which is alluded to by Timon of Phlius in the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... PHILOSOPHY," attended by a full audience as "a rare treat" "like buckwheat-cakes fresh from the griddle," for "Prof. Harris took a decidedly new step in Philosophy," giving "an insight which no philosopher, ancient or modern, has attained." Again, speaking of it privately, Prof. Harris said, "I got hold of the idea three or four years ago, and I have been trying to work it out since. I regard it as my best contribution to philosophy." "Montes parturiunt," ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... a little philosopher, as well as a hero, and if you are not afraid of Kate, you may ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... strings. We approached and accosted him. He ceased his work, and entered into conversation with the ease and politeness of nature's nobleman. His countenance was expressive of benignity and happiness. This was the botanist, traveller and philosopher we had ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... trials to which he had been daily subject. While to some men association with so peculiar and trying a nature as Rusha Thornton's might have brought moroseness and all unloveliness, Duncan Lisle, like the philosopher of hemlock fame, had turned his wife's shrewishness into a coat of armor, within which he preserved his soul serene, contemplative, and peaceful. This is saying ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... is fed to bees, they will quickly transmute it into the purest nectar. There is, however, no more truth in such a conceit, than there would be in that of a man who supposed that he had found the veritable philosopher's stone; and that he was able to change all our copper and silver coins into the purest gold! Bees to be sure, can make white and beautiful comb, from almost any kind of sweet; and why? because wax ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew—a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind. Now Nature, faithfully followed, proves herself a careful mother. A lad, for some liking to the jingle of words, betakes himself to letters for his life; by-and-by, when he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apparently careful examination, walking all round, ventured upon the further experiment of endeavouring to ascertain with her paw whether there was really anything to be apprehended from it. Still not finding any motion, our philosopher of the Newtonian school, satisfied that she had nothing to fear, seated herself quietly by the fire; and the next time she saw it in motion, she sprang gaily forward, and enjoyed her triumph, by playing with the object of her ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... was sure that love of her had been the cause: let her but be satisfied upon this score, and there are very few things which she will not forgive. And, though wholly unconscious of the fact, she is a great and sound philosopher after all. For, from the nature of things, the rearing of a family always has been, is, and must ever be, attended with cares and troubles, which must infallibly produce, at times, feelings to be combated and overcome by nothing short of that ardent affection which first brought the ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... led me to believe that you would become a philosopher; now, the trend is more toward the doctor; tomorrow I'll think you ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... suffer; and there are, I am aware, resources in vanity, that will reconcile man, and woman too, to martyrdom; but these resources should not be exhausted wantonly; and in pleasure, as in economy, there is no benefit in lighting the candle at both ends. The true philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every thing; and fools only, as Horace has it, run into one vice in trying to avoid another. Let not the reader, from these remarks, suppose that their author is a morose censurer of the times; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... said his father. "I suspect we have a young philosopher where you see only a silly little brother. He has, I fancy, got a glimpse of something he does not yet ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... philosopher, thinks we all had a narrow escape, back in geologic time, of having our eggs spoiled before they were hatched, or, rather, rendered incapable of hatching by too thick a shell. This was owing to the voracity of the early ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... page destined to receive the amount of each month's savings, he had copied this saying of a Chinese philosopher:— ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... of one of the first families in the kingdom, who loaded me with kindnesses, and seemed to have a great esteem for my occult knowledge. He told me that the Marquis del M—nte, his father, was a zealous admirer of the cabala, and would think himself happy in having a philosopher like myself (for such he was pleased to call me) under his roof. The marquis lived in one of his country seats on the sea-shore, about seven miles from Naples. There, almost entirely secluded from the world, he bewailed, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sweetness, of this young girl were charming and perplexing to Sir Basil. Girls so assured he had found harsh, disagreeable and, almost always, ugly; they had been the sort of girl one avoided. And girls so lovely had usually been coy and foolish. This girl walked like a queen, looked at one like a philosopher, smiled at one like an angel. He fixed his mind on her last words, rallying his sense of quizzical paternity to ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... believe the sincerity of him who addressed me, altho' he had not convinced me of his innocence; and I wrote the following reply to M. de Voltaire, which a silly pride dictates to me to communicate to you, in conjunction with the letter of the philosopher: "MONSIEUR:—Even were you culpable from too much friendship towards those you cherish, I would pardon you as a recompense for the letter you address to me. This ought the more to charm me, as it gives me ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... wandered on into an abstract dissertation upon journalism generally, winding up with the remark that, "It was the support of the yellow press which defeated Bryan;" but then the Professor is neither a politician nor the son of a politician —being a Scotchman, and therefore a philosopher and dogmatist. The pessimistic vein in his remarks was checked by the purchase of a reversible waterproof shooting-jacket at Butler, several sizes too large, but warm; and the Professor remarked, as he gathered ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... a philosopher, by reflection, the mysterious depths of nature and the enquiry into these depths were among his chief delights. And from boyhood he had felt that it was the business of this life, to prepare for that which is to come. His schoolfellow, Lamb, also observed, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... follows nature when he chooses 10, or perhaps 5 or 20. But it is a matter of the greatest interest to find that other numbers have, in exceptional cases, been used for this purpose. Two centuries ago the distinguished philosopher and mathematician, Leibnitz, proposed a binary system of numeration. The only symbols needed in such a system would be 0 and 1. The number which is now symbolized by the figure 2 would be represented by 10; while ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant |
