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More "Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delightful; as boys we had often seen the outside walls of that fine property which had come to the speculative builder at last, but never a glimpse within; so that there was no desecration for us in the modern laying out of that beautiful double garden of ours, whatever there might have been for such ghosts of Montmorencys as chose to revisit ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... very peculiar. We choose to boast ourselves of being different in England, but we have simply les qualites de nos defauts after all. The clash of speculative opinions is dreadful here, practical men catch at the ideal as if it were a loaf of bread, and they literally set about cutting out their Romeos 'into little stars,' as if that were the most natural ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... have just named—pen in hand. The ordinary text-books of formal logic do not seem to meet the special aim which I am now trying to impress as desirable—namely, the habit of valuing, not merely speculative nor scientific truth, but the truth of practical life; a practising of the intellect in forming and expressing the opinions and judgments that form the staple of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... the master workman to draw his designs upon. By it we are reminded that, as the operative workman erects his temporal building agreeably to the rules and designs laid down by the master on his trestle-board, so should we, both operative and speculative, endeavor to erect our spiritual building agreeably to the rules and designs laid down by the Supreme Architect of the Universe, in the great books of nature and revelation, which are our spiritual, moral and ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... itself on the mind, be uppermost in the mind, occupy the mind; have in one's mind. make an impression; sink into the mind, penetrate into the mind; engross the thoughts. Adj. thinking &c. v.; thoughtful, pensive, meditative, reflective, museful[obs3], wistful, contemplative, speculative, deliberative, studious, sedate, introspective, Platonic, philosophical. lost in thought &c. (inattentive) 458; deep musing &c. (intent) 457. in the mind, under consideration. Adv. all things considered. Phr. the mind being on the stretch; the mind turning upon, the head turning upon, the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... North-American Slavery, more especially considered in its economical aspects. But the author has been led to enlarge his view, and has brought before the public one of the most significant works that have yet appeared on this momentous subject. So far as the treatise is a speculative one, it has an interest for all inquirers. So far as it is intended to influence or modify the current estimate of the great conflict in this country, it bears more directly on the people of England; but, unless we have determined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... were of wider range, and those of a woman who mixed hearing with reading, and observation with her musings. She has no doleful ejaculatory notes, of the kind peculiar to women at war, containing one-third of speculative substance to two of sentimental—a feminine plea for comprehension and a squire; and it was probably the reason (as there is no reason to suppose an emotional cause) why she exercised her evident sway over the mind of so plain and straightforward an Englishman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'My four "doctors,"' he tells Manning, 'are doctors to the speculative man; would they were such to the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... her admirers, she had half laughingly replied that she had once found her "ideal," but never would again. Yet the jest had scarcely passed her lips before she became pale and silent. With this change came also a desire to re-purchase the picture, which she had sold in her early success to a speculative American picture-dealer. On inquiry she found, alas! that it had been sold only a day or two before to a Chicago gentleman, of the name of Potter, who had taken ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... a way that showed me his brainstorm over Robert Gordon had been checked. But there was a startled look in his eyes which changed to a more speculative scrutiny before he ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... with harmonizing resignation to the unalterable decree, offering his private wish a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of natural piety. That he shall know his friends hereafter is not impossible, not improbable; neither is it certain. He may desire it, expect it, but not with speculative pride dogmatically affirm it, nor with insisting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... speculative in these sinister forebodings. The precise dates of the approaching catastrophes were alone uncertain. It was known, however, that they were very distant. Accordingly, neither the learned dissertations of men of science nor the animated descriptions of certain poets produced any impression upon the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of the speculative understanding contemplating for contemplation's sake. This act has all the marks of happiness. It is the highest act of man's highest power. It is the most capable of continuance. It is fraught with pleasure, purest and highest ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... were found and I did eat them,"(Jer. xv. 16.) A speculative knowledge of the word of God, and especially of those parts that are prophetical, will afford pleasure to the human intellect, even though the mind be unsanctified. (Matt. xiii. 20, 21.) But when the prophet gets a farther insight into the contents as ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... It's unfortunate that the market broke before I could get rid of them, but it may rally. I'm rather disturbed about the matter; but, after all, one has to take one's chance in buying shares. Dealing in the speculative sorts is to a large extent a game ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Cicada. His nature was not, perhaps, so perverted as to think about persons of such condition and position in life as Cicada; but since he had heard the discussion about women, and their several classifications, he had somehow become speculative in his sentiments, and ambitious of testing all those different varieties by his own experience. While matters were in this state Iyo-no-Kami returned to the capital, and came in haste to pay his respects to Genji. He was ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... no room for it in the courts of princes, where great affairs are carried on by authority." "That is what I was saying," replied he, "that there is no room for philosophy in the courts of princes." "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share. If ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... of this work to show that as long as the railroads are permitted to be managed as private property and are used by their managers for speculative purposes or other personal gain, or as long even as they are used with regard only for the interest of stockholders, they are not performing their proper functions; and that they will not serve their real purpose until ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts. Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents of action almost exclusively attract his notice; and he talks with very complacent disdain of "the idle learned." Homer, indeed, he admires; but principally, I am afraid, because he is ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thing is such as seems to him to require explanation, and the explanation is that this thing is the doing of some god. If the thing that arrests attention is some disaster, which calls for remedy, the community approaches the god with prayer and sacrifice; its object is practical, not speculative; and no myth arises. But if the thing that arrests attention is not one which calls for action, on the part of the community, but one which stimulates curiosity and provokes reflection, then the reflective answer to the question, why has this thing ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... own—anybody's Youth—no limp and yellowed keepsake, but all crisply done up and ready for putting on. So sharp for the moment was his sense of accepting the invitation to put it on with her as the best possible traveller's guise, especially for seeing Venice in, that catching the speculative eye of the large lady turned upon him, he quailed sensibly. She had the air of having detected him in an attempt to establish a relation with her companion on the ground of their common youngness, and finding herself ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... beasts towards other species arises from hunger, the necessity of nourishment; the cruelty of man towards man arises only from the vanity of his masters and the folly of his impertinent prejudices. Speculative men, who endeavour to make us believe, that all in the universe was made for man, are much embarrassed, when we ask, how so many hurtful animals can contribute to the happiness of man? What known advantage results to the friend of the gods, from being bitten by a viper, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... divine consolation in the hour of death. Flatter not yourself that there is any happiness beneath the sun aside from this. "There is no peace saith my God to the wicked," and, he who says there is, contradicts Jehovah, and is yet "in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity." A speculative faith is of but little consequence, so long as it does not influence our life and conversation for the better. We must believe to the saving of the soul from the evil of the world. "Then shall thy light break ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... Edwardeans is continued down to the middle of the nineteenth century, and later, through different lines, ending in Emmons of Franklin, Taylor of New Haven, and Finney of Oberlin, and is represented among the living by the venerable Edwards A. Park, of Andover, who adds to that power of sustained speculative thinking in a straight line which is characteristic of the whole school, a wide learning in the whole field of theological literature, which had not been usual among his predecessors. It is a prevailing trait of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... o'clock the family and guest retired, the father to indulge his soul's long habit of speculative conjecture, the daughter to sleep, Oswald to think ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... which scientists have stood baffled. Every child of the human race has asked, "What is the origin of the material world, what is the origin of life, and what is the origin of sin?" In general the philosophers held (and most of what science says concerning these matters is not science but speculative philosophy) that matter was eternal and simply asked how it came to its present state. One group, the materialists, held that an active principle inherent in the matter working through long ages, brought about the present state ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... "enlightened"—that is to say, we presume, the most rationalistic and scientific—century the world has yet passed through. We can imagine him asking whether, in all the past history of the human race, so great a zeal for poetry, romantic, lyrical-descriptive, speculative, has ever been manifested at once in such force and width in England, Germany, France, America. And we can fancy him completely satisfied with that single phenomenon. We can also imagine him setting opinion against opinion, outweighing Macaulay ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Montana, went into the Firehole basin and cut a large number of poles, intending to come back the next summer and fence in the tract of land containing the principal geysers, and hold possession for speculative purposes, as the Hutchins family so long held the Yosemite valley. One of these men was named Harry Norton. He subsequently wrote a book on the park. The other one was named Brown. He now lives in ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... evolution. People generally thought the idea absurd, as well as irreligious. All previous efforts on the part of advanced thinkers to persuade mankind of the truth of evolution had been nearly without effect. Among the early philosophers the whole idea was purely speculative. They made no attempt to prove it, and the conception was without influence upon the thinking of the ordinary man. This remains true until the time of Lamarck. This French genius succeeded in persuading not a few people of the validity ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... be worth double, perhaps three times as much as at present. He confided the fact that he had put all his savings into the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed present value. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. His air of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all. Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world were a pretty ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... bulk and stature is pressed upon by a superincumbent weight of 30,000 pounds or 13.5 tons. An inch fall or rise in the barometer shows that this load is lightened or increased, sometimes in a few hours, by nearly 1,000 pounds; and no notice is taken of it, except by the meteorologist, or by the speculative physician, seeking the subtle causes of epidemic and endemic complaints. At Dorjiling (7,400 feet), this load is reduced to less than 2,500 pounds, with no appreciable result whatever on the frame, however ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... leave anticipations and imaginings,—which, by the way, is a forbearance hard of practice in a region where all things are on the whirl of speculative change, and where practical results outrun the projections of even the most visionary theorist,—and return to make such rapid survey of this interesting city as may be ventured on during a first visit of some twenty days. I feel, indeed, that but little can be really known in so ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern you're asking for—there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be saying. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... their intensive values, interpretation of these variations is speculative. They indicate that the pairs of beats are combined in higher groups of four; that the differences of mean variation in the first interval are functions of an alternating major and minor accentuation, the former occurring in the second and fourth, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Hamilton and Clinton approached the Court-house from opposite directions, on the morning of the 17th, they did not cross the street to avoid meeting, although they bowed with extreme formality and measured each other with a keen and speculative regard. Clinton was now forty-nine years old, his autocratic will, love of power, and knowledge of men, in their contemptuous maturity. He was a large man, with the military bearing of the born and finished martinet, a long hard ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... problems, and to enjoy and take part in their discussion; but it could scarcely be expected that, with his numerous other employments, he should really sound to their utmost depths the profundities of Greek thought, or understand the speculative difficulties which separated the various schools one from another. No doubt his knowledge was superficial, and there may have been ostentation in the parade which he made of it; but we must not deny him the praise of a quick, active intellect, and a width of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... that lay beneath the horizon in the distance. Was it the brotherhood of fatigue and suffering endured in common that had served thus to dissipate his wrathful feelings? He was Bonapartist by birth, and had never thought of the Republic except in a speculative, dreamy way; his feeling toward the Emperor, personally, too, inclined to friendliness, and he was favorable to the war, the very condition of national existence, the great regenerative school of nationalities. Hope, all at once, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... philosophy was much more definite than Coleridge's; it gave substance to his character and edge to his intellect, and, in the end, can scarcely be distinguished from the emotion generating his verse. There is, however, no trace of originality in his speculative writing, and we need not regret that, after hesitating whether to be a metaphysician or a poet, he decided against philosophy. Before finally settling to poetry, he at one time projected a complete and systematic ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... this time colonized by the French; and a French settler there, De Gronsseliers, an enterprising and speculative man, after travelling in various directions, reached a country, where he received information respecting Hudson's Bay: he therefore resolved to attempt to reach this bay by sea. In the course of this undertaking ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... from the actual state of society. It arises from the distress and destitution which will fall at times upon a great manufacturing population, and from the wild and extravagant opinions which are naturally generated in an advanced and speculative state of society. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... transportation for the then existing population of the State, and the consequent reckless creation of a State debt for money borrowed at extravagant interest and liberal commissions. The State underwent a season of speculative intoxication, in which, by the promised and expected rush of immigration and the swelling currents of its business, its farms were suddenly to become villages, its villages spreading towns, and its towns transformed into great cities, while all its people were ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the country of speculative science visited by Pantag'ruel and his companions in their search for "the oracle of the Holy ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in giving those extracts is, to shew the vital necessity for the formation of Homes at all our leading ports. At Liverpool, for instance, the crimps are so active and speculative in driving their abominable traffic, that no sooner do they hear of a man-of-war being paid off at Portsmouth, or any other naval port, than they send their agents to entice the sailors down to Liverpool. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... a little apart, watching her husband with speculative eyes. Then she came and stood near him, on the side farthest from the alarming bone ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... trudging on, his mind intent upon something which was part of a scene elsewhere, or on the objects and results of the solemnities in celebration, as yet purely speculative, might have been disagreeably surprised at discovering himself the subject of study by a stranger whose dress proclaimed him a foreigner; possibly the Prince's stare, which we have already seen was at times powerfully magnetic, filled him with aversion and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... development of my flock of sheep were partially due to my speculative desires. I was persistent in having them gratified, and succeeded, by being allowed the privilege of selling off the fat wethers whenever they became marketable, and replacing them with young ewes, which increased rapidly. These could be ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... committee was uninteresting to Mr. Vigil, it was not so to the speculative inhabitants of Limehouse, or to the credulous shopkeepers of Rotherhithe. On the evening of the day on which Mr. Blocks was examined, the shares went up 20 per cent; and when his evidence was published in ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... imposed on the colonies by the Parliament of Great Britain, engrosses the conversation of the speculative part of the colonists, who look upon this unconstitutional method of taxation, as a direful attack upon their liberties, and loudly exclaim against the violation. What may be the result of this, and of some other (I think I may add) ill-judged measures, I will not undertake to determine; but this ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... my journal, as it was written at the moment that the information was given. I have no theory, as I do not indulge in the luxury of geographical theories; but I shall give my information in the same words in which I received it from the natives. Speculative geographers may then ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... of their faculties on their rural doings left them childish and inefficient in the use of their brains for other purposes. Mention has been made of the "fatalism" which still prevails in the village outlook; but fatalism is too respectable a name for that mere absence of speculative thought which was characteristic of the peasant kind of people I have known. The interest of their daily pursuits kept their minds busy upon matters obvious to the senses, while attention to opinions and ideas was discouraged. For this reason the older ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... nervousness, his sleeplessness, and the state of his heart. Then followed reproaches, such as he had never made before. They were sharp enough to make her weep, and true enough to put tragedy into her face. This tragedy she carried down to the breakfast table. It made Jack and Mrs. Hemingway speculative, and it worried Ned. They glanced to him for explanation, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... dark cloud still crowded the zenith, but along the eastern horizon, against the increasing blue, lay a city of golden spires and mosques and minarets—an Oriental city, indeed, such as is inhabited by poets and dreamers and other speculative persons fond of investing their small capital in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in spite of his prosaic profession of bookkeeper, had an opulent though as yet unworked vein of romance running through his composition, and he said to himself as ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have received a partial and inexact report. My opinion is, that certain things are indifferent and unworthy of pursuit or attention, as lying beyond our research and almost our conjecture; which things the generality of philosophers (for the generality are speculative) deem of the first importance. Questions relating to them I answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again, there are modes of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to others. What I myself follow ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Manderson kept the diamonds in which he had been investing for some time past. I didn't open them; I could feel the tiny stones shifting under the pressure of my fingers. How many thousands of pounds' worth there were there I have no idea. We had regarded Manderson's diamond-buying as merely a speculative fad. I believe now that it was the earliest movement in the scheme for my ruin. For any one like myself to be represented as having robbed him there ought to be a strong inducement shown. That had been provided with ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... man; with the man whose dreams are no longer visions of the imagination, but are becoming incorporate in some external order; whose passions are no longer seething within him, but are working themselves out in vital consequences; whose thought is no longer purely speculative, but has begun to give form and shape to laws, habits, or institutions. It is the revelation of the human spirit in action which we find in the epic and the drama; the inward life working itself out in material and social relations; the soul of the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and its rather arid, dour population, should have become the centre of growth for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, needed this hard nucleus of Prussianism—and its matter-of-fact, organizing type ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... his philosophy, and Bishop Horne his simple but pathetic lines on the "Fall of the Leaf,"—lessons of nature which will still find their way to the hearts of mankind, when the more subtle workings of speculative philosophy shall be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... essential of life, whether I was sane or insane. I resolved then and there to study out a new course. By toiling like a sailor at the pump of a sinking ship, I had taken advantage to the uttermost of the respite Galloway's help had given me. My property was no longer in more or less insecure speculative "securities," but was, as I had told Langdon, in forms that would withstand the worst shocks. The attacks of my enemies, directed partly at my fortune, or, rather, at the stocks in which they imagined it was still invested, and partly at my personal character, were doing me ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... less plain to us and as easy of explanation,—just as plain as to how and why some birds eat gravel to improve their digestion. In the cases of different susceptibility to the action of strychnia or of narcotics, the explanation must of necessity, for the present, be more or less speculative. But how are we to account, even in the way of speculation, for the peculiar immunity, lack of predisposition and hereditary tendencies to disease exhibited by the Hebrew, who, since the history of the world, has been a civilized and rational being,—even ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... language. My thoughts cannot make themselves apparent but by words, and to my words she will be able to affix no meaning. Yet is not that a hasty decision? The version from the dramas of Zeno which I found in her toilet was probably hers, and proves her to have a speculative knowledge of our tongue. Near half a year has since elapsed, during which she has dwelt with talkers of English, and consequently could not fail to have acquired it. This conclusion is somewhat dubious, but experiment will give ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... spinster aunt was ingeniously contrived, but it seemed rather speculative and rash—she might not have had a penny. His only ground for jumping to the conclusion that she had a fortune was that, on his saying that "Tupman only wants your money"; "The wretch!" she exclaimed—"Mr. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... such an extravagant problem, by one so new to our councils and deliberations. I never was more fashed in my life; for having hitherto, in all my plans for the improvement of the town, not only succeeded, but given satisfaction, I was vexed to see the council run away with such a speculative vagary. No doubt, the popular fantasy anent education and academies, had quite as muckle to do in the matter as Mr Plan's fozey rhetoric, but what availed that to me, at seeing a reasonable undertaking reviled and set aside, and grievous debts about to be laid on the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the smooth road in the summer sunshine, Grace cast more than one speculative glance about her, trying to glean some faint hint of their destination. Although conversation went on briskly between herself and her Fairy Godmother, her keen eyes lost no detail that might possibly furnish ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... demand pushed the trade deficit up in recent years, although the trade balance improved in 2006. Housing prices probably peaked in 2005, diminishing the prospect that interest rates would be raised to prevent a speculative bubble. Conservative fiscal policies have kept Australia's budget in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and passionate moods; and she could sing and play quite well. Her voice was, of course, quite untrained—she was only fourteen—but it was pleasant to listen to. She was beginning to show the combined traits of her mother and father—Jennie's gentle, speculative turn of mind, combined with Brander's vivacity of spirit and innate executive capacity. She could talk to her mother in a sensible way about things, nature, books, dress, love, and from her developing tendencies Jennie caught keen glimpses of the new worlds ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the village of Lauterbach appeared at the end of the valley, and very proud I felt as I surveyed the tall and handsome house of the late Christian Haas, my future abode, the centre of my property, real and speculative. I admired its situation by the long dusty road, its vast roof of grey shingle, the sheds and barns covering with their broad expanse the wagons, the carts, and the crops; behind, the poultry-yard, then the little ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... great as Dante's own, who when he had by his prowess in arms recovered it for the Empire, stood resolutely between it and the destruction which in the opinion of his comrades it had merited, is condemned to share with a Pope and an Emperor the penalty of speculative heterodoxy. On the other hand, we find Charles of Anjou, the foreign intruder, the bitter foe of the Empire and pitiless exterminator of the imperial race, a man in whom later historians, free from personal or patriotic bias, have seen hardly any virtue to redeem the sombre cruelty of his ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... three times wearing around, providing they didn't come to mending before that," mused the "Pet," with a speculative look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, and I'll wager ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... The speculative market, sensitive barometer of governmental policy, immediately underwent such violent fluctuations as to indicate a general belief that Gladstone's speech meant action in the war. The price of raw cotton dropped so abruptly ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Guernsey, the laws of the city of London are carried over with him. To take the laws as they stand in Canada has been allowed—to act according to those laws, and to be bound by their coercion, is a natural consequence. In this view I think the bill has done nothing obnoxious. I have no speculative opinions. I would have consulted the French customs to a much greater extent, if it had been for me to have framed the law." Colonel Barre, Lord John Cavendish, and Sergeant Glynn next warmly opposed the bill, and they were followed by the Solicitor-general, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his life before. He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled. They soon came to two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to draw a comparison between an ordinary roadside inn in England and its synonym up in the country of America; a better parallel is a speculative railway tavern verging always on bankruptcy. There is an utter absence of the old-fashioned coziness which enables you easily to dispense with luxuries. You enter at once into a stifling, stove heated bar-room, defiled with all ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... much difficulty in belief as in action, for belief is itself an action of the mind. He was always anxious to believe anything that would carry him beyond the limits of time and space, but it was not often that he could give more than a speculative assent to even the most improbable of creeds. Always seeking fixity, his mind was too fluid for any anchor to hold in it. He drifted from speculation to speculation, often seeming to forget his aim by the way, in almost the collector's delight over the curiosities ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... more fitting occasion, I would merely mention now that these questions constitute, in the opinion of our most eminent authorities, the two great standing enigmas of meteorology. Indeed it was the interest manifested in them by Sir John Herschel, in a letter of singular speculative power, addressed to myself, that caused me to enter upon the consideration of these questions ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... demonstration of the unity of the power that is in the universe and manifests itself through it? The unity of God? The Lord our God is one! And this is no question of speculation, it is demonstrated truth. Now, as to any speculative or metaphysical division of God's nature into three parts or personalities, there is not, and there cannot be, in the nature of things, one slightest particle of proof. The unity is demonstrated: anything ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... which, under any circumstances, would have thrown itself into the deepest speculative thought of its time. He seems soon to have passed through the mere ecclesiastical debatings to the deep questions which lay below them. There was one lesson—probably one only—which he had never been able to learn from his great master, namely, to acknowledge that there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... to 1873 has been characterized as one of rampant prosperity, and such it was for the commercial, the manufacturing, and especially the speculative interests of the country. For the farmers, however, it was a period of bitter depression. The years immediately following the close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous expansion of production, particularly of the staple crops. The demobilization of the armies, the closing of war ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... pleased to correct that imagination where you find it. I ever thought the study of it my best entertainment and pastime, but I have no ambition nor design upon the style.' Until he accepts religion, with all its limitations and encouragements, he has not even sure landmarks on his way. So speculative a brain, able to prove, and proving for its own uneasy satisfaction, that even suicide is 'not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise,' could allow itself to be guided by no fixed rules; and to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a sight, when he may have been looking at a chronometer perhaps. What I do know about his procedure is, that he always used a very rough method of equal altitudes, which would make a mathematician stare and gasp; that his nautical almanac was a ten-cent one published by some speculative optician is New York; that he never worked up a "dead reckoning;" and that the extreme limit of time that he took to work out his observations was ten minutes. In fact, all our operations in seamanship or navigation were run on the same happy-go-lucky principle. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Her expression became speculative. Her brown eyes lighted. "I've been wondering if I should look Outward, too. Whether it makes sense—for ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... dark, drizzly, melancholy night; a fair specimen of Gravesend weather and the parts adjacent; no 'star that's westward from the pole' to point my destined path, and furnish food for speculative thought; and, after sliding five or six times up and down some twenty feet of wet deck, I groped my way to the cabin. The captain was not on board, and I found myself a stranger among men. Of all gregarious animals man is the most tardy in getting acquainted: meet them for the first time in a jury-box, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... continued to happen that until the [x] last half-century Herbal Physic has remained only speculative and experimental, instead of gaining a solid foothold in the field of medical science. Its claims have been merely empirical, and its curative methods ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... des Menages" did not long discourage Balzac. At the beginning of 1840 he made an engagement to provide Harel, the speculative manager of the Theatre Porte-St-Martin, with a drama. The play was accepted before it was written; and in order to be near the theatre Balzac established himself in the fifth floor of the house of Buisson, his tailor, at the corner of the Rue ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... altered indefinably. Inspecting his chafing prisoner now with narrowed, speculative eyes which glinted keenly, he fell presently to whistling softly, laughed and with tantalizing abruptness fell silent again. Immobile and subtle now as his silent companion, he stared curiously at the other's fastidiously pointed ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely speculative family of yours if we—— By the way, there's the whistle at Anderson's crossing. Good-by, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... craft to which he belonged. At that time, every man had a 'new principle' of his own for the sneck of the shears, some theoretical mode of cutting, which was to make the coat fit like the skin. Our neighbour, who had a practical and mechanical, rather than a speculative head, resolved not to be behind in the race of competition, but to proceed in a different way. 'It is all very well,' thought he, 'to talk of principles and theories; but with the requisite apparatus, the human figure may be measured as accurately as a block of stone;' and accordingly he set ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Alan Tremaine and Elisabeth Farringdon grew apace during the next twelve months. His mind was of the metaphysical and speculative order, which is interesting to all women; and hers was of the volatile and vivacious type which is attractive to some men. They discussed everything under the sun, and some things over it; they read the same books and compared notes afterward; they went out sketching together, and ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... to be the means of our conversion. The multitude have neither the time, the patience, nor the clearness and exactness of thought, for processes of investigation and deduction. Reason is slow and abstract, cold and speculative; but man is a being of feeling and action; he is not resolvable into a dictum de omni et nullo, or a series of hypotheticals, or a critical diatribe, or an algebraical equation. And this obvious fact does, as far as ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... reverence of magistrates; or if she can form a Timoleon or a Numa Pompilius to the government of a state—how meritorious is the work! One king—nay, one minister or counsellor of state—imbued with her precepts is of more value than all the speculative, retired philosophers or cynical revilers of princes and magistrates ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... evidently a little puffed up with a feeling of satisfaction at the clever way in which he had got out of the difficulty, without displaying his ignorance of astronomy, and was even venturing, in the pride of his heart, to make some speculative and startling assertions in regard to the "'eavenly bodies" generally, when Buzzby put ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... satisfaction; But to be free and bounteous to her mind: And heaven defend your good souls, that you think I will your serious and great business scant For she is with me: no, when light-wing'd toys Of feather'd Cupid seel with wanton dullness My speculative and offic'd instruments, That my disports corrupt and taint my business, Let housewives make a skillet of my helm, And all indign and base adversities Make head ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... of overcoming, as in the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely of power to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the presbyterianism of Lauderdale, and of the speculative republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in sail. The special fastidious shyness of his face attracted those accustomed to another kind of face. And though he did not precisely look at them, they in turn inspired in him the compassionate, morbid curiosity which persons who live desperate lives necessarily inspire in the leisured, speculative mind. One of them deliberately approached him from a side-street. Though taller and fuller, with heightened colour, frizzy hair, and a hat with feathers; she was the image of the little model—the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was no place to go seeking "real boys." But Luck had been a range man himself before he took to making motion pictures; he knew range towns as he knew men,—which was very well indeed. He looked, as he stood there, not disgusted but mildly speculative. Two horses were tied to the hitching rail before Rusty Brown's place. These horses bore saddles and bridles, and, if you know the earmarks, you can learn a good deal about a rider just by looking at his outfit. Neither saddle was new, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... man lurking near and moving as they moved, with a speculative air. Writs were out against Raikes. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after some discussion, "we aren't in the market for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to know that particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're a body of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundation for a competence by our joint efforts. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... were in this essay, it interested them both. There was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part of the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and did not look to any practical purpose in that direction. Besides, if the stranger were the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a sheet of water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in case he seriously meditated taking unceremonious leave of life ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of facts of the past period of over four years; and that the system employed in safeguarding the accuracy of statements contained in it will produce a document of great historical value without entering upon any speculative conclusions as to cause and effect of the various phases of the war or attempting to project into an historical document individual opinions. With these ends in view, this History will be of the greatest value. Signature ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... were fixed in a speculative stare upon the mass of roses that glowed at the center of the table. Miss Marne, glancing at him, knew that, whether or not he was thinking of them, he was conscious of their beauty in every fibre of his being. "I wonder," he ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... it was with an excruciatingly painful struggle that left him shrinking and nerveless, lying in a corner, blinking at the light of a kerosene lamp. Corrigan sat on the edge of a flat-topped desk watching him with an ugly, appraising, speculative grin. It was as though the man were mentally gambling on his chances to ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the Tigmores, can without doubt be made to pay from one hundred to five hundred per cent, on any investment within the first year. The Canaan Company will not have to depend upon shallow sheets of mineral against dead rock, as do many of the speculative enterprises of the mining section. The Canaan Company will not cut blind. It knows its field, it knows its chances, it knows its future'—and so on, and so on—how do you think ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the shifting influence of speculative trading, by taking the business out of the hands of middlemen at home, the Exchange found it quite as important to maintain the control of its ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... three, beside himself, attained maturity. These were his eldest brother Garrett, on whose death Edmund succeeded to the patrimonial Irish estate, which he sold; his younger brother, Richard, a highly speculative gentleman, who always lost; and his sister, Juliana, who married a Mr. French, and was, as became her mother's daughter, a rigid Roman Catholic—who, so we read, was accustomed every Christmas Day to invite to the Hall the maimed, the aged, and distressed of her vicinity to ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... two sects of Greek philosophy that had most adherents among the Romans were those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. Cassius, as an Epicurean, would have no faith in any superhuman powers; but in the moments of danger a man's speculative principles give way to the common feelings of all mankind. I have kept Plutarch's word "enthusiasm," which is here to be understood not in our sense, but in the Greek sense of a person ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... that speech of the child's, that intelligent, illuminating speech that seemed to prove that there was indeed a powerful, thoughtful mind behind those profoundly speculative eyes. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... court of Saxe-Gotha. See the Theologia Aethiopica of Gregory, in (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, p. 716—734.) * Note: The travels of Bruce, illustrated by those of Mr. Salt, and the narrative of Nathaniel Pearce, have brought us again acquainted with this remote region. Whatever may be their speculative opinions the barbarous manners of the Ethiopians seem to be gaining more and more the ascendency over the practice ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... features, seemed to assure the individual addressed, that in Bletson he conversed with a person of intellect far superior to his own. This was a triumph of intellect only, however; for on all occasions of difference respecting speculative opinions, and indeed on all controversies whatsoever, Bletson avoided the ultimate ratio of blows ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... he joined the staff of the Clyde Iron Works, near Glasgow, at a time when the Company had only two blast-furnaces at work. The office of accountant, which he held, precluded him from taking any part in the manufacturing operations of the concern. But being of a speculative and ingenious turn of mind, the remarkable conversions which iron underwent in the process of manufacture very shortly began to occupy his attention. The subject was much discussed by the young men ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... have time, heaps of time, and an oppressive stock of enthusiasm, and I may add, fascinating experience, upon which to draw. The last-mentioned quality is invaluable in all such enterprises. If you have it, full play is permitted the speculative, if not the imaginative, faculties. If you have it not, then the work is merely a brutal exercise, in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... prejudices which one does not meddle with at nineteen. "Youth is conservative because it is afraid." Moya, for all her fighting blood, was traditionally and in social ways much more in bonds than Paul, who had inherited his father's dreamy speculative habit of thought, with something of the farm-hand's distrust of society and its ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... an amusing story about Sir William Rowan Hamilton which exactly illustrates my meaning: "When he had soared into a high region of speculative thought he took no note of objects close by. A few days after our first meeting we walked together on a road, a part of which was overflowed by a river at its side. Our theme was the transcendental philosophy, of which he was a great ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... his countrymen might yet be propelled, thus superseding the ponderous paddle of teak, He here expected to be involved in an intricate labyrinth of mechanical inventions,—in a stormy discussion on the comparative merits of rival machinery,—to be immersed in speculative but gigantic theories. He was elected an honorary member of a news-room; had his coat whitened with cotton; and was obliged to confess that he knew of no beverage that could equal their superb cold punch. Our philosopher now gave himself up to despair; ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... one-sided. There are to be referred to that period many legislative enactments in the highest degree conducive to civil and religious liberty. The foundation of the Royal Society marked the inauguration of a new interest in speculative enquiry, of a great activity in scientific research, and of a broader and more liberal habit of thought on questions connected with government and education. These advantages were attained in spite of a worthless king, of corrupt ministers, and a licentious ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... general circle of English readers—this work comes recommended by the strongest claims both of interest and instruction. It presents in direct antithesis two most conspicuous representatives of the modern speculative mind of England—Sir W. Hamilton ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... also in estimating the intrinsic value of a novel to eliminate as far as is possible the temporal and the accidental; and in particular the especial appeal it may have to your own private craving—for each of us has his soft spot where the pen can pierce. On the contrary, if the highly speculative business of guessing the probable circulation of a novel ever becomes yours, then you must doubly emphasize the importance of these very qualities; search for them, analyze them out of the narrative, equate ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... shilling since 1839 this experience was new and delightful. Among other people I went to see was Mrs. C——. the widow of the Tory writer and branch bank manager, who was my father's successful rival. He was not speculative like my father. He was a keen business man and had a great ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... be depended upon within half a degree, which is sufficient for all nautical purposes. If, therefore, observing and calculating were considered as necessary qualifications for every sea officer, the labours of the speculative theorist to solve this problem might be remitted, without much injury to mankind: Neither will it be so difficult to acquire this qualification, or put it in practice, as may at first appear; for, with the assistance of the nautical almanack, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... gotten summat else to think on," was an answer which he often uttered in a tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and "Whissuntide." But he had a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies, like other non-productive employments, were intended for people ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.' 'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within their reach; she flies from ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the foot of the stairs and stopped before the children. For a long moment he looked them over with speculative interest. "Well," he said, abruptly, "and who are you? That you belong in this neighborhood ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... belonged. At that time, every man had a 'new principle' of his own for the sneck of the shears, some theoretical mode of cutting, which was to make the coat fit like the skin. Our neighbour, who had a practical and mechanical, rather than a speculative head, resolved not to be behind in the race of competition, but to proceed in a different way. 'It is all very well,' thought he, 'to talk of principles and theories; but with the requisite apparatus, the human figure may be measured as accurately as a block of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Galloway seemed not to have heard as he stared away through the gray distances. When he brought his eyes back to Norton's they were speculative. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... habits learned by anybody willing to incur the expense in the inclosures set apart for their exhibition at the various racecourses, where their sportive gambles are the subject of great interest (and principal) on the part of speculative inquirers. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... excluded from all participation in public affairs and confined to the narrow limits of his family circle and profession, followed his natural bent for speculative philosophy and poetical reverie; but while his thoughts became more elevated and the loss of his activity was, in a certain degree, compensated by the gentle dominion of the muses, the mitigation thus afforded ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... says in a letter to Norvin Green, in July, 1855, after discussing the proposed cable: "The effects of the Telegraph on the interests of the world, political, social and commercial have, as yet, scarcely begun to be apprehended, even by the most speculative minds. I trust that one of its effects will be to bind man to his fellow-man in such bonds of amity as to put an end to war. I think I can predict this effect as in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... off from Mr. Adams the gag on the question of slavery. Perhaps even Mr. Adams might have been a little fretting. A long speculative dispatch, wherein, among some good things, one finds some generalizations and misstatements concerning the distress in Ireland, generated by want of potatoes (vide Parl. De.), and not from want of cotton, as says Mr. Seward—a confession ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... up again quickly from his speculative study of the boards in Judge Thayer's floor, to meet the elder man's shrewd eyes with a look of complete understanding. So they sat a moment, each reading the other as easily as one counts pebbles at the bottom of a ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... brass-plate informed the neighbourhood that No. 14 was occupied by Mr. Sheldon, surgeon-dentist; and the dwellers in Fitzgeorge-street amused themselves in their leisure hours by speculative discussions upon the character and pursuits, belongings ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... that have bled upon its altar or been crushed beneath its car, and our sense of the ridiculous subsides into aversion and horror. So, while the superstitious dreams of former times are regarded as mere speculative insanities, we may be for a moment amused with the wild incoherencies of the patients; but when we reflect that out of these hideous misconceptions of the principle of evil arose the belief in witchcraft—that this was no dead faith, but one operating ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... ashes out of his pipe into a metal tray, refilled it, lighted it, and then puffed meditatively, gazing at Hugh with kind but speculative eyes. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... an opinion as to the source of the gambling propensity of Englishmen. 'The English,' says M. Dunne,(68) 'the most speculative nation on earth, calculate even upon future contingences. Nowhere else is the adventurous rage for stock-jobbing carried on to so great an extent. The fury of gambling, so common in England, is undoubtedly a daughter of this speculative genius. The Greeks of Great Britain are, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the people that a prohibitory system be adopted. Protection may sometimes be of service to a nation, but prohibition never." Thus did he qualify the claim of authors and students, who assert that political economy deserves rank among the sciences, whether exact or speculative, and thus did he recognize the protective theory as adapted to the condition of states while in the transition period in the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the suggestion of the Commercial Association of Santos, the minister of transport of Sao Paulo ordered that coffees destined for legitimate traders should be transported during four days of the week, and those of a speculative nature during the remaining two days. A premium of as much as five milreis a bag has been paid by speculators in order ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... founder of Catholicism as a theocratic system, we should have to name neither Augustine nor St. Paul, still less Jesus Christ, but Plato, who in the Laws sketches out with wonderful prescience the conditions for such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take. Even in speculative thought we know that Augustine owed much to the Platonists, the Schoolmen to Aristotle, the mystics to the pupil of Proclus whom they called Dionysius. Only Greek science, and the scientific spirit, were almost completely lost, and a beginning de novo had ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... hills gleamed out from their palms. As the boat came closer to the wharf, the travelers could see the crowds of foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap, ungraceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, speculative, unwelcoming eyes. The noise of the city streets, strange to their ears after the days of sea silence, rose clattering, like a part of the brilliance, the sparkle. The sun broke through the clouds, poured a flood of glory ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Leaving these speculative questions, however, for the present, let us return to the divisions, which are arranged along the deck, not, as formerly, by sizes, but, in the proper way, by the watch-bill. The forecastle-men, of course, come first, as they stand so in the lists by which they are mustered at night ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... of that unthinkable population. But this thought of ours is in truth nothing but a fancy. There are no chains of houses; there are no crowds of men. The colossal diagram of streets and houses is an illusion, the opium dream of a speculative builder. Each of these men is supremely solitary and supremely important to himself. Each of these houses stands in the centre of the world. There is no single house of all those millions which has ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... he had only the bitter hate of the conquered. He cast a malevolent look upon him with eyes that were oddly narrowed—a measuring, speculative look that comprehended his strength and registered the infallibility thereof with loathing. "I wonder what happened to the serpent," he said, "when the man and woman were ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... consecrated, and the first who has been consecrated in these islands." Having spent thirty years in that country, he has much knowledge of it and of its moral and social conditions, and much experience in ecclesiastical government. "He was very learned in theology, whether speculative or practical, moral or scholastic; and very expert in the despatch of business." He is aided in his duties by Fray Raymundo Berart, very learned in canon and civil law, who has left great opportunities of advancement in Espana "to come to this poor province, to serve in the ministry ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... at all. How far the belief that a just peace could only be secured by the exercise of his personal influence over the delegates I cannot say. How far he doubted the ability of the men whom he proposed to name as plenipotentiaries is wholly speculative. Whatever plausible reason may be given, the true reason will probably ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... magic than the cabalistic cyphers of Doctor Dee, or Cornelius Agrippa. His hand presses the spring of an influence that casts midnight or sunshine over the World of Traffic, and shakes entire blocks of real estate with a speculative earthquake. It is not the Czar or the Sultan, but the Capitalist, that makes war or preserves peace. The destinies of the time are enacted not in Congress or Parliament, but in the Bank of England and in Wall ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... the Epistle to the Hebrews, and on the other with those of St. Paul. There may be something of an echo of the fourth Gospel in the allusion—to the unbelief and carnalised religion of the Jews. But the whole question of the speculative affinities of a writing like this requires subtle and delicate handling, and should be rather a subject for special treatment than an episode in an enquiry like the present. The opinion of Dr. Keim must be of weight, but on the whole I think it will be safest ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness, under the circumstances, was terrible. He accepted Destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white with rage, shouted, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... his other writings and in harmony with the body of thought and feeling expressed through them. Now it is certain that as Browning advanced in years he more and more distrusted the results of the intellect in its speculative research; he relied more and more upon the knowledge that comes through or is embodied in love. Love by its very nature implies a relation; what is felt is real for us. But the intellect, which aspires to know things as they are, forever lands ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... assumption. The principle of a fixed limit, to be broken in case of real need, but only after some ceremony has been gone through giving notice of the fact that a crisis has been reached, seems rather to be required by the psychology of speculative mankind. But even if Sir Edward's preference for bills of exchange as backing for notes has all the merits that he claims that is no reason for urging the repeal of the Bank Act to secure their use. Because the Bank Act does not forbid it: it merely says, "there shall be transferred, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. This conception finds its highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compassionate sympathy for others. Asceticism ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less deep a shade, and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. As she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative world as scarcely to know a real one, a warmer wave of her warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was Romance ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... that the peace would be deceptive; that it would have a merely speculative existence. In fact, if, as appears from the strongest evidence to be probable, the Americans should persist in their refusal to return to their obedience to the British crown, the war between Britain and her former colonies would still continue. The King ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... room for it. Yet she used to lament that certain writers of the first class, who were capable of exalting virtue, and of putting vice out of countenance, too generally employed themselves in works of imagination only, upon subjects merely speculative, disinteresting and unedifying, from which no useful moral ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... it would be to become a hermit on some far mountain side, wearing a grey robe, clear-browed and calmly speculative under the stars—or, maybe,—more wonderful: a singer for men, a travelling minstrel—in each case, whether minstrel or hermit, whether teaching great doctrines or singing great songs for all the world—to have come to me, as a pilgrim seeking enlightenment, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language, it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative works, and from translations made by men whose very language had become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion. Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a paraphrase or more distinct ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Florestan and Eusebius, the "two souls in his breast"—the former, the fiery iconoclast, impulsive in his judgments and reckless in attacking prejudices; the latter, the mild, genial, receptive dreamer. Master Raro, who stood for Wieck, also typified the calm, speculative side of Schumann's nature. Chiara represented Clara Wieck, and personified the feminine side of art. So the various personages were all modeled after associates of Schumann, and, aside from the freshness ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... longer in the shade, a young tramp in greasy overalls and cap inhaled the last precious wisps of smoke from a cigarette burned down to an inch of stub, and watched Johnny with a glum kind of speculation. Johnny sensed his presence and the speculative interest, and read the latter as the preparation for a "touch." And Johnny was not feeling particularly charitable after having to pay a seven-dollar C.O.D. besides the express charges. He showed all the interest he felt in his packages ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Mammon! I am punished now for bowing the knee to him. Is there nothing left of your settlement? Fifty thousand dollars a year it secured to you, as we all thought. Only half the securities could be called speculative. The other half were gilt-edged. What has become ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... discussion of Spinoza's religious opinions. This afternoon Mr. D. came again; talked about the Trinity and other theological points. This evening, heard Prof. Silliman. I have nearly finished Fichte, and like him on the whole exceedingly, though I think he errs in placing the roots of the speculative in the practical reason. It seems to me that neither grows out of the other, but that they are coincident spheres. Still, there is a truth, a great truth, in what he says. It is true that action is often the most effectual remedy against speculative doubts and perplexities. When you are in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... amiability of the Hindoo character yield to the temptations of luxury and dominion, the individual grows into a tyrant as cruel and odious as any of those depicted in history. This apparent discrepancy has given rise to many speculative mistakes; but, in our opinion, it is as certain that the mass of the Hindoos are gentle and kindly in their nature, as it is that the mass of women are so. It is a curious thing to see the gallant sepoy on a march, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... me was the glimpse of a cold, speculative gleam in my tormentor's eyes. It was the mere shadow of an expression, but it acted like cold water upon my hot thoughts. I divined, suddenly, that something more than sport was behind the captain's insults. He wanted me to blow up in a great ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... long known to the Revolutionary fame: Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech, Manuel Tallein and Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mersier, Louvet of Faubias; Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, Collet d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags; Fahre d'Egalantine Speculative Pamphleteer; Legendre, the solid Butcher; nay Marat though rural France can hardly believe it, or even believe there is a Marat, except ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... wealth meet every eye: and the great amount of capital seeking investment excites astonishment, whenever peculiar circumstances turning much of it into some one channel, such as railway construction or foreign speculative adventure, bring the largeness of the total ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... around him are his unconscious targets. His self-respect and self-doubt balance each other, until the latter outweighs the former, under the awful pressure of an unheard-of woe. Finally, he comes before us in that poetical, speculative period of life following the years of study and pleasure, and preceding those of executive leadership. Prince, gentleman, scholar, poet,—he is each, and all together, and attracts us from every point ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... important name is associated with the literature of aphorism than that of Pascal; but the Thoughts of Pascal concern the deeper things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in substance systematic. "I blame equally," he said, "those who take sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those who amuse ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... ponderously yet carefully over the edge of the dock and into the leather cushions of the launch. Once safely aboard, he took a package of wintergreen chewing-gum from his pocket and began to chew, staring out across the sound with that placid, speculative enjoyment which reposes in the eyes of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... the individual in his detachment from society that alone can be open-eyed and open-minded; who is qualified to carry on that "proper business of the understanding," "to think of everything just as it is in itself." [2] Descartes, although in habit of mind and speculative instinct he has so little in common with the Englishman, nevertheless finds in the individual's self-discipline and concentration the only hope of preserving the savor of the salt of knowledge. Thus ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... sensitive to accidental influences, or to influences outside of the usual workings of trade. A great war or revolution occurring anywhere, the loss by tempests or frosts of an important staple, such as wheat or cotton, the fall and reaction consequent upon some great speculative excitement, are all likely to produce enormous drains or sequestrations of this valuable material. When the revolt of 1848 broke out in Italy, every particle of specie disappeared as effectually as if it had been thrown into the Adriatic or the mouth of Vesuvius; when the corn crop failed in England ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... appreciate the truths of revelation which can alone supply these deficiencies. In such a state of mind you are in a condition to establish revealed truth in a certain sense a priori, and the method a posteriori is then outranked. The philosopher outranks the historian. In minds of a speculative turn the historian is never considered of primary importance. The principles which its facts illustrate are furnished him by human reason in philosophy, and by the divine reason in revelation. The ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Carr said after some discussion, "we aren't in the market for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to know that particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're a body of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundation for a competence by our joint efforts. You ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... benefiting by experience, and very few men can truly say as much. It is on the practical side that I have hitherto been most deficient. I see my way to correcting that fault. Nothing could be better for me, just now, than electioneering work. It will take me out of myself, and give a rest to the speculative side of my mind. Don't ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... the centuries we find no time in which Christendom was left wholly devoid of mysteries. "It was probably about the end of the 5th century, just as ancient philosophy was dying out in the Schools of Athens, that the speculative philosophy of neo-Platonism made a definite lodgment in Christian thought through the literary forgeries of the Pseudo-Dionysius. The doctrines of Christianity were by that time so firmly established that the Church could look upon a symbolical or mystical interpretation of them without ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... that the market broke before I could get rid of them, but it may rally. I'm rather disturbed about the matter; but, after all, one has to take one's chance in buying shares. Dealing in the speculative sorts is to a large ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... [o], which are a collection of forgeries, favourable to the court of Rome, and consist of the supposed decrees of popes in the first centuries. But these forgeries are so gross, and confound so palpably all language, history, chronology, and antiquities, matters more stubborn than any speculative truths whatsoever, that even that church, which is not startled at the most monstrous contradictions and absurdities, has been obliged to abandon them to the critics. But in the dark period of the thirteenth century they passed for undisputed and authentic; and men, entangled in the mazes of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... affects In me defunct,—and proper satisfaction; But to be free and bounteous to her mind: And heaven defend your good souls, that you think I will your serious and great business scant For she is with me: no, when light-wing'd toys Of feather'd Cupid seel with wanton dullness My speculative and offic'd instruments, That my disports corrupt and taint my business, Let housewives make a skillet of my helm, And all indign and base adversities Make ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... foothills of the Alleghenies, and entirely new to nearly all who heard it. With the railway came the telegraph, the express, and the advent of the daily newspaper among the people. In a single year the community was transformed from its sedate and quiet ways into more energetic, progressive, and speculative life. It was a new civilization that had come to disturb the dreams of nearly a century, and it rapidly extended its new influences until it reached the remotest ends of the little county, and with this beneficent progress of civilization came also the vices which ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... reflected, with a profoundly speculative eye on Number Five. I judged that he was trying to recall a date furnished by Number Five's cousin and that he would have liked to ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... future than about the past. Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity? If art does not justify itself, aesthetic rapture does. Whether that rapture is to be felt by future generations of virtuous and contented artisans is a matter of purely speculative interest. Rapture suffices. The artist has no more call to look forward than the lover in the arms of his mistress. There are moments in life that are ends to which the whole history of humanity would not ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... talent free to range through all books and all time and reproduce brilliant sayings and odd characters,—which, with no other connecting thread than a story, freaks like a spirit through every shade of feeling and region of thought, from the domestic hearth to the ultimate bounds of speculative inquiry,—and which, by its daring and careless combinations of incongruous elements, exhibits a free embodiment in prose of the peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of wilderness scenery in Edgar Huntley, and his graphic account in Arthur Mervyn of the yellow-fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. Shelley was an admirer of Brown, and his experiments in prose fiction, such as Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne the Rosicrucian, are of the same abnormal and speculative type. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... than their original price. This condition applies particularly to legitimate club editions and privately printed editions. If an edition of five hundred copies is widely distributed throughout the country, it is reasonable to assume that the speculative market therefor would be less apt to suffer from congestion than if the sale of the whole number of sets were ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... in the Southern States. Particularly did the lack of quinine afflict the people of those malarial sections comprised within the limits of the South Atlantic and Gulf States. So great was the demand for this drug, that the enormous sums offered for it led many a speculative druggist north of Mason and Dixon's line to invest his all in quinine, and try to run it through the Potomac blockade. Of course, as the traffic was carried on in small boats, it was impossible to break it up altogether; ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... 'Let us do what lieth in us to convince our Atheists, that the religion of the blessed Jesus, is no trick or device; and our wanton and loose Christians, that it is no notional business, or speculative science.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... psychological and sociological fields, and this volume is an important contribution to the science of which it treats.... It will prove more popular than any of its author's other creations, for it is more plainly addressed to the people and has a more practical and less speculative cast. It will require thought, but it is well worth thinking ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... the expense of surveying. This they took care not to pay, or only to pay as fast as they could sell tracts to some purchasers, on which occasions they paid the surveying fee and obtained deeds for the portion they sold. In this way they have held millions of acres for speculative purposes, waiting for a rise in prices, without taxation, while the farmers in adjacent lands paid taxes." [Footnote: ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... bentwood rocking-chair, and swayed to and fro, aware of an ebbing of confidence. Half an hour later she was still sitting there. Her face had changed, something had faded in it; her gaze at the floor was profoundly speculative, and when she glanced at the empty door it was with timidity. Arnold had not come and did ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Fairfield, however, Mallston may not have seen his desperate position, especially with summer and harvest wages coming. Just now he was out of a job, having finished a ditching contract, and his black, speculative eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... advantage of letting the mind and eye dwell in awe upon the wonderful works of God. Of course the mountains are wonderful enough; but they make me feel that humanity plays a very trifling part in the mind and purpose of God. I do not think that if I were a preacher of the Gospel, and had a speculative turn, I should care to take a holiday among the mountains. I should be beset by a dreary wonder whether the welfare of humanity was a thing very dear to God at all. I should feel very strongly what the Psalmist said, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feel it lonesome here?" She asked it with a curious soft slowness, a speculative detachment, as if she only half thought ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirit rising to meet the odds against us, I cast a speculative eye over the Teutons, who had now dissolved their group. Van Blarcom himself—Blenheim, rather—descended in a leisurely fashion while one of his friends, remaining on the staircase, fixed me with a look of intentness almost ominous and the other two ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a book, entitled 'Quidlibet ex Quolibet', or the art of making anything out of anything; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in gross to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book, to prove that there is no such thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea: that you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... centre of growth for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, needed this hard nucleus of Prussianism—and its matter-of-fact, organizing type of ability—to ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the end about. But to Gwen it seemed speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than a possible return to London of the mother, accompanied by her unknown and unknowing daughter. A curious vision flashed across her mind of Ruth Thrale, entertained at Sapps by old Mrs. Picture; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Luxembourg, where he lay for eleven months. Escaped to America, we find him in 1803 presenting to the American Congress a memoir on the construction of Iron Bridges, accompanied by several models. It does not appear, however, that Paine ever succeeded in erecting an iron bridge. He was a restless, speculative, unhappy being; and it would have been well for his memory if, instead of penning shallow infidelity, he had devoted himself to his original idea of improving the communications of his adopted country. In the meantime, however, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... council, or decide causes, or are in some command, the last more especially, for to command is peculiar to magistrates. But to speak truth, this question is of no great consequence, nor is it the province of the judges to decide between those who dispute about words; it may indeed be an object of speculative inquiry; but to inquire what officers are necessary in a state, and how many, and what, though not most necessary, may yet be advantageous in a well-established government, is a much more useful employment, and this with respect to ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... and full, as his mother liked them in regard to fact, and generously philosophized on the side of politics and religion for Whitwell. The Eastern question became in the snow-choked hills of New England the engrossing concern of this speculative mind, and he was apt to spring it upon Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia at mealtimes and other defenceless moments. He tried to debate it with Jombateeste, who conceived of it as a form of spiritualistic inquiry, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... going to be a nun?" asked Sarrion, absent-mindedly. He was thinking of something else and looked at Juanita with a speculative glance. She ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... of this kind had come into his life before. He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled. They soon came to two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... arch imposter Old Patridge of more modern date whose gulleries appear to have no end. "The practice of astrology is divided into speculative and theoretical." (Astronomy and judicial astrology). The first teaches us how to know the stars and planets, and to find their places and motions. The second directs us to the knowledge of the influence and operations of the stars and planets upon sublunary bodies, and without ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away. Otherwise, the matter could have been no concern of mine. It was purely speculative, for I should not, under any circumstances, have fallen in love with Zenobia. The riddle made me so nervous, however, in my sensitive condition of mind and body, that I most ungratefully began to wish that she would let me alone. Then, too, her gruel was very wretched stuff, with almost ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... His speculative tone made her perceive that, unlike herself, he did not know for certain that Marion had committed suicide. She must conceal her proofs, bury them under a heap of lying counterproofs. "My dear, you'd never think it if ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a speculative frame of mind and chose to take as the basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between 1855, when the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number "personally conducted" over land and sea to-day, and then glance ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... by new American members of Parliament. I pass over here all considerations how far such a system will be an improvement of our constitution according to any sound theory. Not that I mean to condemn such speculative inquiries concerning this great object of the national attention. They may tend to clear doubtful points, and possibly may lead, as they have often done, to real improvements. What I object to, is their introduction into ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... power everywhere. It was pumping water from the mines in Cornwall and driving the mills of the manufacturers in Lancashire. Speculative mechanics began to consider whether it might not be employed as a means of land locomotion. The comprehensive mind of Sir Isaac Newton had long before, in his 'Explanation of the Newtonian Philosophy,' thrown out the idea ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... or Rentowels) maintained his character with the common people, although he preached the practical fruits of Christian faith, as well as its abstract tenets, and was respected by the higher orders, notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors by converting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathen morality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faith and practice in his doctrine, that, although his memory has formed a sort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that the parishioners, to denote ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... formidable rivals; and again when, exhausted by disease and overwhelmed by misfortunes, which no human prudence could have averted, he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy of his house. These interviews between the greatest speculative and the greatest practical statesman of the age are fully described in the Correspondence, and form perhaps the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... red lips about very white teeth, was smiling softly, confidently; and yet that the brown-flecked grey of her eyes was as unsmiling, as gravely speculative as his own eyes were. He saw that her skin was a golden brown from life in the open outdoors, that she had upon the heels of her boots a pair of tiny, sharp rowelled spurs, that a riding quirt hung from her right wrist by its rawhide thong, that her cheeks were a little flushed as though from ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... justify the investigation by official bodies of the alleged extinction of this ancient Royal Line. Millions have been expended for that purpose. Commissions have pretended to investigate the subject after the event. Volumes have been returned of a speculative nature to authenticate a mysterious disappearance ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... because it is this practical and moderate character of the man which gives such weight to the very sweeping conclusions on social subjects to which he was driven in his later days. A judgment which condemns the whole system of Poor Laws, for instance, falls with very different weight from a mere speculative theorist and from a practical observer whose mind is constitutionally averse from extreme conclusions. Throughout however we see this intellectual moderation jostling with a moral fervour which feels restlessly about for a fitting sphere of action. "Real life," he writes from Madeira, "is not dinner-parties ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... by millions of years, time winged onward through eternity, to the end—the end, of which, in the old-earth days, I had thought remotely, and in hazily speculative fashion. And now, it was approaching in a manner of which ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... less of him for having been concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays. And so gradually you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the free-rider or free-booter; not safe from degradation on that side also; but by no means of swinish temper, or foraging, as at present the British speculative public, only with ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... others. When this answer was reported through Phoebe, Robert shrugged his shoulders, alarmed at the hot-bed nurture of intellect and these concessions to mental independence, only balanced by such loose and speculative opinions as Miss Fennimore had lately manifested to him. Decidedly, he said, there ought to be a change ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ten years which followed 1849 are notable not only for a sudden outburst of railway construction and speculative activity throughout the provinces, but for the beginning of that close connection between politics and railways which is distinctively Canadian. In this era parliament became the field of railway debate. Political motives came to the front: 'statesmen' began to talk of links ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... Ch'ung, a speculative and materialistic philosopher, A.D. 27-97, banned by the orthodox for his attacks on Confucius and Mencius, only one work has survived. it consists of eighty-four essays on such topics as the nature of things, destiny, divination, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of intuition who are only intuitive cannot have the patience to reach to first principles of things speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen in the world, and which are altogether out of ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... bring up their families. One of them, to make provision for the future, invests L2,000 in safe securities with fixed rate of interest, and L2,000 in some company whose business is of a more or less speculative character, but by good fortune becomes able to pay a dividend of 30 per cent. The other invests a like sum in firm securities, and L2,000 in another company which turns out a failure. Neither of them has anything to do with the conduct of the business of the ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... false one. It was indeed true that some person had sent to the Penelles cottage a London paper, in which there was a large picture of Denasia and the admiral dancing the famous hornpipe. But the manner of its reception was matter of speculation only, and the speculative had founded their tale upon the known hastiness of John and Joan's tempers, without taking into consideration the presence of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has counted among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner, Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local celebrity besides. By an accident, variously explained, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already told her what he had been in the Isthmus for,—to paddle in miasmatic swamps with a view to the possibility of a canal in the remote, speculative future. He had given her a graphic and entertaining picture of the hideous and inconceivable life he had led there for six months, from which he had emerged the only member of a party of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows) who was not either dead by disease, by violence, or by misadventure, ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... laws and reverence of magistrates; or if she can form a Timoleon or a Numa Pompilius to the government of a state—how meritorious is the work! One king—nay, one minister or counsellor of state—imbued with her precepts is of more value than all the speculative, retired philosophers or cynical revilers of princes and magistrates ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... comedies from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy from a mournful event, but the style of the Italians and of Gay is equally tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... practical rather than speculative, political rather than theological, established the Civitas Dei where once stood the Civitas Roma. This ecclesiastical masterpiece of human wisdom "may still exist in undiminished vigor," says Macaulay, "when some traveler ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the accepted prejudices which one does not meddle with at nineteen. "Youth is conservative because it is afraid." Moya, for all her fighting blood, was traditionally and in social ways much more in bonds than Paul, who had inherited his father's dreamy speculative habit of thought, with something of the farm-hand's distrust of society and ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... tradition, showing nothing distinctively American in their writings except the incidental subject. The first authors whom we may regard as characteristic of the new country—leaving out the productions of speculative theology—devoted their genius to politics. It is in the political writings immediately preceding and following the Revolution—such as those of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson—that the new birth ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... paddle wheel axle on the lower deck, but its mode of operation is unknown. Possibly it was of the jet type, with pumps operating off the paddle wheel axle and with a return of condensate from a hot well into the feed water line. A number of possibilities could be mentioned, all speculative. However, there was no doubt that this equipment could be properly installed in the reconstructed hull, either on the lower deck or ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... last rigged herself out a perfect guy at some cheap slop-shops in Market Street. And after all the care Jane and me took of her, giving up our time and experience to her, she never so much as made Jane a single present." Popular opinion, which regarded Mrs. Stiver's attention as purely speculative, was not shocked at this unprofitable denouement; but when Peg refused to give anything to clear the mortgage off the new Presbyterian church, and even declined to take shares in the Union Ditch, considered by many as an equally sacred and safe investment, she began to lose favor. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... brought a reminder of the misery of the moment when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at P.D. and Wrath of God and ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... offer upon the this subject being not merely speculative opinion, but the genuine result of actual experiments; of experiments made upon a very large scale, and under circumstances which render them peculiarly interesting; I cannot help flattering myself that my readers will find both amusement, ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... command as by his uncommon height: tall, thin-faced and sallow, with hollow weather-worn cheeks, a mouth like a crooked gash from ear to ear, and eyes like dying coals, with which he looked the rescued up and down in one grim, semi-humorous, semi-speculative glance. In hands both huge and red he fondled tenderly a squat brandy flask whose contents had apparently been employed as a first aid to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
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