"Scepticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed. Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of evil, that it seemed rather ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... father deceiving him with this alternate suggestion of threat and of kindliness—of power and weakness. He had heard of this cruel phase of Southwestern cunning before. With the feeble sophistry of the cynic he mistrusted the good his scepticism could not understand. Howbeit, glancing sideways at the slumbering savagery of the man beside him, and his wounded hand, he did not care to show his lack of confidence. He contented himself with that equally feeble resource ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... moral situation, from the traditional and often symbolic language in which it is given to us. The comparative method helps us towards this; and is thus not, as some would pretend, the servant of scepticism, but rightly used the revealer of the Spirit of Life in its variety of gifts. In this connection we might remember that time—like space—is only of secondary importance to us. Compared with the eons of preparation, the millions of years of our animal ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... reproached for carrying his speculations too far into the wilds of scepticism—he wrote in distempered times; he was witnessing the dragonades and the revocations of the Romish church; and he lived amidst the Reformed, or the French prophets, as we called them when they came over to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... credibility of the literature and history of which it was in possession; to measure the statements of the Old Testament writings by the rules of Greek and Latin literature, and to argue from the history of Europe to that of the East. Uncontrolled by external testimony, critical scepticism played havoc with the historical narratives that had descended to it, and starting from the assumption that the world of antiquity was illiterate, refused to credit such records of the past as dwarfed the proportions of Greek history, ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... that no creature on earth could endure a moment's contact with its surface. The centre of the "pale-faced moon" is hotter than boiling water. This thought may cheer us when "the cold round moon shines deeply down." We may be pardoned if we take with a tincture of scepticism the following statement "Native Chinese records aver that on the 18th day of the 6th moon, 1590, snow fell one summer night from the midst of the moon. The flakes were like fine willow flowers on shreds of silk." [351] ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... seventy-four-gun ship, went down with all hands on board. Shortly after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at first received with pretty general scepticism, Smeaton's Eddystone tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the rock is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the Bell Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far distant from land, covered at every tide to a depth ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in spirit than in form, a true Christian regimen softened by the tact of a delicate and acute intellect, knowing the world and its ways. "The book has surpassed my hope," said Henry IV. The style is as supple, the fancy as rich, as Montaigne's; but scepticism has given place to Christianism; St. Francis de Sales does not doubt, he believes; ingenious and moderate withal, he escapes out of the controversies of the violent and the incertitudes of the sceptics. The step is firm, the march is onward towards the seventeenth century, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... And this fact is most remarkable, that the person who originally headed the incredulous party, namely, Senor de Ferrer, a learned Castilian, was the very same who finally authenticated, by documentary evidence, the extraordinary narrative in those parts which had most of all invited scepticism. The progress of the dispute threw the decision at length upon the archives of the Spanish Marine. Those for the southern ports of Spain had been transferred, I believe, from Cadiz and St. Lucar to Seville; chiefly, perhaps, through the confusions incident to the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... original must have been. It is of course possible to hold that the story of the dream is pure fiction, and that the lines which Baeda translated were not Caedmon's at all. But there is really nothing to justify this extreme of scepticism. As the hymn is said to have been Caedmon's first essay in verse, its lack of poetic merit is rather an argument for its genuineness than against it. Whether Baeda's narrative be historical or not—and it involves nothing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... give them access to a mind trained as mine had been. They seemed a haze of poetry and German metaphysics, in which almost the only clear thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were the basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism, utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy. Instead of my having been taught anything, in the first instance, by Carlyle, it was only ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... laboratories of the universities of Genoa and Naples. It is in the writings of Morselli, Professor of Psychology at Genoa, and in the reports of Bottazzi, head of the Department of Physics at Naples, that scepticism, such as my own, is met and conquered. I defy Miller or any man of open mind to read the detailed story of these marvellous experiments and deny the existence of the basic ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... passions of the first half of the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim to virtue, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... measure, to produce the very evils it appears to lament. What could be its effect, but to check the ardour of investigation, to extinguish the zeal of philanthropy, to freeze the current of enterprising hope, to bury in the torpor of scepticism and in the stagnation of despair, every better faculty of the human mind, which will necessarily become retrograde in ceasing ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... side of occult research and its deadly perils. Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a "psychic resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold behind." If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... intellectual point of view this way of thinking must be classed as scepticism. "Contingency forbids any inevitable history, and conclusions are absurd. Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from being blown to pieces." Obviously the mystical "security," the "apodal sufficiency" yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are very different moods of mind from aught ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... (like all other places here) has been vehemently disputed. At every step to-day we encountered doubt, and contradiction, and cavilling: authorities are marshalled against each other in puzzling array, and the modern unwillingness to be cheated by fine sounds and great names has become a general scepticism. I have no objection to the "shadows, doubts, and darkness" which rest upon all around us; it rather pleases my fancy thus to "dream over the map of things," abandoned to my own cogitations and my ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... war. My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a butcher—in the middle of all these innocent people—scattering death—I! I!... ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... itself, or that we are to revert to the ideal of mediaevalism—a world iron-bound by the dogmatism of self-appointed representatives of "all truth,"—or unless we are to expect a mental paralysis consequent upon a universal scepticism, there must be some definite bourne for which the forces now at work in humanity are making. We are not able to believe in the perpetuity of an unstable equilibrium in the world of mind any more than in the universe of matter, nor does history show any warrant ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Quenrede, protesting her scepticism, but all the same palpably enjoying the magic experiment, picked an indifferent nosegay of the few buttercups, hawkweeds, and late pieces of scabious which were the only flowers available. Then she removed her hair-pins, and, letting down a shower of flaxen hair, commenced her winding pilgrimage ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... finally resulted inestimable benefits; but these benefits were purchased at the price of much temporary evil. If in religion, the rational tendencies prepared the way for the liberal and undogmatic Christianity to come, their effect for many years was to be seen only in scepticism, in a mocking indifference to religion itself, in a contempt of high moral aspirations and sentiments. If in politics, the final effect of these tendencies was to introduce new wisdom into government, they showed for long ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... culture which the practice of their skilled crafts cannot bestow, and this makes them suspicious of those who have it and diffident in conversation with them. But underneath this reticence and willingness to hear dwells a quiet scepticism which has no docility in it, and is not to be persuaded out of its way by any eloquence or any emotion. Missionary influences, like those of church and chapel, make but little impression on these quiet-eyed men. The tendency is towards a scientific ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... on its subscribers. For the readers of Gallagher's leading articles and columns of news were still in that primitive stage of culture in which every statement made in print is accepted as certainly true, whereas the subscribers to The Times have been educated into an unworthy kind of scepticism. Also the readers of the Connacht Eagle read little or nothing else, while those who read The Times usually glance at one or two other papers as well, and even waste their time and unsettle their minds by dipping into books. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... declined because I had no faith in divinations, and Stephen also declined, for another reason, namely that the result might prove to be different, which, he held, would be depressing. The other Zulus oscillated between belief and scepticism, as do the unstable who set to work to study the evidences of Christianity. But Sammy did not oscillate, he literally howled, and prepared the food which poured in upon us so badly that I had to turn on Hans ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... anything like contentment is to have full scope for the development of one's faculties. Science alone seems to me to afford this scope—Law, Divinity, Physic, and Politics being in a state of chaotic vibration between utter humbug and utter scepticism. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... phrase of the logicians) of the entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant—every section of which arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of thought, by this memorable effort of scepticism, applied by Hume to one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to this phenomenon? What is the main thesis of his celebrated essay on cause and effect? For ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is under no distress of body nor of mind."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 44. "There was much genius in the world, before there were learning or arts to refine it."—Blair's Rhet., p. 391. "Such a Writer can have little else to do, but to new model the Paradoxes of ancient Scepticism."—Brown's Estimate, i, 102. "Our ideas of them being nothing else but a collection of the ordinary qualities observed in them."—Duncan's Logic, p. 25. "A non-ens or a negative can neither give pleasure nor pain."—Kames, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Velasquez availed himself less fully of the privilege than a Flemish or Italian painter would no doubt have done, and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess. Having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received in England at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth quoting Senor Beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "The authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... the word "character." These results were reached after much discussion, and by the way of compromise. The issues thus raised were brought forward again at St. Louis, in 1885, when Rev. J.T. Sunderland, the secretary and missionary of the conference, deplored the growing spirit of agnosticism and scepticism in the Unitarian churches of the west. His report caused a division of opinion in the conference; and in the controversy that ensued the conservatives were represented by The Unitarian, edited by Rev. Brooke Herford and Rev. ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... long before they came into the tropics. Noble old child-hearted heroes, with just romance and superstition enough about them to keep them from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm, which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism! We do not trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for anything and everything being possible; and then, when a wonder ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... carries with it people and doctrines and systems. Many authors left as the heritage to civilization rows of books, and in those books scepticism, indifference, doubt, lack ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... misunderstood, the beautiful, unattainable mother. If Miss Carew had seen into the reveries of her pupil at such a moment, she would hardly have believed how they alternated with the coldest fits of doubt and scepticism. Molly was dealing with a self-made ideal that she needed to satisfy the hunger of her nature for love and worship. But it had no foundations, no support, and it was apt to vanish with a terrible completeness. Then she would feel quite alone and horribly ashamed; she would at moments think ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... our people wanted, but he did not see, Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts. Barnum's mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind, and fostered superstition—and got found out. The result was scepticism, both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them have only one ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... am under my oath, I can only relate the acts which followed from the inference of my feelings. My first sense was that of astonishment too intense not to appear unreal and even amusing. It seemed to me that if I would laugh out loud all would come back, as delusions yield to scepticism and mockery. But it was too cold not to be real, the scene and persons were too familiar to be erroneous. I had to realize that I was in one of the great and terrible occasional convulsions of human nature. Do you ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... dislike of all things having to do with religion. My inability to pass the conversion crisis and a growing contempt for empty enthusiasm finally led me to a saner attitude toward religion, from which I passed easily into religious scepticism; and later the study of philosophy and science, and particularly of psychology, banished the last lingering remnant of faith in a supernatural agency and led me to the passion for facts and indifference to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... who would close all doors to that inner life and consciousness where all true religion finds its birthmark, its hope, its promises and its faith; which, rightly understood, will leave to the horrors of the Roman crucifixion the twin thieves, superstition and scepticism, while the angel of "Goodwill'' will go free to solace the world with the fruit and fragrance of enduring power and promise{.} The steel chains that fasten these hydra-headed crocodiles of sensuous poison around love and destiny can ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the whole, a downward one, from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cynicism, from the imagination to the understanding. It was in a direction altogether away from those springs of imagination and faith at which they of the last age had slaked the thirst or renewed the vigor of their souls. Dryden himself recognized that indefinable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... obliterated one another. She had moods of triviality. She had moods of magnificence. She had moods of intense secret hostility to her urgent little husband, and moods of genial tolerance for everything there was in her life. She had moods, and don't we all have moods?—of scepticism and cynicism, much profounder than the conventions and limitations of novel-writing permit us to tell here. And for hardly any of these moods had ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... their fond mothers as in this period. Games and active outdoor sports appeal to both boys and girls, those games being particularly enjoyable which give the individual an opportunity to shine. Real team play is impossible at this time, since in honor each prefers himself. Any scepticism upon this point will be dispelled by listening to the modest aspirants for office when the positions in a football game are being assigned. The explanation for this lies partially in the instinct of rivalry, which arrays individual against individual, all through the ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... names to garnish one brief document. And now, I bethink me, it is far from impossible that some Dr. Dickkopf may even apply to Strauss's Leben Jesu, and Dr. Whately's 'Historic Doubts' similar reasoning, to prove that the first was elaborate irony, and the second a sincere expression of scepticism." ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... were staring at some weird-looking pictures. On a long table were several speaking-trumpets, formed of stiff brown and gilt paper. Some of the visitors took up these, talked hollowly through them, and laughed with uneasy scepticism. There were two ladies, several young men who looked like clerks, a bluff man from Liverpool, and a dwarf. Presently Messrs. A. and C. (two coarse-looking young men) entered, seated us round the table, and requested us to join hands. The gas was then turned down, and the seance ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... they shut the doors deliberately on any new and possibly unorthodox idea; and it is consequently unreasonable to expect from them any genuine freedom or originality of thought. I can forgive them their assumption of superiority, their inability to meet honest scepticism with anything like fairness, their continual bickering among themselves; but I cannot forgive them the harm they are doing to religion, the discredit they are bringing upon it by their bigoted views and obsolete ideas. They busy themselves doing good—that is the worst of it; they mean well, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... dead calms; and accounted for it (I fear not very philosophically) on the hypothesis that the "waves, by slapping against each other, engender heat, as heat may be engendered by clapping the hands." The master read on, evidently with much difficulty, and apparently with considerable scepticism: he inferred that I had been borrowing, not inventing: though where such prose and such verse could have been borrowed, and, in especial, such grammar and such spelling, even cleverer men than he might well have despaired of ever finding out. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... mobile face, changing with every passing mood. Sometimes his eyes met hers; and hers fell before them. But as soon as they turned away from her she was watching him again, almost greedily, as if she could not see enough of his face in which strength of will and purpose was mingled with a faint, ironic scepticism, and tempered by ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one another. We may seek it in the uncertainty and hovering between belief and scepticism, earnest and play, reality and imagination—such as can only exist in art, or in life when life approaches to the condition of an art—which we find in the scenes where Orlando courts his mistress in the person of the youth who ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... disarranged, came his choicest compositions. His disposition was naturally amiable, although, from the tax imposed by close application to study upon his nervous system, he was liable to fits of fretfulness and scepticism that, only occasional and transient as they were, told nevertheless with disturbing effect upon his temper. In the same unfortunate direction was the tendency of a habit grown insidiously upon him,—a habit against the damning control of which (as no one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... said the constable sententiously. The police is always the incarnation of scepticism.—"Monsieur le Baron Hulot has been caught by a trick," he added, loud enough for Valerie ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... overtly occupied in pumping into it. If he but half-believed in victory he at least liked the wind of the onset in his ears, and he had a general sense that when one was "stuck" there was always the nearest thing at which one must pull. The embarrassment, that is the revival of scepticism, which might produce an inconsistency shameful to exhibit and yet difficult to conceal, was safe enough to come later. Indeed at the risk of presenting our young man as too whimsical a personage I may hint that some such sickly glow had even now begun to tinge one quarter ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... get farther than that in my philosophy, when Prue looks at me, and smiles me into scepticism of my own doctrines. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... narrative. Born and brought up in the Bungletonian communion, himself collaterally connected, by a sister's marriage, with Jedediah Bungleton, the revered founder of the Very Particular People, Gowles was inaccessible to the scepticism of the age. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... the want of original thinking began to be felt; however, it unfortunately happened, that bold presumption hurried far in advance of profound inquiry, and hence the spread of public immorality was quick followed by a dangerous scoffing scepticism, which shook to the foundation every religious and moral conviction, and the very principles of society itself. Voltaire was by turns philosopher, rhetorician, sophist, and buffoon. The want of singleness, which more or less characterised all his views, was irreconcileable with a complete ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... you," Cicily persisted, undismayed by her husband's jeering attitude of scepticism, "that you will win in the end. Yes, you will; because it is right: that you should. I am doing my part, not only to help you; but, too, because it is right. We owe a duty not only to ourselves, but to those people as well.... Even ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... down to the fire at the center of the camp. He was taller than his fellows, pole thin under his robes, his face narrow, clean-shaven, with brows arched by nature to give him an unchanging expression of scepticism. He strode along, his tinkling collection of charms providing him with a not unmusical accompaniment, and came to stand directly before ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... that both the actions and the writings of contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding the purity of Platonic affections. The words and lives of many illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the people ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... thrilled by the remark than he would have been a few days before. A faint degree of his father's scepticism had crept into him and the only reply he vouchsafed was a polite smile. It was absurd to fancy for an instant that the senior member of the Fernald company, the head of the firm, the owner of Aldercliffe, the great and rich Mr. Lawrence Fernald, would ever trouble himself to hunt ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sighted to accept that outlook as satisfactory, he will mingle with his frivolity a strain of bitterness and discontent,—the bitterness of self-corroding scepticism, and the discontent which grows apace through its very effort to ignore its own existence. In a word, his attitude towards life will be one of cynicism,—that blend of hardness and bitterness with frivolity which exactly ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... enlightenment, which has produced, or accompanied, religious or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occurrences. Religion welcomes them as miracles divine or diabolical. Scepticism produces a reaction, and 'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot, or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the conditions in which marvels flourish. If we are savages, then Vuis and Brewin beset the forest paths and knock ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... and the point of view from which he habitually apprehends phenomena is an enforced cognizance of matter-of-fact sequence. The result, so far as concerts the workman's life of faith, is a proclivity to undevout scepticism. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... turning to God, but certainly the realization of the nearness of God and eternity are very present to most men's minds. As a man said up at the Front, 'Out here every man puts up some kind of a prayer every night.' The superficial scepticism which is so largely ethical, or the result of indifference, and which is assumed by many men in England, has no hold at the Front. One of our best known Bishops was telling me when I met him 'somewhere in France' that a short time back he was about to conduct a service ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... greatest curiosity and a good deal of scepticism about Rachel's power in the modern drama, the melodrama of Victor Hugo, and the social drama of Scribe. But her appearance in the "Angelo" of Victor Hugo and in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" of Scribe satisfied the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of the reader of the journal. He could see in the younger lady's face the earnestness of her attention and catch the full scepticism of her but slightly delayed "What is there then?" Just so he could again as little miss the mother's clear decision: "There's plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend there isn't." Strether had, after posting ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... understood to be but a condition of one's own mind, for which, according to the scepticism, latent at least, in so much of our modern philosophy, the so-called real things themselves are but ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Republic." He is uttering a protest against our concluding, that because degeneracy appears to be the invariable law or destiny of all human commonwealths, THEREFORE, no Archetypal Model exists of any perfect state, or polity: and then, in opposition to this political scepticism, Plato adds these remarkable words:—"en ourano isos paradeigma anakeitai to boulomeno oran kai oronti eauton katoikizein," etc. etc.—"The state we have here established, which exists only in our reasoning, but it seems to me, HAS NO EXISTENCE ON EARTH. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... impossible to thought, without assuring it any objective reality, and merely lest the supposed impossibility of what it must at least allow to be thinkable should endanger its very being and plunge it into an abyss of scepticism. ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... imagination an ideal that was not realised in fact or in thought. It depended on the assumption of anthropomorphic gods, an assumption which could not stand before the criticism of reason, and either broke down into scepticism, or was developed into the conception of a single supreme and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... method of the laboratory is but the strict application of the one sound and fruitful mode of reasoning—the method of verification by experiment. Evidence must be tested before being trusted. The first duty of such a method is to question in order to find good reason; Goethe's "taetige Skepsis," a scepticism or questioning which seeks to overcome itself by finding good standing-ground beyond. Authority as such is nothing till verified anew. The creeds of ancient sages, the dogmas of more modern date, must equally bear the light of widening knowledge ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the action into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by saying he was not ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... A theory? Me! [Theories are connected in his mind with the late Professor Tyndall, and with scientific scepticism generally: also perhaps with the view that the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... favour of our middle classes, those who best represent their rather narrow ideas, their somewhat prescribed views, their rather superficial scepticism, and their at times somewhat excessive egoism, display profound alarm at this new power which they see growing; and to combat the disorder in men's minds they are addressing despairing appeals to those moral forces of the Church ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... But he's a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one's so often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared d'emblee in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former days," said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, "in former days the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... disappointed him, but because it was renewed evidence of my weakness. I thought that if I was incapable of getting to the bottom of such a very shallow complication as this, of what value were any of my thinkings on more difficult subjects, and I fell a prey to self-contempt and scepticism. Contempt from those about us is hard to bear, but God help the poor wretch ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... religious feeling. Nevertheless it is well to prepare the prospective reader for statements that may jar harshly against deeply rooted mental habits. It is well to warn him at the outset that the departure from accepted beliefs is here no vague scepticism, but a quite sharply defined objection to dogmas very widely revered. Let the writer state the most probable occasion of trouble forthwith. An issue upon which this book will be found particularly uncompromising is the dogma of the Trinity. The writer is of opinion that the Council of Nicaea, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Comment. in epist. ad Galatas, ii. 3. His assertion has, however, met with much scepticism in modern times, and it must be admitted that he was not a ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... opposition has always been an incident of progress; and even in this new country, receptive as it was to new ideas, the Washingtons, the Fitches, the Fultons, the Coopers, and the Whitneys, who saw visions and dreamed dreams, all had to face scepticism and hostility from those whom they ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... of these coast-guards who affected a complete scepticism in regard to smuggling—he even went so far as to deny that it had ever existed! He was distinguished among his companions by a singular habit—that of always going to sleep upon his post; and this ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... belonging it seems, to that gigantic eight or nine feet race of men of past days, whose jaw-bones so many vivacious persons have clapped over their own, like horse-collars, without laying by a single one to convince the soul of scepticism. ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... monopolists"—"I have seen the state of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country." The speech was well received. The impression produced two days later by Byron's "Childe Harold" was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting. Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his strain, served only to heighten its success. The Prince Regent had the poet presented to him, and the author of "Marmion" offered his praise. In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, "The ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... benefactor when he separated the world of physical Nature from the world of Mind; and Pascal was equally a profound philosopher when he showed that faith could not take cognizance of science, nor science of faith. The blending of distinct realms has ever been attended with scepticism. "Canst thou by searching find out God?" What He has revealed for our acceptance should not be confounded with truths to be settled by inquiry. It is a legitimate yet underrated department of Christian inquiry to establish the authenticity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... quiet succeeded; or rather, the exhaustion had produced a cold fit of the ague which was symptomatized by indifference among the many, and a tendency to infidelity or scepticism in the educated classes. At length those feelings of disgust and hatred, which for a brief while the multitude had attached to the crimes and absurdities of sectarian and democratic fanaticism, were transferred to the oppressive privileges of the noblesse, and the luxury; intrigues and favouritism ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... return to the doctrine attributed by Plato to Protagoras, that the mind is only a succession of momentary perceptions. At this point the modern philosophy of experience forms an alliance with ancient scepticism. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... has done in the history of Greece what Dr Arnold did in that of Rome: he has at once excluded the early legends entirely from the class of historical records. The outcry which we sometimes hear against that scepticism which has resulted from later and more severe investigations into the nature of historical evidence, and the loss thereby sustained of many a popular tale, is—need we insist upon it?—mere childishness. It is never found that we lose any thing by truth, and certainly not here. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... certainties; if he adopted, as he was accustomed to do, conventional language and conventional ideas, it was only to feel himself in touch with his fellows; for Howard's mind was really a place of suspense and doubt; his scepticism went down to the very roots of life; his imagination was rich and varied, but he did not trust his hopes or even his fears; all that he was certain of was just the actual passage of his thought and his emotion; he formed no views about the future, and he abandoned the ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and everybody knows how portentous that sight is, and how these broad rays, whether they light upon the Scilly Isles or upon the tombs of crusaders in cathedrals, always shake the very foundations of scepticism and lead ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... The scepticism that appeared, even among the most enlightened of medical men when my sentiments on the important subject of the cow-pox were first promulgated, was highly laudable. To have admitted the truth of a doctrine, at once so novel and so unlike any thing that ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the personality of Homer, expressed himself civilly though firmly on the origin of language, and had tact enough to drop at the right moment such subjects as the ultimate reduction of all the so-called elementary substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho's chronology, or even the relation between the magnetic condition of the earth and the outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexibility was naturally much helped by his amiable feeling towards woman, whose nervous system, he ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby, very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely mistaken you. I am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is her forte. It will be the very oddest thing if after all . . . ! No, I shall own, romance has not departed. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scepticism which followed the refinements of rabbinism there is no trace, either here, or in Susanna, or in Bel and the Dragon. The tone of them all is that of an earlier time, free from any symptoms of this later decline. But still the signs of date are not sufficiently decided to justify ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... with awe by ignorant labouring men, which is still true. Paracelsus, though he has a reputation for magical daring, thought the use of the twig 'uncertain and unlawful'; and Agricola, in his 'De Re Metallica' (1546) expresses a good deal of scepticism about the use of the rod in mining. A traveller of 1554 found that the wand was not used—and this seems to have surprised him—in the mines of Macedonia. Most of the writers of the sixteenth century accounted for the turning ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 'and, of course,' he said, 'if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from doing so for five months?' 'Certainly, nothing that I can think of,' was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled upon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The apparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would not work—a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On reconsidering ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... immoral thing than a cruel one So well satisfied with his reply that he repeated it twice That if we live the reason is that we hope That sort of cold charity which is called altruism The discouragement which the irreparable gives The most radical breviary of scepticism since Montaigne The violent pleasure of losing Umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies Was I not warned enough of the sadness of everything? Whether they know or do not know, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... can clear your father's character?' asked his sweetheart's father. There was a tinge of scepticism in his voice, though he ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... 'when I said good-bye to your husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in season and out of season, for nearly forty-five years—"God knows best." Well, my dear lady, a sense of humour, a sense of reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticism—call it what you will—just intercepted them. Oh no, not any of these, my child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know best; but in a matter like this it is not even my place to say so. It would be good for none of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of that capture. German spies have of late, been appearing with disquieting frequency. They are met with in the most unlikely places. Frank was a little shaken in his scepticism. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... went in little groups towards the tennis-lawn, where Phadrig had elected to display his powers, the three Professors instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility. Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic mediums, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... that evening, she found herself looking at him with wonder, and with a sort of scepticism about what her visitor had said. He seemed so full of life; it was impossible to think of him as being likely, or even able, to die. But she had made up her mind to open the subject to him, to force something from him, and ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... heartily welcomed by the Unitarians of Japan—is full of painful significance. The Bishop, while expressing his thankfulness that there are large numbers in the Congregationalist body, who have no share in the prevailing scepticism, points out that in dealing with others, with whom this is not the case, nothing can be gained by any attempt at co-operation. "At such times a severe exclusiveness may be the truest exhibition of ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... knowledge of it was not one of the qualifications for a teacher. A man might be a Mohammedan or a Hindoo if he were only a proficient in geography, arithmetic, or the exact sciences. The teachers in the normal schools might be infidels provided they did not openly inculcate their scepticism; and, in point of fact, in the schools which were designed to train teachers only, a vast majority ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... movements of their minds may be slower and more calculated; but we yield to the potency of their endowments, and the loveliness of the scene which they animate. The enchantments of the poet are strong enough to silence our scepticism; we forbear to inquire whether ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and that eternal worldliness that freezes too fiercely—that absolutely blisters with its frost—like the upper air of the Andes. You speak of Kate only as too readily you speak of all women; the instinct of a natural scepticism being to scoff at all hidden depths of truth. Else you are civil enough to Kate; and your 'homage' (such as it may happen to be) is always at the service of a woman on the shortest notice. But behind you, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... your Isaiah and Matthew. And I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as I would verses of the other; nor must you retract yourselves from the labour in suspicion that I desire to betray your scepticism, or undermine your positivism, because I recommend to you the accurate study of books which have hitherto been ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Skippy's traditional scepticism of any statement with the Snorky stamp would have warned him at any other time. But this being in a way a new experience in strange waters, his nervousness got the better of him. Halfway up the driveway he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... speaking through Peter, was admitted no longer. Hence, as Cardinal Manning most truly observes: "The old forms of religious thought are now passing away in England. The rejection of the Divine Voice has let in the flood of opinion; and opinion has generated scepticism; and scepticism has brought on contentions without end. What seemed so solid once, is disintegrated. It is dissolving by the internal action of the principle from which it sprung. The critical unbelief of dogma has now reached to the foundation of Christianity, and to the veracity of ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... constructors and pilots have continued at their tasks, overcoming technical difficulties and personal risks, the interest of ordinary people has grown perceptibly. Even before the war—which has done so much to focus attention on flying—the attitude of scepticism and apathy had been greatly changed. When the London Aerodrome at Hendon was established, there were shrewd men in the city, men who are ordinarily very sound in their conclusions, who declared the public would never go there in appreciable ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... Pliny, it was easier "to sit and listen quietly in the schools than to be up and wandering over the deserts, and to seek out new plants every day,"[9] and so, in the third century before Christ, the school of Empiricism was established, the system of which resembled the older Scepticism. It rested upon the "Empiric tripod," namely, accident, history and analogy. This meant that discoveries were made by accident, knowledge was accumulated by the recollection of previous cases, and treatment adopted which had been found suitable in similar circumstances. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... least protest. In religion and philosophy no one protested. Such protest as was made took forms more simple than the silence, like the deism of Theodore Parker, and of the boy's own cousin Octavius Frothingham, who distressed his father and scandalized Beacon Street by avowing scepticism that seemed to solve no old problems, and to raise many new ones. The less aggressive protest of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was, from an old-world point of view, less serious. It ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... and character. Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of "breeding," more chiselling in body, more fastidiousness in soul, a little more poise, a little more sheer grace; in mood, more variance, in mind, more clarity and, mixed with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism which her mother ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... simplicity which distinguished Pius and even Verus. (Hist. August. 6, 34.) This suspicions, unjust as it was, may serve to account for the superior applause bestowed upon personal qualifications, in preference to the social virtues. Even Marcus Antoninus has been called a hypocrite; but the wildest scepticism never insinuated that Caesar might probably be a coward, or Tully a fool. Wit and valor are qualifications more easily ascertained than humanity ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... meteors, and eclipses Their inheritance by Jews and Christians The belief regarding comets especially harmful as a source of superstitious terror Its transmission through the Middle Ages Its culmination under Pope Calixtus III Beginnings of scepticism—Copernicus, Paracelsus, Scaliger Firmness of theologians, Catholic and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... rustics. They have an amazing familiarity with certain religious ideas and certain Biblical terms. There is a kind of audacity in their use of the Scriptures, which reminds one of the freedom of mediaeval mystery-plays. Probably this boldness began, not in scepticism or in irreverence, but in honest familiar faith. It certainly seems very odd to us in England, and probably expressions often get a laugh which would pass unnoticed in America. An astounding coolness and freedom of manners probably go for something ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... has upheld me right along," said Thorne in answer to Bob's scepticism regarding government sincerity. "The Office is all right; don't make any mistake on that. It's just a question of getting at it. I admit the system is all wrong, where the complaints can't get direct to the chiefs; but that's what I'm here for. This Plant is one of the easiest ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... silence, but with mingled compassion and contempt. From inaccessible depths of his soul, into which his sober, critical, mocking reason did not shine, a mysterious voice appeared to rise, imperiously commanding his scepticism to be silent. "I am right!" reason ventured to murmur. "You are wrong!" thundered the voice from the depths. "I will not consciously permit myself to be made giddy by the dizziness of romantic self-deception!" answered reason—but now Prince Louis felt as ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Proverbs. There are proverbs proper, a few of the popular kind, but most of them bearing the stamp of deliberate art, and dealing with the prudent conduct of life (x.-xxix.); there are speculations of a more general kind on the nature that wisdom which is the guide of life (i.-ix.); and there is scepticism (cf. Eccles.) represented by the words of Agur (xxx. 1-4). The book, as a whole, might be described as a guide to the happy life, or, we might almost say, to the successful life—for a certain not ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... it to the affairs both of his own nation and of the commonwealth of nations. It was a supreme experiment. People will perhaps some day wonder that many of those who derided the experiment and reproached its author, failed to see that they were making manifest in this a wholesale scepticism as to truths that they professed to prize, far deeper and more destructive than the doubts and disbeliefs of the gentiles in ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... reason with his friend upon his own atheistical principles, explaining to him that he had adopted this plan with a design to show him the fallacy of his scepticism. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... explain," I said, "for what purpose you submitted me to that ordeal. If you proposed to correct my scepticism concerning ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... And the protest of Pragmatism and the voluntarists {64} generally against what they term 'Intellectualism'[18] and their distrust of the logical faculty, are virtually an avowal of despair and a resort to agnosticism, if not to scepticism. If we are to renounce the quest for objective truth, and accept 'those ideas only which we can assimilate, validate, corroborate,'[19] those ideas in short which are 'practically useful in guiding us to desirable issues,' then it would seem ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... life require investigation much keener than has ever been applied to them, and that many might easily be placed in a new light. Indeed, the whole of this most momentous section of ancient history ought to be recomposed with the critical scepticism of a Niebuhr, and the same comprehensive collation of authorities. In reality it is the hinge upon which turned the future destiny of the whole earth, and having therefore a common relation to all modern nations whatsoever, should naturally have been cultivated ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Of lawyers can turn right to wrong; And language, by your skill made pliant, Can save an undeserving client. Is it the fee directs the sense To injure injured innocence? Or can you, with a double face Like Janus's, mistate a case? Is scepticism your profession, And justice absent from your session? And is, e'en so, the bar supplied, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... that strange mixture which at present distinguishes England from all other countries. Such violent extremes were then unknown, of industry and debauchery, frugality and profusion, civility and rusticity, fanaticism and scepticism. Candor, sincerity, modesty, are the only qualities which the English of that age possessed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... such a state of affairs all Knowledge would be impossible. The scepticism which logically followed from such a doctrine was too universal to be capable even of the fiction that it was credible. Berkeley, it is true, endeavoured to save the situation by postulating the incessant and immediate intervention of the Deity as the sustainer of the sensible panorama. ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... comes around. Have I never seen the Medium before? No. Then I should pay him a visit. Wants to talk with me about my past and future. Has much to say; and so on. Do I not go often into a building where many persons work at chemistry? Am I not sceptical?—rather. Wants to cure my scepticism, and so on, ad nauseam. Me is tired, me wants go. Again the jerks, the rubbing of the eyes, and the Indian maid ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... of Jebel Malayh (Malih): we afterwards ascertained by marching up the Wady Surr that it was not. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was thoroughly well scoured; but the results were nil. In due course of time the tarnishing and the disappearance of the metal reduced my scepticism to a certainty: the "gold dots" were the trace of some pilgrim or soldier's copper-nailed boot. It was the first time that this ludicrous mistake arose, but not the last—our native friends were ever ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... maternal, a dedicated power. Madame Okraska, he reflected, must be an extraordinary person if she really deserved that gaze. He didn't believe that she quite did. His dissatisfaction with the music extended itself to the musician and, looking from her face to the girl's, he remembered with scepticism Betty's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the time, Hume undertook to write a History of England, which, with all its errors and faults, still ranks among the best efforts of English historians. Like the French philosophers, Hume was an infidel, and his scepticism appears in his writings; but, unlike them—for they were stanch reformers in government as well as infidels in faith—he who was an infidel was also an aristocrat in sentiment, and a consistent Tory his life long. In his history, with all the artifices of a philosopher, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... that, on a particular occasion, water was turned into wine; and, on the other hand, it is asserted that a man or a woman "levitated" to the ceiling, floated about there, and finally sailed out by the window. And it is assumed that the pardonable scepticism, with which most scientific men receive these statements, is due to the fact that they feel themselves justified in denying the possibility of any such metamorphosis of water, or of any such levitation, because such events are contrary to the laws of nature. So the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... played by Mysticism in philosophy is parallel to the part played by it in religion. As in religion it appears in revolt against dry formalism and cold rationalism, so in philosophy it takes the field against materialism and scepticism.[36] It is thus possible to speak of speculative Mysticism, and even to indicate certain idealistic lines of thought, which may without entire falsity be called the philosophy of Mysticism. In this introductory Lecture I can, of course, only hint at these in the barest ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... that if travellers sometimes impose on the credulity of mankind, they are often also not believed when they speak the truth. Credulity and scepticism are indeed but different names for the same hasty judgment on insufficient evidence: and, as the old woman readily assented that there might be "mountains of sugar and rivers of rum," because she had seen them both, but that there were "fish which ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... December, 1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elze's remark— "In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of thought. The converse is the case with us Germans; freedom of thought is restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism presents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it appeared as if a literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... "if I have caused annoyance. But we English people possess the right of our opinions. However, I do not wish to bias other minds, and trust that my scepticism ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... his own spiritual accounts, Heinrich Heine in the latter part of his life wrote of his friend Zunz:[89] "In the instability of a transition period he was characterized by incorruptible constancy, remaining true, despite his acumen, his scepticism, and his scholarship, to self-imposed promises, to the exalted hobby of his soul. A man of thought and action, he created and worked when others hesitated, and sank discouraged," or, what Heine prudently omitted to ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... to see with, what softness the scepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... entire interview, at one moment carried away by the contagious confidence of the doctor's tone, and impressed by his calm, clear, scientific explanations and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, and the next moment reacting into utter scepticism and contemptuous impatience with himself for even listening to such a preposterous piece of imposition. By the time he had walked half a block, the sights and sounds of the busy street, with their practical and prosaic suggestions, had quite dissipated the lingering ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... delicate boiled kid must be eaten with an impartial mind. I remember one day at Careggi, when Luigi was in his rattling vein, he was maintaining that nothing perverted the palate like opinion. 'Opinion,' said he, 'corrupts the saliva—that's why men took to pepper. Scepticism is the only philosophy that doesn't bring a taste in the mouth.' 'Nay,' says poor Lorenzo de' Medici, 'you must be out there, Luigi. Here is this untainted sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.' 'Because he has ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the remonstrances of Pandarus, who asked if they had visited Sarpedon only to fetch fire? At last, at the end of a week, they returned to Troy; Troilus hoping to find Cressida again in the city, Pandarus entertaining a scepticism which he concealed from his friend. The morning after their return, Troilus was impatient till he had gone to the palace of Cressida; but when he found her doors all closed, "well nigh for sorrow adown he gan ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... as Henry's respectful sympathy for this immemorial rheumatism had contributed to win Mrs. Flower's heart. As to the precise amount of rheumatism from which Mrs. Flower suffered, Henry soon realised that there seemed to be an irreverent scepticism in the family, nothing short of heartless; for rheumatism so poignantly expressive, so movingly dramatised, he never remembered to have met. Mrs. Flower could not walk across the floor without grimaces of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... they have no need of Thee! Pardon them. Although their pride may outrage Thee, they will be, sooner or later, baptized in tears; grant that they may cease to believe in any other shelter from the tempest than Thy love, and spare them the severe lessons of unhappiness. Our wisdom and scepticism are in our hands but children's toys; forgive us for dreaming that we can defy Thee, Thou who smilest at Golgotha. The worst result of all our vain misery is that it tempts us ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... still more excited their wonderment, by recapitulating the feats of Archimedes. As the narrative proceeded, one restrained his scepticism, till he was almost ready to burst, and then vociferated, "Silas, that's a lie!" "D'ye think so?" said Mr. C. smiling, and went on with his story. The idea, however, got amongst them, that Silas's fancy was on the stretch, when Mr. C. finding ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... counted amongst the virtuous. Nor doth he ever obtain the fruits of his virtues! Nor doth he of sinful heart, who having accomplished a virtuous act doubteth in his mind, obtain the fruits of his act, in consequence of that scepticism of his! I speak unto thee, under the authority of the Vedas, which constitute the highest proof in such matters, that never shouldst thou doubt virtue! The man that doubteth virtue is destined to take his birth in the brute species. The man of weak understanding who doubteth religion, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... greatly differ. Any two Englishmen have about the same experience, personal and ancestral, of the weather; yet their beliefs in the saw that 'if it rain on St. Swithin's Day it will rain for forty days after,' may differ as confident expectation and sheer scepticism. Upon which of these beliefs shall we ground the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Ivan would have lost the greater part of its obsequiousness. Joseph did care for his benefactor, honestly. But later in the afternoon there came a little incident which, in some measure, bore out the old musician's instinctive scepticism. Nearly every one in the room had gathered about one or another of the samovar-tables, indulging in their favorite recreation of eating; and busily talking shop. Ivan, however, still occupied with the work of his protege, remained seated ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... determination to penetrate secrets, to know all that is to be known, not to form conclusions without evidence. But the scientific attitude tends, except in the highest minds, to develop a certain dryness, a scepticism about spiritual and imaginative forces, a dulness of the inner apprehension, a hard quality of judgment. Not in such a mood as this does humanity fare further and higher. Men become cautious, prudent, and decisive thus, instead of generous, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pocket lens into her hand and bade her survey one of the phials with it. Eleanor's scepticism fled. That something was there, in pretty active life, was evident. Somethings. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Stewart. The majority of Ian's most trusted advisers were of the same opinion as the Master, since the number of persons who can understand the conditions necessary to the productiveness of exceptional and creative minds is always few. Besides, most people at bottom are in Martha's attitude of scepticism towards the immaterial ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... views in the various matters under discussion, can we be astonished that we are absolutely ignored, and our views not considered? "We believe that an attitude of merely destructive criticism, of aloofness, scepticism, pessimism, is a deplorable mistake. It is not by standing aloof from the movements of our day, but by going fearlessly into them with the message of truth entrusted to our charge, shall we best fulfil our high mission towards our fellow countrymen. We must seize these opportunities ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... interval of heated debate Silas returned and with an air of scepticism demanded twenty-five dollars. When Kenny, who never questioned the price of anything, argued the point from motives of pure antagonism, he called the marshal. The marshal was conservative. He dallied with the need of coming. Kenny took advantage ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple |
