"Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attractive grace, I cannot comprehend his meaning, unless, in the true Mahometan strain, he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... inferior, in which we are confronted by something much more evil than the mere presence of the sadistic impulse. What I refer to is a very subtle and complicated mood wherein the simple sadistic impulse to derive sensual pleasure from the contemplation of cruelty has been seized upon and taken possession of by the emotion ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the mournful howl of the coyotes comes across the plain, and their slinking forms emerge from the shadow of the rocks. There is a shapeless heap, the carcass of some dead mule or ox, some jetsam of the desert, lying near at hand, at which my horse was uneasy as I drew rein in contemplation, and which explains the nearness of the beasts of prey, and the long line of zopilotes, or buzzards, which I had observed to cross the fading gleam of the firmament. All is solitary, deserted, peaceful. The day is done, the night has come, "in which ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... you that many tears were shed, and that the very numerous audience (the church of the Stadtpfarrei [I.e., the parish church] was thronged), as well as the performers, had raised themselves, body and soul, into my contemplation of the sacred mysteries of the Mass...and everything was but a humble prayer to the Almighty and to the Redeemer!—I thought of you in my heart of hearts, and sought for you—for you are indeed so very near and dear to me in spirit!—Next Monday, the 8th September, at the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... inaugural, regretfully "looks back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to find language to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from the contemplation." The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history are all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian with the "idem sententiam de republica," which makes unity and nationality. What a prestige and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... with an artist like Mr. Lemuel, pappy. No, no. Of course I have to keep my eyes open, and pick up things that may be useful. His work is the work of intense spiritual contemplation—it is inspiration—" ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... prays in us by sighs and groans that are unutterable." Now, if the spirit, say they, prays in us, we must resign ourselves to its motions, and be swayed and guided by its impulse, by remaining in mere inaction. Hence, passive contemplation they considered the highest state of perfection. The number of the mystics increased in the fourth century under the influence of the Grecian fanatic, who gave himself out as Dionysius, the Areopagite, a disciple of St. Paul, and probably lived about this period; and by pretending ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... this life under strong excitation, calling up its forgotten stores. Think what its power may be in that life as a handmaid to Conscience. With all its old lumber rooms of forgotten deeds thrown open—with all the forgotten feelings of my life—boyhood, youth, manhood—open for my contemplation. My impatience and God's patience, my sorrows and why God sent them, my mercies, all the kindly providences of God working unknown to me all ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the woman had quitted the room, Lamont returned to his contemplation of the beautiful face of the girl lying so white and still on the wooden settee, as revealed to him by the light of the swinging oil ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... new and remarkable omission in her experience of men, however bald, and while this was refreshing for a time it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a woman can, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but he was marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation of the distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on its stalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching how the moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he was unaware that her charms were of other ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... and that his brother was quite safe in Higg's hands; but Bobus evidently did not believe it. He kept silence while his uncle remained, but he had hunted up his father's surgical books, and went on about humeral clavicles and ligatures all the evening, till his mother felt sick, in the nervous contemplation of possibilities, though her better sense was secure that she had done right, while Janet was moodily silent and angered with her, in the belief that she had weakly let Allen be injured for life; and Bobus seemed as if he had rather it should be so than ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning Sir John Meredith's valet intimated to his master that Mr. Meredith was waiting in the breakfast-room. Sir John was in the midst of his toilet—a complicated affair, which, like other works of art, would not bear contemplation when incomplete. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the earth had a greater hold on the mind than the brightness of the sky. The Welsh terms for a week and a fortnight, wythnos (eight nights) and pythefnos (fifteen nights) respectively confirm Caesar's statement. To us now it may seem more natural to associate religion with the contemplation of the heavens, but for the Celtic lands at any rate the main trend of the evidence is to show that the religious mind was mainly drawn to a contemplation of the earth and her varied life, and that the Celt looked for his other-world either beneath ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... of slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and the men of the Revolution. . . . So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of lost souls of the finally impenitent. The autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free Republicans, sooner than will our masters ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Absorbed in the contemplation of the combat between Snowball and the shark, he had hitherto remained unobservant of a circumstance of the most alarming character,—one that threatened not only the destruction of the Coromantee, but Ben Brace as well, and Lilly Lalee, and in time little ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... dwells; Grongar, in whose silent shade, For the modest Muses made, So oft I have, the evening still, At the fountain of a rill, Sate upon a flowery bed, With my hand beneath my head; While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood. Over mead, and over wood, From house to house, from hill to hill, 'Till Contemplation had her fill. About his chequered sides I wind, And leave his brooks and meads behind, And groves, and grottoes where I lay, And vistas shooting beams of day: Wide and wider spreads the vale, As circles on a smooth canal: The mountains round—unhappy ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... dangers. There are few moods of the religious life that are not represented in the Psalms: penitence, intellectual perplexity, domestic sorrow, feebleness, loneliness, the approach of death, the excitement of great events, the agony of persecution, quiet contemplation of nature, each has its word. The imprecations of some of the Psalms show a trait of the national character without which the picture would be incomplete. It may be in part extenuated by the consideration that in ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... her, and yet oddly without anything to say. He had lived so long and seen so much of life and had got so far above its changes; more, he had lived so much in his study and felt life so little except in contemplation, and with so small an admixture of practical experience of human nature, that he looked at the young thing before him and was conscious of his unreadiness, and in some sort of his unfitness, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... of India shuffled for a new deal; but as long as I live, and while it remains my duty to send an account to Your Highness of Indian affairs, Goa must not be dismantled, for I would not that my enemies should exult in the contemplation of any serious disaster to this estate; and I must sustain it at my own cost, until they get their wishes, and another governor be sent ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... muscles of the face. Their eyes are more bright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to sterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners acquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of innumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but against the good earth; in a silent and powerful way ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... pass under the gloomy gates that lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent square is now as squalid and forsaken as the Place Royale of Paris, though it dates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so instinctively revolts at the contemplation of those orgies of priestly brutality which have made the very name of this place redolent with a fragrance of scorched Christians, that we naturally assign it an immemorial antiquity. But a glance at the booby ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... my spirits revived again, and I turned, with pleasure, to the contemplation of the new life upon which I was entering. But though it was not far past the middle of September, the heavy clouds and strong north-easterly wind combined to render the day extremely cold and dreary; and the journey seemed a very long one, for, as Smith observed, the roads were 'very heavy'; and ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... they were mistaken as regards Pitt's attitude. At last Leeds spoke of the scheme to Pitt who drily told him that circumstances did not call for any alteration in the government and that no new arrangement had ever been in contemplation.[231] If the Portland whigs were to separate themselves from Fox and his friends and were to support the government, they would have to support the government of Pitt, and that after a while, as we shall see, they ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... and the rest of the good people of the world on the occasion. Despotism and Usurpation are fallen, never, I hope, to rise again. But what gives me the greatest pleasure in the contemplation of this occurrence is the spirit of religion and, consequently, of humanity which has constantly marked the conduct of the Allies. Their moderation through all their unparallelled successes cannot be too much extolled; they merit the grateful remembrance ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... common interest; and while these mainsprings are wanting, it is in vain to look for such movements and effects as cannot be produced without them. If this radical defect did not exist; if the Government here was as earnest as it ought to be in its contemplation of this war, but really was without the means of prosecuting it; if it acknowledged and took its proper interest in the possession of the Netherlands, and asked your assistance to that object, only because they ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... if he cannot look and see In a grate fire's friendly flaming all the joys which used to be. If in quiet contemplation of a cheerful ruddy blaze He sees nothing there recalling all his happy yesterdays, Then his mind is dead to fancy and his life is bleak and bare, And he's doomed to walk the highways that are always thick ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... we will not only become acquainted with the highest developments of which ornamental art is capable, but will moreover broaden our views as to its object and scope, and will stimulate our own imagination and invention, by leading us to the contemplation of the myriad beautiful and protean forms it has assumed, when surrounding conditions, such as religion, climate, temperament, nationality, etc., have been different. Knowledge of historic ornament will also prevent the imposition ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... he wished, for the good woman and her daughter, when they saw the door open, entered at once; and when they beheld the hermit in holy contemplation, as though he had been a god, they ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large baby, which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains sometimes in sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! the inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness into which this baby's eyes were then only beginning to compose themselves to stare, over ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... and in the drawing-room of Wilkins's one celebrity was hob-nobbing with another! ("Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Brindley!") Yes, he was happy, both in what he had already accomplished, and in the contemplation of romantic adventures ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... we say it is quite equal to Unterseen, by the same artist, and engraved in our last volume, we hope our readers will not be long ere they judge for themselves. We could have lingered for an hour in the contemplation of this peaceful picture, with the devotional interior of St. Peter's—and in contrasting them with the turmoil of the Great Town out of which we had just stepped to view this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... known to our senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry; but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of noble contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this planet—nay, the whole solar system—shall have fulfilled its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... finally fell upon Hugh McCulloch of Indiana, who had made a favorable record as comptroller of the currency. Thus only two of Mr. Lincoln's original cabinet, Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles, were in office at the date of his second inauguration; and still another change was in contemplation. Mr. Usher of Indiana, who had for some time discharged the duties of Secretary of the Interior, desiring, as he said, to relieve the President from any possible embarrassment which might arise from the fact that two of his cabinet were from the same ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... if we had the chance, we would not return to the past, but over many of us few other studies exercise so great a fascination as the contemplation of the "good old ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... individual with whom they were in daily intercourse, it is not extraordinary that their faith faltered, and that their powers of apprehension failed, as they pondered the prophecies relating to His advent. When they attempted closely to grapple with the amazing truths there presented to their contemplation, and thought of "the Word made flesh," well might they be overwhelmed with a feeling of giddy and dubious wonder. Even after the resurrection had illustrated so marvellously the announcements of the Old Testament, the disciples still continued ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... if the chill of an empty church were in his bones. He knew how far worse it had been than Garth had told. He knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "How old are you?" Jane had confessed to it. He knew how the outward glow of adoring love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to self-contemplation. He had known it all as abstract fact. Now he saw it actually before him. He saw Jane's stricken lover, bowed beside him in his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no merciful curtain of oblivion could ever ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... a perfect standard, to be perfect even as his Father in heaven is perfect, and to look forward, by that help which Plato had no warrant to look for, to attain the perfect measure of the fulness of Christ. Although Plato believed and taught that man ought to strive after and devote himself to the contemplation of the One, the Eternal, the Infinite, he was humbly conscious that no one could attain to the perfection of such knowledge; that it is too wonderful and excellent for human powers. Man's incapacity for apprehending this knowledge he attributed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... an institution in which individuals devote themselves, apart from others, to the cultivation of spiritual contemplation and religious duties, and which has constituted a marked feature in Pre-Christian Jewish asceticism, and in Buddhism as well as in Christianity; in the Church it developed from the practice of living in solitude in the 2nd century, and received ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... her ruins, her antiquity, her Biblical associations to give her interest with the world at large. Japan is infinitely to be preferred in any light of contemplation; China, even, rivals her in all natural advantages; and India is much more inviting. In looking at Egypt we must forget her present and recall her past. The real Egypt is not the vast territory which we shall find laid down by the geographers, reaching to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... without date, but before May, 1610, to which were prefixed verses by Field, Beaumont, Chapman, and Jonson. If, as some have supposed, the last named already had at the time a pastoral play of his own in contemplation, the reception accorded to his friend's venture can hardly have been encouraging, and may have led to the postponement of the plan; as we shall see, there is no reason to believe that the Sad Shepherd was taken in ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... me, remote metaphysical musings; those faces like moons I imagined all wane as moons wane, the passers-by vanish; and immortal Reason, disdaining the daymoth she dwells with, turns away to her crystalline sphere of sublime contemplation. I am lost out of time, I walk on alone in a ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... feeling of great misery seized Sally. She stared down at the discoloured stream, and her eyes filled with tears. She was again consumed with a sense of loneliness; and a faint horror of the returning tide caused her to break once again from her contemplation, to walk back through the drawing-room, and to rejoin Gaga. He was sitting upon the bed, regarding with a vacant expression the two dressing-cases which had been brought up to the room and which stood together against the wall. The room was cold and dark. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... himself and to leave a great name after him, but without any expense to himself or the Company, for this never did anything remarkable for the country by which it was improved. Thus he considered the erection of a church a very necessary public work, the more so as it was in contemplation to build one at that time at Renselaers-Wyck. With this view he communicated with the churchwardens—of which body he himself was one—and they willingly agreed to and seconded the project. The place where it should stand was then debated. The Director contended that it should be placed in the fort, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... began to smile. He had just seen Raoul, who had smiled upon him. With his hands joined upon his breast, his face turned toward the window, bathed by the fresh air of night, which brought to his pillow the aroma of the flowers and the woods, Athos entered, never again to come out of it, into the contemplation of that paradise which the living never see. God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude, at the hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of the other life of which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... up to the contemplation of diabolical imaginations, Cotton Mather was led to take the part he did, in the witchcraft proceedings; and it cannot be hidden from the light of history. The greater his talents, the more earnestly he ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... but our lives need not therefore be heavy and earth-bound. We have Heaven, and we have—Nature! We will call down the former into our hearts and into our home, and we will inquire of the latter concerning its silent wonders, and through their contemplation elevate our spirits. By the flame of our quiet hearth we will sometimes contemplate the movements of the great world-drama, in order thereafter with the greater joy to return to our own little scene, and consider how we can best, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... which stands on its own pretensions, which is independent of sequel, expects no complement, refuses to be informed (as it is called) by any end, or absorbed into any art, in order duly to present itself to our contemplation. The most ordinary pursuits have this specific character, if they are self-sufficient and complete; the highest lose it, when they minister to something beyond them. It is absurd to balance, in point of worth and importance, a treatise ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... lustrous folds behind her. Her beautiful throat and shoulders rose in statuesque whiteness from the mist of chiffon that encircled them. Her dark hair showed a moonbeam parting that rested the eye, wearied by the contemplation of waves and frizzes fresh from the curling-tongs. Her mother's pearls hung in ropes from neck to waist, and the one spot of color about her was the single American Beauty rose she carried. There is a patriotic florist in Paris who grows ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... recognised as the most exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded as more important than holy deeds, and many people went into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... hour spent in the contemplation of the common end of all that live, in introspection and retrospection, who of us does not again take up the burdens of life with renewed resolutions to redouble our energies to faithfully discharge every public ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... the people. I consulted with him, and he executed his commission with so much discretion and bravery that above four hundred considerable citizens were posted up and down in platoons with no more noise and stir than if so many Carthusian novices had been assembled for contemplation. After having given orders for securing certain gates and bars of the city, I went to sleep, and was told next morning that no soldiers had appeared all night, except a few troopers, who just took a view of the platoons of the citizens and then galloped off. Hence it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... opened, and a page announced several couriers who had arrived simultaneously from different points. Father Joseph arose, and, leaning against the wall like an Egyptian mummy, allowed nothing to appear upon his face but an expression of stolid contemplation. Twelve messengers entered successively, attired in various disguises; one appeared to be a Swiss soldier, another a sutler, a third a master-mason. They had been introduced into the palace by a secret stairway and corridor, and left the cabinet by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in the contemplation of the moonlight, he suddenly observed that the moonlight falling upon the windows was obscured for an instant, as if somebody were passing up and down the room. In a few moments this obscuration was repeated, and the same thing happened ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... and spend their days in solitude, expecting a recompence in a better life. The strict and severe penances these men voluntarily endure, far exceed all those so much boasted of by the Romanist monks. Some of these live alone on the tops of hills, remote from all society, spending their lives in contemplation, and will rather die of famine than move from their cells, being relieved from devotion by those who dwell nearest them. Some again impose long fasts upon themselves, till nature be almost exhausted. Many of those whom they call religious men, wear no garments ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Mr. Hammond led her gradually to the contemplation of some of the gravest problems that have from time immemorial perplexed and maddened humanity, plunging one half into blind, bigoted traditionalism, and scourging the other into the dreary sombre, starless wastes of Pyrrhonism. Knowing full well ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... from foreign systems: their habit is "to adapt what they borrow so as to fit it to what they possess." In the second place, the Tendai system became the parent of nearly all the great sects subsequently born in Japan. In the third place, the Buddhas of Contemplation, by whose aid the meditation of absolute truth is rendered possible, suggested the idea that they had frequently been incarnated for the welfare of mankind, and from that theory it was but a short step to the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... when he was sick and the joy which had burst forth when he recovered, he could not conceal from himself that she entertained sentiments toward him which he did not reciprocate. He loved the young girl, and experienced much pleasure from the contemplation of her delicate grace and melancholy beauty. He loved the sound of her melodious voice. More than once since the discovery he had made, he asked himself if he should not look on what had happened as a signal interposition of Heaven in his favor. A quiet life, a comfortable home, the love ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... other as fast as persons usually write, and faster than this would be faster than is necessary. The Canadians are alive on the subject, and lines are projected from Toronto to Montreal, from Montreal to Quebec and to Halifax. Lines are also in contemplation from Toronto to Detroit, on the Canada side, and from Buffalo to Chicago on this side, so that it may not be visionary to say that our first news from England may reach New York via Halifax, Detroit, Buffalo ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... not informed thee that I have it in contemplation to obtain for thee the hand of a King's daughter ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... is in contemplation or a novel departure to be suggested, it sometimes happens that a rather elaborate explanation is necessary. Do not send such an explanation in writing until you have demonstrated the impossibility of seeing the ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... all my hopes had been abandoned, the consciousness of the impossibility of my escape once for all extinguished also my painful alarm and liberated my mind, which was then already inclined to lofty contemplation and the joys ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... 面而立也與。 CHAP. IX. 1. The Master said, 'My children, why do you not study the Book of Poetry? 2. 'The Odes serve to stimulate the mind. 3. 'They may be used for purposes of self-contemplation. 4. 'They teach the art of sociability. 5. 'They show how to regulate feelings of resentment. 6. 'From them you learn the more immediate duty of serving one's father, and the remoter one of serving one's ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... in one of his placid, silent moods, and sat in serene contemplation, replying to all appeals in benignant-sounding syllables more or less articulate—as taking up his cross meekly in a world overgrown with amateurs, or as careful how he moved his lion paws lest he should crush a rampant and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of salvation, have escaped from the world to this mountain, which is thus full of holy hermits serving the Lord, and doing various things with very realistic expressions. Some are reading and praying, and are all intent on contemplation; while others are working to earn their living, and are exercising themselves in various activities. Here is a hermit milking a goat in the most vigorous and realistic manner. Below this is St Macario showing ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... pervades the tenor of our daily life, runs in our heart's-blood, sits at our hearths, wings our loftiest dreams of human exaltation. How, on this earth, could we love, or revere, or emulate, if, in our contemplation of the human being, we could not sunder the noble, the fair, the gracious, the august, from the dregs of mortality, from the dust that hangs perishably about him the imperishable? We judge in love, that in love we may be judged. At our hearthsides, we gain more than we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... be; he was even aware that the worst Mount Hope said of him was much better than he deserved. In those hours that were such a new experience to him, when he denied himself other companionship than his own accusing conscience; when the contemplation of the naked shape of his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... must act as though she had no thought beyond the full enjoyment of the early morning. Slowly, and with many pauses, she made her way towards the ruins, and passed in after standing at the door absorbed in contemplation of the beauty of the scene about her. She hummed the tune of a little ballad to herself, and sat down on the first convenient piece of fallen masonry. If men were watching this place she would give them ample opportunity to ask what her business there might be. Not a movement, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... forthwith she began to think what she could give Blanche out of her small treasures, and how best to conciliate her affection. She wrote her forthwith a kind letter, in which, of course, no mention was made of the plans in contemplation, but in which Laura recalled old times, and spoke her goodwill, and in reply to this she received an eager answer from Blanche: in which not a word about marriage was said, to be sure, but Mr. Pendennis was mentioned two or three times in the letter, and they were to be henceforth, dearest Laura, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Every contemplation, it little matters in which direction one turns, magnifies the difficulty of tariff legislation, but the necessity of the revision is magnified with it. Doubtless we are justified in seeking it. More flexible policy than ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in which strange things had happened, or the influence of the hour and the climax and death of the year, or a voice in his heart speaking to him with authority, he could not tell. Only he knew that on a sudden all his guiding reason, all his knowledge, all his cool contemplation of the physician and common sense of the man, were swept entirely away. His theory of insanity seemed in a moment the theory of a dwarf intellect trying to stick wretched, absurd pins through angels—white or black—that it thought butterflies. His conversation with Cuckoo on the Hampstead Heights ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... independent attitudes. Under the clear cold light of Parisian skies, the unfortunate man soon perceived that his wife was a fool, an irretrievable fool. Not a single idea even lurked in the velvety depths of those beautiful black eyes, lost in infinite contemplation. They glittered like an animal's in the calm of digestion, or in a chance gleam of light, nothing more. Withal the lady was common, vulgar, accustomed to govern by a slap all the little world ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... with them. They acquire, moreover, the keen steady gaze of those who live in constant communion with the silent hills, so different from the Oriental fatalism in the eyes of the Kensingtonite, which comes from the eternal contemplation of the posters of Chu ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... which I suffered from my theory, was not (I believe) that it really made me selfish—other influences of it were too powerful:—but it taught me to blame myself for unbelief, because I was not sufficiently absorbed in the contemplation of my vast personal expectations. I certainly here feel myself delivered from ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... not a stranger to enterprise, and still less to the contemplation of enterprise; but an enterprise such as this he had never even outlined. That his dear lady was troubled at the situation he had placed her in by not going himself on that errand, he could see ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door, and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with his back to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfast contemplation of the calm man and, incidentally, of the feed box. She knew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three heads and perhaps four would turn casually in her direction. Their ears ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... himself in his bed again, sinking back into the dull contemplation of the teasing, smarting pain where the torn ligaments of his thighs were slowly knitting themselves together. He tried desperately to forget the pain; there was so much he wanted to think out. If he could only lie perfectly quiet, and piece together the frayed ends of thoughts ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Mackinaw as one of the healthiest portions of the whole Northwest, and to which, in time, tens of thousands of persons, even from the furthest south, would resort to be reinvigorated in body, refreshed in mind, and delighted with the contemplation of the sublime and beautiful scenery in that region of expansive waters, of rocky coasts, of forest-bearing ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was neither represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices. [9] The sages of Greece and Rome, who had elevated their minds to the contemplation of the existence and attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this philosophical devotion. [10] They were far from admitting the prejudices of mankind as the standard ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to man it is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to illustrate the application of this bolder faith. When the record of his high extraction fell under dispute, we were driven to a contemplation of the whole of his life, rather than of a part and that part out of sight. We remembered again, out of Aristotle, that the result of a process interprets its beginnings. We were obliged to read the title of such dignity as we may claim, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... It was in contemplation to make the road from Lucknow to Shajehanpoor and Bareilly pass through this place, Tundeeawun, by which some thirty miles of distance would be saved, and a good many small rivers and watercourses ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the suburbs, and out into the open country. The evening was a lovely one, and the country looked its best. It was difficult to believe, as I drove through the peaceful landscape, that in all probability a dark deed was in contemplation, and that the young man to whom I had taken a most sincere liking was in danger ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... voices gone, and the Great Silence whole years of noise had helped to make, reigning undisturbed around, he mused, as I did now, upon his work, and lost himself amid its vast extent. I could not quite determine whether the contemplation of it would impress him with a sense of greatness or of insignificance; but when I remembered how long a time it had taken to erect, in how short a space it might be traversed even to its remotest parts, for how brief a term he, or any of those who cared to bear his ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... preserve an interval between their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures; while the central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a wide horizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only a margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation sat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which rose on long necks above the others. One of the heads Paul perceived, was much the so most beautiful of the collection, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... incredible prosperity, went their own way as self-containedly as usual, wholly unconcerned by the non-arrival of Mrs. Herbert on a visit of ceremony, or the failure of the 'Social Reformer' to pierce the lofty ethereal regions of abstract contemplation where Herbert himself sat throned like an Epicurean god in the pure halo of cultivated pococurantism. Every day, as that eminent medical authority, Hilda Tregellis, had truly prophesied, Ernest's cheeks grew less and less sunken, and a little colour returned slowly to their midst; while Edie's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... present a firm front that for the time being could do no harm, and of keeping his opponent waiting. The effect did not quite come off. Under that enforced attendance, the Prime Minister had turned his back on the door, and wrapt in contemplation of the book-shelves stood as though unaware that the Primate had made his state entry. It was a pity that he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... reflections and images, in a variegated round of changing visions; and in this way he will unconsciously and gradually feel the metaphysical unity of all things in the great image of nature, and at the same time tranquillise his soul in the contemplation of her eternal endurance and necessity. But how many young men should be permitted to grow up in such close and almost personal proximity to nature! The others must learn another truth betimes: how to subdue nature to themselves. ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... The effects which the contemplation of these glorious waters produce, are of course very different, according to one's temperament and disposition. As I stood on the brink above the falls, continuing for a considerable time to watch the great mass of water tumbling, dancing, capering, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is full of men, but their principal occupation is human work of some sort; and women see in them the human distinction preponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries her coachman—long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect, apparently; but in general women see the human creature most; the male ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... right; Rapacious animals we hate: Kites, hawks, and wolves deserve their fate. Do not we just abhorrence find Against the toad and serpent kind? But envy, calumny, and spite, Bear stronger venom in their bite. Thus every object of creation Can furnish hints to contemplation; 70 And from the most minute and mean, A virtuous mind can morals glean.' 'Thy fame is just,' the sage replies; 'Thy virtue proves thee truly wise. Pride often guides the author's pen, Books as ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... contemplation of the fog with a renewed assumption of indifference. George Lovegrove's shiny forehead puckered into little lines. He looked anxiously at his wife. The good lady, however, laid a fat forefinger upon her lips and nodded her head at him in the most ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... doxan auto donta, hoste ten pistin humon kai elpida einai eis theon]. Here we find a conception of the pre-existence of Christ which is not yet affected by cosmological or psychological speculation, which does not overstep the boundaries of a purely religious contemplation, and which arose from the Old Testament way of thinking, and the living impression derived from the person of Jesus. He is "foreknown (by God) before the creation of the world", not as a spiritual being without a ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... possessions is fearful. One likes to look to America in this as in all things tending to advancement; but there the "damned spot" stares us in the face, blights our hopes, and crushes our sympathies—hideous slavery —hideous alike in the recollection of the past, the contemplation of the present, and the anticipation of the future. I wish two things— 1. That you would write a work on the subject less "sketchy and perfunctory," as you call it, so that any one not versed in English ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... really good things in themselves, to be encouraged by beneficent legislation. It is hardly necessary to say now that nothing could be more narrow and even more perverse than this interpretation of Malthus's philosophy. Another of the teaching minds which passed from the contemplation of earthly subjects during the reign was that of James Mill, the historian of British India and the promulgator of great doctrines in political economy. James Mill, like Edmund Burke, had studied India thoroughly, and come to understand it as few men had done who had lived there ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... gross vapours of earth were gathering around me, and closing in upon my inward heaven; and thus it was that Mr. Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness; and I rejoiced that I had now a subject for contemplation that was above me, not beneath. I was glad to see that all the world was not made up of Bloomfields, Murrays, Hatfields, Ashbys, &c.; and that human excellence was not a mere dream of the imagination. When we hear a little good and no harm of a person, it is easy and pleasant to imagine more: ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... verge of the horizon church-towers and smoking chimneys of farm-houses continually occur, visions of fat, brown, sucking pigs, rashers of ham and boiled fowls, with foaming tankards, will intrude unbidden after an hour or two of contemplation. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... honours as are now being paid him generally come to a man after his death and not before it. This is all very well for a politician whose profession immerses him in public life, but the older I grow the more satisfied I am that there can be no greater misfortune for a man of letters or of contemplation than to be recognised in his own lifetime. Fortunately the greater man he is, and hence the greater the misfortune he would incur, the less likelihood there is that ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... of paying for his fare brought to his consciousness that he had but a little over ten dollars with him. He thrust the change back into his pocket, and took up his contemplation of nothing. The river water dripped slowly from his "cork" boots to form a pool on the car floor. The heavy wool of his short driving trousers steamed in the car's warmth. His shoulders dried in a little cloud of vapor. He noticed none of these ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... incredulity had passed away almost as quick as the first emotion of discovery, and for the next twenty-four hours he had no sleep. That would never do. At meal-times (he took the foot of the table set up for the white men on the bridge) he could not help losing himself in a fascinated contemplation of Captain Whalley opposite. He watched the deliberate upward movements of the arm; the old man put his food to his lips as though he never expected to find any taste in his daily bread, as though he did not know anything about it. He fed himself like a somnambulist. "It's an ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... exercises, and abate the violence of its disappointed efforts. The thought, no longer bent on that divine and mysterious essence, so superior to the narrow capacities of mankind, was able, by means of the new model of devotion, to relax itself in the contemplation of pictures, postures, vestments, buildings; and all the fine arts which minister to religion, thereby received additional encouragement. The primate, it is true, conducted this scheme, not with the enlarged sentiments and cool reflection of a legislator, but with the intemperate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... majesty of beings celestial, they judge it altogether unsuitable to hold the Gods enclosed within walls, or to represent them under any human likeness. They consecrate whole woods and groves, and by the names of the Gods they call these recesses; divinities these, which only in contemplation and mental reverence ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... who have to pay the taxes. In a growing country, where real estate enhances so rapidly with time as in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration without ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... unexpected. The gradual rise, night after night, of new stars and new constellations, belongs to a still higher order of curiosity; for it not merely places well-known objects in strange positions, but brings totally new subjects of contemplation before our eyes, and leads us to feel, perhaps more strongly than upon any other occasion, the full gratification which novelty on the grandest scale is capable of producing. I shall never forget the impatience ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... and they could easily surprise and destroy every squadron which we have upon the high seas months before they would necessarily hear of a declaration of war, or know why they were captured. The very contemplation of such possibilities is intolerable, and should be sufficient of itself, setting aside all considerations of commerce and diplomacy, to arouse our nation to the adoption of the proper means for ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... not as an inner consciousness or mental communion simply, not as an absorption into ourselves within, but as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... beholding the miracle, kneel and adore him. Now he is a youthful prince, beautiful and gentle, troubled with pity for the poor, the afflicted, and the aged, as they rest by the roadside. And finally, as a hermit, he sits in the shade of a boh-tree, rapt in divine contemplation. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... authorities might have elicited embarrassing questions from them, so he and Louis quietly departed without explanations, leaving for the second time debts of considerable amount. They reached Ajaccio on September sixth, 1791. Napoleon was not actually a deserter, but he had in contemplation a step toward the defiance of French authority—the acceptance of service ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the picture much of the softness characteristic of the original. He remembered when it was taken—during one afternoon they had spent together at a neighbouring watering-place, when he had suggested her sitting to a touting artist on the sands, there being nothing else for them to do. A long contemplation of the likeness completed in his emotions what the letter had begun. He loved the woman dead and inaccessible as he had never loved her in life. He had thought of her but at distant intervals during the twenty years since that parting occurred, and only as somebody he could have wedded. Yet now the ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... little bell giving clamorous notice of a visitor's approach (for Mr Bailey came in at the door with a lunge, to get as much sound out of the bell as possible), Poll Sweedlepipe desisted from the contemplation of a favourite owl, and gave his young ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... careless administration slighted, or neglected, his claim to protection, and left him a prey to legal machinations, the nation would have certainly lost it's chief champion; for, on the best authority, it is here repeated, he once had it in contemplation to leave for ever ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the reverie into which the contemplation of this glorious sight had thrown me, by hearing a female voice exclaim, "How beautiful is Nature—how magnificent!" I turned, and saw two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance. It was from the elder that the exclamation had come, which brought me back ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... that Lord Castlederry was a well-meaning man, but, as she knew, without success. She had delighted in her husband's great courage and self-sufficiency, his sureness, his strong decision and his unconquerable pride and independence ... but now, in contemplation, these things frightened her ... she wondered sometimes why it was that they had not frightened her in his lifetime ... and the thought that she might have to live again in contention and opposition roused all her ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... discrepancies of style may therefore be expected to present themselves, but these are so eclipsed by the grandeur in its leading features, that the eye takes in the whole as a single conception, and overlooks, in its contemplation of such a magnificent association of objects, the marks of difference that exist between the efforts of earlier and later genius."[28]—The Purbeck pillar, which divides the greater arch of the West door into two lesser ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... gifted woman. There breathes throughout the whole a most eminent exemption from impropriety of thought or diction; and there is at times a pensiveness of tone, a winning sadness in her more serious compositions, which tells of a soul which has been lifted from the contemplation of terrestrial things, to divine communings with beings of a ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... denominated on this account, is a position not capable of proof: whereas, in all probability, the true account of the matter runs thus—The works of antiquity awe us by their time-hallowed presence; the mind is sent into a serious contemplation of things; and, the subject itself in nowise contravening, we attribute all this potent effect to the agency of the subject before us, and 'High Art,' it becomes then and for ever, with all such as "follow its cut." But then as this was so named, not ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... down and lay back on the greensward, in pleasant contemplation, when he heard a gentle cough—as of one who wished to attract attention. Looking up he observed close at hand, a tall man, dressed in black, with long hair, which fell over ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... of such a life would plunge him. Even if he had the power to write, he dared not. As one whom in a desert, seeking for a face, should come to a pool of blood, and seeing his own reflection, fly—so would such a one hasten from the contemplation of his own degrading agony. Imagine such ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but the divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a certain value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the whole universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her own sake, the Hebrew only for the sake of his Creator. She had no independent significance for him; he looked at her only 'sub specie eterni Dei,' in the mirror of the eternal God. Hence he took interest in her phases only ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... "Going into Nicolay's room this morning, C. Schurz, and J. Lane were sitting. Jim was at the window, filling his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplation of a Secession flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria. 'Let me tell you,' said he to the elegant Teuton, 'we have got to whip these scoundrels like hell, C. Schurz. They did a good thing stoning our men at Baltimore ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the two provinces was in contemplation, it became evident that the business of such an extended colony could not be carried on in the United Parliament, were it to be encumbered and distracted with the contending claims of so many localities. This consideration led to the establishment of the District ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Rialto," said Uncle Dan, rousing to the contemplation of a good substantial fact. "It's everywhere in Venice. You're always coming out upon it, especially when you have been ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... I have got you away from that man," he would murmur to her after long periods of contemplation. We know from Powell how he used to sit on the skylight near the long deck-chair on which Flora was reclining, gazing into her face from above with an air of guardianship and investigation at the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... not the reader suppose that the pilgrim of the wilderness could feast his imagination with the romantic beauties of nature, without any drawback from conflicting passions. His situation did not afford him much time for contemplation. He was an exile from the warm clothing and plentiful mansions of society. His homely woodman's dress soon became old and ragged. The cravings of hunger compelled him to sustain from day to day the fatigues of the chase. Often he had to eat his ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... connected with Dr. Johnson's visit to Plymouth, with his old friend Sir Joshua. He was much pleased with this jaunt and declared he had derived from it a great accession of new ideas . . . "The magnificence of the Navy the ship building and all its circumstances afforded him a grand subject of contemplation." He contemplated it in fact, as Mr. Pickwick contemplated Chatham and the Medway. The commissioner of the dockyard paid him the compliment, etc. The characteristic part, however, was that the Doctor entered enthusiastically into the local politics. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... pourtrayed to the life. The more I looked, the more I felt charmed with it. Never had I seen any thing so truly characteristic as this sketch, for it was scarcely more. It was after nearly an hour's quiet contemplation, that I began to remember the lateness of the night; an hour, in which my thoughts had rambled from the lovely object before me, to wonder at the situation in which I found myself placed; for there was so much of "empressement" towards me, in the manner ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872) |
