"Doubter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second head the gain in clearness. The Spiritual World as it stands is full of perplexity. One can escape doubt only by escaping thought. With regard to many important articles of religion perhaps the best and the worst course at present open to a doubter is simple credulity. Who is to answer for this state of things? It comes as a necessary tax for improvement on the age in which we live. The old ground of faith, Authority, is given up; the new, Science, has not yet taken its place. Men did not require to see truth before; they only needed ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... renown—I would say immortal, were I not afraid that most people have forgotten—by bringing his frigate home from Labrador to England after losing her rudder. It is said that he subsequently ran for Parliament, and when on the hustings some doubter asked about his political record, he answered, "I am Captain Rous who brought the Pique across the Atlantic without a rudder." Of course the reply was lustily cheered, and deservedly; for in such seas, with a ship dependent upon sails only, it was a splendid, if somewhat reckless ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... out a poke and threw it upon the table. When Thomas had untied the string and held the moose-hide sack by its two lower corners bottom upwards there clattered out upon the boards enough of good-sized golden nuggets to cause the eyes of the doubter to sparkle with interest. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Roman guard became as dead men; "the Lord was risen indeed!" and He appeared to His disciples, and so overcame the unbelief of Thomas by His very presence, bearing the marks of His human sufferings, that the doubter fell down and "worshipped Him," saying, "My Lord, and my God!" Jesus remained on earth for forty days, and we still "behold the man." He conversed familiarly with His apostles, ate and drank with them, and instructed them in the things pertaining to His ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... in it. But I say defiantly that I did believe in it. And I say further that there was never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more convincing evidence. And it wasn't true.... Well, I find I'm a changed man. I find I am no longer a believer: I am a doubter." ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... here quite wide, but the tunnel passed under the river bed, thus anticipating the Thames tunnel by about four hundred years. If any one shakes his head at this, and begins to doubt that our story is true, we will point out to such a doubter the secret way that leads from a certain castle to a distant village, a veritable catacomb which in a straight line would be fully a mile long, a work of the Hussites. The vaulted passage-way is ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... His people too well to let their stupid unbelief and hardness of heart interfere with His own gracious purposes! How tenderly He rebukes the spirit of this doubter. "Why," as if He said, "Why distrust me? Why stultify thyself with these unbelieving surmises. Hast thou already forgotten my own gracious assurances, and thine own unqualified acceptance of them. My hand is never shortened that it cannot save; my ear is never heavy ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... along the road they had come by. Some instinct told him that the sight of the things he had seen would wake up memory, and that bit by bit, as he went, the mist would retreat before him, and perhaps vanish at last. Some instinct told him this, but reason, who is ever a doubter, tortured him ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... conclusion, is the natural out-put of scholastic all-sufficiency; so, the form of the essay, as we have it towards the end of the sixteenth century, most significantly in Montaigne, representative essayist because the representative doubter, inventor of the name as, in essence, of the thing—of the essay, in its seemingly modest aim, its really large and adventurous possibilities—is indicative of Montaigne's peculiar function in regard to his age, as in truth the commencement of our own. It provided him with precisely the literary ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... anything," said a poor doubter, who had trusted in human prudence, and been disappointed; who had endeavored to walk by the lumine of self-derived intelligence, instead of by the light of divine truth, and so lost his way in the world. He was fifty years ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... drive for hire and some samples of oats and dry-land spuds and stuff that you raised on your claim—" She eyed him sharply for one so endearingly feminine. "Would you do it? There'd be a salary, and besides that a commission on each doubter you landed. And I'd just love to have you for one of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... confined to the Jews alone. Every great world-faith experiences nowadays the throes of transformation and readjustment. Mistaking them for the final struggle, the believer wrings his hands in despair over the impending doom, and the doubter contemplates a religionless future with a great deal of glee. But both will be disappointed in their reckoning. Religion, as we shall see, is entirely too inherent in human life to be dispensable. The belief that it has served ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... who taught the D primary, traded rooms with Miss Crutcher, who taught the "a-b Abs." Miss Munsell was a big fat lady, and she smiled so that the dimples came in both cheeks and her double Chin was doubter than ever, when she told the children what a dear, nice teacher Miss Crutcher was, and how fond she was of them, and wouldn't they like to make a Christmas present to their dear, kind teacher? They all said "Yes, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... felt himself unable to cope without the aid of Mr. Harper; the second might be met with candor. Should he then be candid with this doubter, relate to him the facts as they had unrolled themselves before his own eyes;—secret facts—convincing ones—facts which must prove to him that whether Georgian did or did not lie at the bottom of the mill-stream, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter.... I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... "The doubter burst into an explosion of derisive laughter and walked away. A few paces, and he came back; walking up to Colonel Conwell he seized the axe and said, 'See here, Preacher, this is not the kind of work for a parson or a lawyer. If you ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... long and simple love-letter from Bud, while satisfying the cravings of the lover, stirred up again the misgivings of the doubter. And her cogitations resulted in the admission that Bud must be either one of two things. Either he was absolutely innocent of the imputations contained in the letter that Skidmore brought, or he was one of the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... impressions which come of man's spiritual existence. In the same way, Carlyle has a grander meaning running through his books, more of sublimity, a finer eloquence, because the spiritual is to him real. Doubter and scorner as he was, he could not but see that man's being reaches beyond the material world and interprets some higher realm. Vague as that faith was with him, it was a source of the most effective literary power and stimulus. He bursts forth, under ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... surely save it, but that done, we have an arduous task before us. Christianity and love must take the place of expediency, machiavelism, and cunning diplomacy in the sphere of politics. We see the smile of scorn upon the lips of the doubter; he deems the thing impossible. So he would have pronounced our noble record of the last three years, three years ago. Nay, it is already half accomplished, since we now know it must be done. The black man free, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... argument for the authenticity of the portraits is the portraits themselves. They are beautiful, they are skilful, done in Stuart's style and entirely worthy of him. To suppose them done by any one else involves the doubter at once in a maze of improbabilities and impossibilities. The present writer is willing to put himself on record as quite convinced that they were painted by Stuart and are wholly by his own hand and are unusually important ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the ratification of the Constitution; and a majority of them had served as members of the national convention that framed the document or of the state ratifying conventions. Only one man of influence in the new government, Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, was reckoned as a doubter in the house of the faithful. He had expressed opinions both for and against the Constitution; but he had been out of the country acting as the minister at Paris when the Constitution ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... did not the city government make a piece of work of putting an end to such a scandal?" inquired a doubter ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... he had made at his forge, and I suppose it had taken him twice as long to make the special tool as it had to mend the parts of my rake; but when I would have paid him for it he would take nothing save for the mending itself. Nor was this a mere rebuke to a doubter. It had delighted him to do a difficult thing, to show the really great skill he had. Indeed, I think our friendship began right there and was based upon the favour I did in bringing him a job that I thought ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... may drag him down into the invisible." Like Watteau, Laforgue was "condemned" from the beginning to "a green thought in a green shade." The spirit in him, the "shadow," devoured his soul, pulverised his will, made of him a Hamlet without a propelling cause, a doubter in a world of cheap certitudes and insolent fatuities, but barred him proffering his pearls to pigs. He came before Nietzsche, yet could he have said with Zarathustra: "I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers, they are arrows of longing for ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of Uncle Terry's mildly flavored shafts of sarcasm, he made no enemies and his kind heart and sterling honesty were respected far and near. He was considered a doubter and skeptic, and though seldom seen at church, as he had originally contributed his share when that edifice was built, his lack of ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... truth that there has never been and there is not a perfect church. Of the twelve men who formed the nucleus of the Christian church and who had the advantage of the personal teaching of the Christ, one was a doubter, another was worldly-minded, a betrayer, and a son of perdition who sought relief from the stings of conscience by self-destruction; a third was a deserter and vacillator, who drew from the great apostle of the Gentiles a stinging rebuke for ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply to Mr Isaac D'israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved partly at Petworth and partly in ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... it was, she was beginning to be a doubter. She would not own it, even to herself, but she was beginning to fear that he might be mistaking the desire to be, for the power to be. What he considered his best work invariably came back. He said that this was because editors were unable to appreciate strikingly original ideas when they were ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... 'that it does not discover much profundity or penetration,' we ought in common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written about Shakspeare one-half so entertainingly. If this statement be questioned, let the doubter, before reviling me, re-read the preface, and if, after he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content to withdraw the observation, which, indeed, has only been made for the purpose of introducing a quotation from the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... When a doubter first encounters you, he pours out a deluge of abuse of churches, and ministers, and creeds, and Christians. Nine-tenths of what he says is probably true. Make concessions. Agree with him. It does him good to unburden himself of these things. He has been cherishing ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... between God and his mother now! Unwise counsellors will persuade the half crazy doubter in his own faith, to believe that he does believe!—how much better to convince him that his faith is a poor thing, that he must rise and go and do the thing that Jesus tells him, and so believe indeed! When will men understand ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the doubter gathered up his slippers, and backed out from the presence, when the pacha and his minister were, with an honest rivalry, endeavouring to remove at once their doubts and their thirst; and were so successful in their attempts, that they, in a short time, exchanged their state ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the Doubter is not yet extinct, and many, as usual, shook their wise heads at the enterprise. It was admitted that in inland navigation the Americans had beaten the world; that except an occasional blow-up, their river steamers were really models of enterprise and skill; but it was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the most they can out of the world; wisdom is acknowledgment of these propositions; folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the sphere of sense. The supporter of these doctrines by no means permits himself to be regarded as a rampant and dogmatic atheist; he is simply the modest and humble doubter of what he cannot prove. He even recognizes the persistence of the religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a new religion suited to the times—the Religion of Humanity. Thus he is secure at all points: for if the religion of the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... skepticism, scepticism, misgiving, demure; distrust, mistrust, cynicism; misdoubt[obs3], suspicion, jealousy, scruple, qualm; onus probandi[Lat]. incredibility, incredibleness; incredulity. [person who doubts] doubter, skeptic, cynic.; unbeliever &c. 487. V. disbelieve, discredit; not believe &c. 484; misbelieve[obs3]; refuse to admit &c. (dissent) 489; refuse to believe &c. (incredulity) 487. doubt; be doubtful &c. (uncertain) 475; doubt the truth of; be skeptical as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Church for it, and of that we must be certain. That certainly must not for a moment falter, and the moment it does falter, there is no telling but that the whole edifice so laboriously raised will tumble down upon the guilty shoulders of the imprudent doubter. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs. Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into silence and shadow and wait for a moment—and the bewildering will happen, or you will imagine it to happen. I will agree to furnish from this company a medium that will astonish ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... evidence is needed of aesthetic defect in the still unoccidentalized Japanese taste let the doubter go to any popular second-grade Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple. Here unaesthetic objects and sights abound. Hideous idols, painted and unpainted, big and little, often decorated with soiled bibs; decaying to-rii; ruined ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... semblance of the torturer who had mocked and scourged the meek Redeemer, who had crowned his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced and slain him. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake were not enough to glut the pious hate this priestly trickery inspired. It was not enough that the doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the crackling fagots, but it must be loaded in eternity with the curses ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty; containing, among Many Surprising and Curious Matters, the Unutterable Ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the Disastrous Projects of William the Testy, and the Chivalric Achievements of Peter the Headstrong,—the Three Dutch Governors of New Amsterdam: being the Only Authentic History of the Times that ever hath been or ever will be published. By Diedrich Knickerbocker. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... a strong conviction of the essential truths of revealed Christianity; sincere believers in the gospel, of enduring principle, of pure, consistent, blameless life and conduct. Speculative theology he cared little or nothing about. He was no disputant, no doubter, no casuist; of the heights of mysticism, of the depths of infidelity, he knew nothing. He was conservative, of course, from temperament rather than from inquiry. He took the literal, prose view of Calvinism, and rejected doctrines ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... to be told the whole amazing story. He shook his head at the conclusion, and went on record as being a doubter by saying: ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... Long, the doubter, he was willing to admit that he had made a grevious error of judgment. Had he thought that Ziffak suspected his misgivings, he would have taken the fellow's hand, ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him "liar." The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... you still will doubt and fear me, And think this heart to other loves will stray, If I must swear, then, lovely doubter, hear me; By every dream I have when thou'rt away, By every throb I feel when thou art near me, I love but ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... narrowly at Aramis while he uttered these words, which displayed so much true respect, so much warm devotion, such entire frankness and sincerity, that even he, D'Artagnan, the eternal doubter, he, the almost infallible in judgment, was deceived by it. "A man who lies cannot speak in such a tone as that," ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mantua. With a German's fondness for music, he beguiled the tedium of many a long winter evening. With his German education he had imbibed radicalism to its full extent. Thoroughly conversant with the Sacred Scriptures he was a doubter, if not a positive unbeliever, from the Pentateuch to Revelation. In addition to this, his flings at the Chaplain, his messmate, made him unpopular with the religiously inclined of the regiment. He had besides, the stolidity of the German, and their cool calculating practicalism. This did not always ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... tortured, racked, and burned them for the glory of God and the good of humanity. He is of the minority, as was Roger Williams when, in 1635, the popular and conventional thought of Salem banished him. Mr. King is not an infidel or even a doubter. On the contrary he is ardently religious, being a zealous and conscientious member of a sect of Christians noted for their piety and faith. The Adventists, of whom he is an honored member, it must be remembered, hold somewhat peculiar views about ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... attention, and does to a certain extent superinduce the "blank misgivings" of mysticism. It does this, however, without going further and filling the mind with new life. If I bid a man follow my reasoning closely, and then say, "I am the slayer and the slain, I am the doubter and the doubt," I puzzle his mind, and may succeed in reawakening in him the sense he has often had come over him that we are ignorant of our own destinies and cannot grasp the meaning of life. If I do this, nothing can be a more legitimate ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... abruptly: "The doubter may be convinced if he will but put himself in the way of it. The life of my granddaughter is more valuable to-day than that of any king or queen. Her mission is to open the door between the two worlds. She is here ready for the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... answered, in writing, the deaf man. "A little suspicion soon overspreads the whole nature, and yet, I think, one can be generous even with suspicion. Among the disciples were a traitor, a liar, a coward, and a doubter; but none upbraid the last, poor Thomas, and he is sainted in our faith. Do you know that suspicion made me deaf? Yes; if we mock Nature with distrust, she stops our ears. Do you not remember what happened to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the present system," he remarked. "Yes," some one replied, "but we always finish so badly." "Oh, I always finish well enough," was the pert rejoinder; "I generally come out on top." "Ah," retorted the other, "I was thinking of the electors." But the doubter did not come out on top at a subsequent election, and his defeat was probably the means of his discovering defects in the old system that no number of successes would have led him into acknowledging. From the two or three members who ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... golden age of the province of the New-Netherlands, when it was under the sway of Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called the Doubter, the people of the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... resulting from such denial—scepticism wherein vanishes any certainty as to the existence both of Mr. Spencer and his critic, and by which it is equally impossible to have a thought free from doubt, or to go so far as to affirm the existence of that very doubt or of the doubter who doubts it. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... the learned of the schools Who measure heavenly things by rules, The sceptic, doubter, the logician, Who in all sacred things precision, Would mark the limit, fix the scope, "Art thou the Christ for whom we hope? Art thou a magian, or in thee Has the divine eye power to see?" He answered low to those who came, "Not this, nor this, nor this I claim. More than the yearning of the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... back to Judaea. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon doubters, I always doubt the quality of his faith. It is of little use to have ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... a college porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest, is not this the most revolting folly that ever entered the human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I say so. For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes; and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour." Voltaire charges Warburton with calumniating Cicero, ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... I expect, boys!" exploded the doubter; "it sounds just like a fairy story to me. But then there was some one here, because we glimpsed him disappearing like a falling star. I wanted to give him a shot, but I remembered what Max here said about shooting when in doubt; and we ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... upon foolish questions?" she replied. "Are no metals smelted in thy country, O Holly? Now hadst thou sought to know what I am doing—But that, without seeing, thou wouldst not believe, so, Doubter, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... faith in Jesus Christ as a Saviour. But what then, they cannot make you forget that you are a sinner. You know better, your own heart tells you the truth. They can take away the Saviour, and only leave you your sins. The doubter may scoff you out of believing in the resurrection. But can he laugh you out of believing in death? When your little child dies, and you look at the loving eyes closing for the last time, what comfort has your doubting friend to give you? Not a word. He leaves you alone with your ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... triumphant. No faith before it ever took so victorious a stand in its infancy. It has swept like a hurricane of fire through the land, compelling faith from the baffled scoffer and the most determined doubter." ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... are asked to believe that a man who could express himself in this way and show this courage was a doubter, a skeptic, an unbeliever, an agnostic, an infidel. "Christ is God." This was Lincoln's faith in 1860, found in a letter addressed to the Hon. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... my troth unshaken, Though others may deceive; To give with willing pleasure, Or still with joy receive; To bring the mourner comfort, To wipe sad tears away; To help the timid doubter— ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Biarni, Blihar (Blig?) surnamed Snub-nosed; Biorn from the district of Sogni; Findar (Finn) born in the Firth; Bersi born in the town F(I)alu; Siward Boarhead, Erik the Story-teller, Holmstein the White, Hrut Rawi (or Vafi, the Doubter), Erling surnamed Snake. Now from the province of Jather came Odd the Englishman, Alf the Far-wanderer, Enar the Paunched, and Ywar surnamed Thriug. Now from Thule (Iceland) came Mar the Red, born and bred in the district called Midfirth; Grombar the Aged, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... or whoever hid this ivory, if there's any there, get it up to the cave, if it is a cave?" asked Don the Doubter. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... word sorcery (malefice)? From maleficiendo, which means male de fide sentiendo.[72] A curious etymology, but one that will hold a great deal. Once trace a resemblance between witchcraft and evil opinions, and every wizard becomes a heretic, every doubter a wizard. All who think wrongly can be burnt for wizards. This was done at Arras; and they long to establish the same rule, little by little, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... expense of quitting the prejudice of your whole precedent life. I will not forestall your judgment by saying anything more of this book, but only wish it may afford as much entertainment as it has me. This historic doubter dined with me yesterday, Williams, Lord March, Cadogan, and Fanshaw, qui m'a demande a diner, at ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... achievement in coherence, but neither was Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid sermon—a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be preached to as one not yet brought into that flock ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... guilty!" with an eye that flashed and a voice which rang, and a look in his pale, proud face that no murderer's face ever wore on this earth, and with those two words he had carried conviction to many a doubter. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... would remark, in the words of the Roman Governor, "Almost, praying white man, thou persuadest me to become a Christian," but he never quite became one—indeed, I do not think he ever meant to. It was to him that my father addressed his "Letters to a Native Doubter." This work, which, unfortunately, remains in manuscript, is full of wise saws and learned instances. It ought to be published together with a precis of the doubter's answers, which ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... yet arrived, so they were short a rolling pin, which had to be carved from a broken wagon-shaft with a jack-knife before they could begin; but they achieved the baking of 324 pies between 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. that day. It is fair to state for the sake of the doubter, however, that the pie fillers, both pumpkin and apple, were all prepared and piping hot on the stove ready to be poured into the pastry as it was put into the oven, which, of course, helped a ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... feeling himself shunned in a lonely ostracism, has not been strong enough to endure in rectitude and has fallen into dissipation. Every instance of the sort is rehearsed by the faithful, with many exultant expressions of mourning, in the hearing of the doubter. And finally, it is the prediction of the priests that no apostate can prosper; and though the Mormon people are charitable and do not intend to be unjust, they inevitably tend to fulfill the prophecy and devote the ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... exaltation that is eminently unfavourable to the permanently profitable treatment of such a subject. There are in it too many of those eloquent and familiar commonplaces of orthodox history, by which the doubter tries to warm himself into belief, and the believer dreams that he is corroborating faith by reason. The assembly for whom his discourse was prepared, could hardly have endured the apparition in the midst of them of what both rigorous justice and accurate history required to have taken into ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... cool for fanaticism, had yet in it enough of a certain tepid geniality to save him from becoming a scoffer. The character which he claims for himself, and somewhat ostentatiously parades, is that of a sceptic or general doubter—a character in which, when rightly understood, there is nothing to be ashamed of. To take nothing on trust, to believe nothing without proof, to show no greater respect for authority than may consist in attentive and candid examination of its statements, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... governments, and to be despoiled, contrary to every principle of justice, and in defiance of the most plain and fundamental law of property? It puts one in mind of the judgment of the renowned "Walter the Doubter," who decided between two citizens, that, as their account books appeared to be of equal weight, therefore their accounts were balanced, and that the constable should pay the costs. The United ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... study of W.R. Greg's "Creed of Christendom", of Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma", helped to widen the mental horizon, while making a return to the old faith more and more impossible. The church services were a weekly torture, but feeling as I did that I was only a doubter, I spoke to none of my doubts. It was possible, I felt, that all my difficulties might be cleared up, and I had no right to shake the faith of others while in uncertainty myself. Others had doubted and had afterwards believed; for the doubter ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too, altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases, go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... clergyman,—alas! I looked upon the church, I suppose, as little more than a career!—I was not a very faithful man. I had many doubts which, as clergymen must, I concealed. By nature I suppose I had rather an incredulous mind. Not that I was a skeptic, but I was sometimes a doubter. Rather than faith, I should have much preferred to have knowledge, exact knowledge. Often I even felt ironical when confronted with the simple faith we clergymen should surely encourage, sustain, and humbly glory in, whereas with skepticism, even when openly expressed, I always felt some ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... man who affects to doubt everything he hears, I never hesitate about writing him down an ass. A great doubter is a solemn and self-conceited prig. How amusing is it to see the blockhead shake his empty pate, compress his lips into a sneer, and turn up his absurd unmeaning eyes in dubious disbelief, when he hears aught which he thinks it would imply sagacity to discredit! Such persons imagine, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... nest never had been found by a person so familiar with all outdoors as my father. Then came a second discovery: it could curl its beak in a little coil when leaving a flower. A few days later I saw distinctly that it had four wings but I could discover no feet. I became a rank doubter, and when these convincing proofs were carried to my father, ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... defend her, And her peerless worth proclaim; Challenging each recreant doubter Who aspersed her ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... that sinful experiment with the handkerchief I discovered by accident that I was not the only doubter in Polotzk. One Friday night I lay wakeful in my little bed, staring from the dark into the lighted room adjoining mine. I saw the Sabbath candles sputter and go out, one by one,—it was late,—but the lamp hanging from the ceiling still burned high. Everybody had gone to bed. The lamp would go ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... not defending the town. It's merely——I'm a confirmed doubter of myself. (Probably I'm conceited about my lack of conceit!) Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages in all countries. Most places that have lost the smell of earth but not yet acquired the smell of patchouli—or of factory-smoke—are just as suspicious ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... every chance of success. Fiddlesticks! I snap my fingers at such folly. What do these gentlemen say to the case of FIGTREE, the great Q.C.? Everybody knows that FIGTREE is, without exception, the most indolent man in the world. Let any doubter walk down Middle Temple Lane and ask the first young barrister he meets what he thinks of FIGTREE. I am ready to wager my annual income that the reply will be, "What, Old FIGTREE! Why, he's the laziest man at the Bar. I thought everybody ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... Let such doubter ponder well the signification of truth, its relation to life, its identity with the good, and the paramount might of wisdom and a clear understanding, and he will be ready to exclaim with the passionate piety of St. Augustine: "Ubi inveni veritatem, ibi inveni ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... they will probably feel less disposed to censure my conduct. If there be any doubt of this critical situation of an European who travels openly and avows himself a Christian in The Sahara, all I can do is to beg of the doubter to make the experiment himself. The reader will also be pleased to recollect, that the Denham and Clapperton party, though they travelled the safest routes of Sahara, were protected by the Bashaw of Tripoli, and their safety ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... were so she would not come and, her father being indifferent upon the point (Lady Jane did not count in such matters), ceased her attendance. It was the old story of a strait-minded bigot forcing a large-minded doubter out of the fold that ought to have been wide enough for both of them. Moreover, this difference of opinion on matters of public and spiritual interest ended in a private and mundane animosity. Mr. Knight could never forgive a pupil of his own, whose ability ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... permit it to desert,' Mr. Clark stood forward on every occasion the uncompromising champion of spiritual independence, and of the rights of the Christian people. He took his place far in the van. He was no mere half-and-half non-intrusionist,—no complaisant eulogist of the Veto,—no timid doubter that the Church in behalf of her people might possibly stretch her powers too far, and thus separate her temporalities from her cures. Nothing could be more absurd, he asserted, than to imagine such a thing. On parade day, when she stood resting on her arms ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... hearing the mumble of the old man's voice, tiptoed to the door and peeped in. He goggled at the tableau and listened to the words. He was in the state of mind of that oft-quoted doubter who spat on the giraffe's hoof and remarked to the bystanders, "Hell! There ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the doctrine of immortality from Plato to Swedenborg, and even to Mr. John Fiske. How well he was acquainted with it Ewbert could not quite make out; but he had recurrently a misgiving, as if he were in the presence of a doubter whose doubt was hopeless through his knowledge. In this bleak air it seemed to him that he at last detected the one thing in which the old man felt an interest: his sole tie with the earth was the belief that when he left it he should cease ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... man—that's a man after my own heart—a man quite after my own heart!" The other said with rather doubtful and hesitating confirmation, "Ye-s." "You don't seem to think so highly of him as I do," said the first speaker. "Why," replied the doubter, "I can't say I do; you remember some time ago he failed, and certainly upon that occasion he behaved very ill to, not to say cheated, his creditors." "Ah!" said the first commendator again, "that is very likely—I should have expected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... an expression—"high-brow"—maybe complimentary in origin, but become in some sort a term of contempt. A doubter of our general divinity is labelled "high-brow" at once, and his doubts drop like water off the public's back. Any one who questions our triumphant progress is tabooed for a pedant. That will not alter the fact, I fear, that we are growing feverish, rushed, and complicated, and have multiplied ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... passed by, even the greatest doubter became convinced that the business of the store was improving. Great crowds came every day to look about, if not to buy, for their curiosity as well as interest was ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... notes stating his opposition to them. But he heartily approved the substance of the work, though his object in the publication of the Fragments was more to feel the public pulse than to instill theological doctrines into the minds of the people. Reimarus had been a doubter like many others of his countrymen. He committed his mental phases to paper, though he thought that it was not yet time to issue them for public notice. The Fragments published by Lessing contain the gist of his entire work, and contributed far more to the growth of skepticism ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... "Poor, weak doubter!" said Mr. Carroll, in a tender, yet reproving voice. "Does not He who calls us to this labor know our wants? And is not He able to supply them? Have you forgotten that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof? Whose are the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... coming slowly towards him. Could it be he whom Dode loved,—this Palmer? A doubter? an infidel? He had told her this to-day. A mere flesh-and-brain machine, made for the world, and no uses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... re-writing of the first volume was completed in September 1835; the whole book in January 1837. The mood in which it was written throws a light on the excellences as on the defects of the history. The Reminiscences again record the gloom and defiance of "Thomas the Doubter" walking through the London streets "with a feeling similar to Satan's stepping the burning marl," and scowling at the equipages about Hyde Park Corner, sternly thinking, "Yes, and perhaps none of you could do what I am at. I shall finish this book, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... doubter will be welcomed to glory while the canting hypocrite is hustled into the patrol wagon for the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... Carrig-a-fooka Inn—that is, one beloved by the sheehogues; and though you may be never so much interested, I may not tell you its exact whereabouts, since no one can ever find it unless he is himself under the glamour. Perhaps you might be a doubter, with no eyes for the 'dim kingdom'; perhaps you might gaze for ever, and never be able to see a red-capped fiddler, fiddling under a blossoming sloe bush. You might even see him, and then indulge yourself in a fit of common-sense ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... breathed from these letters. It was in the forties. Those were the days when a Hegelian wave went over Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... spiritual realms of those who went forth through the death change into light and liberty 'over there.' Mediums, as intermediaries, have enabled spirit people to comfort the sad and encourage the weak; to relieve the doubter and console the bereaved; to confirm the old-world traditions regarding bygone spirit intervention and revelation, and supplement our hopes and intuitions with proof palpable. Present day experiences of inspiration and spirit manifestation make credible and acceptable many ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... prominent at this period. And firstly we notice the rise of rationalism, that is of the impulse to criticise belief and to ask for that element in it which approves itself to the reflecting mind. Reason asserts its right to judge of tradition; the doubter suggests emendations in the legend; the piously inclined turn their attention to those parts only which are capable of lofty treatment. This tendency is fatal to polytheism. As reason knows not gods but only God, the gods can only hold their place on condition that they are what God must be, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... such preaching of the law can be dispensed with, by employing solely what is called in some quarters the preaching of the gospel, I do not agree with the opinion. The benefits of Christ's redemption are pearls which must not be cast before swine. The gospel is not for the stupid, or for the doubter,—still less for the scoffer. Christ's atonement is to be offered to conscious guilt, and in order to conscious guilt there must be the application of the decalogue. John Baptist must prepare the way for the merciful Redeemer, by legal and close preaching. And the merciful Redeemer Himself, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... auto-suggestion of those few who believe the advertisements of the hair-restorers—you will forgive the unpoetic simile for the sake of its exactitude—as against the verdict of the world that a genuine discovery of such a remedy would leave no single doubter in Europe or America, nor even in the London Clubs! Yet each time I read the cunning article (I have less hair than when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and met you in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... one must have had experience of a thing thoroughly to understand it, and the subject is such a delicate one, that I question whether there are any two human beings more incapable of understanding one another than a believer and a doubter, however complete may be their good faith and even their intelligence. They speak two unintelligible languages, unless the grace of God intervenes as an interpreter. I have felt how completely maladies ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... who leave me out; When me they fly I am the wings: I am the doubter and the doubt, And I ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... at last shall vindicate the right. Crime shall be meted with its proper pain, Motes shall be taken from the doubter's sight, And fortune's general justice rendered plain. Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth, Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet, Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. As sometimes from the meanest spot ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... he added in his clear, cool voice, "that I have no longer either the perpetual timidity of the self-doubter or even the occasional anxiety ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... creature into good humour with me:* And who knows, thought I, if I can hold it, and proceed, but I may be able to lay a foundation fit to build my grand scheme upon!—LOVE, thought I, is not naturally a doubter: FEAR is, I will try to banish the latter: nothing then but love will remain. CREDULITY is the God of Love's prime minister, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Never woman endeavored with truer single-heartedness to understand her spouse. In her life's aim was no failure. Let him expatiate on sound to the bounds of fancy's extravagance, she could confidently follow, and would have volunteered her testimony to a doubter, as if all were a question of tangible fact, to be definitely proved. So in every matter. For all the comfort she was to the man she loved, for her confidence in him who deserved it, for her patient endurance of whatsoever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the doubter, now fully reassured by the above shrewdly fashioned answer, "but Anna was always so infernally jealous of you, and made herself so wretched over the fear of losing your affection, that I could think of no other reason for her foolishness. Now, about this ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... full-rounded, a complete man, strong at every point. Each had a strength of his own, with a corresponding weakness. Then Jesus yoked them together so that each two made one good man. The hasty, impetuous, self-confident Peter needed the counterbalancing of the cautious, conservative Andrew. Thomas the doubter was matched by Matthew the strong believer. It was not an accidental grouping by which the Twelve fell into six parts. Jesus knew what was in man; and he yoked these men together in a way which brought out the best that was in each of them, and by thus ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... and forcibly. But to this young boy's piercing mind, the arguments against Christianity seemed stronger than those which were brought forward to refute them. Thus the lad became, not a positive unbeliever, but an honest doubter. He now sought earnestly for other works ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was probably living a more solitary and sedentary life than ever before, and could hear the voices of solitude; he was not the busy riding missionary of "The Bible in Spain," nor the feted author, but the unsocial morbid tinker, philologist, boxer, and religious doubter. It has been said that "he was a Celt of Celts. His genius was truly Celtic." {218a} It has been said that "he inherited nothing from Norfolk save his accent and his love of 'leg of mutton and turnips.'" {218b} Yet his father, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... such witnesses, whether believing or sceptical, would have found no place for their science, for the miracles of Christ were of such a kind that the most scientific doubter could have no more accounted for them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, next to our Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest evidence, is that of the feeding of the 5,000; for it is recorded by each one of the four Evangelists. Now, if this miracle had been ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... house should these Diabolic doubters go, but to that of Old Evil-questioning. So he made them welcome. Well, said he, be of what shire yon will, you have the very length of my foot, are one with my heart. So they thanked him. I, said one, am an election-doubter; I, said another, am a vocation-doubter; then said the third, I am a salvation-doubter; and the fourth said, I am a grace-doubter. I am persuaded you are down boys, and are one with my heart, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... each whatsoe'er he may in silence desire! Comfort impart to the mourner, and give to the doubter instruction, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the Northern poem of Sorli and Hamther, which is a later version of the same story. But even if the existence of a Gothic ballad of Swanhild were doubted,—and the balance of probabilities is against the doubter,—it follows indisputably from the evidence that in the time of Jordanes people were accustomed to select and dwell upon dramatic incidents in what was accepted as history; the appreciation of tragedy was there, the talent to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... which might be mistaken for Arcadian simplicity, did we not know that innocence was no characteristic of either court in that age. "J'en cognoissoys ung," he told her, "qui estoit nay a tant de sortes de vertu, qu'il ne failloit doubter qu'elle n'en fut fort honnoree et singulierement bien aymee, et dont j'espererois qu'au bout de neuf mois apres, elle se trouveroit mere d'ung beau filz," etc. La Mothe Fenelon, iii. 439, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... as corroboration for so outrageous a facture as the cognomen Daddleskink, but it served to convince the doubter. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... person,—not the labourer who digs the soil for the planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows. And the most despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you—and why thousands ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... man may begin to doubt the existence of anything divine. He may reject all mythology, and only recognise as reality what is forced upon him by his sense-perception. But the Mystic did not become a doubter of this kind. He saw that the doubter would be like a plant were it to say: "My crimson flowers are null and futile, because I am complete within my green leaves. What I may add to them is only adding illusive ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... fear principles which seem startling, but which are proved to be rooted in democratic ground, so long as we have faith in the democratic system itself. There is no road open for the doubter and questioner of popular rights but that which leads back to abandoned ground. We may proceed, then, with an attempt to explain the philosophy of the rule of Change. Shall it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon. What is more, it has gained him a lasting name; for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... The former, it may be feared, are generally the ground of unbelief; the latter the basis of doubt. Christian writers, in the wish to refer unbelief to the source of efficient causation in the human will, with a view of enforcing on the doubter the moral lesson of responsibility, have generally restricted themselves to the former of these two classes; and by doing so have omitted to explore the interesting field of inquiry presented in the natural history of the variety of forms assumed by scepticism, and their relation ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... find it very hard work to preach to hearers who do not believe, or only half believe, what he preaches. But pews without heads in them are a still more depressing spectacle. He may convince the doubter and reform the profligate. But he cannot produce any change on pine and mahogany by his discourses, and the more wood he sees as he looks along his floor and galleries, the less his chance of being useful. It is natural that in times like the present changes of faith and of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... then, a fatalist, and so vented this command as if he believed "What must be, must be!" unlike the doubter who said: "No! what must be, won't be!" The Douglasites could not meet this change of base, and Trumbull became senator by the Lincolnites' coalition. Lincoln publicly ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... prayer, and meet in argument, according to the grace and power given to him—not indeed the blaspheming infidel, for such a foe is unreasonable and unworthy of an answer, but—the often candid, anxious, and involuntary doubter; the mind, which, righteously vexed with the thousand corruptions of truth, and sorely disappointed at the conduct of its herd of false disciples, from a generous misconception is embracing error: the mind, never enough tenderly treated, but commonly taunted as a sceptic ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of the master, DOING the things he says to them, you are of those Christians, if you WILL be called by the name, to whom he will say, I never knew you: go forth into the outer darkness. Then at least will the church be rid of you, and the honest doubter will have room to breathe the divine air of the presence ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... offensive! I have seen that kind of vernal gladness. What an advent! When you find the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind your billet in Artois; when the G. S. O. 2 comes into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and shows it to every doubter, then you know the time has come for the testing of the gas cylinders, and you wonder whether this is the last time you will be noteworthy because you had the earliest news of the chiffchaff. The spring offensive! Guns are now converging by leagues ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... imperturbable in mind, athletic in body, unconquerable, and immortal. Such individuals meet in comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open road, to his conception of "these States." One of his typical visions of the breadth ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... bid me chant Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant! Had you bid me sing of Wouter, (He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!) But to rhyme of this one,—Mocker! ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... which drew him away from the one that alone was and could be fruitful is obvious enough. But by and by out of the very doubt came the sweetness[150] of a higher and truer insight. He became aware that there were "things in heaven and earth undreamt of in your philosophy," as another doubter said, who had just finished his studies, but could not find his way out of the scepticism ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Wise doubter, look at a small piece of iron. It looks solid. You suppose that its various parts touch. But ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... It is the same to outer appearance, so far as personal identity is concerned. The doubting, questioning disciples handle His person, they know His face, they recognize His voice. He eats with them and talks with them and moves in their midst as before. Even the doubter, stubborn in his demand for tangible, physical evidence, is convinced by the feel of his hands that this is indeed Jesus back again. Further, He moves about among them unrecognized till He chooses to be known. Yet this may have been His power over them ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... grace over the whole barrel of salt fish, in bulk, as the mercantile phrase would be. By the time that he was sixteen, Shaftesbury and Collins, efficiently aided by the pious writers who had endeavored to refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic. Apparently he gathered momentum in moving along this line ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that," replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last refuge of sorrow—the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the firmest faith—"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate art of jiu-jitsu. ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... "a sinner vile Am I, against my will: Each hour I humbly pray for faith, But am a doubter still. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... curious mark in a stone at Jerusalem. According to this, St. Thomas, after the ascension of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin Mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted the doubter ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fables, ever doubting whether God Sol, after inaugurating Winter by his supposed retreat from the earth, would return to revivify nature with his life-giving rays, gave to the genius of the twelfth month the title of the Doubter. In the Christian calendar this personification is known as Thomas, and a more specific dedication of the shortest day of the year having been made to him, the 21st day of December is ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... be troubled by any momentary fear that such might indeed be the solution of his riddle, and to feel or to fancy for the moment some kind of ease and relief in the sense of that very trouble. A born doubter would have doubted even of Horatio; hardly can all positive and almost palpable evidence of underhand instigation and inspired good intentions induce Hamlet for some time to doubt even ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the Princess dwelt a deep religious faith, such as becomes a noble, womanly heart. Nevertheless, her ardent mind sought to penetrate every mystery, so she was often accused of being a doubter—when the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... this was a secure and permanent progressive system, and on the strength of some three hundred years of change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, "Things always have gone well. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... doubt. Oh, ye all-wise spirits in the air, how can ye witness all this woe, and give no sign? Would, would that mine were a settled doubt, like that wild boy's, who without faith, seems full of it. The undoubting doubter believes the most. Oh! that I were he. Methinks that daring boy hath Alma in him, struggling to be free. But those pilgrims: that trusting girl.—What, if they saw me as I am? Peace, peace, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... struggles of an ardent, enthusiastic, inquisitive spirit to deliver itself from the harassing uncertainties, to penetrate the dread obscurity, which overhangs the lot of man. The first faint scruples of the Doubter are settled by the maxim: 'Believe nothing but thy own reason; there is nothing holier than truth.' But Reason, employed in such an inquiry, can do but half the work: she is like the Conjuror that has pronounced the spell ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of Herrick, Muse of Locker, Help me sing of Knickerbocker! Boughton, had you bid me chant Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant, Had you bid me sing of Wouter, He, the onion head, the doubter! But to rhyme of this one—Mocker! Who shall rhyme to Knickerbocker? Nay, but where my hand must fail, There the more shall yours avail; You shall take your brush and paint All that ring of figures quaint,— All those Rip Van Winkle jokers, All those solid-looking smokers, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... asks no forced or faint assent. It appeals to human reason, and it blames not the conscientious doubter or denier. When it requires you to examine, and constitutes you judge, it condemns no honest decision. The mind that approaches christianity must be free, and ought to be fearless. Hesitate not to reject that which evidence does not substantiate. ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... His speech was neat and nipping. As a workman he was exact and his tools were always in perfect order. In brief he was a Yankee, as concentrated a bit of New England as was ever transplanted to the border. Hopelessly "sot" in all his eastern ways, he remained the doubter, the critic, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... life, and he watched his young friend's condition with anxiety. Was it the prison life—or was it perhaps the books—that had transformed this young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into a hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was of doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been the old man's hope that it would have developed greater energy through being replanted in fresh, untouched soil, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... peaceable. It is simply leaving things to the will of the majority. Right ideas will win, no matter what the opposition to them. Better change the arena of conflict. A single champion of an idea would once challenge a doubter and prove his hypothesis by the blood of the disputant; you do the same thing on a great scale. The Southern people—very good people as you and I have cause to know—think the constitution gives them the right, or rather cannot take away the right, to withdraw ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson |
