"Philosophy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years. But it worried him. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... grandmothers a new basis of morality, and to render meaningless all the consoling epitaphs on the mossy New England gravestones. She read Emerson for his sweet spirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her simple Congregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy, from which she took only a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... see him again," said Spiridione, who carried plenty of philosophy about him. "And by now the scene will have ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... spectacle indeed to see every body inspired by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life—to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... one Ghurab, a hunter, or, according to other accounts, warden of the royal fishponds, who lived, in some unspecified century, in the neighbourhood of Karmanshah. They breathed a spirit of comfortable, even-tempered satire and philosophy, disclosing a mockery that did not trouble to be bitter, a joy in life that was not passionate to the verge of ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old woman's words had wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul's longing ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... receives. The subject bulks largely in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Cicero. And among modern writers it gets most importance in the writings of the more Pagan-spirited, such as Montaigne. In all the ancient systems of philosophy, friendship was treated as an integral part of the system. To the Stoic it was a blessed occasion for the display of nobility and the native virtues of the human mind. To the Epicurean it was the most refined ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of Philisides, and shadows forth his friendship with the French humanist Languet. More than this it would be rash to assert, and Greville did his friend an equivocal service when he sought to find a deep philosophy underlying the rather formal characters of the romance[148]. These characters, as we have seen, are for the most part essentially courtly; the pastoral guise is a mere veil shielding them from the crude uncompromising light of actuality, with its prejudice ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the astonishing advance in the author's technique. The World Set Free is on an altogether different plane from The War of the Worlds and those other gorgeous pot-boilers. It combines the alert philosophy and adroit criticism of the Tono Bungay phase with the luminous vision of Anticipations and the romantic interest of his eccentric books of adventure. The seer in Mr. Wells comes uppermost, and I almost think that when the history of the latter half of the twentieth century ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... had never seen anything like this girl across the counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could have given immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth, nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His imagination was as untouched by woman as the girl's was by man. But his imagination was touched now, and the woman was ...
— The Game • Jack London
... embryo plot of some young Hussar officers to cut the son of the magician, I rather smiled; but while I, with even greater reverence than all others, was making way for his Excellency, I observed Mrs. Premium looking at my spurs. 'Farewell Philosophy!' thought ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... that our philosophy was that the fireball could have been two meteors: one that buzzed the C-54 and another that streaked across the airfield at Goose AFB. Granted a meteor doesn't come within feet of an airplane or make a 90-degree turn, but these could have been optical illusions ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... beginning work and stacked in a glistening pile on the desk in front of him, was no proof of innate viciousness of disposition, but it prejudiced the Old Etonian against him. It was part of Psmith's philosophy that a man who wore detachable cuffs had passed beyond the limit of human toleration. In addition, Bristow wore a small black moustache and a ring and that, as Psmith informed Mike, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... it, they should have let it burn itself out." When a young man was promised a present of cocks that would fight till they died, he said, "I had rather have some that will fight and kill their foes." This was the style of their talk; so that some have well said that philosophy is more ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to the ends of life and the hope of immortality, affords insight into the very depths of his nature. It is a rare outburst at a moment of intense feeling, in which, more completely than in almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... moral and intellectual nature of the Age will be purified and expanded, when brought into contact with the attributes of his character, and the productions of his mind. Nor can the meditative statesman, whose party is his country, and whose political creed is based upon a true philosophy of human nature, forget,—that while the French revolution, as involving FACTS, belongs to History, as enclosing PRINCIPLES, it appertains to Humanity: and hence, the abiding application of Burke's profound views, not only to ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... fall, comes to all without their seeking it; but that individual salvation or rescue from the effects of personal sins is to be acquired by each for himself by faith and good works through the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ."—From the author's Story and Philosophy ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... he keep reading philosophy of some sort for all this year?" she wondered. "If it's all written in those books, he can understand them. If it's all wrong, why does he read them? He says himself that he would like to believe. Then why is it he doesn't believe? Surely ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... German philosophy always occurs at the beginning rather than the end of an argument, and the difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which is a master race except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot find out, (as is usually the case,) you fall back on the absurd occupation of writing ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... father might have declared that old age found him ever learning. Not indeed with the fiery earnestness of his young days of stress and storm; but with the steady advance of a practised worker who cannot be unoccupied. History and philosophy, especially biblical criticism, composed his chief ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... best biography ever written. But was not Boswell a pedant? Was he a philosopher? Macaulay himself has penned many biographies. Most of them are quite above the pedantry of small facts. Instead, they are crammed with deep philosophy, with abstractions, and with the balancing of antithetical qualities. They are bloodless frameworks, without life or humanity,—bundles of peculiarities skilfully grouped, and ticketed with such and such a name. No one sees a man within. As biographies they will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... exercised such a marked influence on the fortunes of that periodical, that he was usually regarded as its editor, although the editorial labour and responsibility really rested on Mr Blackwood himself. In 1820 he was elected by the Town-Council of Edinburgh to the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University, which had become vacant by the death of Dr Thomas Brown. In the twofold capacity of Professor of Ethics and principal contributor to a popular periodical, he occupied a position to which his genius and tastes admirably adapted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my mother-in-law blows him up, he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe; he steps out, and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics; and he smokes wery comfortably till she comes to agin. That's philosophy, Sir, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... presently added a bravura touch: the unquenchable vanity of the intellectual snob asserting itself over all prudence. That is to say, I laid down the rule that no idea should go into the book that was not already so obvious that it had been embodied in the proverbial philosophy, or folk-wisdom, of some civilized nation, including the Chinese. To this rule I remained faithful throughout. In its original form, as published in 1918, the book was actuary just such a pastiche of proverbs, many of them English, and hence familiar even to Congressmen, newspaper ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Northwest long enough to have learned the great lesson of this country," explained Colonel Howell. "This is a region where you can't have a program and where, if you can't do a thing to-day, you can do it some other time. And, after all, it isn't a bad philosophy, just so long as you keep at it and do it sometime. They seem to do things slowly sometimes up in this wilderness land, but they always seem to do them in the end. I guess it's the Indian way. I notice they always drive ahead until they get there, although ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... view is no doubt contrary to the received opinion. I am however interested to see it lately maintained by Driesch (Science and Philosophy of the Organism, London, 1907, p. 233), and from the recent observations of Godlewski it has received ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dwelt at Cures, a city of the Sabines, and was as eminently learned in all laws human and divine, as any man could be in that age. They falsely represent that Pythagoras of Samos was his instructor in philosophy, because there appears no other person to refer to. Now it is certain that this philosopher, in the reign of Servius Tullius, more than a hundred years after this, held assemblies of young men, who eagerly imbibed his doctrine, in the most ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... speculative opinions have taken the place of sound doctrine in the Protestant pulpit of this present day. The congregations in general have become so proud and vain in their imaginations, and so spoiled through philosophy, that they heap to themselves teachers having the wildest speculative opinions. Their itching ears have an insatiable desire for fine essays, amusing stories, and historic tales. The proud, arrogant pulpit orator of this present day makes ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... many—could not subdue. Her husband set up in the wine trade in Edinburgh. For many years they lived in the Old Town, then a respectable neighbourhood, among a cultivated and well-bred society, in which they moved as equals, entertaining, with others, such a man as Dr. Thomas Brown, the professor of philosophy, a great light in his own day, and still conspicuous in the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... to Italy, for the gifts, poured out from her treasures of art, science, medical skill, and political knowledge, of literature and philosophy, to all the uses and adornments of human life, introduces a reference to the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, which are shown to have been based on these great principles:—That all authority over the people emanates from the people,—should return to them at stated intervals,—and that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Dean of Carlisle, and Lucasian Professor of the Mathematics at Cambridge, who had the reputation of one of the first mathematicians of that University, and who published some ingenious papers on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy, in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' was originally a weaver—as was also his brother JOSEPH, the well known, author of a 'History of the Church.' Of the same profession was also, in his younger days, the late Dr. JOSEPH WHITE, Professor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... so strongly associated with a particular meaning that although the vocal value is exactly the same, yet the one spelling goes to one man and the other to a different man. "Spenser" would never suggest to a learned man the author of the "Philosophy of Evolution," nor would "Spencer" ever suggest the author of the "Fairie Queen." "Mr. Mil" would never mean "John Stuart Mill," although the words "Mil" and "Mill" are pronounced exactly alike. We sometimes cannot recall a Proper Name, yet we feel sure that it ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... intelligible for these three last centuries. The lines entitled Expostulation and Reply, and those which follow, arose out of conversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached to modern books of moral philosophy. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... nearing home, Molly's hardly-bought philosophy of life revealed itself in the brief comment: "It's very easy to make a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... him up damp and quivering in those gray hours of the dawn, when dark shadows fall upon the spirit of man. He had a steady nerve for that which affected himself, a nerve which would keep him quiet and motionless in a dentist's chair, but what philosophy or hardihood can steel one against the pain which those whom we love have to endure. He fretted and chafed, and always with the absurd delusion that his fretting and chafing were successfully concealed. A hundred failures never convince a man how impossible it ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... depends," debated Ridgwell, "what particular lot you want. Biography, Philosophy, Romance ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... to condemn smoking and drinking; you have known what life is, but what about me? I have served in the Department of Justice for twenty-eight years, but I have never lived, I have never had any experiences. You are satiated with life, and that is why you have an inclination for philosophy, but I want to live, and that is why I drink my wine for dinner and smoke ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... OF THE LIMBERLOST. The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness toward all things; her ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... heads together talking helves and axes, axes with single blades and axes with double blades, and hand axes and great choppers' axes, and the science of felling trees, with the true philosophy of the last chip, and arguments as to the best procedure when a log begins to "pinch"—until a listener would have thought that the art of the chopper included the whole philosophy of existence—as indeed it does, if ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... beyond Noddy's moral philosophy, and he did not worry himself to argue the point. He pulled up to the landing place at the Glen, where he had so often conveyed Bertha, and near the spot where he had met with the accident which had placed him under her kindly care. ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a monomaniac; these overmastering ideas about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off her balance; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and made her what she could not otherwise have become. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms IfIEuroI muII1/4I-I"a?1/2II?a1/2 I cubedIOEI cubedI?I expressing "the laws of generation contained in matter"—precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual connection. The eleventh verse ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman, (who, by the way, should have had his sister,) balks his humor, and the pit's reasonable expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new philosophy against duelling. The audience were here fairly caught,—their courage was up, and on the alert,—a few blows, ding dong, as R——s the dramatist afterwards expressed it to me, might have done the business,—when their most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... an Oak was that from whence they received their denomination; as at this very day the Welch call this tree Drew, and this order of men Derwyddon. But there are no small antiquaries who derive this oaken religion and philosophy from the Oaks of Mamre, where the Patriarch Abraham had as well a dwelling as an altar. That Oaken-Plain and the eminent OAK under which Abraham lodged was extant in the days of Constantine, as Isidore, Jerom, and Sozomen have assured us. Yea, there are shrewd probabilities that ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... were poets or fabulists, and could invest inanimate objects with all the qualities and feelings of animate ones; if, with all the magic of old AEsop, we could make pots and kettles talk, and endue barn-door fowls with the spirit of philosophy, we should be tempted to say that the great gates of Beaufort House, together with the stone Cupids on the tops of the piers, ay, and the vases of carved flowers which stood between those Cupids, turned up the nose as the antiquated, ungilt, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... warning from Sta. Marta about the War Minister. Montero and his brother made the subject of an earnest talk between the Dictator-President and the Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a doctor of philosophy from the Cordova University, seemed to have an exaggerated respect for military ability, whose mysteriousness—since it appeared to be altogether independent of intellect—imposed upon his imagination. The victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His services ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... sentence to say that he could not tell me what I wanted to know," she described the interview afterward. "And then he talked to me for two hours about himself. He told me of his start in life as a three-dollar-a-week clerk, how rich he was, his philosophy of life; how you should recognize defeat when it was coming, accept it before it was complete and overwhelming and start out afresh, how liberal and advanced were his social views, how with all his wealth he was ready ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... give him your oar. He shall mind the boat till Monday. A final and a wholesome exercise in what he calls his philosophy, to row all day from a place he has never understood to a ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... Nihilist Society, properly speaking, is said to have been founded by Russian students about the year 1859. German works on philosophy and natural science were then much in demand, as forbidden fruit among the aspiring youths of Russia. The books not being allowed to pass the frontier, stray copies were smuggled in, and lithographed translations passed from hand to hand. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... History of England," in four volumes. Amongst his other works are "A Romance of the Peerage," "Spencer and his Poetry," "A History of Commerce," "The English of Shakespeare," and "Bacon, his Writings and Philosophy." He had a flowing and cultured style, and he embellished his work with many references to the classics. He was one of the best read men of his time. His extensive reading and the simplicity of his style made him a ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... classes been undistinguished in the more peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. Take, for instance, the great names of Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, and of Worcester, Boyle, Cavendish, Talbot, and Rosse, in science. The last named may be regarded as the great mechanic of the peerage; a man who, if he had not been born a peer, would probably ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... had presented a memorial praying that a fair proportion of the professors and office-bearers in the new colleges should be members of the Roman Catholic church; that Roman Catholic professors should fill the chairs of history, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, geology, and anatomy; that there should be a Roman Catholic chaplain in each of the colleges, to superintend the moral and religious instruction of the Roman Catholic pupils, and that each of these chaplains ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... like many other excellent habits, so far from being ameliorated, it has been cultivated and confirmed by refinement and civilization, and increases in exact proportion as we approach towards that state of perfection which is the ne plus ultra of modern philosophy. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... after all, why not? Drummer-boys, and powder-monkeys, and other imps of his age that dealt destruction, did not depopulate gratis; Mankind acknowledged their services in cash: but old Jenner, taught by Philosophy through its organ the newspapers that "knowledge is riches," was above diluting with a few shillings a week the wealth a boy acquired behind his counter; so his apprentices got no salary. Then why not shut up the old rogue's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the Latin word for an ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... then it was still, he insists, an agreeable life "on the whole," since "the recurring seasons" healed the wounds and the grief, and left the survivors to enjoy existence "in the usual way." This, it must be owned, is a very comfortable and cheery philosophy—for those who preach it. We do not see that they need ever complain of "bad times," since they can always be sure that the recurring seasons will bring alleviation to the survivors. It may also be admitted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Japanese Unitarian Association have been clearly defined in its constitution: "We desire to act in accordance with God's will, which we perceive by our inborn reason. We strive to follow the guidance of noble religion, exact science and philosophy, and to discover their truth. We believe it to be a natural law of the human mind to investigate freely all phenomena of the universe. We aim to maintain the peace of the world, and to promote the happiness of mankind. We endeavor to assert our rights, and to fulfil our duties ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... steps of rigid demonstration in this strange logic, (and most admirably indeed is the form of the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it,) we learn that God is the only causa libera; that no other thing or being has any power of self-determination: all move by fixed laws of causation, motive upon motive, act upon act; there is no free will, and no contingency; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... "It's very true philosophy, after all," observed Mr. Campbell; "happy is the man who is content to be poor. If a man prefers to live entirely upon flesh, as the hunters do, there is no reason why he should work hard and till the ground ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... philosophy, as you call it, Master Leo, but I cannot say as how I am much wiser than I was; only you will see we will get our canoe to sit fairly on the water—neither heeling over to ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... out by a long day, before going to sleep, it was saying its prayers. The gate of dreams had reopened; in the train of religion came little puffs of theosophy, mysticism, esoteric faiths, occultism to visit the chambers of the Western mind. Even philosophy was wavering. Their gods of thought, Bergson and William James, were tottering. Even science was attainted, even science was showing the signs of the fatigue of reason. We have a moment's respite. Let us breathe. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Bell's manuscript name for this genus since his paper was read at the Zoological club of the Linnean Society, before the publication of my genera of Reptiles in the Annals of Philosophy, where I erroneously considered it as synonymous with Dr. Leach's genus Macrosoma instead of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... for metaphysics. He became a thinker rather than a man of action, and was one of the first and staunchest friends of the philosopher-theologian Rosmini, whose attempts to reconcile religion and philosophy led him into a bitter struggle with Rome. For Camille another sort of life was planned. It was decided that he must "do something," and at the age of ten he was sent to the Military Academy at Turin. He did not like it, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... bear us. I understood and sympathized with the men who lay asleep all day in the sunshine on the Riva and who sang all night on the bridge below our windows. What is more, I envied them and wished they would take me into partnership. Were they not putting into practice the philosophy our ancient friend Davies had preached to me in Rome? But only the Venetian can master the secret of doing nothing with nothing to do it on, and if J. and I were to hope for figs with our bread, or even for ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... see why. Certainly he hasn't learned the first word of the philosophy of life who still confounds what he desires and what ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made positive contributions to the preparation ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... am in a most melancholy frame of mind. He who has mastered all the vices of the ancients and wrested from nature the secret of the normal curvature of cats' claws can surely spare from his wisdom a few rays of philosophy to cheer an old man's gloom. Pray tell me what I shall do to assuage ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... led the conversation with highbred courtesy and tact. Fra Ambrogio, having discoursed upon the spiritual doctrines of S. Paul's Epistles, was at liberty to turn an attentive ear to purely aesthetical speculations. The grave and elderly Lattanzio Tolomei added the weight of philosophy and literary culture to the dialogue. Michelangelo, expanding in the genial atmosphere, spoke frankly on the arts which he had mastered, not dictating ex cathedra rules, but maintaining a note of modesty and common-sense and deference to the opinion ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... midnight doors and snatched away the young men, her influence had grown so fast that her presence brought comfort, and she helped to assuage the grief of the wailing women. She even urged upon them that philosophy of their own, which said "Malaish" to all things— the "It is no matter," of the fated Hamlet. In time she began to be grateful that an apathetic resignation, akin to the quiet of despair, was the possession of their race. She was far from aware that something in their life, of their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the Burnham ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... possess wealth and influence. There are subdivisions into sects among them, and it would be quite impossible to follow them through the mazes of belief to which they adhere. There is a great deal of philosophy among ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... their accoutrements, and all the little articles which they had picked up among us, with some few presents I had given them. The loss which they seemed to regret most were their spears and shields, and some tobacco which they had received from me. However, they bore it all with the philosophy of an Indian, and laughingly continued their toilette. They appeared, however, to be a little mortified at the thought of returning to the village in such a sorry plight. "Our people will laugh at us," said one of them, "returning ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... have been performed, is carried in a magnificent, antique procession to the shore and back again. Under the gateway on either side are the Ni-o, or two kings, gigantic figures in flowing robes, one red and with an open mouth, representing the Yo, or male principle of Chinese philosophy, the other green and with the mouth firmly closed, representing the In, or female principle. They are hideous creatures, with protruding eyes, and faces and figures distorted and corrupted into a high degree of exaggerated and convulsive action. These figures ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... German, having married my mother's sister, an Englishwoman. Being very much attached to his fatherless nephew, he invited me to study under him in his home in the fatherland. This home was in a large town, and my uncle a professor of philosophy, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... not understand his quiet resignation. What is it to be thought of that one who was the butt of the University—one on whom nature had played her fantastic tricks, should be the person who held the key to his lovely sister's heart? No! the father might resign himself to his quiet philosophy, but he, at least, would have none of it. It should never be said within the college walls that he looked tamely on while a farce of this kind was being played out, especially as some of his most intimate fellow-students, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... been"—and she laughed low—"I might have been had I seen what he has. I may be when I get old like him. There should be no religion for youth, only poetry and philosophy; and no poetry except such as is the inspiration of wine and mirth and love, and no philosophy that does not nod excuse for follies which cannot outlive a season. My father's God is too awful for me. I failed to find him in the Grove of Daphne. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... still not much more than a wilderness," said Peter. "It will be quite a while before the structure of our cosmic philosophy will stand on a solid foundation. In short, Frederick, much remains to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Tuke, who complained that Tommy talked music and pseudo-philosophy by the hour when he was wound up. She saw Effie's long, outstretched arm ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... mother is almost as invariably set to the prosperous daughter as to the good-for-nothing son; there is a subtle philosophy in it, but quite aside from ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... name of the best. This Lent I tried Coleridge again. But surely one's mind must be curiously at random to go to such woolgathering. I found him what I fear Lamb and his friends knew him to be—a tireless and heavy preacher through the murk of whose nebulous scholarship and philosophy the revealing gleams of wisdom are so rare that you are almost too weary to open the eyes to them when they flash. Selden is better, but abstract, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... visit him in London at twilight in a dark brougham. Mrs. Neuchatel was greatly taken by his appearance, by the calmness of his mien, his unstudied politeness, and his measured voice. He conversed with her entirely at dinner on German philosophy, of which he seemed a complete master, explained to her the different schools, and probably the successful ones, and imparted to her that precise knowledge which she required on the subject, and which she had otherwise been unable to obtain. It seemed, too, that he personally knew all the famous ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... ecclesiastical council. Laws against blasphemy, which were virtually laws against heresy, were in force in these three states. In Massachusetts, Catholic priests were liable to imprisonment for life. Any one who should dare to speculate too freely about the nature of Christ, or the philosophy of the plan of salvation, or to express a doubt as to the plenary inspiration of every word between the two covers of the Bible, was subject to fine and imprisonment. The tithing-man still arrested Sabbath-breakers ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... frequently went from Zaandam to Amsterdam, to attend the anatomical lectures of the celebrated Ruisch. His thirst for knowledge appeared to be universal and insatiable. He even performed, himself, several surgical operations. He also studied natural philosophy under Witsen. Most minds would have been bewildered by such a multiplicity of employments, but his mental organization was of that peculiar class which grasps and retains all within its reach. He worked at the forge, in the rope-walks, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... we shouldn't have seen you much at my residence! As you live in New York, you come, but here you wouldn't; that is always the way." With this light philosophy Verena beguiled the transit to the library, into which she introduced her companion with the air of a person familiar with the sanctified spot. This edifice, a diminished copy of the chapel of King's College, at the greater ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... nature, retain power over, and give direction to, his first efforts at creation. The first art of the Renaissance, awakened by the discovery of the classic remnants, retained a great deal of the faith and superstition, the philosophy, theology, and childlike naivete of the middle ages. Its painting and sculpture, but chiefly the first of these, gave themselves chiefly to the representation of the soul upon the face, and of the untutored and unconscious movements of the body under the influence of religious ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... information was needful. And as no one had tried to explain to him the mysteries which he carried about with him inside that fair skin of his, so no one had tried to explain to him the mysteries by which he was hemmed in, either mystically through religion, or rationally through philosophy. Never in chapel or at Sunday school had a difficulty been genuinely faced. And as for philosophy, he had not the slightest conception of what it meant. He imagined that a philosopher was one who made the best of a bad job, and he had never heard the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... knowledge of the globe, and of man, its principal inhabitant, so much the object of such a voyage, that he might consider it as undertaken for his gratification; and he who professed a particular branch, whether of natural philosophy or natural history, would expect so many new observations and discoveries in his favourite pursuit, that the voyagers could not fail to have his best wishes for their success. A professor of the fine arts might expect ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... inflict upon believing souls, many must have had to suffer then. The sceptics were infused by the intolerance of the others. But the worst (even as it is to-day) was to watch the torrent of foolishness which, under cover of religion, philosophy, or miracle-working, pretended to the conquest of mind and will. Amid this mass of wildest doctrines and heresies, in this orgy of vapid intellectualism, they had indeed solid heads who were able to resist the general intoxication. And ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... was his one haunt apart from the clubs, the one civilized and civilizing home he knew with intimacy, and one night there over a cigarette and a whisky-and-soda he turned his jejune philosophy of life upon ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... His philosophy is apparently not uncommon and one may expect to find anything on the land from rusty scythe blades to broken down farm wagons and automobiles. After these have been removed the place will look decidedly improved even though a mossy growth under the maples denotes sour soil, and ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... I store it in the treasure-house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... his can be protected by no madness of the passions or vindictiveness of misanthropy from the healing influence of time; and if the leisure of his tedious incarcerations gave us four or five books in the worst of services, they gave us also those extensive studies of history and its philosophy to which we owe, among much else that is great in literature or in event, the three works on ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... remember, my dear friend, that after having run through the school-philosophy, I became sensible of my unfitness for metaphysical speculations, and therefore totally abstained from engaging in them. Since then I have acquiesced in some things, and abandoned all hope of comprehending others; trusting, as ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... Maria, give him some wine, and keep him quiet," cried Sir James. "Don't you hear that Dr Grayson and I are discussing a point in philosophy!" ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... filantropo. Philanthropy filantropeco. Philatelic filatela. Philatelist filatelisto. Philately filatelo. Philologist filologiisto. Philology filologio. Philosopher filozofo. Philosophise filozofii. Philosophy filozofio. Phlegm flegmo, muko. Phlegmatic flegma. Phoenix fenikso. Phonetic fonetika. Phonograph fonografo. Phosphorus fosforo. Photograph fotografajxo. Photographer fotografisto. Photography fotografarto. Phrase frazero. Phraseology frazeologio. Phthisis ftizo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... or nature of the mental faculties employed. If instinct means anything, it means the capacity to perform some complex act without teaching or experience. It implies innate ideas of a very definite kind, and, if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill's sensationalism and all the modern philosophy of experience. That the existence of true instinct may be established in other cases is not impossible, but in the particular instance of birds' nests, which is usually considered one of its strongholds, I cannot find a particle of evidence to show the existence ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... interruption of that course. The stream of the miraculous is here confluent with the stream of the natural. By such legends the credulous man finds his superstition but little nursed; the incredulous finds his philosophy but little revolted. Both alike will be willing to admit, for instance, that the apparent act of reverential thanksgiving, in certain birds, when drinking, is caused and supported by a physiological arrangement; and yet, perhaps, both alike would bend so far to the legendary faith ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... breathe the vital air? Let mad philosophy their names declare. Yet some there are, less daring in their aim, With humbler cunning butcher sense for fame; Who doubting still, with many a fearful pause, Th' existence grant of one almighty cause; But halting there, in bolder tone deny The life hereafter, when the man ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... and brother to St. Gregory Nazianzen. When the latter repaired to Caesarea, in Palestine, where the sacred studies flourished, Caesarius went to Alexandria, and with incredible success ran through the circle of the sciences, among which oratory, philosophy, and especially medicine, fixed his attention. In this last he became the first man of his age. He perfected himself in this profession at Constantinople, but excused himself from settling there, as the city ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... in this. Let me call your attention to a fact of immense significance in this matter. All this time the study of science and philosophy, that dared to think beyond the limits of the Church's doctrine, were crushed out. There was no free philosophy, there was no free study of science, there was no free anything for a thousand years. The secular armed forces of Europe, with penalties of imprisonment, of the rack, of the fagot, of ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... a wide circle that fetched up again against that doubt in himself which was hurting her, even while it was making her happy. He had taken the example of Big Louie and applied it to his own life, and suddenly the girl realized how infinitely greater was his philosophy thereof than was hers. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... In the capacity of a Friar Minor, he was not ashamed of seeking the advice of the least of his brethren, he who had been taught such elevated things from the Sovereign Master. It was likewise one of his maxims throughout his whole life, and of the principles of the sacred philosophy, of which he made profession, to address himself to the simple as well as to the learned, to the imperfect as well as to the perfect, to the young as to the old, with the ardent desire to find from intercourse with them in what way and by what means he could ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... what our greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters' gallery were still unknown. Walpole—when he was not affecting philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale—could throw electric flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man. He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... by force of contrast. The sleeping blankets were damp, the clothes were damp, the ground was damp, the air was damp; but, after all, discomfort is a little thing and a temporary, and can be borne. In the retrospect it is nothing at all. Such is the indian's philosophy, and that is why in a rain he generally travels instead of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high fantastical" in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their wit; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition of their hearts; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed for them in the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... instead of in masses. They should thoroughly understand that this can only be accomplished through the adoption of precise and exact methods, and having each smallest detail, both as to methods and appliances, carefully selected so as to be the best of its kind. They should understand the general philosophy of the system and should see that, as a whole, it must be in harmony with its few leading ideas, and that principles and details which are admirable in one type of management have no place whatever in another. They should be shown that it pays to employ ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... to which abstraction is employed in the activities of a group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the complexity of consciousness in the group. When science, philosophy, and logic, and systems of reckoning time, space, and number are taught in the schools; when the attention is not so much engaged in perceptual as in deliberate acts; and when thought is a profession, then abstract modes ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas |
