"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as a curious coincidence, that the same year which saw the birth of him who established rational government witnessed the death of him who perfected literature. In 1873, Martin Farquhar Tupper—next to Smith the most notable name in history—died of starvation in the streets of London. Like that of Smith, his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... human creatures aping their betters in that way. Flying, indeed! Don't you let me catch you at it again, or you will be sorry for it, I can tell you. Now move on, and walk on your feet in a sensible way, like rational human beings. Go along! What ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... her only rational theory of the case! But his supposed insanity did not vindicate him to her pure and just mind. For he was not an insane man so much as an insane devil! He had only been mad in his recklessness, not in ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... time it was thought more rational to suppose that the sun actually pursued his course below the solid earth during the course of the night. The early astronomers had, moreover, learned to recognise the fixed stars. It was noticed that, like the sun, many of these stars rose and set in consequence of the diurnal movement, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the whip of slavery, and mechanic subordination has eradicated those noble and rational incitements to concord and honour. Instead of which, mistrust and slavish fear having arisen, the enthusiastic spirit of the Brandenburg warrior declines, and into this error have most of the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... "catch at words, and very naturally, as by so doing they hope to prevent the possibility of rational conversation. Catching at words confined to pothouse farmers, and village witty bodies! No, not to Jasper Petulengro. Listen for an hour or two to the discourse of a set they call newspaper editors, and if you don't go out and eat grass, as a dog does when he is sick, I am no female woman. The ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... than to excite transient emotions. Now there is Rev. Mr. Lamson who was educated in R. College. I have heard him preach to, as I thought, an honest, well meaning, but an ignorant congregation, and instead of lifting them to more rational forms of worship, he tried to imitate them and made a complete failure. He even tried to moan as they do in worship but it ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... prospectus is before me in his handwriting, but it bears upon itself sufficiently the character of his hand and mind. The paper would be kept free, it said, from personal influence or party bias; and would be devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong might be redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of Louis the Eleventh, as much distressed as before, looking at each other slyly, understanding each other better with their tails than they ever understood with their mouths, for there is never any equivoque in the transactions of the parts of nature, and everything therein is rational and of easy comprehension, seeing that it is a science which we learn at ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Ben Brace to his protege was simple, as it was also rational. The sword-fish had been charging into a shoal of albacores. Partly blinded by the velocity of its impetuous rush, and partly by its instinct of extreme voracity,—perhaps amounting to a passion, it had seen nothing of the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... clear-headed; she was not clever; nor was she even always rational. But she was essentially honest. She knew that she would fly at anybody who should in her presence say such bitter things of any of her children as Lord Fawn had said of Mr. Greystock in Lucy's hearing;—and she knew also that Lucy was entitled to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... in August, 1813. With it ended the era of birthday songs and New-Year's verses. The King was mad; his nativity was therefore hardly a rational topic of rejoicing. The Prince Regent had no taste for the solemn inanity of stipulated ode, the performance of which only served to render insufferably tedious the services of the two occasions in the year when imperative custom demanded his attendance at the Chapel. Consultation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... things which exist because we require them, which we know because we employ them, these are the type of all great works of art. And from the selfsame craving which insists that these should be shapely as well as handy, pleasant to the eye as well as rational; through the selfsame processes of seeing and remembering and altering their shapes—according to the same aesthetic laws of line and curve, of surface and projection, of spring and restraint, of clearness and ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... that I have enough to say in favour of Petrarch to satisfy his rational admirers; but I quote this sonnet as an example of the worst style of Petrarch's poetry. I make the English reader welcome to rate my power of translating it at the very lowest estimation. He cannot go much further down than myself in the scale ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... The first rational idea which came to her was that there was no difficulty now about getting the curtains; and the second was that their chief merit was a merit no more. What is the good of a thing being cheap when one has ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... also another object, sufficiently important to determine our Government in looking to the increase of our connexion with Eastern Africa. It is certainly a minor one, but one which no rational Government can undervalue. The policy of the present French King is directed eminently to the extension of commercial influence in all countries. To this policy, none can make objection. It is the duty of a monarch to develop all the resources of his country; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... in the multitude of facts which it contains, but rather in the lucid, natural way in which a few really important facts are presented and grouped, and in the stimulus which it imparts to a rational study of our country's history.—The Review ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... substance of original justice. The other foundation of law, which is utility, must be understood, not of partial or limited, but of general and public utility, connected in the same manner with, and derived directly from, our rational nature: for any other utility may be the utility of a robber, but cannot be that of a citizen,—the interest of the domestic enemy, and not that of a member of the commonwealth. This present equality can never be the foundation of statutes which create an artificial ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... when they had neither paper nor ink? How did Friday come to know so intimately the habits of bears, the bear not being a denizen of the West Indian islands? On the ground of these and such-like trifles, one critic declared that the book seems calculated for the mob, and will not bear the eye of a rational reader, and that "all but the very canaille are satisfied of the worthlessness of the performance." Defoe, we may suppose, was not much moved by these strictures, as edition after edition of the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... derived from evidence of the divine favor; and confidence, from an appropriation of God's promises to ourselves. And in many other ways, also, the Holy Spirit produces spiritual feelings through the instrumentality of the truth. But all religious feeling, produced by impulse, without any rational view of the truth, is to be suspected. It may be the work of Satan, who is very busy in counterfeiting religious experiences for those he wishes to deceive. Every religious affection has its counterfeit. Thus, sorrow may be produced ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... man must be a very obdurate Sadducee that will not believe it.' The year after, Mr. Baxter, perhaps encouraged by Mr. Mather's book, published his own Certainty of the World of Spirits, with another testimony, 'That Mr. Mather's book would Silence any incredulity that pretended to be rational.' And Mr. Mather dispersed Mr. Baxter's book in New England, with the character of it, as ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... government of Prince Maurice, in Brazil, he had heard of an old parrot that was much celebrated for answering like a rational creature, many of the common questions that were put to it. It was at a great distance; but so much had been said about it, that his curiosity was roused, and he directed it to be sent for. When it was introduced into the room where the prince ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... "Guide" was translated into Hebrew twice during his life-time, and was studied by Mohammedans and by Christians such as Thomas Aquinas. With general readers, the third part was the most popular. In this part Maimonides offered rational explanations of the ceremonial and legislative ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... writer said, was not a place at which a prosperous miner could expect to locate himself for many years; but the prospects were good enough to justify some present attention to personal comforts. All this was rational, pleasant, and straightforward. And in the letter there was no tone or touch of the old quarrel. It was full and cordial,—such as any son might write to any father. It need hardly be said that there was no mention made in it of Mrs. Smith. It ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... it didn't really exist in the space-time framework he was used to. Instead, it was partially a four-dimensional pseudo-manifold superimposed on normal space. If not perfectly simple, at least the explanation made matters rational rather than supernatural. But, at the time, everything seemed to take place in a chaotic dream world where infinite distance and the space next to him seemed one and the same. He knew then why Diana ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... form, in the production of evil" (President Hyde). Men are morally lazy; they have to be pushed into what is good for them, and the "pushee" is almost sure to resent the pushing. The idea that men ardently desire what is rational and noble is pernicious fiction. They want to be let alone. This ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... illness, lasting from February 20 to April 22, 1879, the temperature many times registered between 108 degrees and 111 degrees F. About a year later she was again troubled with the stump, and this time the temperature reached as high as 114 degrees. Although under the circumstances, as any rational physician would, Mackenzie suspected fraud, he could not detect any method of deception. Finally the woman confessed that she had produced the temperature artificially by means ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the difficult defile, and extend themselves in battle array on the near side of the bridge, while the English, or rather Anglo-Norman cavalry, remained stationary, without so much as laying their lances in rest. There remained, as he thought, but one hope—one only rational explanation of this unaccountable inactivity—this voluntary surrender of every advantage of ground, when that of numbers was so tremendously on the side of the enemy. Father Aldrovand concluded, that the succours of the Constable of Chester, and other Lord Marchers, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... little knock and the query, "Do I disturb you, Jack dear?"—a query which he answered with quite superfluous assurance to the contrary. Later, even after their wise conclusion that they must be rational, she had been accustomed to put the question, not at all as a purely perfunctory marital civility, but, as she shyly admitted to herself, because it was so sweet to hear Jack's negation and see the love-light in the eyes that soon brought her, fascinated and fluttering, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... have robbed us of what is, as it were, one of the natural rights of reasoning, man. Lying prodigies and juggleries, forged and pretended miracles, even—oh, shame!—imitations of His most sacred wounds, have, up to our own time, made all rational men more and more afraid of aught which seems to savour of the miraculous; till most of us, I think, would have to ask forgiveness—as I myself should have to ask,—if, tantalized and insulted again and again by counterfeit miracles, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... about the necessities of strong government. 'Yes,' said the Savoyard exile, 'but be quite sure that, to make the monarchy strong, you must rest it on the laws, avoiding everything arbitrary, too frequent commissions, and all ministerial jobberies.' We may well believe how unsavoury this rational and just talk was to people who meant by strong government a system that should restore to them their old prerogatives of anti-social oppression and selfish corruption. The order that De Maistre vindicated was a very different thing from the deadly and poisonous order which was the object of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... appeared contemptible and insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of mind inspired him with respect ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... from the north or from the west; but as they were utterly unacquainted with the art of writing, they have no records or monuments from which to elucidate this inquiry, and their traditionary accounts are too crude and imperfect to afford any degree of rational information on the subject. The Chilese call their first progenitors Pegni Epatum, signifying the brothers named Epatum. They call them likewise glyce, or primitive men; and in their assemblies invoke their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Estates, Manors and Tenants, it wou'd in Time with Patience and Management, produce vast Effects, and a strange Revolution in our Circumstances, Customs and Manners. These are Thoughts worthy of Men, of Christians, of Free-born Britons, and rational Creatures! worthy to be planted and nursed in every honest Breast, and to be spread as universally, as the Air we breathe, and the Bounds of Nature and the World. He that has them, and feeds and cultivates them in his Soul, and brings ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... to melt the vilest obduracy. The excitement which had greeted him on his arrival at Brookfield was to be thanked for its having made him partially forget his humiliation. He had, of course, sufficient rational feeling to be chagrined by calamity, but his dominant passion sucked sustaining juices ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... new system in a higher form. Judaism will not pass away till it is fulfilled in Christianity—the Roman Catholic Church will not pass away till it is fulfilled in Protestantism—Orthodoxy will not pass away till it is fulfilled by Rational Christianity. Judaism continues as a standing protest, on behalf of the unity ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and condition the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... they had perceived it during the night, but he had seemed quite rational since daybreak. They were shocked therefore at this sudden outbreak, and tried to calm him ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... term Gospel Preaching, because it ignores this. The simplest hearer feels that there is something irrational in saying that the death of Christ is a great proof of love to the sinful unless there is shown at the same time a rational connection between that death and the responsibilities which sin involves, and from which that death delivers. Perhaps one should beg pardon for using so simple an illustration, but the point is a vital one, and it is necessary to be clear. If I were sitting on the end of ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. Much progress has also been made toward making youthful platform speaking, as well as youthful writing, more rational in form, more true in spirit, more useful for its purpose. In good time written and spoken English, conjoined with disciplinary training in thought and imagination, will both become firmly established in their ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... in the face, expecting to see some signs of insanity, or at least monomania, in his eyes, but there were none. He was evidently perfectly rational, and this belief was apparently as natural to him as a belief in a hereafter, or in any other religious doctrine, is to other people. After a short pause, as I glanced at the ring, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... is to obtain some day, still the question as to whether now is or is not the time for it to assume a more distinct form, brings us by a rational necessity to a brief notice of the influence of European diplomacy and the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... obscenities and looseness of speech, which set in on English soil as soon as the potent personality of the author himself had ceased to compel silence and blind opinion. England began to wonder at its own infatuation, and, gaining perspective, to view the writings of Sterne in a more rational light. Into the first spread of this reaction Sturz was introduced, and the estimate of Sterne which he carried away with him was undoubtedly colored by it. In his second letter written to the Deutsches Museum and dated August 24, 1768, but strangely not ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... constitution of the Asclepions, medical and priestly pursuits had, before the time of Hippocrates, become combined; and, consequently, although rational means were to a certain extent applied to the cure of diseases, the more common practice was to resort chiefly to superstitious modes of working upon the imagination. It is not surprising, therefore, to find ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... I was at peace with the world. We had succeeded in our quest and found the treasure. In a few days at most I should be back at Panama with my slim sweetheart in my arms. What more could rational man ask? ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that they have become only half-way brutes. The Filipino is convinced that to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity as a rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what is told him, to pay what is demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; to work, suffer and be silent, without aspiring to anything, without aspiring to know or even to understand Spanish, without ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... false. Punch, before 1862, commonly drew Russell as a schoolboy telling lies, and afterwards as prematurely senile, at seventy. Education stopped there. No one, either in or out of England, ever offered a rational ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... that every rational householder will agree with us, that the first thing to be guarded against in this country is cold, next wet, and thirdly darkness. A man who can really prove that he possesses a thoroughly warm, dry, and well-lighted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... headpiece with the bells on it. He's standing on a heap of shells and waving this rusty boat-hook around. Course, I expects when he sees Mr. Robert and realizes how he's been rescued he'll come out of his spell and begin to act rational once more. But it don't work out that way. When Mr. Robert calls out to him and he sees who it is, he keeps ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... traveller, artist, and one of the strongest advocates of freedom and liberty for the oppressed of both sexes, and of her suffering sisters especially, she was an honour to the time and to womanhood. The women of the old world found in her a powerful, sympathizing, yet rational champion; just in her arguments in their behalf, able in her statements of their needs, and thoroughly interested in ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... to the political mind of Europe by the revolution in North America was soon felt in the Netherlands. The wish for reform was not merely confirmed to the people. A memorable instance was offered by Joseph II., son and successor of Maria Theresa, that sovereigns were not only susceptible of rational notions of change, but that the infection of radical extravagance could penetrate even to the imperial crown. Disgusted by the despotism exercised by the clergy of Belgium, Joseph commenced his reign by measures that at once roused ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... instantly!" said Porthos, who went to execute the orders, casting all the while looks behind him, to see if the bishop of Vannes were not deceived; and if, on returning to more rational ideas, he would not recall him. The alarm was sounded, the trumpets brayed and drums rolled: the great bell of the belfry was put in motion. The dikes and moles were quickly filled with the curious and soldiers; the matches sparkled in the hands of the artillerymen, placed ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... could have been subsisted for a week off of the country, or its foragers had lost their cunning. In that time General Bragg would have been forced, in all probability, to return to East Tennessee, without a chance to deliver battle with a rational hope of success. His army was footsore, weary, and could not have been readily concentrated. Buell was removed because he was thought to be "slow," and dull to perceive and seize favorable opportunities. There will always be a difference of opinion about which opportunities were the safest to ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... writer of the letters forever, but its inconsistency with the chivalrous attitude he had just taken occurred to him in time to prevent him from becoming doubly absurd. His rage with Seth Davis seemed to him the only feeling left that was genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoundrel's touch. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... French and German critics have begun to place this reverential feeling for the 'classics' of a language upon a more rational basis. In estimating an author, they throw themselves back into the times in which he wrote; they determine his place among the spirits of his own age; and ascertain the practical influence his works have exercised over those of succeeding generations. In short, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... these fruits have, the dropping is generally attributed to some conditions affecting the growth of the tree, which never have been fully determined. It is of such frequent occurrence that it is called the June drop, and it usually takes place in May in California. As the cause is not understood no rational preventive has been reached. A general treatment which consists in keeping the trees in good growing condition late enough during the previous season, that is, by seeing to it that they do not suffer from lack of moisture ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... to others, as a coherent whole, because he always knows, or thinks he knows, the value of x in the personal equation. Were it otherwise, that sense of conscious identity which alone makes life a serious thing and immortality a rational hope, would be impossible. It is with the means of finding out this unknown quantity—in other words, of penetrating to the man's motives or his understanding of them—that the biographer undertakes to supply us, and unless he succeed ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... many blessings" they enjoy, and "beg leave to approach the throne, and express our indignation at, and abhorrence of, the measures adopted by our unhappy and deluded fellow-subjects in America, in direct opposition to law and justice, and to every rational idea of civilization;" "with still greater indignation, if possible, we behold this rebellious disposition, which so fatally obtains on the other side of the Atlantic, fomented and cherished by a set of men in Great Britain;" ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... We will disregard the ethics of the thing and look at it from a purely rational viewpoint, if a rational viewpoint is possible to anybody but van Manderpootz. Don't you realize that in order to attain Carter's attitude toward Fitch, you would have to adopt his entire viewpoint? Not," he added ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... travel and write novels and have my pictures in book reviews, and all that! When I arrived at the office I was on the verge of total insanity. I was obliged to ask the paragrapher to write my next day's leader. It was night before I became rational, and once that, the whole world donned cap and bells and began capering for my express benefit. The more I thought of it, the more I laughed. What a whimsical world it was! And was there anything in it so grotesque as my part? I took the check from ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... been equally as clever. Thus it was that he had an ill-concealed, or only half-concealed contempt for such seamen as suffered themselves, at any time or under any circumstances, to fall into the enemies' hands. On all other subjects Bob was not only rational, but a very discreet and shrewd fellow, though on that he was often harsh, and sometimes absurd. But the best men have their weakness, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... you will have of its liberty!" returned the cousin sarcastically. "After having passed a girlhood of wholesome restraint in the rational society of Europe, you are about to return home to the slavery of American female life, just as you ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... naturally so lively, should readily submit to such gloomy restrictions at the command of their rulers, proves how easily a wise government might introduce among them the blessings of rational civilization. Well might Karemaku exclaim, "Tameamea, thou hast died too soon!" Had this monarch doubled the usual age of man, and accorded his protection to such a reformer as Stewart, the Sandwich Islanders ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... disciplined brain can accomplish them. And my brain is disciplined, and I will discipline it more and more as the days pass. I am, therefore, independent of hazard, and I will back myself to conduct all intercourse as becomes a rational creature.' ... I can say this. I can ram this argument by force of will into my brain, and by dint of repeating it often enough I shall assuredly arrive at the supreme virtues of reason. I should assuredly conquer—the brain being such a machine of habit—even ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... will an end; to will morally is to will the rational end. But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). How could he will the rational, unless he willed it also ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the only companion of the murdered man and first discoverer of the body. The fact that he, on the ground floor, had slept through the struggle and the report, made the obliviousness of the couple in the room above a rational sequence. The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room. By noon they had departed with the body, and the long ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... disappeared to make way for 'residential chambers.' I have a few other Cambridge friends here, and I showed some of these the photograph. One, I am now aware, is under the impression that I am to be married soon, but the others were rational. Grierson, of the War Office, recognized the portrait at once. 'She is playing small parts at the Criterion,' he said. Finchley, who is a promising man at the bar, also recognized her. 'Her portraits were in all the illustrated papers five years ago,' ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... and professors of this generation; yet I could not but leave this short line to you, who, of all interests in the world, have been my greatest comfort, being now come to the utmost period of my time, and looking in upon my eternal state, it cannot be readily apprehended by rational men, that I should dare to write any thing, but according to what I expect shortly to be judged, having had such a long time to consider on my ways, under a sharp affliction. As for my case, I bless God it is ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Rational. Field Commanders must be realists. The job comes first. In this case, the job of defeating the enemy.... But what does that have to do with us? Nothing, eh? You're right. Sometimes I like to talk, and I suppose ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... of provisions. Massena at length found himself compelled to retreat; and, if he executed the military movement with masterly ability, he for ever disgraced his name by the horrible licence which he permitted to his soldiery. Every crime of which man is capable—every brutality which can dishonour rational beings—must be recorded in the narrative of that fearful march. Age, rank, sex, character, were alike contemned; it seemed as if, maddened with a devilish rage, these ferocious bands were resolved to ruin the country which they could not possess, and to exterminate, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... through a chaos of canyons and divides which did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan. It was as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker. In vain he sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the McQuestion and the Stewart. Then came a mountain storm that blew a blizzard across the riff-raff of high and shallow divides. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... and been pardoned, and risen again to a new, a truer, a more honest, a more righteous life. Our forms of devotion ought then to become not a snare and a hypocrisy, but honest outward signs of the spiritual grace which is within us; as honest and as rational as the shake of the hand to the friend whom we truly love, as the bowing of the knee before the Queen for whom ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... which is used by many of the ironmasters of the present day with freedom and effect, in communicating with each other on the subject of their respective manufactures. Prejudices seldom outlive the generation to which they belong, when opposed by a more rational system of explanation. In this respect, Time (as my Lord Bacon says) is the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... calmly think of you, as some time belonging to another, and with all a brother's confidence, can tell you that I, too, love another,—not as once I loved you, for that would be impossible but with a calmer, more rational love." ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... and achieve the protection, scientific study, and rational use of Antarctic seals, and to maintain a satisfactory balance within the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he could talk it over with Natalie! But he knew Natalie too well to expect any rational judgment from her. She would demand at once that the girl should go. Yet he needed a woman's mind on it. In any question of relationship between the sexes men were creatures of impulse, but women had plotted and planned through the ages. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... will is good and pure and not poisoned by the imagination, a pure blood and a strong and healthy body will be the result. If the imagination (thought) is pure, it will purify the will and expel from the latter the elements of evil. The fundamental doctrine of the most rational system of medicine is therefore the purification of the Will and the Imagination, and every one carries within his own heart the universal panacea, which cures all ills, if he only knows how to employ it. The purification and strengthening of the will by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... "Yes, that is rational, sensible enjoyment," replied Ruth. "I wish sensible people would have the moral courage to act sensibly in this matter of rest and recreation. But it would shock a great many quite as much as it did Guy. Now I think it is well and often necessary for persons to have a more decided ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... on Whitelocke. He is a senator and one of the College of War, a person of great esteem and good parts; his conversation was full of civility; his discourse (in French) was rational, and for the most part upon matter of war, history, and the mathematics. In his company was an officer, his brother-in-law, who had served the King of Portugal in his late wars, and was a civil person, and seemed a gallant man. This Grave ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... The German china bowl with globular receiver of the essential oil, the absorbent meerschaum, the red Turkish bell-shaped clay, the elaborate hookah,—a really elegant ornament, and perhaps the most healthful and rational form of smoking,—pipes of all shapes, began to fill the shops of London. Coleridge, when cured of opium, took to snuff. Byron wrote dashingly about 'sublime Tobacco,' but I do not think he carried the practice to excess. Shelley never smoked, nor Wordsworth, nor Keats. Campbell loved a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to supply the needed heat and comfort. What would an exclusive vegetable diet be worth to them, exposed as they are? With us, lying between the two extremes, with a climate and country abounding in both fruits and animals, with seasons of cold and heat in nearly equal extremes, it seems quite rational that a mixed diet, regulated by common-sense rules, is the best. Certainly the highest civilization to which man has yet attained is found in the temperate zones, where neither the one nor the other extreme in ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwalior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... said Walstein. 'I was myself once fond of reasoning, but the greater my experience, the more I have become convinced that man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... Scolia is no less wonderful than the repeated strokes of the Ammophila. Each has her appointed game and each slays it by a method as rational as any that our own science could invent. In the presence of this consummate knowledge, which leaves us utterly confounded, what a poor argument is that of 1 1 2! And what is that progress by units to us? The universe is mirrored in a drop of water; universal logic flashes ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... pleasing, or, in other parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course of things; and however hackneyed be the thought, however common-place the phrase, it is true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, would be the first idea of any rational creature, who caught but a glimpse of Emily Warren; and I should account it little wonder if, upon a calmer gaze, that beauty were found to have its deepest, clearest fountain in those large dark ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... related to us a curious incident illustrating the instinct of the swinish quadruped; but which to his mind, as well as to ours, seemed more like a proof of a rational principle possessed by the animal. The incident he had himself been witness to, and in his own woodlands. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings. This, I say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious of this in my own nature, I know that it is a ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... forth eternal curses on his name, in spite of all the brilliancy of his splendid administration. But if the glory and welfare of nations consist in other things—in independence, patriotism, and rational liberty; if it was desirable, above all material considerations, to check the current of revolutionary excess, and oppose the career of a man who aimed to bring all the kings and nations of Europe under the yoke of an absolute military despotism, and rear a universal ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... proceed to make; if my influenza—which causes me to shed involuntary tears that give me the appearance of a drivelling idiot, and which jerks me nearly out of my chair every now and then with a convulsive sneeze—will permit me to do anything rational or useful. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... at the expense of rational patriotism, or in disregard of sound philosophy, that I have given vent to feelings tending to encourage a martial spirit in the bosoms of my countrymen, at a time when there is a general outcry against the prevalence of these dispositions. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's. But when my life drops 'twill be hers—not till then." His words on this subject so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his moaning strain: "And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... frost-work, or a pageant of vapory exhalations. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and yet for ever and ever, I comprehended the total ruin of my situation. The case, as others might think, was yet in suspense; and there was room enough for very rational hopes, especially where there was an absolute certainty of innocence. Total freedom from all doubt on that point seemed to justify almost more than hopes. This might be said, and most people would have been more or less consoled by ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the exact distinction between the several kinds of white blood corpuscles, a rational definition of leukaemia, polynuclear leucocytosis, and the knowledge of the appearances of degeneration and regeneration of the red blood corpuscles, and of their degeneration in haemoglobinaemic conditions. The same process, then, has gone on in the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... only for amusement, I think we can find others far more rational and innocent. But depend upon it, girls, you would not wish to go, if there were not in your minds a ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... can go and spend his nights in a tavern!—oh, yes, Mr. Caudle; I daresay you DO go for rational conversation. I should like to know how many of you would care for what you call rational conversation, if you had it without your filthy brandy-and- water; yes, and your more filthy tobacco-smoke. I'm sure the last time you came home, I had the headache ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... 1832, a normal product of our state system of education; a Pantheist, and, if not a Republican, at least with the persuasion that the Republic was the most rational form of government; reflecting too upon the causes which could decide millions of men permanently to obey one man, when all the while I was hearing from grown up people much bitter or contemptuous criticism of their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Conceive of Shakespeare's folk, not as dead and past, but as living. These men and women, among whom we move, are those among whom Shakespeare moved. Ages change customs and costumes, but not characters. Bring Shakespeare down to now, and see how rational his men and women become; and we, as central to his movement, may begin to reckon on the periodicity of souls as of comets. I would have people inherit Shakespeare as they inherit Newton's discoveries or ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the society into which chance had introduced us; the sprightliness of their wit, the justness of their reflections, the dignity which accompanied their vivacity, plainly evinced with how much greater strength the mind can exert itself in a regular and rational way of life, than in a course of dissipation. At this house every change came too soon, time seemed to wear a double portion of wings, eleven o'clock struck, and the ladies ordered a servant to shew us our rooms, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason, common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood. Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one. There are not wanting those ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... falling dew it grows in intensity until neither the gates of death nor even the stubborn resistance of a human will can prevail against it. It is power sufficient to satisfy the most critical search, and to make acceptance not only possible with one's reasoning power in fullest exercise but the rational thing. ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... of doubt were full of anguish. Perchance Jeff had given his life for his son's, for life seemed long in returning to the little face that lay so still and white, with the pretty yellow curls dripping wet. At last Jeff opened his eyes, but it was with no rational gaze. ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... Satan communed visibly and audibly with the children of men—thanks to the invokers of relics and the tellers of beads—and was so familiar and reasonable withal, as to argue and persuade men touching the propriety of submitting themselves to him, as rational and intelligent creatures; and even was silly enough, at times, to suffer himself to be outwitted by the greater sagacity and address of his intended victims. For proof, we cite the following veracious narrative, which bears within ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... fabric of society going to pieces? Nonsense! When so many people come to church. And then look at all the societies at work for the—for the— ah—prevention of everything. Why, I belong to a dozen at least myself; the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Rational Dress Reform, for doing away with petticoats—no, by-the-by, it is my wife who belongs to that. But, at any rate, everything is being done that should be done, and you talk nonsense, my dear"—looking at Ideala ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the triumph over one's self, thru which man does what he should and not what he wishes. In the immoral man there is no struggle between two tendencies, one against evil and the other against good. There is only the instinctive tendency; there is no rational control in opposition. What mastery over self does a man have who for the purpose of controlling his habit of dirty and obscene speech seeks the intervention of a saint? Lacking in will, dispossessed of any idea of struggle with himself, how can he triumph over himself? Slave to his own passions ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... the doctor said, you know. Good-bye!" and Jess took her big basket and started on what John used feebly to call her "rational undertaking." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the army does not seem rational to a foreigner. To preserve the idea of republican simplicity and equality, army men are not rewarded with orders, as in other countries, which is a great injustice. Few officers, though veterans of many wars, wear medals, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... worldly hesitations and fictions, his political bargain and make-believe. Most Nonconformists with an instinct for English history could see something poetic and national about the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Archbishop of Canterbury. It is when he does the rational British statesman that they very justifiably get annoyed. Most Anglicans with an eye for pluck and simplicity could admire Dr. Clifford as a Baptist minister. It is when he says that he is simply a citizen that ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... different system on the morrow, he was led to suspect the possibility of future revolutions, and was thus determined to be no longer embarrassed by previous systems, nor deterred by opinions however learned, which conflicted with a rational recognition of the mechanical nature of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the yoke that sat so heavily upon them, a train of dismal memories. The life of a soldier on a convict station was at that time a hard one. He was often stinted in rations, and of necessity deprived of all rational recreation, while punishment for offences was prompt and severe. The companies drafted to the penal settlements were not composed of the best material, and the pair had good precedent for the course they were ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... any more. He was perfectly conscious and rational. But from the waist down he could not move ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... "Nonsense. Self-sacrifice is rational only as it is the highest form of self-development. It is your duty to develop yourself. Self is the source of all knowledge and strength; books are its record; the world exists only ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... faith and hope to continue the work. Fortunately for all reforms, the leaders, not seeing the obstacles which block the way, start with the hope of a speedy success. Our demands at the first seemed so rational that I thought the mere statement of woman's wrongs would bring immediate redress. I thought an appeal to the reason and conscience of men against the unjust and unequal laws for women that disgraced our statute ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... spotless kids; and as he was dressing, drew a mental picture of the party to which he was going. It was to be composed of quiet, steady men, who were such hard readers as to be called "fast men." He should therefore hear some delightful and rational conversation on the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, the present standard of scholarship in the University, speculations on the forthcoming prize-poems, comparisons between various expectant class-men, and delightful topics of a kindred nature; and the evening would ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... country best, took the lead, and guided them round these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was a grassy, briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side. Here they wandered apart, and after an interval ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... off, whose conveyance, through the wear of many years, has become remarkably seedy; and every time you meet it you think that there you see your own, as it will some day be. Every dog has his day: but the day of the rational dog is overclouded in a fashion unknown to his inferior fellow-creature; it is overclouded by the anticipation of the coming day which will not be his. You remember how that great, though morbid man, John Poster, could not heartily enjoy the summer weather, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Philoxenus and others should know music excellently well, and for their cleverness be ranked amongst the few, is indeed a thing of wonder, but not incredible nor contrary at all to reason. For this reason that a man is a rational animal, and the recipient of mind and intelligence. But that a jointless animal ([Greek: anarthron]) should understand rhythm and melody, and preserve a gesture, and not deviate from a measured movement, and fulfil the requirements of those who laid ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... these dead men and women who sleep in the vast necropolis below have been fooled, and the awakening signal has not sounded for a single one of them; and that the creation of mankind—mankind that thinks and suffers—has had no rational explanation, and that our poor aspirations are vain, but so vain as to ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... large and harmoniously organized nationality as the American Union, there arises a movement which, without the slightest rational or high moral cause, aims to break away from this advanced, this free and humanizing political organization; and not only to break away from the main body, but also maintains the right of the seceding portion itself ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "poetic ideal" of Friedrich Wilhelm; who is a dumb poet in several particulars,—and requires the privileges of genius from those that READ his dumb poem. It must be owned he rises into the fantastic here and there; and has crotchets of ultraperfection for his Army, which are not rational at all. Crotchets that grew ever madder, the farther he followed them. This Lifeguard Regiment of foot, for instance, in which the Crown-Prince now is,—Friedrich Wilhelm got it in his Father's time, no doubt a regiment then of fair ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a jealous husband, "We Arabs think that when a man has a precious jewel, 'tis wiser to lock it up in a box than to leave it about for anyone to take." The Eastern adopts the instinctive, the Western prefers the rational method. The former jealously guards his treasure, surrounds it with all precautions, fends off from it all risks and if the treasure go astray, kills it. The latter, after placing it en evidence upon an eminence in ball dress with back and bosom bared ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton |
