"Sceptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... onslaught on the powers of darkness. And it was this "parcel of ground," already consecrated by the bones of St Patrick, King Edgar, and St David, which became the favourite burying-place of mediaeval saints and heroes. The legend which accounted for its early pre-eminence is even in these sceptical days worth retelling, for from its popularity the future importance of the abbey sprang. Joseph of Arimathaea was despatched by St Philip along with eleven companions "to carry the tidings of the blessed Gospel" to the shores of ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Catholics were soon undeceived. King James drank "to the eternal damnation of the Papists"[463] solemnly at a public dinner, no doubt to convince the sceptical of his Protestantism; and he divided his time very equally between persecuting the Puritans and the Catholics, when not occupied with his pleasures or quarrelling with his Parliament. The Puritans, however, had the advantage; popular opinion in England was on their side; ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Species of Philosophy II. Of the Origin of Ideas III. Of the Association of Ideas IV. Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding V. Sceptical Solution of these Doubts VI. Of Probability VII. Of the Idea of necessary Connexion VIII. Of Liberty and Necessity IX. Of the Reason of Animals X. Of Miracles XI. Of a particular Providence and of a future State XII. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Doctor was a cleverer man than he, and of course would want to show it. So, after the fashion of a country squireen, he felt a longing to "set him down." "He's been a traveller, they say," thought he in that pugnacious, sceptical spirit which is bred, not, as twaddlers fancy, by too extended knowledge, but by the sense of ignorance, and a narrow sphere of thought, which makes a man angry and envious of any one who ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... along the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Californian Sierras, itself two hundred miles from the Pacific and more than a mile above sea-level. Gulls also follow the plough in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is, not unreasonably, sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have no taste for grain. Unfortunately the ordinary scarecrow has no terror for them, and I recollect, in the neighbourhood of Maryport, seeing an immense number of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity to several crows that, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... the holiday-makers carry packets of basil leaves and flowers, which they place upon the grave of the Mother Pilgrim, silently repeating as they do so the 'Fatiha' or prayers for the dead. Others more Puritanical, perchance more sceptical, utter not their prayers to the grave; but as the words pass their lips, turn their faces seawards, remembering Holy Mecca in the far west. Glance for a minute within the room that enshrines the tomb, and you will ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... progress of physical astronomy up to the time when very striking proofs of the universality of the law of gravitation convinced the most sceptical, it must still be borne in mind that, while gravitation is certainly the principal force governing the motions of the heavenly bodies, there may yet be a resisting medium in space, and there may be electric and magnetic forces ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... they had long been waiting to hear. As usually happens, too, this same word, once uttered, was soon abundantly repeated; spoken in all dialects, and chaunted through all notes of the gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. Sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and though the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in Germany, it reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... so in the eighteenth century. In England a Professor may easily become a fossil; in Germany he often guides the thought of the age. For some years that scoffing writer, Voltaire, had been openly petted at the court of Frederick the Great; his sceptical spirit was rapidly becoming fashionable; and now the professors at the Lutheran Universities, and many of the leading Lutheran preachers, were expounding certain radical views, not only on such vexed questions as Biblical inspiration and the credibility of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... king of the piskies, or fairies, and proves the truth of the story he has afterwards to tell by producing the goblet, "which remained in the boy's family for generations, though unfortunately it is no longer forthcoming for the satisfaction of those who may still be sceptical." A like origin has been suggested for the celebrated "Luck of Edenhall," and the "Horn of Oldenburg," and other like relics); the Carinthian girl, who, climbing a mountain during the noon-hour, entered through a door in the rock, and remained away a whole year, though it seemed but a little while; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... implication seems rather to be that if you begin by believing on inadequate grounds, you will presently attain to belief on adequate grounds, or, in other words, knowledge. Thus, when you go to a spiritual seance in a sceptical frame of mind, the chill of your aura frightens the spirits away, and you obtain no manifestations; but if you go in a mood of faith, which practically means confident expectation, the phenomena follow, and you depart a convert. I use this illustration ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... this sense is not sceptical. Even a charge that existing codes of morality and systems of thought are largely matters of social habit, or rules devised by church and state to maintain an arbitrary and profitable power, does not justify the inference that there is ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Sacrement, which illustrate in a blaze of gorgeous colour the story of how Jonathan the Jew bribed Jeanne de Louvain to steal the three Consecrated Wafers, from which oozed, when sacrilegiously stabbed by the sceptical Jew, the Sacred Blood of a world's redemption. This story is told again—or rather, perhaps, a similar story—in the splendid painted glass from the church of St. Eloi that is now preserved at Rouen in the Archaeological Museum. As for the Grande Place, or original market-place of ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... the risks of being duped by believing a premature theory need be faced. The questions here are always trivial options, the hypotheses are hardly living (at any rate not living for us spectators), the choice between believing truth or falsehood is seldom forced. The attitude of sceptical balance is therefore the absolutely wise one if we would escape mistakes. What difference, indeed, does it make to most of us whether we have or have not a theory of the Roentgen rays, whether we believe or not in mind-stuff, or have a conviction about the causality of conscious states? ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... and admirably sceptical chapter on the Emotions (XI) is followed by a largely destructive chapter on Consciousness, Learning, and Remembering, in which Prof. Thorndike is in point of literary style almost at his worst; ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... nothing in their structure and instincts which urges them on to do these things for the mere love of doing them, as a hen is urged to sit upon a chalk stone, concerning which she probably is at heart utterly sceptical, rather than not sit at all. There is no honey and cell- making instinct so strong as the instinct to eat, if they are hungry, or to grow wings, and make themselves into bees at all. Like ourselves, so long as they can get plenty to eat and drink, they will do no work. Under these ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... expected, from the very nature of the topic of investigation. But the author has endeavored, as a student at the feet of his judges, to derive the largest possible benefit from criticism. No word of censure, however wide of the mark, has been unwelcome to him, whether from the sceptical or orthodox press. To all questioned passages he has given a careful re-examination, in some instances finding cause for alteration, but in others seeing his ground more strongly sustained than ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical biographer decide? Audley seems ever to have been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of everything, it was only among the ecclesiastics that Des Esseintes could hope for pleasurable contract. In the society of well-bred and learned canons, he would have been compelled to share their faith, to refrain from floating between sceptical ideas and transports of conviction which rose from time to time on the water, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... remarkable range of hills, and under his guidance we saw many strange things. More than once, he spoke of the existence of a glaciere at no great distance, and talked of taking us to see it; but we were sceptical on the subject, imagining that glaciere was his patois for glacier, and knowing that anything of the glacier kind was out of the question. At last, however, on a hot day in August, we set off with him, armed, at his ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... isolated and highly exaggerated incidents to attribute very shining qualities to their favourite animals; the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded as brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the field—the Bayard of the four-footed kind, a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times have not suffered it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened with the puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of that age, a very loose morality where the public was concerned; but in Halifax the prevailing infection was modified by a very peculiar constitution both of heart and head, by a temper singularly free from gall, and by a refining and sceptical understanding. He changed his course as often as Shaftesbury; but he did not change it to the same extent, or in the same direction. Shaftesbury was the very reverse of a trimmer. His disposition led him generally to do his utmost to exalt the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the treatment is that of applying a counter-irritant as near to the diseased parts as possible. Regarding its efficacy we must confess to being somewhat sceptical. The treatment has been constantly practised and advised, however, and we feel bound to give it mention here. A smart blister may, therefore, be applied to the whole of the coronet, and need not be prevented from running into the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... indeed are very rich as gold and silver can make them, only his sword he and I do not like. In the afternoon my Lord and I walked together in the coach two hours, talking together upon all sorts of discourse: as religion, wherein he is, I perceive, wholly sceptical, as well as I, saying, that indeed the Protestants as to the Church of Rome are wholly fanatiques: he likes uniformity and form of prayer; about State-business, among other things he told me that his conversion ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is stronger, his appetite is increasing and—he's beginning to grouse. That old ruffian of a farrier-corporal, McCullough, was right, begad!—he knew the man better than I did. As a general rule I'm inclined to be rather sceptical of such drastic experiments, ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... merely a modern rechauffe, with "up to date" allusions, of Lucian's Vera Historia. Prototypes of the majority of the stories may either be found in Lucian or in the twenty volumes of Voyages Imaginaires, published at Paris in 1787. In case, however, any reader should be sceptical as to the accuracy of this statement he will have no very great difficulty in supposing, as Dr. Johnson supposed of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of such stuff if he would only consent to abandon his mind ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... its way is the overthrow of the Anwhei faction of the militarist party. The Chinese liberals do not feel very optimistic about the immediate outcome. They have mostly given up the idea that the country can be reformed by political means. They are sceptical about the possibility of reforming even politics until a new generation comes on the scene. They are now putting their faith in education and in social changes which will take some years to consummate ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... other words, however pious and religious a man may be (as we understand the words in Europe), there is no reason why, as a recreation apart from his faith, he should not rigidly adhere to the human evidence of history so far as it goes. On the other hand, however sceptical and discriminating a man may be, from the point of view of imperfect human knowledge, in the admittance of humanly proved fact, there is no reason why, from the emotional and imaginative side of his existence, he should not rigidly subscribe ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... to be subdued by Yoga, i.e., by regulating the wind within the body. Doubt is to be dispelled by certainty; this implies that certain knowledge should be sought for by driving off doubt. The commentator thinks that this means that all sceptical conclusions should be dispelled by faith in the scriptures. By 'fear,' in this verse, is meant the source of fear, or the world. That is to be conquered by the conquest of the six, i.e., desire, wrath, covetousness, error, pride, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... explanation shall I give of the wonderful facts which I have set forth? Why, none, absolutely none. I do not explain facts, I relate them. Growing daily more sceptical of the interpretations suggested to me and more hesitating as to those which I may have to suggest myself, the more I observe and experiment, the more clearly I see rising out of the black mists of possibility ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... that, for all her delight, Zora had been somewhat sceptical. She loved Septimus, she admitted, but his effectuality in any sphere of human endeavor was unimaginable. Could anything good come out ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... reason, if for no other, cultivate as often as you can, without entrenching on the nobler pastime of fly-fishing, the art of trolling—for we must confess that there is an art in this as in everything else; and should my reader be sceptical on the point, he has only to try conclusions, when he gets the chance, with some old troller, and he will ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... refused to believe the assertion that four more moving bodies had to be added to the planetary system. They scoffed at the notion; they said the satellites may have been in the telescope, but that they were not in the sky. One sceptical philosopher is reported to have affirmed, that even if he saw the moons of Jupiter himself he would not believe in them, as their existence was contrary to the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, as he admitted. He occasionally spoke of himself as 'sceptical,' that is, in contrast with those whose faith was more definite, more dogmatic, more securely based on 'articles.' To illustrate Murray's religious attitude, at least as it was in 1887, one may quote from a letter of that year ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... reluctance to reply to it, though never forgetting the attack, a certain timidity with men, a fondness for dress and luxury, an extreme love of conversation, generosity to the point of self-sacrifice, and a religious turn of mind in a sceptical century. His connection with the salons of Paris, where so much of his life was spent in the society of women, probably contributed largely to develop those ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... his thick fingers with a contemptuous look for the women folk. He had just worked off his five years' government naval service; and it was as master-gunner of the fleet that he had learned to speak good French and hold sceptical opinions. He hemmed and hawed and then rattled off his latest love adventure, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... had told them as much as I thought necessary, they both started cross-examining me in such an impertinent and sceptical manner that at length I became extremely irritated, and declined to answer any more questions. Whereupon Dr. Loonem proceeded to wash his hands again, saying in an oily manner, as though addressing a child, "Pray, ah, don't excite yourself, my dear sir; don't, ah, excite yourself! ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... at her guest in uncomprehending wonder. Could this be the sneering, insolent Miss Wicks who was speaking? There was no sign of a sneer on her face now. She spoke with a simple directness that could not fail to impress the most sceptical. "I have been hearing about you from a source entirely outside Overton," she continued, "from a Smith College senior who lives in Oakdale. She visited a friend of mine during the holidays. I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... precepts, I can conceive him doing nothing wrong. But if such a man stood in need of money, I should not like to trust him; and I should certainly not trust him with young ladies, for there there is always temptation. Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... these gentlemen go to work with the most serious mien; at the opera they deem it becoming to put on a nonchalant, sceptical, cleverly-frivolous air. They concede with a smile that they are not quite at home in the opera, and do not profess to understand much about things which they do not particularly esteem. Accordingly, they are very accommodating and complaisant towards vocalists, ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... I had read Dr. Baraduc's book, "Les Vibrations Humaines," I approached the instrument in a very sceptical frame of mind; but I was soon convinced of my error. At first, holding a mental attitude of entire relaxation, I found that the left-hand needle was attracted through twenty degrees, while the right-hand needle, the ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... it does not end here. The flaw runs through the whole constitution of things; there is no possible equation between the anomalies and dislocations on which he turns the dry light of that sceptical philosophy which has usurped the place of faith. Thought is good and action is good, but they will not work together. Our reason is our glory, but our indiscretions serve us best—we must either be cowards or fools. We have a perception of infinite goodness, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... were softness, impetuosity, romantic imagination, and tender fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago. Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... there are two separate principles concerned in its pretensions; and by accident in part, but in part also through the silent and inevitable march of human progress, there has been steadily gathering for many years an interest of something like sceptical and hostile curiosity about each of these principles, considered as problems open to variable solutions, as problems already viewed from different national centres, and as problems also that press forward to some solution or other with more and more of a clamorous ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... genuine in the sense which makes them so attractive—that is to say, as literally authentic pictures of a great man's interior life, of his actual words and behaviour as witnessed by his intimates—must always remain doubtful to the sceptical mind. True reminiscences are naturally somewhat cloudy in outline, hanging loose together with gaps and interruptions; whereas these are all coherent, clear-cut, and written in a style that gives superior polish and setting to every ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... a sceptical pause, during which he watched the lambent light as it played about in a slow fantastic way, just as if it were a softly-glowing lantern carried by a short-winged moth, which used it to inspect the flowering plants as it sought for ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Sack," from his favourite beverage of spiced sherry negus. This impudent rascal, a sweep who had turned highwayman, with the most perfect impartiality rifled the pockets alternately of Cavaliers and Roundheads. Gold is of no religion; and your true cut-purse is of the broadest and most sceptical Church. He emptied the pockets of Lord Protector Cromwell one day, and another he stripped Charles II., then a Bohemian exile at Cologne, of plate valued at L1,500. One of his most impudent exploits was stealing a watch from Lady Fairfax, that brave woman who had the courage ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in the world; but at the end of his book you find that he has not opened his heart on this subject. No doubt his profession as a reciter and story-teller prevented him. We can see that Thucydides was sceptical; but can we fully see what his scepticism was directed against, or where, for instance, Nikias would have disagreed with him, and where he and ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... of the points on which he was genuine and emphatic was common to the middle ages; a deep and somewhat snivelling conviction of the transitory nature of this life and the pity and horror of death. Old age and the grave, with some dark and yet half-sceptical terror of an after-world - these were ideas that clung about his bones like a disease. An old ape, as he says, may play all the tricks in its repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience into good humour. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the well-known connection between the aurora and magnetic disturbances. On the other hand, it must be confessed that many striking magnetic storms have occurred without any corresponding solar disturbance,[5] but even those who are inclined to be sceptical as to the connection between these two classes of phenomena in particular cases can hardly doubt the remarkable parallelism between the general rise and fall in the number of sun-spots and the extent of the daily movements of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... to this conservatism. The Archbishops had returned like the Bourbons, forgetting nothing and having learned hardly anything. If any man could have learned the lesson of history it was Juxon's successor, the hard sceptical Sheldon, and one of the jottings in Pepys' Diary shows us what sort of lesson he had learned. Pepys had gone down the river at noon to dine with the Archbishop in company with Sir Christopher Wren, "the first time," as he notes, "that I ever was there, and I have long longed ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... costumier of a British pantomime; coach with prodigious emblazonments of hats and coats-of-arms, that seems as if it came out of the pantomime too, and was about to turn into something else. So it is, that what is grand to some persons' eyes appears grotesque to others; and for certain sceptical persons, that step, which we have heard of, between the sublime and the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as you say, be after that pure image! He is so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures them up and reads them ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the deistical movement which Rousseau found in progress at Geneva in 1754,[338] was distinctly the outcome in a more or less marked way of a rationalising and philosophic spirit, and not of the religious spirit. The sceptical side of it with reference to revealed religion, predominated over the positive side of it with reference to natural religion. The wild pantheism of which there were one or two extraordinary outbursts during the latter part of the middle ages, to mark ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... there was sometimes considerable prolixity of detail; there was occasional change of character and scenery; there was once or twice an absolute change in the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that of Monte Flat,—a community accustomed to great expectation and small realization,—a community wherein, to use the local dialect, "they got the color, and struck hardpan," more frequently ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... sorry to say that yellow journalism is not only not unknown in Japan, but is apparently in a very flourishing condition there. I regret the fact all the more because the people of Japan are not yet sufficiently educated or enlightened to receive what they read in the newspaper in a sceptical spirit. That educational and enlightening process is only effected by a long course of newspaper reading. Even in this country we can remember the time when any statement was implicitly believed because it was "in the papers." Now some other and better evidence ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet's epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half-sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. He is the pupil of Ramsay, but he leaves his master, to make a social protest and to lead a literary revolt. The Gentle Shepherd, still largely a court pastoral, in which "a man's a man" if born a gentleman, may be contrasted with "The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... long prevailed, are defended by persons who have only natural interests at heart; because these persons lack that speculative freedom and dramatic imagination which would allow them to conceive other moulds for morality and happiness than those to which a respectable tradition has accustomed them. Sceptical statesmen and academic scholars sometimes suffer from this kind of numbness; it is intelligible that they should mistake the forms of culture for its principle, especially when their genius is not original and their chosen function is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... city; familiarity with sacred things apparently breeds doubts and indifference. The prayer-stone is reverently touched to lips, cheeks, and forehead at the finish of prayers, and then carefully wrapped up and stowed away until praying-time comes round again. To a sceptical and perhaps irreverent observer, these praying-stones would seem to bear about the same relation to a pilgrimage to Meshed or Kerbela as a package of prepared sea-salt does to a season ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Marner was suddenly seen standing in the warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which Silas had entered was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one had noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be supposed to have felt an argumentative ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... which they had so solemnly and recently avowed. Its farther effect was to dissipate that spell of invincibility, which, in the minds of the Americans, seemed to hover about a British armament;—to heighten the courage of the militia, and to convince the most sceptical, that it needed only confidence and practice, to make the American people as good soldiers as any in the world. The Carolina riflemen were not a little elated to discover that they could handle twenty-six pounders as efficiently as the smaller implements of death, to which their ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the lawn, and sat down beside his daughter. Smith, the bull-dog, raising a sleepy head, breathed heavily; but Mr. Bennett did not quail. Of late, relations of distant but solid friendship had come to exist between them. Sceptical at first, Mr. Bennett had at length allowed himself to be persuaded of the mildness of the animal's nature and the essential purity of his motives; and now it was only when they encountered each other unexpectedly round ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is amritham, eternal. This it is in us which makes us sceptical of death, even when the fact of death cannot be doubted. In reconcilement of this contradiction in us we come to the truth that in the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... learned—and a little "loco"—mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound respect for the character of the woman who was known in the country as the English Senora. He presented this tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man of his habits. Mrs. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... both—should not have the best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in her career, unthinkable. Even though she read it in print she would disregard it, for her attitude to them papers is sceptical; even Lord NORTHCLIFFE, with all his many voices, dulcet or commanding, has wooed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... and forget that they had a fair allowance of human passions. And consequently we are very apt to make a false estimate of the precise nature of that change which fairly entitles us to call Pope's age prosaic. In showering down our epithets of artificial, sceptical, and utilitarian, we not seldom forget what kind of figure we are ourselves likely to make in the eyes of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... type to devote her life to him, he might yet be saved to Goodness, and even rear a spirited family in his likeness to solace his declining years. But like so many experienced men of the world, he doubted if there were any good women. Of such as he had heard tell he was outwardly sceptical ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... his sceptical smile; but the girl did not notice. Instead, for the first time, she ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... thoughts were racing. Seeing into the future was a rather revolutionary idea to me. My mind is conservative; I have always been sceptical of the more fantastic ideas suggested by science. But Charlie seemed to know what he was talking about. In view of the marvelous things he had done that night, it seemed hardly fair to doubt him now. I decided to accept his astounding statement at ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... they will.' Teddy's tone was stern, and Nancy was too occupied in holding her hat on her head as they crept through some low bushes to advance any more sceptical opinions. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... will emancipate the slaves. In the midst he would rush out to a lecture on mineralogy, and come back sighing that it was all about "stones, stones, stones"! The friends read Plato together, and held endless talk of metaphysics, pre-existence, and the sceptical philosophy, on winter walks across country, and all night beside the fire, until Shelley would curl up on the hearthrug and go to sleep. He was happy because he was left to himself. With all his thoughts and impulses, ill-controlled indeed, but directed to the acquisition ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... else, I have been to such people," he answered indifferently. "But if you ask my true opinion—well, no; I am quite sceptical! There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but more often there is nothing. In fact, you must remember that a witch generally tells her client what she believes her client wishes ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... constraint of cumbrous clothing; and not even his dedication to the Holy Virgin prevented him from growing up the most ardent of the admirers of Voltaire. His earliest instructors, as happened to most of the sceptical philosophers, were the Jesuits, then within a few years of their fall. That these adroit men, armed with all the arts and traditions which their order had acquired in three centuries, and with the training of the nation almost exclusively in their ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... of Mr. Bingley Crocker was one that would have provided an admirable "instance" for a preacher seeking to instil into an impecunious and sceptical flock the lesson that money does not of necessity bring with it happiness. And poetry has crystallised his ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to be sure—a veritable ape-man, as his name implies—but exactly therein lies his altogether unique distinction. He is the embodiment of that "missing link" whose nonappearance had hitherto given so much comfort to the sceptical. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... here looks like a locksmith or something of the sort,' Bersenyev was informed the following evening by his servant, who was distinguished by a severe deportment and sceptical turn of mind towards his master; 'he wants to ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... the roof of their mouth, or in some other part about them, resistunt incantatorum praestigiis ([2795]Boissardus writes) morbos a sagis motos propulsant &c., that to doubt of it any longer, [2796]"or not to believe, were to run into that other sceptical extreme of incredulity," saith Taurellus. Leo Suavius in his comment upon Paracelsus seems to make it an art, which ought to be approved; Pistorius and others stiffly maintain the use of charms, words, characters, &c. Ars vera est, sed pauci artifices reperiuntur; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist; especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and the attitude of ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly far more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be in the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... invest itself with the odour of sanctity, and the parish-priest might be made as formidable a person within his own village as the mayor or the agent of the police-minister. Louis XVIII. was himself sceptical and self-indulgent. This, however, did not prevent him from publishing a letter to the Bishops placing his kingdom under the especial protection of the Virgin Mary, and from escorting the image of the patron-saint through ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... find it—he has a theory) it will be found to be a secret isle in some great estuary or arm of that ageless Eastern river suspected by the major. Surely that mysterious Apple (of whose powers Margarita was once so sceptical) never grew on any vulgar, easily-to-be-come-at mainland! No, it lurks to-day in its own island Paradise, and the angel with the flaming sword cut the land apart from all common ground so that the furrows smoked beneath it as the floods raced in. If we find it—the major ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Lord Kelvin exhibited these. He did more. He became the champion of the telephone. He staked his reputation upon it. He told the story of the tests made at the Centennial, and assured the sceptical scientists that he had not been deceived. "All this my own ears heard," he said, "spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by this circular disc ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... is certainly, as a rule, not as good as the stuff he was using. Have a headache this morning. I often get one after 3 days in trenches. There was a great hue and cry after a German spy yesterday. Telephones going all over the place. I was wickedly sceptical about him from the first, and ultimately triumphantly proved him to be an officer of the ——Regiment who had been detached on some duty. The unfortunate gentleman had an impediment in his speech, and this was noted down as proving him to be a German, of course! Six divisions of K.'s new army are ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... seem to require it, can hear the footsteps of an approaching enemy at distances which astonish us. So also the deaf and dumb are very keen-sighted, and generally make very accurate observations. Any reader who is sceptical in regard to the cultivation of the senses, would do well to consult the account of Julia Brace, the deaf and dumb and blind girl, as published in some of the early volumes of the "Annals ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... "the pup" was worthless. Scott, whose smile was kindly even when sceptical, only corrected Bill to the extent of saying that Friday or Scuffy, whoever or whatever he might be, was no pup; that he was a full-grown dog and in Bob's judgment ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... be called a game, save perhaps with the chief player, who was not more or less sceptical than most public men with whom he had acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a public man in England that altogether believes in his party? Is there one, however doubtful, that will not fight for it?) Young Frank was ready to fight without much thinking, he was a Jacobite as his father before ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the low. Do not misunderstand us, gentle reader. We do not wish in the slightest degree to palliate the coarse language, the debasement, the harsh villainy, which shock the virtuous when visiting the haunts of poverty. Our simple desire is to assure the sceptical that goodness and truth are sometimes found in strange questionable places, although it is undoubtedly true that they do not deliberately search out such places for an abode, but prefer a pure atmosphere and pleasant companionship if they can ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... created by the inward instincts of the soul: it had afterwards to be pruned and chastened by the sceptical understanding. For its perfection, the co-operation of these two parts of man is essential. While religious persons dread critical and searching thought, and critics despise instinctive religion, each side remains imperfect ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... that the idea behind this demarche is simply to gain time. I have pressed M. Venizelos on this, and, although he did not wish to appear to be as emphatic as his followers, he had to admit to me that he had no illusions and that he remained sceptical. If King Constantine is really {133} sincere, he can give a proof which will allay all doubts. Let him order a mobilization at once . . . and call in M. Venizelos to form a ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the body is not the end of the man, else the whole force of the argument in the preceding verses would disappear. If death is annihilation, what reason is there for seeking God before it comes? Therefore verse 7 is no interpolation to bring a sceptical book into harmony with orthodox Jewish belief, as some commentators affirm. The 'contradiction' between it and Ecclesiastes iii. 21 is alleged as proof of its having been thus added. But there is no contradiction. The former passage is interrogative, and, like all the earlier part ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Origin I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Nan, coldly sceptical, eyed de Spain. "And do you try to tell me"—she pointed to Sassoon's unbound hands—"that he is riding out of here, a free ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... ideas of the time, that a downright atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of gods is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing 'ad hominem' according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet he abstains from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State approved. He does not defend himself, as Xenophon ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... place of the draft that went to France, and in them the N.C.O.'s plant esprit de corps and the fear of God. The missing identity discs arrive, and a fourth Date is fixed—July 21. And the dwellers in the blinking hole, having been wolfed several times, are sceptical, and treat the latest report ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... at heart a missionary of some sort, and Lucy had a vague idea that the influence of a good woman was always effective in such cases. She never imagined that the youth would test her pretty, heartfelt opinions and her glowing faith in the rightness of things in the cold, sceptical light of his logic. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... that the essential unity which binds the members of the five denominations together, in spite of some external differences, is manifesting itself forcibly. Not only does the evangelical alliance prove to the most sceptical that this unity is real, but a fact peculiar to the United States, the great awakening produced by the crisis of 1857, has given evidence of the perfect harmony of convictions. In the innumerable meetings caused to spring up by this awakening from one end of the country to the other, it has ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... would ever have founded a state; and I am pretty certain that, left to itself, it would never have overthrown a slave state. What it did do, as I have said, was to produce some very wonderful literary and artistic flights of sceptical imagination. The world did have new visions, if they were visions of monsters in the moon and Martians striding about like spiders as tall as the sky, and the workmen and capitalists becoming two separate species, so that one could devour the other as gaily and greedily as a cat devours a bird. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... find she is some young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability." He stood considering me some minutes; then added, "She looks sensible, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... sceptical, my boy," said the doctor. "Let me prove it to you. Come a little nearer ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... of Charleston was received, announcing the ratification of the Treaty by the Prince Regent." We assume then, that on the 22d of January, such intelligence was received of the Peace at New-Orleans, as might, and should have satisfied the most sceptical military caution, of its truth, at least to the extent required for our examination ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... singing about the Trojan horse, and jesting about priests. The fact that it was a priest on whom the snakes had fastened seemed to afford especial delight to the sceptical and priest-hating rabble. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... are men inhabiting them, because they are earths alike with the planets, and wherever an earth is, there are men inhabitants; for man is the end for which every earth was created, and nothing was made by the great Creator without an end." [456] If any are still sceptical, Sir William Herschel, an intellectual light of no mean magnitude, may reach them. He writes: "While man walks upon the ground, the birds fly in the air, and fishes swim in water, we can certainly not object to the conveniences ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... commander in a territory of which he is in occupation; while (3) most English and American writers look upon the meaning of the clause as doubtful. If Mr. Cohen will look at p. 44 of my Laws of War on Land, 1909, he will find that I carry this sceptical attitude so far as to include the clause in question in brackets as "apocryphal," with the comment that "it can hardly, till its policy has been seriously discussed, be treated as a rule of international law." I have accordingly maintained, ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland |
