"Skeptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mystifiers of the public, and showed no desire to conceal anything. There was no darkening of rooms, no putting of hands under tables, no fear that spirits would refuse to act because of the presence of some skeptic, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... attempt at a translation of the fourth sonnet may serve to give some idea of how far the world-renowned philosopher and skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume the anomalous role of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... blame him if he sometimes grow skeptic or acid about the profession of letters. Of each hundred manuscripts turned in there will rarely be more than three or four that merit any serious consideration; only about one in a hundred will be acceptable for publication. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It was ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a "tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... entirely satisfied Max, though of course that skeptic of a Bandy-legs had to let his eyebrows go up in an arch as he listened; but then Bandy-legs would doubt anything that savored of the uncommon. Max simply frowned at him and paid no more attention to ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... well the case of a man of 32 who came to me for help after five of the so-called schools for stammerers had failed to afford him any relief. Quite naturally this man was a confirmed skeptic. He did not believe that there was any cure for him. Anyone who had been through the trials that he had experienced would have felt the same way. But he placed himself under treatment, nevertheless, and in a few weeks' time, the Unit ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... I don't mean to interfere with your plans. I told you I have left this matter entirely in your hands," answered the skeptic, his ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... great singer," continued this world-defying skeptic, "trilling like a thrush, scampering over the scales, I see a clumsy lot of ah, ah, ahs, awkwardly, uncertainly ambling up the gamut, saying, 'were it not for us she could not sing thus—give us our ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... if the Lord wanted her to, and again she answered yes. Then we asked her if she believed the Lord would heal her. She said she did. Her husband and oldest daughter were standing by, expecting her to die any minute. Her mother, who was a skeptic, was also present. She wanted me to persuade her daughter to take medicine. I replied that I would talk to her daughter, but did not tell ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came his last shot; the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... long hunt," rejoined the skeptic, and with his eyes still on the tail of the disappearing Exposition car, he reluctantly ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without believing that there is something crooked ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... which is in opposition to first appearances, how must it fare with those which are conformable to appearances familiar from the first dawn of intelligence, and of the conclusiveness of which, from the earliest records of human thought, no skeptic has suggested ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of Uncle Terry's mildly flavored shafts of sarcasm, he made no enemies and his kind heart and sterling honesty were respected far and near. He was considered a doubter and skeptic, and though seldom seen at church, as he had originally contributed his share when that edifice was built, his lack ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Like the Greek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which in restraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and imposing measure and poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties themselves. The skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinction between that vague entity, "the ideal," and the personal idea of the artist concerned with it, can be shown this distinction better than it can be expressed in words. He will appreciate ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... science on the science of natural theology. Geology has disposed effectually and forever of the oft-urged assumption of an infinite series; it deals as no other science could have dealt with the assertion of the skeptic, that creation is a "singular effect;" it casts a flood of unexpected light on the somewhat obsolete plausibilities of Bolingbroke and Jenyns, that exhibits their utterly unsolid character; yet further, it exhibits in a new aspect the argument founded on design, and invests ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... A lone skeptic had little chance to beat back the wave of excitement created by the young Robinson's stories. His success prompted him to concoct new tales.[12] He had seen Lloynd's wife sitting on a cross-bar in his father's chimney; he had called ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... dishonoured even in the least particular? Were not the half-believing church and the unbelieving world looking on, to see how the Living God would stand by His own unchanging assurance, and would He supply an argument for the skeptic and the scoffer? Would He not, must He not, rather put new proofs of His faithfulness in the mouth of His saints, and furnish increasing arguments wherewith to silence the cavilling tongue and put ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... stand rough usage, it only required probably some thought on Mr. Reckenzaun's part to make them available even in a gale. Enormous strides were being made with regard to these batteries. No one present had been a greater skeptic with regard to them at first than be himself; but after constant experiments—employing them, as he had done for many months, for telegraphic purposes—he was gradually coming to view them with a much more favorable eye. The same steps which had rendered all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... his doubt," suggested Mr. Perry with a smile; "for, if a man must doubt, he'd better shout than smother his ideas in a skeptic pout." ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... variety of speculations, and has involved the question, whether all men are the sons of Adam, or whether the distinctions of the human race were owing to the several sources from whence its members sprung? The skeptic supposition that each portion of the globe gave its own original type of man to the human family at once solves the difficulty of American population; but as both Christianity and philosophy alike forbid acceptance of this view,[208] it becomes ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... have given us no adequate body of data by which we may predict the birth of a genius, they have, on the other hand, given us most minute descriptions whereby we may recognize the husk containing the poetic gift. The skeptic may ask, What has the poet to do with ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... from that of the ladies of the household. And yet he pretended to be a firm believer in Christianity; and while he had no objection to any extreme of vice, he discountenanced infidelity. On one occasion, when a philosophical skeptic had been enlarging for some time on his objections to the Christian faith, Charles replied by saying, "My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and have heard more arguments in favor of atheism than you, but I have lived long enough ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... superstition, his mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... heard scarcely a word of Dr. Walden's address since that last whisper, "So you are destined to immortality, remember." Words spoken in jest, and yet thrilling her through and through with a solemn meaning. She had always known and always believed this. She was no skeptic, yet her heart had never taken it in, with a great throb of anxiety, as it did at that moment. Was she being led ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... miserable train of talk to-night; but that young witch leads a man on so. I'm glad she has a decided mind of her own; one feels less conscience-stricken. I'm what they call a skeptic myself, but after all, I don't quite like to see a lady become one. I shan't lead her astray. I wouldn't have said any thing to-night if it hadn't been for that miserable hypocrite of a Van Anden; the fellow must learn not to pitch into me if he wants to be let alone; but I doubt if ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden—a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a blank, utter skeptic with regard to the worth of woman. He did not believe in their virtue nor their self-respect; he believed them to be clever actresses, and, taken all in all, the best kind of amusement to be had for money. The kind of opinion was then new to me; the effect ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... that worthy widow arose and saluted—or rather Pocahontas, through her mediumship, arose and saluted—Miss Sarah Branly. And the skeptic will please take notice that this extraordinary manifestation is neither enlarged nor magnified, but that it actually happened precisely as is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... (Creatures of Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... impressed; but General Grant, who had come to Washington that morning and was present, remarked with matter-of-fact exactness that Murfreesboro was no victory and had no important results. Not the wildest imagination of skeptic or mystic could have pictured the events under which ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... said the professor delightedly. "To temonstrate to an honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches. Ve vill now broceed to temonstrate. Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes, anodder man's dicket, letters—unt all. He gomes to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... very atmosphere they breathed—heavier upon them fell the sense of something almost supernatural, beyond the human and the finite. Skeptic and faint believer, sinner, Christian and scoffer, they were all alike now in the presence of a faith whose evidence was before them in harrowing vividness, in the torment and agony of a fellow creature ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... apparently transcending not alone the bounds of human invention, but those of divine creation, yet the proposed means to be employed were alleged to have been confined within the sober forms of sober reason. It was affirmed that, to a degree of more than skeptic scorn, Bannadonna had been without sympathy for any of the vain-glorious irrationalities of his time. For example, he had not concluded, with the visionaries among the metaphysicians, that between the finer mechanic forces and the ruder animal vitality some ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... along in silence. Willie Gear was his father's pride and pet. He was a noble boy. He inherited his mother's tenderness and patience, and with them his father's acute and questioning intellect. He was a curious combination of a natural skeptic and a natural believer. He had welcomed the first step toward converting our Bible-class into a mission Sabbath-school, and had done more than any one else to fill it up with boys from the Mill village. He was a great favorite with them ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... there entered no evil into his design in creating or maintaining the universe. But all this really assumes the very thing to be proved. King gets over the difficulty and reaches his conclusion by saying, "The Deity could have only one of two objects—his own happiness or that of his creatures."—The skeptic makes answer, "He might have another object, namely, the misery of his creatures;" and then the whole question is, whether or not he had this other object; or, which is the same thing, whether or not his nature is perfectly good. It must never be forgotten that unless ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... warrior brow Passed, like a cloud, away, And tears coursed down the rugged cheek That flowed not till that day. "Not—not in mine," with choking voice, The skeptic made reply; "But in thy mother's holy faith, My daughter, ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... say that I went as a skeptic; but I must own that I have come away utterly unable to explain by any natural means the phenomena that ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... so fair to the natural eye and velvety to the touch, becomes beneath the microscope suggestive of the hide of a hairless Mexican dog. Religion is a beautiful, an enchanting thing if you do but look at it with the natural eye; but when you employ the adventitious aid of the skeptic's microscope you find flaws enough. It were doubtful if even our boasted American Government, of which you are so proud, could stand such an examination and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... as he walked away. Mrs. MacGlowrie had evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story. He did not share the man's superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism. Yet even then, the widow's action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger. A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... faithless, and perverse skeptic, that these things are so: that ocular and auricular evidence, indubitable and overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... showing you a picture of it, or telling you what it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the only possible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to our minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally, in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of symbolical language, but the literalities ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... which he himself had studied, and that of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.) founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics were developed into Stoics by Zeno (341-260 ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... children; but he feels kindly towards it, and judges mildly of it; and enjoys it very tolerably well, although he has so slight a hold on it that it would not trouble him much to give it up. He said he hoped he should die at sea, because then it would be so little trouble to bury him. Me is a skeptic,—and when I asked him if he would not wish to live again, he spoke doubtfully and coldly. He said that he had been in England within two or three years—in his native county, Yorkshire—and finding his brother's children in very ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... a man of the nature of the Abbe Gerard particularly enjoyed. The idea of finding himself the successful reviver of an inanimate doctrine, while secretly conscious that he was, in reality, a skeptic in matters of dogmatically vital importance, was to a mind so prone to delight in paradoxes eminently agreeable. It pleased him to see the letter of the Archbishop lying upon a volume of Strauss, and to read the glowing and extravagant praise lavished on him in the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... There is no class of persons so generally underrated and vilified, yet this would be a dull world without them. And the faculty is not to be acquired. Really good talkers are born, not made. (And some, I hear a skeptic say, are not to be borne in certain contingencies.) Talk is like a river; it rushes onward, by expression of ideas, making room for thoughts to follow, and the dull elf, whose mouth is a mill-dam, finds his fancies and thoughts accumulate on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and, I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book and the history of one nation—as if no other books were inspired ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... he came home tired and weary at nightfall and laid his head, full of aching thoughts, on his pillow to rest, capricious fate released him from his skeptic views of life; the hard lines faded from around his handsome mouth, and a slow smile, as of old, crept back there from its exile, for when he was tired or sad, a fair vision invariably stood beside him and smoothed away the traces of care from his face. He could feel the velvety touch of her ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth—the flash of the nature the young man had hidden ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the end of time, the vanity and credulity of women will lead them to lend credence to such statements, rather than look matters firmly in the face, with the eyes of common-sense and experience. I, for one, am a very skeptic on this subject of manly dislike growing out of female susceptibility, and usually take the conservative ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... The Gentle Skeptic; or, Essays and Conversations of a Country Justice on the Authenticity and Truth of the Old Testament Records. Edited by the Rev. C. Walworth. New York. D. Appleton & Co. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... left the Coast, I flew to New York. Ken Purdy called in John DuBarry, True's aviation editor, to hear the details. Purdy called him "John the Skeptic." After I told them what ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... of the working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked, that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and that they can therefore be corrected. It is with hope for the material betterment of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to listen to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... accounted the most enlightened, that the contrast which their destitute state presents to the numerous advantages of civilized life, and to the refinements of polished society, is truly astonishing. If there possibly can be a single Briton who is a skeptic to the benefits of education, let him only take a view of the intellectual degradation and disgusting condition of the Gypsies. But if Britons have made greater advancement in civilization than some other nations, the Gypsies here ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... between the mythology of the early Greeks and that of many of the Asiatic nations, that we give place here to the supposed meditations of a Hindu prince and skeptic on the great subject of a future state of existence, as a fitting close of our brief review of the religious beliefs of the ancients. Among the Asiatic nations are to be found accounts of the Creation, and of multitudes of gods, good and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and collars Ever sent out from Paris, worth thousands of dollars, And all as to style most recherche and rare, The want of which leaves her with nothing to wear, And renders her life so drear and dyspeptic That she's quite a recluse, and almost a skeptic, For she touchingly says that this sort of grief Cannot find in Religion the slightest relief, And Philosophy has not a maxim to spare For the victims of such overwhelming despair. But the saddest, by far, of all these sad features, Is ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... feeblest image. In their midst Galiani, secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy, a clever dwarf; a genius, "a sort of Plato or Machiavelli with the spirit and action of a harlequin," inexhaustible in stories, an admirable buffoon, and an accomplished skeptic, "having no faith in anything, on anything or about anything,"[4206] not even in the new philosophy, braves the atheists of the drawing-room, beats down their dithyrambs with puns, and, with his perruque in his hand, sitting cross-legged on the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... than as I must, for the impulse to say some words of comfort, which I feel you need, is very strong. I only sang of what I wished on Sunday evening. I have little philosophy, and still less of definite belief in regard to the future life. While I am not a theoretic skeptic, all questions of faith are to me so vague and incomprehensible that I am a practical materialist, and live only ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... by Arius as "that unbaptised pagan, the flamen of Jupiter." The noble plan of the book and the grave importance of the questions that agitate the characters, combine to make it a valuable production to both believer and skeptic. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... authority, his first object is to rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well. "Tyranny has, indeed, no outlet!" The few, whom in modern times we have seen endowed with a similar spirit of self-control, have attracted our admiration by their honesty rather than their intellect; and the skeptic in human virtue has ascribed the purity of Washington as much to the mediocrity of his genius as to the sincerity of his patriotism:—the coarseness of vulgar ambition can sympathize but little with ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... world—that vast collective individuality to which you and I belong—too often dispels those sensitive enthusiasms by its neglect or disapproval. Do we not find in our daily speech a certain cynicism toward youth? Does not our skeptic wisdom paste the label "illusions" over the word "ideals" written on the young man's brow? Is there not a refusal to recognize young manhood's force until it compels recognition ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... penny a week for each of those old enough to bear educating. His better half argued that, having so many children, they ought in reason to be exempted. Only people who had few children could spare the penny. But the one point on which the cobbler-skeptic of the Mile End Road got his way was this of the fees. It was a question of conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. They ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... skeptic, Mallory raised a corner of the samite in order to make certain that he was not being cheated. Instantly, a reflected ray of moonlight stabbed upward into his eyes, and for a moment he was blinded. Exorcising ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... impelling him to be an industrious, self-supporting citizen—in short, if he has not a new heart looking to a new life as a citizen and a man, he will become a vagabond on the land granted him, and a skeptic in the school in which he is taught. The next few years will constitute a crisis in the rapidly changing condition of the Indian, and it is precisely at this point where the vital element of the Christian life must be infused into his character. To the Christian public, all other questions subordinate ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... of reasoning and argument; one in particular, named Moung-Shwa-gnong; who would spend whole days at the zayat, and engage Mr. Judson in endless discussions.—Not satisfied with the Buddhist faith he had become a confirmed skeptic, and disputed every Gospel truth before he received it with much subtilty and ingenuity. But after a while he found that his visits at the zayat had attracted the notice of Government, that the viceroy on being told he had renounced ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck is as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam. But it all depends on what you want to be filled with. Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam. But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... our hands once more! but I cannot send her to your Excellency. Is it from living among these peasants and fishing-folk, or is it because, as people pretend, a skeptic is always superstitious? I could not muster courage to send you Dionea, although your boys are still in sailor-clothes and your uncle, the Cardinal, is eighty-four; and as to the Prince, why, he bears the most potent amulet ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the mood, attitude, and prejudices should be ascertained. This constitutes his standpoint. Most writers have convictions or belong to schools of belief that consciously or unconsciously influence their work. A skeptic like Gibbon could hardly do justice to the rise ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... science already accumulated. If you know that,—for instance, in geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the news to auditors frankly incredulous who yet were sufficiently impressed by her sincerity to resolve on looking into the thing for themselves. Consequently the Dale homestead became a magnet for the curious, and many a skeptic came and went away convinced that the day of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... according to the mental temperament of the individual by whom it is adopted and applied. "An organ of investigation being introduced, which may be employed for any purpose indifferently, the tendency of such a theory of religious inquiry will just tell according to the spirit in which it acts. A skeptic will develop the principle into Infidelity, a believer into Superstition; but the principle itself remains accurately the same in both."[99] The connection between the theory of Ecclesiastical Development and the infidel theory of Progress has not escaped the notice of many acute and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man, who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is driven by the rocks (of hard doctrine) and the thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of the wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed of snow, flatters himself that all is well, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... enough," replied the skeptic, "but save me from the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners—did I hear you correctly, uncle, when you ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... now goes, thou unbelieving skeptic," replied one of his comrades, laughing; "has not the gallant been seen, recognized—is he not known as one of King Edward's minions, and lords it bravely? But hark! there are chargers pricking over the plain. Hurrah! Sir ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... bring reproach on the Christian name, and a grievous curse on the nation—then assuredly, the institution of Christianity is not to blame for it; for its Author, both by precept and example taught the contrary. It was but a few days ago, that a skeptic remarked to me, "that the inconsistent conduct of professors of religion satisfied him that there was no truth in the Bible; or at all events, that there was something wrong about it." I must hasten to a close, as I cannot extend my remarks ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... infidels, no religious scoffers, among those soldiers seriously awaiting the zero hour. In the rear areas and rest billets, the profane and irreligious word might often have been heard; but face to face with Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, the skeptic was silenced. Boys who might have been hitherto negligent in approaching the Sacraments were now the first to call to me, "Father, I ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... is invaluable in diagnosing diseases and prescribing a remedy, for it reveals the hidden cause of all ailments, in a manner that has often perplexed the skeptic and dumbfounded the scoffer. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... their coming as apparitions. I always was, still am, a skeptic on the point of ghost stories in general, nevertheless I am a Christian, and I believe and know that we continue ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... light of the carbuncle bursts upon them from beneath the lifting clouds; but they now feel instinctively that it is too great a prize for their possession. The man of one idea also sees it, and his life goes out in the exultation over his final success. The skeptic appears, but cannot discover it, although his face is illumined by its light, until he takes off his large spectacles; whereupon, he instantly becomes blind. The English nobleman and the American speculator fail to discover it; the former returns to his ancestral halls, as wise as ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, who came at once to Austin and established headquarters. The women were asked to reach the remote sections, to eradicate prejudice and leave understanding in its stead.... They did all that was asked of them and more. The most confirmed skeptic on the question of women's participation in public life must have been converted had he witnessed the unselfish, tireless, efficient work of these hundreds of devoted women and the striking ability of their leader, whose genius for organization, knowledge ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... that in Catholicism as early as in Protestantism appeared the sharp rift between intellect and belief. Montaigne, a man of the world, is outwardly a conformist, but a real skeptic. A nominal Catholic, he corresponds to Shakspere, a nominal Protestant. Montaigne reveals the world of one personality as, frankly as Shakspere pictures a world of humanity, and in each the purely religious element ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the statesmen and philosophers of London used to leave the metropolis on Saturday and journey far into the country to join the crowds, often numbering twenty thousand people, that followed this preacher from village to village. David Hume, the skeptic, explained Whitefield's charm by saying that the preacher spake to his audience with the same passionate abandon with which an ardent lover speaks to his sweetheart when he pleads for her hand. But Benjamin ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 1776) was a celebrated Scotch historian and essayist. His most important work is "The History of England." He was a skeptic in matters of religion, and was a peculiarly ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... made Willet a skeptic. While he did not accept unquestioningly all the beliefs of Tayoga, neither did he wholly reject them. It might well be true that earth, air, trees and other objects were inhabited by spirits good or bad. At least it was a pleasing belief and he had no proof that it was not true. Certainly, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Carroway was capable of wondering. Her power of judgment was not so far lost as it is in a dream—where we wonder at nothing, but cast off skeptic misery—and for the moment she seemed to be brought home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her children kissing a man who was hunting in his pocket for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... He allowed the young skeptic to try the goggles on and read by the light of the lamp. He knew little of the psychology of salesmanship, but with what might be called Platonic shrewdness, he sensed that once the prospect had experienced the joys ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... glory of sacrifice, and the presence of Death, and not be moved to a contemplation of the fountain-head of these sublime mysteries. But it is the upper class which in particular has returned to the Church. Before the war, rationalist and genial skeptic, the educated Frenchman went to church because it was the thing to do, and because non-attendance would weaken an institution which the world was by no means ready to lay aside. This same educated Frenchman, brought ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... side of the woman who prayed. He is a New Englander, by birth and breeding, now living in this western state: almost a giant physically, keen mentally, a lawyer, and a natural leader. He had the conviction as a boy that if he became a Christian he was to preach. But he grew up a skeptic, read up and lectured on skeptical subjects. He was the representative of a district of his western home state in congress; in his fourth term or so I think at ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... Meslier (1678-1733), cure of Estrepigny, in Champagne, was a skeptic, but preached only strict orthodoxy to his people. It was only in his manuscript, Mon Testament, that was published after his death, and that caused a great sensation in France, that his antagonism to Christianity ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... His teeth were very sharp and white. "Very well, Mr. Hughes, since you are a skeptic, perhaps you will not object to being the subject ...
— The Doorway • Evelyn E. Smith
... knowledge, compared with what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short" [Footnote: Cicero, Qu. Ac., i. 12.]—the complaint, not of a skeptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind. [Footnote: Lucret., lib. i. 834-875.] Anaxagoras thought that this spirit [Greek: ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the Pope of Rome, the Arch-prelate of the Church. "Monk," fiercely demands Voltaire, "Monk, what is that profession of thine? It is that of having none, of engaging one's self by an inviolable oath to be a fool and a slave, and to live at the expense of others." But he was the philosophical skeptic of Paris. "Where is the town," cries Montalembert, "which has not been founded or enriched or protected by some religious community? Where is the church which owes not to them a patron, a relic, a pious and popular tradition? Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the worst in the Bible. Huxley thought it the best. Huxley was, as everybody knows, the Prince of Agnostics. We need not stop to ask why. Nobody who has read the story of John Stuart Mill's boyhood will wonder that Mill was a skeptic. And nobody who has read the story of Thomas Huxley's boyhood will wonder at his becoming an agnostic. As Edward Clodd, his biographer, says, 'his boyhood was a cheerless time. Reversing Matthew ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... ermine furs for Anna Belle,—at least they were very white furs with very black tiny tails: collar and muff of a regal splendor, and any one who declined to call them ermine would prove himself a cold skeptic. Jewel jounced up and down in ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... and dazzling flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within three days the inhabitants would give themselves up ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... of the Syracuse Journal:— If it would not be asking too much, I would beg leave to say a few words through the columns of your paper. In Saturday's issue of the Standard I notice a letter written by "Skeptic," which that paper calls "silly," and charges the writer with being "lacking in the upper story." This is a misfortune, truly; but I have taken some trouble to investigate these reports and find them vouched for by highly respectable parties. ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... that he loved to hearken to the stories of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not, like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy—he was a "self-taught" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the charm of Molly Wingate—Little Molly, as her father always called her to distinguish her from her mother—now soon were to have actual and undeniable verification to the eye of any skeptic who mayhap had doubted mere rumors of a woman's beauty. The three advance figures—the girl, Woodhull, her brother Jed—broke away and raced over the remaining few hundred yards, coming up abreast, laughing in the glee of youth exhilarated by the feel of good ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the drift of her lover's wishes. "Come, father," she cried merrily. "I am aching to see what the ship's stores, which you and Robert pin your faith to, can do for me in the shape of garments. I have the utmost belief in the British navy, and even a skeptic should be convinced of its infallibility if H.M.S. Orient is able ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... his lips, he threw himself, face downwards, on the ground beneath it, and, with his fingers clutched in the soil, lay there for some moments, silent and still. In this attitude, albeit a skeptic and unorthodox man, he prayed. I cannot say—indeed I DARE not say—that his prayer was heard, or that God visited him thus. Let us rather hope that all there was of God in him, in this crucial moment of agony ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... greatly disliked. He now acknowledged that the whole thing was a swindle, and gave details of the way in which he came to embark in it. He avowed that the idea was suggested to him by a discussion with a Methodist revivalist in Iowa; that, being himself a skeptic in religious matters, he had flung at his antagonist "those remarkable stories in the Bible about giants"; that, observing how readily the revivalist and those with him took up the cudgels for the giants, it then and there occurred to him that, since so many ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... is dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and color. The hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. He does not rise from his contemplation with the words or the feeling ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... a cousin, the Marquis de Territet, a skeptic, who lived in Burgundy, and whom all this disturbance had upset in his habits, and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal formalities, the funeral, and all the rest of it, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the principle ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... clean linen than for any article he had ever written, declared that I was about to be banished from everything like decent society; another vowed by all the deities of his Olympus that I was a mountebank and a skeptic, who had undertaken to defend sound doctrines and to tomahawk eminent writers simply by way of bringing myself into public notice; a third painted me as a poor wretch who had come from his provincial home with his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... greater influence if they will rigidly exclude from their teaching force the brilliant skeptic who "becomes the center of a coterie without his gifts, dazzled by his boldness, infected by his skepticism;" but rather employ Christian professors who will inspire a "noble ambition that unites in its scope the life that now is and that which is to come, that comprehends ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... actual and present existence can be disproved neither by analogy, philosophy, or theology, nor can it be questioned without casting a doubt also upon the whole system of our religion. This religion, by many a fanciful skeptic, has been called barren and gloomy; but setting aside all the legends of the Jews, and confining ourselves entirely to the generally received Scriptures, there will be found sufficient food for an imagination warm as that of Homer, Apelles, Phidias, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... then, as the investigation became more minute and skillful, forty, sixty, seventy-five per cent of scars in the apices of the lungs, remains of healed cavities, infected glands, or other signs of an invasion by the tubercle bacillus. Of course, the skeptic challenged very ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... conference, and before the UFO's could read the newspapers and find out that they were natural phenomena, one of them came down across the Canadian border into Michigan. The incident that occurred that night was one of those that even the most ardent skeptic would have difficulty explaining. I've heard a lot of them try and I've ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... he found it absorbing to study an original of his stamp—(he was unwearying in his observation of humanity)—and to discover his impressions of Paris. The frankness and rudeness of Christophe's remarks amused him. He was skeptic enough to admit their truth. He was not put out by the fact that Christophe was a German. On the contrary: he prided himself on being above national prejudice. And, when all was said and done, he was sincerely "human"—(that was his ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... contempt for science and skepticism together; and an unbeliever, even if learned in the stars and old bones, ranked with him as a knave or a fool, and sometimes both. His pet joke, which was not original, was that there was only one letter of difference between septic and skeptic, and of the two the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... for a full minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take a taste of ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... proof of an invisible intelligence directing this young lady to write poems which she admits she never wrote before her friend's death. The materialistic skeptic who is always ready to interpret dreams as coincidences cannot call this a coincidence before the testimony of such facts when they are brought to the eyes of an intelligent public. The would-be interpreter of human existence remains baffled and silent; ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... a thorough Alexandrian, and had been accustomed from childhood to listen to the philosophical disputations of the men about her. So she perfectly understood her brother Philip, the skeptic, when he said that he by no means denied the existence of the immortals, but that, on the other hand, he could not believe in it; that thought brought him no conviction; that man, in short, could be sure of nothing, and so could ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... against the Bible, was his peevish reflection, that it was self-contradictory in its assertions, and unmistakably distinct only in its denunciations of wrath. Here was a case in point, and one which might justly be "taken up" by a fellow, if it was worth while. As for himself, he was no skeptic. Exeter Hall might have clasped him to her breast (and would) upon that ground. He was accustomed to use the name of the Creator whenever he wished to be particularly decisive; but for any other purpose he had never named it with his lips. Even as a child, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... attitude of the Suitors toward such a view? Eurymachus is the name of their speaker now, manifestly a representative man of their kind. He derides the prophet: "Go home, old man, and forecast for thy children!" He is a scoffer and skeptic; truly a spokesman of the Suitors in their relation to the Gods, in whom they can have no living faith; through long wickedness they imagine that there is no retribution, they have come to believe their own lie. Impiety, then, is the chief fact ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... "Skeptic or not, I can assure you of one thing—that the queen had no sooner refused it than she earnestly desired ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... be frankly a skeptic and had been expressing his emotions by wagging his head and grunting. In the line of his general disbelief in every declaration and in everybody, he pulled his watch from his pocket as if to assure himself as to the real time; he had scowled at the Senator's mantel clock as ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... thing done?" questioned a young skeptic, running his tongue into his cheek in a skillful way, and distorting his whole face with a disagreeable leer. He began to suspect that he was being cheated into ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... the young skeptic, nettled at the laugh that went round, "that don't prove anything. You know," turning to The Pilot, "that there are heaps of people who ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... heart, my soul, have all been wrenched and twisted with such emotion as is not pleasant to feel nor expedient to speak about. It was too real, too heart-rending, too awful. I hate, I abhor myself for feeling things so acutely. I wish I were a skeptic, a scoffer, an atheist. I wish I could put my mind on the mechanism of the play. I wish I could believe that it all took place two thousand years ago. I wish I didn't know that this suffering on the stage was all actual. I wish I thought ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the world may not be bought at the expense of private and domestic wretchedness. So frequent and so lamentable are the proofs of human weakness in this respect, that we are sometimes tempted to believe the opinion of the cold and sneering skeptic,[112] that the two ruling passions of men are the love of pleasure and the love of action; and that all their seemingly good deeds proceed from these principles. It is not so: it is a libel on human nature: men,—even erring men,—have better motives, and higher aims: ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the further doorway, on which was worked in Gobelin tapestry a forest with its grand, imposing oaks, were pushed nervously aside. Jack Hart entered, mask in hand, and scanned the room with skeptic eye. ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... and morality. But if she can not be the Atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. Around the ideas of religion she throws her bulwark of invisibility; and the sword of the skeptic and the battering-ram of the materialist fall harmless ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Palamas, we have found every trait of the Greek character: He is religious and superstitious; a skeptic, a pagan, and a pantheist.... He is a poet and a philosopher.... He abandons himself to every impulse of the Greek soul. But he is always fond of drawing back, of concentrating, of trying to encompass in a general form the sensations and ideas which sway him. His principal and ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... of others as well as of preachers. David was a man of God; he sinned, and to this day men despise him for it. The skeptic and the infidel cease not to point to the sad spectacle. The one sin of Peter in denying his Lord stands out today as a dark stain upon his life. O my friend, if you have been defeated in your Christian life, if you have lost the sacred treasure of salvation from your heart, I adjure you today ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... book tells its own story of long and patient waiting for a specimen, of watching, of disappointments, and triumphs. I love it especially among my book children because it represents my highest ideals in the making of a nature book, and I can take any skeptic afield and prove the truth of ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... a clear and forcible display of the reasonableness and certainty of our faith in Jesus Christ as the author of immortality to man, that we ascertain the proper ground on which the modern skeptic, of whatever creed, stands when he avows his opposition to the gospel. That we may duly estimate the strength of his opposition, we must not only enumerate his objections or arguments, but we must exactly ascertain the exact position ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... aspiration. Cobden's errors, if any, have been of severity. It is maintained by those who do not love him that he has laughed many a promising youngster into a sour obscurity. And this may be true. A niggard in respect to praise, a skeptic in respect to promise, he is well known. But what he has commended has never failed of a good measure of critical recognition in the end. And he has ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... "But since you're such a skeptic, you can wait until we've hauled in the food. Come on, scientist. And unless you keep an open mind until you hear the evidence, we'll take your Junior ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... retraction &c 607. doubt &c (uncertainty) 475; skepticism, scepticism, misgiving, demure; distrust, mistrust, cynicism; misdoubt^, suspicion, jealousy, scruple, qualm; onus probandi [Lat.]. incredibility, incredibleness; incredulity. [person who doubts] doubter, skeptic, cynic.; unbeliever &c 487. V. disbelieve, discredit; not believe &c 484; misbelieve^; refuse to admit &c (dissent) 489; refuse to believe &c (incredulity) 487. doubt; be doubtful &c (uncertain) 475; doubt the truth of; be skeptical as to &c adj.; diffide^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Bargrave had been driven crazy by a cruel husband, and dreamed the whole story of the apparition. Now all this is sufficiently artful. To have vouched the fact as universally known, and believed by every one, nem. con., would not have been half so satisfactory to a skeptic as to allow fairly that the narrative had been impugned, and hint at the character of one of those skeptics, and the motives of another, as sufficient to account for their want of belief. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... and conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education; but these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances, which, even the skeptic must confess he is not. So long as a man has the power to change one habit, good or bad, for another, so long he is responsible for his own character, and this responsibility continues ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... congregation till he came to me, when grasping my hand, he exclaimed, "Praise the Lord that ever he sent you to this place." He was asked to pray. "Yes, yes," was his instant reply, "that is just what I want to do;" and such a prayer as he offered up is seldom heard. A well-known skeptic arose and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... confederate, conspirator. Acknowledge, admit, confess, own, avow. Active, agile, nimble, brisk, sprightly, spry, bustling. Advise, counsel, admonish, caution, warn. Affecting, moving, touching, pathetic. Agnostic, skeptic, infidel, unbeliever, disbeliever. Amuse, entertain, divert. Announce, proclaim, promulgate, report, advertise, publish, bruit, blazon, trumpet, herald. Antipathy, aversion, repugnance, disgust, loathing. Artifice, ruse, trick, dodge, manoeuver, wile, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and well that his early desertion of fiction is surprising. His mocking spirit has often suggested comparison with Voltaire, whom he studied and admired. He too is a skeptic and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the cave of infidelity. That there are honest skeptics in the world we all believe, and the honest skeptic is one who says, "I cannot believe as you do, and I do not know that I would if I could, but if your hope is any comfort to you, then cling to it and go down to your grave trusting ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... thou, in these wild, troubled days, Misjudged alike in blame and praise, Unsought and undeserved the same The skeptic's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
