"Skepticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately by God himself—the phenomena of the creation of life—have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of supernatural works as of natural. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... expected by the farmers of the State, but gradually their confidence waned. As they saw the new professor walking over the farm in a dilettantish way, superintending operations with gloved hands, and never touching any implement, doubts arose which soon ripened into skepticism. Typical were the utterances of our farm manager. He was a plain, practical farmer, who had taken the first prize of the State Agricultural Society for the excellence of his own farm; and, though he at first indulged in high hopes regarding the new professor, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... thinking of the true Christian standard. There is a conventional Christian standard which is more cruel and unforgiving than society's standard. But it is really definitely unchristian. Further, society is radically insincere, forgiving what can be kept secret, condoning on account of moral skepticism much general laxity, and yet breaking out into a mock moral indignation ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... particular spot is hardly one where a person would prefer to see a ghost, even if one knew it was but an optical illusion; but one evening, some years ago, when a bright moon was mounting high and swinging well around to the south, a young girl who lived near by and who had a proper skepticism for the marvels of the gossips passed this house. She was approaching it from an opposite sidewalk, when, glancing up at this belvedere outlined so loftily on the night sky, she saw with startling clearness, although pale and misty in the deep shadow of the cupola,—"It ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a somewhat doubtful tone. "I'll have to ruminate on that. However, this little glimpse of a better way than I have hitherto known, seems like an olive leaf of hope and promise to me, for I have been tossing on a restless sea of doubt and skepticism for years, reaching out and groping after some substantial plank that would float me into a haven of peace and rest. But how is it that you, so young, argue so clearly and logically about these things that have puzzled older and ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... precocious child, at seven years of age, so he tells us in his "Autobiography," he had familiarized himself with Milton's "Paradise Lost," and by the time he was ten years old he had grappled with the ages-old problems of Whence and Whither and become a skeptic! It is doubtful whether his "skepticism" really consisted of anything more than the consciousness that there were apparent contradictions in the Bible, a discovery which many a precocious lad has made at quite as early an age, and the failure of the usual theological subterfuges to satisfy a boy's frank spirit. Still, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... from the established religion carried her into the field of German skepticism. She translated Strauss' Life of Jesus. For three years her studies were interrupted by the serious illness of her father. When he died she went to Geneva and remained on the Continent a year. Then she came home and took up her residence with the Brays. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... traced back to that hive of nations, that primitive residence of mankind, the country east and south of the Caspian Sea and in the vicinity of Mount Ararat: cf. Tur. His. Ang. Sax. B. II. C. 1; also Donaldson's New Cratylus, B. I. Chap. 4. Latham's dogmatic skepticism will hardly shake the now established faith on this subject. The science of ethnography was unknown to the ancients. Tacitus had not the remotest idea, that all mankind were sprung from a common ancestry, and diffused themselves over the world from a common centre, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... superfluous to remark that precisely the members of our party's military organization assumed in October an attitude of extraordinary caution and even some skepticism toward the idea of an immediate insurrection. The closed character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical and organizational resources ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... too, was in a condition of spiritual deadness. Bishoprics and livings were sold and given to political favorites. Clergymen, like Swift and Lawrence Sterne, were worldly in their lives and immoral in their writings, and were practically unbelievers. The growing religious skepticism appeared in the Deist controversy. Numbers of men in high position were Deists; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, and Pope's brilliant friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the head of the Tory ministry, whose political ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... shield of Numa. The folly of the ancients in believing such narrations has often been the subject of remark; but, however fabulous the particular cases referred to, the moderns have been compelled to renounce their skepticism respecting the fact itself, of the actual transition of substances from celestial space to terrestrial regions; and no doubt the ancient faith upon this subject was founded on observed events. The following table, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... asserts that "an article is a word prefixed to substantives, to point them out, and to show how far their signification extends; as, "a garden, an eagle, the woman." Skepticism in grammar is no crime, so we will not hesitate to call in question the correctness of this "best of all grammars beyond all comparison." Let us consider the very examples given. They were doubtless the best that could be found. Does a "point out" the garden, or "show ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... immigration into Attica was long implicitly received. Recently the bold skepticism of German scholars —always erudite—if sometimes rash—has sufficed to convince us of the danger we incur in drawing historical conclusions from times to which no historical researches can ascend. The proofs upon which rest ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... natural taste for harmonious coloring and simple form? That dress, I will maintain, sprang as naturally from the salt sea as Aphrodite did; and the man who suspects artifice in it or invention has had his mind perverted by the skepticism of modern society." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... opinions, philosophy was gradually reduced to the ignominious confession of utter incapacity, and found its check or intellectual fall in skepticism. Xenophanes and Heraclitus mournfully acknowledged the unsatisfactory result of all the struggles of philosophy, in the admission of a universality of doubt; and the memorable effort of Socrates to rally the discomfited champions of truth, ended in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... credence; persuasion, faith; conviction, assurance, confidence; tenet, dogma, creed, opinion, doctrine, cult, view, principle; intuition; superstition, fanaticism. Antonyms: doubt, disbelief, skepticism, misgiving, incredulity. Associated Words: credulous, incredulous, credulity, credibility, incredibility, gull, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to have a better view of the newcomer. Those upon the opposite side of the pyramid crowded to the front as the words of the old warrior reached them. Skeptical were the expressions on most of the faces; but theirs was a skepticism marked with caution. No matter which way fortune jumped they wished to be upon the right side of the fence. For a moment all eyes were centered upon Tarzan and then gradually they drifted to Ko-tan, for from his attitude would they receive the cue that would determine theirs. But Ko-tan ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inception of modern Science on your Earth, based on the scientific method of investigation, its devotees adopted a spirit of skepticism concerning all problems of human activity not susceptible to measurement with the foot-rule, or analysis with the test tube, with the result that the newer Science of Psychology was invented to supply a reasonable and material explanation for ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... child-like simplicity, where man saw and adored the Deity in all his works, heard his laughter in the ripple of the stream, his voice in the thunder-storm and saw his anger in the writhen bolt, to the present age of skepticism, where he can see his Creator nowhere; and, blinder than his barbarian ancestors—knowing more of processes but less of principles—protests that Force is the only Demiurgus, dead ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this, any one doubts the fact that evaporation tends to produce cold, let him countenance his skepticism, by wetting his face with warm water, and going into the air in a Winter's day, and his faith will be ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... going back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a cheerful Machiavelian drunkenness which quite satisfied all my instincts of skepticism, an idea ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... like so many little hands tugging at his heart-strings and moistening his eyes, he realized that there was needed in this hurrying, selfish life of ours something deeper, and something beyond the skepticism of Voltaire and the materialism of Ingersoll. And there in that dim little room, with two dozen poorly clad and simple fisher-folk singing gospel hymns to the accompaniment of a wheezy cottage organ, he realized that while atheism and doubt might appeal to his intellect, it did ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the role of theology, but sought only to know men and things. In one sense Buddhism is atheism, or rather, atheistic humanism. In one sense, also, the solution of the mystery of God, of life, and of the universe, which Gautama and his followers attained, was one of skepticism rather than of faith. Buddhism is, relatively, a very modern religion; it is one of the new faiths. Is it paradoxical to say that ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... friend came to me with the confession that for several years she had masturbated, and had become such a slave to the habit that she severely suffered from its ill effects. At that time I had never heard of self-abuse by women. I listened to her story with much sympathy and interest, but some skepticism, and determined to try experiments upon myself, with the idea of getting to understand the matter in order to assist my friend. After some manipulation, I succeeded in awakening what had before been unconscious and unknown. I purposely allowed the habit to grow ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... deep, do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... that beset his mind, at times betrayed him into skepticism—he has doubted if there be a Providence! I have heard him say, "God has built a brave world, but methinks he has left his creatures to bustle in it ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no document or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all inquiries, historical skepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... He laughed with skepticism, but plied his paddle again. He was not as concerned about the launch as he pretended, of course; at the worst it probably meant that Stinson had been entertaining some of his friends on the sly. He had no intention ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... lassitude in vital energy. One becomes blase, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. How many young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, like a sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, our vices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. What reflections upon ourselves these youths weary of life force us to make! What announcements are graven on ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... It is a matter of course that in these premises any appreciable illiteracy is an intolerable handicap. So is also any training which discourages habitual self-reliance and initiative, or which acts as a check on skepticism; for the skeptical frame of mind is a necessary part of the intellectual equipment that makes for advance, invention and understanding in the field of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... shoes when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's impossible armies? If much that we read as literal history turns out legend and myth, are we to find a painful alternative between a blind credulity and as blind a skepticism? We follow this same re-reading of Roman and Grecian story untroubled, and see the heroes of our childhood turn into races and sun-myths without calling the Muse of History ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... be uncovered during a drought, without the desired result immediately following. In cases of long continued rains, its intervention has been equally happy. I have heard several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous qualities of the picture, hint that the barometer was consulted on these occasions; else, say they, why was not the picture uncovered before the mischief had gone so far? What an idea is suggested by ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Tractarian movement, but soon underwent the radical revolution of thought revealed by his first treatise, the "Nemesis of Faith," which appeared in 1849, and created a sensation. Its tendency to skepticism cost him his fellowship, but its profound pathos, its accent of tenderness, and its fervour excited wide admiration. Permanent fame was secured by the appearance, in 1856, of the first two instalments of his magnificent work, "The History of England, from the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... established human authorities, without a trace of the heresy of suspecting their genuineness, had at last experienced a reversal. True, the boy had been born in the early hours of nineteenth century doubt and religious skepticism. The so-called scientific spirit, buried for ages beneath the debris of human conjecture, was painfully emerging and preening its wings for flight. The "higher criticism" was nascent, and ancient traditions were already beginning to totter on the foundations which the Fathers had set. But Spain, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Antiquaries, brought out his own "edition" of the poems, with a commentary providing extensive historical proof of what Bryant "ascertained."[8] The remarks of Warton and Tyrwhitt suddenly seemed hasty and superficial. Warton had clearly outlined his reasons for skepticism, but he offered to show "the greatest deference to decisions of much higher authority."[9] Tyrwhitt had also hesitated to be dogmatic. He saw fit to suggest that, since Chatterton had always been equivocal, the authenticity of the poems could be judged ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... reason why such a course as that which you complete to-night is necessary and valuable. I have heard instruction of this kind deprecated as likely to bring disturbing elements into the mind. One may doubtless change from belief to skepticism by too much searching. It used to be a standing joke in Yale College, when I was a student there, that a well-known professor reputed to be an Atheist, had been perfectly orthodox until he had heard President Porter's lectures on the "Evidences of Christianity." But seriously, this objection ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... at other places who felt less skepticism. The report from Vale went to the Military Information Center and thence to the Pentagon. Meanwhile the Information Center ordered a photo-reconnaissance plane to photograph Boulder Lake from aloft. In the Pentagon, hastily alerted staff officers began to draft orders to be ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... outlaws. It is much more remarkable, however, that, still retaining his faith in king and nobles, Church and State, he should have pushed his appreciation of such men to the degree of marvellously comprehending—nay, enjoying—certain types of skepticism which sprang up in fiercest opposition to authority; urged into existence by its abuses, as germs of plants have been thought to be electrified into life by sharp blows. And it is most remarkable of all, that he did this at a time when ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... arguments I have rehearsed indicate conclusively that in the laws of thought we have the norms of absolute truth—and skepticism on this point can be skepticism and not belief only by virtue of the very law which it ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... But skepticism aroused Blaze's indignation. With elaborate sarcasm he retorted: "I reckon that's why my best team of mules run away and dragged me through a ten-acre patch of grass burrs—on my belly, eh? It's a wonder I wasn't killed. I reckon I smoked so much that I give a tobacco ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... derogatory to the "Majesty of heaven and earth" to conceive of him as occupied with our mean affairs, numbering the hairs of our heads, and guiding the sparrow's fall. But the blow which crushed her heart, destroyed its skepticism. She saw so clearly in this dispensation, the hand of a Father chastening his erring child; she felt so keenly that she deserved the rod, for having in a measure worshipped the gift more than the giver, that she believed, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... it. But there was a kind of reassurance in such hearty skepticism. With each passing minute, that ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... matriculation, without any attempt to understand them. "Our venerable mother," says the great historian from whom we have already quoted, "had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference"; and these blended influences, which led Gibbon first to Rome, and then to skepticism, proved no doubt to the average mind a mere narcotic to all spiritual life. Gibbon is not the only great writer who has recorded his testimony against Hanoverian Oxford. Adam Smith in that work which has been called, with pardonable exaggeration, "the most important book that ever was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and several companies which wished to gain control of ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... during the last few years of his life he used to lock the outer doors of his house twice a day and then engage in private prayer; on the other hand, friends of Burton who knew him and were with him almost to the last have received this statement with skepticism. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... case is a classic example of discordant personality. You all remember his half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan, his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own weakness of will when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown off the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... certain provinces of France, old religious customs which are full of charming simplicity. May they endure and ever hold out against the icy breath of skepticism, the cold rules of the beautiful, and the wearisome ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... of woman throughout Christendom has been going on only where these doctrines have been outgrown or modified through the influence of science, of skepticism, and of liberal thought generally. That the Bible does teach that woman's position should be one of subordination and submission to man, and that through her first came sin into the world, is indisputable; and I do not see how such teachings, believed to be direct from God, can be accepted ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... old man be whom we saw with them?" asked Harry eagerly, his mind no longer containing an ounce of skepticism to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Skepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... part of his work is more miscellaneous, but most of it is in some sense philosophical or autobiographical. Believing profoundly in scientific method, Renan was unable to find in science a basis for either ethics or metaphysics, and ended in a skepticism often ironical, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the discontents, the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... you cry out? Mr. Stirling, am I not right?" Madame appealed to the one face on which no amusement or skepticism was shown. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... their disagreements among themselves, and went over to the Sufis, the pietists and mystics of the Mohammedan faith. There are a number of resemblances between Gazali and Halevi as Kaufmann has shown, and there is no doubt that skepticism in respect of the powers of the human reason on the one hand, and a deep religious sense on the other are responsible for the point of view of Gazali as well as Halevi. But there is this additional motive in Halevi that he was defending a persecuted race and a ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the back of my brain, all the while, was some shadow of doubt, of skepticism, of reiterated self-warning that it was all too good to be true. It wasn't until I looked over the well-gnawed top rail of Slip-Along's broken manger and saw that blessed boy there, by the light of Whinnie's lantern, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Tens of thousands of Egyptians continue to regard her one of the great powers. They never believed the news of her defeat in the Balkans and the reoccupation of Adrianople confirmed them in their skepticism. At the same time, a secret German propaganda for some years before the war did much to spread abroad the doctrine of German invincibility. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a section of the population holds entirely erroneous ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... The skepticism of factory workers appals me. They suspect everybody and everything from the boss down. I believed almost everything about Mame, especially since she paid back all she ever borrowed. No one else in that factory believed ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... 2002, and 6.3% in 2003. Further reforms will come slowly because of strong political forces backing government controls. The economy remains vulnerable to higher fuel prices, poor agricultural weather, and the skepticism of foreign investors. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... transformation or to demonstrate the great principle of a spiritual ascension from our decayed bodies, of those seraphic hosts, who are to stand as ministering angels around the majesty of Heaven, through all the never ending cycles of eternity, no matter what objections skepticism may urge of the impossibility of conceiving how the dead can be raised up to a newness of life. Our faith receives it as a revealed fact, and our hearts rejoice in the glorious hope, because we know that our Redeemer liveth, and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... 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 outlines of men and things; and these ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... as well have urged the stones in the streets to cry out in behalf of the perishing captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, the chilling apathy, the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that were revealed on that memorable occasion! My soul was on fire then, as it is now, in view of such a development. Every soul in the room was heartily opposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and enrage the South to know that an anti-slavery society existed ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... able to say no to Ray, but even he looked dubious at the small gray fellow's voluble outpouring of pseudo-scientific jargon. Ray, made sensitive by years of open skepticism on the part of many listeners, caught the look and insisted on a ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with her—accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso, misterioso!"—she maintained her bitter skepticism, and the curtain fell on her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent away ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the Deep Place—prease! He was a pitiable object, could Martin have found pity for him in his heart. He was no longer the suave, dapper Japanese gentleman. His boasted gentility was gone with his courage; and superstitious terror had quite overcome his Western skepticism. He was just a yellow coolie, terror-stricken, cringing before ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... perceiving the electric flash he had excited, "skepticism is a disease of my intellect. Perhaps the most noticeable and palpable fact of the moment is the presence and identity of the Duke who is opposite to me; and yet, doubting as I sometimes do my own existence, is it not natural, that, philosophically speaking, the presence and identity of your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... placed this legend beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in the legend myself, and in so doing have profited much from the examples of divers grant-claimants, who have often jostled me in their more practical researches, and who have my sincere sympathy at the skepticism of a modern hard-headed ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... had friends who had "seen flying saucers" at some time, but both had openly voiced their skepticism. Now, from what the colonels said when they were interviewed after landing at Colorado Springs, they had changed ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... prepossessed in his favor. They conversed frequently upon topics which Mr. Abbot had long been in the habit of scoffing at, but there was an element of reverence in Mr. Heath's nature that commanded his respect in spite of preconceived ideas and a tendency to skepticism. His arguments were always reasonable and convincing. He could not fail to feel this influence; and it was not long before Virgie could see that a great change had taken place in her father's feelings regarding his relations to an overruling power and the future, which hitherto had seemed ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... note of skepticism, turned and looked The Roman haughtily in the face, then, turning to Jimmy, he said in a ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to recover from the surprise occasioned by Britz's revelation. He became aware of a growing skepticism that refused to accept so obvious an explanation of the puzzling circumstances surrounding the merchant's death. Surely the same solution would have suggested itself to him ere this were it possible for twenty hours to have elapsed between the time of the shooting and ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... in which he not only tried to prove that Dr. Faustus had never been at Wittenberg, but pronounced his whole story fabulous. An attempt like this would not surprise us in our own time, the age of historical skepticism; but the seventeenth century gave credit to narratives having much slighter foundation. Although this dissertation was full of historical mistakes and erroneous statements, it made some sensation, as is proved by its four successive editions. It was also translated into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... no declaration was signed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, except by the clerk and presiding officer of the Continental Congress. Consequently, the Pine Creek story arouses justifiable skepticism. However, there does seem to be some evidence ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... and humility is necessary in this work of healing. The loving patience of Jesus, we must strive to emulate. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" has daily to be exemplified; and, although [10] skepticism and incredulity prevail in places where one would least expect it, it harms not; for if serving Christ, Truth, of what can mortal opinion avail? Cast not your pearls before swine; but if you cannot bring peace to all, you can to many, if ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... whether groping in the night of barbarism or walled in by the skepticism of an advanced civilization, has felt at one time or another, an irrestrainable longing to draw aside the veil which shuts out the great hereafter, and solve the mystery of the life that is to come. Many a time is the heart ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... they have them. I know not how, as a general fact, they came by them. I can only say that they are often very early imbibed; and that they grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength. Would to Heaven this utter skepticism in regard to female worth and purity could be removed; or rather prevented. It is the bane of social life—as I could show, were I disposed to do ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... has been extensively adopted by philosophers, especially on the continent of Europe; and its ultimate reaction on the public mind had no small share, we believe, in creating that universal skepticism which at last broke forth upon Europe, in all the horrors of the French Revolution. While the profoundest minds were speculating themselves into the belief that sin was the necessary means of the ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... into your thinking a lively doubt about all classifications and general terms, for they are the basis of statistical measurement. That done you are fairly proof against seduction. No better popular statement of this is to be found than H. G. Wells' little essay: "Skepticism of the Instrument." Wells has, of course, made no new discovery. The history of philosophy is crowded with quarrels as to how seriously we ought to take our classifications: a large part of the battle about Nominalism turns on this, the Empirical and Rational traditions divide on it; in our ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the demand of the moment was George's forte. Indeed, there were those among his friends who felt that there were moments when George lived up to things too brightly and too beautifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his openly skeptical moments. But George even lived up to his uncle's skepticism. He accepted his remarks with charming good humor. It was his pride that he could laugh ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... yet I read, I talk, I teach, I write, but to no effect; it is as though I were walking in my sleep. The Buddhist tendency in me blunts the faculty of free self-government and weakens the power of action; self-distrust kills all desire, and reduces me again and again to a fundamental skepticism. I care for nothing but the serious and the real, and I can take neither myself nor my circumstances seriously. I hold my own personality, my own aptitudes, my own aspirations, too cheap. I am forever making light of myself in the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... God at one of our meetings. She was converted at the same time. She had brought two of her daughters to the meeting, desiring that they too should know Christ. I said to the mother: "How is it with your skepticism now?" "Oh," said she, "it is all gone." When Christ gets into the heart, atheism must go out; if a man will only come and take one trustful, loving look at the Saviour, there will be no ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... (Brass), an attack on the worship of money; 'Le Fils de Giboyer' (Giboyer's Boy), the story of a father's devotion, ambitions, and self-sacrifice; 'Maitre Guerin' (Guerin the Notary), the hero being an inventor; 'La Contagion' (Contagion), the theme of which is skepticism; 'Paul Forestier,' the story of a young artist; 'Le Post-Scriptum' (The Postscript); 'Lions et Renards' (Lions and Foxes), whose motive is love of power; 'Jean Thommeray,' the hero of which is drawn from Sandeau's novel of the same title; 'Madame Caverlet,' hinging on the divorce question; 'Les ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy—I will add, deplorable. Through what faults or infirmities of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixity of the earth itself may equally outlast the notion of the fixity ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... than six weeks now since his experience in Queen's Gate, and he had gone through a variety of emotions. Bewildered terror was the first, a nervous interest the next, a truculent skepticism the third; and lately, to his astonishment, the nervous interest had ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... pain produced by an unexpected blow on the head, but only the sad consciousness that they must part with the children. But even this consciousness was dimmed by the impressions of the day. The fathers and the mothers looked at their children with mingled sensations, in which the skepticism of parents toward their children and the habitual sense of the superiority of elders over youth blended strangely with the feeling of sheer respect for them, with the persistent melancholy thought that ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... For, as skepticism is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discontent is the mother of progress. The man is comparatively of little use in the world who ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... to please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance to the course of events marked by the stars is bound to result in confusion. And here's another striking coincidence: You mentioned casually that Isabel spoke of buried treasure in the far north. I'm ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... extensive—that the feeling in my mind from the moment they began to appear until we left them has been one of intense surprise and of incredulity. Every day spent in surveying them has revealed to me some new beauty, and now that I have left them, I begin to feel a skepticism which clothes them in ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... consciousness of walls, which, though invisible, are none the less impassable, and of chains, though light as air, yet stronger than brass or iron. And everywhere is the machinery ready, though different in its frame and operation in different torture-chambers, to crush out the budding skepticism, and to mould the mind into the monotonous decency of general conformity. Foe or Fetish, King or Kaiser, Deity itself or the vicegerents it has appointed in its stead, are answerable for it all. God himself has looked upon it, and it is very good, and there is no appeal from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... who have really studied the phenomena of the sensitives, starting with absolute skepticism, have come to a new form of the old belief; and when, of the remaining minority, the weight of respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of judgment, how does the argument look? Isn't it at least one of those cases of new phenomena where it is well to be on guard against old mental habits, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the ferns, delicate and elfin, with a shy perplexity on her face. It was difficult to speak even to Mother about wood-ladies without a pretence of skepticism. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... His skepticism he indicates in references, for example, to Paracelsus and van Helmont. Their specific remedy against "the stone," he says, and their claims that they can reduce stones to "insipid water, is so strange (not to say incredible) ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... smattering of scientific knowledge, dismissed the thing as some harmless meteorological manifestation that, while interesting, was not necessarily dangerous. And there were many, inclined to incredulity and skepticism, who believed that they were witnessing a hoax or an advertising ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... do grieve—in spite of your grinning skepticism and your bantering attitude. See here, Tom; I've started about a thousand times to say ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... world would collapse without Mind, without the in- telligence which holds the winds in its grasp. Neither 209:12 philosophy nor skepticism can hinder the march of the Science which reveals the supremacy of Mind. The im- manent sense of Mind-power enhances the glory of Mind. 209:15 Nearness, not distance, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... were no illusion, and in 1881 Schiaparelli added to the astonishment created by his original discovery, and furnished additional grounds for skepticism, by announcing that, at certain times, many of the canals geminated, or became double! He continued his observations at each subsequent opposition, adding to the number of the canals observed, and charting them with classical names upon ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... Raeburn was the very last man to understand or sympathize with any phase of life through which he had not himself passed. He had never been troubled with religious doubts; skepticism seemed to him monstrous and unnatural. He met the confession, which his son had made in pain and diffidence, with a most deplorable want of tact. In answer to the perplexing questions which were put to him, he merely replied testily ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... on. "Poor old idiot, she was certain that planchette would tell who it was that stole our chickens. I told her to go ahead—but planchette wouldn't write. Cousin Parnelia laid it to the blighting atmosphere of skepticism of this house." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... believe that no man, who knows me personally or by reputation, will suspect the honesty of my skepticism. If I were politic, and intent only on my own preferment or pecuniary interest, I should swim with the strong tide of public sentiment instead of breasting its powerful influence. The hazard is too great, the labor too burdensome, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison |
