"Irrational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say who is the "funkiest" oarsman before a race that I know. I mean by "funk," not the under-estimating of one's chances—for some of the most nervous men have a very shrewd idea of them—but the irrational excitement which keeps the brain constantly thinking of the impending race, and prevents the sufferer from sitting still or having any comfort, or, in the most serious cases, any sleep, for two or three days before it. It is a real malady, which is most distressing to those who are subject ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. To such, however, I would not advise trusting too much. The bore is harmless, no doubt, as long as you listen to him; but disregarded, or stopped in mid-career, he will turn upon you. It is a fatal, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... correcting the erroneous reference of the Translator, I can find no such case alluded to in the chapter. But Caelius Aurelianus mentions two modes of treatment employed by Asclepiades, into both of which the use of wine entered, as being "in the highest degree irrational and dangerous." [Caelius Aurel. De Morb. Acut. et Chron. lib. I. cap. xv. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he saith in favour of some Popish doctrines, above what some other learned Protestants have said, is not so much by way of assertion or justification of them, as to shew what reasons they may justly be thought to proceed upon, and so not to be go irrational or impious as they are ordinarily accounted; and this only in order to the peace of the christian world, that we may have as much charity to others and not as high animosities, live with all men as sweetly and amicably, and peaceably, and not as bitterly as is possible, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Berganza; and what makes the miracle greater is, that we not only speak but hold intelligent discourse, as though we had souls capable of reason; whereas we are so far from having it, that the difference between brutes and man consists in this, that man is a rational animal and the brute is irrational. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Hindoos turns on the battles between the Asuras, the irrational demons of the air, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... strong interest in science and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter. It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when the public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... bad in things of use, including buildings. Oxford and Cambridge profess to give a liberal education; but you have only to look at their modern buildings to see that their teachers themselves do not know a good building from a bad one. They, like all the rest of us, think that taste in art is an irrational mystery; they trust in the expert and usually in the wrong one, as the ignorant and superstitious trust in the wrong priest. For as religion is merely mischievous unless it is tested in matters of conduct, so taste is mere pedantry or frivolity unless it is tested on things ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... was the sort of little device which really made them think themselves in love, and gave the salt to the whole affair. Moreover, there was this ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did. So that Cecil had not only her fair fame, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... caricaturing and disfiguring the beauty of the genuine blessing; then good is changed to evil, and the evil is the greater, the more comprehensive the truth that is so shamefully abused. It is absurd and may entail sad consequences upon the world, if the rational use of Apis is to be converted to the irrational proceedings of the so-called specific method, which is often practised by men who, knowing better, purposely conceal the truth from the world. For years past, I have been called upon again and again, by patients who had been in the hands of these ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... hear him your own selves;' so he called him, and he came and told his tale so punctually, and affirmed its truth with such ample grounds, that Mansoul fell presently under a conviction of the truth of what he said. The preacher did also back him, saying, 'Sirs, it is not irrational for us to believe it, for we have provoked Shaddai to anger, and have sinned Emmanuel out of the town; we have had too much correspondence with Diabolonians, and have forsaken our former mercies: no marvel then, if ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... consider. Jean—the girl of his fondest dreams, who had forsaken him and fallen under the spell of the courtly manners of the suave soldier-engineer. What would Jean think? If she loved the man she would never believe in his guilt. She would believe, with a woman's irrational loyalty, that he, Hedin, had in some manner contrived to place the coat in Wentworth's possession, and he knew that the engineer would never cease to proclaim that he had been made the dupe of a scheming lover. The case against the man must be plain. When Jean could be shown that Wentworth ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... the detective melancholy; but he had not yet begun to reflect on how the passing of a dearly loved husband would change the life of Mrs. Pendean. He suddenly felt himself thrust out of the situation forever, yet resented his own conviction as irrational. ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... exact: every beast, all cattle, every creeping thing, every fowl, and every bird, after their kind went in; and saith he again, they that went in, went in two and two; as if there had been an intelligence among these irrational creatures, that the flood was shortly to be upon the earth. Indeed, many among the sensitives have strange instincts, as appendixes to their nature, by which they do, and leave to do, to the astonishment of them that have reason: But that any instinct in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Motley had not recalled it. But the judgment of the world concerning her, in her present state, is not more flattering than that of the author of Hudibras, who, in addition to venting his spleen against the people, employs his wit upon the irrational land, calling it, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and our intelligences are a product of nature and a part of her remedial powers. So there is nothing in the slightest degree irrational or inconsistent in our attempting to assist ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... inclination to laugh, but I restrained myself; and a sudden and very irrational impulse made me say that she was a relation of mine. The words had no sooner escaped me than I bit my lip, for this stupid lie could only do me harm, but it was decreed that I should do nothing at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... he flung it as far from him to leeward as possible, at the same moment ordering his companion to give way for home again with all speed. This was done whilst the terror of his attack was still upon him; but it was not in the nature of a man of Henderson's training to give way for long to so irrational a fear as that which prompted this action, and in less than a month afterwards he had, with the adoption of all proper precautions, secured another and far more liberal supply of the singular essence, with a view to future experiments ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... mere creeds, because a man's good or evil deeds become a series of actions with inevitable consequences. If you teach him that he can throw off the results of a bad life, and of all it has entailed upon his fellow man, by a brief spell of penitence, or a blind, irrational faith in the sacrifice of a Being he has neglected and ignored during the greater part of that life, you really are only pandering to the selfish and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... we may perhaps add the Anglo-French school of book-collecting, works on lines which to a normal lover of books must at first appear rather mysterious and strange, if not absolutely irrational. The closest analogy which it is in our power to suggest is the almost parallel sentiment and policy in regard to other branches of inquiry—china, furniture, numismatics. The Frenchman and his English disciple have no respect whatever as collectionneurs for substantial value, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... heaven and in earth, "upholding all things by the word of his power," the universe is His magazine of means. Nothing which acts or exists, is exempted from promoting in its own place the purposes of His kingdom. Beings rational and irrational, animate and inanimate; the heavens above, and the earth below; the obedience of sanctified, and the disobedience of unsanctified men; all holy spirits; all damned spirits; in one word, every agency, every element, every atom, are but the ministers of His will, and concur in the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... confident expectation of success, but his feelings had then been very suddenly changed. His confidence had arisen from the influence of a dream, his dejection from a cause more frivolous still; so that he was equally irrational in his hope and in ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... be true, a society to circulate Bibles is a most irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy and money. We cannot ignore the extent and severity of the opposition to the very idea of revelation, even if we would; we should not if we could. We are told with some exaggeration—the wish being father to the thought—that the educated mind of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... leaned, as if for support, against the casing of the door. He looked at her curiously, wondering what her mental processes were like, and saying to himself, with mingled chagrin and philosophy, that it was impossible to deal with a creature so irrational, but that fortunately he was not responsible for her movements His glance wandered about the studio, noting with artistic appreciation the pleasant coloring of a heap of cushions thrown carelessly on the divan. He wondered if it would have been ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... merest chance it happened to be Ephraim Gundry's. I was quite surprised, and told him so; and he said that he also was surprised at meeting me in this way. Remembering how long I had been here, I thought this most irrational, but checked myself from saying so, because he looked so poorly. And more than that, I asked him kindly how he was this evening, and smoothed my dress to please his eye, and offered him a chair of rock. But he took no notice ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... he pleases. In this sort of dream he raves and resolves, he fights or he flies, and then wakes to confused memory of just what the author thinks fit to call to his recollection. It is very interesting and edifying, truly, to watch the movements of an irrational puppet! I do beg of you, when you take up the functions of the novelist, not to distribute this species of intoxication amongst your dramatis personae, more largely than is absolutely necessary. Keep them in a rational state as long as you can. Depend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is bound up on the one hand with ideas and on the other with bodily states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration of the central place of the emotions in the realm of ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... my own observation; and that they should not conform to the common usage of maritime nations—both savage and civilized—in this particular is improbable. Even the Chinese—who are generally admitted to be the most unconforming and irrational people in the world—reef their sails, at least, in the orthodox way. Besides taking a practical view of the matter, how are they in any sudden emergency, and with their limited crews, to undo the elaborate lacing, without going ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... a protection is a deceitful thing," as the Scotch translator of KING DAVID has it, and I entirely agree with him. I rather wish to be protected from a horse, than expect any succour from a creature so large, muscular and irrational. Far from being "courageous," as his friends say, the horse (I am not speaking of the war-horse) is afraid of almost everything, that is why I am afraid of him. He is a most nervous animal, and I am a nervous rider. He is afraid of a bicycle or a wheel-barrow, which do not alarm the most timid ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... to all the opportunity for steady and productive employment, to remove from all the handicap of arbitrary or irrational exclusion, to offer to all the facilities for education and health and welfare, to make society the servant of the individual and the individual the source of progress, and thus to realize for all the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... me other phenomena which I do not consider as beings like myself, but as irrational objects. Speculation finds it easy to show how the conception of such objects develops itself purely from my power of conception and its necessary modes of action. But I comprehend these same things also through need and craving and enjoyment. It is not the conception—no, it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... quite clearly that with people just as they are now, with their prejudices, their ignorances, their misapprehensions, their unchecked vanities and greeds and jealousies, their crude and misguided instincts, their irrational traditions, no Socialist State can exist, no better State can exist, than the one we have now with all its squalor and cruelty. Every change in human institutions must happen concurrently with a change of ideas. Upon this plastic, uncertain, teachable thing Human Nature, within us and without, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a savage, must be familiar with arms. He must ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... That an irrational custom," went on Professor Haddock, "prevents respectable young ladies from making love, a thing they would enjoy doing, whilst mercenary girls do it too much and without getting any enjoyment out of it. It is indeed deplorable. But M. Leon ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the people derived great benefit; disputes never went beyond the ears of the chief minister, and, in the words of the immortal barber and poet of the city, "the kingdom flourished under the guidance of a mule; which proves that there are qualities in the irrational beings which even wisest ministers would ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... the Don Quixote of Provenal troubadours, must have had a touch of this madness, when, after having fallen in love with a lady of Carcassone, named Loba, or the Wolfess, the excess of his passion drove him over the country, howling like a wolf, and demeaning himself more like an irrational beast than ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... thinks at all upon religion, however misbelieving, can entertain any mental prejudice against the existence of a Deity, or against the received character of His attributes. Such a man would be merely in a savage state, irrational: whilst his own mind, so speculating, would stand itself proof positive of an Intellectual Father; either immediately, as in the first man's case, or mediately, as in our own, it must have sprung out of that Being, who is emphatically the Good One—God. But if, as is possible, a mind, capable ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... failure to do this at the last session of Congress are well known and deeply to be regretted. With the opening prospects of increased prosperity and national greatness which the acquisition of these rich and extensive territorial possessions affords, how irrational it would be to forego or to reject these advantages by the agitation of a domestic question which is coeval with the existence of our Government itself, and to endanger by internal strifes, geographical divisions, and heated contests for political power, or for any other ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... sense which makes people pessimists in politics, the sense of the hopeless height of the high places of the earth. That pile of wealth and power, whatever was its name, went up above and beyond me like a cliff that no living thing could climb. I had an irrational sense that this thing had to be fought, that I had to fight it; and that I could offer nothing to the occasion but an indolent ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... patroon have remained content with his bottle?" he grumbled. "But his mind must needs run to this frivolous and irrational proceeding! There's something reasonable in pilfering a purse, but carrying off a woman—Yet ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... is not likely to proceed from a spirit, but merely fortuitious. 3. That the inconstancy of such notices, in cases equally important, proves they did not proceed from any such agent. 4. That as our most distinct dreams had nothing in them of any significancy, it would be irrational and vain to think that they came from heaven. And, 5. That as men were not always thus warned or supplied with notice of good or evil, so all men are not alike supplied with them; and what reason could ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... have embraced Christianity, can by no means be called the inheritance or subjects of Jesus, since they have since the days of Constantine and the Counsel of Nice renounced his doctrines, and perverted his religion into "a fabulous, irrational and blasphemous superstition,"[fn29] for as much as all of them, except a handful of Unitarian Christians, are worshippers of three Divine Beings united by an ineffable union; and by far the greater part ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... SCRAPS OF POETRY, &c., by ROBERT BURNESS: a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational and irrational.—As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... other interiors in him that follow in accordance with the degrees of order. This inmost or highest degree may be called the entrance of the Lord to the angel or man, and His veriest dwelling-place in them. It is by virtue of this inmost or highest that a man is a man, and is distinguished from irrational animals, for these do not have it. From this it is that man, unlike the animals, is capable, in respect to all his interiors which pertain to his mind and disposition, of being raised up by the Lord to Himself, of believing in the Lord, ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... an irrational anger at his words. "Old fool! She has only fainted," I returned. "Get ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... I got—I know not how—I got into the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at last: I got into the Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone, gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days, I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... had not carefully gauged his syringe, and the over-amount of morphia thrown into his system so stimulated him that his words appeared exceedingly irrational to the young man, whose judgment was based on unusual shrewdness and common-sense. He was greatly puzzled by the sudden change in his companion. It was evident that he had not been drinking, for his breath was untainted and his utterance was natural. But his face was flushed, and he ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... on the part of many farmers to regard fertilizers only as stimulants, due to the irrational use of certain materials, but a good commercial fertilizer is a carrier of some or all of the necessary elements that we find in stable manures. They may carry nitrogen, phosphoric acid, or potash,—any one or two or the three,—and ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... English artist of the Eighteenth Century, William Hogarth, of the mad house in London know as Bedlam. If he were here, he might draw a companion picture of the Tombs. The one is as much as the other a crazy, incoherent, irrational, futile place, yet embodying very accurately a certain aspect of the civic attitude toward the insanity of vice and crime of the day. There is nothing intelligent, purposeful, trenchant or radical about it; it is planted in ignorance and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... however little power she had in other respects, when compared with the mistresses of the king; but the daughter of Stanislaus Leckzinski was a gentle, admirable woman, although somewhat narrow-minded, and wholly given up to irrational devotional exercises and bigotry. Like her father, she was altogether in the hands of the Jesuits, blindly and unconditionally their servant; such an attachment to a religious order, and such blind devotedness as hers would be quite incredible, if we did not possess her own ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... was of a murderous force, ten thousand bolts of irrational lightning raging around the country, striking a thousand ...
— Watchbird • Robert Sheckley
... in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension and depression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the day proceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth upon my customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty with dust. The court had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of sun fled over ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people, which, amidst the common degeneracy, alone preserved the faith of a better age. It is by no means improbable that this superstition, the most irrational and the most unsocial into which Protestant Christianity has ever been corrupted by human prejudices and passions, may still linger in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would have made allowances for the cause. Before resorting to extreme measures in defending his charge, he first would have sought to bring them to their senses. Drunken men are men unbalanced, irrational. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... he is fantastic, it is reproachfully asked if poetry is not fantastic, and if you do not like poetry? If you intimate small affection for Little Nell and Little Paul, you are a brute; if you hint that his social crusades were often quite irrational, and sometimes at least as mischievous as they were beneficial, you are a parasite of aristocracy and a foe of "the people." If you take exception to his repetitions, his mannerisms, his tedious catch-processes of various kinds, you are a "stop-watch critic" ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... evil as still consumes his being is not popular in these days, and may perhaps be regarded as irrational. But we should do well to remind ourselves that while those who regard evil merely as a vestigial memory of human evolution do little or nothing to check its ravages, men like General Booth, and the men and ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... there is much immoderate and irrational grief, the disposition, with many, is to forget the dead as soon as possible, and forever. Some need to think far more of the deceased. They should remember that the dead are alive; that no doubt they think of them; and that, instead of being separated farther and farther from the deceased, by ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... child, etc. Between the father and the child there is no mysterious correlation; the child is a multiplication of him; the father is duplicated, and in order that no harm may come to the helpless, irrational creature, a miniature of himself, he must demean himself ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... not irrational belief that as "either sex alone is half itself," and "each fulfils defects in each," there was created for every male soul some feminine spirit, whose heart was capable of responding to the finest pulses of his; one who could meet his largest requirements; ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... commons,'—Here of is the sign of the genitive or possessive case, and commons is of that case, governed of proceedings."—Alex. Murray's Gram., p. 95. "Here let it be observed again that, strictly speaking, no verbs have numbers nor persons, neither have nouns nor pronouns persons, when they refer to irrational creatures and inanimate things."—S. Barrett's Gram., p. 136. "The noun or pronoun denoting the person or thing addressed or spoken to, is in the nominative case independent."—Frost's El. of Gram., Rule 8th, p. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... publish or conceal the betrothal as he chose and as she chose. Yes, useless! He felt, inexplicably, a criminal. He felt that he had committed an enormity. It was not a matter of argument; it was a matter of instinct. The old man's frightful and irrational resentment was his condemnation. He could not face the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... distinction is here made between the services rendered God by Christians and those which the Jews rendered. The thought is: The Jews' service to God consisted in sacrifices of irrational beasts, but the service of Christians, in spiritual sacrifices—the sacrifice of their bodies, their very selves. The Jews offered gold and silver; they built an inanimate temple of wood and stone. Christians ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... philosophers propagated the erroneous notion that if certain religious legislators had forbidden various aliments, it was for hygienic motives. Even Renan believed that dread of trichinosis and leprosy had caused the Hebrews to forbid the use of pork. To show the irrational nature of this explanation, it will be enough to point out that in the whole of the Bible there is not a single instance of an epidemic or a malady attributed to the eating of unclean meats; the idea of hygiene awoke very late in the Greek world. To the Biblical writers, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... walk in life, and that very morning she had noticed him crossing a street in the young woman's company. Vane, as it happened, had met Kitty Blake by accident and had asked her to accompany him on a visit to Celia. Evelyn did not think she was of a jealous disposition, and jealousy appeared irrational in the case of a man whom she had dismissed as a suitor; but the thing undoubtedly rankled in her mind. While she was considering it, Jessy Horsfield entered ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... alone. But a rebuff such as this, so irrational as he thought it, so entirely out of keeping with Miss. Lord's behaviour, he could by no means accept. Nancy was walking towards the railway-station; he followed. He watched her as she took a ticket, then put himself in ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... of us who count Mr. Yeats one of the immortals while he is still alive, are inclined to shy at a claim at once so solemn and so irrational as this. It reads almost like a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... magic spell for changing in an instant the nature of the relations of two human beings to one another. If a man marries a woman after three weeks acquaintance, and the day after meets a woman he has known for twenty years, he finds, sometimes to his own irrational surprise and his wife's equally irrational indignation, that his wife is a stranger to him, and the other woman an old friend. Also, there is no hocus pocus that can possibly be devized with rings and veils and vows and benedictions that can fix either a man's or woman's affection for twenty minutes, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... no violence to a suppliant, no, not even if he were his own foe; since how irrational must it be to stigmatise robbers of temples as sacrilegious and yet to regard him who tears the suppliant from the altar as ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... distrust his fellowmen. That second visit to Peter Westley——" Mrs. Travis spoke quickly to hide her bitterness. "He was so sure that what he had made was good—an inventor has always, my dear, an irrational love for the thing he has created—and to have it spurned! He was supersensitive, super—everything. Then my own health went to pieces. I suppose I simply was not getting enough to eat to give me ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... time the thing haunts me like a detective story—I can't find the solution! What does it mean? Why did he do it? It is so irrational—so impossible—so utterly incomprehensible! And shall I never know ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... any ordinary heretic, had not religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion. This passion or emotion, according to those who deny her attachment to Bothwell, was simply terror—the blind and irrational prostration of an abject spirit before the cruel force of circumstances and the crafty wickedness of men. Hitherto, according to all evidence, she had shown herself on all occasions, as on all subsequent occasions she indisputably showed herself, the most fearless, the most keen-sighted, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... to-morrow among my neighbours, they would be only injured by it—it would not be Christian of them to take them—they have enough. If they have not, I give it them. It does less harm to me than to them. But this I know is very irrational; and the point is not to be affected by that. I could live in a cottage tomorrow, if there ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of outrage three years ago in Butte. There is not one man who was here, who, I believe, was in any way, shape or form responsible for such outrages. I find that the ultra-Socialistic members of the unions in Butte denounced these men for coming here, in a manner as violent—and I may say as irrational—as the denunciation [by the capitalistic writer] in the article you sent me. Doubtless the gentleman of whom you speak as your general manager is an admirable man. I, of course, was not alluding to him; but I most emphatically was alluding to men who write ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... reason for charging a man with Agrarianism, though it be never so unreasonable a reason, his infidelity is taken for granted, and it would be labor lost to attempt to show the contrary. Nor is this conclusion so altogether irrational as it appears at the first sight. Religion is an ordinance of God, and so is property; and if a man be suspected of hostility to the latter, why should he not be held positively guilty towards the former? Every man is religious, though but few men govern their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... that answer," commented Carew. "A man couldn't feel it; it's irrational. Miss Gladwyne speaks with a certainty that our guide will come, though she has nothing to base her calculations on—she doesn't know the distance or the difficulties ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... them by faith, a medium as legitimate as that of sight. They are mysteries, but everything contains a mystery; they demand of him what every day's, every hour's events demand of him—faith. Let us understand, however, that faith is not the surrendering of our minds to that which is irrational and inconsistent. These terms should not be confounded with the mysterious and the incomprehensible. That the earth moves and yet stands still is not a proposition that demands faith. It is in the province of reason to say that it cannot ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... respondent's counsel assured the Court that his client 'had resolved to spend his fortune, if necessary, in resisting the claim of the Rev. Dr. O'Fay.' Lord Justice Blackburne pronounced this to be a very irrational determination, although he had to decide that the claim could not be sustained ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "we shall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal physical force, and that we shall witness, as happens every day in the lowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men." And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the socialist premise ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... hand. I mused on this, wondering if beneath the busy exterior of life there lurked in people's hearts a secret imperishable conviction. And, after all, was it not a millennium—the final triumph of science—the conquest of the irrational by the rational? ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... precipitous wall of the house and the tall yew trees the path was a chasm of impenetrable gloom. Somewhere there were steps down to the right, a gap in the yew hedge. Denis, who headed the party, groped his way cautiously; in this darkness, one had an irrational fear of yawning precipices, of horrible spiked obstructions. Suddenly from behind him he heard a shrill, startled, "Oh!" and then a sharp, dry concussion that might have been the sound of a slap. After that, Jenny's voice was heard pronouncing, "I am going ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... irrational to contrast Carlyle's heroes, Cromwell, Mirabeau, Frederick, Napoleon, with men like Washington or Lincoln. The circumstances were different. The conditions of public use and of personal greatness were ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... thing—love. It caused the trouble. It was more terrible than frost or famine. Women were all very well, in themselves good to look upon and likable; but along came this thing called love, and they were seared to the bone by it, made so irrational that one could never guess what they would ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... into town—because he could not bear to meet his son, people said; and Samuel never took the hill road out of Old Chester for a corresponding reason. Furthermore, it was hard to connect Samuel with anything so irrational as a quarrel, for every year he grew in solemn common sense. Benjamin Wright's growth was all in the way of temper; at least so his boy Simmons, a freckled mulatto of sixty ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... property owner may commit any kind of an architectural nuisance so long as he confines it to his own front yard. The strength of IS, the weakness of should be, conflicting interests and legislative cowardice are responsible for the highly irrational manner in which ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... condemned by the German Government itself, but only after many years, and mainly because they were wasteful. Government representatives have told the Reichstag, as Herr Schleitwein did in 1904, that they must pursue a 'healthy egoism,' and forswear 'humanitarianism and irrational sentimentality.' 'The Hereros must be forced to work, and to work without compensation and for their food only. ... The sentiments of Christianity and philanthropy with which the missionaries work must be repudiated with all energy.' This is what is ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... a laugh that seemed to her the first irrational flaw in something exquisitely reasonable, and ran down the dark stairs. She attended imaginatively to the sound of his footsteps; as on her first excited night in country lodgings the summer before she had sat up in bed listening to horse's hooves beating through the moonlit village street, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the faithful few who clung to the old creed; but they had ceased to be regarded as binding upon their consciences by the great mass of the Western Asiatics. Western Asia was a seething-pot, in which were mixed up a score of contradictory creeds, old and new, rational and irrational, Sabaism, Magism, Zoroastrianism, Grecian polytheism, teraphim-worship, Judaism, Chaldae mysticism, Christianity. Artaxerxes conceived it to be his mission to evoke order out of this confusion, to establish in lieu of this extreme diversity ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... √2 (the ratio of the diagonal of a square to its side). The occasion for this method of approximation to √2 (which can be carried as far as we please) was the discovery by the Pythagoreans of the incommensurable or irrational in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... of propinquity, joined to reasons of self-love and a real passion which had no means of satisfaction except by marriage, led Paul on to an irrational love, which he had, however, the good sense to keep to himself. He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle Evangelista as a man should who desires not to compromise his future life; for the words of his friend de Marsay did sometimes rumble in his ears like a warning. But, in the first ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... was not all irrational. Hugo's supremacy was not that he was the greatest artist in essentials, for here Dumas was immeasurably his superior. It was not that he knew best the heart of man, or had apprehended most thoroughly ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... seen in my walks the irrational creatures of God, the birds and the beasts, governed by a kindly instinct in attendance on their young, often has it come into my head that love and charity, far more than reason or justice, formed the tie that ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... members of his church, a Norwegian, sixty-two years of age, and a widower, had for the last preceding year been considered by most of the residents as demented. The missionary himself had observed his erratic and frequently irrational conduct, and was impressed with the probable truth of the prevailing rumor. One morning, however, as the missionary was seated in his study, he was surprised to receive a very early call, and upon invitation his visitor took a seat and explained the object of his visit. He said that ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... proved futile; nor could human wit have succeeded. The exasperated Duke was contumacious, irrational; the two Majesties kept pulling different ways upon him. Matters grew from very bad to worse; and Mecklenburg continued long a running sore. Not many months after this (I think, still in 1729), the irrational Duke, having got money out of Russia, came home again ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... however, total exports rose by perhaps 30% in 2003 and 19% in 2004, largely because of higher international oil and gas prices. Overall prospects in the near future are discouraging because of widespread internal poverty, the burden of foreign debt, the government's irrational use of oil and gas revenues, and its unwillingness to adopt market-oriented reforms. Turkmenistan's economic statistics are state secrets, and GDP and other figures are subject to wide margins of error. In particular, the rate of ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from. As for your youth whom blood and blows delight, Away with them! there is not in ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... eye, uncontrollable fury in his heart, the irrational fireman, both fists uplifted, made a wild onslaught upon the ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... experience, of views sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the best way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, to this personal accent—the moral equivalent of her dimple—that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational success. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas into first-hand emotions that so endeared her ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... obvious that want of Instruction concerning Religion does in a Sceptical Age dispose Men to Scepticism and Infidelity, which often terminates in downright Atheism; let us see whether, or no, Ill, by which I mean, all irrational Instruction in regard of Religion, ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... is not from God in the way of principle, but from man in the way of fact; and thus, being a mere contingency, or moral accident in the history of human development, self?government is the essential prerogative of our nature. In accordance with this irrational and unscriptural hypothesis, we find Price and Priestly expanding Locke's views at the period of Burke; while in the writings of that apostle of political Antinomianism, Rousseau, and his English counterpart Tom Paine,—the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... us: ay, and may be nearer it, too, than many of us, as it is expiating its willfulness in more terrible and direct punishment. There is not a single spasm in that decayed and nerveless frame, not a single horror of all the gloomy forebodings and irrational shudderings of the sickening delirium, not a single mile of the grim dusty roads he wearily traverses, which is not needed to bring him to the truth. The soul may be so clouded that it may not even be taking note of its punishment, may not be even conscious ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at once, and I began to reflect upon what had passed. It seemed to me that he was foolish and irrational, altogether unlike himself. He had asked my advice upon a point in which his own judgment would serve him better than mine, and it was contrary to his nature to ask advice at all in such matters. He was evidently hard pressed and unhappy, and I wished I could help him, but ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... question was to be construed according to the spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired. This was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young Earl of Warwick; who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked up in the Tower of London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland; and, at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people: who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented; and the boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... cry him aloud as Daddy? Uncle, he had intended they should call him; but that is, for beginning speech, a hard saying, embracing both a palatal and a liquid. Whereas Da-da—the syllables come almost unconsciously to the infant mouth. So he had encouraged it, and even felt an irrational pride in the honourable ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... made his legs move. He walked on through the shrouds of Death until he felt a taut singing in his nerves. An irrational fear sprang out in him, cascading down his spine, and Cully shuddered. Ahead there was something. Two motives: get there because it (they?) calls; get there because ...
— Cully • Jack Egan
... 'that the wheat appeared finer than any I have seen in England, and totally free from weeds.' And a few months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the same way, wrote: 'In so infant a settlement, it would have been irrational to expect that abundance which bursts the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more cultivated countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance which indicated that with economy and industry, there would ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... to inquire what are the true ends of society and government? Man is a gregarious animal—a social being. He may exist in solitude, but he cannot enjoy life: he cannot perfect his nature. Those who have watched and studied closely the habits of those irrational animals, who live in communities, as the ant, the bee, and the beaver, have observed not only a settled system and subordination, but the existence of some wonderful faculty, like articulate speech, by which communication takes place ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... distasteful. One does not like to think of himself as a chance hit of the irrational physical elements; neither does he feel at ease with the thought that he is the result of any break or discontinuity in natural law. He likes to see himself as vitally and inevitably related to the physical order as is the fruit to the tree that bore it, or the child ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... he has not at hand; rest is not at his command; he must run, weary himself, endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the elements and seasons; and as the ignorance in which he was born and bred gives him or leaves him a multitude of false and irrational ideas and superstitious prejudices, he is likewise the slave of a number of errors and passions, from which civilized man is exempted by the science and knowledge of every kind that an improved state of society has produced."—Volney's Travels ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... yourself, by believing in Him who was smitten in your stead, who "was wounded for your transgressions and bruised for your iniquities;" in beseeching you to let the Eternal Son of God be your Substitute in this awful judicial transaction; we are summoning you to no arbitrary and irrational act. The peace of God which it will introduce into your conscience, and the love of God which it will shed abroad through your soul, will be the most convincing of all proofs that the act of faith in the great Atonement does no violence ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... sit clinging to the cornice, and look down on my other self and the rest of us, if I could only find the key. I laboured for hours in search of these formulas, thinking to compass my ends by means absolutely irrational. For example, I was convinced that if I could only count consecutive numbers long enough, without losing one, I should suddenly, on reaching some far-distant figure, find myself in possession of the great secret. I feel quite sure that nothing ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... of the world, except the social, yet irrational ancient superstitions of Greece and Rome, mankind have vainly thought to propitiate the Almighty beneficence, by ridiculous acts of austere self-torment; and even the ignorant or designing followers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... even to the irrational instincts, and making spirit and blood obedient and docile to it. Such also were most of his companions, for though they were dashed to the ground and dragged along by the Cyclops, they said not a word about Odysseus, nor did they ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... supreme good in life, or rather the only good, that the prostitute is better than the nun, for the one makes men happy, the other is dedicated to a painful and shameful celibacy; that the law against adultery is a sort of sacrilege; that women should be common and should go naked; and that it is irrational to die for one's country or for any other ideal. . . . It is noteworthy that the representative of the Christian standpoint accepts tacitly the assumption that happiness is the supreme good, only he places that happiness ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... tendency to bind one age to another, and in that distinction of ranks, of which, although few may be in possession, all enjoy the advantages. Hence, again, you will observe the good nature with which he seems always to make sport with the passions and follies of a mob, as with an irrational animal. He is never angry with it, but hugely content with holding up its absurdities to its face; and sometimes you may trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority, something like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Placidia had an irrational way of losing her possessions. While yet on her way to the London railway station she had lost her tam-o'-shanter. So perforce, she travelled in a large picture-hat which, although pretty and becoming, was hardly suitable headgear ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... unknown. He has no country to defend and bleed for—he can relieve no sufferings—for he looks around in vain, to find a being more wretched than himself. He can indulge no generous sentiment—for he sees himself every hour treated with contempt and ridiculed, and distinguished from irrational brutes, by nothing but the severity of punishment. Would it be surprising, if a slave, labouring under all these disadvantages—oppressed, insulted, scorned, trampled on—should come at last to despise himself—to believe the calumnies of his oppressors—and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... there was nothing left to be done but to wait, and, as far as might be, to make inquiries; and to take any decisive step now when the affair had scarcely begun, and hardly yet taken shape, would be simply senseless, irrational. To hope for any success was irrational, even if I had been a person of much more importance and influence, ... but what could I, a petty official, do? As for her, she was absolutely without ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... protector of our material interests: interests to which we now sacrifice all others. The events of the last month show, with the utmost vividness, that these very interests may be endangered by the arbitrary and irrational will of a despot. The feelings, therefore, which were his real support are now bitterly hostile ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... secret aversion to seeing so gentle a creature thrown even for an hour upon her own resources, though in situations which scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources; and often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and a fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... mere tools, with which they can build up a pedestal for their solitary statue, and who sacrifice every feeling which should sway humanity, and every high work which genius should really achieve, to the short-sighted gratification of an irrational and outrageous selfism. As for my manners, I flattered myself that they advanced in measure with my mind, although I already emulated Napoleon. I soon overcame the fear which attended my first experiments in society, and by scrupulously observing the paternal maxims, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... of the Whigs! Behold the only Republic that can be established in England except by force! And who can doubt the swift and stern termination of institutions introduced by so unnatural and irrational a process. I would address myself to the English Radicals. I do not mean those fine gentlemen or those vulgar adventurers who, in this age of quackery, may sail into Parliament by hoisting for the nonce the ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... shadow, gracious Hien," remarked Tsin Lung, turning towards the other with courteous deference. "Shall we bring a scene of irrational carnage to an end and agree to regard the incomparable Thang-li's benevolent tongue as an outstretched ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... which, to the backward look of later years stand out with undying vividness, and this not necessarily because of any import attached to them; often, in the irrational workings of memory, very vital affairs refuse to come when bid, while quite little things or aspects of them are imprinted on the mind for ever. That ceremony of "Crying the Neck" at Cloom had, it is true, been for Ishmael Ruan a notable happening, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Gautier, the victims in these two stories, were neither spiteful, nor mendacious, nor irrational, so they are probably true. The second was possibly due to Balzac's odd notions of "business being business." The first, I have quite recently seen reason to think, may have been a sort of reminiscence of one ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... by Friedrich Wilhelm; of which some specimens remain, and one whole month, September, 1719 (the Boy's eighth year), has been published. Very singular to contemplate, in these days of gold-nuggets and irrational man-mountains fattened by mankind at such a price! The monthly amount appears to have been some 3 pounds 10 shillings:—and has gone, all but the eighteenpence of sovereign pocket-money, for small furnishings and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... "Irrational folly!" cried Pillerault. "In matters of honor I ought to be believed. What nonsense were you saying just now? How have you robbed your creditors when you have paid ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... convinced myself, experimentally, that human existence, human nature, was a bottomless pit and an uncommonly filthy one at that. Reaction was inevitable. Then I understood why men have invented gods, subscribed to irrational systems of theology, hailed and accredited transparently ridiculous miracles. Such lies are necessary to certain stages of development simply for the preservation of sanity, just as, at another stage, sanity, for its own ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of evidence to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, when they began their work; were far enough from any intention of meddling with even the most irrational of the dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Pooh! That's nothing! That signifies absolutely nothing! It's meaningless! It's a detail. You get well—do you hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you'll see! And if she is an idiot—in the event of her irrational persistence in an incredible and utterly indefensible attitude"—he choked up, then fairly barked at Siward—"take her anyway, sir! Run off with her! Dominate circumstances, sir! take charge of events! ... But you can't do it till you've clapped yourself into prison ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... really seen spring," Louise said to him, one day, in excuse of some irrational impulse that had driven her out of the house. And the quick picture she drew, of how, in her native land, the brief winter passed almost without transition into the scathing summer; her suggestion of unchanging leaves, brown barrenness, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that emotion might lead him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him, stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this conclusion ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... I can return the compliment," observed the man of business. "Your limitation is to be downright irrational." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from Harrow you might see the Scottish Express on the North-Western main line. For a moment I did not realise that the train was German, that the purpose of its journey was to kill me and my fellow-men. But it is too easy to sentimentalise, to labour the stark fact that war is a grotesque, irrational absurdity.... ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquizing, "and is frightened by strange buggaboos! 'Tis but a piece of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... best American philosophers, and some French ones, for the support of mass opinion, developed a system which set forth that reason always led you into traps and that the only mind to trust was the irrational, instinctive or intuitional mind. Thus the nonsenseorship, with excellent philosophic support put the ban upon thinking. Now, I do not contend that many suffer seriously from this restriction. For, after all, thinking is hard work and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... possession of some spark of faith which He would fain blow into a flame. He shows them and us the reason for overwhelming fear as being a deficiency in faith. And He casts all into the form of a question, thus softening rebuke, and calming their terrors by the appeal to their common sense. Fear is irrational if we can exercise faith. It is mere bravado to say 'I will not be afraid,' for this awful universe is full of occasions for just terror; but it is the voice of sober reason which says 'I will trust, and not be afraid.' Christ answers His own question in the act of putting it,—ye are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that one could hardly recognize for one thing or another, certainly not as examples of any well-meaning styles which have lasted until to-day. The straight line now disappeared in favour of the most dissolute and irrational curves imaginable, and the sober majesty of the gardens of Louis XIV became a tangle of warring elements, fine in parts and not uninteresting, effective, even, here and there, but ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... which he called a frivolous waste of time; and he had a similar dislike to evening parties; not on account of a puritanic disapproval of dancing, or of young people of different sexes meeting and having opportunities of getting acquainted with each other, but the hours were so irrational, and the conventional dress so unbecoming and dangerous to health, that he had prohibited Jane and Elsie from accepting the invitations that were showered on them when they had given up lessons and were supposed to be ready to come out. If people would meet at six, and break up before twelve, and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an irrational excess;—but we must not believe with Beattie all the absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the doctrines of the school, as explained by Sextus Empiricus, are far more suited to the wants and infirmities of human reason as well ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... indeed been a long one, and yet no other moral movement involving so many and so great social changes ever made more rapid progress. You and your fellow-laborers are truly to be congratulated on the full and abundant harvest your faithful seed-sowing has brought to humanity. The irrational sentiment, based upon the methods and customs of barbarous times, is rapidly yielding to reason. The world is learning—women are learning—that character, even womanly character, does not suffer from too much breadth of thought, or from too active a sympathy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the chapel at Cape Coast Town, when the beautiful liturgy of our Church is read; and the decorum which is observed by the natives, who read the responses, appears in striking opposition to the wild irrational service which they formerly offered at the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... sensibility of the woman. . . . Alas for him! He, too, might have discovered what Byron did; for were not his errors avenged upon him within, more terribly even than without? His cries are like the wails of a child, inarticulate, peevish, irrational; and yet his pain fills his whole being, blackens the very face of nature to him: but he will not confess himself in the wrong. Once only, if we recollect rightly, the truth flashes across him for a moment, and the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... little whether these legends are historically correct. Their value lies in the moral of them. And as for their real historical correctness, the Straussian argument that no such persons existed, because lies are told of them, is, I hold, most irrational. The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a truth. The high moral character ascribed to them would never have been dreamed of by persons who had not seen living instances of that character. Man's imagination does not create; it only reproduces and recombines its own ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... childlike sensitiveness, of candour, of innocence, and of affection. There is nothing surprising about this contrast. Nearly all of us are double. The more a man develops intellectually, the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole: that is to say, to the irrational, to the repose of mind in absolute ignorance, to the woman who is merely a woman, the instinctive being who acts solely from the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce school of controversy, in which the mind of Europe has been involved since ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... spectators of a fight in which doubtless many would have liked to have taken a part. The introduction of proportional representation has rendered this particular feature of the Belgian electoral system quite unnecessary. Electors are not so fickle as an irrational method of voting made them appear ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... merely florid writer. There are two causes which have given rise to this calumny; namely, that narrowness of mind which leads men to suppose that the truth lies entirely on the side of their own opinions, and that whatever does not make for them is absurd and irrational; secondly, a trick we have of confounding reason with judgment, and supposing that it is merely the province of the understanding to pronounce sentence, and not to give in evidence, or argue the case; in short, that it is a passive, not an active faculty. Thus there are persons ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the Emperor. And precisely therein lies their present problem. For one may say, I think, with confidence that this attitude cannot endure, and is already disappearing. Western thought is an irresistible solvent of all irrational and instinctive ideas. Men cannot be engineers and pathologists and at the same time believe that a man is a god. They cannot be historians and at the same time believe that their first Emperor came down from heaven. Above ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... parallel series, whence comes this correspondence? Why should knowledge illuminate the object. The doctrine of the Vijnana vadins, that it is knowledge alone that shows itself both as knowledge and as its object, is also irrational, for how can knowledge divide itself as subject and object in such a manner that knowledge as object should require the knowledge as subject to illuminate it? If this be the case we might again expect that knowledge as knowledge should also require another knowledge ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... history and the necessities of the race. Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches and societies, sprang up like mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant, fanatical, without self-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief. It is irrational, cruel, to hold the Negro, under such strange conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences of bad education, unwise teachers, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming |
