"Scepticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opinion he chose to take up, he was able to make good either by the foils or the cudgels, by gross banter or nice distinctions, by a well-timed mixture of paradox and common-place, by an appeal to vulgar prejudices or startling scepticism. It seemed to be equally his object, or the tendency of his Discourses, to unsettle every principle of reason or of common sense, and to leave his audience at the mercy of the dictum of a lawyer, the nod of a minister, or the shout of a mob. To effect this purpose, he drew largely on the learning ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... another. The so-called laws of nature, such as gratitude or the love of our neighbour, were in fact contrary to the natural passions of man, and powerless to restrain them. Nor had religion rescued man by the interposition of a Divine will. Nothing better illustrates the daring with which the new scepticism was to break through the theological traditions of the older world than the pitiless logic with which Hobbes assailed the very theory of revelation. "To say God hath spoken to man in a dream, is no more than to say man ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... wanted, but he did not see, Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts. Barnum's mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind, and fostered superstition—and got found out. The result was scepticism, both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them have only one head: ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... to connect those phenomena to a system, and compare them with those of sleep, of vision, of light. His whole scientific belief, based on the assertions of the school of Locke and Condillac, was in ruins. Seeing his hollow ideas in pieces, his scepticism staggered. Thus the advantage in this struggle between the Catholic child and the Voltairean old man was on Ursula's side. In the dismantled fortress, above these ruins, shone a light; from the center of these ashes issued the path of prayer! Nevertheless, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... significance to confidential reports. The hermetic isolation which during the world war divided Europe into two separate worlds made this doubly urgent. But it is inevitable in regard to confidential reports that they must be accepted, for various reasons, with a certain amount of scepticism. Those persons who write and talk, not from any material, but from political interests, from political devotion and sympathy, are, from the nature of the case, above suspicion of reporting, for their own personal reasons, more optimistically than is justified. But they are apt ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... and listen quietly in the schools than to be up and wandering over the deserts, and to seek out new plants every day,"[9] and so, in the third century before Christ, the school of Empiricism was established, the system of which resembled the older Scepticism. It rested upon the "Empiric tripod," namely, accident, history and analogy. This meant that discoveries were made by accident, knowledge was accumulated by the recollection of previous cases, and treatment adopted which ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a butcher—in the middle of all these innocent ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... spot now partly covered by the Citadel. Plymouthians so devoutly cherished the legend that they preserved the figures of the two wrestlers, cut in the turf after the manner of the famous White Horses; but either a greater scepticism or another need for the site has caused the figures to vanish long since. As Corineus, by the same tradition, became first Duke of Cornwall, it was supposed that he bestowed his name on the Duchy; but the "Corn" ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... that a freezing nose in a Russian city is seized upon and rubbed by the bystanders without explanation. In a winter's residence and travel in Russia I never witnessed that interesting incident, and am inclined to scepticism regarding it. The thermometer showed -53 deg. while I was in St. Petersburg, and hovered near that figure for several days. Though I constantly hoped to see somebody's nose rubbed I was doomed to disappointment. I did ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of our holy and Apostolical Church is not thus lax and indiscriminate. It rests not upon scepticism, but upon sound and definable principles. It does not proceed on the assumption that all creeds are equally good, but that men of all creeds have a political right to follow the dictates of conscience, whether enlightened or erroneous, in matters purely spiritual, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... excited in all parties. "Odious," says M. Thiers "to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins and the Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets which afford some consolation for an unjust death. A universal disgust, an absolute scepticism were his last sentiments; and he went to the scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was drawn along the Rue St. Honor'e, he beheld his palace with a dry eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of life," ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Henry's respectful sympathy for this immemorial rheumatism had contributed to win Mrs. Flower's heart. As to the precise amount of rheumatism from which Mrs. Flower suffered, Henry soon realised that there seemed to be an irreverent scepticism in the family, nothing short of heartless; for rheumatism so poignantly expressive, so movingly dramatised, he never remembered to have met. Mrs. Flower could not walk across the floor without grimaces of pain, or piteous indrawings of her breath; and yet demonstrations that you might ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... artless and crystal-clear but excessively complex and obscure. It is, indeed, the chief mark of a man emerged from the general that he has lost most of his original certainties, and is full of a scepticism which plays like a spray of acid upon all the ideas that come within his purview, including especially his own. One does not become surer as one advances in knowledge, but less sure. No article of faith is proof ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... two folio vols. in 1695-6, and was engaged in controversies caused by it until his death in 1706, at the age of 59. He was born at Carlat, educated at the universities of Puylaurens and Toulouse, was professor of Philosophy successively at Sedan and Rotterdam till 1693, when he was deprived for scepticism. He is said to have worked fourteen hours a day for 40 years, and has been called ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... attention to the simple necessary cheque, or the safer and more enticing Bank of England note. If you are an honest expert, there is a wide field for your talents; and if I do not believe you to be anything of the kind, you have yourself to blame for my scepticism. You came here without an introduction, without any warning of your arrival. You refuse to leave my room. You inform me that you want money with a candour unusual among beggars. You then ask me to inspect a forged manuscript which you either know or suspect me to have seen before. Should you have ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... should see anything at all I looked. But for some seconds without success. My scepticism, however, soon left me. At first I saw only the coarse grain of the paper and the thin vapour rising from it. Then the knowledge that I was gazing into a dish vanished. I forget my companion and the previous conjuring trick. I saw only ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... suffered and died to atone for the sins of the world"—an alteration which was heartily welcomed by the Unitarians of Japan—is full of painful significance. The Bishop, while expressing his thankfulness that there are large numbers in the Congregationalist body, who have no share in the prevailing scepticism, points out that in dealing with others, with whom this is not the case, nothing can be gained by any attempt at co-operation. "At such times a severe exclusiveness may be the truest exhibition ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favour every client; That 'tis the fee directs the sense, To make out either side's pretence. When you peruse the clearest case, You see it with a double face: For scepticism's your profession; You hold there's doubt in all expression. 10 Hence is the bar with fees supplied, Hence eloquence takes either side. Your hand would have but paltry gleaning Could every man express his meaning. Who dares presume to pen a deed. Unless you previously are fee'd? ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... attendants, you sighed regretfully for your previous humble station, for your retired life and communion with wisdom, and regarded your actual brilliant position as an unsatisfactory sham happiness. Neither can Allorqui admit that Paulus had been disturbed by philosophic scepticism, for to the day of his baptism he had observed all the Jewish customs and had only accepted that little kernel of philosophy which accords with faith, always rejecting the pernicious outward shell. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... indicate this: Since we call that disposition of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of reason, but the opposite of faith,—Scepticism, Unbelief, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... it may gratify curiosity to notice three or four works, which hear an excessive price. The price cannot entirely be occasioned by their rarity, and I am induced to suppose that we have still adepts, whose faith must be strong, or whose scepticism ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 24th.—Major HUNT and Mr. KING, though in some respects not unlike one another—each combining a child-like belief in what they are told outside the House with an invincible scepticism in regard to the information they receive from Ministers inside—are rarely found hunting in couples. But they made common cause to-day over the alleged award of the Distinguished Service Order to persons who had never been near the firing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... Governor and Captain Cator saw lying on the ground huge timbers to be used in its erection, but how these were to be reared up was not apparent. Very kindly they gave Mr. Duncan a quantity of ropes, blocks, etc., but even then they sailed away in considerable scepticism as to the possibility of unskilled red men raising a large and lofty church. In ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... seemingly indubitable manner that thinking was entirely divorced from reality. It required only another century for philosophy to draw from this the unavoidable consequence. It appeared in the form of Hume's philosophic system, the outcome of which was universal scepticism. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful scepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... physical fact. Faith, since it does not spring from the pure reason, cannot indeed, as the old dogmatisms, both philosophical and theological, have united in asserting, be demonstrated by the reason. Equally it cannot, as scepticism has declared, be ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... this time, that the Author had a great end in view. He has lived to see Scepticism and Infidelity openly avowed, and even endeavoured to be propagated from the Press: The great doctrines of the Gospel brought into question: Those of self-denial and mortification blotted out of the catalogue of christian virtues: And a taste even to wantonness ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... current coin even for the thinker. The part played by Mysticism in philosophy is parallel to the part played by it in religion. As in religion it appears in revolt against dry formalism and cold rationalism, so in philosophy it takes the field against materialism and scepticism.[36] It is thus possible to speak of speculative Mysticism, and even to indicate certain idealistic lines of thought, which may without entire falsity be called the philosophy of Mysticism. In this ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... incident, that she was smart enough to see that it wasn't her he was hankering to know, but the pretty sister by her side; and when challenged to prove that they were sisters,—a statement which aroused the scepticism of his ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... capable of being known to be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook. I believe the scientific outlook to be immeasurably important to the human race. If a more just economic system were only attainable by closing men's minds against free inquiry, and plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the middle ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... measure, to produce the very evils it appears to lament. What could be its effect, but to check the ardour of investigation, to extinguish the zeal of philanthropy, to freeze the current of enterprising hope, to bury in the torpor of scepticism and in the stagnation of despair, every better faculty of the human mind, which will necessarily become retrograde in ceasing to ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... that both the actions and the writings of contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding the purity of Platonic affections. The words and lives of many illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the people from ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... love of liberty, which was his misfortune in life, since it deprived him of the comfort of any faith, refused him any refuge for his thoughts, robbed him of peace, and even of the soft pillow of scepticism—this "real liberty" formed the unique originality and grandeur of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... ourselves that we have secured a method and freedom of thought which will not permit us to be the victims of the absurdities of the Middle Ages, but, in fact, there is no solid obstacle to our conversion to some new grotesque religion more miraculous than Roman Catholicism. Modern scepticism, distinguishing it from scholarly scepticism, is nothing but stupidity or weakness. Few people like to confess outright that they do not believe in a God, although the belief in a personal devil is considered to be a sign of imbecility. Nevertheless, men, as a rule, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... discords. Even when he did not resolve them, he firmly believed that they would be resolved. This, his essential difference from the other poets of the last fifty years, marks not only his apartness from the self-ignorance of English society, and the self-sceptical scepticism which arises from that self-ignorance, but also how steadily assured was the foundation of his spiritual life. In the midst of the shifting storms of doubt and trouble, of mockery, contradiction, and assertion on religious matters, he stood unremoved. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... in the twenty-second volume of the Quarterly Review. De Quincey also asserted that he had frequently seen the divining-rod successfully used in the quest of water, and declared that, 'whatever science or scepticism may say, most of the tea-kettles in the Vale of Wrington, North Somersetshire, are filled by Rabdomancy.' Mr. Baring-Gould also quotes the case of a friend of his own who was personally acquainted with a Scotch lady who could detect hidden springs with a twig, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of mind and health of body hitherto unknown. Plenty of open air, plenty of physical exertion, a continual instancy of toil; here was what had been hitherto lacking in that misdirected life, and the true cure of vital scepticism. To get the train through: there was the recurrent problem; no time remained to ask if it were necessary. Carthew, the idler, the spendthrift, the drifting dilettant, was soon remarked, praised, and advanced. The engineer ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cried Rebecca, forgetting her scepticism. "What do you s'pose they're doin' in New ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the meaning of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it;—these are the lessons we learn" from workers in Science. "With all this vigorous management of the negative element, they inspire no scepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to its pursuit. The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth and for applying it to its highest uses, pervades those writers." "In cultivating, therefore," science as an essential ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... politer word.' For humanism, conceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's term), has sincerely to renounce rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals of rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so different from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of humanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by a multitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in any given case; and what is more satisfactory than any alternative in sight, may to the end be a sum of PLUSES and MINUSES, concerning ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... followed from the inference of my feelings. My first sense was that of astonishment too intense not to appear unreal and even amusing. It seemed to me that if I would laugh out loud all would come back, as delusions yield to scepticism and mockery. But it was too cold not to be real, the scene and persons were too familiar to be erroneous. I had to realize that I was in one of the great and terrible occasional convulsions of human nature. Do you know how it next affected me? With an instant's sense of sublimity! ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... grand, of ornate Latinists and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and generals—in fact, the history of all humanity as it appears to his penetrating eye, serving a mind marvellously incisive in its scepticism, and a heart that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice, contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony. As to M. Anatole France's adventures, these are well-known. They lie open to this prodigal world in the four volumes of the Vie Litteraire, describing the adventures ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... spared the religion of their times. Diogenes, who was called "Socrates gone mad," was no exception to this rule. Humour, which is seasoned with profanity, is most telling when there is not too large an amount either of faith or scepticism; very few could find any amusement in the sneers of an utter infidel. Diogenes was almost as deficient in ordinary religious belief as in most other kinds of veneration. Sometimes he may have had the good effect of checking the abuse of sacerdotal power, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... insignificance. The disintegrating effect of such knowledge on the faith of the masses must be, and manifestly is, simply enormous. Not that there is any rival consensus and authority to take the place of dethroned Catholicism. Even scepticism is too little organized and embodied, too chaotic in its infinite variety of contradictory positions, to create an influential consensus of any positive kind against faith. Its effect, as far as the unthinking masses are concerned, is simply to destroy the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... for the manifestly impossible purpose of protecting her from herself as well as others, I had surrendered myself to the probable vengeance of a band of cut-throats if I betrayed them, and to the certain vengeance of the law if I did not. Brande, notwithstanding his constant scepticism, was scrupulously truthful. His statement of fact must be relied upon. His opinions were another matter. As nothing practical resulted from my reflections, I came to the conclusion that I had got into a pretty ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... with noble thoughts, and words of fire, carry the truth from one hemisphere to the other—where are ye? What do ye? Consumed upon the altar of a withering selfishness—cramped and debased by the bonds of a narrow scepticism—man has prostituted you to vile uses. Slaves of his passions, and ministers of evil, He has made you;—and where God had said, "Let there be light," has too often answered, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... going to pass off without a failure," I said to myself, recalling triumphantly the scepticism as to our capabilities, which some of our friends ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... scientific position in regard to the transmissibility of modifications should be one of active scepticism, that there seems to be no convincing evidence in support of the affirmative position, and that there is strong presumption in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... at the same time, to save appearances. It would certainly be presumptuous to accept implicitly the narrative of de Thou, which is literally followed by Hoofd and by many modern writers. On the other hand, it would be an exaggeration of historical scepticism to absolve Philip from the murder of his son, solely upon negative testimony. The people about court did not believe in the crime. They saw no proofs of it. Of course they saw none. Philip would take good care that there should be none if he had made up ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I most admired in the Corean were his scepticism and his conservatism. He seemed to take life as it came, and never worried much about it. He had, too, practically no religion and no morals. He cared about little, had an instinctive attachment for ancestral habits, and showed a ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... nevertheless always an uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... you know, is frequently consulted by the suffering and oppressed; frequently called upon to answer that question in which the scepticism of the humble and the ignorant ordinarily begins: 'Why am I suffering? Why am I oppressed? Is this the justice of Providence? Has the Great Father that benign pity, that watchful care for His children, which you preachers tell us?' Ever intent on deducing examples from the lives to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... father had two sons; I remained a bachelor, but my elder brother married, and had a son who became a sailor like all the rest of us, and will inherit the proper estate. Well, my father was a strange man; he somehow combined Fanshaw's superstition with a good deal of my scepticism—they were always fighting in him; and after my first voyages, he developed a notion which he thought somehow would settle finally whether the curse was truth or trash. If all the Pendragons sailed about anyhow, he thought there would be ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... exactly the opposite tenor. In each generation there have been chemists among the leaders of their science who have refused to admit that the so-called elements are really elements at all in any final sense, and who have sought eagerly for proof which might warrant their scepticism. The first bit of evidence tending to support this view was furnished by an English physician, Dr. William Prout, who in 1815 called attention to a curious relation to be observed between the atomic weight of the various elements. Accepting the figures given by the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of the Dragon, the monster which, to inveigle people and snap them up with greater certainty, became indistinguishable from a rock, the trunk of a tree, a bundle of twigs. Since those happy days of artless credulity, scepticism has chilled my imagination to some extent. By way of a parallel with the three examples which I have quoted, I ask myself why the White Wagtail, who seeks his food in the furrows as does the Lark, has a white shirt-front surmounted ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... because the majority still believe. No religion—and least of all the religion of the dead—could thus suddenly lose its hold upon the affections of the race that evolved it. Even in other directions the new scepticism is superficial: it has not spread downwards into the core of things. There is indeed [470] a growing class of young men with whom scepticism of a certain sort is the fashion, and scorn of the past an affectation,—but ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... call out, which a good actor would observe, in the—"Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and the repetition of his name and in his own presence indicate a respect or an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him,— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... to the Colonel's explanation of the mysterious letters with growing scepticism. He had scarcely spoken, but an attentive observer could have divined his state of mind by the short, petulant blows he gave to the glowing horseshoe on the anvil. Now he stopped in his work, rested his arms on his hammer-shaft, ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... all the phenomena of the solar system. Wherein consists the strength of the theory of undulation? Solely in its competence to disentangle and explain phenomena a hundred-fold more complex than those of the solar system. Accept if you will the scepticism of Mr. Mill[19] regarding the undulatory theory; but if your scepticism be philosophical, it will wrap the theory of gravitation in the same or in ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... observation, to note that even after the Pearl Street station had been in actual operation twenty-four hours a day for nearly three months, there should still remain an attitude of "can't be done." That such a scepticism still obtained is evidenced by the public prints of the period. Edison's electric-light system and his broad claims were freely discussed and animadverted upon at the very time he was demonstrating their successful application. To show some of the feeling at the time, we reproduce the following ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... calumny, that all who love their African brother hate their God and Savior. I look, indeed, on Mrs. Stowe's volume, not only as a noble contribution to the cause of emancipation, but to the general cause of Christianity. It is an olive leaf in a dove's mouth, testifying that the waters of scepticism, which have rolled more fearfully far in America than here,—and no wonder, if the Christianity of America in general is a slaveholding, man-stealing, soul-murdering Christianity—that they are abating, and that genuine liberty and evangelical religion are soon to clasp hands, and to smile ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... states[132] that Sona and Uttara were despatched to Suvarnabhumi. This is identified with Ramannadesa or the district of Thaton, which appears to be a corruption of Saddhammapura[133] and the tradition is accepted in Burma. The scepticism with which modern scholars have received it is perhaps unmerited, but the preaching of these missionaries, if it ever took place, cannot at present be connected with other historical events. Nevertheless the statement of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of the first half of the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim to virtue, was practically ignored, and the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... in his Memoires d'outretombe, so full of sadness and bitterness, was to speak of the coronation in a tone of scepticism verging on raillery, celebrated at the accession of Charles, in almost epic language, the merits of this traditional solemnity without which a "Very Christian King" was not yet completely King. In his pamphlet, Le roi est mort! Vive le roi! he conjured the new monarch ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... discovered, Marsham's change of attitude. But the two men had hardly anything else in common. Ferrier was an enormous reader, most variously accomplished; while his political Whiggery was balanced by a restless scepticism in philosophy and religion. For the rest he was an ascetic, even in the stream of London life; he cared nothing for most of the ordinary amusements; he played a vile hand at whist (bridge had not yet dawned upon ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... against any farther investigation;—But to what purpose?—Surely not to refute my theory, but to explode every physical inquiry farther on the subject, and thus to lead us back into the science of darkness and of scepticism. But let us proceed to see our author's sentiments ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon in August they were not unready to accept it. They felt, for the speech made them feel, that a great thing had happened. Yet they might well be pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in Ireland, and how it would issue in action. A famous Nationalist said some ten days later: "When I read the speech in the paper, I was filled with dismay. Now I recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the title-page. When you have made arrangements as to time, size, type, etc., favour me with a reply. I am giving you an universe of trouble, which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for my scepticism at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so much more like an attack than a defence, that, haply, it might better be omitted—perpend, pronounce. After all, I fear Murray will be in a scrape with the orthodox; but I cannot help it, though I wish him well through it. As ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... evidence is to be discarded, what evidence are we to accept? Is it to be of the kind that is relied upon for referring quotations to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel according to Peter, or the [Greek: Genna Marias]? There are sometimes no doubt reasonable grounds for scepticism as to the patristic statements, but none such are visible here. On the contrary, that Heracleon should have written a commentary on the fourth Gospel falls in entirely with what Irenaeus says as to the large use that was made of that ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... upheld me right along," said Thorne in answer to Bob's scepticism regarding government sincerity. "The Office is all right; don't make any mistake on that. It's just a question of getting at it. I admit the system is all wrong, where the complaints can't get direct to the chiefs; but that's ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... self-preservation and of self-destruction are equally powerful in this world. The devil will hold his empire over humanity until a limit of time which is still unknown. You laugh? You do not believe in the devil? Scepticism as to the devil is a French idea, and it is also a frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do you know his name? Although you don't know his name you make a mockery of his form, following the example of Voltaire. You sneer at his hoofs, at his tail, at his horns—all ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... went down with all hands on board. Shortly after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at first received with pretty general scepticism. Smeaton's Eddystone tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the rock is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the Bell Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far distant from land, covered at every ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went in little groups towards the tennis-lawn, where Phadrig had elected to display his powers, the three Professors instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility. Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic mediums, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... against which our statute-book and the code of almost all civilised countries have attested by laws upon which hundreds and thousands have been convicted; many, or even most, of whom have, by their judicial confessions, acknowledged their guilt and the justice of their punishment? It is a strange scepticism, they might add, that rejects the evidence of Scripture, of human legislature, and of the accused persons themselves.'[94] Reason was hopelessly oppressed by faith. In the presence of universal superstition, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... progress of mankind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of those laws is diffused. 2d. That before such investigation can begin, a spirit of scepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the investigation, is afterward aided by it. 3d. That the discoveries thus made, increase the influence of intellectual truths, and diminish, relatively, not absolutely, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Doubt.— N. unbelief, disbelief, misbelief; discredit, miscreance[obs3]; infidelity &c. (irreligion) 989[obs3]; dissent &c. 489; change of opinion &c. 484; retraction &c. 607. doubt &c. (uncertainty) 475; skepticism, scepticism, misgiving, demure; distrust, mistrust, cynicism; misdoubt[obs3], suspicion, jealousy, scruple, qualm; onus probandi[Lat]. incredibility, incredibleness; incredulity. [person who doubts] doubter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... further taught philosophy, but in order to demonstrate that all philosophy is false; and, as Pascal observed later, that to ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. They seem to have been extremely intellectual, very learned, and most serious despite their scepticism, and to have rendered Greece the very great service of making a penetrating analysis—the first recorded—of our faculty of knowledge and of the limitations, real, possible, or probable, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... dominant that life would be worthless unless they were achieved—yet might be forced, by the might of events, to forego them. Hadria's own heresy had been of the head rather than of the heart. But to-day, feeling began to share the scepticism of the intellect. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and preserving the purity thereof, against all kinds of errors, heresy and schism, as namely, Independency, Brownism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Arminianism, Socinianism, Libertinism, Familism. Scepticism, Quakerism, Deism, Burignonism and Erastianism; and as we declare, that we willingly agree in our consciences unto the doctrine of the church of Scotland in all points, as unto God's undoubted truth and verity, grounded ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... ran into a dark, handsome, evil-eyed woman, clad in the most costly of dresses, and sparkling with jewellery. She glided past them with sly, silent footsteps, and vanished by the cupboard. Cured of scepticism, and throwing dignity to the wind, the Captain's wife raced downstairs, and, bursting into the drawing-room, flung herself on the ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Nabopolassar. According to the historian she caused a sepulchral chamber to be constructed for herself in the walls of Babylon, above one of the principal gates. So far as the terms of the inscription are concerned he may have been hoaxed by the native dragomans, but there is nothing to rouse our scepticism in the fact of a tomb having been contrived in the thickness of the wall. At Sinkara Loftus discovered two corbel-vaulted tombs imbedded in a mass of masonry which had apparently served as basement to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... anecdote, must have betrayed the scepticism we felt, for the Colonel proceeded to a corner of the room, and produced the identical Umbrella. Of course, such a proof was irresistible, and we were compelled to do penance for our unbelief by lending the gallant Colonel a sovereign, for "the Bank was ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... that at three-and-twenty they shut the doors deliberately on any new and possibly unorthodox idea; and it is consequently unreasonable to expect from them any genuine freedom or originality of thought. I can forgive them their assumption of superiority, their inability to meet honest scepticism with anything like fairness, their continual bickering among themselves; but I cannot forgive them the harm they are doing to religion, the discredit they are bringing upon it by their bigoted views and obsolete ideas. They busy themselves doing good—that is the worst ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... civil sense, its advantage, and disadvantage; advantage, in promoting statuary and the arts; disadvantage, in bringing their gods too much on a level with human beings, and thence depriving them of their dignity, and gradually giving rise to scepticism and ridicule. But no statue, no artificial emblem, could satisfy the Northman's mind; the dark wild imagery of nature, which surrounded him, and the freedom of his life, gave his mind a tendency to the infinite, so that he found rest in that which presented no end, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... imagination an ideal that was not realised in fact or in thought. It depended on the assumption of anthropomorphic gods, an assumption which could not stand before the criticism of reason, and either broke down into scepticism, or was developed into the conception of a single supreme and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and Dictionary writing. Scepticism. Eternal necessity refuted. Lord Hailes's criticism on The Vanity of Human Wishes. Mr. Maclaurin. Decision of the Judges in Scotland ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... thing." Here he took a few steps of a jig, to which the "Marysville Pet" beat time with her feet, and concluded with a laugh and a wink—the combined expression of an artist's admiration for her ability, and a man of the world's scepticism of feminine ambition. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... elsewhere also in the New Testament to the devout in Palestine at this period; and it designates in a striking way the peculiarity of their piety. The age was spiritually dead. Religion was represented by the high-and-dry formalism of the Pharisees on the one hand and the cold and worldly scepticism of the Sadducees on the other. In the synagogues the people asked for bread and were offered a stone. The scribes, instead of letting the pure river of Bible truth flow over the land, choked up its course with the sand of their soulless commentary. Yet there are good people even in the worst of ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... that very modest achievement, with which, however, luck, opportunity, or any extraneous influence could have had nothing to do. That fact, satisfactory and obscure in itself, had for me a certain ideal significance. It was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism and even to some not very kind aspersions. I had vindicated myself from what had been cried upon as a stupid obstinacy or a fantastic caprice. I don't mean to say that a whole country had been convulsed by my desire to go to sea. But for a boy between ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... a pocket lens into her hand and bade her survey one of the phials with it. Eleanor's scepticism fled. That something was there, in pretty active life, was evident. Somethings. The ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... enjoyment, read a very great deal of belles-lettres, and continued to work at German philosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plunged into a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much more stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism. It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before his time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a most abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyes ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... first term dispelled his belief in the marvellous. His brother was by this time at boarding-school, and they met only on Sunday, when they renewed their knightly sports, but with diminished ardor. One day Alfred asked Paul seriously what he thought of magic, and Paul confessed his scepticism. The loss of this dear delusion was a painful shock to Alfred, as it is to many children. Who cannot remember the change which came over the world when he first learned that Krisskinkle alias Santa Claus did not fill the Christmas stocking—that the fairies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... his character by incidents with which I have myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S., friends and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... finds no prototype in the whole course of time, and admits of comparison with no ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Inquisition had existed from the time when reason meddled with what is holy, and from the very commencement of scepticism and innovation; but it was in the middle of the thirteenth century, after some examples of apostasy had alarmed the hierarchy, that Innocent III. first erected for it a peculiar tribunal, and separated, in an unnatural manner, ecclesiastical superintendence and instruction ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was a Man went into one of these thinking Engines, but he came wiser out than he was before; and I am persuaded, it would be a more effectual Cure to our Deism, Atheism, Scepticism, and all other Scisms, than ever the Italian's Engine, for Curing the Gout ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... classical learning, bringing streams of thought from old Greek and Latin fountains, caused a sudden expansion. It was like the discovery of an unsuspected and greater world, with a body of new truth, which threw the old into contemptuous disuse. A spirit of doubt, scepticism, and denial, was engendered. They comprehended now why Abelard had claimed the "supremacy of reason over faith," and why Italian poets smiled at dreams of "immortality." Then, too, the new culture compelled ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... in times of great religious fervor men sometimes change their religious opinions; whereas in times of general scepticism everyone clings to his own persuasion. The same thing takes place in politics under the liberty of the press. In countries where all the theories of social science have been contested in their turn, the citizens who have adopted one of them stick to it, not so much because they ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... impression that he is narrating an actual event. He does not "make believe" like the European nurse, even like the European child, who has always, in some nook or corner of his mind, a presentiment of the scepticism ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... doctor came in. It was not long before he arrived. He began by sending Rachel out of the room—and then he told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no more. Serious persons, in search of proofs of hardened scepticism, may be interested in hearing that he showed no signs of remorse ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Maupertuis's materialistic thesis. Lange has shown that at a very early period in the movement the most consistent materialism was ready and developed, while such leaders of the movement as Voltaire and Diderot still leaned either on deism, or on a mixture of deism and scepticism.[214] The philosophy of D'Alembert's Dream is definite enough, and far enough removed ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... in her turn will boast of masters in the art, whose memories will ever be preserved and hallowed. But whatever the future may bring forth, the marvellous accounts of the powers of ancient music will meet with little indulgence from modern scepticism. At present such effects are unknown among us, and therefore unintelligible. Among the early Greeks, for many centuries, the several characters of poet, musician, lawgiver, and philosopher, were combined in the same individual; and it is probable that the music of that period consisted principally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... whole, a downward one, from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cynicism, from the imagination to the understanding. It was in a direction altogether away from those springs of imagination and faith at which they of the last age had slaked the thirst or renewed the vigor of their souls. Dryden himself recognized that indefinable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... nothing would persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong, for in my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and gentle nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character which has given more consequence and force to his scepticism than all the arguments of his sophistry." The real truth of the matter was that, meeting Sterne at Lord Hertford's table on the day when he had preached at the Embassy Chapel, "David was disposed to make a little ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... tell us the most marvellous theosophical adventures, which he knew not by hearsay, but because he had passed through them himself. We might express an opinion: he stated facts. And it seemed that he had no more intimate friend than Sinnett, and that to Sinnett he had confessed his scepticism, asking for a sign, a manifestation, and that one afternoon when they were smoking over their coffee and cognac after lunch in Sinnett's chambers, then on the third floor of a house near the Oxford Street end of Bond Street—Forepaugh was carefully exact in his details—Sinnett ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... could well discriminate between the genuine servant of Christ and the mere sounding professor, while at the same time scientific studies had rather tended to make him undervalue clear dogmatic teaching as set forth in the revealed Word of God. Yet he was too profound a thinker to adopt that popular scepticism which is either the refuge of those who, consciously or unconsciously, use it as a screen, though it proves but a semi-transparent one at the best, to shut out the light of a coming judgment, or the halting-place of thinkers who stop short of the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... had any scepticism left, the Emperor would have dispelled it by the clear and business-like explanations ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... their pride may outrage Thee, they will be, sooner or later, baptized in tears; grant that they may cease to believe in any other shelter from the tempest than Thy love, and spare them the severe lessons of unhappiness. Our wisdom and scepticism are in our hands but children's toys; forgive us for dreaming that we can defy Thee, Thou who smilest at Golgotha. The worst result of all our vain misery is that it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the hue of apple blossoms. The warm breeze kept stirring her hair caressingly and, against the glare, she lowered her long lashes, half veiling her eyes. But at his avowal of the cause of his coming her lips curved with humorous scepticism. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... ship, went down with all hands on board. Shortly after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at first received with pretty general scepticism, Smeaton's Eddystone tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the rock is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the Bell Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far distant from land, covered at every tide to a depth of ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Turgenef returned to his native land, he brought back with him, indeed, a high knowledge of Latin grammar, but a total ignorance of the highest aims of life. He brought back with him a religious scepticism, and a metaphysical pessimism, which colored henceforth his whole life, and therefore his artistic works. For those were the days when men yet believed that the great problems of the soul in its relation to the gods and to men could be solved ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... about his heart. How should he have doubted that her feelings were as exquisite as her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning. In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences, the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her advisers, bespoke ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... to earth and was even then among the mountains of his beloved Peru. He reminded them of how he, Tiahuana, had conducted Arima into the presence of the Council of Seven and caused him to relate his story to them; of the scepticism with which that story had been received, of the difficulty which he had encountered in persuading the Council that it was their duty to permit him, as High Priest, to sift the story and ascertain how far it was true; and ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... of Ian's most trusted advisers were of the same opinion as the Master, since the number of persons who can understand the conditions necessary to the productiveness of exceptional and creative minds is always few. Besides, most people at bottom are in Martha's attitude of scepticism towards the immaterial service of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... declared himself convinced that Garth died in the communion of the Church of Rome, having been privately reconciled. It is observed by Lowth that there is less distance than is thought between scepticism and Popery; and that a mind wearied with perpetual doubt, willingly seeks repose in the bosom ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... misunderstood, the beautiful, unattainable mother. If Miss Carew had seen into the reveries of her pupil at such a moment, she would hardly have believed how they alternated with the coldest fits of doubt and scepticism. Molly was dealing with a self-made ideal that she needed to satisfy the hunger of her nature for love and worship. But it had no foundations, no support, and it was apt to vanish with a terrible completeness. Then she would feel quite ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... at all! Scepticism only indicates gross materialism and lack of imagination. There is nothing at all to be proud of in the possession of a low ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... in the evening of this most momentous day, and I must put down my pen, but there is one thought which perhaps may serve as answer to the scepticism so often expressed when I asserted my belief in this world after all. I mean if a man, when he experiences some transcendent joy, is prompted to express that joy in terms of nobler effort and sterner consecration to the welfare of others—does ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... seems as if the end was reached, the goal attained, and that man has no more to do,—just then, when he appears to have no choice but between eating and drinking and living in his comfort as the beasts do in theirs, and scepticism which is death,—then it is that in fact, if he will but look, the Golden Gates are before him. With the culture of the age within him and assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself an incarnation of it, then he is fit to attempt the great step which is absolutely possible, ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... confirmation of the accounts of such writers as Cieza de Leon and Garcilasso de la Vega in those relics which still survive as the surest witnesses of the past, defying the tooth of time, the ravages of violence and the denials and assumptions of a crazy scepticism. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... religious ideas and certain Biblical terms. There is a kind of audacity in their use of the Scriptures, which reminds one of the freedom of mediaeval mystery-plays. Probably this boldness began, not in scepticism or in irreverence, but in honest familiar faith. It certainly seems very odd to us in England, and probably expressions often get a laugh which would pass unnoticed in America. An astounding coolness ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... as you like, the man is really not bad-looking. He has a nice lithe springy figure, and a clean complexion, and an open brow. And if there's a suggestion of superciliousness in the tilt of his nose, of scepticism in the twirl of his moustaches, and of obstinacy in the squareness of his chin—ma foi, you must take the bitter with the sweet. Besides, he has decent hair, and plenty of it—he'll not go bald. And he dresses well, and wears his clothes with an air. In short, you'll make a very handsome couple. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the vicar, and the pinched and stuffy rooms of even the post-office people and the grocer, so enforced these suggestions, that it was only when I was a boy of thirteen or fourteen and some queer inherited strain of scepticism had set me doubting whether Mr. Bartlett, the vicar, did really know with certainty all about God, that as a further and deeper step in doubting I began to question the final rightness of the gentlefolks, their primary necessity in the scheme of things. But once that scepticism had awakened ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... thing than a cruel one So well satisfied with his reply that he repeated it twice That if we live the reason is that we hope That sort of cold charity which is called altruism The discouragement which the irreparable gives The most radical breviary of scepticism since Montaigne The violent pleasure of losing Umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies Was I not warned enough of the sadness of everything? Whether they know or do not know, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... America curious, balancing between hope and scepticism. The European world is full of the criticism of America, and for the matter of that America too is full of it; hostility and depreciation prevail,—overmuch, for in spite of rawness and vehemence and a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... which are occasionally published of such appearances. I do not at all expect that we shall be believed when we make known our adventure, any more than others have been; but that will not alter the facts of the case. The almost universal scepticism with which announcements of such creatures' appearances are treated is, after all, not very difficult to account for. They doubtless inhabit only the extreme depths of the ocean, and are probably endowed with ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... called to the attention of Mr. Wilson before he went to Paris, the course of international diplomacy might have been rather different. These twenty-five stories and sketches one and all reveal a sneering scepticism about human nature and an utter denial of moral values. From a technical point of view, "The Adventure of My CurA(C)" is a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a certain scepticism that provoked another laugh from Daisy. She was almost frivolously ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Then I should pay him a visit. Wants to talk with me about my past and future. Has much to say; and so on. Do I not go often into a building where many persons work at chemistry? Am I not sceptical?—rather. Wants to cure my scepticism, and so on, ad nauseam. Me is tired, me wants go. Again the jerks, the rubbing of the eyes, and the Indian maid ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... the world has confirmed the fact, beyond the possibility of scepticism, that men cannot discover and establish a perfect rule of human duty. Whatever may be said of the many excellent maxims expressed by different individuals in different ages and nations, yet it is true that no system of duty ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... be rain?" Neither June nor the moon make reply, but youth has no doubts. The girl, weeping tears of joy over Rennes's perilous words, had but one clear regret in her mind—she could not see him for some hours. His declaration dispelled the terrible bitterness, scepticism, and indifference to all sentiment which had gradually permeated, during their acquaintance, her whole heart. Repulsed affection may turn to hatred in haughty, impatient souls. But in Agnes it produced a moral languor—a mental indolence—the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... been tempted as I was"—not by the charms of Mrs. Bowes, of course: he found that Satan troubled the lady with "the very same words that he troubles me with." Mrs. Bowes, in truth, with premature scepticism, was tempted to think that "the Scriptures of God are but a tale, and no credit to be given to them." The Devil, she is reminded by Knox, has induced "some philosophers to affirm that the world never had a beginning," which he refutes by showing that God predicted the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Palla, the solution lay in loyalty to the faith she professed; in living it; in swaying ignorance by example; in overcoming incredulity by service, scepticism by love. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... another and a scientific age; nor was it unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of the sympathy with France, which had been rendered more than ever powerful in Germany by the forcible suppression of patriotism. Abstract philosophy, despising nature and history, mocking Christianity, once more revived and set itself up ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... acknowledgment. Therefore, and with distinct pleasure, I wish to say that the active encouragement of casual, but trusted acquaintances, the inspiring indifference of unconvinced intimates, and the kindly scepticism of indulgent relatives, who, perforce, could do naught but obey an immutable law of blood-related minds—all these influences have conspired to render more sure the accomplishment of my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and paced the room, his hands behind him, his eyes bent down. His face still bore the marks of his sudden and terrible suffering, but the perfectly balanced powers of his mind were already beginning to assert themselves. The habit of scepticism, that is, of systematic inquiry into all that befell him, was too strong to remain long in abeyance, and the equilibrium of the mental forces, cultivated to excess by his method of study, was too stable in nature to be long disturbed, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... escaping by a subterranean channel to Lough Corrib, thence to the sea. Sundry unbelievers, however, stoutly assert a conviction that "it's so be nacher entirely an' thim that says it's not is ignerant gommochs that don't know," and in the face of determined scepticism the question of the origin of the lake ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... on the other all the philosophers. 'In this division, to my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar.'[160] Reid, in fact, had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led to a paradoxical scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every acceptation of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart alleged for not ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... every body appear of a character which may be deemed even exemplary; calumny, therefore, falling upon such a subject, injures not only himself but society, since it weakens all confidence in virtue, and strengthens the scepticism of depravity." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... mad," said the constable sententiously. The police is always the incarnation of scepticism.—"Monsieur le Baron Hulot has been caught by a trick," he added, loud enough for Valerie ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... dogmatism which the Stoics had introduced. That was really carrying on one side of Platonism and not the least important. It is true indeed that the Academy appears to us at this distance of time mainly as a school of scepticism, but we must remember that its scepticism was directed entirely to the sensible world, as to which the attitude of Plato himself was not fundamentally different. The real sceptics always refused to admit that the Academics were sceptics in the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... any person in normal health can be hypnotized, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and power; and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, and that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe the French seem to be most susceptible, and the English and Scandinavians least so. The impression that weak-minded persons ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... diversity of religious opinion to be gratified in separation and the erection of new organizations, rather than in the endeavor to purify the old and established form, at once threw wide open the door of schism, and with it, in the end, that of scepticism. The movement once begun could neither be checked nor controlled by any human effort. Others claimed the right which they themselves had exercised, and the result was soon seen in the separation of one after another denomination from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... designated Takenouchi-no-Sukune, who thereafter seems to have served sovereign after sovereign until his death in the year 368, when he must have been from two hundred to three hundred years old. This chronological difficulty has provoked much scepticism. Dr. Kume, an eminent Japanese historian, explains, however, that Takenouchi was the name not of a person but of a family, and that it was borne by different scions in succeeding reigns. The first was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Christ's Resurrection. There have been many attempts on the part of those who reject that belief to account for its existence, and each of them in succession has 'had its day, and ceased to be.' Unbelief devours its own children remorselessly, and the succession to the throne of antichristian scepticism is won, as in some barbarous tribes, by slaying the reigning sovereign. The armies of the aliens turn their weapons against one another, and each new assailant of the historical veracity of the Gospels commences operations by showing that all previous assailants have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... distinguished; there are merchants, husbandmen, physicians, who will all dispute his right to manage the flock. I think that we can best distinguish him by having recourse to a famous old tradition, which may amuse as well as instruct us; the narrative is perfectly true, although the scepticism of mankind is prone to doubt the tales of old. You have heard what happened in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes? 'You mean about the golden lamb?' No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and stars once arose in the west and set in the east, and that the god ...
— Statesman • Plato
... tables of the law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs of half the civilized world. The solemn scepticism of science has replaced the sneering doubts of witty philosophers. The more positive knowledge we gain, the more we incline to question all that has been received without ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth," replied I, after a moment's pause,—for the abruptness of the question had somewhat startled me,—"to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all, over the dust that once was human. The weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead corpse of the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor, and causes him to connect the ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... infinite forces, of which man is himself the haphazard and highest production, it has contented itself with the elementary work of destruction, without even attempting to dig the foundations for anything which it is proposed to erect in the place of what has been destroyed. "Scepticism," says Carlyle, "is, after all, only half a magician. She calls up more spectres than she can lay." Scepticism was, nay is, sometimes, a necessary attitude of the human mind. But man cannot live on doubt alone, and therefore, though we profoundly believe the possibility ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and that day she was stricken fruitful by the lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah." He dealt Pounded Meat a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound of Cheschapah's galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk everything. Their scepticism ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister |
